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. ....................................................................................................
“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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
At the invitation of Newton Mearns Baptist Church, the Rev. Stuart Blythe will be travelling tomorrow to Berlin with the pastor of the Church Rev Brian More to attend an European Evangelical Alliance Conference on Evangelism. At this conference they will be presenting the personal evangelism project 'Exist' that has emerged from Newton Mearns Baptist Church. Stuart will be offering something of the biblical/theological/cultural rationale for the project and Brian will introduce its history and the involvement that the Church has had with the project.
Having recently hosted two lectures of great quality the next public event of the College will be the Annual Thanksgiving Service on Thursday 19th June at 7.30pm. the speaker on this evening will be Professor Larry Hurtado, author and New Testament scholar from New College, University of Edinburgh. All are invited to join with us on this evening. The event will be held at 7.30pm in Central Baptist Church, Paisley.
This is an event when and where former students and members of the wider Baptist Community can come and offer, by their presence, support to the College staff and students.
Recent Comments