Storyteller’s World

My Friend Moriarty - I think I’ve told you about him before. When he and I were lads at school together, most people thought that My Friend Moriarty, when he grew up, would be a politician, because of all the lies he told.

Mind you, not everyone called them lies. Moriarty’s mother used to say he had a brilliant, creative imagination. His teacher used to say his stories were a bit far-fetched. But me and my friends, we called them what they were. We called them porkies. (Porkies is short for porky-pies, Cockney rhyming slang for lies.)

No, you don’t want to hear the rest of this morning’s all-age service talk.

Now that the ruins of the garage have been removed, you might think the site would be of little more interest to passers-by.

Not so!

The question that everyone is asking as they look at the enclosure that remains, is: What kind of animal are they keeping behind that fence? Given that there are yellow ‘Danger of Death’ notices attached to the fence, it must be dangerous, surely?

This is absolutely right. The creature behind this fence is probably the most dangerous creature known to humanity. The giant man-eating Antarctic sabre-toothed dormouse. Due to global warming, this animal has become not only savage, hungry, irritable and extremely unpredictable, but also invisible.

Elation and joy are great stimulants, that have got us through the hurricane of emotions, and all the haps and mishaps, of the past fortnight. But suddenly today both Alison and I seem to have hit the wall. After another week of work and social whirl, and the hassles of insurance claims, we feel shattered with weariness. So not much blog today.

Having prepared for tomorrow’s preaching, I’m left wondering what it is about the story of Thomas that we need to learn and learn again. His feast day falls on a Sunday, barely three months after we had the same story as the Gospel of the Sunday after Easter. Doubting and believing; refusing to accept without seeing; hailing his friend as My Lord and my God - where on this whole spectrum do I stand, do we stand? And where is he trying to move us on to?

A new neighbour turns up on the doorstep to introduce himself. A delightful, pleasant, intelligent, friendly, Christian man. He has just moved from Cambridge to the house on the corner, to start a new Christian work for [some group of churches].

I’m glad Alison is with me, because this is the kind of thing that leaves me speechless, since I don’t trust myself to open my mouth in case I say what I think. Which is, that anyone who knows Oxford (or indeed, the world) knows that it needs a new church like it needs a hole in the head, the heart, the soul, the foot, or the space-time continuum.

Yet God has told this lovely man to come and do this work: not to try to poach anyone from any of the existing churches, but to make real new disciples.

(This already betrays a rather particular theology and ecclesiology. Practically, there’s hardly anyone who doesn’t have a church affiliation somewhere in their history - even now, in this unchurched, postchristian generation - unless they belong to another faith altogether. Theologically, if they really don’t, that means they ‘belong to’ the Church of England - they just don’t know it yet. )

Alison gamely asks the proper questions: What kind of thing is this GC?

It’s Bible-centred (as opposed to all the rest, I suppose, which never use the Bible?), informal, relationship-centred, not saddled with buildings yet, interested in community (ha!), probably what people would call charismatic.

So how is it different from [Housechurch 1] and [Housechurch 2] which already have congregations in Oxford?

Well, it’s similar to both of those, in fact they have some quite close links. But obviously God has given his instructions.

What does He think He’s doing!? Anyone who knows Oxford (or indeed, the world) knows that it needs a new church like it needs a hole in the head, etcetera - so I’m quite sure the Lord knows it, too. What the churches in Oxford do need, if there’s some spare Christian energy and personnel around, is for people to come and get stuck in helping the many good works that are already going on, some of them struggling for lack of willing workers.

Has God got it wrong? Or could it be, could it just possibly be, that there are some Christians out there who aren’t hearing the message straight?