“If you do not know where you come from, then you don’t know where you are, and if you don’t know where you are, then you don’t know where you’re going. And if you don’t know where you’re going, you’re probably going wrong.”

Terry Pratchett

These words are found on the lips of one Terry Pratchett’s characters in his Discworld books. They’re a perceptive nudge to get us to keep checking our bearings. Where am I? Where have I been, and where am I headed? Know thyself. And it’s this sentiment that captures the thinking behind the ‘2022 Life Audit’.

The initial idea for a ‘stock-take’ came from an online article by Melissa Kruger, ‘New Year, New Beginnings: The Importance of Considering Our Ways’, which I read way back in January 2018. Melissa’s questions were really helpful and prompted me to create a personal ‘audit’ worksheet of my own, which we used as a church. When I shared a sample of it on Twitter, a few people asked for a copy for their own use, so a few years back I figured it may be worth investing a bit of time to ‘upgrade’ it and create the ‘2019 Life Audit’. Since then it’s had some tweaks and calibrating and this year a few people encouraged me to put something out for 2022.

I think the whole ‘New Year Resolutions’ tradition can often become an exhausting exercise that ends up burdening people with guilt, but there’s undoubtedly great value in using the natural marker of a new year to ‘take stock’. As I’ve written about before, I think it can be very easy to ‘reason your season’ – to excuse the ‘state of affairs’ in which we find ourselves. Instead, it’s helpful to consider where we find ourselves and the trajectory we’re on.

Of course, in all this we need to be very mindful that we’re in the midst of a pandemic that has been the context of our lives for the last couple of years. We will be weary, disorientated, and reeling from a collective trauma, the likes of which hasn’t been experienced by most in their lifetimes. Perhaps more so than normal, we need to give space to reflecting on the impact of this season of turbulence. And in our hoping and dreaming about the future, let us be kind to ourselves – as well as to our spouses, families, friends and colleagues.

So why not make some space in your diary over the new year period? Print out the downloadable booklet (19 pages – you can see a couple of them on this post). Find somewhere you’ll be undisturbed. Put your favourite music on and grab a pen. Just use what’s helpful in the time you have.

And let’s pray that as we reflect on our lives, we’d be more conscious of his grace, more dependent upon his Spirit, more committed to his people, and more willing to ‘abound in the work of the Lord’, knowing our labour in the Lord is not in vain (1 Corinthians 15:58).

Download the 2022 Life Audit pdf here:

‘Never Really About God’

Readers of this Saturday’s edition of The Times were greeted with the clickbait headline that ‘Anglicanism was never really about God’. Despite some really stimulating Credo faith pieces in The Times over the last few months, I know this article caused a fair few people to splurt their coffee in horror!

Thankfully this Comment piece from journalist Matthew Parris was only on page 33, but for a good chunk of a full page Parris set out to decry the Church of England – and its Archbishops in particular – for such supposedly outrageous things as seeking to “‘plant’ new churches in untilled soil” or to see people come to faith in Jesus Christ. According to Parris, who acknowledges that he doesn’t “believe in God”, the Church should give up on trying to win over new converts and instead focus on it’s ‘shrinking market’ who value it being ‘theologically unchallenging, with a certain mild muzziness as to doctrine, and a sharp distrust of zeal’.

Of course, there’s more going on than meets the eye. Recently there’s been a raging debate within the Church of England around the place of ‘traditional parish ministry’. The ‘Save the Parish’ campaign was launched in August in response to the belief that C of E money is being redirected away from parochial ministry and a movement towards ‘further centralisation of power’. Parris will be aware of this – hence his concern that ‘bricks and stones and windows, ritual and music’ are being abandoned. These are valid concerns which will need addressing. But as many involved in ‘traditional parish ministry’ have pointed out, let’s not think that the Church of England is in the business of ‘saving parishes’ at the expense of losing God.

The Royal Verdict

However, there was another high profile comment given on the Church of England this past week, which Parris seems to have missed. Whilst the Queen was unable to be physically present at the opening of the Church of England’s new General Synod, she sent Prince Edward to deliver her opening address. And whilst recent episodes of the popular series The Crown may have depicted some royals as not really caring for the truth of the Christian faith, there was no mistaking what the Queen would say to Mr Parris. As my friend Dave Bish, himself not an Anglican, astutely observed:

To quote Her Majesty more fully:

“None of us can slow the passage of time; and while we often focus on all that has changed in the intervening years, much remains unchanged, including the Gospel of Christ and his teachings.

The list of tasks facing that first General Synod may sound familiar to many of you: Christian education; Christian unity; the better distribution of the ordained ministry to the needs of the population. But one stands out supreme: “to bring the people of this country to the knowledge and the love of God”.

It’s hard to argue with that. Our business is God. Everything flows from God. Everything points to God. Our good news is God’s gospel. That God so loved the world that he gave his only Son so that whoever believes in him shall not die but have eternal life.

All the liturgy, all the music, all the buildings. All the Foodbanks and debt advice and toddler groups. All the prophetically pointing to another way of doing Life. All the sharing the hope of the gospel in all sorts of creative and courageous and connected ways. We exist to bring the people of this country to the knowledge and love of God.

And Christianity in the UK has always had this missional heartbeat. Think of Augustine of Canterbury landing in Kent to bring a knowledge of Jesus Christ to pagans. Or Aidan and Cuthbert of Lindisfarne bringing the gospel to Northumbria. Or Tom Cranmer’s desire to articulate and multiply the gospel of grace alone so it resounded across the land.

Take God away and we can all go home now.

Learning from the New Testament

Of course, Parris speaks for some people. And of course, that people of varying scales of belief feel welcome in churches across the country is in many ways a positive indicator of places of welcome and authenticity.

Similarly, it’s clear the Church of England is having to do some adjusting of mindset. For what it’s worth, I don’t think it’s surprising that the Archbishop of York’s line at Synod – “Let our death be a grand operatic death. Let it be something fantastic. Let’s not crawl into a corner” – has been picked up by the likes of Parris. My own take is that the language of death and decline are having to be used by some now because of a misemphasis in years gone by.

A more helpful description of the Church – and one found throughout the New Testament – is the imagery of exile and witness. We serve from the margins. We witness to a Better Story amidst an overwhelming cacophony of narratives. We know we’re not the only show in town. I think that’s why the new tagline, ‘A simpler, humbler, bolder Church’, resonates so well.

But is it true?

Strangely, as Madeleine Davies spotted, Parris wrote an article for the The Spectator nearly ten years ago that seemed to almost critique his current position. Really, it hits the nail on the head. So let’s give him the final word, albeit from his 2012 self:

“Jesus did not come to earth to offer the muzzy comforts of weekly ritual, church weddings and the rhythm of public holidays… If a faith is true, it must have the most profound consequences for a man and for mankind… Is it true? – that is the question.”

So UK retailer John Lewis released their much-anticipated Christmas advert a little earlier than normal. Here it is…

Past Its Best or A Favoured Tradition?

Undoubtedly the ‘What-did-you-think-of-It?’ water-cooler conversations don’t seem to be as prevalent as they were a few years, and maybe that’s because we’re all a bit fed-up with the JL Christmas ad formula by now.

As The Guardian put it, “Sweet children? Check. Bittersweet ending? Check. Maudlin cover version of a song you once liked? Check, in this case a version of Together in Electric Dreams that sounds like it was performed by someone who has tumbled down a well and just realised nobody is coming to rescue her. Such a total lack of John Lewis products that, if you showed the advert to someone who didn’t know what John Lewis was, they would be forced to assume it was some sort of spaceship repair company? Check. It is, plain and simple, a Christmas ad by numbers.”

As a church minister, the Christmas season is full of opportunities to share the Christian gospel – and it’s often Christmas adverts that can provide moments of engagement. After all, they are the common Christmas stories we’re consuming. How does the Christian message both connect and confront? I was therefore keen to explore how this year’s JL advert might serve up opportunities to share the hope of Jesus.

Encountering the Unexpected Guest

First up, being entitled ‘Unexpected Guest’ gives an obvious opportunity to connect with the gospel. In one sense, Jesus was not unexpected. His birth and coming had been long-foretold – and yet when he arrived, he was dismissed by many. Though he is God’s promised king, he came in a manner that many did not expect. And of course, for many people today, Christmas goes by with little thought given to Jesus Christ. We have some sense of their being the ‘real meaning of Christmas’ – but that’s probably more likely to be articulated as family, community and love, rather than a response to Jesus and his kingship. And that presents an obvious call to action: will we welcome this Unexpected Guests into our Christmas? What will that look like? We’d do well to consider the responses given to us in the birth accounts of Jesus, the shepherds, wise men and even Mary and Joseph themselves.

The story of the advert itself is heart-warming enough (even if some have called the alien child a little ‘creepy’ too!): Strangers becoming friends. Generosity and welcome. Finding commonality over divides. Going back to our old Christmas traditions and sharing them with others. Of course, the emotional resonance of all of those is heightened by the reality that last Christmas we were so limited in the way we could celebrate.

Your First Christmas Or The First Christmas

There’s then the fact that the advert has the simple closing caption, “For a Christmas as magical as your first”. Again, this plays on the fact that last Christmas was so unlike other years. We long to go back to the familiar. But as heralds of the Christian gospel, we know that the true ‘magic of Christmas’ will only be discovered when we go back to the very first Christmas. To miss the baby in the manger two-thousand years ago is to miss the wonder (or, to put it another way, ‘magic’) of the Incarnation, of God entering our world to save.

Put that all together and it’s a heartening call to encourage people to discover the ‘magic of Christmas’ through encountering the Unexpected Guest at the heart of the *very* first Christmas.

What did you make of it?