What’s your church like?

How do you answer a question like this? Do you talk about what happens at a typical Sunday meeting? Maybe you say how many people belong to the church, and what social or outreach projects the church runs. Credit to Frank Viola for the idea, but how about describing what our church is like in terms of what a church is supposed to be:

A new kind of people – looking beyond the natural categories of race, social background, gender, age and so on

A family – looking after each other and putting each other’s needs before our own

A body – with everyone contributing and playing a part in the life of the church, like a body is made of many parts that can only work properly when in harmony with all the other parts

A bride – loved limitlessly by God and expressing his beauty in our world

An army – growing in our ability to stand against the powers opposed to God: ‘I will build my church and the gates of Hades will not overcome it’.

A holy priesthood – all serving God and bringing him glory through our daily lives

A holy nation – set apart for God’s purposes, reflecting the values of God’s kingdom rather than our earthly kingdom

A golden lampstand – bringing light to the world and together banishing the darkness of oppression, injustice and poverty

One loaf – connected together and united, like the grains that are baked together to make a loaf of bread

God’s field – as expressed in the loaf idea, we should all be rooted in God’s soil so that together we show God’s likeness

A vineyard – linked with Christ so that his character and ours are so closely intertwined

A sheepfold – moving together and following the direction of God, our shepherd

A temple – being built together with Christ as our foundation and cornerstone, and bringing God’s presence into the world

A city – citizens of the glorious heavenly Jerusalem, a city in which Jesus is the prince and the light

Please do have a quick read of the article on Frank Viola’s blog. I think it’s wonderful and it’s certainly given me a fresh lens on how we ‘do’ church.

Up to our eyeballs in debt

So, as I guess you know, the UK is in a lot of debt. As I write this, the figure is a bit over £947 billion but you can see the exact amount by clicking here . The problem isn’t just that the UK is in a lot of debt, it’s that we’re in a lot of debt and the amount of debt is increasing – according to Government figures the UK ran a deficit of £159 billion in 2009, meaning that the UK’s national debt went up by £159 billion.

I hope I’ve explained here the difference between ‘debt’ and ‘deficit’, and I’ve tried to do this because the two words seem to get mixed up a lot. I remember a few news items in the period leading up to the general election last May where journalists and politicians talked about ‘getting the country’s debt under control’ or even ‘reducing the national debt’. What they actually meant was ‘reduce the national deficit ’, so that we were still getting into more debt, just not as quickly as before. The Labour Party’s manifesto for the 2010 general election set a target to ‘more than halve the deficit over the next four years’ (see page 11). I’m cynical about politics-speak so forgive me for taking their minimum figure of halving the UK’s national deficit. Working from that 2009 deficit of £159 billion, we can rephrase Labour’s target as saying ‘we will take action so that at the end of 2013 the UK will still be losing money, but at a rate of less than £80 billion per year’. Assuming they knocked £20 billion off the deficit each year, that would leave the UK with a national debt of something like £1,300 billion at the end of 2013.

But anyway, that all sets the scene for my latest musing, which is about how seemingly intelligent people can come to such hugely different views on the best response to the national deficit and debt. The new (does it still count as new?) government believes that the deficit needs to be reduced pretty quickly and they have their share of commentators, journalists and so on applauding their stance. And, a little to my surprise, it seems that the majority of the population agrees for now. This graph is from a report released today by Ipsos MORI. (Click here and go to page 23.) People were asked whether they agreed or disagreed with the statement, ‘in the long term, this government’s policies will improve the state of Britain’s economy’. And taking the percentages of people who agreed or disagreed, 23% more people agreed.

But there are also many joining Labour in arguing forcefully and loudly that the government’s approach will end in disaster, bringing on the dreaded ‘double-dip recession’. Click here and here for a couple of recent examples from the Guardian. It seems to me that both the ‘cut now’ and ‘cut later’ groups want basically the same thing; for the UK to return to lasting economic growth as soon as possible. So how is it that they’ve come to pretty much opposite opinions as to how best to reach this point? I thought economics was supposed have a strong scientific, objective basis? Help me out, folks!

Musical genius

I’ve been listening to Picaresque (Amazon link) by The Decemberists this week. Fantastic album, full of great tunes, clever lyrics and interesting stories. I love how they write about such a range of subjects, from bereaved wives of American Civil War soldiers to teenage sporting disaster. Here’s a little sample of their lyrics:

When I was a girl how the hills of Oconee
Made a seam to hem me in
There at the fair when our eyes caught, careless
Got my heart right pierced by a pin

We are two mariners, our ship’s sole survivors
In this belly of a whale
Its ribs our ceiling beams, its guts our carpeting
I guess we have some time to kill
You may not remember me, I was a child of three
And you a lad of eighteen
But I remember you, and I will relate to you
How our histories interweave

Among five score pachyderm, each canopied and passengered
Sit the duke and the duchess’s luscious young girls
Within sight of the baroness, seething spite for this live largesse
By her side sits the baron, her barrenness barbs her
And we'll all come praise the Infanta

Trust me, I know they look really pretentious on screen but they work in the songs! If you like indie-folk-rock with a bit of prog and a guy with a slightly whiny voice…

While I’m on the subject of great lyrics, here’s a couple more that I just love, firstly from I Want You To Stay by Maximo Park:

I always said you could rely on me, now it seems that I was wrong
I want you to stay, I want you to stay with me
‘Cause nothing works round here where cranes collect the sky
I think of your face at night, ‘cause nothing works round here

It’s that line ‘where cranes collect the sky’ that gets me; what a perfect metaphor to describe a bleak urban, industrial landscape. Here’s another fab metaphor lyric, from my favourite American alt-folk singer, Laura Veirs and her song, Galaxies: (Unofficial video as the official one has got embedding disabled on YouTube)

When you sing, when you sing, stars fill up my eyes
Galaxies roll down my cheeks, galaxies
Galaxies, they flood the streets, galaxies

Hope you like some of these songs, and share your favourite lyrics below!