The Way Ahead - Week 2: Talk about faith

Many years ago, when I was a junior programmer, I remember doing a sales presentation to an important client. This was something that I had worked on for weeks and the account manager and I really wanted to show this potential client what we could do. As the client entered the room the computer that we were using failed. Since this was the days of mainframes, we were left looking at a blank screen. Phone calls told us that the failure would take a while to fix and we would simply have to wait whilst others fixed the system – in the meantime the other members of staff who were present got agitated / annoyed / angry / and abusive, whilst senior management tried to keep the potential client happy in the other room. Peter, the account manager, and I were both Christians and so we decided that we would walk away from where the other were and in the corner of the room where all the equipment was set up, we decided we would pray – which we quietly did. The reaction that this caused from the others who saw what we did was, frankly, awkward. They ranged from laughter, to suggestions that we were not taking things seriously. Peter and I thought we were taking things seriously, we did the only thing we could think of to do, and this was what our faith at the time said was the most serious thing to do.

I don’t know what your reaction to this story is and whose side you would take if you were there. It did cause a great deal of comment at the part of Raytheon where we worked, and we got quite a few positive and negative comments. That said it also seemed to give other people permission to tell us what they thought about our faith, and there were many conversations that followed from this – and when Peter got into trouble with the police it again caused eyebrows to rise.

In more recent times I ended working very closely with a wonderful colleague and friend called Irfan Khan who is now a Senior VP at SAP. He is a devout Muslim and the regular pattern of prayer that is part of their faith became a regular part of both his and my life in the years we worked together. When we had a lab built for us in the UK to allow us to spend less time in the office in the US, we insisted that we had a space allocated for Irfan’s prayer mat, and we made it clear that at 3:00pm Irfan would be saying prayers and the door would be closed. He and I discussed our faith’s for hours and hours, both as we worked in the office, and as we travelled the world together. Of all the people I have met on my faith journey, Irfan is clearly a person who has had a huge impact on my thinking and spiritual development, and I will never deny the presence of God at work in Irfan’s life.

When John Wesley set up his original bands he had a question to ask the band members “Is it your desire and design to be on this and all other occasions entirely open, so as to speak everything that is in your heart, without exception, without disguise, and without reserve?”. In the material this week there is some discussion of the Church Life Profile that the writers did that suggests that some people find it “problematic and even offensive to be asked to share what is deepest in their heart – this is private”, whilst others find it a real “disappointment when they do not feel that their church is a place where they can talk to other Christians about the issues they face living out their discipleship in the world”.

Stop for a moment and consider the following questions before we carry on:

1)      Why do you think many Methodists find it hard to talk about faith? (Ian extra: do you think that the assumption in this question is true?)

2)      How satisfied (or not) do you feel with the conversations about faith that happen around your church?

3)      With whom, and in what contexts, do you in fact feel most able to open up and share what is closest to your heart? What makes those people or contexts safe and fruitful for deep conversation?

One of the reasons that people often feel uncomfortable talking about their Christian faith is that the terms that we use are foreign to those who we are talking to, and the concepts that we accept can be subject to ridicule – “what do you mean he rose from the dead? – do you really believe this?”. Comedians at the moment seem to delight in pointing out some of the Church’s idiosyncrasies and where we do things that simply cannot be defended. I would want to argue that the discussion on Woman Bishops, both in its nature and the way that it has been conducted is a good example of this.

I have heard many sermons over the years talk about how as Christians we are called to be counter cultural, and I would agree, we are. But in accepting this there is a danger that we also suggest that it is acceptable to be culturally irrelevant – and here I would argue that we are not. On the night before Calvary, Jesus said to his disciples “I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another. If the world hates you, be aware that it hated me before it hated you. If you belonged to the world, the world would love you as its own. Because you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world—therefore the world hates you.” (John 15:17). The fact that there is something different in our lives should be visible to those around us, and we should accept that some people will talk to us about it – but in accepting this I do not believe that we should simply treat this as a license to do things that make no sense. We want people to see that we are different because of the love that Jesus refers to, and because we stand against many of the things that the world accepts (greed, self-centredness, etc).

In my original two examples I think I would now suggest that the first is a classic case of good intentions leading to something that was pompous and made others feel uncomfortable, whereas the second is one of the most precious memories that I have. They were both counter-cultural but the difference was a sensitivity to others and how they felt – being aware of how others would understand the actions that were taken. Surely the same applies to all the things that we do as Christians beyond the boundary of our church buildings – whether it be what we place on our website, the way we walk through our community with a donkey, or the things we do in Christ’s name; we are called to be counter-cultural but we are not called to be irrelevant or frankly, silly.

Our material this week ends by asking us how much we know about the community that we serve, and asks whether part of our issue as Christians is that we do not know these people, their needs, or their ways of working, meaning that any attempt we have at sharing our faith and being disciples to them are almost certain to fail as we do not the right way to approach them and/or communicate our faith. Put simply we do not know how to be Christians in the real world without risking being or doing something that comes across in the wrong way – and the suggestion is that this results in us doing and saying nothing.

Three questions to end:

1)      Who is telling us the truth, and how can we tell?

2)      Are we powerless to influence things?

3)      Who is our neighbour? How can we discern which community we are called to serve in?