Make Friends with Change.
How do you live out your faith when everything is changing so fast? To
those filled with anxiety, fear, and pessimism, Terry Biddington turns the question
on its head: How could you possibly live out your faith if the times were not
changing. After all, God is all about creativity; creation is all about wonder;
the Gospel is all about the unexpected. And the Christian church is—or should
be—all about improvising to the tune of hope, personified in the dance of one
Jesus of Nazareth. It’s risky. It’s difficult. It’s deep into the life of God.
This book takes as its starting
point the reality of change, and it seeks to explore how change may be
seen positively by the church. It also seeks to help reinvigorate its teaching
and ministry and the way in which Christians understand their spiritual
journey. Change is seen not only as a welcome dynamic of the life of faith,
but as the very source of unexpected and transformative encounters with
God and the transcendent. For God is forever coming into the world, ceaselessly
creating and opening up rich possibilities for new beginnings.
 |
Terry Biddington holds an M.A. in theology
from Manchester University, and a PhD. from Leeds University in 16th Century
Spanish religious verse. He is Anglican Chaplain to the three universities
of the Manchester Higher Education Community in Manchester, UK. He describes
himself as an ordinary pastor and theological practitioner trying to speak
authentically, interestingly, and honestly and to address his concerns
for the future of the church while encouraging fellow travelers to face
their own questions and doubts with hope, courage, and good humor.
|
Advance reviews of Risk-Shaped Discipleship
Here is a demand for risk-taking discipleship which finds its
roots in Scripture. This is no woolly liberal treatise but a serious exercise
in getting radical Christianity and the church to return to the Bible for
its inspiration and producing a reformation based on a theology with risks
at the heart. It will provide a rich resource for study groups and individuals
seeking a new direction for their faith.
Bishop Stephen Lowe, former Bishop for Urban Life and Faith, UK
On both sides of the Atlantic churchgoers and the ones who love them
are searching for ways to be church. Hand-wringing over the church's “relevance”
abounds. But here Terry Biddington takes a different tack—we need to
change not to keep up with the times, but because our God is a God of change
and new creation; a God who is “on the inside of change.” Terry Biddington
uses a rich variety of scripture and conversations with patristic, mystic,
and feminist thinkers to craft an alluring picture of a God who draws humanity
into new creation. Unsettled churchgoers, those on the church's fringes,
and, ultimately, the whole church will be the richer for it.
Rev. Nathan Eddy, United Church of Christ
Terry Biddington is that rare person—someone whose pastoral work is
deeply rooted in his Christian faith and who is also able to write engagingly
with a profoundly informed scholarship about the spiritual journey that
we all need to be on. The book is a must for anyone seriously concerned
about the role of religious ministry in the 21st Century. Few books will
really change your life—this one will if you let it.
Dr. William West, Quaker and Reader in Counselling, Manchester University,
UK
Terry Biddington’s new book, Risk-Shaped Discipleship, has the qualities
of fresh thinking, challenging imagery and fearless exploration that those
who know his work would expect. He seeks to develop what he finds so lacking
in the church’s response to change: namely a “creative and accessible theology
of change.” By exploring a series of biblical stories to
powerfully illuminate our present condition he helps us imagine a truly
risky, realistic and hope-filled discipleship today. There is much in the
book to disagree with—but that is precisely the kind of debate he wants
to engender! Even though written with a light and accessible touch, this
is food for serious thought and prayer.
Rev. Dr. Chris Jenkins, Catholic Priest and Psychotherapist
Challenging, inspiring, tender yet assertive, this prophetic book offers
the “green shoots of recovery” that the institutionalised church desperately
needs at this time. Here is a thoughtful Biblical and visionary paradigm
for all who have transitioned beyond the confines of a severely disabled
church. All those who long for full inclusion and equality really need
this book: read, mark, and inwardly digest. This really is dynamite and
articulates brilliantly the place I and so many others have been evolving
into. Thank you SO very much.
Rev. Clive Larsen, is a parish priest and involved in The Progressive
Church Network, Inclusivechurch, and Changing Attitude, UK
Terry Biddington loves the Bible: he takes its texts seriously.
This book will appeal to Christians who treasure the Bible, and are willing
to explore its language and ideas in the light of modern knowledge about
the historical times in which the texts were produced and subsequently
read. The author's clear and interesting text, together with the
helpful questions in each chapter, will help readers to relate the contents
to their own lives and times.
Una Kroll, feminist activist, writer and priest
The challenge of change to the churches is something everyone
committed to the future of the church should be concerned with. This
book encourages us, through reflection on our own experience—to see change,
and the accompanying “cutting edges,” not as a threat, but as places where
God is most fully present.
Hilary Topp, National Coordinator, Student Christian Movement, UK
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1.i Taking Stock of Where We Are: The Reality of Change
ii Imagining Things Differently: Newness and the
Experience of God
2.i Abraham and Sarah: From Anxiety to New Birth
ii A Time for New Birth: Natality as a Way of Re-imaging
the Christian Adventure
3.i Moses: Exile, Identity, and Law: On Learning from a
Burning Bush
ii Law, Risk, and Freedom: Getting on the
Inside of the Relationship
4.i Jeremiah: On Defying the Ways that Lead to Death
ii Is the Matrix Real? On Being Born Afresh into
Hope
5.i Second Isaiah: The Treasures of the Darkness
ii Toward a Theology that Re-Imagines the World:
On Darkness, Birth, and Flourishing
6.i Jesus, Bodies, and the Threat of Wholeness
ii Flourishing and the Body of Christ
7.i Jesus, Scripture, and Risk-shaped Imagination
ii Imagining a New “Kindom” Text for the Church
8. Piecing Together a Risk-shaped Discipleship
Works Cited
Introduction
The idea of risk-shaped discipleship is more than mere rhetoric. All
discipleship needs to be risk-shaped if it is to truly respond to the challenge
of communicating hope for today’s world and so make a tear in the everyday
fabric of the normal human perception of reality, a perception that is
everywhere colored by the deep hues of anxiety, fear, and pessimism.
The communication of hope creates a space in which to articulate a
voice that performs a different tune that calls us to participate and cooperate
with God’s endless creativity, in an attitude of almost playful risk or
daring. Hope is like the music of great jazz musicians, where any so-called
wrong note or mistake is immediately incorporated into the performance
and becomes the basis for a new improvisation. While such an approach tests
the musicians’ ingenuity to its limits and is not without its risks, it
gives them scope and impetus for the further creative development of their
performance.
Similarly for us in the performance of our lives, hope exists when God
and people together create an improvised response to the events and personalities,
the joys and tribulation of daily life. To understand the performance of
human life as the risk-shaped challenge of hopeful improvisation is to
understand that life is best appreciated as being the result of the creative
interplay between the non-negotiable chords (the “givens” of our lives)
and those gratuitous moments of serendipity, coincidence, or pure grace.
In these moments of grace, our perception is momentarily but irrevocably
transformed by the “yet-more” of God. And Scripture shows us that the Christian
life is all about improvising on this score of hope, personified in Jesus’
performance of his own life.
There is encouraging evidence (scriptural and otherwise) that God chooses
to operate precisely through times of unimagined change and radical novelty,
and that life is best understood from the perspective of constant renewal,
newness, and new birth. The challenge of Christian discipleship is to look
for the unexpected and the new and to discover divinity within it. Christians
today, perhaps as never before, are being called to consider how our world
(which we think we know so well) and the church (which so many of us struggle
to remain part of) may be imagined differently through the eyes of God.
In many parts of the world, the church has led the way in communities
where suffering, exploitation, alienation, and abuse are rife. But the
church in the West now needs to respond afresh to God’s call by helping
the world to discern how and where God is at work. Specifically, the church
needs to help the world to imagine into being a different future by helping
the world to hear the transgressive tales and subversive memories of a
radically alternative way of life that it has been given to share. For
the church has treasures that the world needs right now for its flourishing.
It is only when the church rediscovers the radical newness of God and manages
to live and share this revolutionary inheritance that it can be most true
to its prophetic vocation in the world.
This book explores how we might collectively imagine new ways of being
church and new ways of being true to the radical proclamation of Jesus
of Nazareth. Each chapter begins by reflecting on a scriptural witness
and then explores how to reexamine the relationship between traditional
theological themes and our lived experience. This examination is done in
the light of a renewed understanding of God as one who exists by birthing
new life into being.
Chapter One explores the nature of change. All too often the church’s
reaction to change has been to avoid it at all costs. But if the church
is to be true to its calling then it should itself become an agent of the
freedom and change the world needs to experience.
Chapter Two explores freedom from anxiety and death through the story
of Abraham and Sarah. It presents the birth of Isaac and the covenant as
touchstones for discovering a life-giving mutuality between God and humanity.
This chapter also examines the incarnation and birth of Jesus to show how
each new moment of our lives might be an opportunity to engage with the
radically re-creative energy of God.
In Chapter Three we look at the great narrative of Moses and Aaron.
These men speak God’s truth to the powerful of their day in the form of
the proclamation of a radical alternative reality embodied in the Law given
at Sinai. This Law, which was utterly different from any other, can paradoxically
function like any law in its ability to create an inclusive identity and
exclude people. This chapter explores how the Law must be challenged in
the name of God if it is to reveal the real freedom that comes with risking
all to be a disciple and follower.
What precisely this risk might entail is investigated in Chapter Four
through the story of Jeremiah. The word of God that comes to Jeremiah is
meant for those at the center of the political and religious life of Judah,
a life focused on the temple and its rituals. Complete allegiance to unchanging
practices and routines was believed to guarantee God’s protection, even
in the face of the undeniable chaos of the time. It was to be the solution
to all the nation’s security fears and problems. At the heart of this story
is the show-down between Hananiah, the prophet of the establishment, and
Jeremiah, the dangerous outsider, and between two versions of reality and
two visions of God.
The possibility of discovering the “yet-more” of God is developed in
Chapter Five from the curious idea found in Isaiah of the “treasures of
the darkness.” While the notion of darkness has frequently suffered negative
overtones within the Jewish and Christian religions, its use in Isaiah
opens a doorway to think about the hiddenness and essential unknowability
of God. This chapter explores the wordless and
imageless experience of darkness as the location for fresh and intimate
encounters with God in the very ground of our being.
The next two chapters consider Jesus as the expression of God’s newness
and re-creative love. Chapter Six develops the idea of healing and the
relationship between human bodies and the physical presence of Jesus. How
it is, for example, that wherever Jesus goes he embodies in his own person
the re-creative energy of God and turns no-bodies into some-bodies; that
he calls forth from individuals an unexpected realization of their own
visceral connectedness that draws them to membership in a community; that
this community witnesses to the new reality bursting into the world and
overcomes the simple dichotomy between “savior” and “saved.”
How the church might practice a theology of “fullness of life for all”
is the theme of Chapter Seven. This chapter explores how Jesus read and
interpreted Scripture, how the early church reacted, and whether or not
we might regain the practice of reading the Scriptures subversively. Imagination
is essential to the work of doing theology and to the business of cooperating
with God to help usher in the new values and practices of God’s reign.
For too many of us, Scripture has assumed a state of fundamental and irredeemable
fixedness within our liturgical and ethical practice, which contributes
to the bored indifference and lack of anticipation with which we routinely
approach such amazingly life-giving texts.
Consequently, the church must repent and experience afresh the re-creative
love of God in order to create new strategies for offering the transformative
care the world needs. Chapter Eight is an attempt to articulate a practical
spirituality of risk and change. This chapter asks why we find ourselves
so settled on the idea that truth is always timeless and changeless, and
why we have allowed ourselves to become suspicious of being open (or opened)
to change and growth. It also explores what it is that can help us to confront
our risk aversion and so enable God to help us rediscover what the church
is for, what Christianity is to become in the West, and whether authentic
risk-shaped discipleship is the real Christian vocation today and God’s
new gift to the world.
Each section and chapter concludes with questions with which to reflect,
alone or with others.
|
