Unbuttoning the Church

How do you read Caravaggio's The Calling of St Matthew? Which figure is the evangelist - the bearded man in the black hat, or the younger fellow keeping his gaze fixed on his cash rather than Christ on the right of the picture? Is the bearded man gesturing to himself, or to the other figure? I think the latter, while Canon Chris Russell, the Archbishop of Canterbury's Advisor on Evangelism and Witness, argues that it's the former, which radically changes your interpretation of the painting.

This is just one and not the most important point I disagree with in the online CofE 'Leadership for Evangelism' material I'm working through at the moment with a view to fulfilling the bit of our development plan which deals with 'faith sharing' (the overall significance of the painting is that it's an illustration of the way the encounter with Christ can take place in the midst of our everyday lives, which is fair enough). A more notable example is the episode in another passage where two commentators discuss what holds ordinary Christians back from sharing their faith. 'We've done extensive work across years in 18 countries,' says one, 'and what comes back consistently is that they're worried about rejection.' Hm. My mind goes back many years to a different context, to a Liberal Democrat meeting in Oxford where my late and lovely friend Sam was asked by the future MP for Oxford West why he didn't invite any of his friends to our meetings: 'Because I want to keep them, Evan', Sam answered reasonably, and I have always believed the situation is the same in matters religious. Nobody wants to think that their friendship is instrumental, that the relationship is actually about recruitment into an organisation, and what Christians are afraid of is not their friends or relatives saying No as such, but being thought to be fake, to be engaging in a relationship for the sake of something else. I'm not sure the Church's officials really want to think about that.

But there is a lot of useful material there, too, and it makes me reflect differently about some of our activities at Swanvale Halt. The things we’re doing at the moment to try to widen our diet of worship in ways that might provide different routes into faith for those on the edges of it – Forest Church, Compline online, and Sunday Space – are not on their own drawing in a single soul beyond the ones I could have predicted all along would take part in such things. I now doubt they will. What they might do is get some of the congregation acclimatised to the habit of being more than passive consumers of religion, but being more open and articulate about it, a little less controlled and buttoned-down. It’s not easy for me, frankly, because I rather prefer controlled and buttoned-down, but it’s absolutely necessary. So I carry on lowering my sights until they are almost level with the ground!