Scottish Baptist College

Dimensions of Baptist Spirituality: Under the Rule of Christ

It's here. Just received in the post my copies of the most recent Regent Study Guide entitled Under the Rule of Christ. Dimensions of Baptist Spirituality, Paul Fiddes (Ed.), Smyth and Helwys, 2008 (ISBN: 978-095397 - 4-1). The book arose out of a request from the Baptist Union Retreat Group to the UK College Principals to write something on spirituality amongst Baptists. The result was a series of papers which we wrote, reviewed together, revised in the light of our discussions, and then offered for publication.

Here's the blurb from the publisher

In this book the Principals of the six Baptist colleges in Great Britain take up a request to write about Baptist spirituality. They propose that the spirituality of Baptists, in all its diversity, is characterized by living ‘under the rule of Christ’. While all Christian spiritual traditions affirm this truth, they suggest that there is a particular sense of being under Christ’s rule which has been shaped by the story of Baptists and by their way of being church through the centuries. Elaborating the main theme, chapters explore various dimensions of spirituality: giving attention to God and to others, developing spirituality through suffering, having spiritual liberty within a community, living under the rule of the Word in Christ and scripture, integrating the Lord’s Supper with the whole of life, and engaging in the mission of God from an experience of grace. Together, the writers present an understanding of prayer and life in which Christ is both the final authority and the
measure of all things.

Chris Ellis is Principal Emeritus of Bristol Baptist College; Paul Fiddes is Principal of Regent’s Park College, Oxford; Steven Finamore is Principal of Bristol Baptist College; James Gordon is Principal of the Scottish Baptist College, Glasgow; Richard Kidd is Principal of Northern Baptist College, Manchester; John Weaver is Principal of the South Wales Baptist College, Cardiff; Nigel Wright is Principal of Spurgeon’s Baptist College, London.

My own chapter "Spirituality and Scripture: the Rule of the Word" is an exploration of how Baptists live with the theological tensions inherent in the Baptist declaration of Principle. That tension is both vital and creative, and calls us as Baptists to live in that dynamic place of personal trust, seeking to reconcile in obedient discipleship, faith as personal encounter with and commitment to "Christ as the sole and absolute authority in all matters pertaining to faith and practice" while at the same time holding to Scripture with a faithfulness that takes just as seriously the crucial qualifier "as revealed in Holy Scripture".

Later this year, on November 27 at Newton Mearns Baptist Church, the Rev Dr Stephen Holmes, Lecturer in Systematic Theology at the University of St Andrews, will deliver the inaugural lecture of the Scottish Baptist Theological Study Group. The lecture will be on "Baptists and the Authority of Scripture", and Steve will approach the subject as a Baptist theologian, deeply evangelical in conviction, and from a personal perspective that is both pastoral and academic. In a postmodern context impatient with authority claims, dismissive of denominational loyalty as unnecessarily limited in perspective, in an overall situation of church decline and loss of theological confidence, conviction is more than ever an essential component of identity.

How Baptists interpret the Bible indicates how Baptists use the Bible. And if we think at all about that sentence then we should be more than a little uneasy with that word "use". The nature of the authority under which we seek to faithfully follow after Christ is of the first theological importance, and for that reason can become an issue of personal and at times rancorous disagreement. But for Baptists there is an underlying spirituality that arises out of what we have historically called Baptist Principles. Central to these is the person and place of Jesus Christ.

We love and serve the crucified, risen and coming Christ who is living and present in the Church which is His body. We seek together to discern the mind of Christ, as a fellowship of believers, a gathered and covenanted community, and as such a complete Church because Christ is present in its gathering. It is in this process of seeking the mind of Christ that we regularly gather, assuming His promised presence in our gathering, trusting the superintendence of the Holy Spirit who moving amongst and within our hearts interprets the truth of Christ, and with mind and heart open and obedient to Scripture as it is opened, read and pondered, so that in this dynamic force field of divine initiative, human longing, shared learning and redemptive love, we seek to follow after the One who always goes before us, beckoning us to follow.

The "church meeting" is, therefore, in all actuality and with deliberate intent, the Church meeting its Lord - nothing less than that level of reality and truthfulness does justice to the principles by which as Baptists, we claim to live. A Baptist hermeneutic of Scripture, worked out in such a spiritually dynamic and communally discerning context, is something quite different from many other models based on different theological principles; amongst other things, it is such an hermeneutic that entitles us ever to use the word radical for the Baptist way of being the Church. Indeed the word radical is rendered semantically redundant wherever Baptist identity issues in the faithful and principled practice of Christ-centred community living.

Amongst the Scripture stories that inform how as Baptist we might 'use' Scripture, is the account of the disciples on the way to Emmaus. The risen Christ, drawing near, opens the Scripture, patiently and with persistent authority - then in the breaking of bread, their eyes are opened. The words of Christ about opened Scripture, and the shared meal of broken bread, impel hesitant faith towards recognition, and trustful joy towards an unknown but accompanied future. This Malaysian Icon captures the surprise on the two disciples' faces - the place of fellowship, where, in the presence of the risen Christ, Scripture is opened and bread is broken, becomes the place of recognition and revelation; the place too, where all our assumptions about our lives and possible futures are radically revised by each encounter with the One who goes before us, lovingly daring us to follow.

Posted by Jim Gordon.

Dr Ted Herbert : For me to live is Christ, to die is gain.....

Yesterday I attended the Thanksgiving service for the life of Dr Ted Herbert, Vice Principal of International Christian College. The service expressed some of the deepest realities of Christian faith - hope through Jesus Christ, gratitude for a life so fully and fruitfully lived, celebration of a life given to the service of Christ and His Church, and a recognition of the loss and sorrow that inevitably accompanies the death of someone so deeply loved and widely held in high esteem.

We learned much about this loveable and energetic man. His friend from student days spoke of Ted's integrity, ability to bring people together, unpretentious enthusiasm for learning and his obvious but never ostentatious intellectual gifts. Dr Tony Sargent described Ted as a cedar of Lebanon - tall, straight, and life enhancing and life giving. The personal relationship between himself and Ted was shared movingly and with a great sense of affection and of the co-operative partnership they had shared in the work of ICC and in wider theological education.

While the service affirmed the hope of the Gospel and something of the deep gratitude to God Ted had himself expressed during the weeks of his illness, the service nevertheless held the important balance between gratitude and hope filled faith, and the personal sense of loss that follows Ted's death, particularly for his family and colleagues. Glory tinged with sadness, and sadness suffused with the hope of glory.

On discovering the seriousness of his illness, Ted made it clear from the outset that he would live his final weeks as he had lived his life, - trusting in God for strength, depending on the grace that is sufficient, living gratefully and joyfully out of the faith that so animated and vitalised him. An email from him, responding to my own sent to him after his illness was announced, carried his usual friendly and open interest, and was a brief reassurance to those like myself who were concerned at the news. His testimony given recently to the College students, and to his own church community at Bearsden Baptist, can be heard here on Youtube.

This is one of the most remarkable testimonies I have ever heard, as Ted talks with humble confidence, with an unmistakable tone of peaceable and restful trust, and with unqualified gratitude to God for his life. No complaints or questions, just a sustained note of gratitude for what has been. When someone facing a terminal illness says he is in a win win situation because if God heals him God is glorified, and if not he will be himself in glory, it is hard not to wonder at the grace that enables such courage.

The many tributes paid by students and former students, by friends and those who owe much in their own spiritual experience to Ted's witness and friendship have been gathered on the ICC website here. My own comment I have copied below, because it says much that we want to express as a College to Diana, Joy and David, to our colleagues in Christ at ICC, and to the students and countless others who give thanks to God for Ted's life.

As a brother in Christ and as a colleague in the work of Christian training, I quickly came to appreciate Ted's spiritual, personal, intellectual and adminsitrative gifts. Over the years his pivotal and guiding role in ICC has been both highly significant and very fruitful in the work of God's Kingdom, seeing the College become a leading training resource within and beyond the UK. I pass on the condolences of the staff, students and others in the Scottish Baptist College community, assuring Diana and Ted's family of our prayers that they will continue to know the strength of which Ted so movingly spoke in his testimony. Our prayers too for the Principal and all the staff and students at ICC as you go through a period of major readjustment. The sovereign love of God keep and guide Ted's family, and sustain the wider family with whom he worked in the service of Christ. And may the peace of Christ strengthen our faith and hope, and enable us to give thanks for a life in Christ, faithfully lived.

Posted By Jim Gordon

Celebrating 50 years of pastoral ministry: Rev Dr Derek Murray

Spent Saturday afternoon at a house party in Inverurie, then Sunday morning at a morning worship service in Aberdeen. Both celebrating the same thing, a fiftieth Anniversary since Ordination. That's 50 years of living faithfully towards promises made about the care of the flock of God, the ministry of Word and Sacrament, and the surrender of secondary priorities in the interests of the Kingdom of God.

Derek Murray (the taller one in the photo!) was ordained 50 years ago. As minister in Paisley, Kirkcaldy and edinburgh, as Lecturer in the Scottish Baptist College full time 1961-66, as Hospice Chaplain for 15 years, and as part time lecturer in our College for 46 years, his service to Christ, and to our denomination in Scotland is justly to be celebrated. And so it was.

A house party, a worship service, and a sermon by the Rev Dr Ruth Gouldbourne on the text from the woman who anointed Jesus, 'She did what she could', as well as a couple of sizeable 50th Anniversary cakes shared with the congregation, enabled us to do what we too seldom do - honour and celebrate pastoral ministry as life well lived, and as a vocation that is secretly transformative and life enhancing.

Derek was also presented with a scrap book of memories, greetings and photographs. My own contribution was personal, and goes back to my own experience of Derek as teacher, and my knowledge of him as a man, and as my friend. With Derek's (very reluctantly given) permission I'm including it here, both as an appreciation of Derek's contribution to our College and the theological education of our ministry, and as a glimpse of the qualities that give pastoral ministry its enduring values as an expression of the love of God. 
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“A long obedience in the same direction”

By October 1974, at the Baptist Theological College of Scotland, I was plunged into the deep end of the Old Testament by Derek Murray, and taught how to swim. He was teaching Old Testament exegesis following the retirement of The Rev J Allan Wright, and the set book was Daniel. The Sunday school stories seemed straightforward enough – big statues, even bigger furnaces, a lions’ den and a grass eating king recently turned vegetarian, and in the background the God of Israel who wasn’t to be messed with.

But what about the beasts, the horns, the eyes, the Ancient of Days, the secret numbers of weeks and all the other symbolic images of politically subversive apocalyptic? One of the clear memories of those conversations around the table, supported by standard commentaries such as Heaton and Porteous, was the humility and gentle questioning of Dr Derek. It wasn’t that he was the authoritative, Hebrew- breathing, biblical specialist – it was that he was one of the learners who taught us a great deal about how to learn together, and how to open a Bible, and to read, mark and learn with open and valid questions. For preachers, there are few more liberating discoveries than that the Bible not only welcomes our questions, but gives us the kinds of answers that help us question our world, ourselves and even the ways of God.

 When some years later Derek was the preacher at the College Valedictory service, he spoke about the pastorally disastrous and spiritually damaging impact of ministers who specialise in guilt-making. He was referring to the commonly held belief, then and now, that what Christians need is challenge, and challenge equates to being told the gap between aspiration and performance, the gulf between what we want to be for God, and what we know we are. Guilt, he argued, may be a powerful motivator, but nothing like as powerful as gratitude; and a sense of unworthiness may at times be a healthy astringent, but we are most galvanised into costly acts of love by the knowledge we are loved. It was an address that avoided the more popular or apparently more important questions of church growth, effective leadership, missional drivenness – and in doing so recalled us to the classic discipline of love fuelled by a redeeming and reconciling Gospel.

These two personal memories, significant as they are for me, demonstrate two pervasive Christian graces; reverent curiosity about life and faith, and grace-informed optimism about people. As a pastor, a teacher, a chaplain and a friend, Derek has quietly, unobtrusively, faithfully and in ways he himself might never take time or trouble to imagine, lived out a life of pastoral vocation that has touched many of us with decisive reminders of what pastoral care can be when it is the natural outflow of a humanity that is itself the gift. In the end what Derek the husband, father, scholar, pastor, writer, preacher, has brought to the vocational trajectory of his life, is a deep faith in God, a gently persistent faith in people, and an enviable capacity for unaffected self-forgetfulness. It has been a long obedience in the same direction.

 Whereas most of us can occasionally come pretty close to false modesty about our abilities, I have never sensed anything other than genuine surprise in Derek Murray when good things are said of him in his hearing. These things are written then, so that he might have the chance to feel genuinely pleased with what others say about him!

Fifty years of ordained ministry, and such ministry, is a special gift to the church, and one to be celebrated. I am very happy to be personally included amongst those whose memories and experiences help to celebrate the gift of such a ministry. Shalom, and thank you

on the streets

Today the creative homiletics class hit the streets.

We engaged in 3 street spiritual disciplines:

1. Attentiveness - to others as part of our attentiveness to God. Being aware of other people, their presence, their characteristics, their emotions, their actions.

2. Discernment - of the rulers, principalities, and powers at work in the streets. The ideas and ideologies competing for interest, attention, compliance.

3. Street Reading and Interpretation of Scriptures - carrying out a corporate bible study outside a dis-used HBOS, Bank of Scotland Building on Luke 12 - including the parable of the rich fool read out loud from the steps before we sat on the pavement and steps to talk.

At least for a time in the contested space of Glasgow Streets the Word was being embodied and discussed.

The class was great, the discussions englightening, the coffee fine, and the challenges radically apparent.

These are disciplines that I would be really keen to repeat, develop, lead others in.

Stuart

Why no Gospel?

The other day at the Baptist Union of Scotland's Council Meeting I posed a number of questions.

One such question was why is it that preachers can feel and indeed strongly claim that they are preaching the gospel but their congregations do not hear or experience it as such?

One reasons may be a particular 'high' view of preaching and proclamation. A view that paradoxically and unecessarily gives little attention to the communicative aspects of God's self revelation in Christ which should be central in all Christian preaching.

Another may be an over estimated sense of ones own importance and role. A position sometimes hidden in the reason above.

Paul Scott Wilson in The Practice of Preaching, revised edition (Nashville: Abingdon, 2007) points to theology and the 'deep structure' of sermon forms. 

This is a good revision of an already good book. Wilson draws on years of preaching experience, his own research and writing into preaching and listeners, an extensive knowledge of the 'New Homiletic' and developments in preaching, and a desire that the gospel should be experienced as such or is not gospel at all.

Despite all the preaching they do, and the theologising about it they may offer, I am sometimes surprised at the lack of reflexive attention that preachers give to their art. Wilson's is a god book for encouraging such, although as with all books there are things within it with which one may agree and disagree.

In arguing for his case that preaching should be experienced as gospel, he cites no less than hero to some, famous Baptist preacher from another age, Charles Spurgeon (1834-92)

'The grandest discourse ever delivered is an ostentatious failure if the doctrine of the grace of God be absent from it; it sweeps over [our] heads like a cloud, but it distributes no rain upon the thirsty earth', 162. 

Preparing

Are the students back yet? I am asked this fairly regularly at the moment. I think the inmplication is - your easy days are coming to an end.

To be sure the students being present make a College a College in the sense of a living community of learning where the presence of one another, the creativity created by conversation, discussion, and debate, the friendship and support, are all a key part of the experience.

Yet the Summer is not a quiet period. The work of the previous semester and indeed year is completed with respect to necessary University requirements. Staff have holidays. New students are interviewed and met. Handbooks are updated. Courses are revised, updated, new courses written. We are preparing for the second time in as many years to begin teaching a new BD programme. Administration with respect to timetables, calendars, registration, is taken care of. Consideration is given to how the students experience can be improved both in terms of their academic learning and in terms of their formative development and spiritual progress.

The students will be back, and new ones appearing next week. We are looking forward to their presence and presently continue the preparation to try and make the next semester a good occassion for them as they pursue their vocational aspirations and the sense of the call of God in their lives.

As we prepare, hold them and us in your prayers. 

biometrics

Biometrics is the process of recording a persons identity with reference to some permanent aspect of their humanity - often a physical characteristic: retina, face, fingerprint.

The use and proposed use of such in an increasing number of areas of life is apparent. Plans at present exist to introduce biometric finger scanning into my daughters school - now for school meals, now for attendance, now for the library, now to prevent bullying etc. I list all of these possibilities because iit depends on who you speak to.

Now, the arrogant and poorly informed and convceived way that this system has been introduced is one thing - hardly encouraging confidence in the organisation who is going to be responsible for holding the data 'safe'.

The technology and nature of the process what can and cannot be done with it is quite another with explanations so far sounding like the second hand reporting of the manufacturers advertsing campaign.

I have a different question. It relates to the way in which biometrics in collecting permanent personal human data changes the relationship of any individual to the state. A purpose in such a method of data collection is 'knowledge' - permanent verifiable knowledge. As that data is collated with other data the amount of possible knowledge becomes somewhat unlimited - absolute. Knowledge we know is associated with power.

Biometric data collection has the real potential to establish for a State permanent absolute knowledge and corresponding control over a persons life.

I think that there should be some theological objections to any such absolutising of knowledge and power to any State (the point is not whether they are good por bad). Such is to put the State in a 'God-like' position with a God-like claim.

Arguments in favour of giving to the State such knowledge and rights are 'freedom' and 'security'. I think that there should be some Christian thought as to where we are in fact claiming such things are to be found and what we understand their nature to be if we associate them so much with State power that we are prepared to risk personal freedom for them.

Baptist concepts of separation of Church and State, issues of freedom of conscience and non-coercion require in an age of biometrics to go beyond older understanding and arguments into new grounds that may actually demand costly acts of resistance to State interference.  

The Church is Dead - Long Live the Church?

Commenting on the recent Baptist World Alliance Youth Congress in Leipzig - BWA president the David Coffey stated

'Never write the Church off. You know that I am a European Baptist, and you know that Europe is sometimes called the "graveyard of Christianity". I don't agree with that. And the young people here are a reminder that its not true. But out of graveyard can appear great life. That's the core of our faith as Christians. When Jesus was buried on Good Friday, people thought that was the end. But there was an Easter Day'. (The Baptist Times, August 7 2008, 1).

I am wary, I confess, of such general statements made after conferences although I understand the sentiment being conveyed absolutely.

Yet it got me wondering. What is it that we are looking for in the Church in Europe - a revival, a re-newal, a resucitation, or a resurrection?

Unlike the others the latter requires first as a pre-requisite - death. It also creates something different from the others as that which emerges has actually gone through death offering something in a sense truly new although not divorced from that which has gone before.

I don't see signs of resurrection in the European Church - a new life marked by suffering, emergent in triumph, hopeful for the future. I confess I do not even see a resucitated Church although not being present at Leipzig I do not know whether such was a sign.

Last night I heard a comment from a justice seeking, people loving, Christian young person about how he had recently met with so many friends who are spiritual and love Jesus and are trying to make sense of faith (struggling) but who 'hate' the Church in its institutional and experienced form. Get that - not just 'don't like', but 'hate'. If there is anything valid in what such young people are saying it suggests to me that there is still a bit of dying to be done with respect to institutional Church life in Europe before we will ever be able to say the Church is dead, let alone that it has been resurrected to new life. If resurrection is the hope, however, such death should not necessarily be feared.

(Musings - Stuart Blythe)  

Graduation 08

Here are some of the students at their recent graduation. One student Tim Power will graduate at a later service.

 

After McDonaldization

As ever John Drane shows himself to be insightful and provocative with a concern for the future and mission and ministry of the Church in his recent book 'After McDonalidization'. At times his critique is incisive, one might say sharp, indeed cutting. Writing about the resistance that can be encoutered by people trying to 'break into' churches from those already there he states: 'I have come to realize that such hostility is far from unusual, and is actually quite deeply ingrained in the atitudes of many Christian people. tolerance of incomers-let alone showing friendship to them - is not even on their radar'.  A quote offered by Drane from the journalist John Shore is if anything even more damming: 'Why are so many Christians so obnoxious and mean-spirited? It seems like Christianity's mostly about being judgemental, narrow minded, and having an infuriatingly condescending attitude towards anyone who isn't a Christian. Christians are so busy being smug about being Christian that they forget to be kind'.  With such analysis it is perhaps not surprising that the remedy offered is not a programme or better publicity but a 'practice'. Drane writes, 'A central identifying mark of an authentic Gospel community in the twenty-first century (as in the first century) will be hospitality, a gift that invariably blesses thise who give as well as those who receive.' 

Practicing hospitality it seems to me requires overcoming fear, the sense of the privacy and possession of 'my own space' and the 'ah but' feeling that excludes some people in our hearts and minds before we have ever welcomed them, and it also involves trusting in the transforming power of the Gospel and Gospel community honestly shared and lived. Not sure which of these may create us the greatest problem. Naming such difficulties, fears, and feelings, however, and talking them through rather than saying we should offer hospitality and then not doing so is perhaps something that requires time and attention. It certainly does if Drane is right in both his analysis and solution.

Good book, worth a read.  

Stuart Blythe