THE 100 MARKS OF A HEALTHY CHURCH

Some notes by Kim Thoday. (See the article 100 Marks on this website for the complete list).

1. Accountability: Everyone should be answerable to someone.

2. Administry: Good organisation is like good digestion.

3. Aesthetics: God is the ultimate artist. We are perhaps all familiar with the work of creative artists who, in a single creative act, grasp in its totality the whole of a work of art, and must then make their material conform to what was grasped. It is said, for example, that Mozart and Beethoven held entire symphonies in their heads, and simply wrote them down with virtually no changes. Now imagine God as such a creative artist, writing a symphony. In God's creative grasp, however, there is not only the entire score of the symphony, but also the instruments to be played and the musicians to play them. God creates it all from nothing - ex nihilo. We can extend the analogy even further. Since God creates the players God knows them intimately, all their strengths and weaknesses, where they will play well and where they will simply fall away. God even knows that some will try to disrupt the score by throwing in discords. God does not stop them since God has created and respects freedom, but, in the divine creative grasp, God places every discord into a greater harmony, even incorporating various deliberate errors. The whole creation is God's symphony. God is 'in control' as the composer and conductor, writing the score and inspiring us to play our best. We all have our part to play but no matter how difficult it becomes, the final harmony is assured since, for God, the creative grasp is in fact completely creative, with no intervening steps. In the divine grasp it already is. This is God's omnipotence and omniscience.

4. Architecture: Buildings preach. The pattern of our common celebration shapes our life as a people and as individuals. The space in which worship happens comes to be special for us - not so much for itself but for the meanings we come to associate with it. Choose your worship space with these criteria in mind: First, it must be aesthetically pleasing. As an art form, it must come off as authentic, true, and imaginative; not as bizarre, incomplete, shoddy, or inauthentic. Second, it must draw us beyond ourselves, into the realms of spirit, imagination, and caring. It should convey the awe of splendour, a sense of ultimate mystery, and it should help our spirits to soar. Third, it must reflect a sense of community for, after all, according to scripture, 'we are members of one another.' Architecture and design can help convey that sense of belonging, but they must do it in a way that leaves room for the individual. Our self-transcendence cannot be an obliteration of self! Fourth, through symbolic form, it must put us in touch with anchor points of the Christian heritage and experience. Ideally, they should be expressed in an open, inviting way, so that our entry into the meaning of symbolic form is expansive and challenging. We should be able to say, 'Wow!' - not, 'Oh, yeah, there's the cross again.' Too many churches represent answers. I would prefer if more of them represented questions, if their architects had been more concerned with making forms and spaces that would encourage us to think, to look, and to wonder rather than forms and spaces that offer easy answers. I do not think that the offering of easy answers is what religion is, or should be, about.

5. Audits: Help keep us honest

6. Authority

7. Bible: Is a means not an end Christians are followers of Jesus, not followers of a book. The Bible informs our faith, but in dialogue with the Christian tradition, our culture and experience. The Bible is not just a book or even book of books (the Latin word biblia means a library). It represents the shared life of the faith community, which entered into the covenant God offered before there was a book. The Bible reflects that community's experience with God and with life. In fact, the word scripture, in its root meaning, is 'an act of writing,' an act that records events which have already transpired. We come to the book and meet the life it conveys. It is a map of past, shared life experiences that points the direction for the present and the future.

8. Bureaucracy: Like salt is necessary, but becomes unhealthy in large quantities.

9. Children: They are often best taught outside Sunday Schools. Closely connected with the new position which Jesus accords to women in the sphere of the approaching basileia [kingdom] is a new view of children. In the world of Jesus, children, like women, were counted as things of little value. Jesus, on the other hand, not only promises salvation to children as such (Mark 10:14), but also declares that it is only possible for a man to enter the basileia if he becomes a child again (Matt. 18:3). As a result, he brings children nearer to God than adults. Sayings like this cannot be derived either from contemporary literature or from the community, which shared the patriarchal attitude of its milieu; rather, they belong to the heart of Jesus' message.

10. Clericalism: One of the Church's greatest evils. A clericalistic attitude can only recognize real and decisive activity and initiative in the Church if it comes from the clergy rather than from other members of the people of God. Juridical thinking is deeply mistrustful of any movements of the free Spirit of God, the Spirit which is operative in the Church where and when he wills, which cannot be regimented. Following the example of the apostle [Paul], every clergyman in the church (like an animal that parts the hoof and is clean) should first of all clearly distinguish between himself and his office, i.e., between 'the forms of God' and the form of a servant,' and, regarding himself always as the lowliest of all, perform his office in between fear and love entirely for the welfare and advantage of his subjects. Moreover, he must know that because every office is given only for the welfare of the subjects, he must be willing to give it up if he finds that he cannot administer it to the furtherance of the benefit of his subjects or that he blocks it by his person. Certainly, this is the whole sin of the clergyman: that he deprives his ministry of its fruit by one or both of these faults; he will be strictly held responsible for his failure. -An excerpt from Martin Luther's commentary (1516) on Paul's Epistle to the Romans.

11. Commitment: You get what you expect! In the end, to employ an image, the people trust those who share the same fate as they do. If the boat goes down, then the leaders go under with the people. Only that kind of commitment is adequate for the task of empowering lay people for the work of ministry. The educative task of the leadership of the congregation includes putting the people in touch with their own strengths, and helping them find security in the ministry they offer. Since the central metaphor of christian existence is incarnation, then what we believe and what we live must find its integration in what we ourselves, however modest the result, do as the body of Christ. For Christ, says Bonhoeffer, takes form in a band of men and women, those who seek to bring to life a serving community for the sake of the world God loves.

12. Committees can be useful sometimes The camel is the horse that was designed by a committee.

13. Community within - a sense of belonging A characteristic of our time is that many people do not sense they belong in the public world. I have to act in society, but I do so as a stranger, I may be a citizen in this nation, a taxpayer in this city, a worker at this job - but in all these transactions I often feel anonymous. A community is an intermediate grouping in which I can belong. This belonging includes similarity and individuality. I sense that people are like me, perhaps not in every regard but in some important ways. In addition, these people know me 'in particular' and value me as the particular person that I am. Here, to some degree, I am special. I may not be unique, but at least I am not merely a cog in a machine. I probably do not feel I am indispensable to this community, but by the same token I realize that for these people I could not easily be replaced by just anybody. To these people I am important enough that when I am here I can be noticed and when I am gone I can be missed. This is to belong.

14. Community without: Do they know your church is there? Christians are called to be bridge people, to be stepping stones whereby non-Christians move closer to their commitment to Christ and his kingdom, and to their final integration into the body of Christ. Bridge building is a key part of the work of partnership. The pub Here is the natural place where a great number of working-class people relax, and friendships are formed. It is an important feature of working-class culture and so must be taken seriously. For most people pub and church don't mix. On either side, the feeling is often mutual. If a regular at the pub started coming to church his entrance fee would be to stop going to the local boozer. So if local Christians can regularly attend a local pub, an enormous number of barriers are broken down, even more so if the group of Christians are seen to be actually enjoying themselves. Absolute amazement if the vicar is among them!!

15. Compassion is doing what Jesus did for the lost, the least and the last.

16. Confessional churches are more healthy because they are more honest. Individual and communal confession keeps us in touch with our humanity. Consequently, as persons and as the church, in recognising the sinful, imperfect sides to ourselves, we are evermore aware of the need for forgiveness and restoration that is sourced within the unconditional grace of God. Churches, like any other groups that are not confessional, risk becoming ethnocentric. In 1906, William Sumner coined the term ethnocentricism in his famous work, Folkways. He defined it as the '... tendency of every group or nation to nourish its own vanity, boast its own superiority, exalt its own divinities, and to look with contempt on outsiders.' So full of artless jealousy is guilt It spills itself in fearing to be spilt. -Hamlet, Act IV.5.

17. Conflict may be good for you! Conflict and hostility are not goals of community, to be sure. But neither are they automatic indications that our parish or ministry team or religious house is in serious trouble. Conflict is both a normal and expected ingredient in any relationship - whether friendship or team work or family life - that brings people together and engages them at the level of their significant values and needs. Whenever persons encounter each other over a period of time - especially when matters of importance are involved - we can anticipate that differences will be noted, disagreements will develop, discord may emerge. The challenge in community relationships is not to do away with these signs of conflict or, worse, to refuse to admit them when they do arise. Rather we can attempt to learn to recognise the potential areas of conflict for us and to deal with these issues and feelings in ways that strengthen rather than destroy the bonds between us. Conflict should not of course, be the only - or the chief - experience of relationship in a group. A community must take care, especially at those points in its history when there is a good deal of conflict, to balance these experiences with expressions of a larger unity. Often this is achieved most effectively in ritual and celebration. Communication skills are needed: the ability to listen with accuracy and empathy to others; the ability to disclose information about myself, my needs and expectations, my own images and definitions of community - neither apologetically nor aggressively, but assertively. Skills of conflict resolution, negotiation, and problem-solving are essential to effectively incorporate diversity within community. Skills of empathy and imagination are needed to enable us to dream beyond the problem that seems to separate us and find a new solution in which we stand together. And special skills are necessary for the celebration of both our diversity and our unity.

18. Counseling: Church renewal through the renewal of persons. Pastoral care and counseling are valuable instruments by which the church stays relevant to human need. They are ways of translating the good news into the 'language of relationships,' as Reuel Howe expresses it - a language which allows the minister to communicate a healing message to persons struggling in alienation and despair. Pastoral counseling is an essential means by which a church is helped to be a lifesaving station and not a club, a hospital and a garden of the spiritual life - not a museum. Counseling can save those areas of our lives that are shipwrecked in the storms of our daily living, broken on the hidden reefs of anxiety, guilt, and lack of integrity. An effective caring and counseling program, in which both minister and trained lay persons serve as enablers of healing and growth, can transform the interpersonal climate of a congregation, making a church a place where wholeness is nurtured in persons throughout the life cycle. Pastoral care and counseling contribute to the continuing renewal of a church's vitality by providing instruments for the renewal of persons, relationships, and groups. By reducing the crippledness of our ability to give and receive love, counseling can help us to be the church - the community in which God's love becomes an instrument of continuing renewal through reconciliation, helping to heal our estrangement from ourselves and our families, from other church members, from those outside the church, and from an enlivening, growing relationship with God. It can create windows of new awareness, restoring sight to eyes previously blinded by our anxious, guilt-ridden self-concern - to the beauty, tragedy, wonder, and pain all about us. Counseling can allow us to discover fresh dimensions of our humanity. It can release our potentialities for authenticity and aliveness. It can help to release our trapped creativity - the potential creativity present in every person. By renewing us as persons, counselling helps empower us to become renewal agents in a church and in a society that desperately need renewing. Because we had human, limited parents who had human, limited parents, all of us are limited, to some degree, in our ability to love fully. Many people are severely crippled in their ability to love in growth-nurturing ways. This is the heart of their problem. To say to such a person, 'You need to love God and neighbour more,' is like shouting to a person floating on a log in mid-ocean, 'What you need is dry land!' Nothing could be truer or less helpful. What such a person needs is to know where the land is and how to get there. Counseling and therapy are methods of helping people learn to love themselves, their neighbour, and God more fully and freely. Erich Fromm states: 'Analytic therapy is essentially an attempt to help the patient gain or regain his capacity for love. If this aim is not fulfilled, nothing but surface changes can be accomplished.' Unearned love (grace) is both the method and the power of transformation to greater wholeness. For persons whose ability to love is painfully diminished, counseling or therapy can mean the difference between a creative, productive, joyful life and one of inner captivity, stagnation and self-rejection. For such persons, counseling can be an imperfect but effective channel for receiving the gift of God's healing, transforming love.

19. Covenantal churches take relationships seriously

20. Cultural relevance - the apostles practised it, so should we: While the Gospel always remains the same, the Church must be ever proclaiming its message in new and creative ways; keeping pace with the rapidly changing and increasingly diverse communications mediums and language of contemporary culture. James D G Dunn, rightly asserts that '...confessions framed in one context do not remain the same when that context changes. New situations call forth new confessions. A Christianity that ceases to develop new confessional language ceases to confess its faith to the contemporary world.' In secular Australia, the church need be on the sidelines only if that is where it wishes to be. If it repeats and cares for those among whom it is set, it will be respected in return. Is Australia the South Land of the Holy Spirit? Most Australians, in their inimitable way, would shy clear of such a flowery description. But like the Aborigines who have known this country as 'land of the Spirit' since the time of the Dreaming, many white Australians today find spiritual value in the very terrain their ancestors found so terrifying. There are deep springs of spiritual values, too, underlying the so-called secular society. They are simply waiting to be baptized by a church generous enough to recognize that they are of God.

21. Cultural critique - the prophets did it, so should we! The prophetic dimension of ministry encompasses the cultural level of values. The Christian mission is not just about religious faith and personal morality. It has an historical, cultural dimension which will involve engaging existing cultures in critical dialogue, transforming them through the power of the Gospel message. In our own time this will involve the promotion of global transcultural meaning and values, respect for cosmological cultures, critical cultural dialogue to reorient our 'understanding of understanding,' that is, the transcendence of the human spirit, listening to the voices of the oppressed and suffering and so on. These are the prophetic tasks of the present day. This is also what is meant by theology as Longeran understands it: 'theology mediates between a religion and a cultural matrix.' We live in a prophetic hour, and its time we Christians looked seriously at the world around us. We currently face the crisis of a civilisation crumbling around our ears, and if we look in the Scriptures we can see that it is in precisely such times that God addresses His people through the prophets. Every time humanity gets to the end of itself, God raises up prophets. The Old Testament prophets were not those who had it passed on to them from a human hierarchy; they were those who burned with the conviction that God had uprooted them, set them before the people and said, 'Righto! Now speak!' - whether they liked it or not.

22. Dreaming: fundamental to human health. The ministry of mediating the Christian dream of the kingdom begins in the community's awareness of its own dream and vocation. Hopefully, this will be a shared, lively, and practical dream. A community's ambition or mission must be a shared one; if it is a plan imported or announced 'from on high' it will be less effective in moving these Christians to action. It must also be a lively dream - one that excites us, one that is more than a distant memory of 'what we have always done' or a vague guilt about 'what we ought to do.' It must also be a somewhat practical vision - a hope that is pursuable, that finds expression in the community's specific and daily decisions about such things as education, finances, and liturgy. The liveliness of a faith community arises from its shared vision and clarity of purpose. A vital community is one that is excited by the dream of the kingdom, the vision of a society transformed by justice and love. Its energies are aroused by and directed toward the realization of this dream.

23. Eat Together: Families do that! Have you ever noticed how often the Gospels speak of Jesus enjoying a celebratory meal with his friends? Their importance cannot be overestimated. Without them community remains a pious hope, an unfulfilled longing, a concept devoid of content.

24. Ethics: How to behave in a Godless world. If you are neutral in a situation of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has his foot on the tail of the mouse, and you say you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your ity. -Desmond Tutu, bishop of the Church of the Province of South Africa (Anglican). Mourn not the dead But rather mourn the apathetic throng, The cowed and meek Who see the world's great anguish and its wrong And do not - Ralph Chaplin, 1922 Written by Chaplin while serving a twenty-year sentence in Levinworth Gaol, USA. A member of the International Workers of the World, he had been sentenced in 1918 for taking part in 'a conspiracy with intent to obstruct the prosecution of the war ...'

25. Evangelism: Good News is for sharing I believe we have failed to understand that we ought to do what Jesus did, not only say what Jesus said. Kusmic, in a brilliant burst at the Lusanne conference said, 'Our basic need is not that of methodology, but more authenticity.' The answer to world evangelisation 'How will they hear?' is inextricably linked to the answer to the question, 'What will they see?' Our message has no credibility apart from its visibility in transformed personal lives, in new relationships in the believing community, and a loving concern and sacrificial service for the needy. Evangelism is a life before it is a task; it is a question of being, before it becomes an agenda for doing. The believing community will either evangelise by its attractive new quality of life, or it will create barriers to the gospel by its old way of life. I'm convinced that evangelism is the key and if it is not philosophically and practically functioning, all other aspects of church life will stumble or fall. If it is at the heart of a church's life and ministry it brings health to pastoral care, social action and education. It is the great unifying force that drives all other ministries.

26. Grace: A sure sign of God's presence The Church becomes an event of grace as the lives of its members are transformed in hope, in joy, in self-forgetful love, in peace, in patience, and in all other Christlike virtues.

27. Faith is trusting God: In the face of Doubt, Faith goes where Reason alone, cannot. In 1962, the famous anti-humanist poet, T S Eliot said 'For people of intellect, I think that doubt is inevitable. The doubter is a man who takes the problem of his faith seriously.'

28. Healing is holistic: Jesus' healings were spiritual, physical, social and political. The political dimension of the Kingdom motif means that God's saving activity challenges every structure and system of values which threaten human life and the beauty of creation. Jesus' healing activity and his exorcisms mean precisely this. The text of [Matthew] 12:28 is decisive: 'But if it is by the Spirit of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.' 29. Holistic is healthy: Reaching up to God's heart; Reaching in to God's people; Reaching out to God's world. Leadership Diagram of the Bonneville Baptist Church, Lambeth, Britain

30. Leadership: Authentic leadership is honoured and inspires confidence. The old cliché should read: 'Too many Indians and not enough chiefs.' The Christian church desperately needs leaders. What is leadership? The church already has an overabundance of prima donnas who perform magnificently but leave no room on the stage for others. They are performers not leaders. Leadership must seek to fulfil the identified goals of our organisation. These goals must be compatible with the goals Christ gave to his followers.

31. Love, Joy, Peace: the cultivators of community It is because of this essential need to love as well as to be loved that Neibuhr was right when he said, 'Love is the law of life;' love is that participation in one another through which we find and come to be ourselves and in the absence of which we destroy each other and ourselves. Love, therefore, expresses quintessentially that union of individuality and community that is precisely the human; for to love is an act of a unique individual towards another unique individual, and yet it forges and expresses the deepest bonds of community and of participation in community. As the self becomes a self in encounter with other persons, so it fulfils itself in loving union with them; both the 'archeology' (origin) and the telos (completion) of the self lie in loving community with others.

32. Justice: The Gospel orientation towards the poor and the powerless. The synoptic writers, in the tradition of Deutero-Isaiah, evidently present Jesus as 'the One who brings the good news of the expected last time.' His proclamation and ministry are completely under the sign of the gospel. He preaches the gospel of the kingdom to the poor and calls captives into the liberty of the coming kingdom. The focal point of his message is that God is drawing near and will set people free. In that sense, the exodus of the last time begins with Jesus. It begins with the broken, the captives and the blind, as Luke says, or, in Matthew's words, with the blind, the lame, the lepers, the deaf and the dead. Both writers sum up the people who are primarily affected under the expression 'the poor.' The 'poverty' meant extends from the economic, social and physical poverty to psychological, moral and religious poverty. The poor are all those who have to endure acts of violence and injustice without being able to defend themselves. The poor are all who have to exist physically and spiritually on the fringe of death, who have nothing to live for and to whom life has nothing to offer. The poor are all who are at the mercy of others, and who live with empty and open hands. Poverty means both dependency and openness. We ought not to confine 'poverty' in religious terms to the general dependence of men on God. But it cannot be interpreted in a merely economic or physical sense either. It is an expression which describes the enslavement and dehumanization of man in more than one dimension. The opposite of the poor in the Old Testament is the man of violence who oppresses the poor, forces them into poverty and enriches himself at their expense. 'Riches' are equally multi-dimensional and extend from economic exploitation, by way of social supremacy, to complacency of the people who look after themselves in every sector of life, ignore the rights of others and do not want to have to say thank-you to anyone for anything. The rich will only be helped when they recognize their own poverty and enter the fellowship of the poor, especially the poor whom they have made poor through violence. If the gospel of the coming kingdom, like the first beatitude, is directed to 'the poor,' then it can only be heard as a message of joy in the revelation of our own poverty and in fellowship with the poor. The abasement which is meant by humility is not a private virtue but the social entry into solidarity with the humble and the humbled. It is precisely as the partisan 'gospel to the poor, that the kingdom of God brings rich and poor, healthy and sick, the powerful and the helpless for the first time into that fellowship of poverty in which it is possible to talk without distinction about 'all men.' In a divided, unjust and violent world, the partisan gospel reveals the true universality of the coming rule of God and the indivisible liberty. 'The church of Christ must make a fundamental choice; whether to respond to the summons of the poor, or whether to justify non-involvement. There is no doubt that in many instances the latter option has been chosen. The church has hurried past on the far side of the road, too intent on its own religious destination to even notice the broken and wounded. The Bible will not allow us our comfortable faith. Scripture indicates that God is the God of Nutters and Druggies, of Wogs and Pros. These people represent a plea to us from the God of compassion, and our response to them will reflect the depth of our commitment more accurately than the volume of our worship. The call goes out to us, as it has to every generation, to be the people of God; to see with God's eyes, to feel with God's heart, to care with God's compassion.'

33. Mentors: Models and Mirrors of the Kingdom life Children, were offered as mentors by Jesus to adult disciples! Welcome to the strange, challenging world of Jesus of Nazareth. Little Alexander, my 18-month-old son, is already up. His eyes are fully open, animated, gazing about the room and through the window. 'Come on lazy bones!' he seems to be saying. 'Get out of bed! Take the morning off work. Take me to the park.' I carry him on my shoulders. He loves this elevated view of the world. A dog trots by and he laughs. A magpie sings and he engages in conversation. A leaf tumbles from a tree and he follows its slow-motion flight. A sparrow sits on an electric wire and he points to it. Cars move past on their Monday morning procession to work and he is totally absorbed in the miracle of their motion. When we reach the park I let him down and, immediately, he is running, exploring, drinking in the morning. He picks up a stone, examines it and hands it to me. He comes across a twig, a red leaf, a gumnut, examines each one in turn and brings them to me. He is a teacher, showing me how to look at things anew. Looked at from one angle, the gumnut seems like a vase, perfect in its symmetry. Turn it over, and it is shaped like a bell. Meanwhile, Alexander is off and running again, for the sheer joy of it, over the dew-laden grass, a little gumnut baby in tubby motion, speaking his private language in which he seems to be proclaiming: 'It is wonderful to be alive on this perfect autumn day.' And it becomes obvious: Alexander's first love is life itself. The world is new, vibrant and magical. Magic. It is not a word adults embrace readily. It is a word that seems to disappear from our vocabulary as we leave our childhood years behind.

34. Ministry: It belongs to the whole church. Every church member is to minister by means of his particular gift; but no one must ever push himself forward with his own special charism. The Church therefore takes the ministries that do not appear openly (silent intercession, for instance) as seriously as it takes public ones. [In Churches of Christ] We have a very strong emphasis on the 'priesthood of all believers.' In relationship to ministry, this emphasis is expressed through what we call 'mutual ministry.' For us, ministry is centred in the whole people of God and this is demonstrated visibly on all occasions when we come together as the 'community of faith.' Hence, public worship will never be left in the hands of one person., the ordained minister, but the leadership of the worship service will be shared by others. The same principle applies to other dimensions of ministry. Mutual ministry, however, does not mean 'democracy gone mad.' While we believe that all Christians are 'ministers,' we recognise that not all Christians minister in the same way. We concur with the Pauline emphasis that ministry is dependent upon gifts and that there are specialised ministries within the context of the more general ministries of the whole people of God. Although all of us have spiritual gifts, some of us have gifts which are more suited to public ministry. All gifts, however, are interdependent and necessary for the well-being of the 'Body of Christ.' Public ministry, therefore, depends upon the 'community of faith' recognising and authorising the use of special gifts by the holders of those gifts.

35. Mission: What would Jesus do? The history of Christian mission warns us of the dangers of the missionary enterprise. 'With his taste for the piquant, Archbishop Tutu likes to tell a joke that has an edge of bitter truth to it. "When the white man first came here," Tutu says, "he had the Bible and we had the land. Then the white man said to us, Come let us kneel and pray together. so we knelt and closed our eyes and prayed, and when we opened our eyes again, lo! - we had the Bible and he had the land."'

36. Music: The heart of the community of faith seeking the heart of God. Paul tells the Colossians that Christians are to 'sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God' (3:16). Psalms have been part of the said and sung worship of the Jewish community since before Jesus' time. Early in its life, Christian worship included musical components. The Gregorian chant, which was part of the liturgy in the early Middle Ages, became a dominant foundation of the Western music tradition. During the Renaissance the great composers wrote music for the church. Luther understood that to give the church back to the laity meant freeing their voices and spirits to sing, so he wrote several dozen hymns, often rescuing a tune from the tavern or the street. Calvin and his followers in Old and New England used the psalm tune as their musical mode in worship. John Wesley viewed music and song as an offering from the heart, to God: 'Learn the tunes. Sing them as printed. Sing all ... Let not a slight degree of weakness or weariness hinder you. If it is a cross to you, take it up, and you will find it a blessing. Sing lustily and with good courage. Beware of singing as if you are half dead, or half asleep, but lift up your voice with strength. Be no more afraid of your voice now, nor more ashamed of its being heard, than when you sing the songs of Satan. Sing modestly Do not bawl ... strive to unite your voices together so as to make one clear melodious sound. Sing in time. Do not run before or stay behind ... and take care not to sing too slow ... Above all, sing spiritually. Have an eye to God in every word you sing. Aim at pleasing [God] more than yourself, or any other creature. In order to do this, attend strictly to the sense of what you sing, and see your heart is not carried away with the sound, but offered to God continually.'

37. Prayer: Alone with the Alone. I found a master for myself, Moche the Beadle. He had noticed me one day at dusk, when I was praying. 'Why do you weep when you pray' he asked me, as though he had known me a long time. 'I don't know why,' I answered, greatly disturbed. The question had never entered my head. I wept because - because of something inside me that felt the need for tears. That was all I knew. 'Why do you pray?' he asked me, after a moment. Why did I pray? A strange question. Why did I live? Why did I breathe? 'I don't know why,' I said, even more disturbed and ill at ease. 'I don't know why.' After that day I saw him often. He explained to me with great insistence that every question possessed a power that did not lie in the answer. 'Man raises himself toward God by the questions he asks Him,' he was fond of repeating. 'That is the true dialogue. Man questions God and God answers. But we don't understand His answers. We can't understand them. Because they come from the depth of the soul, and they stay there until death. You will find the true answers, Eliezer, only within yourself!' 'And why do you pray, Moche?' I asked him. 'I pray to the God within me that He will give me the strength to ask Him the right questions.'

38. Prophets: The Key to hearing God's voice What becomes of a Church in which the prophets are silent? What becomes of a Church in which there is no one who gives direct expression in words to the promptings of the Spirit, even if in a different form from the prophets of Paul's time; a Church in which there is no one with a conviction of his calling and responsibility to illuminate the Church's path in both present and future in a particular situation? A Church in which prophets have to keep silent declines, and becomes a spiritless organization. Outwardly everything may seem all right, things will run smoothly, according to plan and along ordered paths, situations will be weighed up in advance and all unforeseen things will have been allowed for or will simply be left on one side; but inwardly it will be a place where the Spirit can no longer blow when and where he wills, where the Spirit, given the smooth running machinery, is no longer needed and would be at least a disturbing influence, where the ecclesiastical way of life is a way without real life. The pastors in the Church who do not want to listen to the Church's prophets, who can indeed no longer hear them because in the midst of all their governing they have lost the knack of listening , may indeed quote the prophets of the past, now dangerous no longer, as saints in their sermons, but they will be so certain of possessing the Spirit themselves, that they will boast of him rather then listen to him, and will give out their decrees, their regulations and commands as coming from the Spirit. For all their talk of the Spirit and of service, they will be practising a form of rule in which power has replaced Spirit, and ruling has replaced listening; their power, subtly 'spiritual' though it may be, is open no less than secular power to being used in an absolutist, totalitarian or even terrorist manner.

39. Renewal : An ongoing Process! Under the leading of the Holy Spirit the images and forms of Christian life will continue to change, as they have in previous centuries. In a healthy community of faith the production of new myths and symbols goes on apace. The ecclesiologists of the future will no doubt devise new models for thinking about the Church. But what is new in Christianity always grows out of the past and has its roots in Scripture and tradition. For the recovery of the church we have to deal with God himself and to plead with Habakkuk, 'O Lord revive thy work in the midst of the years, in the midst of the years make known; in wrath remember mercy.' The testimony of history will help us to do so as it helped that prophet and countless others since his day. All that God has done in grace and power in any age or land He can do again. By painful chastening the churches of this century are being taught what Frederick Barker asserted over a hundred years ago: 'What we want is not so much fresh organization, but new life, the life which the Spirit of God imparts, the life by which a church becomes a light and power in the world.' When a repentant church turns to God, and pleads with Him to work, another new era will be at hand.

40. Spiritual Gifts: Presents from God that meet human needs. Many congregations invite their people to list the gifts for ministry they believe they can offer. As a congregation invites participation from a growing number of its members in the practise of ministry, a deepened awareness of faith, its meaning and requirements, grows with the responsible actions of the group. So too do the gifts available, for only as our capacity for service finds expression do the gifts of ministry grow and increase, coming to full expression in the action of faithful service. We lose what we do not use.

41. Spiritual Warfare: The battle still rages At the beginning of Mark's Gospel, Jesus is driven by the Spirit of God into the wilderness. There his vocation is tested, he resolves to follow the Spirit, and angels minister to him. This pattern of discernment is ancient: Jacob wrestles with an angel through a long dark night; Jeremiah is torn between the demanding word of God and the false prophets who accuse and threaten him. Those of us who try to follow the call of God today find ourselves constantly in similar predicaments. Our experiences when we are at the edge of our lives, when we are taken by unfamiliar spirits, good or bad, beyond our zones of security, are often crucial for the rest of our lives. In giving ourselves to follow the Holy Spirit we are drawn into territories where, like Jesus, we encounter doubt and darkness and, perhaps, demons. In such moments we need the comfort of a wisdom which, greater than ordinary human knowledge, is the gift of the same Spirit of God. How am I to understand my demons? Imagine it is twilight: I am out in the countryside, walking along an unmarked path. as night closes the path leads into a wood, then into a forest. Light from the moon is blocked out by the trees. It is so quiet that I can almost hear myself breathe. It is so dark that I cannot see my own feet. I hear a sound: perhaps a twig falling? Or a bird rustling in the branches? Or is it a dingo? Or a jaguar? I slow down, straining my eyes to see where the path is going, but I see nothing. I am helpless. I hear more noises: a creek rushes unseen nearby. Branches move: is it the wind? Or is it an ambush? Or a ghost? I stop, petrified with fear. Then the moon breaks through the clouds, the way is clear and I move forward freely and happily. Though there was nothing there in the darkness, in my ignorance I was afraid. And in my fearful imagination I created monsters, monsters real enough to take control of me and bind me captive. The next time I go down that path I will remember more clearly its twists and turns. I will be 'street-wise,' and I will be less afraid. Demons are as real as darkness, petrifying and binding us. And yet they are as empty and unreal as darkness becomes when light breaks in. Belief in the power of evil spirits is still important for us today. It is a way of acknowledging that we are not always directly responsible for the misery and alienation of our lives. There are untamed forces and structures in our world and our heart which can debilitate us. Modern medicine increasingly appreciates the importance of treating the whole person. The body cannot be separated from the spirit: fear and guilt can play as much a role in illness as viruses and infections. Demons remain a legitimate metaphor for the unnameable forces that threaten our freedom and vitality. Today we are still in need of the authority of Jesus over the demonic powers .

42. Teaching: When you stop learning you start dying. The one thing I am here to say to you is this: that it is worse than useless for Christians to talk about the importance of Christian morality, unless they are prepared to take their stand upon the fundamentals of Christian theology. It is a lie to say that dogma does not matter; it matters enormously. It is fatal to let people suppose that Christianity is only a mode of feeling; it is virtually necessary to insist that it is first and foremost a rational explanation of the universe. It is hopeless to offer Christianity as a vaguely idealistic aspiration of a simple and consoling kind; it is, on the contrary, a hard, tough, exacting, and complex doctrine, steeped in drastic and uncompromising realism. And it is fatal to imagine that everybody knows quite well what Christianity is and needs only a little encouragement to practise it. The brutal fact is that in this Christian country not one person in a hundred has the faintest notion about what the church teaches about God or [human nature] or society or the person of Jesus Christ.

43. Unity in Diversity: Let's celebrate the diversity of God's creation and the unity of God's purpose. Our churches reflect the glory of God when they encourage integrated worship and dialogue between people of radically diverse backgrounds and world views. Any social organisation which seeks to create uniformity and by definition, artificially separates like from unlike, us from them, saved from unsaved and ultimately delineates who is superior and who is inferior, is innately anti-God and therefore anti-human. Surely we can draw upon the too numerous lessons of the twentieth century, of the inhumanity of totalitarian regimes which have demanded ideological and behavioural conformity. At the height of apartheid, Trevor Huddleston CR, wrote: '...hell is not a bad description of South Africa, nor a very great exaggeration. For as I understand it theologically, the real pain and agony (expressed symbolically but very definitely by Christ in the Gospels) of hell is frustration. Its atmosphere is dread. Its horror is eternity. When you are in hell you see the good but can never reach it, you know that you are made for God but between yourself and Him "there is a great gulf fixed." It is not a bad description of the ultimate meaning of apartheid.' [Apartheid literally means apart-ness ]

The path of Jesus has a distinct downward trend. The proclamation and the deeds of Jesus pertained to all people exactly because he took sides with the weak, the sick, the poor people, and the outcasts - those people in whom the brutality of human beings and their society was manifested. Jesus is a friend of the poor and, strangely enough, lays hold on human society at its bottom end. The law according to which human societies function is based on the homogeneousness of its member. The law according to which the Christian community functions, however, is in no way based on the homogeneousness of its members and the sympathy between people of equal mind. It has to do with the acceptance of those who are different: Jews and pagans, Greeks and barbarians, masters and servants. The walls and fences of the ghettos, which people erect against one another in order to remain on their own and to justify themselves and humiliate the others, are demolished in the Christian community. Churches which are constituted merely by people who are equal, are heretical in their social structure. They are not more than religious societies with a slight Christian veneer. Only if the Christian community is rooted in the acceptance of those who are different and in the social embodiment of justification by faith, only in such a case can this community be a sign which points towards the human kingdom of the Son of Man. The church's unity is its unity in freedom. The church's holiness is its holiness in poverty. the church's apostolicity bears the sign of the cross, and its catholicity is linked with its partisan support for the oppressed.

44. Women: Like men are called into the priesthood of all believers. Jesus frees women from traditional social roles, from family associations. He addresses them as individuals and makes them independent individuals. In following him Joanna presumably left her husband, the finance minister at the court of King Herod, and on Easter morning was by the tomb of the 'enemy of the state' (Luke 8:3; 24:10). The mother of the sons of Zebedee did not flee at Jesus' arrest, as did her sons, but stood by the cross - a distinct individual on the basis of her own decision (Matt. 26:56; 27:55). In our family-orientated churches we have forgotten that the gospel first of all makes people individuals and gives them the courage to become individuals, men and women. Jesus breaks the tabus which surrounded women in the East. He accepts them in all their bodily existence as complete people, though their bodies were regarded as being weak, impure, incapable of being involved in the cult. He heals the women with a haemorrhage, who was cultically and socially impure and isolated because of her bleeding (Mark 5:25ff.). He even touched sick women: Peter's mother-in-law (Mark 1:30) and Jairus' daughter (Mark 5:41). In one manuscript (Luke 23:2) he is accused of having led women and children astray. In our belief in redemption, which is limited to soul and spirit, we have forgotten what a physical, bodily, tender, indeed erotic dimension the liberation of Jesus has. Moreover, women were the only ones who did not flee at his arrest. They were also the only friends to stand under his cross; they went to the tomb and were the first witnesses of the resurrection. They are regarded today as the real bearers of the tradition of the death and resurrection of Jesus.

45. Zenophilia: the love of strangers My enemy is my guest