NOVEMBER 2019
The difference
with boys
TALES FROM AN “ARMY GRANDFATHER”
Chaplaincy life in the armed forces
WHAT’S SO AMAZING ABOUT THE BODY?
Philip Yancey introduces his new book
TRANSFORMING IDENTITIES Discussing transgenderism
CONTENTS | NOVEMBER 2019
FEATURES 12 Building on solid ground
Vision for PCI’s engagement in the public square
16 Friendship in action
The partnership of Friendship House and Great Victoria Street Presbyterian
18 Tales of an “Army grandfather”
Chaplaincy life in the armed forces
20 What’s so amazing about the body?
Philip Yancey introduces his new book
32 The church and boys
Tailoring children’s ministry to engage boys
34 A culture of community
PCI events on building the community of the church
Tales from an “Army grandfather” p18
36 Understanding human rights Outlining PCI’s work in this area
38 Transforming identities Discussing transgenderism
REGULARS 4 6 8 9 13 14 15 23 31 40 42 47
What’s so amazing about the body? p20
Letters News In this month… As I see it Life lessons My story Arthur Clarke Mission Connect Talking points Reviews Life in PCI Betsy Cameron
Transforming identities p38
CONTRIBUTORS Suzanne Hamilton is Senior Communications Assistant for the Herald. She attends Ballyholme Presbyterian in Bangor, is married to Steven and mum to twin boys.
Alan Meban attends Kilmakee Presbyterian Church and writes about culture and politics as Alan in Belfast on his own blog and Slugger O’Toole.
Karen Jardine is PCI’s Public Affairs Officer and an elder in Bloomfield Presbyterian Church.
Ruth Bromley is PCI’s Children’s Development Officer. She is married to Brendan, mum to Bess and is a member of First Holywood Presbyterian.
Cover photo: Mark Hawthorne November 2019 No. 826 £1.50 (€1.80) Published by: The Presbyterian Church in Ireland, Assembly Buildings, Belfast BT1 6DW. T: +44 (0)28 9032 2284 E: herald@presbyterianireland.org W: www.presbyterianireland.org
Editor: Sarah Harding
The views expressed in the features, news reports, letters and book reviews of this magazine are not necessarily those of the Editor. Editorial comment and signed articles do not necessarily contain the Subscriptions and Advertising: Elaine Huddleston; Suzanne Hamilton; official views of the Church, which can be laid down only by the General Assembly. Acceptance of advertisements does not imply endorsement Renée Finnegan of the goods or services. The Editor reserves the right to decline any Design and Layout: advertisement or letter without assigning any reason. Letters may be Edward Connolly edited for publication. No correspondence can be entered into regarding Printing: non-publication of advertisements or letters. W & G Baird Ltd.
The Presbyterian Church in Ireland is a Registered Charity in Northern Ireland (NIC104483); Registered Charity in Republic of Ireland (20015695).
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What’s so amazing about the body? Alan Meban caught up with author Philip Yancey at the end of his UK tour promoting his updated book, based on two titles he co-wrote with Dr Paul Brand in the 1980s. The author of classic books like Where is God When it Hurts? and What’s So Amazing About Grace?, Yancey is no stranger to these shores having spoken at New Horizon in August 2018 and previously appeared with New Irish Arts in the Belfast Waterfront. At the heart of Fearfully and Wonderfully is a metaphor about diverse but interrelated parts of our body cooperating together to keep us functioning and healthy, and how we should be working together like that as the body of Christ. Is this something you think the church needs to get a firmer grasp of ? Not just the church, but society in general. In the preface I talk about the difference between an organisation and an organism. Organisations, like governments and businesses, are very hierarchical. We pay the top people the most and treat them with special perks. And then we just ignore the people at the bottom. In 1 Corinthians 12, the fullest treatment of the body analogy in the Bible, Paul turns that upside down. He says the body can get along fine without the parts to which we give special attention, such as the eye. But the
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parts we treat with special modesty, the unpresentable parts, are the most valuable of all. The body wouldn’t work without them. And when I ask doctors what Paul is talking about, they say, probably kidneys and colons because if those stop working you will die within just a few days. I think the church loses sight of that because we have become an organisation, like the society around us. Much of church hierarchy is topdown; people at the top exert the power.
…the body can get along fine without the parts to which we give special attention…But the parts we treat with special modesty…are the most valuable of all.
I understand Jesus describing something that grows organically from the bottom up and the body image shows how that can work because cells are very diverse. They’re judged not on where they fit in the hierarchy, but they’re judged by their worth to the rest of the body. Loyal, faithful Christians who stick it out in tough [situations] or are prayer warriors because they’ve had a stroke and can’t get out very often. Those kinds of people may be the most valuable members of the body because our measurement is loyalty to the Head. You’ve written about us needing grace over doctrinal unity. It is not about agreeing on everything, but how do we treat people who strongly disagree or are morally offensive. Even the most holy people like the Pharisees were morally offensive to Jesus because they were missing the whole point of the gospel. Then he got the reputation of hanging out with sinners and prostitutes. In his parables, the hero is usually unexpected, the wrong person, not the holy guy.
What can we do about those we find morally offensive? Speaking in my home church, I said that, to me, one of the hardest things about prayer is the command to love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. I realised I’d never done that. I showed a picture of Al Qaeda and Isis terrorists, and I asked what would happen if every church in north America chose one of these people, learned to pronounce their name, and started praying for them. Didn’t Jesus tell us to do this? A colonel from the US army [attending the service] got quite convicted. He had served tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. He’d tried to kill people before, but never thought about praying for them. He started the ‘Adopt a Terrorist for Prayer’ website (atfp.org) where you can sign up, choose a terrorist, read a biography and agree to pray for them. We can know what God is like because God treats us, his enemies, with love, grace and forgiveness. That’s counterintuitive. It’s not human. It’s not the way the world works. The mission of the church is to show what God is like and if it doesn’t differ from the world around us, we’re probably doing something wrong.
One section in the book powerfully deals with chronic pain. Have we immunised ourselves from hearing and responding to cries for help from a society in pain? With modern media, we’re aware of every cry for pain around the world. It becomes almost numbing and you just can’t take it anymore. Dr Brand talks in the book about his leprosy patients. A healthy body is a body that hears the pain and pays attention to the weakest part. I see that in response to the persecuted church, and disasters around the world. The church does respond, but the individual person in the church needs some help in prioritising and making choices. We can’t each bear all the world’s suffering at once. When a baby has some sort of abnormality or is born out of wedlock
The mission of the church is to show what God is like and if it doesn’t differ from the world around us, we’re probably doing something wrong.
Fearfully and Wonderfully Back in 1976, Philip Yancey read an inspiring booklet by Dr Paul Brand, an orthopaedic surgeon who spent much of his career working with leprosy patients in India. The “brash young journalist” phoned him out of the blue at the leprosarium where he was working, flew down to meet him, and they subsequently Dr Paul Brand became firm friends. Brand had been sitting on an unpublished manuscript for years. Yancey saw potential in the writing, and added his own research and thoughts, publishing two books – Fearfully and Wonderfully Made and In His Image – in the 1980s. Yancey was impressed at the way Brand “would weave science, medicine and theology together, talking in great detail about the human body, but always with a sense of humility, gratitude and praise for the design of it”. He was touched by the surgeon’s stories of leprosy patients enduring rejection and suffering, yet bearing the triumphant image of Christ. Now combined and updated, Fearfully
in South Korea, there is a shame culture and parents will abandon the baby. Every day in Seoul, babies are discarded in garbage bins. One pastor was appalled and installed a box in the side wall of his church. When a baby is deposited on the soft blanket and the door closed, a warning light goes on, an alarm sounds and the pastor comes down and collects the baby. I visited that place. He has saved over 1,000 babies that would have been thrown away. And he finds new homes for them, not just in his church, but other churches across South Korea. Some have such difficult health problems that no one is willing to adopt them. The pastor has adopted 23 babies himself. That’s an example of standing out from the surrounding culture. Some people believe their calling is to protest or to legislate, and I understand that. But I use him as an example of what an ordinary person can do, a common pastor of a medium-sized church, dealing with the reality around him. He gets quite a bit of publicity in Seoul and that makes people think before they throw away their baby. We are to bear God’s likeness so that when people look at us, like when people look at this pastor in South Korea, and
and Wonderfully: The marvel of bearing God’s image explores the idea of ‘one body, many parts’ and how what we know about the cells within us can inform our lives as part of Christian community, with each of us made in the image of God. The book deals with blood and bones, skin, breath, muscles and pain. It’s a mix of human anatomy, physiology and a bit of social anthropology. And many amazing examples are drawn from Brand’s learning about patients with leprosy and their treatment. Bodily similes are built about how the body of Christ should behave. Brand concludes: “I have written of lessons from the spiritual Body: the need to serve the Head faithfully, the softness and compliancy of the skin, the diversity of member cells and the marvels that result from their cooperation. Taken together, these provide a sense of presence to the world – God’s presence.”
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What’s So Amazing About Grace?
see that God cares for all these children, God cares for the weak and for the marginalised. In the same way my military friend said God says love your enemies. We should be doing that. We should be standing out from culture around us in a provocative way that shows people what God is like.
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We should be standing out from culture around us in a provocative way that shows people what God is like.
President Carter – who still teaches a weekly Sunday school class in his local church – named you as his favourite modern Christian author. I didn’t know until somebody sent me a clipping from the New York Times! So many people either tilt towards practical politics or take a couple of issues like abortion and homosexuality and only focus on those. President Carter took his faith very seriously and even after his term in office he intentionally looked at human rights, basic human dignity, care for the weak and marginalised, and equality of races through [the lens of ] his faith. He tried to combine both what he believed was biblical and right, along with what was possible politically.
to evangelical leaders. And for that reason, they have strong support for the current president compared to Democratic alternatives. But at the same time what President Trump has done to the office, the profaning of the office, these angry petulant tweets that come out and the way he treats other people, the way he treats women, it’s one thing to support his policies, it’s quite another to say he’s God’s man for our time, because I don’t see qualities described as the fruit of the Spirit in abundance in President Trump’s style. We Christians are called to demonstrate those qualities, the fruit of the Spirit, as well as standing up for principles that we think are important politically.
In 2016, you expressed your amazement at the evangelical support for the policies of the then Republican candidate Donald Trump. Are you surprised, disappointed, or do you understand why some church leaders and members are so uncritical of President Trump? It’s a question of style. I know that some of the issues, like abortion, are important
You’ve more books in the pipeline? For the last couple of years I’ve been working on a memoir that tells some of my own family background stories that have not been told in print before. Most of my books are a combination of narrative and essay. But this one is not. It’s pure narrative, but explains a lot about why I ended up writing about the things that I did.
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In his most personal and provocative book ever, Philip Yancey offers compelling, true portraits of grace’s life-changing power. If grace is God’s love for the undeserving, then what does it look like in action? And if Christians are its sole dispensers, then how are we doing at lavishing grace on a world that knows far more of cruelty and unforgiveness than it does of mercy? He challenges us to become living answers to a world that does not know, ‘what’s so amazing about grace’.
The Jesus I Never Knew
For several years, Philip Yancey taught a class on Jesus that relied on movie depictions of his life. Out of that class came this book, The Jesus I Never Knew, it gave him a new and different perspective on Jesus and his work; his teachings, his miracles, his death and resurrection. The emphasis of this is the relational and personal rather than the scholarly. Ultimately, it is about who Jesus was, why he came and how no one who meets him ever stays the same.
Prayer: Does it make any difference?
Philip Yancey probes the very heartbeat, and the most fundamental, challenging, perplexing, and deeply rewarding aspect of our relationship with God: prayer. What is prayer? How does it work? In this book he encourages us to pray to God the Father who sees what lies ahead of us, knows what lies within us, and who invites us into an eternal partnership through prayer.
NOVEMBER 2019
Mission Connect
To be a Christian is to be a disciple of Christ
Getting side by side Rosemary Spiers
Mission news from workers around Ireland and the world.
To be a Christian is to be a disciple of Christ Chris and Rachel Humphries Home life Naomi Leremore On mission in northern Fermanagh Rev Gunther Andrich A ministry of presence Rev Jonathan Newell
Every aspect of our Church’s mission depends to some extent on United Appeal. Hundreds of projects and programmes at home and overseas are helping to advance God’s kingdom, showing God’s love in action to hundreds of thousands of people.
Busy days at River House Stephanie Moore-Archer
Including November prayer diary
The church & boys
Ruth Bromley highlights an event in the new year, that will encourage those involved in children’s ministry to consider how well their activities engage with boys.
I
t was the end of the summer and I had agreed to take an open children’s church on the first Sunday in September on the theme of prayer. There would be children from nursery to P7 and it needed to be interactive and inclusive of everyone. So, I planned and prepared and all that was left was to gather the resources. Then I read Nick Harding’s book, The Church and Boys, as part of my summer reading in work. It dawned on me as I thought about the morning I’d planned that it was skewed towards girls, and if I’m honest, probably much of the activity that we do in children’s ministry is too. I knew I needed to redo the planning in light of what I had read. Nick says in the opening page of the first chapter, “Boys are different from girls. Boys are part of God’s great creation, just as girls are, and God is a God of diversity, but there are a huge number of issues facing boys that make them different and may be affecting the
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way they become men.” Nick had my attention from this opening page; he doesn’t hold back as he lays out the way life is for the boys that we interact with in our ministry. “Testosterone in boys, which becomes more evident as they get older, slows down brain development whereas oestrogen in girls speeds it up. How then can our churches expect 10-year-old boys to behave as sensibly as 10-year-old girls? Often the church looks for both an intellectual level of understanding and an emotional response, which is difficult for boys of any age… boys like practical activities. They are more likely to take
…the more we admonish boys for behaving like boys, the more we tell them, ‘This place is not for you.’
things apart, think about how things work, and enjoy factual and evidencebased ideas.” The more I read this book the more I began to think about the children’s ministry, not just in my own congregation, but across the whole denomination. Many of our children’s leaders (as well as many of our primary school teachers) are female and so a lot of our children’s ministry is slanted in that direction. And that’s not a criticism; it’s simply a fact of female leaders doing what comes naturally. But maybe there is a better way. Either that is female leaders thinking more about the boys in our midst and how they are different, or it is encouraging more men into children’s ministry and allowing them to live out their faith as men for the boys to see. And here’s the challenge: “If boys do not have a significant male role model, they may struggle to thrive, and those who have no male in their lives at home or at school until they reach secondary school
will not have seen what a ‘man’ can really be like.” Wow. Nick also says, “The church could gain from embracing some of the messiness that boys bring to our communities…the more we admonish boys for behaving like boys, the more we tell them, ‘This place is not for you.’” So, what can we do as a Church? Nick suggests that we should try and view our worship space through the eyes of a boy and accept that we may have to work a bit harder to keep them engaged and to feel like church is a place where they belong. To aid this and to help our boys to grow, we may need to create a likeminded group of boys. Maybe you could do more to encourage your Boys’ Brigade company in all that they do as a step towards this. Nick goes on to say, “Boys in community are able to challenge each other, compare their problems, and talk things through, fight and bond with each other.” So, what about my Sunday with the full range of children and the prayer theme? Well I changed some of it to reflect
…we should try and view our worship space through the eyes of a boy and accept that we may have to work a bit harder to keep them engaged… what I read in this book. Just tweaked a few things because I also had the girls in the group to cater for, but it made a difference. I watched as all the children participated and then brought their parents up to see all the prayer stations and the challenges they had taken part in. Nick affirms, “Boys have a great deal to contribute to the life of any church.” I couldn’t agree more with this statement. We need to work harder to make this happen and allow our boys to contribute in children’s ministry, in worship and in community. If you want to know how to do that better, prioritise coming to hear Nick speak on this subject on 8 February 2020. It is crucial that we make a difference!
REVIEW
The Church and Boys Nick Harding
THE BIBLE READING FELLOWSHIP £8.99
The tagline for this book is ‘Making the Connection’ and it certainly lives up to that. In every part of the book it echoes the importance of making the connection with boys. My expectation was to read a book full of theory, statistics and analysis on boys and their relationship with the church; however, I was pleasantly surprised to find it gave real and practical examples. As someone who regularly engages with Boys’ Brigade leaders, chaplains and companies, I will now be saying, “Before you do anything, read this!” It opens your mind to thinking and understanding the adjustments we should be aware of when working with boys. For example, simple factors like thinking through the environment, activity and format in which we work with boys. There is an emphasis throughout the book on having male role models who engage in youth and children’s activities in church, so our boys see them in the front line of our congregations. Very simply and straight to the point, it states that, “Boys need men” and presents a real challenge to the church, not just to have men in background jobs or leadership roles but releasing them into children’s ministry so boys will then see these role models from a younger age. A quote that stands out for me is: “We need to do all we can to help boys grow in their faith and to know what their faith is all about.” For me, Boys’ Brigade is and always will be all about Jesus. Faith is central to what we do, as our object states: “The
The Church and Boys with Nick Harding Date: Saturday 8 February 2020 Venue: Assembly Buildings, Belfast Time: 10am-12.30pm Why are boys so under-represented in churches? Why do churches find it difficult to cater for boys? What would help boys in church to grow into mature men of faith? Come along to this one-off event and hear stories, see resources and listen as Nick Harding (the author of The Church and Boys) as he spells out the problem and encourages us to see this in missional terms. For more details go to www.presbyterianireland.org/events
advancement of Christ’s kingdom among boys and the promotion of habits of obedience, reverence, discipline, selfrespect and all that tends towards a true Christian manliness.” What I loved about this book is the continuous reference to faith and how the book provides simple practical suggestions to add to your context that will dramatically change your overall approach in how you reach boys for Christ. The book has lots of ideas on engagement with the Bible, prayer, worship and activities with boys. Nick says, “If we are to help the boys in our churches grow successfully into Christian men, we need to include them in the activities of the church from the earliest point on.” This spoke volumes to me. Boys’ Brigade provides that opportunity from a young age and we need to embrace it fully. This is a challenging read that really gets you to think of ministry to boys in a way you maybe have never thought of before. It is a fantastic resource for anyone working with boys in youth or children’s ministry and every Boys’ Brigade leader should read this book. Please pray for the work of Boys’ Brigade in our congregations. During 2020 Boys’ Brigade Northern Ireland will be embarking on a year of mission which will involve eight mission events during October 2020 in partnership with Crown Jesus Ministries. Please pray for the Mission 2020 as preparations begin and we build up to the mission events. David Penney, Training and Programme Officer, Boys’ Brigade Northern Ireland
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