Pastors, Poets, Prophets or Gandalf?

Some years ago, visiting the U.K, , I stood at the back of the little village church in Grasmere in the Lakes District. This is surely one of the most quintessential of little English villages! The poet William Wordsworth who lived in here for fourteen years, described it as "the loveliest spot that man hath ever found." 

The little stone church (St. Oswald's) has been there since 642. It’s one of the oldest chapels in England. With its high wooden pews, stained glass windows, pulpits, organ, fading hymn books and other pieces of typical church paraphernalia it looked and felt and even smelt “Churchy.” I had the sense of being whisked back in my imagination to every archetypal memory of childhood associated with being in “church.”  

Not many generations ago the shape and functions of a local parish church were well understood and more or less unchanging: funerals, weddings, worship services, hymns, maybe some choruses, Sunday School, pews, organs, offerings, youth clubs, cucumber sandwiches, fetes, lunches, fellowship events, holiday camps, dedications, children’s talks, missionary weekends, prayer meetings, working bees, craft groups and the occasional inter-church gathering or outreach.

The buildings were all designed along the same lines, the dusty old fellowship rooms all smelt the same! The liturgical hangings and occasional stained glass worked together to create a particular mood or space. There was a minister, with larger churches employing a part time youth pastor or maybe student minister, and very occasionally even a children’s worker or pastoral care assistant. The Church stood at the centre of the community. A place for worship; a place that told the story of that town; the theatre where the of the rites of passage for each generation were enacted time and again. 

To aspire to pastoral ministry meant describing a vocational pathway most practicing Christians could imagine, and most comedic TV shows could caricature with ease (Think Vicar of Dibley, for example).

Ministers managed and cultivated stable congregations whose members often had long histories in the church. The minister presided over the rites of passage for these close-knit communities -- hatches, matches and dispatches! The events on the annual church calendar were organized in a similar fashion year by year. The minister maintained and conserved the marks of a gracious and compassionate community that was often quite well connected and appreciated by its broader community.

Such a minister might expect to serve for maybe five to ten fruitful years in such a congregation before moving to take their particular gifts and insights to strengthen another, not dissimilar church. In a long ministry, that might encompass several congregations. Whilst there were cultural and geographic differences from place to place, the paradigms and patterns and expectations were common - even across denominational boundaries the patterns were not dissimilar.

This has now changed. Most denominations are both aging and declining. Many denominations face the likelihood of disappearing altogether in a society that is becoming increasingly pluralistic and secular. Most under forties have little memory of the faith-narrative and rituals, and those that do often come from non-english speaking communities. Careers are no longer ‘life-long’ vocations, but will change several times. Society itself is going through a season of rapid change.

A TIME LIKE NO OTHER

Picture a time of incredible change and rapid progress! The certainties of yesterday  are lost in the progress of today. As one writer enthuses: “Let the great world spin forever down the ringing groves of change!”

Another significant national leader says in a speech: 

“Nobody, however, who has paid any attention to ... our present era, will doubt for a moment that we are living at a period of most wonderful transition, which tends rapidly to accomplish that great end, to which, indeed, all history points ... the unity of mankind [sic]. ....
The distances which separated the different nations and parts of the globe are rapidly vanishing before the achievements of modern invention, and we can traverse them with incredible ease; the languages of all nations are known, and their acquirement placed within the reach of everybody; thought is communicated with the rapidity, and even by the power, of lightning. ...” 

A key political commentator looks back: 

“ It is nowadays not easy to recollect how wide was the intellectual gulf which separated the young generation ... from their parents. ... The young men [sic] of the time grew up with the new ideas and accepted them as a matter of course... Our parents lived in an intellectual world which bore no relation to our own; and cut adrift as we were from the intellectual moorings of our upbringings, recognising as we did, that the older men were useless as guides in religion, in science, in philosophy ... we also felt instinctively that we could accept nothing on trust from those who still believed that the early chapters of Genesis accurately described the origin of the universe, and that we had to discover somewhere for ourselves what were the true principles of the ... science of sociology...”

The time I write of is one of great upheaval, discovery, technology and meteoric change. The old world and its ways are being swept away. A breathtaking and new global economy is being birthed. New injustices and also fresh opportunities are evolving. 

Fresh expressions of church are urgently needed and being launched – movements of brave, young and radical followers of Christ who raise the hackles of the traditional religious bureaucracies they are leaving! 

I write, of course, of the mid eighteen-hundreds. 

Where is God in difficult times?

There is a particularly poignant scene in Les Miserables. The poor and oppressed people have risen up in revolution hoping for a better life, but the revolution has failed.
Good men and women have fallen, and the level of suffering has increased and now Marius Pontmercy sits in the broken cafe knowing he's the only one to survive, his friends have died, other than Jean Valjean, and he now regrets and reminisces the loss of his friends:

“Oh, my friends, my friends, forgive me.
That I live and you are gone.
There's a grief that can't be spoken.
There's a pain goes on and on.”

 

One of the realities of human life is that tragic things and suffering happen in our world, and not just to bad people who we might think deserve a good wake-up call. Look at the pained faces of those sitting in the ruins of a bombed out city or in a squalid refugee camp. 

One of the great questions in life is this: "Why is there suffering?" -- Where is God in a war? Or in an earthquake Or in a crime of terror? Or a sombre medical diagnosis?

How do you respond to that?
How do we help our kids understand why the suffering doesn’t just go away when they say their prayers?
What do you believe your faith has to say that is helpful or unique at a time like this?

Rabbi Harold S. Kushner, author of the provocative book “When Bad Things Happen to Good People”, tells how one day he received a phone call informing him that a five-year-old boy in the neighbourhood had run out into the street after a ball, had been hit by a car, and died. He did not know the boy; the family was not a part of his synagogue. Nonetheless he went to the service. 

In the eulogy, the family's minister said, “This is not a time for sadness or tears. This is a time for rejoicing, because Jack has been taken out of this world of sin and pain .... He is in a happier land now where there is no pain and no grief, let us thank God for that.” 

Rabbi Kushner said that he felt so so bad for Jack's parents and family!  Not only had they lost a child without warning, they were being told by a representative of their religion that they should rejoice. Of course they did not feel like rejoicing. They felt hurt; they felt angry; they felt that God had been totally unfair to them; they felt, not for any valid reason, guilty even. Their minister assumed God to be the direct and simple cause of this tragedy, and that therefore a simple solution would suffice.

Boutros Winter 2026 Update

Greetings friends,We’ve attached a short news-letter to give you bit of an update  about what’s happening for us and at haven. Click HERE

We’re into the middle of the year, with the shortest day of the year coming up soon (21 June)!

Winter is a season of discontinuity. The growth, warmth and light of summer are gone, he days are short, often damp, and there’s less light. Spring is still a-ways off. It’s a ‘liminal’ time!

Our modern world can feel like permanent liminality! Everything we thought was nailed down keeps changing. We live with permanent stress because the 24/7 world is never still long enough for us to re- acclimatise.

We’ve had a ‘pandemic’ of stress and fear long before we had the corona-virus pandemic! We have been alert and alarmed for years. And then of course, the never-ending earthquakes in world affairs can feel like a dark  liminal space. How do you navigate such seasons?

In our newsletter, there’s a reflection on managing such liminal times.

The prophet Jeremiah, writing about his time affirms where hope comes from: “... But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.'The Lord is my portion,' says my soul, ‘therefore I will hope in him.’"  Lam 3: 21-40

We want to say a huge thankyou to the many who encourage, support and pray for us and for Haven — You are all SO appreciated! 

  Sincerely,

  Martin and Esmae

Anzac Day | Grief and Hope

About halfway through the movie 1917 there is a haunting scene of exhausted young soldiers slumped down listening to one singing the song: “Wayfaring Stranger.” 

It’s the view of World War 1 from from the perspective of an insignificant shell-shocked trooper in the trenches.
It's Anzac Day again, and many of us will rise early to recall the Great War and the millions of lives that were lost.

The human cost of World War 1 was enormous. More than 9 million soldiers and an estimated 12 million civilians died in the four-year-long conflict, which also left 21 million military men wounded.

There was also a human cost in a larger sense. The war remade the world for the worse in every conceivable way. It ignited the Russian Revolution, it laid the ground for Nazism. It made World War II pretty certain. It’s hard to imagine the second world war without the first. What is unmeasurable, is the huge personal and emotional toll on a generation in terms of ongoing grief and trauma.

Each generation — and each of us personally will in some way — experience grief and trauma. Whether its the loss of a loved one; or surviving a natural calamity like a massive bushfire or flood, or a life- threatening illness — or maybe by having the rhythms and hopes and dreams of our lives derailed by some unexpected and inescapable shock or crisis — the great depression or nine-eleven for some, the repercussions of the COVID:19 crisis for others, the war in Ukraine or the Gaza crisis or grinding poverty or oppression.

On Generosity | Thoughts before Easter

On our own, we conclude: there is not enough to go around

we are going to run short
of money
of love
of grades
of publications
of sex
of beer
of members
of years
of life

we should seize the day
seize our goods
seize our neighbours goods
because there is not enough to go around

and in the midst of our perceived deficit
you come
you come giving bread in the wilderness
you come giving children at the 11th hour
you come giving homes to exiles
you come giving futures to the shut down
you come giving easter joy to the dead
you come – fleshed in Jesus.