Jason Swan Clark - Podcast

On New Year eve a short reflection in the face of what we might be hoping to avoid in 2022, after the experience of 2020 and 2021…So as we go into 2022, how is your perception? Are you suffering from target fixation and perceptual narrowing? Are you struggling not to hit the dangers and things you want to miss?

Faith often falters in the face of suffering and loss. Christianity is not about avoiding suffering through some name it and claim it superstition, and it is also not a stoical fatalism and the mere acceptance of fate. Instead, it is something radically different, of participation and transformation that can be practiced, whereby our faith begins to grow and grow instead of dissipating.

Denial does not protect but traps us and deceives us, keeping us from the experience of death and resurrection. Just as its opposite psychological sibling, fatalism overwhelms and destroys us, keeping us buried in the tomb of loss. Both snuff out real Faith.

Perhaps COVID is the great compression, an intensifier, and the great revealing. What has manifest was already there, something underneath that came to the surface under the intense pressures of COVID. COVID was not the cause of many things. It just took what was there and revealed it.

So many words have been used to chronicle and delineate this pandemic. The great _____(insert your choice of adverbial word or phrase); reset, leveller, pause, accelerator, resignation, etc. I prefer the descriptor of 'disruption'. Perhaps the 'Great Unsettling' is a better diagnostic word and account of our time….But what if the nature of COVID or its length meant something else. Indeed what if this moment, this disruption, was a chance to wake up. And to stop putting off all the things I want to be as a Christian and know I could be.

We are entering what is known as the 'recovery phase' of a disaster, and it is the most prolonged phase, taking years. Adrenalin is spent. Exhaustion sets in. Losses have to be counted and processed. Rebuilding in the face of loss takes an effort amid depletion of resources, emotional and financial. But Jesus has a route through it for us, if we choose Him.

Since March last year, I have been working on a project that is almost ready to launch. I have made over twenty long-form interviews with Christian leaders, from three worlds of the academic, social entrepreneurship and prayer. We have called the project ExtraECC - short for Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus. Those interviewed include, Rowan Williams, Frances Spufford, Steve Chalke, Martyn Percy, Jill Weber, Ben Pink Dandelion, Pete Greig, Ruth Valerio, Peter Meadows, Eve Poole, Chris Lee, Peter Owen Jones, and Sam Wells.

The truth is this: Christians need no permission in order to read God’s Word. God delights in speaking to his followers, as they read his Word. But there is another truth. We can also be very bad at reading the Bible. So how on earth are you and I ever going to be able to read the Bible well? A new book by Dr Stephen Burnhope speaks to and responds to this most enormous of challenges. How to let the Bible speak by itself and directly, but how we might also better navigate it with an understanding that we cannot obtain on our own. I this episode I interview Steve about this most amazing book How to Read the Bible Well: http://mybook.to/readbiblewell The Big Story of the Bible - talk by Steve Burnhope: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJzXSIECr-0 Steve Burnhope’s Blog: https://www.talkingofgod.com/conversation

In this short podcast update, I share about two projects you can listen to. An interview about discipleship and 'replanting' church in a post COVID world. Then the other is a collaboration, where I and my friend Dr Geoff Holsclaw, like many in the modern world, are grappling with the consequences of cutting edge science and how it can inform the daily walk of faith, leadership in the church, and the very task of theology. Discipleship and Re-planting: http://jason.so/Multiply TLD Theology and Neuroscience: http://jason.so/TLDlaunch

If A Christian Does Something But Doesn't Post It On Social Media, Did It Really Happen? by Jason Swan Clark

Today’s post is about the first steps for getting help with mental illness. Steps that are not about any lack of faith but are the most important confession of faith to learn to make. It takes courage to say those words, "I am not coping". It is an act of faith, like the Psalmist to declare to someone else how we are struggling, 'My flesh and heart have failed..." (Psalm 73).

I have hit the COVID wall. I am sick of the sound of my own voice as I talk with others for planning, caring, responding, leading. I am, moreover, fed up with my voice in my head. With the promise of coming out of COVID, I am so suddenly exhausted. Perhaps it is always darkest before the dawn. And so I have been considering Not Doing. And I am not very good at it.

(This is part 2 of a series as a podcast what will be a book on mental health and faith) Mental illness is a journey none of us wants to undertake, but we can only refuse it for so long once it comes upon us. For the longer we deny its effects on us, the worse it becomes. Like a warning light on our car's dashboard, where ignoring it makes what happens next much worse. People are prone to avoiding a doctor for physical symptoms, and even more so for the help and support mental illness require.

Let me introduce you to The Illusory Truth Effect. This is the cognitive bias (remember that means a mental processing error). The repetition of a statement and claim makes us more likely to believe it. In other words, just hearing a lie, again and again, means we are hard-wired to start believing it. So how do you fight back against the lies?

So this week my church network has moved its annual conference online. Another sadness under COVID that instead of meeting in person as we do each year with old and new friends from around the UK, we will instead be online. But as we meet, starting later today (you can watch and take part in free too), this moment has caused me to pause and consider again why I am part of this group of churches. Stay with me to the end or fast forward to the extremely person bit. https://www.vineyardgathering.com

The chances are that you are reading or listening to this because you need help, or you are trying to support someone else you know, love and care about. You are not on your own, even though it might feel like it. Mental illness is something you can, despite your worst fears, face, venture through and come out transformed. Instead of something to fear and be avoided, it can be God's gift for healing and growth.

It is distressing to see people I know and love resorting to comparisons of hate. Families, and church members, cross-post against each other on social media and cannot speak to each other in person. Your sides awful behaviour, lies, violence, justify ours. If our disposition, our deepest reflex to people different to us, especially family and fellow Christians is like this, we have been infected.

I don't need to explain loving my wife, or my children. But love for Jesus remains and sounds strange to modern ears. As if some apologetic is needed to justify why love and relationship are possible let alone normal with regards to Jesus. He has been my greatest love, to order the investments of my life in - where I studied, worked, who I married, and where I live. Yet at times under the pressures and sufferings of life, I have become like Peter, one who followed Jesus at a distance (Matthew 26:58). Like all great loves there is an ebb and flow, a push and pull, but only from me. Jesus has always been there calling me back to follow him. https://studios.vidangel.com/the-chosen https://youtu.be/yzqTFNfeDnE

Have you noticed when you ask your friends how they are, they might at present be saying 'I don't know?' You might have found that question hard to answer in COVID too. But what if there was a way to get a better handle on how we are doing, to take care of ourselves? A way to measure how we are doing no matter what we encounter.

You will have to steer a course into and through 2021, to decide how you are going to navigate in the face of all that impinges upon your hopes desire and plans. Suppose denial and despondency are not suitable pathways. How instead are Christians invited to navigate the worst of times and receive God's plans for their lives? Try walking backwards.

Leading ourselves and a church is challenging in a pandemic. But what does it take to lead a network of churches in COVID? In my interview with Andy Smith, I got to ask him that very question.

There might be out of the billions of people in the world, a great number of horrible people who call themselves Christians. You can meet them online anytime. But right now in church communities, are people you will never meet online, who are decent, good and kind, and gracious - because they love and follow Jesus. The problem is, you won't meet them in late-night social media trolling. It's offline, in person, in devotion to Jesus, picking up their cross daily, as they serve others.

Have you ever thought I know God can speak to people, but why are those who claim he does, so crazy, deranged and damaging? Well, there is another way, and I dare to suggest it is the way God does speak today. I have been on the receiving end of prophetic words from Andy Smith, one of the most gentle, caring, considered church leaders I know. I have seen the impact his careful sharing of words have had on so many others. In this short segment of an interview with And Smith, I ask him about the prophetic and how he has learned to hear from the Lord. Andy is the senior pastor of the Belfast Vineyard Church, in Northern Ireland. He is also on the leadership group for Vineyard Churches UK & Ireland.

Death is the great interrupter and revealer of our story. So are the unexpected moments of life, the things that arrest our story, like a serious illness, redundancy, divorce, and now a pandemic. Our disappointments like nothing else reveal the story we are living by and for. And often what we are living for is what Jesus warned us not to base our life on.

Like many of us, you might be struggling to know how to understand what we are facing and what we ought to do. In this clip from my interview with Andy Smith, we get some wise advice on what we really face. And best of all some wisdom and clarity on what the Lord does and does not require of us at this time.

This is probably the most significant issue at the heart of why we don't receive God's best in our lives. And there is an insight and practice from St Ignatius of Loyola to enable us to deal with this and to act in our own better interests. Agere contra - act against.

I recently interviewed one of my favourite inspiring leaders and pastor - Andy Smith. In this part of the interview I ask Andy if he could tell pastors, church planters, leaders just one piece of advice what would that be? Authentic, vulnerable, and hopeful. The answer might surprise you and hope will inspire you. We also snuck in a couple of pieces of extra wise advice.

It’s hard not to look at images of socially distanced worship services and miss what we used to be able to do. You might be struggling with what is now available to connect, and whether to connect at all. Maybe this reflection will help you to better see what God might be doing, and take part.

You have likely had someone pray over you or share with you, that you were made ‘for such a time as this’. You want that to be true but doubt if you are and have what it takes for all that is still to come…But there is somethng you were made to do, know how to do and love to do. All you have to do is this.

Fear and denial are two sides of the same coin…Catastrophizing denies the power of the resurrection and leaves us stuck on Good Friday, far from the cross. Denial prevents us dying to self, which is the only way to resurrection. It attempts to get to Easter Sunday without passing through Good Friday and death.

We often see two extremes with regards to faith, that instead of being different to each other, are actually two sides of the same coin. One collapses into tragedy, fear and loss. The confession of this kind of faith is loss with no hope. Then the other kind, often construed as faith, is all about sunshine and rose, and denial. The kind of faith that says if I don’t think about, or hear anything negative, bad things won’t happen to me. Kind of like putting on Christian la la ears. Both of these construals of faith are not the faith the Bible speaks of. The faith of the bible is one that laments. A dual confession of loss and complaint whilst at the same time declaring that God is sovereign and our hope. The faith of the bible is doing the right thing, being ‘faithful’ no matter how we feel or what is happening to us. The faith of the bible is confidence in God to act, that is not obsessed about my own circumstances, but the welfare of others, where I am God’s agent of faith for others. Not convinced, or want to know more? Listen to this short talk I made for my church on real faith. It draws on the story of the crossing of the Red Sea.

What is Christianity really about? What if it was as Jesus said, He was life itself? How might we understand what that means and looks like? How do we access this? In this most personal and disclosing of interviews, I interview Andy Hickford, who introduced me to Jesus when I was 17. We look back and look forward to the invitation to a life lived with Jesus.

I feel the need to make a public apology to people who are not Christians about Christians…There is no apologetic for the behaviour of some Christians. It just requires an apology. We are sorry, and they should do better. Here are some reasons why.

At the time, I thought this was an amazing interview, and I was moved and inspired as I talked with Jill Weber. We focused on her new book, Even the Sparrow. On playing an edited version of the interview to my church in our online Sunday service, my FB messenger, WhatsApp and YouTube comments started to fill up with messages. Messages from people being inspired, encouraged and excited about what God could do with them. If you want something to give your faith a shot in the arm, remind you God is in control and can do wonders through you, no matter what you are facing - give this a try. Jill Weber and her husband Kirk helped found the Greater Ontario House of Prayer in Canada, and she served as its Abbess for 17 years. Jill is now the Global Convener of the Order of the Mustard Seed, a lay ecumenical religious order, and currently serves on the international leadership team of 24-7 Prayer as their Director of Houses of Prayer, and as Director of Spiritual Formation at Emmaus Road Church in Guildford, UK.

Friends are wondering why despite their deep faith they are weary of online services. Watching them makes them more tired. Many who expected their faith to come alive at a time like this, who are being faithful, feel like they are undertaking a slow walk—a walk through dragging mud, that exhausts them more with every step…my diagnosis and suggestion are that there is a different reason they and you are tired, one not due to pressure of work, family or the economy under COVID.

Perhaps at this moment in history, we face our own Tower of Babel being revealed and responded to by God. COVID-19 is a virus that does not just cause respiratory symptoms but manifests and amplifies our other underlying health conditions. The conditions of our souls, minds and spirits, and way of life. Fever and delirium cause of to babel to each other and past each other in person and online.

The full interview I made with Peter Wyatt, who is a Christian and a trauma therapists specialist is now online in full. After serialising the interview for the past few weeks in video format, it has been insightful to see how his advice has correlated all that has been unfolding. We are a long from this being over and his advice still stands in good stead.

I got to interview Revd Dr Antipas Harris, who works with T D Jakes as the dean of the new Jake's Divinity School, and authored of the just-published "Is Christianity the White Man's Religion?" We discussed his book and the connections with anti-racism in response to the murder of George Floyd. I also asked for his advice on how churches, Christians and leaders can better respond to this cultural moment and opportunity. He has some superb advice. I hope you will take a listen.

Are you reticent to share your thoughts online? Do you fear to say something that might then be used against you? If you do, you are not alone....For without speaking and thinking incompletely and at times badly out-loud, we cannot change our minds, see other points of view, and ultimately understand 'better'.

The church may have meant man things to you before COVID. What has it become more and less of for you at this time? I share this very personal reflection of what the Church has come to mean for me.

The murder of one man, George Floyd, has reverberated around the world. Why has this incident in the USA, led to a worldwide response when previous ones have not? Beyond the obvious racism, and systemic problems in the USA, something bigger within COVID-19 seems to be taking place. This audio is from my Sunday talk Sunday 7th June.

The real work, the real things that require the addressing of racism will be lost. A moment for change becomes highjacked by attacking and defending statues, for we will do anything and everything other than what brings change.

A short reflection on why we cannot turn away but must instead 'bear witness' to what happened to George Floyd and his murder.

David Macgregor lived through the 2011 earthquakes that destroyed much of Christchurch, New Zealand. I asked him what he learned and how his church discovered what God does in a crisis, so we might better navigate COVID-19.

Is believing a conspiracy theory the definition of a deficiency in intelligence? After all, only stupid people believe in conspiracy theories? Wrong. Surely good people, because they are good don't believe conspiracy theories because these theories are, well, bad. Sadly no. Bad actors, malevolent agents in the world create conspiracy stories. But it is not just the feeble-minded and wicked who believe them. Really good people that you and I know believe these godawful things. They are sharing them on social media as I write this. Why is this you might indeed wonder, as I do?

Why do people turn to God in a crisis, why is that and what might happen in this crisis?

One of the things about this COVID-19 crisis has been the prodigious production and release of stunningly helpful resources by the church for the church. One downside has been the overwhelm from such resources. So how can we keep on top of these and future resources, so that we don’t get overloaded and miss what we really need? I offer some tips and the few resources that are now helping me the most.

You never know how much you really believe anything, until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life or death for you. So what do you really believe?

What if nothing the Coronavirus is doing to your life right now can stop you having the life you want and all that you will measure life by when it is over.

I've maybe clocked up over 2,000 hours of time in ZOOM over several years. I've experienced the good, the bad and ugly of ZOOM. I've seen how ZOOM can enable groups to share, and be intimate over extended periods. Such that strangers become close friends before they ever meet in person. In the end, meetings in virtual are no different from those in the real world, in that they just require etiquette appropriate to the medium. So for smaller groups sharing together here are my top tips for meeting in the virtual.

If not yet, you might already be thinking, 'great yet another ZOOM meeting for work', I need that like I need a hole in the head. But something more pernicious will also take place. That weariness will carry over into our faith engagements. The magic, the delight of being able to meet with people to share your faith, to pray and connect, will become just one more thing to do online. Why? Because there is something, we have not yet learned to do.