Having introduced myself and described some of my hopes for the book, in this post I begin to unpack a theme which runs throughout – ‘Reimagining Possibilities’.
In the opening verses of the fourth Gospel John describes a fascinating exchange between John the Baptist, and the Jewish leaders. The Baptiser had just been getting on with his main role in life, preparing the way for Jesus. But his radical call to repentance and general actions were disturbing the religious establishment. A delegation of priests and Levites were sent to integrate Him:
‘Then they said to him, “Who are you? Let us have an answer for those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?”’[1] .
Wow, those were heavy questions to hurl at John, as a means of ascertaining exactly who he was, and the nature of his relationship with Jesus.
The truth is of course, is that they are equally penetrating for us. If we allow them, they can cut to the very core of who we are. As such they are a great place for us to begin thinking about Reimagining Possibilities: Who are you? What do you say about yourself? Let us have an answer…
What does Reimagining Possibilities mean?
Let’s imagine you are sensing God calling you in some way. That could be to explore a vocational role, to youth work or ordained ministry, for example. Or it could be that you feel you are being called to begin a new mission or ministry in your work place, or as a volunteer, in addition to your 9-5 job. The Bishop of Chelmsford, Stephen Cottrell, has called this, ‘the echo of a whisper of a call’. In other words, it’s the feeling you have when you kind of think that God may be stirring something in you, but his voice, if indeed it is his voice at all, seems very distant, very faint, and the whole thing can leave you feeling quite uncertain.
In addition to feeling uncertain whether it is God calling, many people also feel insecure about themselves. Those insecurities are expressed in phrases such as: “it cannot be me, I could never do, or become that”; “I’m not qualified or academic enough”; “I don’t know enough Christian stuff”; “God has clearly made a mistake and called the wrong person”; “the church would never want me, I’m not good enough”. I have heard all of these statements – mainly from my own mouth.
A call from God can unlock a multitude of vulnerabilities in us, which seem to go way beyond the call itself. The reaction can seem disproportionate to what a person may think God is saying. It appears that wrestling with a sense of vocation is often synonymous with wrestling with the very core of who we are. The call opens doors in us that we’ve never opened, or perhaps have not opened for a long time, and behind the doors lies the real ‘you’.
Those uncertainties, insecurities and vulnerabilities can feel horrible, overwhelming in fact. But they are very important because they force us to face the penetrating questions: Who are you? What do you say about yourself? For many, what those thoughts and feelings cause us recognise is that we are far from the finished product, ready for action. In fact they can make us feel like we are the ‘hardly started’ product.
‘God is not disillusioned with us because he had no illusions with us in the first place’.
But, what if rather than viewing those thoughts and feelings as a threat, they actually represent a wonderful invitation from God? An invitation to allow Him to begin a new and beautiful work of being, ‘transformed into his image’[2], to an even greater extent. This is the amazing truth, God knows us better than we know ourselves, with all our frailty, and yet he still chooses us, and calls us. He has much higher hopes and dreams for us than we have for ourselves. I love the expression, ‘God is not disillusioned with us because he had no illusions with us in the first place’. He knows us, and calls us in spite of that, not because of that.
‘God picks the weakest, the smallest, the meanest of people on the face of the earth, and he uses them’.
Saint Francis of Assisi
Answering those questions honestly is often an admission that we are starting from quite a humble place; we don’t have much going for us, and we need to be reimagined, probably quite significantly. When Saint Francis of Assisi was asked why God called him he said, ‘God picks the weakest, the smallest, the meanest of people on the face of the earth, and he uses them’[3].
This, in simple terms, is what I mean by Reimagining Possibilities. It’s about acknowledging that God graciously calls and choses us, but he also needs to transform us. It’s about the necessity to be transformed, but it’s also about God’s desire to transform us. How much we’re up for that, and the degree to which we need to be reimagined, is revealed by our honest answers to the questions: Who are you? What do you say about yourself?
Reimagining Poultney
I can say all that with confidence because it is my story and my experience. Even from the initial call at Spring Harvest in 1989, although I have not always used the term, I knew that there was a significant amount of reimagining that needed to take place within me.
Like many I began from a place of feeling devoid of any sense of direction or ambition in life, let alone having any sense of call. I remember a conversation when sat in a friend’s car, aged 17. I distinctly recall wondering aloud what I was going to do with my life as I had no discernible talent, skill or gift which I could put to good use (the glories of teenage angst!). But over thirty years God has completely reimagined me, in a quite remarkable way. It was just a few years after that moment in the car, when he first called me, and that call has been expanding ever since. But more importantly, ‘who I am’ has also developed significantly since that moment.
Just to clarify, I am not saying I have turned into something grand or great, this is a celebration of the ordinary after all. If anything I am more conscious now than ever, of my weaknesses and failures. I often find myself wondering if I have ‘achieved’ anything in twenty five years of ministry – do I simply have more titles than testimonies? I am plagued by the familiar insecurity of many Christian leaders, that is, believing that my peers have made a much greater mark on history than I have, or will. I’m not being falsely modest here either, I’m just trying to be real about my experience. I think what I can say is, to quote Mother Teresa, ‘I have done no great things, only small things with great love’ (although even the ‘great love’ bit has been questionable at times).
I’m
simply trying to highlight the change from then to now. If I were to have been asked, ‘who are you?’
and ‘what do you say about yourself?’ when sat in that car aged 17, I would
have said, ‘I have no idea’ and ‘not much’, if I even knew how to respond to
the questions in the first place. Now I
can actually answer the questions, but also, have a much richer, fuller,
deeper, and more secure understanding of who I am. My mini-bio on Twitter is: ‘Ragamuffin. Abba’s Child’ – that, in three words, sums it
up. The point is, if God can reimagine
me, and the possibilities for my life to the extent he has, then he can do that
with anyone’s.
[1] John 1:22
[2] 2 Corinthians 3:18
[3] Cited in McDonald, 2004:71