Leadership and power - Nigeria and Britain

I connected with two great guys yesterday who I used to work with in the '80s. Ken is now Bishop on the Niger (Nigeria) where he has a couple of years left to serve before retirement. He is also chair of the Church of Nigeria Missionary Society (part of Faith2Share) so we had business to do. The more interesting part of the conversation however was about leadership in a Nigerian culture. Ken has a great vision for the real potential of lay leadership in the church in Nigeria, but (outside his own diocese where he is 'king') constantly comes up against rampant clericalism. He as a Nigerian and I as a Brit. were trying to analyse how much of that style of leadership - bishop/knight/chief - is cultural (and perhaps even appropriate) and how much is simply human power games. No answers but a good discussion.

Then in the evening Bob rang. He was Dean (big boss) of a cathedral in the UK and at Christmas decided to step down from all that and find a humbler way to serve. Risky - he doesn't have a job yet - but a great witness to those who see promotion and titles as the ultimate objective!

A good Coptic read

It's amazing what you can discover on the internet whilst looking for something else. A search for a particular order for Christian women in Russia once brought me a very unexpected offer from some other Russian women ... let's not go there! Well today I stumbled over the fact that the Coptic Orthodox community in Australia have been very busy putting hundreds of Coptic books on the web in English. Pope Shenouda seems to be going for a world record in books written, but there are a lot of other interestings things there, including children's books. If you are interested in one of the oldest surviving Christian traditions take a look at http://www.coepa.org/index.php

Make disciples and ... No 'and'!

From time to time I get asked to peer-review an article or a book that a colleague has written, pre-publication, so they can feel a little more confident sending it in to the editor. Normally its a task a hate because either the article is very boring, or its so cleaver I don't understand it, or its really bad and I don't know what I can say without causing my friend major psychological distress. It's like saying, "your baby is so ugly"! But today life was different. Well I suppose it is Easter week so we should expect that. An Indonesian colleague sent me a small book he has written. It's full of good stuff. I'll plug it here when he gets it off the press. Here are two quotes - I hope that's OK, BB?

"The dynamic community of Ecclesia [church] of Jesus Christ powerfully operates in advancing the Kingdom of God every single day. ... Unfortunately this non-stop transformation has, in many parts of the world, been reconfigured into a single event on Sunday."

" Jesus did not command the Ecclesia to 'engage in making disciples and also to care for the poor'; or to 'make disciples and to care for the creation'; or to 'make disciples and to engage in the public square.' This is because making disciples includes all of those."

Christ in Bang-Wizzen

I rode on the back of a motorbike through the dark street of a small town in India many years ago. It was Dewali and firecrackers jumped out at us from every angle. Excited children raced through the alleys and grown men wore grins as they sent jumping jacks sparking after their neighbours. Hindus were having fun with their gods. Last night I was in the church where I grew up as a teenager. In all solemnity we recalled creation, flood, exodus, and prophetic promise and then all heaven broke loose – not just Alleluias and bells, not just cymbals and tambourines, but fireworks! Not just sparklers (we had those) but proper big wizzy, banging fireworks.

Christ is risen, he is risen indeed.

If Christ be risen (he is!), then fireworks are only the start! There’s a lot more fun to come, and not just childish fun but real grown up fun, world changing fun, live giving fun, fun beyond measure and out of control. Christ is risen, let the party begin.