Fast fashion: a term used to describe a business model based on producing masses of clothes extremely quickly and at a ridiculously low cost. This blog post was written by Megan Cooper, a WTC student.
The value of friendship in the Christian life – Andy Hudson
A while ago one of our students, Andy Hudson, submitted an essay on the value of friendship in the Christian life with specific reference to male friendships. Here he highlights the need for openness, honesty, love, and burden-bearing.
God and Female Imagery – Jasper Knecht
We often get asked in the WTC Theology classroom about the practice of using feminine pronouns and female imagery for God. Why do some people think it’s okay to use ‘she’ and ‘her’ for God when the Bible uses only masculine terms?
A little reflection on (self) deception – Lucy Peppiatt
I don’t know much about the process of deception in general. I do know it’s easy to be deceived. I don’t recall ever feeling…
Book Review of Christer Petley’s ‘White Fury’ by Dr. Steve Watts
Steve Watts - Book Review of Christer Petley's 'White Fury'
Christer Petley’s White Fury: A Jamaican Slaveholder and the Age of Revolution (Oxford, 2018).
Available to purchase here.
“British historians write almost as if Britain had introduced Negro slavery solely for the satisfaction of abolishing it.”
This bitter observation, made by the noted historian and first prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago, Eric Williams, appears in the final pages of Christer Petley’s superb White Fury: A Jamaican Slaveholder and the Age of Revolution. It gives voice to a view that British historians, if not also the British public, have tended to see slavery primarily in terms of its abolition. And why wouldn’t they? Who wouldn’t want to see themselves on the right side of history? But if we are not careful it can be a story more concerned with praising John Newton’s amazing grace, than lamenting the utter wretchedness of the human cargo he had transported, so matter–of–factly, across the Atlantic.
Petley does not say so explicitly, but one gets the sense while turning the pages of his book that he had Williams’s words firmly in mind. White Fury, simply put, is an unvarnished portrait of British slaveholding. More specifically, it is a portrait of Simon Taylor, not only the most “successful” of the Caribbean planter class, but also one of the wealthiest men of the British Empire.
Employing Taylor’s correspondence as his principal resource, Petley traces the slaveholder’s career from the mid 18th to early 19th centuries as it weathers storms both literal and figurative. High winds, blight, and disease turn Taylor’s sugar plantations into high-risk, high-reward ventures, while the American and French revolutions and the unwelcome rise of abolitionism challenge his relationship to the Empire. And so we read of Taylor’s hopes, fears, struggles, ailments, frustrations, and finally his fury when the British government turns its back on what still remained a highly profitable industry. Abolition, for Taylor, was no humanitarian victory; it was nothing short of betrayal.
What is strikingly absent from Taylor’s correspondence, however, is any meaningful comment on the thousands of people who lived, and often quickly and miserably died, on his plantations. He treated these, by–and–large, as little more than livestock. Not much better was his treatment of those few relatively-privileged African men given authority over the more destitute, among which numbered a substantial number of women and children. Not much better still was his treatment of those Creole women, euphemistically referred to as “housekeepers,” who produced Creole children without the legal status of heirs. His quest for profit eclipsed their personhood; their value enumerated, literally, in pound sterling. His overwhelming concern, then, was for their economic productivity, tempered only by an ever-present fear of their revolt.
Gratefully, Petley does not limit his study to Taylor’s self-interest. Instead, the reader is treated to a wider, richer view. At turns, Petley traces the passage of a slave ship on its dreadful course, details the hardships of plantation life, reveals the integration of Caribbean and British mainland economies, and much besides. Indeed, one can quite easily imagine a not too indirect line from the lucrative output of Taylor’s plantations to the proverbial spoonful of sugar in the average British home. All the President’s Men told us to “follow the money”; in this case, the same could well be said of the sugar.
All told, then, Petley offers both a bracing and enlightening account of this troubled period in British history. It is carefully-researched and highly readable. It is unflinching yet unpolemical. And it offers much to chew over, to reflect upon. So, of the many possible subjects to explore in the latter part of this review, I think it beneficial to highlight at least a few.
The first, concerns Taylor’s colonial British identity. As has often been pointed out, the American Founding Fathers were evidently not referring to the new nation’s multitudes of African slaves when they affirmed that all men were created equal. But in light of Taylor’s letters and the wider contours of British colonisation detailed in Petley’s study, it occurs to me that the Declaration is neither as tragically ironic nor obviously unjust as I had previously assumed. White colonists, and particularly those ruling over a multitude of black slaves, were in fact often at the more progressive edge of political liberalism. They were especially keen to assert their rights and freedoms vis–à-vis a potentially overbearing government back home. Such freedom, moreover, was further reinforced in contrast to the enslaved people who surrounded them, laboured under them. Freedom, alongside whiteness, western civilization, and religion, was what made them distinct, and––in their eyes––superior.
The second relates to Taylor’s stunning degree of compartmentalisation. How is it possible to be a champion of freedom while enslaving others? But perhaps that is just my naïveté talking. The world’s first democracy, after all, was underwritten by slave-labour, specifically in the silver mines southeast of ancient Athens. And yet the theological and biblical allusions scattered about Taylor’s letters still strain the boundaries of credulity. What is anyone to do with a slaveholder who unironically describes their position relative to the British government as being akin to Israelites straining under Egyptian bondage? And yet, there is Taylor again, thanking Providence for blessing his labours.
If there is a place for critiquing Petley’s otherwise fine analysis, it is here. Much more could have been said about the religious and theological content that emerges in the writings of both slaveholder and abolitionist. And the same surely goes for the beliefs of the slaves themselves.
Early in the book, for instance, there is brief mention of the nonconformists who arrived in Jamaica and immediately set to work undermining the strict hierarchy of the slave society they encountered. Unlike the baptisms into the Church of England for those select few of Taylor’s skilled and favoured slaves, these sought mass baptisms and grassroots change. Indeed, despite the caricatures of present popular imagination, such missionaries were more typically thorns in the side of imperial economic interests rather than ignorant agents of colonisation.
And later on, when Petley charts the rise and ultimate success of the abolition movement in Britain, he repeatedly refers to these as humanitarian activities. But this movement began among the Quakers and then gained momentum predominantly among evangelical Anglicans. Humanitarian is thus far too secular a word for something so explicitly theological. From Clarkson to More, from Newton to Wilberforce, slavery was a sin––a sin for which the British Empire was already being judged by God. What then to do with these conflicting theologies with real world consequences? What then to do with those places where slaveholder and abolitionist were otherwise in theological agreement? Neither party, it must be said, was in much doubt that the Empire itself had been providentially ordained.
With this criticism aside, I return again to Williams’s initial observation. Not only can the standard British account of slavery focus more upon abolition than the slavery itself, but it can also prioritise the voices of the powerful, regardless of whether they are doing the enslaving. Petley appears sensitive to this pitfall. At every opportunity he seeks to give voice to the thousands of otherwise historically voiceless men, women, and children unloaded upon Jamaican shores. Indeed, the very arc of the work seems to point in their direction. Whether intended or not, I appreciated his decision to address the immense cost born by these people first, prior to any exploration of Taylor’s own risks and labours. It gave the welcome impression of putting matters in their rightful place, if only in historical retrospect.
And it is this tendency that brings me to a final, discomfiting reflection. As I first began to read White Fury, I became aware that I was approaching Taylor in terms of how and why he did what he did. How could he have systematically disregarded and even destroyed so many people, so many images of God? Surely profit, no matter how great, could ever pay off such a grievous blood debt. How could he sleep at night? And yet… and yet. Follow the sugar. Follow the tags on my clothing. Follow the phone in my pocket, to the hands that made it, and under what conditions. I don’t know. Follow the often war-torn origins of the metals that bring my devices to life, ever-hungry for my entertainment spent in leisure. Do I want to know? Do we?
Compartmentalisation and its dear friend Hypocrisy are never too far away from the human heart. But there is yet more to say. My perspective, when reading Taylor’s letters and, indeed, Petley’s study, assumes a freedom to choose; the freedom to say no. It is clearly not, then, the perspective of one shackled to another in the dark, rows upon rows, stench and disease, frightened, angry, hopeless, human cargo shuddering along the Middle Passage. I struggle to imagine myself in that place, so far from freedom, even though it has been experienced by so many. So many. And that distance is haunting, and more revealing, than I would care to admit.
Dr. Steve Watts teaches Church History and Spirituality at WTC. He received his PhD in Mediaeval History at the University of St Andrews and was most recently a postdoctoral fellow at the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies in Toronto. He graduated from Regent in 2010 with an MCS in Interdisciplinary Studies. He presently lives in Hamilton, Ontario, with his wonderful wife Elissa and four bright-eyed children.
Come and Study With Us
Our study of theology means engaging with a Kingdom that is powerful and transformational.
We offer programmes in ‘Kingdom Theology’ because at the heart of our study is the belief that Jesus came proclaiming the good news of the Kingdom of God. Through his life, death, and resurrection, he has brought the reality of the Kingdom to this world.
Find out more about WTC Programmes HERE.
The Holy Spirit and the Church
Alain Emerson -The Holy Spirit and the Church
The Holy Spirit is the one who ushers in the Kingdom of God. That Kingdom is present, although often hidden, in the church. The Holy Spirit is the one through whom God actively loves us in time. The Spirit is the way that the Trinity is revealed to us, pointing us always to the truth embodied in the Crucified, and leading us to the Father. By Godʼs love, we live in the Age of the Spirit, that new time in which the church exists and testifies to the world that our time is not our own. God has taken time for us and the sign of that divine intrusion is the Holy Spirit at work in the church that lives and works in the world. God through the Spirit draws us into the life of the Trinity, forming the people of God. The Spirit chooses to have a body on which the Spirit can rest. That body turns out to be called “church.”
In recent years, it has become common to talk about the church as both ‘gathered’ and ‘scattered.’ It’s helpful language in many ways as most will concur that church should be both a gathered community and a scattered dispersion of Jesus followers in their local communities. Often though this language becomes fashionable, impressive coffee-shop conversation focused more on how to ‘program’ both gathered and scattered expressions, but lacking the creative leading of the Holy Spirit. I’ve also heard it said you need to choose what kind of model you want to be—a city on a hill (emphasis on gathered expression of church, implying a well-oiled machine of great Sundays and a ministry program menu to back it up) or the salt of the earth (emphasis on scattered church expressions—‘church-wherever-we-are’ types and the dispersion of everyday missionaries into the spheres of influence).
I have always thought, Why not both? Is this not the biblical mandate? And I wonder if our pre-Covid church categories and cultural Christianity of 21st Century forced us too rigidly into one model, or often motivated us to establish one in reaction to the other? Is this season of deconstruction allowing us to reframe our understanding of church and re-centre our ecclesiology on something more akin to the normative patterns of the New Testament.
Our theology / ecclesiology is so important here. First of all, we are primarily the redeemed people of God, sinners rescued from darkness to form a new ‘covenant’ community based on the sacrificial love of Jesus. We are an alternative community, the ‘one new humanity’ living in this world as a counter-cultural vision of kingdom family, a signpost of how people will live together forever in the new heaven and earth. Sacrificial Love is therefore the axis for everything this community does and is. As Jesus taught us ‘people will know we are His if we love one another’ as he loves us. We are not just a random set of individuals scattered all over the place colliding once a week for some fellowship and pep-talk. The church is a people, a one-minded, one-hearted family baptised into one Spirit.
I am coming to realise that many streams of the church have focused on individual conversion and individual spiritual formation and even individual evangelism at the expense of building an actual community of the Holy Spirit. Remember the desert fathers who taught us the importance of solitude (monk, comes from ‘monos’ which means ‘alone’) and counter cultural spiritual formation in an empire-compromised church reached the point where they realised a life spent completely ‘solitary’ could only take them so far in their spiritual journey! Basically, they realised they needed other people to truly grow and thus the inspiring individual spiritual lives of St Anthony and others soon developed into inspiring spiritual communities. As John Finny put it – “the cells [of the Egyptian desert] became clumps (groups of monks meeting for fellowship) and the clumps became communities (the birthplace of communal monasticism as we know now it).”[2] In this context Jesus-followers became committed to a healthier form of spiritual formation. The raw elements of these communities intrigued the masses, from the poor and destitute to kings and queens and the DNA of these communities was exported into the soil of many nations all around Europe resulting in a meta-change in the cultural landscape.
My point is that as much as we, in the charismatic church, want to see a dispersion of scattered servants, carrying kingdom authority into every sphere of influence, gossiping the ‘good news’, healing the sick and confronting the powers and as much as we want to break the over-emphasised institutionalised form of the church (I get it!), we should not allow our reaction to this to pay less attention to the gathered church and its corporeal reality. The early church never assumed that ‘kingdom work’ could be done as isolated individuals, who simply ‘checked-in’ with one another for church on Sunday or worse simply watched an ‘online’ service. Rather the corollary to the spontaneous expansion of the early church was small communities of believers learning how to become one in Christ so they could reflect the life of Christ in the world.
Contrary to what many of us may think, it’s hard to deny Jesus spent as much time forming a community as he did proclaiming good news! This of course is not a dichotomy we need to force but rather a recognition that the proclamation of the kingdom flows from the formation of a Christlike community—Family on Mission. We can only accurately display the kingdom of God when we are committed to the community of the King because the community gives credibility to verbal proclamation. The one new humanity is what God is establishing on the earth to give glory to Himself. Of course, we are not talking about an insular-looking cozy community serving its own needs – rather a family loving one another into Christ-likeness, empowered by the Holy Spirit to proclaim the good news of the kingdom and to push back the kingdom of darkness. We must encourage everyone to do the work of the evangelist – but we must not forget the church as community is an evangelist—the body of Christ on earth, witnessing to his saving grace. Further the church is more than God’s agent of evangelism of social justice in the world, it is the agent of God’s entire cosmic purpose (Eph 3:10). The church’s pattern of life and commitment to loving one another serves as a countercultural structure to the political and social structures of the day. As Karl Barth describes, the church is ‘the provisional representation of the sanctification of all humanity.’[3] Therefore in its very ‘being’ the church should be prophetic and evangelistic.
Yes, we must absolutely equip the church to scatter into society and leaven the lump of the world, not ‘demanding’ or ‘imposing’ change but scattering the seeds of truth in the way (sacrificial love) of Jesus Christ—a love more powerful than any of the sin-systems of this world, even death itself! These seeds will plant roots in society and bring forth the fruit of change in the world. But where community is lacking and where there are no environments to nourish, the leaven can often become inactive and loses its flavour. In this season of lockdown and restrictions, with a lack of gathered environments, we are in danger of the church ‘losing its flavour’ as, in my experience ‘online church’ is not able to ‘salt’ God’s people as much as actual ‘sacramental’ community.
Practically, therefore, we need to adapt and think about how we establish our churches in these days which are built around family and where spiritual formation in the way of Jesus continues to happen in community, where it was also supposed to! This of course is more challenging in days of lockdown and restrictions, but what if we have an opportunity to make these environments better than what they were pre-Covid. While there are a host of advantages to how we pivot our technology in this season there is also the danger that church becomes even more a ‘spectator sport’ than it was pre-Covid! I really believe if we work hard, reform our patterns and gathered environments to engage more people in smaller, participatory groups built around Word and Spirit dynamics and establish these groups on the principles of discipleship and mission (the Great Commission), this could be an incredible moment for the church. What if we can maximise the opportunities to build these type of environments in this season, even if it is online, so at least the principles and practices are in place for once we get out of restrictions? If the last reformation put the word of God into people’s hands what if this is an opportunity to put it into people’s hearts?
If you are unsure how to do this, ask the Holy Spirit and give yourself to more rigorous Biblical reflection on the New Testament with your leadership team. The Holy Spirit specialises in granting wisdom for how the church is established and as we submit ourselves to the scriptures He will guide you in these uncertain but full-of-opportunity days! Ephesians 3:8-10 reminds us God grants those who are called to lead and serve His church a ‘mysterious’ wisdom in the administration (or planning /‘architecting’) of the ‘household of faith.’ Look to Him. He’s been waiting for a chance for us to put down the church growth books, break the clergy-laity divide, surrender whole-heartedly to His leading and pick up the New Testament again – it’s all in there! Also be aware of who God has placed in your church body; doubtless there are many mature people who haven’t yet been empowered, equipped, and challenged to lead and disciple others. Maybe now is the chance to deploy them into service – take a risk, call them into action alongside you and go for it! A new wineskin built on the reality of the priesthood of all believers, the gifts of the Holy Spirit in the radical servanthood of the Spirit of Jesus.
Maybe this is our reformation?
[1] Stanley Hauerwas and William H Willimon, The Holy Spirit (Abingdon, 2015).
[2] John Finny, Recovering the Past (Celtic and Roman Mission), (Darton,Longman & Todd, 2013)
[3] Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics v. 4: The Doctrine of Reconciliation. eds. Geoffrey William Bromiley and Thomas Forsyth Torrance (Edinburgh T. & T. Clark, 1958-1962), 614.
I’m Alain Emerson and I live in Northern Ireland where I help lead Emmanuel Church and also provide leadership for 24-7 Prayer in Ireland. I have the privilege of teaching at WTC on the module, ‘Shapes of the Church: Past, Present and Future,’ which is part of the Church Planting and Leadership Programme. As someone who has grown up in the
church and found myself in church leadership most of my adult life, I have a passion to see the body of Christ become all it was destined to be. I am fascinated by the many shapes of the church which have emerged throughout the centuries and the current
conversation. This has informed and inspired my own practice as a church leader, church planter and overseer over a network of churches. During these unique Covid days, I am convinced the Spirit is giving us an opportunity to reform many of our structures and patterns and yet the theological framework upon which we establish this is of utmost importance. This is a small contribution to the on-going conversation.
Come and Study With Us
Our study of theology means engaging with a Kingdom that is powerful and transformational.
We offer programmes in ‘Kingdom Theology’ because at the heart of our study is the belief that Jesus came proclaiming the good news of the Kingdom of God. Through his life, death, and resurrection, he has brought the reality of the Kingdom to this world.
Find out more about WTC Programmes HERE.
Welcome Home
A blog post by Revd Azariah France-Williams.
A Warm Welcome?
There is a myth that black West Indians were invited by the U.K government after WW2 to help rebuild the shattered British landscape. In fact, the government was not willing to have members of the Islands come over. They sent emissaries to the Islands to in effect declare:
“England is not open for business, thank you for your interest, we do not need your help.”
The problem was Islands like Nevis had incredibly high literacy rate coupled with easy access to English newspapers. The classifieds were clear, England was bleeding and needed labour to staunch the flow of blood. So although the government did not want the black presence, the businesses did.
One of the travellers over that period was a nineteen year old girl from Nevis who boarded an Italian boat called the Lucania. The sea spray flecked her cheeks as she boarded British passport in hand in 1955. That young bright-eyed teenager was the woman who would become my mother. She came to bring her strength and her love as a full citizen, with full rights, bringing her full self. But it can be hard to bring your gift and feel like you are merely tolerated. She worked as a seamstress and would sit on the long bench in front of her sewing machine at Hepworths factory in Leeds. Her white colleagues had a game where they would all shuffle down the bench until she toppled off the edge of the bench. White supremacy can not accommodate anyone that is ‘other’ and will strive to reestablish a world where the ‘other’ is on the floor. Although she was treated badly, she determined to make others feel welcome driven by her faith and love.
There is a Peters and Lee song called ‘Welcome Home’ the lyrics are warm and melodic, causing one to sway and smile whatever mood you were in before listening. School was not easy for me for a range of reasons. Whenever I arrived home from school, I would spot the net curtains twitch and I would know what to expect. Upon entering the house the ‘Welcome Home’ song would be blaring out at top volume and my mother would take my hand and pull me into the hallway, and dance with me. After I got over the embarrassment I would sway along and join in with the singing. We would laugh, and settle into the rest of the afternoon.
Mum welcomed me in the place she received no welcome. U.K stood for UnKind.
To some extent my mother came to the U.K to find some purpose and identity. As a ten-year old, when the second world war had finished, she wanted to now be a part of the ongoing rebuilding enterprise. She was coming to the mother country for affirmation and validation. It was a big journey with companions along the way and the thought was always that she would head back to Nevis, head home after she had done her bit, seen the world, and saved up some money to cultivate her patch of land, return and settle down. Because we all know there’s no place like home.
There is no place like home.
In the movie the Wizard of Oz Dorothy and her ragtag crew of three friends and Toto seek him out to receive the gifts he is presumed to be able to offer. Dorothy’s dog Toto pulls back the curtain and then they met the wimp behind the wizard. He shuffles from behind a curtain and the game is up.
A biblical hero with his three friends on a journey is Daniel. The story here is that they survive their own tornado and are taken to the land of power and oppression. The sheer scale and magnitude cowed many of the stolen into capitulation to the new power. They had their names changed and the emperor, the Wizard demanded they saw the world he did.
He set up a huge statue to himself and demanded everyone gathered to worship, and bow down to this oppressive display of power, but Dorothy and her three friends, I mean Daniel and his companions, would not bow down seeing the fragility behind the projection of power.
‘There is no place like home.’ Daniel and his friends bring a sense of home with them. They connected to the God of their ancestors and even in a strange land they stood despite the risks. In my book Ghost Ship, I am attempting to stay standing, I am holding onto the edge of the bench, the Church of England has rejected her children from other lands. Well eventually Dorothy got back home, and Daniel’s descendants returned, but now identity was hybridised. Home would have to be reimagined all over again. My mother never made it home but made herself a home to so many.
God knows black lives matter, God is unambiguous about that love. When our doorbell rings and someone different to us turns up at our door, in our nation, at our church can we dust off the record player and play ‘Welcome Home,’ they may be tired, and one day it may be you needing to push the doorbell hoping to hear the music.
‘in as much as you did it to the least of these, you did it to me’
Come and Study With Us
Our study of theology means engaging with a Kingdom that is powerful and transformational.
We offer programmes in ‘Kingdom Theology’ because at the heart of our study is the belief that Jesus came proclaiming the good news of the Kingdom of God. Through his life, death, and resurrection, he has brought the reality of the Kingdom to this world.
Find out more about WTC Programmes HERE.
Fan into flame the gift
Fan into flame the gift…
On a Sunday in early October, Mike Neelley and I went into Skagit County Jail together for our weekly services. Five men gathered around a stainless steel table cemented into the floor. We began with a prayer and then I passed out photocopies of 2 Timothy 1:6-14 – the passage on the gift of God.
I invite someone to read the first verse:
“For this reason I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God which is in you through the laying on of my hands.”
I offer a brief introduction by stating that God has gifts for all of us– spiritual gifts. These gifts are different from natural abilities, like being artistic, perceptive or a good communicator. Spiritual gifts are distinct from learned skills like carpentry, welding, or auto mechanics. They include healing, prophesy, identifying evil spirits that afflict people, faith, and many others.
“Maybe some of you already know of a gift God has given you,” I suggest, looking around at blank faces.
“Or, maybe some of you still don’t know if God has given you a spiritual gift, and you’d like to receive something.”
The men seem to resonate with this option. I go on to share how these gifts enable us to become actively involved in God’s liberating work in the world,
I share how exercising a spiritual gift, like praying for someone to be healed or sharing a prophetic impression requires faith, which means taking risks. I ask someone to read the next verse:
“For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and love and discipline.”
Hearing these verses in the heart of the jail, with the TV blaring a football game suddenly made me feel vulnerable. I think I was then and there experiencing the kind of fear or timidity we’d just read about. The next verse seemed to expose and directly address the underlying issue:
“Therefore do not be ashamed of the testimony of our Lord or of me His prisoner, but join with me in suffering for the gospel according to the power of God, who has saved us and called us with a holy calling.”
We talk about how natural it is to feel ashamed to believe in God’s liberating actions and of Jesus himself. You can feel like a fool believing in an invisible God.
Yet in the face of this Paul writes as an inmate himself, urging people not be ashamed. After all Jesus has saved us, and we need saving. Still when we respond to his call we do enter into a kind of suffering, which the apostle acknowledges. But Christ Jesus “abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.”
Suddenly I remember that the men hadn’t seemed aware that they had received a spiritual gift. I suggest that Mike and I would love to ask the Holy Spirit to reveal each person’s spiritual gift, and that we could gladly ask God to give new gifts.
The men all seemed eager to for whatever was going to happen next. Mike and I looked at each other and began to go for it, taking turns to speak prophetically over each man around the table.
Each man seemed to soak up the words of affirmation that Mike and I offered, agreeing with the gifts that we identified or spoke over them. We could see new hope ignited, there in this place of bleakness where negativity, harsh labels and curses abound.
Only one man joined us in “P pod”—a Mexican American guy with stars tattooed on his cheeks, barely visible under long curly black hair parted in the middle. He is a man of deep conviction, born of suffering through years in prison.
Mike and I were moved by how easy it was to identify people’s spiritual gifts in the jail setting, and how precious and welcomed God’s perspective is among those who feel downtrodden.
We wrap up our time with each group by encouraging the men to step our in faith—fanning into flame their gifts. We encourage them to not let fear paralyze them, but God’s power, love and disciple.
Paul’s final words seem the perfect charge: “Guard, through the Holy Spirit who dwells in us, the treasure which has been entrusted to you.”
Mike and I find ourselves being deeply encouraged by this Scripture and our experience with the men. I share this message at Tierra Nueva’s service that day, and the work continues.
For further reflections on the gifts of the Spirit, read “Guerrilla tactics: signs, wonders, justice and mercy,” chapter nine in Guerrilla Gospel: Reading the Bible for Liberation in the Power of the Spirit.
Coming Out of Complementarianism: One woman’s long journey to freedom
I recently received a letter from a woman explaining to me how she had been on a journey out of complementarianism, what that had meant for her, her relationship with God, the women around her, and her marriage.
On Love, Life, Death, and Leaving Something Written
My mother was a prolific writer. We haven’t even begun to work through her journals and notebooks, but a few months ago I came across a little folder of theological reflections from her time at Smith College, where she studied literature and theology, and I tucked it away to bring home before putting it back for the others to read.