Faith After Doubt: with Brian McLaren

[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] do [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] hey good morning everybody it's so lovely to see you all um oh you guys are good who are in the room today last week it was everyone looked slightly worried whereas your eyes at least look welcoming and friendly today and so welcome if you're joining us at home which i guess if you're online you might be or maybe you're outdoors or wherever you are you're especially uh welcome here today it's so good to finally be sort of having real people around find it exhausting do you find it exhausting meeting real people um but we'll get used to that again but uh we want you to feel welcome today i'm uh excited about this morning i think this new kind of series we've just had the easter weekend as you would have spotted and we're in this kind of post easter time and it feels like spring is is really kicking in we've had this reminder about resurrection about this incredible moment in history that changed everything and we live as resurrection people what does that look like and what we're thinking about over the next few weeks is about change really and is about changing thoughts changing belief changing uh stuff that happens all around us we are in a new kind of phase as humanity i think post the pandemic and as a church as we've been forced to not meet and ask ourselves kinds of questions this seems like a really good time to pause to ask ourselves where are we at you know where where am i right now there's been so much change that's been forced upon us and where am i and that's the focus of the next few weeks where we're going to be thinking about right where are we as individuals and where are we as a church and one of the things that i want you to just start chewing over is is what was the last thing that you learned that was really new what was the last really new thought that you had about your faith i think i've gone through so much of my christian life year after year where actually there was nothing very new i just settled into beliefs and then life comes at you and sometimes life forces you to ask for some new revelation for some new thoughts for some new teaching and in this little season we're just pausing to pause and think about just that what is it that god wants to teach you that something new something that you haven't thought before or maybe you thought it but you've been frightened of grasping that thought and working it through more so that's what we're going to be doing over these weeks but let's just pause and be in the room and um and then we're going to pray a little prayer some words will appear it should be sort of obvious but if it in orange that's the bit i say and words in black is the bit that you say and it's so nice to have people in the room who will say it really loudly and confidently with me if you can see the screen from where you're sitting but let's just pause for a minute and maybe just for a moment hold that thought as you come into this room do you sense that you're on the kind of edge of something new as life comes back as tomorrow shops open and pubs outdoors open um and these little things do you feel like perhaps for you you're on the edge of something new and i really want to encourage you to grasp that and to think that through over these few weeks but let's just pause and maybe just start by just asking yourself where are you today where are you with god how do you feel about god today how do you feel about your life and your place in the world let's pray this prayer in fact you know ask the banter they want to come up because they're going to lead us in song i have to do my duty and remind you that you're not allowed to sing as these guys lead us i don't know if we'd even know you've got masters on i found it really hard last week not to some people said to me i saw you you were singing in fact my daughter accused me of that i was just humming i wasn't singing i wasn't breaking the rules but uh at home you're allowed to sing if you want to but even just the words i know i'm really grateful for mark leading today with sarah and sam and i know that mark has thought about the songs that we're singing today in light of some of those thoughts that we're going to be thinking about over these weeks but let's pray these words together i'm going to say the words in orange if you say the words in black god of our being be present in our gathering god of becoming help us to become more fully ourselves god of learning light our passion to know more god of seeking be in our own search for understanding god of teaching show us how to teach one another god of story weave together our own stories with yours god of our longings hear the words we are unable to speak god of our hearts accept our worship today amen [Music] there's a song in my soul and i feel it stirring in me and this i know for sure that your love is like a flood and your mercy never ending i give my song to you there's a joy in my soul and it rises like the morning this i know for sure and that your grace is enough and your promise never breaking i give my song to you for all of your goodness [Music] sings for you for all of your goodness i will love you forever i sing for you yes all my songs i sing for you there's a hope in my heart burning bright in the darkness and this i know for sure that i will look upon your face forever dwell in your presence and always sing to you for all of your goodness [Music] it sings for you for all of your [Applause] you goodness and all my songs i sing for you yes all my songs i sing for you let my life be to you a symphony singing out holy [Music] holy all my days every single breath i breathe singing out holy [Music] in all my days [Music] for all of your goodness is a whale running over and oh my soul it sings for you for all of your goodness i will love you forever and oh my soul it sings for you yes all my songs i sing for you yes all my songs i sing for you [Music] where are you now when darkness seems to win and where are you now when the world is crumbling [Music] oh i [Music] look up [Music] and where are you now [Music] when all i feel is doubt when i can't figure it out oh [Music] look up [Music] you're [Music] [Music] even in a suffering [Music] oh [Music] you say i hear you say look [Music] look up and then let me give you a few notices and then i should tell you that i should have said this at the beginning but slightly different service today you're going to get kind of two talky bits really sorry about that i'm going to try and keep them sort of shortish but dead sort of simple service today but i think i think there's some good things to get thinking about certainly had my head thinking in terms of preparing for it but we're just going to pause for a minute because nationally and internationally there is so much going on in the world right now isn't there there's so much happening um there was the death of prince philip this week that lots of gatherings and churches will pause and think about um if you are aware of what's going on in northern ireland right now i'm amazed that it's not bigger news for for people of my age and uh and older you you will know uh kind of some terrible memories really of my childhood of hearing stories and stories of terrible things um happening in that part of the world and uh we don't want to return to that and uh um uh so we're gonna pause we're gonna think about that equally in in myanmar burma um terrible things happening over 600 people killed by the security forces of the country in in these kind of uprisings that are happening there and story after story of things happening in our world that we don't want to be ignorant of and we don't want to ignore and so i thought well let's just have a minute's silence today while we hold those things because some of them will will chime more with you and you want to carry those things and that's okay some people today that kind of news about prince philip is a heaviness a sadness particularly on behalf of the queen you know married to somebody for 73 years she's just a woman who is missing her husband today no doubt and that feels tragic as well as being a father and a grandfather so let's pause and think about that kind of loss but also it might be that in this minute there's something just too painful for you right now with a friend somebody that you love or something happening in your own life that that's the thing you want to hold out for healing today so in this moment of quiet just whatever the thing that you want to just hold out you don't have to justify why you want to hold that thing but just hold that thing and it's okay if that thing is you today that you say i know there's some terrible things happening but god this is me and i want to put myself in your hands right now so we'll hold a minute of silence together and then we'll pray but let's do that as we continue to remember those things let's pray the lord's prayer together and uh you can pray whatever version that you you know but this is the room this is what we're going to pray together in the room right now this version let's pray our father in heaven hallowed be your name your kingdom come your will be done on earth as in heaven give us today our daily bread forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil for the kingdom the power and the glory are yours now and forever amen amen so as i said i'm gonna what i want us to do is to do a little bible study together which i think will set us up well for this talk that uh i interviewed this guy called brian mclaren this week in fact i didn't interview him i said from the off this is just a conversation i didn't have any any questions prepared other than my first one and after that it was just to have a chat with somebody who i really admire who i've read his books over years i had to try and stop being a bit of a fanboy actually i tried to play it called you'll notice that um but i really like brian mclaren i've met him a couple of times over the years and he's a good man you know just somebody who you'd want to go down the pub with and uh very much lives out uh what he writes about and talks about and so i've got a lot of respect for him and so that interview we're going to split into two parts and what's going to happen is we're going to watch one part this week and i'm going to help us i hope get sort of prepare for that in this little bible study and then next week sam is going to look at the second half of this talk which talks a bit more about the church and what might this faith after doubt stuff look like for us as a church but in preparation for it i thought there was a perfect kind of story for us to look at in the bible because it's a story that lots of churches will look at this week or next week as a post easter story quite well known to some of you potentially but what i want to do is i want us just to read it through and i want you to do your best to hear the story again immediately as you start to read it would go oh yeah this one try and stop yourself doing that and try and be here it's about two men walking on a road to a place called emmaus i think it's a brilliant story about this is a slightly kind of punchy phrase you'll have to forgive me but about liminal space uh it's it's a bit old now but there was a point where everything everybody talked about liminal space and all liminal spaces is a threshold you know even as i stand here this little drop that everyone falls off from then they don't when they're not used to standing here this is a liminal space because it's a threshold between one level and another that doorway over there is a liminal space the door that you came in you know the outdoor is out there and those doors that people came into here or the front door of your house is a liminal space that that threshold space that moment where you're where you're not really in one space but you're not really in the next space um that threshold and uh in in nature there's another sort of uh illustration or something to think about it's called the riparian zone and the riparian zone is one of the most important kind of uh parts of the of the biome which is where water meets land so wherever water meat lands it's called the riparian zone because this exchange takes place in this odd little strip of it's neither land nor is it water it's this exchange that is going on subtly but really it means it's an incredibly fertile place in fact psalm 1 talks about being like a tree that's planted by a stream being like a tree that's planted in this liminal space in this riparian zone because there's incredible fertility as stuff leaks out of the earth into the water which is good and as the water and its nutrients leak into the earth and this exchange takes place but it's always a place of insecurity liminal spaces just are where you are neither in one thing nor in another and in this story in the bible we find ourselves from this very concrete three years that the disciples have had of seeing and touching and talking to jesus himself and then he's gone and they know that he's died and we're in this odd liminal space post-easter where some people have seen the risen christ and others have just heard rumor of it and this is brilliant a little story we get to have a little look at about two men who are caught in liminality oh that's good phrase isn't it who are caught in liminality who are basically suspended between one space and the other all that we held on to all that we were certain about we're no longer certain about what does the future bring they're caught somewhere between solid and liquid they're caught between being outside and coming indoors they're these in this awkward space so let's let me read it to you and it's found in luke chapter 24 and do your best to picture which set of eyes you want to read the story through jesus enters the story and there's these two men either be two of either be one of the disciples that'll be both that would be weird or be jesus and try and just read this story through the eyes of a disciple or through the eyes of christ himself let me read it to you now that same day two of them were going to a village called emmaus about seven miles from jerusalem they were talking with each other about everything that had happened as they talked and discussed these things with each other jesus himself came up and walked along with them but they were kept from recognizing he asked them what are you discussing together as you walk along they stood still their faces downcast one of them named cleopas asked him are you the only one visiting jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened there in these days what things he asked about jesus of nazareth they replied he was a prophet powerful in word indeed before god and all the people the chief priest and our rulers handed him over to be sentenced to death and they crucified him but we had hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem israel and what is more it's the third day since all this took place in addition some of our women amazed us they went to the tomb early this morning but didn't find his body they came and told us that they had seen a vision of angels who said he was alive then some of our companions went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said but they did not see jesus he said to them how foolish you are and how slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken did not the messiah have to suffer these things and then enter his glory and beginning with moses and all the prophets he explained to them what was said in all the scriptures concerning himself as they approached the village to which they were going jesus continued on as if he were going farther but they urged him strongly stay with us for it's nearly evening the day is almost over so he went in to stay with them when he was at the table with them he took bread gave thanks broke it and began to give it to them then their eyes were opened and they recognized him and he disappeared from their sight they asked each other were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the scriptures to us i just think this is a beautiful story and i just want to bring out a few bits if there's something that was just special to you then hold on to that i'm not going to negate that i just want to add a few bits that came to me as i read this story through this week it's a beautiful story isn't it of people being in between space and the first thing that struck me was this lovely lovely sentence that says whilst they were talking whilst they were discussing jesus came and walked with them and the first thing i want to assure you as you listen to what i talk about with brian mclaren in a moment is within your doubts and within your discussions and within your concerns christ is walking along with you and the biggest uh comfort of my life i think is i've had these doubts myself there's an amazing part of the beginning of this book that brian writes and for me personally just just such a beautiful bit where he basically says that he's leading a church he's preaching and he stops believing in the stuff that he's supposed to tell everybody and he goes to the leadership of his church and he says i'm really sorry after leading this church for so long i'm going to have to step down because i'm not sure what i believe and in this moment of genius one of the leaders says to him don't do that don't leave because this is going to be so rich for us to walk through this with you and for you to share your doubt with us what an amazing thing what an amazing piece of wisdom from that leader now this is good stuff jesus is probably closer to you right now than he's been for a long time so journey with us that's one thing that struck me the other thing that i really liked is that do you notice the playfulness in jesus where he says what is it you were talking about now this is jesus who knows everything this is the risen christ this is the this is god who comes into their midst and he doesn't say guys shut up with your silly questions and sit down and i've got a sermon that's going to put all of these things right jesus actually says what are your questions what things what is it that you want to know i mean what a beautiful gentle thing that if anybody had the right to tell you what the truth is jesus did but it doesn't start with telling them truth he starts with saying what are your questions bring your questions to me and then he has this thing where he says to them you're foolish it seems like a real admonishment i don't like this bit of the story but it's there so we have to tell it but what i think jesus is doing is he's saying i told you this stuff all along and it's true and did you notice what he says he says beginning with moses he goes back to these jewish lads and he tells them the story again so he's not telling them anything new i think what he's saying to them is you couldn't hear this before you couldn't understand it before but let me tell you again because maybe now you're ready to hear you're in a new phase of being able to hear something new and i think that that is an important thing they i i love their response when jesus says he's going to go on further i don't know where he's going jesus or whether he's sort of kidding them i i need to leave you now and he they beg him to stay they say come on stay keep on with us because we haven't there's more to learn again that thing of not giving up when your questions come and finally the most famous kind of phrase of all perhaps in this little discourse is were not our hearts burning within us what have you ever thought about that phrase because i've heard it all my life as this hugely comforting thing oh my heart was burning you know it's just stuff you read and then when you pause and think about it is your heart burning a good thing is it a comfortable thing i don't know if they meant they had heartburn i don't i should have looked at what the original greek says in that passage but weren't our hearts burning i've heard so many people preach on that oh it was so wonderful that we got to question that stuff with jesus i don't know if that is what they're saying i think they're talking about what it's like to be in a discomfort to be an uncomfortable position where you're trying to hold on to some old beliefs that don't work anymore but you're not quite sure of what the next thing is of that letting go in between stages and sometimes it feels like your heart burns i've been in that position where sometimes i've been in rooms with people and i've thought all of these people are so much more certain than i bless lauren daigle in her song i know you're in control it was the most sort of strong line in that song that was was sung to us and we we sang along with you know all about doubt but you have to say but i know you're in control there have been times in my life when i haven't known that god is in control and you will know that feeling and the confidence to be able to say it's okay to say i don't know what is going on i don't know if god cares and i don't know if he's there but actually the beginning to speak out those questions and those doubts might make it feel like your heart is burning in an uncomfortable way but i think that that is a threshold to something new and that's what brian's book talks about so i'm going to shut up but hopefully that's got you thinking about some of the thought behind what we're trying to do over these weeks and then this is brian so if you don't know who brian mclaren is he's written lots of books incredibly proficient writer and he wrote a book 20 years ago called a new kind of christianity that was just the book of its time where so many people myself and my friends were going ah and it was part of a trilogy and it was told us sort of in an allegorical way about somebody losing faith and talking through their doubts it's a brilliant book and that was a really threshold moment for a lot of people and people talk about brian mclaren as being the kind of one of the fathers of a kind of new uh movement within within the church so it's a real privilege that he said yes to being interviewed and so listen to what he has to say but what i really want to do is i want you to be thinking about what are the questions that you would have wanted to ask him what are the things that you want to to ask further what are the questions that are burning in you as you listen to this because if you're in a small group this is just 18 minutes long it's probably short enough for you to watch this week together are we allowed to do that on zoom or in outdoors project it onto a house and or just make some notes and if you're in a small group or if you're seeing people who are part of the church this week say to them what did you think about that stuff what were your questions what were the questions burning in you as you watch that let's watch together well welcome brian it is so lovely to have you here with us welcome to brighton uh have you ever been to brighton in the flesh i i don't think i have if i have always just passing through and this has been the easiest trip i've ever had it's great to be there well i invited you years ago to say you know if you're ever in the uk come to brighton um so we've sort of got you here in a very odd way but it's really kind of you to give us some of your time and um brian this isn't a slick podcast or anything this is just a chat with somebody who i admire and who has uh i'm sure you hear this often but has sort of helped to shape my some of my thinking in fact as i was thinking about you earlier i kind of thought i'm not sure brian mclaren's ever introduced me to a new thought but he's given me words to form those thoughts that i've had or knowledge that was coming upon me and so i can't remember how many years ago new kind of christianity came out but i just remember kind of devouring that you know as a minister of a church and it was it was a just so super helpful and um everything you know you've that you've put out since i've read i really i'm doing a phd at durham university around nature connection and spirituality so great even your i think god got unbound i think it's called yes was was really fascinating maybe a bit niche but brilliant i loved it oh thank you so much thank you i loved writing that so oh great um well um today i i really want this just to chat brian because i have this part of this church community that i deeply love um we've been on a journey in fact just this coming weekend is our 10th anniversary we were two little baptist churches that were we're really uh looking to probably to close at some point in the near future and we joined together and started this new journey and we are in lots of ways we're doing well but i think even on our 10th anniversary we're still trying to uh find our place you know i think fundamentally we're too liberal for the conservatives and too conservative for the liberals and and the other churches sometimes in brighton don't quite know what to do with us um but and i will plug away because um i'm very happy too but faith after doubt landed in my uh let's look through my letterbox a few weeks ago and i have really enjoyed reading that and i just think so many people in our church would just be all over um that book faith after doubt and there's one point where you say only doubt can save the world and is that polemic is it hyperbole but just just far away with with that thought justify that phrase sure well uh one of the things i would say dave is that uh certainty is a great way to destroy the world uh you know in my country we for hundreds of years hundreds of years and affecting millions of lives white people were certain that they were superior and had been given a god-given right to enslave black people i mean when you just let that sink in and you think about the horror that that did to both black people and white people because both were dehumanized through that kind of relationship you just think certainty everyone wants certainty but certainty is a pretty dangerous thing when unless you're perfect we always need to be open to the possibility that we might be wrong and doubt in many ways is the way that we acknowledge the possibility that we might be wrong or maybe wrong is too strong a word but we might be incomplete we might have half of the truth um and yet there's more to see so that's where doubt is so important and and i say it might save the world because for example right now with climate change we have assumptions about how the world has to run that will destroy us and we have to have the courage to doubt those assumptions and imagine new possibilities so i see faith in many ways being a consequence of doubt once you're when you're certain you have no faith and you have no doubt but when doubt comes along it opens the possibility to explore and face some new possibilities yeah that's great and and i think um you know just to to position ourselves one of the most regular conversations i have with people in my church is is coffee shop conversations when we could meet in coffee shops or pubs yeah oh for the day they'll come back soon for us um but people saying to me dave i don't know what to do i've lost my faith you know yes um and i've learned over the years to be more and more excited when i have those conversations and it happened to me just the other day and i emailed somebody back and i said that's great news let's talk let's go for a walk yeah and one of the things that you talk about in doubt is that it's that's the threshold to new stages of faith so the doubt being necessary in order to for that sort of maturation of your of your faith and and if you can talk us through those four stages of faith that you call them would be super helpful sure well um i call stage first i should say that you know i we always have to acknowledge that stage models stage theories can be abused people can use them to you know minimize and dehumanize other people and we certainly don't want to do that um but i i've studied uh as many uh different stage theories as i can get my hands on and um try to integrate them and learn from each of them and so my fourth stage simple process starts with simplicity and that's where all of us start all of us when we're children we're new to this world and we depend on authority figures to tell us what to believe um so you might call simplicity is faith before doubt it's when we're being told what to believe our initial run of things and um and when we're in simplicity we see the world in dualism us them in out safe dangerous friend enemy orthodoxy heresy uh heaven hell we just love binary options because it's simple and it's we're just getting acquainted with the world and a lot of people stay in simplicity their whole lives especially religious people because i think a lot of religious communities act as if simplicity is the only stage of life and to not be in simplicity they call it backsliding when often it's really growing um and and probably a lot of the people who call you saying they're losing their faith what they really mean is i'm losing my stage one faith where everything is just binary and and uh and where authority figures have the right to tell us what to think and we aren't allowed to ask questions or think for ourselves many people outgrow that they doubt that and they enter into stage two that i call complexity and this is the stage where we begin to ask our own questions now we already have a starting point it's the simplicity that we were given and so very often complexity means modifying uh if if simplicity gave us a kind of contract in complexity we start writing addenda to the contract and fine print to the contract and uh you might call uh stage two is faith negotiating doubt uh or faith managing doubt um trying to get back to secure to to certainty but realizing certainty is a little more complicated than we thought sure many people stay there their whole lives i personally think that the mega church is kind of the classic stage two uh kind of faith because you know very often it's it's about how to succeed instead of being about dualism it's about pragmatism um and uh how does and it's about how to do life on my own how to have a good marriage how to you know all the things we have to do as adults um so stage two very important many people stay there their whole lives and they feel so relieved when they find a stage two kind of christian faith because it's a whole lot more space than stage one used to give them um but then what happens is very often my as my friend richard rohr says great pain or great love enter our lives and very often they go together or i might add a great education or a lot of travel and and we reach this new stage of doubt where we're not just trying to fix the simplicity that we inherited but we're starting to see real problems with it often ethical problems as well as intellectual and things just don't make sense and now we are on the verge of throwing it all out we we we don't think it's fixable anymore anymore and and maybe many of the people who contact you saying they've lost their faith what they're saying is i've been trying to fix it and i don't think it's fixable in the in the form that i i'm trying to fix and and a whole lot of people have been told that's the only form there is and so some people just leave christianity at that point or by the way jews and muslims and buddhists and atheists even go through this kind of process i think um but stage three is a very dynamic process and and in many ways it's who i wrote this book for um most because they have so few places where they're safe to say how deeply their doubts go how deep their devs go and many people think that's all there is and they stay in that state because it's the best they've been able to find but i think something happens when we begin to in a sense become even skeptical of our skepticism and uh cynical of our cynicism and we start to say how am i gonna live uh i i can i live with uncertainty can i live with unknowing how am i going to do it and it seems to me that opens us up to the fourth stage that i call harmony that i think is a very deep kind of faith but it's a very different kind of faith than we start with that's brilliant and and i think there will be a bunch of people going yeah you know i'm i'm there i'm not i'm not in the simplicity or complexity phase you know maybe this perplexity thing and for me you know probably as a church we're the bulk of people who i chat with are i think are probably stage three people if can you just further define a little bit about how how do you know that actually you're moving on what are the hallmarks of somebody who's living in a more harmonious life rather than just a perspective sure well i i think you know i never want to to fix or criticize people in stage three because that's what everybody does oh you're just being too negative oh you're being too critical um but and often people in stage three are angry um why did you know i i had this experience a couple of years ago dave i i won't go into the whole story but i'm not a depressive person and i wasn't like clinically depressed but i was experiencing the sadness and i why am i so sad and i watched and i realized my grandparent my grandchildren had just been visiting and they left and i i thought well i'm not just sad that they left i loved having him here but it's connected to their being here and here's what it was none of my grandchildren are being raised close to the kind of religion i was raised with and i wasn't sad about that i was happy about that and that's when it hit me i was feeling sad for the damage that was done to me as a child by the kind of religion i inherited through no one's bad intention i the most wonderful parents anyone could ask for and they had taken the religion they inherited and made it much better for me but when i looked at my grandchildren and i thought they're they are not being subjected to some of that harm and and this is a big part of stage three realizing i've been harmed other people have been harmed by this kind of religion or faith or theology or spirituality and they start saying this isn't good and i i cannot bear it anymore and that and but then so in those early stages of course they're angry of course they're frustrated um but when they start to say okay am i going to be angry and frustrated the rest of my life um i don't think that's the way i want to live um and then they say how am i going to live how am i going to do better and and when they start asking that question very often they feel stuck until they can find a person or a community or it might just be a book or a writer they say this person has a bigger framework that's what i'm looking for and i think that's often how it happens i think i think we we uh i don't know how it's been in the states but we've just had off the back of black lives matter off the back of you know previously brexit these paradigm shifting sort of moments and just an another interesting one with a a murder of a single woman in a sort of prominent park in london this kind of outcry of come on men what what are we doing you know what what are we saying and then you bring faith into that and you realize that the superiority that perhaps has been bred that you're somehow superior you know if you've managed to find this secret way that's called christianity that has been taught that men are superior to women that lgbt people are destined to hell and unworthy and unpacking that sort of stuff you know for me that's one of the border towns of like am i going to leave this place all together or can i stick with it and within my own family i've got people saying there's nothing wrong with one church i love it but i don't want to be part of the church um because of all of that stuff um yeah i mean do you think we're in a different place than the states or just different parts of the states would be more like life is here potentially i i that's what i would say i would say unfortunately what we have going on in the states is major sectors of both protestant and catholic christianity that are doubling down on that male dominant white supremacist even though they would never use that term um form of christianity because to them it represents order and they're and they're desperately afraid of disorder so uh so and the order they want is the order with white men on tops and and the and they see christianity as their ally and then there's others who are leaving christianity because of that and then there are some of us who are saying actually christianity itself has been about that but it doesn't need to be and part of our work is to help it be liberated uh from those those constraints by the way it's just interesting you phrased it that way because um i'm just literally today have been working on the sequel to faith after doubt it's called do i stay christian and um and so yeah it's and the number of people asking that question the number of people asking it publicly is skyrocketing and i can only imagine the number of people who are secretly asking it yeah so give us a little glimpse of the next book then because institutionally i want you know and i i ask this genuinely as openly as i can as someone who's a church leader you know with sort of skin in the game but i think more than ever i'm asking myself the question you know are is the structure redeemable or is the spirit going to do stuff outside of these structures in in new ways um or is it a bit of both yeah well there's some uh obviously i'm in fact my big problem writing this book now is a week ago it was 105 000 words and now i've got it down to 95 000 and i've got to get 15 000 more words out of it before i'm uh i think it's ready to go because i there's so much to say but uh but here's how i structured the book um i part one of the book is just called no and i i have ten chapters about very very good reasons to not stay christian and i think before anybody should stay christian they should really take seriously the good reasons to to not do so you know and they are painful and profound issues that we have to deal with the second third of the book is called yes and it offers ten reasons with eyes wide open to those first ten to say i could stay christian um yes there for these reasons i could say christian and then the third part of the book i just called how and it's saying look whether or not you stay christian if you're a christian and you're going to leave what kind of person are you going to be and if you're from a christian background and you're going to stay what kind of person are you going to be that and that to me is really the the deeper question it's not whether you stay christian it's what kind of human do you want to be and when we change have that question what kind of human do i want to be and then we were to say the church could be a place to help us all become a certain kind of human now that i think opens up possibilities yeah okay i wonder how you found that and that last little bit the next book because i hurry up and write that because i want to read that i think that's a fascinating thing 10 reasons to not be christian and like the courage to go who wants to read 10 reasons not to be a christian because i want to be a christian but having the courage to say let's look square on the things that are reasons not to be but also 10 reasons to be i think is interesting i wonder if we could guess what some of those 10 reasons might be but that's it that's what i want to encourage us to to go away with you might find that unsettling you might find it disturbing i hope so because that sense of your heart burning within you either because you're annoyed that he said that or he didn't say that or what do you mean by that well why didn't dave ask that question um then it's okay and that's the kind of faith we have you know one of the most beautiful things for the whole nation of israel was that it was a nation that could have been called the nation of jacob do you know that you know because he was the forefather of it but jacob's name was changed by god to the name israel which means to wrestle with god isn't that a beautiful thing that the the name for the people of god are the people who will wrestle with god and yet some of our churches have turned into no there's no wrestling there are just some laws to learn and that's the way to keep things simple but we're allowed to wrestle and we're encouraged to wrestle we're going to finish with a song it's hard to sing after that all the best with your song choice mark no pressure there aren't many songs written about doubt are there yet this is part of our lives there should be more worship songs written about our doubts as well as the things that we want to sing about that we can uh we can affirm but let me let me pray for us before we sing let's pray god i thank you for this incredible um and beautiful relationship that you invite us into one where are we allowed to ask to be frustrated to feel angry to feel disappointed thank you for the truth of that thank you for the mercy and kindness that you show to us in allowing us to be foolish to ask what might seem like silly questions one day in the future but we're allowed to ask them now and so god we put ourselves in your hands trusting trusting with the mustard seed sometimes of faith that we have that you are good that you're merciful that you love us and that you have new things to tell us new places to take us new stories to tell us new truth for us to grasp we give ourselves to that kind of relationship trusting trusting in you amen thanks dave we're going to sing you a song called us for them by uh michael anisa gungle um and uh they uh they're really interesting couple they started life as worship pastors and they started their life as worship pastors of the church and then gradually found themselves not fitting with all their faith particularly michael's faith not fitting with the churches that they were in um and they've written lots about it in in words and in um in songs and this came from a set of albums they did called one wild life uh which was all about sort of understanding uh faith and life uh across soul body and what's the third one called spirit um and this is one of the songs from it it's called us for them [Music] when the lines are drawn [Music] when you're in or out when it's us or them and we shame the doubt it is all alive all we ever really need is love there's no need to shed more blood look upon the cross look upon the cross and see the face of christ see the mercy in his eyes every valley shall be left dead high and now our enemies are blessed and the heavy laden rest and his judgment is [Music] there is no more kills there is no more shame all our darkest sin all our deepest pain blessed are the all the lonely broken lost and torn see a kingdom comes to us a war that's foreign the way of the lord wielding mercy like a sword every mountaintop will be made alone no he won't see eyes like us and his judgment comes to us and his judgment is low [Music] his judgment is low we will not fight their woes we will not fall in line cause if it's us or them it's us for them it's us for them we reject the i the old they can't define us anymore cause if it's us or them it's us for them it's us for them we will not find their walls we will not fall in line cause if it's us for them it's us for them [Music] [Applause] [Music] it's us for them it's us for them preparing the way of the lord willing mercy like a sword every mountain talk will be made low and no he holds the eyes like dust and his judgment comes to us and his judgment is his judgment is that's me told they do write some songs like that thank you mark that's great let's pray as we finish if you're new here we often finish with this little prayer because it just feels like a beautiful way of asking for god's grace to not just be with me but to be with everybody so let's pray this prayer those of us in the room if you're at home if you want to join in may the grace of the lord jesus christ and the love of god and the fellowship of the holy spirit be with us all evermore amen now if you want to jump on the link that's below on on youtube then there is a kind of live little zoom coffee catch up uh encourage you to do that and then the only other thing to tell you about really it's tonight um sam is finishing he's done this series how many weeks have you done so it's incredible 12th or 13th week is sam has served us beautifully well i kind of said i'd help him and i did one week sorry sam but he's done a lovely job of just helping us go through this wonderful book by barbara brown taylor called an altar in the world tonight's the last one and even if you sort of think oh is it okay to join the last one it would be good to and sam basically just gets us to switch our videos off and just he reads to us some lovely thoughts and it's a good way to finish a sunday so that's at half past seven and there's a link also below on youtube but thanks so much for being with us today god bless you you

Channel: One Church Brighton

Views: 717

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: one church brighton, onechurch, 1 church, church, baptist, social, community, sussex, brighton, 1 church brighton, florence road, florence road baptist church, brighton baptist church, uk, england, christian, christianity, charity, ocb, Brian mclaren

Id: 1gKQf7wnj8c

Length: 66min 45sec (4005 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 11 2021