Hillsong #1: You’re Welcome!

Chris & Jonathan at Balmoral Beach, Sydney. Chris is trying desperately to look as cool as Jon, bless!

It was so good to have Chris Parkes – our Guern in Oz – to plan and arrange for us a week visiting Hillsong Church in Sydney Australia. Chris has been studying at their ministry training college and working in the church there for over three years now. He is coming to the end of his Degree course having previously completed what can be best described as a Diploma in Ministry during his initial year in Sydney.

The 4000-seat convention centre at Hillsong's main campus where several services are held each weekend.

Hillsong is well known in most of Charisendom if not the wider Evangelical world, firstly for its prolific worship and song-writing output as a community which began dramatically to influence beyond its Sydney based church in the early 90s with songs like This is My Desire and Shout to the Lord. Since then the trickle has turned into a torrent of wonderful, catchy, Jesus-centred worship songs of which you’re now very likely to find peppering song set-lists from Littlehampton to Little Wanganui.

We arrived in Sydney late at night and were met at the airport by Kim Drew, a lovely South African friend who used to live in Guernsey. Kim attended an Alpha course we were running a couple of years ago after which she joined our church but sadly only for a few months before her husband Colin’s job moved them and their family to Australia.

Colin & Kim Drew

I had never met Colin nor their children, and so it was very gracious and generous of them both to have us to stay, initially for three nights, but in the end, as other accommodation fell through, for a whole week! It was thoroughly fortuitous also that the Drews live in Cherrybrook, a suburb of North West Sydney which is about 10 minutes drive from the main Hillsong Campus in Baulkham Hills.

This massive suburban district North West of the city is one residential new-town after another, and is collectively known as ‘the Hills’ district because so many of the residential clusters in this region have the word ‘hill’ in their title, and also because… well, they’re hilly, I guess. Anyhow this is the reason the church has the name ‘Hillsong’, it was originally founded in the early 80s as The Hills Christian Life Centre. As an affiliated Assemblies of God church (in Australia the denomination is known collectively as Australian Christian Churches) it was part of a generic “Christian Life Centre” movement in the AoG which was a kind of renewal and restoration movement and as such influenced Europe also.

Brian & Bobbie Houston

Hillsong thus started off life as a kind of suburban church plant from the Christian Life Centre in downtown Sydney which has now somewhat ironically become the city campus of Hillsong Church. Brian and Bobby Houston, the senior leadership couple in Hillsong Church are a bubbly, trendy, fatherly-motherly couple who set the tone for much of the culture in this massive church of over 20,000 people. It was Brian’s father who was the pastor of the original Sydney Christian Life Centre which is now the Hillsong city campus.

Chris (Parkesy to his friends) lived only a few minutes drive from Colin and Kim’s place too, so he was able to pick us up each day and taxi us around which was just great. Chris is fully engaged in Hillsong Church and loves all that he does there, which includes the theological degree course that he’s been on the past few years, but this is only part of the picture. When I say fully engaged I mean fully. Chris is also a Connect Group Leader (i.e. home-group leader), and as one of the Powerhouse leaders (no, not primary kids for any Rockers reading this, in Hillsong this means young people aged 18-25) he also oversees a Tribe which consists of around 400 people – a collection of around 40 Connect Groups, and of course he is involved with leading and serving at at least two weekend services, as well as the Powerhouse midweek service!

Chris does all this voluntarily as thousands of others do, but he also does a small part-time paid job for roughly two days a week in Hillsong’s international conference office which is often manned 24 hours a day. So together with college lectures, study and course-work, Chris has a pretty full week! But as with so many we met who are equally full-on engaged in church life, Chris loves Jesus full-on too, inside-out, enjoys everything he does, takes responsibility seriously, wants the world to see the glory and excellence of the Lord Jesus through the church and seems thoroughly satisfied! What a joy it was to be with Chris and so many others like him at Hillsong all week. It does your soul good to be with such energetic, uncynical, Jesus-centred people who love and enjoy God, love loving people with the love God gives, and love the abundant life he has given us fully too!

This was the overriding theme weaving through our Hillsong experience in Sydney – we felt so welcome from the moment we arrived, we met such genuine lovers of Jesus who took time and effort to make us welcome all week and clearly enjoyed doing so, and we met people whose lives have been transformed through being wonderfully ’sucked in’ by this welcoming unworldly love and have thereby met Jesus. As one guy, now a youth leader, expressed it to me – “I know now that the Saviour sought me out and found me through the overwhelming love and joy of this powerful community of friends called Hillsong”.

Wow! And double wow!

As we talked together and prayed at the end of our time at Hillsong Judith tearfully summed it up like this, “I don’t think I have ever met so many genuine, uncynical, loving, passionate people!”

A Small Oversight

“May I have your visas please?” asked the friendly check-in clerk.

“Visas?” I said “No, you don’t understand. Let me explain – we’re British, we’re flying to Australia, we don’t need visas.”

How many of you know you need a visa to enter Australia? Well, how were we to know? Why didn’t you tell us! What ever happened to the British Empire and the map with a quarter of the world painted pink? You blink for half a century and it’s disappeared. Huh? We’re subjects of the same Queen! Isn’t Oz part of the Commonwealth for crying out loud?

We knew we needed extra security checks when travelling to the USA. The flight booking website informed us that the old Visa-Waiver system was no longer sufficient for Brits and that we had to apply on-line a month or two before with passport and travel details so as to get a Homeland Security check before entering the country. But you still didn’t need a visa for North America.

And so it was that we found ourselves at the Qantas check-in desk at Central Station in downtown Hong Kong, thinking we had timed things just nicely, early morning, a couple of hours to spare, we’d check in our bags at Central Station then take the MTR underground to the Airport and have a leisurely hour or so sipping lattes and espressos whilst waiting to board. Instead we had a rather sudden shock and a tense wait to find out if perhaps neither of us, just one or us, or (preferably) both of us could board the plane and fly to Oz!

I have to say the staff at Qantas Hong Kong were fabulous! On realising our predicament the check-in clerk informed us that they could apply to the Australian authorities on our behalf then and there, but could not of course guarantee whether we would be allowed visas. So they did, and whilst copies of our passports and documentation were made and quickly electronically whizzed into the ether, we were instructed to wait at Central Station. After about half and hour or so we were informed that Judith had been granted a visa but that they had not been informed about me.

Typical!

I remember once completing a life-assurance questionnaire; one of the questions was “Is your job dangerous?” I immediately thought of pastors and missionaries I knew who were daily facing persecution around the world, and hesitated for a moment before answering “It should be”. Perhaps this was now coming back to haunt me. Somewhere in the International Electronic Database there was an entry on Comrade Le Tocq J. P. which read “BEWARE: this man thinks he’s dangerous.” There’s only one thing worse than a man who’s dangerous and that’s a man who thinks he’s dangerous. At other times I would have been proud of this accolade but now there it was causing me to be barred forever from enjoying boomerangs in their natural habitat. Perhaps I would not be allowed back into the UK! Maybe I would end up marooned as some crazed, volatile, politico-religious exile in Hong Kong, without citizenship, lost in the maze of streets in Kowloon, trying to communicate in Pidgin-Cantonese “Oh Pea Roh… Me No Visa… Lob Loofah!”, proclaiming the end of the world, and thinking himself dangerous for the rest of his life.

We were informed that, because of time getting short now before take-off, we should make our way on the MTR from Central Station to Hong Kong Airport where we were to inquire at the Qantas desk whether I had been granted a visa or not. So off we went. And what a peaceful and gleeful train journey that was, as we calmly discussed whether just Judith should fly or should she wait in Hong Kong with me if it transpired that my visa was not issued in time, and whether we could afford the extra cost of new tickets. Of course we prayed a little too.

And so it was as the Qantas assistant at the airport desk recovered from the sloppy kiss I gave her (or was it ‘him’? – I never stopped long enough to check) having informed us that my visa had been granted, that Judith and I could be seen skipping through the Departures gate with time enough for a much desired espresso and a latte before we boarded the flight and headed south for the next part of our adventure towards Sydney, the land of Oz and Hillsong Church…

Q: What Have Communism, Superstition & Legalism Got in Common?

A: they all bind you through fear.

Pensées on Seeing the Effect of these Three Influences in Hong Kong

In the sense that Communism, Superstition and Legalism bind people through fear, they are all religious. Because of this they are also in a curious way attractive, at least to certain types of people, but maybe to all of us, just in varying degrees.

Many people like to be told what to do. They like not having the responsibility to think through things for themselves. I think this is a fundamental and perhaps universal human flaw.

Fear and faith also have a lot in common; in both cases you believe that what you cannot yet see will happen to you. The difference is that fear is not based on trust. In fact in many ways fear could be said to be the opposite of trust.

The word religion comes from a Latin root which means to bind. Under communism, superstition and legalism, human beings find themselves bound to act in certain ways, not in the end because they trust those who have dictated things to be so, but because they fear the consequences of resisting and not doing what they are told to do.

The kind of questions they are faced with are: What will they do to me if they find out? What will my fate be in their hands? What will others think?

Fear is not based on reason. In fact fear undermines reason to the extent that people who allow fear to dominate their lives eventually stop thinking reasonably for themselves.

Faith, especially the Christian faith, invites reason, encourages reason, is a healthy environment for reason to flourish. Faith is based on trust, and where there is trust there is progress. You can talk openly, you can even disagree. You confess that you are on a journey together and that you do not know all things but have much to learn.

A few Christians might subscribe to communism (but I don’t know any personally!) Some Christians are strangely superstitious in their behaviour. But there are many more Christians who remain sadly bound by legalism as if it were the acceptable face of being a Jesus follower. As if you blend in better with the religious world by so doing. The deeper sadness is that most do not even realise it, thinking instead that this is as good as it gets in the Christian life.

As we meandered around the Hong Kong and learned more of the diverse cultural history of the city and its environs it made me think about the legacy of these influences today. Eastern Mysticism in its plethora of manifestations, from Buddhism to Taoism/Daoism (neither of which incidentally is especially theistic) has held people in superstitious bondage to a greater or lesser degree for years; rooted in animism and with so often the common thread of reincarnation these -isms, religions and philosophies still focus on a human being’s individual moral obligation to do right things and abstain from wrong things in life in order not to be punished in the future. Thus this fear is a major motivation and the onus is totally on the individual’s responsibility to earn the right to a better life. Communism more recently has built on this culture of fear and perhaps even in its less vicious modern incarnation mixed now with the demiurge of materialism is still overshadowing Hong Kong’s future with its claws of control; in this case Big Brother is certainly watching, not only next-door but now lurking in the corridors of power waiting for an opportunity to inflict its crushing fear. It was indeed Mao Zedong who professed “Communism is not love. Communism is a hammer which we use to crush the enemy.” The fearful question is then ‘Who is the enemy?” and the supplementary one is “Have I become the enemy?”

Now the impact of Christianity sadly has also often done little to thwart, in fact sometimes it has added to, this oppressive weight of the culture of dos and don’ts, ask not and question not, tick all the boxes and feel proud; for this is the bewitching effect of legalistic Christianity, which can come in and immediately attract those who have grown accustomed to this lifestyle based on other fear-founded -isms.  The Apostle Paul goes so far as to call this “another gospel… no gospel at all” [Gal 1:6-7] It is surely not the Gospel, for it is not good news at all. And yet it has and still is masqueraded as the Gospel around the world by well-meaning ministers. It is not even new news, for it is based so much on the worldly concept of earning favour – do good = be accepted, do bad = be rejected. It just perhaps seems more holy when wrapped up in Christian paper.

The Gospel of Grace in the Lord Jesus Christ is the exact opposite. He gives rest to the heavy laden. We simply come to Him and ask. [Matt 7:7, 11:28; Luk 11:9, 13]

So it is basically this ungospel of legalism that Rob Rufus and others like him are vehemently seeking to see stamped out, and I for one am glad for it. We must pray for this glorious good news to go out far and wide, especially in a place like Hong Kong sitting, as it has for centuries, like a gateway into China and the East. But currently City Church International’s impact on Hong Kong, and on locals, let alone on China, is, in reality, minuscule. It is out of proportion to the thousands of downloads of Rob’s sermons in the rest of the world via the web. So we must pray too for churches like The Vine whose impact in Hong Kong is growing rapidly and currently have, I believe, at least the nascent strategic apostolic and administrative gifting to reach out and sustain evangelism and church-planting within Hong Kong and into mainland China. In my humble opinion these two mixed together would be a lethal weapon against the kingdom of darkness, much like Wesley and Whitefield might have been if they’d been able to work together more often!

Nate-the-dude & Amy Sarchet-Waller of The Vine

John Snelgrove of The Vine

Rob & Glenda Rufus of CCI

Hongsong – The Vine

Much like Hillsong only different… in Hong Kong, the singing city.

We were staying with Judith’s brother Graham and his wife Luise who were fantastic hosts. Since their arrival in Hong Kong some three years ago Luise has, for part of the time, been on the staff of the Vine Christian Fellowship which is where we decided to worship that afternoon, joining in with the third of their three services each Sunday. It was great to experience this church first hand; we had heard so much about it not only from Luise and Graham but also because of its support and connections with Care for Children – the Beijing based charity established and run by Rob and Liz Glover over ten years ago when they left our church in Guernsey with a call to the far East!

So after the morning with Rob Rufus at City Church International in Kowloon, then catching the Star Ferry back to Hong Kong island for a spot of lunch, we headed for The Vine Centre, which is actually not a separate building but a suite of rooms situated on the 2nd floor of Two Chinachem Plaza tower block and accessed by lift from the 1st floor office lobby. Complicated to find? Actually no, because a)

Two Chinachem Plaza - access to lifts to The Vine by the walkway with the Delifrance sign!

their church website has comprehensive directions for arriving on foot, by bus, MTR (metro) and tram, b) there is even an interactive google map on their site which allows you to put in your own address so as to produce detailed personalised directions, and c) there is a colourful band of welcomers you can’t miss in the plaza area where the lifts are situated ready to help you find your way up where you are greeted by more friendly welcome hosts. All in all they have done their best to ensure that their ‘Centre’ meeting venue, hidden as it is up a skyscraper, is as accessible and visible as possible.

Despite the fact that the location is clearly not ideal they have transformed the space in an incredible way! What they have done is to create a church meeting space using two or three floors of office space – amazing in itself that they got permission for this! They now have a vision to procure a purpose-designed facility in due course (the plans were available for viewing while we were there). In the meantime this office conversion gives them a theatre-type hall which holds about 150 people (looks like they knocked through two floors to get the height for this), and includes some clever sound-proofing, trendy unobtrusive lighting (there is no natural light), a smallish (in terms of depth) stage and excellent  AV/PA facilities. In addition there is an small lounge area, coffee-bar serving Starbucks-style drinks, reception area, and rooms for kid’s ministry, counselling, storage and a small suite of offices. It perhaps helps that one of the two leading pastors, Tony Read, was an Ove Arup engineer before entering full-time ministry!

So in order to grow and accommodate new growth the church now holds three services on a Sunday (9:30am, 11:30am – both with kids & teen ministries,  & 4:00pm – with kids ministry) We arrived with a few moments to spare and were warmly greeted by a group of teenagers who were manning the area around the access lift from the first floor walkway which is one of many walkways linking the plethora of high rise buildings in Hong Kong, and making it easier to get between one building and another without having to go down to street level each time.

There are many off-quoted urban myths about Hong Kong, such as the one about Hong Kong being so densely populated that the inhabitants would not be able to fit if they all had to stand at ground level. Clearly this is not exactly true, as there are huge areas of unbuilt space in the whole of the territory, but in a single section of the urban area like Mong Kok for example it might come close to the truth as the statistics show only 3.9 m² or 42 ft² per person, (whereas in Hong Kong as a whole it is 158 m² or 1702 ft² per person). This is certainly dense (compares to Guernsey’s around 1,190 m² or 12,800 ft² per person) and can truly feel so at certain times and in certain places, but the Hong Kong Government and planning authorities have been intuitive and forward-thinking in how they have allowed the city to be developed, especially in the last 40 years or so. As a result there are people everywhere but everything seems to flow much better than in a city like London for example. Moreover their public transport system is at least on a par with that in Paris; the trams, underground and buses coordinating seamlessly so that as long as you know where to get off and change it should not be difficult to find your way around in the urban area.

Having thus been flagged and greeted by a bunch of enthusiastic red T-shirt wearing youths we took the lift to the Vine Centre level and were similarly greeted and welcomed by more young people – the youth group were clearly on welcome ministry this week! We just had time for a brief introduction and chat with John Snelgrove one of the two Senior Pastors – who could almost be a body double for Hillsong’s Brian Houston in looks and mannerisms! The other, Tony Read was also present but already helping lead things at the front. John remembers visiting Guernsey 20 years ago and attending a Baptist church called Bethel (now Shiloh) while he was working around the UK. As the meeting hall is smaller and a more compact theatre-style than we are used to the feeling could best be described as cosy. I guess around 160 people were present as there were no empty seats visible, the rear doors were open and a few chairs spilled out into the lounge area.

The Vine band lead us in worship

The band struck up a song – I wrote in my journal “Hillsong style” – by which I meant it both looked and felt like I know Hillsong church ‘does’ worship; not in any critical sense, simply an observation: the singers were placed along the front of the stage, either side of the worship/band leader, four or five of them, a couple of yards space between each, encouraging and exhorting the congregation to enter fully into worshipping Jesus through their visible, heartfelt enthusiasm. It was loud, but not ear-splittingly. They sang familiar songs like Happy Day, Alleluia for the Lord God Almighty Reigns, God of this City (I found this quite moving to sing in Hong Kong!) After around 25 minutes the person we would call an “anchor leader” came on stage and brought the worship time to a close with some prayer, followed by a warm welcome to guests and visitors. He then announced the weekly news which took the format of an excellently presented video “Vine News” which was very funny too! So well produced – I think these are accessible on their website. Everything was on screen including a detailed ‘orientation’ for parents of their children’s ministry. Following this the anchor leader gave a short exhortation about giving prior to the offering being taken up (this was also very much in a Hillsong style). As the stewards took up the offering a moving testimony video was shown – an interview with a fairly new church member whom the Lord had healed miraculously. Matt Redman’s lovely song Befriended played in the background. We then prayed for the lady in the video who was present.

The preacher was Dawn Strachan and her text was Rev 3:7-13. If you’d asked me as she began what her profession was I would have guessed she was an unmarried school teacher. She was a good communicator, direct, made you feel like you ought to listen, funny at appropriate moments, spoke with a fairly loud voice and a fairly formidable presence on the stage. She was in fact an unmarried school teacher. Her text about Jesus’s message to the church in Philadelphia focused on one main point – that God is calling the greatness out of us; he is always in the business of doing this. She illustrated this ably from her own experience and of individuals in the church. There was a bit of camaraderie going on at one point with a few of the congregation members; being visitors we didn’t always get the joke, but it was not overplayed and demonstrated the strong sense of community and purpose that there is in this great church buzzing with potential.

There were lots of encouraging cries of amen! and right! during her preaching and it was here that I first noticed someone shout out “Come on!” – something I would hear lots more of in the following weeks at Hillsong in Australia as well as churches in America. I don’t know if this is a new phenomenon in terms of Christian affirmative quasi-imperative interjections but I certainly had not heard it in church before! And for a few moments I wondered if it was intended critically as in “Come on! Get to the point!” or even “Come on! No-one’s going to believe that!” I’ve heard many kinds of affirmative quasi-imperative interjections in my time in Charisendom, some carried over from Pentecostalism, others newly formed in the last thirty years (none as far as I’m aware from Methodism – we were lucky if we got a muffled amen after a corporate prayer back in those days!) So I was familiar with absolutely [very popular in the 90s], affirmative [Star Trek fans], agreed, all right [British], alright [US], alrighty [very US], as you say, assuredly [RSV readers], aye, certainly, exactly, good, hear-hear [slightly political], indeed, indeedy [British ex-pats in the US], ja [South Africans], most assuredly [NASB users], of course, okay, oui [Europhiles], positively, preach it [someone who's just woken up in the middle of a sermon], precisely, quite [very English], rather [Famous Five fans], right [Charismatic & Reformed], right you are [Archers fans], righto [Narnia fans], sure [middle-aged & trendy], sure thing [middle-aged & sad], true, verily verily [KJV readers], yay [teenagers], yea [teenagers trying to sound like KJV readers], yeah [thirty-somethings], yep [forty-somethings], yes, yessir [moderate Western fans], yessirree [serious Western fans], you bet [North American pentecostals], you betcha [British ex-pats trying to sound like North American pentecostals], you said it [probably either the most inane or the most profound comment anyone could make], and the like. But I had not yet come across come on! Nevertheless it grew on me and I began to practise it from time to time as we travelled. By the end of my sabbatical I was a real come on-er!

But enough of that.

Mine's a skinny grande caramel latte, half caf and half de-caf, with mocha shot and room for whipped cream and sprinkles on top...

The service finished with prayer and one final song before we followed the crowd out into the packed lounge where visitors can get a free coffee at their Starbucks-style coffee-bar, newcomers can chat to leaders and parents are reunited with their kids. We were introduced to Nathan and Amy Sarchet-Waller, a great couple who have a connection with Guernsey as Nate’s father’s family was from the island, brought up in the Elim Pentecostal Church. Paul (Nate’s dad) planted Elim Full Gospel Church a thriving Cantonese-speaking Charismatic church with a base in Hong Kong, as well as dozens of other churches planted in neighbouring SE Asia. Nate is a qualified teacher and together they serve as youth leaders at the Vine. It was fun talking with him about Guernsey, a place he obviously loves too – they usually visit once a year – so we hope to see them next time!

After a long day, we made our way back out into the humid heat of the city in search of some supper. Graham and Luise took us via Hong Kong’s great electric ladder, the Mid-Levels Escalator, to one of their favourite

Soft-crusted crustacean

Vietnamese restaurants where soft-shell crabs were on the menu – a first for most of us and a real winner – absolutely delicious!

This was then followed by a long journey – about 4 metres – across the road to a restaurant which served only desserts. Of course all the girls were in heaven, whilst Graham and I humoured them and forced ourselves to eat some fruity syllabub or other. Whilst we sat their licking our lips we observed what looked like a Hong Kong Chinese family group setting off a small incendiary device across the road on the edge of the pavement. This turned out to be a religious ritual including chants and prayers to ward of evil demons and invoke ancestral gods, after the death of a family member and the closing of a business nearby. It made a huge mess and I’m not sure what our Health and Safety officers would have said back home with cars and pedestrians passing so close by.

superstition is alive and well in Hong Kong

Nevertheless it emphasised for me the massive opportunity as well as the massive and essential mission that the Christian Church is faced with in this singing city where the temples to hedonism, materialism, consumerism as well as paganism are not hidden but there for all to see, painted in garish colours in honour of the known and unknown gods who bind this people, packed so tightly together in their cosmopolitan millions.

Absolutely disgusting... but I forced it down as a necessary sacrifice to maintain family harmony

Thank God for Hong Kong, and pray God that he moves in great revival power there!

Finding Rufus II

Simple eh? Until you get there!

It looked like a short stroll using the map on their website, maybe it was the near 100% humidity and 40°C heat, but it was soon seeming like an unguided tour hiking through back streets of Kowloon in search of City Church International’s meeting place at the YWCA.

Searching for a church in York once I stopped a guy carrying a guitar to ask for directions (I know, a man asking for directions – but I was desperate). He looked like he would know since who else but a Christian carries a guitar around, and wears slightly dull semi-formal casual clothes at 9.30 on a Sunday morning? Turned out he was a Christian and although he was not going to the church we were searching for he ably guided us there. Well, we did ask a couple of people where the YWCA was but they did not know, nor had they heard of City Church International, not surprisingly. I even tried asking “You no weh fine Wa Dub You See Eh?” or “Lob Loofah?” but I just got strange looks. That Church in York and Rob Rufus’s in Hong Kong shared a similar learning need: if you meet in an unpresupposing building, in a fairly hidden part of town and you want newcomers to visit and attend your services you need to provide a) good information about transport links  – the church website map was poor on detail and did not even mention the fact that the Number 8 bus which links perfectly with the Star Ferry terminal, stops just 50 yards away! – and b) proper signage outside.  Otherwise only the really determined will come. And we were really determined.)

Eventually, overheated (it was very very hot this Sunday morning and the humidity was near 100% again) and somewhat flustered – definitely in need of grace – we found a building which looked like it was a YWCA centre. “I think this is it” I announced. I was at the head of the trail of course (which included Judith, Grace, Emily and Luise) with my trusty iPhone GPS google maps sat-nav – although between tall buildings it was not that useful for detail! We felt like we’d just walked 1000 miles, and soaked with perspiration I declared that even if this was not the right place we were going to go in and hold church there ourselves as it was at least likely to have air-conditioning and refreshment.

Thankfully it was CCI’s meeting place and once we had cooled down and glugged some water we entered the hall. In reality the building is not hard to find when you know where it is!

We were about 10 minutes early and although there were no signs outside the building, as you entered the hall there was a table with posters and some of Rob’s audio CDs. A pre-service prayer meeting had started a few minutes before at the front of the chairs around the worship band. About 30 people including the worship band, gathered around Rob and Glenda and were evidently praying for the service. There were no welcome stewards evident in the hall so we quietly found some seats in middle and sat down.

The hall has a high ceiling conference room with potential seating for perhaps a few hundred, it looked like there was a sectioned off balcony area too. Chairs for about 150 were arranged theatre-style facing the stage, and at the back behind the middle block we were sitting in there were toddlers’ toys on a mat and a 18 inch high children’s paddling pool filled with water, which at first I thought was an innovative touch – the kids could splash around during worship! (Actually it was there to be used for baptisms which occurred at the end of the service, but during our time of worship one toddler ventured towards the sides of the pool – it was not the inflatable but the ‘floppy’ type – and promptly fell in! I had moved to the back during worship to take a couple of photos and saw this happening in my camera lens. Water began to flow out in the direction of the PA and videoing equipment! I ventured towards the toddler to pick him up, but the toddler’s mum, who had been gloriously ‘lost in wonder’ somewhere while her child baptised himself, quickly came to his rescue and helped in the clean up operation which ensued as we appropriately sang a song with a line about “washing me clean”!)

We used to run a prayer time at the front of our meeting hall just before the service started. I was thinking about this as I observed theirs now from a visitor’s point of view. We moved it into a side room when someone suggested that it was not very visitor friendly as newcomers could feel awkward not knowing whether they should join in or not, whether they could talk or should sit quietly. At the time I remember responding with something dismissive like “Of course visitors are welcome to join in – it’s not exclusive!” But you get a new perspective when you’re on the receiving end, and there is a marked difference between visitors being welcome and visitors being made welcome. Actually we did feel a tad awkward and excluded as the group at the front got louder and louder in their excitement in the Spirit; and we were Christians – not sure how an unbeliever or an newcomer would feel (cf. Paul’s concern for ‘outsiders’ and the ‘uninitiated’ in 1 Cor 14:16, 23ff). There were a few other folk milling around, setting up tables for refreshments and children’s ministry stuff, but strangely no-one spoke to us until just before the band struck up when Glenda came over to say hello and introduce herself to Judith, Luise and the girls. She was warm and friendly and made us feel immediately at home.

Worshippers at City Church International

The meeting was scheduled to start at 10am, but there were plenty of empty chairs! Hmm… this reminds me of somewhere I thought. About 5 minutes later the band struck up a song and people stood to join in. The music was lively, Jesus-focused, and heart-felt. The mainly familiar songs ranged from Hillsong to Chris Tomlin. We even sang Jason Upton’s In Your Presence. As with the home-group meeting the participation in this section was all sung; prophetic songs, singing in the Spirit, sung prayers, participants were singers and those leading at the front using the mics – the music continued in the background throughout. After 20 minutes Glenda Rufus invited us to take our seats, then she welcomed newcomers and guests (including us) and shared the notices for the week. She invited a guy who had been with them for the majority of the 5 or 6 years the church has existed there to give his testimony and be prayed for because he was returning home, which I think was somewhere in South Africa. He had been initially drawn to the church because he’d heard there were South Africans there.

By now there were around 70-80 people present and Glenda announced that the children would be leaving with their leaders. There were around a dozen who left for the children’s group which was held in another room.

Rob got up to preach. I will try and give a synopsis of the notes I took because it was a timely preach for the church and also reassured me in some matters we have had to face as leaders. He based his sermon on Romans 5. He started out by saying that this had been a tough year for them as a church. They had lost a young man through suicide, but he reminded us that many have been saved from suicide by the grace of God. Nevertheless Rob had just completed a teaching series on “Dealing with Hardships” in response to the troubled times they had been through. He now wanted to return to the topic of the Grace of God, mainly he said, because it also fundamental to handling issues like this because grace is the only way God relates to us all the time. He emphasised that grace is not about living selfishly but living for the benefit of others. The Bible does not speak of cheap grace – i.e. sinning as much as we want; nor any sort of distorted grace – e.g. seeking our own pleasure at the expense of others. The issue is: the free gift of righteousness. This is not earned, it cannot be earned; it is a gift. But there are still Christians who sadly believe the opposite and this affects the way they relate to God. E.g. They think “When I sin God punishes me; when I’m good he’s gracious.” No! In fact that is the world’s way of relating to us, not God’s.

Rob read again as he had done Thursday night (see earlier post) the prophetic word he’d written out about a new season of revelation on grace and the gift of righteousness. He emphasised a section about being unchangeably, perfectly qualified to rightstanding with God… That some folk are waiting for a greater thing. But that God says “There is no greater thing I have to give you… If there is a greater thing I have to give you it is a greater REVELATION of that righteousness… So I’m inviting you to a further lifting of the veil. A supernatural grace avalanche will sweep the earth as an international tsunami of glory.” In his letters to Timothy Paul makes it clear that prior to his conversion, when he was a Jew under the Law, he was a violent man [I Tim 1:13]. Under the law you are angry, grumpy, self-righteous. Religion is satanic, it’s the same power that deceived Adam & Eve. Violence caused by religion is satanic. Jesus brought a revolution: He was not a wimp. Jesus lost his temper. He was a real man with testosterone. He got angry when it was appropriate: he got angry with religion and religious people. A revolutionary challenges the ruling legalistic Pharoahs who are controlling things for the benefit of a small elite.

Genesis chapters 1-3: In Eden (which in Hebrew means “place of pleasure”) the fruit of the Tree was the Knowledge of good & evil. The deception was about being righteous apart from God – knowing good and evil without God.  i.e. being self-righteous. They were actually already like God (imago dei – made in His image) and with God, in His presence; the Devil’s temptation was to be like God without God. He said they could know righteousness apart from God. To know how I stand with the Father I don’t look at myself I look at Jesus. I no longer have an old nature but now a new nature that wants not to sin. But even if we do sin the Holy Spirit is there to help us out of it.

He pointed out that Rom 5:12.ff makes clear that your sin did not bring sin into the world. Neither did your sin kill you or condemn you. It was through Adam that sin came into the world and condemns us. He argued from v13 that despite the fact that God does not count sin where there is no law, however death still reigned even though they didn’t sin in the same way as Adam by breaking a commandment. They sinned because in Adam all have sinned. This is so because Paul argues in vv14-19 “How much more will those who received the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ.”

Rob stated that he did not hate the law of God he loved the law!  But not because it makes him more holy (Col 2 – law is cancelled to those who are in Christ) but rather the law was given to increase sin! (No one is going to stop sinning altogether until Jesus comes again.) The law actually incites us to sin. So he asked the question which sin did Jesus die for? Our sin in breaking the law, or Adam’s sin? It was Adam’s sin [N.B. actually I think it was both - i.e. all our sins, viz. those which separate us from God - our 'conditional' and 'positional' sin we are born with, as well as the sins we commit 'in the flesh' because of this condition - which we do need to continue to confess and repent of as the Spirit reveals. Cf. Isa 53:6, Heb 10:17, 1 Jn 1:9, but his point is valid in this context because it is in Adam that we inherit our enmity with God - Jon]. Because in Adam all sinned and inherited death. But no-onene was aware because we thought we were OK through self-righteousness. v21. The cure is infinitely greater than the problem. Once that problem is cured  people need to be made aware of this fact. But with our new nature we learn new joys and pleasures and we don’t desire to sin. Rob said while he knew a Christian was free to sin without condemnation, he said because of the new nature he had no desire to sin – “It’s like a third shoe” he quipped, “I don’t need it, don’t know what to do with it.”

Baptisms in the paddling pool!

The service finished with a song and then we celebrated the baptisms of three people who had recently joined the church. This is where the paddling pool came in handy although it was so shallow those getting baptised had to sit in it and were dunked backwards, just about getting totally immersed with a little effort! After the service tea, coffee, biscuits and buns were served. We stayed and chatted for a while and I talked briefly with a couple of the worship team members and with Rob and Glenda again.

Rob & Glenda Rufus

It was good to get a bit of background on this church, where they’re at and where they are currently heading. Much falls on the shoulders of Rob and Glenda who really run the place. They suffer from a transient membership which many city churches do – people come, especially ex-pats, stay for a couple of years then move on. So it is not easy to build consistently. In addition Rob and Glenda travel a lot, speaking at conferences and churches in their network New Covenant Ministries International, as well as hosting conferences themselves. Through these means they seek to get the grace message spread abroad, but it does mean that they are not always around which for the only full-time pastor/elder in the church must be tricky, especially when Glenda is basically the church administrator.

Speaking to those who attended the home group and others on the Sunday morning, the church seems to have what I have sometimes referred to as a ‘Field of Dreams‘ vision. Field of Dreams was a slightly bizarre 1989 movie about an Iowa corn farmer who has a kind of epiphany involving a dead baseball player, and hearing voices he interprets them as a command to build a baseball diamond in his fields. When he does so the Chicago Black Sox team arrive and play there. It includes (apparently) great sporting heroes like Shoeless Joe Jackson (sounds like Baseball’s equivalent of Seasick Steve!) and the immortal line whispered by The Voice “If you build it, he will come.”

In the early days of our church and my experience in what was then called the ‘Restoration movement‘ we had a Field of Dreams vision for the local church; we believed that all we needed to do was to build local church right, with the correct ingredients, Baptism in the Holy Spirit, freedom from denominational structures, New Testament teaching, apostolic and prophetic leadership and no dead religion… If your built according to this pattern then ‘He would come‘ and dwell there, and by implication ‘they would come‘, i.e. the lost would automatically start getting saved, the church would grow and revival would follow.

As a result most of the growth we had at that time was from existing Christians, disgruntled with their dead church life, leaving one church and joining ours which was marginally better. We did some occasional outreach and evangelism but we did not really engage with the culture around us, learning its language in order to communicate the Good News effectively. And so our church life did not really attract non-Christians and the few that ventured in, found it intriguing at best but confusing in the main and difficult to interpret. We were very inward focused – what we did satisfied us and other Christians who were looking for ’something deeper’ but did little to enable us to be salt and light, or to fulfill the Great Commission or impact and transform the world around us.

I was not disappointed by my visit to City Church International, for Rob and Glenda are wonderful warm people; Rob is a powerful communicator who has a gift of putting ideas into pithy little saying often using rhyme, alliteration or assonance, which make them humorous and easy to remember; they are both genuine exhorters of the flock and clearly father and mother the work – a trait which the Lord would impress upon both Judith and me over and over again in Australia; and the congregation is like an extended family, totally supportive of their ‘parents’, convinced of the doctrines of grace and living in the good of this. Nevertheless I was surprised that the church was not larger, given Rob’s inspiring zeal, and not more conscious of the need to be seeker-accessible given that it has been in existence for over 5 years and Hong Kong is a city of several millions.

But we left filled with the presence of Jesus and touched by the love of his people, and caught a passing Number 8 bus back to Central Hong Kong via the Star Ferry.

Veni, Vidi, Versace

… or I came, I saw and I did a little shopping.

That was I think the general motivation behind Grace’s and Emily’s idea of a trip to Hong Kong. And visiting Uncle Graham & Auntie Luise of course.

We had only ever transferred flights in Hong Kong before. Over ten years ago we spent 6 hours at Hong Kong Airport, en route to China. Not surprisingly the city looks and feels different to being viewed from a plane window or an airport terminal. Perhaps when landing at the old airport with wing-tips almost touching the skyscrapers either side you got more of an immediately feel for the intensity that is Hong Kong; but nothing can make up for actually living in the city for a while.

Truth is, this time we all did a lot of living, viewing, seeing, smelling, touching, shopping, bartering, haggling (I even had a shirt and jacket tailored for me!) but overall we were more oohed and wowed by other things in the Singing City: the mix of cultures, the people-filled buildings, the islands, the sea, the cacophonous colours, seeing faithful Christian witness in the midst of the other gods of religious mysticism and materialism. It was a feast for the senses indeed.

Nevertheless Grace of course got into her stride very quickly with bartering in the markets. She had such a successful technique that eventually Emily got very cross when she saw that her mother clearly had been unable to purchase an item for her (I forget what) at the significantly reduced rate Grace was managing to achieve. In future Grace would do the bartering for her not Mum, decided Emily. In future Grace actually would do the bartering for Mum also.

Deciding tactics in Stanley Market

Grace had perfected her technique in Egypt, when we were on holiday there a couple of years ago, whilst Judith was muttering “Why can’t we just go to a fixed price place? I’m so embarrassed.” It went something like this: Grace would start at a fairly ridiculously low price, feigning potential ignorance of the currency conversion, stick doggedly to it, letting the seller come down and down (from his initial ridiculously high price). Then as things got sticky and drawn out, with the skill of her Airport-Fire-service-negotiator* father, she’d up her price ever so slightly, giving a certain frisson of unexpected encouragement to the vendor, who would normally drop his again further as a result. But then just as he was loudly bemoaning how little he would have left for his starving, shoeless children, Grace would decide no, she didn’t want the item for anywhere near that price, turn her back and make out to leave. At which point the vendor would normally rush after her, pleading with her to stay and bargain further. Waiting for her moment – the point at which the vendor offers to drop to a really low price, perhaps below what your actually willing to pay – Grace, with a comedian’s timing would stop dead in her tracks and agree to a purchase half-way.

“I can’t do that!” said Judith “It’s too much like acting.” Indeed it is a drama, or a dance, and you must enjoy the taking part if you are to win. And both parties generally go away happy; the vendor has a sale, and I think Adam Smith would agree that even here on a micro-scale the supply-and-demand laws work to the extent that to the sandal-seller a $10 note is of greater worth than another unsold pair of sandals of which he has myriad. Whereas to the purchaser, walking around with her feet in a pair of sandals is infinitely preferable to perambulating in a $10 note.

But enough of market economics! However wondrous and fascinating they are!

"Copy watch?... Copy bag?... Copy shoes?... Copy sunglasses?... Copy kitchen sink?"

There is certainly plenty of opportunity to practise your bartering techniques in Hong Kong, and Auntie Luise knew all the good markets. Infact I think she knew all the markets! Now I don’t mind window shopping actually, I’m fascinated by what people will buy, and here in Hong Kong there is the added advantage that you can buy anything. This is because if they haven’t got it, just show them a picture of what you want and they’ll make a copy for you. It’s the cri de guerre of the street vendor in Kowloon: “Copy watch Sir?… Copy bag?… Copy pen? … Copy jeans?…” Not fake, please note. But copy… In Dubai it was “Fake watch Sir?” Here it’s a copy. I prefer copy. OK I know they’re both not the genuine article. But copy has more of an ‘old master’ feel to it, don’t you think. All the painters of old did copies of their own work and others’ on commission. They never called those fakes! OK so they do call them fakes if you do that kind of thing today. But hey! I was amused by copy.

So I ventured into the make-shift market-booths a few times to see how much a copy Tag Heuer Grand Carrera would cost me. Or a copy Patek Philippe. Or a copy Rolex Yacht Master. But you see I don’t want a Rolex, not even a bargain copy Rolex. I’m very content with my real Tissot thank you very much. You don’t hear stall holders shouting “Copy Tissot“; so it’s kind of set apart. Except,  this was Hong Kong, remember. I followed one vendor to the back of his stall and as I began to flick through reams of pages of photos of Rolexes and Cartiers, he glimpsed my Tissot peaking out from under my sleeve. “Ah you wan copy Tisso? Yeh?” he exclaimed jabbing my wrist with his finder “We do goo copy Tisso!”

So I have decided. My next watch will be a Casio.

_____

* private joke for Guernsey residents with a long memory. I’m not going into it now, it would take far too long. Try googling it if you’re sad and bored!

Finding Rufus

It was a fittingly fun ending to a fun evening.

I’d been in touch with Rob & Glenda Rufus who lead a church in Hong Kong; I wanted to attend their Sunday meeting but also asked if they had any midweek events as I wanted to experience as much as I could while on sabbatical. They replied that the church had one home group which met in their home and they kindly invited me to the meeting that week which would be a prayer meeting.

Glenda had emailed me directions to their house which was in the ‘New Territories’. It looked a little complicated to get there from the city: Taxi, then several MTR metro and train changes and connections, then buses. When I showed the directions to Graham he thought there would be an easier way to get there.

Hong Kong Island is not large – at 31 square miles it is only about 6 square miles bigger than Guernsey -  in fact nearly 7 square miles of Hong Kong has been reclaimed in the last 100 years, so originally it was geographically about the same size as Guernsey. But with a population of 1.3 million this is over 2000% bigger than Guernsey’s. Nevertheless, they still remarkably have a lot of green areas, one of the first trips we made was to Stanley Market on a bus, passing through leafy hills and pleasant open bays. The built up area of the island in terms of population and buildings is concentrated in the Central & Western District measuring just 4.8 square miles – about the size of Guernsey’s “urban area” of St Peter Port and St Sampson, but with a population density of 52,200 per square mile compared to our 2,200 per square mile! Based where we were living in the Mid Levels of Victoria Peak as I got up each morning and looked out of the window I reminded myself that the area I could view from our window, Central, was actually smaller than St Peter Port and yet it looked like this…

…which is why I always maintain that we are not over-populated in Guernsey; after all my grandfather apparently used to think we were over-populated when the population reached 35,000 decades ago. Now, not that I want to see an increase to Hong Kong levels but another 10,000 wouldn’t be noticed! It may feel over-crowded to some, but that is a subjective assessment. Personally I like people, even more now that God’s doing something new in me, so I say ‘bring them in, the more the merrier!’ And our cheapest and easiest building space is air; let’s build a tad higher guys, and build it beautifully of course.

Anyway, back to Hong Kong and directions to the Rufus home. Naturally the Special Administrative Region includes all the other islands (hundreds of them), the Kowloon peninsular across Victoria Harbour and the ‘New Territories’ to the north where Rob & Glenda live. It was the latter area which was leased to the UK until 1997. Strictly speaking the British Government did not have to relinquish Hong Kong Island which according to the treaty of 1842 was given in perpetuity, but they uncannily and prudently saw that it would be wrong and in any case almost impossible to divide the colony effectively. Thus Hong Kong SAR remains today a motley collection of islands and fragments of mainland thrown together by history, and as such it was both smaller and larger than I’d imagined.

I decided to take Graham’s directions in the end, partly because the bus for the latter section was identical to the one Glenda had suggested but also the first part of the journey was simpler, just a metro ride with one change.  However in the event, partly because I missed a bus connection – just watched it depart as I ran off the metro, and then had to wait twenty minutes for another; and partly due to road works and diversions on the final bus route, the journey to the Rufus’s house in Sai Kung from the Hong Kong city where we were staying took two hours and would have taken longer if I’d not had my trusty iPhone with me to check on GPS when we started on the diversion. The stop I was meant to get off at was on the section we were diverted from so I had to walk back from a further stop!  I really had not realised it was possible to travel for so long and so far within the territory.

When I got off the bus it was pitch black. There were hardly any street lamps. I could see that the area was actually a small fishing village – there were signs that indicated this – but it was very very hot and humid and now I was late for the meeting. I walked to the stop I was meant to have got off at and retraced my steps. No road signs! Was this the road for the Rufus residence. No-one about to ask. This was a very quiet and fairly unpopulated spot. The road was unlit and it was a steep incline. My GPS indicated that I was roughly in the right area but the road is a very minor one and sufficient detail was not possible. How would I read the numbers on the houses? Ah! Thank God for my trusty iPhone flashlight torch. But there didn’t seem to be many houses anyway.

I cautiously walked up the unmarked, unlit hill, about the width of a Guernsey ruette. I was starting to smell strange smells when it immediately dawned on me that I was walking into the municipal rubbish tip. Hmm… that can’t be right. Lord, please help! And he did. I walked another fifty yards up the hill and began to hear singing. Christian songs.

Wearing the ‘full lin’ as our friend Andy Shilling would say, but still dripping with perspiration I opened the French Doors and entered the room in which about 30 people, a piano, guitar and amp were squashed together in a space about 12′ by 24′. Some older ones were sitting on sofas pushed against the walls, and there were a few chairs around. But generally people were standing singing worship songs, arms raised and not a few were shaking or manifesting in the Spirit in some way. I felt at home. In fact the evening was a mix between what sometimes occurs at our Newfrontiers Leaders Prayer & Fasting conferences and like going back to the 1990s Toronto Blessing days; there was some wacky singing in the Spirit about being drunk and out-of-tune, “I’m a wino for Jesus” etc., lots of holy laughter, noise and enthusiastic prayer. This was refreshing to experience and take part in, and I soon chilled in every sense of the word.

After a while we sat or slumped – depending on our state of inebriation, some people were prayed for and they said farewell to others as they were leaving Hong Kong, some announcements about Rob’s travels were made, I was warmly welcomed – Rob mentioning Newfrontiers and stating candidly that he had been introduced to the revelation of grace through Terry Virgo. It was clear then and talking with folk afterwards that Terry is well known, his teaching read and listened to, and loved amongst them.

The last hour or so was spent with Rob reading and expounding on a prophecy he’d been given that week whilst he was just going about his ordinary day’s activities, showering if I remember correctly! It concerned a coming greater revelation of grace and righteousness which would sweep through the world, and be embraced by many more people. Rob felt the Lord was saying amongst other things that some people and indeed churches were searching for more ’signs’ from God, more revelation, but that God did not have more revelation to give them except that of righteousness and grace. In unpacking it further Rob shared how we need to live free from guilt and shame as Christians, not under burdens of the law which has been cancelled at the cross through the atoning work of Jesus. God wants to bless us, his children, and we should not be embarrassed when he does so. He is a father and loves giving gifts to his children. We should not be embarrassed or jealous when God blesses others either. He joked that if someone wanted to give him a gift – a trip to Guernsey for example – for no apparent or deserved reason, he’d say ‘thank you very much’ and take it as a gift from God, whether he felt he deserved it or not. I interjected that he’d be welcome anytime!

The people were attentive to Rob’s every word, submitted and eager. At the close we prayed again, then those who could stay had refreshments and enjoyed fellowship. I stayed for a brief chat to Rob and the guys sitting next to me, who, like perhaps the majority present turned out to be South African ex-pats. But, conscious of the time it took me to get there and the fact it was now well past 10.00pm I headed back down the hill to try and find the correct bus stop.

Now the funny ending.

I found the bus and my return journey was smoother than my outward one, perhaps because I recognised where to go this time. However it still took an hour and half to get back to Central Hong Kong. Now to find a taxi back to the appartment. It was nearly midnight and many taxis were booked and busy. Eventually I found one. Now, I was under strict educational instructions to give my address as “Old Peak Road Number Nine” and not “Number Nine Old Peak Road” which apparently no Cantonese speaker would understand. Neither must I be so English as to say “Please take me to…” before the address or please and thankyou after it.

So I duly obeyed. “Old Peak Road Number Nine” I said. The thirty-something taxi-driver looked at me blankly. “OLD PEAK ROAD NUMBER NINE” I repeated a little louder. He made gestures clearly indicating that I was speaking Double Dutch (or Double Japanese perhaps in this case) to him. I tried again slowly. No joy. I got my map out to point to it. He looked at it for about ten seconds then pushed it back to me shaking his head.

longest escalator in the world - brilliant idea!

I was about to give up and venture to see if the Mid-Levels Escalator was still operating at this late hour, when suddenly I had a flash of inspiration.

My driver was looking suicidal in the front of the cab now.

“Oh Pea Roh Numma Lye” I said in my best mimic singy-songy Cantonese. He suddenly became animated, screeched into gear, “Ah! Oh Pea Roh Numma Lye!” he repeated knowingly, like it was some kind of secret mantra, and he drove off towards my destination.

Then he turned and smiled at me as if to say “Why you no say tha in firs place?”

Healthy Emos

Among the books I mentioned this one by Peter Scazzero had clubbed together with other books and experiences in my sabbatical with a determination to cause me to think deeply.

Judith and I read it chapter by chapter alternately – as we often do with books like this – and then talked about how it had spoken to us after we’d both read a section. I recommend this type of reading technique especially for husbands and wives in leadership; it enables regular reflection, the pausing before rushing into the next chapter helps you listen to one another. [This might not work with a novel!]

So I want to just take a moment to commend this little tome to you. Much of it was very familiar to us after 20 odd years in ministry. (‘Odd’ being the operative word!) But I think for newcomers to pastoral leadership it was essential to include this, and it gave Judith and I an opportunity to assess and agree what we have learned about shepherding the flock of God and where we would do things differently now in retrospect.

“Righteousness is easy in retrospect” so said White House chronicler Arthur Schlesinger Jr., and I guess inevitably everything is easy in retrospect. It doesn’t hurt however to learn from the past in a positive way because we are responsible for handing on the baton to the next generation, and even if our past mistakes cause consequences or are unlikely to reoccur, it is a healthy exercise to quietly and graciously review the way we have undertaken decisions and actions. It is emotionally healthy to do so.

When the disciples asked Jesus to teach them to pray as he did, he taught them to ask our Father to “…forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us”. Now unless you’re a weird dispensationalist who believes that this prayer should not be used until the millennium or after the pre-wrath mid-tribulational rapture then this principle in the Lord’s prayer applies today, to you and me. And it involves retrospection to do this: In order for us to fully and properly forgive others who have sinned against us we must acknowledge this sin and who they are, and in so doing we release them from our judgment and we receive grace from the Lord to know and realise our own forgiveness for having sinned against him.

Living in the past of course is not good or godly. Many Christians sadly still do this, labouring under a burden of imaginary sin that was cancelled at the cross. As a result they are demotivated, joyless and a poor witness to the abundant life in Christ.

In Jesus God crossed out our sins on the cross! Past, present and future!

But that also does mean we should be consciously grateful for this and live a different life in this world as a result. This involves forgiving others the way we have been forgiven too. Full of mercy, full of grace. Not looking for it to be earned. Taking the initiative like Jesus did – not waiting to be asked – for it was “while we were still sinners that Christ died for us” [Rom 5:8]

In the early chapters the author describes from painful personal experience how, although superficially his life and marriage looked great and he was involved in leading a highly healthy and successful church by anyone’s standards, internally both individually as especially within their marriage relationship things had been deteriorating for some time. He points out that the reason that he did not initially acknowledge the extent of this impoverishment was because this was an emotional deterioration. It suddenly came to a head when his wife exclaimed that she loved him, but she was going to leave him.

He paints the picture more gloomily as he begins to realise that they are not the only ones in this dire situation, in fact because of the way he has led and undertaken his ministry and where others have sought to copy him, there are fractures within many lives. To begin with he tries the “I can fix this” mentality which is common to most leaders… well, men… well, common to me certainly. The idea is you add some ‘healing’ structure to the problem (e.g. seeing a counsellor) and carry on as before. He soon realises this will not do. The only solution is to stop what he’s doing and together with his wife and then his leadership, review what has happened and turn around (i.e. repent)  from the direction they were heading in.

One of the best chapters of the book is entitled Leaders need to lead out of Brokenness and Vulnerability. In this section he presents some solid biblical principles, touching especially on the misnomered story of the Prodigal Son which alludes to the brilliant handling of this by Tim Keller in The Prodigal God. Scazzero also refers in some detail to the Rembrandt painting Return of the Prodigal Son. I was deeply moved by this chapter personally sensing that God the Holy Spirit was doing something profound in my soul. I am learning to let God teach me what this means for my life and leadership because this is not the way I have led in the past. So together Judith and I thanked God for having arrested us at such a time as this and we began to feel more than ever that this sabbatical was heaven-planned, not so much for me to learn from great and growing churches, but for a great and gracious God to grow my heart in a new direction.

Not all of Scazzero’s book is as profound or secure as this however – some parts I found woolly on the nature of personal sin and being sinned against. Similarly I would have valued more reference to the redemptive power of the cross in dealing with our sin. Nevertheless it is a book that did me good. At the right time in the right place.

It made me “want to be a better man” [Jack Nicholson's awkward OCD character Melvin, to Carol, played by Helen Hunt in As Good As It Gets] Remember that line men!

.

Hong Kong Song

We stood late at night on the open viewing gallery of the umpteenth floor of the Old Peak Road apartment block and looked out over the illuminated Lego shapes of Hong Kong island and across the water towards Kowloon; the air was alive with the drone of the traffic far below, the hum of insects and the distinctive singy-songy sound of Cantonese conversations not very far away. This is truly a singing city.

It was certainly a surprising experience for me. I did not expect to fall in love with it like I did. I thought it would be an experience to visit Hong Kong, certainly. But I had not anticipated an affair of the heart.

Part of the attraction of the city is just people. Lots of people. Millions of people. Different people. Speaking differently. Eating differently. Doing different things. Everywhere.

“What interests me, ” Paul Theroux wrote of foreign travel in The Old Patagonian Express, “is the waking in the morning, the progress from the familiar to the slightly odd, to the rather strange, to the totally foreign, and finally to the outlandish.”

In Hong Kong, like Dubai and the many emerging global quasi-city states of today, you can find the familiar and the foreign, even the ordinary and the outlandish side by side. This is partly due of course to the fact that it was a British Colony for the last 150 years. The Hong Kong Museum – a must-see attraction which we highly recommend – creatively portrays the development of this tiny fragment of what was considered to be unproductive south China soil, largely unwanted by the Qing Emperial government and largely uncalled for by the British, who back in London rather reluctantly received it, only really seeing the acquisition as a means to an end: the reestablishment of open trade with China after the first Opium War.

Sky-scrapers are built using bamboo scaffolding

Who could have foretold its herculean rise from a small entrepôt colony into the global metropolis it is today?

So you can start with a Dim Sum brunch followed by Vietnamese soft-shell crabs for at lunch time, on to English Afternoon Tea later on and finish the day with a genuine Indian curry for supper. As we had such superb hosts in Graham & Luise – Judith’s brother and sister-in-law (Graham’s something big in RBSI in the far east, which, as the UK government now own a large chunk of the Royal Bank, probably mean he’s doubling up as British High Commissioner) – we were shown around all the best places and experiences in a finely planned and prepared itinerary.

We dined and supped on all manner of different international cuisines, since as Hong Kong is such a global cosmopolitan metropolis you can find the genuine gastronomic article there whether it’s American, British, French, Greek, Indian, Italian, Mexican, Spanish, or any manner of Eastern epicurean delight you are after.

“Nothing personal, but we don’t touch Chinese food. Never did.
All the grease, all the glue.  And it’s always so wet.
Makes me want to spew.”

- Betty Mullard, the snobby English widow in Paul Theroux’s novel Kowloon Tong.

Well we do eat Chinese food, and what better place to enjoy it than Hong Kong? So we dined thanks to Graham and Luise’s generosity and excellent recommendations at some wonderful places large and small, grand and down-to-earth, urban and island-rural, and tried all manner of new tastes without the slightest hint of spewing.

Dried Squid - feeling peckish?

In fact we very much enjoyed it. We did see some strange things in the markets though and wondered sometimes whether they were for decoration or nutrition. Hundreds of live frogs in a bag, for example or squashed and dried quid looking like something which had just been run over in a cartoon. I’ve often had frogs legs in France and I once ate dog with Robert Glover (neither of us quite realising what it was until after the event) the first time I visited China and so I was quite open to try anything out. Sadly the opportunity for dried squid and chicken’s feet risotto did not materialise on this occasion.

Anyone for plain food? Pig's Organs perhaps...

The people – so friendly, smiling, welcoming – continue to be the heart and soul of this city. Everywhere you look from the omnipresent taxi-cabs to the plethora of street markets selling anything you can imagine and some, from the simple fishermen landing their catch on Lama island to the sharply dressed secretaries travelling home on the efficient MTR system, there are the signs of industry, ingenuity and hard work. If it can be sold, someone in Hong Kong is selling it, if it can be cooked someone is cooking it, if it can be built someone is building it, if it can be discounted someone it discounting it, if it can be invested or floated someone is investing or floating it, if it can be made someone is making it, if it can be squeezed in where you thought there was no room, then someone is squashing it. As we speak.

The Way God Speaks Through In-flight Movies

Sabbatical Reading Mountain

“I have said at least once a week my whole adult life that there is an absolute disjunction between our Father’s love and our deserving. Still, when I see this same disjunction between human parents and children, it always irritates me a little. (I know you will be and I hope you are an excellent man, and I will love you absolutely if you are not.)” – Gilead [p73]

No witnessing of amazing churches, revival meetings, or miracles of healing, can ever substitute for the ongoing transformation that our Great Physician must undertake in each of us personally. And this operation can take place in any and the most unusual of circumstances.

I think I stumbled across a recommendation of Marilynne Robinson (the author of Gilead) in one of the Christian blogs I follow, which was discussing the lack of quality Christian authors in the mainstream, in the light of William Young’s The Shack and other populist paperbacks like that which tend to appeal in the main to those who are already believers. I remember her being referred to as a ‘reformed’ or ‘Calvinist’ author, and some kind of critique for her retaining strong values but at the same time appealing to a very broad audience and yet exposing some tough unpleasant issues to chew over. Anyway I ended up doing a search on Amazon marketplace and bought both her novels second-hand for a few pence! I’m not sure I knew what I was buying. I then added them to the pile labelled “Sabbatical Reading Mountain”.

Robinson had only written two novels until recently. She wrote Housekeeping, which I read after reading Gilead, in the early 1980s. It is a quite different tale, told in a quite different way. It possesses some of the descriptive genius of Gilead but perhaps lacks the depth of her later work. She has just published a third novel, Home, which picks up the Gilead characters and community but from a different angle, I look forward to reading it.

Gilead may have been the trigger but once fired, it was like God had pre-ordained everything I was reading, watching, listening to or generally experiencing to speak directly, personally, and specifically to me. I went out in search of great strategies for the Church and the Kingdom and found again and again God confronting me with his great strategies for my heart.

There is no doubt that those who think that regular long-distance jet travel would be a glamorous lifestyle are seriously mistaken, or have rarely had to use this form of transport. Perhaps flying business or first class might add a touch of glamour (not that we’d know) but for me waiting around in airports, regularly getting delayed, then spending hours confined into a small place will never be my idea of fun.

Nevertheless, Judith and I have discussed this often and we feel there are certainly some small touches that can make up for the usual cramped legroom, bland, tasteless reheated food (worse – sickly-sweet desserts), Mr Grumpy (who always needs 2 armrests) plonking himself down in the seat next to you, lack of sleep, Ms Mona plus her ten children aged 15 weeks to 15 years returning sun-burnt from holiday establishing herself and her clan in the rows in front of you and immediately reclining the seats, swollen feet and ankles, one in-flight movie on a tiny screen so far away you need opera glasses (made worse if it’s a film you actually would like to watch – but this is rare on such flights), queues for the WC which stretch back to the tail area, seats positioned just infront of these same public conveniences and so close that, inconveniently, they do not recline (but remember Mona & her groaners in the row just infront of you spend the whole flight recumbent – so much so that you can literally inhale their dandruff as the uncontrollable air-con freezes your face, flight attendants who are engaged in deep and meaningful conversations at the rear of the cabin and thus are never available, lukewarm medium-dry Greek white wine and tepid Russian beer. Yunno.

Not that we’re complainers of course! Where was I? Oh yes, there are certain things we really feel airlines can do well if they give some thought to it, even in economy; those small touches which make up for all these things. These are things like:-

• Hot towels just before take-off
• Free mints to help keep your ears unblocked for take-off and landing
• Bottles of water at the start of the flight
• Good, simple, tasty meals
• Pre-meal G&Ts
• Foot rests,

and

• An in-flight entertainment system that you can manage individually, has a wide selection of movies and videos and… actually works (both audio and video I mean)

Cue: QANTAS which as you know, stands for Queensland And Northern Territories Aerial Services. The majority of our flights had been booked with this Spirit of the Flying Kangaroo airline (as opposed to perhaps the Ghost of the Flying Donkey we have in Guernsey’s Aurigny – see the blog title photo above) not because we had ever experienced them before (we had not) or because others had recommended them (they had not) but because they offered the cheapest deals, especially for my flights which would be an around-the-world ticket. They form part of the One World alliance which includes British Airways also so we felt confident we were not going to be treated worse than we’d experienced on BA. Up to this point our top flying experience had been either with Emirates to Dubai as few years ago, or more recently on the excellent Qatar air service to the Maldives. However let it not be said that Oz cannot compete with the UAE. Our experience on QANTAS was superb. The seats were roomy, comfortable and adjustable, the food was good. Yes good. Edible. Tasty even. A choice of wines! Plenty of loos, small queues. Overall the service was superb: sweets and hot towels around take-off, friendly attentive customer care, when you want it, without being overbearing. Excellent! And… the in-flight entertainment worked well and had a fine selection of movies, both old and new.

So it was that over the course of flying to Hong Kong, and then on from there to Australia, Judith and I watched perhaps 5 or 6 movies between us. We talked about them, exchanged ideas and recommendations. No, Judith did not feel obliged to watch Borat just to be able to understand the cultural humour of our teens. And yes, I thought My Life in Ruins was a complete waster – more of a poovie-movie than a chick-flick – and not 1% as funny as My Big Fat Greek Wedding which I did watch with my daughters. There were some fun ones, like Duplicity, and some edge-of-your-seatbelt thrillers, like the Matrix series (which I’d never fully seen before!) and gripping historical drama like The Young Victoria. But what pierced me to the heart were two very different films both Judith and I watched – The Soloist and Disgrace.

Now, again I don’t want to say too much about the plot in either case. In fact again, you may not be that affected in the same way, or indeed in the slightest, for I reckon the Holy Spirit had deliberately placed these two movies on the Qantas list for August & September, having already previously destined their respective producers to make the films in time for my Sabbatical. It was clearly aimed at me. And deliberately after I had by now read both Gilead and a book entitled The Emotionally Healthy Church by Peter Scazzero – this latter was recommended by our good friends Derek & Jenny Gibbs, on the leadership of New Community Church Sidcup.

Perhaps it was the juxtaposition of reading these and then watching the movies, or maybe it was just the Holy Spirit, but one way or the other I ended up a blubbering wreck in my quite comfortable Qantas seat, slightly reclined.

The Soloist recounts the true story of a very gifted but mentally ill young black boy from an impoverished background whose love of music and ability to play the cello send him soaring up musical ladders at an early age, even attending the prestigious Juilliard School in New York. However things go wrong when through stress caused by a type of schizophrenia his life disintegrates into confusion, fear, anguish and anger and he drops off the radar screen and is accidentally ‘rediscovered’ years later playing a beaten up old violin on Skid Row in downtown Los Angeles, by a reluctant journalist looking for a good story. The movie charts the relationship between this would-be-carer-journalist Lopez and the schizoid-homeless-musician Ayers, contrasting the difficulties both have in relating to the institutionalised and statutory care and assistance offered by agencies, with the non-professional volatile love-hate relationship that Lopez develops in his attempts to help Ayers single-handedly with the lone tool of his LA Times Column.

The movie really ends up being more about how Lopez is changed by his reaching out to Ayers. He becomes more gracious, merciful, yet determined, even though Ayers doesn’t really change much. It is a rhapsody to friendship.

Disgrace is directed by Steve Jacobs and is based on a novel by award-winning author James Coetzee. It touches many themes and could be described as one critic succinctly put it as a  “lethal look at the after-shock of apartheid”. It is set in South Africa, largely in Cape Town and the main character is John Malkovich, but this is not like many films he has acted in before.

I have got into trouble in the past for recommending Malkovich movies, some of which, it is true, are a little bizarre or avant-garde. In this one he plays a university professor of literature who has an affair with a student and ends up quitting his job because he won’t apologise publicly. Instead he leaves the city and takes some time out with his daughter who runs a small-holding in the remote Eastern Cape. What seems at first like an idyllic setting is shattered by an horrendous crime which affects the black/white relations in the area, his relationship with his daughter and his view of his own life.  Disgrace is shocking, beautiful, and touchingly poignant in places. I found it drawing emotions out of me, questions about how I viewed the world, sin, weak Christians, fallen people, friends who have back-slidden, those who had been close once and now out of touch. Questions which had been ignited primarily by my reading of Gilead, Emotionally Healthy Church, and praying with Judith thus far in our Sabbatical journey.

This all made for a divine coup d’état on my soul.

I was thinking about so many things but rising within me was a unexpected tide of fresh mercy, sweet grace and an overwhelming desire for the love of Jesus to wash over people’s lives.

Near the end of Disgrace John Malkovich’s character, David Lurie , visits the home of the parents whose daughter he had an affair with at the start of the story. He now desires their pardon, even going as far as humiliating himself he kneels before the mother to beg forgiveness. But what struck me was the harsh, unforgiving Islamic legalism of the father, and I found myself saying “Lord, I’m a father also, but save me from becoming like that!” Trouble is, I think I have been already; not in situations involving my own children of course, but with those in my  flock, in my ‘care’ who have been sinned against, and desiring to protect and defend, towards those who have perpetrated the sin, and who may, perhaps, have been willing to seek mercy. I don’t know.

But this I do know: by God’s grace I want to be different. By God’s grace I am different!