Into the Spider-Verse and the Leap of Faith

Miles in his Spiderman costume and hody crouches on the side of a building.

A young Black-Latino boy crouches on the edge of a building, music swells, he takes a deep breath, pulls down his spiderman mask, braces himself. Then as the soundtrack asks -What’s up danger? – he leaps from the top of a skyscraper and plummets, out of control, down towards the street below him.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. I want you to understand why Into the Spider-Verse and this moment in particular mean so much to me. So, here’s the proper context for Miles’ leap of faith.

Miles Morales gets bitten by a radioactive spider and tries to take on the role of Spiderman. His first and second attempt don’t go well at all.

Miles Morales as Spiderman falls between some buildings screaming ‘AAAAA!’

It’s not something he can do by himself. When Peter B Parker appears on the scene, he finally has someone to show him the ropes (webs?): how to unstick himself from things by relaxing, how to use a webshooter, how to swing. It turns out there are more Spider … people (?!) as well, none of whom have time to teach him anything, but they can show him what it means for each of them to be a Spiderperson.

He sees their unique skills and, more importantly, how they choose to use them. He sees their response to those they’ve rescued and to when they fail. He sees them fight, and get knocked down, and get back up again. Despite the lack of radioactive spiders in my life, I also know people who have shown me what it looks like to live through good times and bad, how to use my talents to help others, how to keep going when I just don’t want to. These people are in my church, in history books, and on nearly every page of the Bible. But, while I very much want to follow their example, I’m also afraid. Afraid that unlike my heroes, I would fail and fall and hurt.

When it’s time for Miles to prove himself, he can’t. He’s not ready, he doesn’t know how, there’s too much uncertainty, too much danger, things have already changed so much! What if there’s no going back? What if it’s the wrong decision?! He asks Peter B the question we all ask before a big decision: “When will I know I’m ready?” And receives the answer no-one wants: “You won’t. It’s a leap of faith. That’s all it is Miles, a leap of faith.”

The circumstances are different for each of us, but we all know that feeling: too much hangs on our decision and we can’t possibly know the outcome – maybe it’ll be all we hoped it would be but maybe it won’t. I know that feeling, I had it when I got married; when I moved countries; every job application, every message to someone I don’t know… I bet you know that feeling too, maybe you’re starting your own business, learning a new skill, taking an exam. None of these things are as physically dangerous as Miles’ leap, but they’re a leap of faith all the same.

That’s when his dad comes to talk to him.

Miles and his dad separated by a door. they both press their heads against it wanting to communicate better.

You can see and hear and feel the love from dad to son. It’s always been there but it’s clearer, more raw, more vulnerable and more emotional here (I’m not crying, you’re crying) – and it’s only after hearing this from his dad that Miles is actually able to take the leap of faith.

Miles’ leap of faith is not one of blind faith anymore. He can follow the example of other Spiderpeople who have made that same decision. And while he, for sure, doesn’t know what will happen; he’s now confident that he will be loved, whether he succeeds or fails.

That love is what makes the difference for me. Even though I’m aware that the people who love me can let me down, because I let down the people that I love too, I can be confident in how much God loves me. And I hope that is something you know too. Just as Miles hears (again) his family’s love for him as he stands on that edge, every time I approach something I’m afraid of, every time I would rather flee than fail, I can look at the time that God himself went to the cross and died for me – looking at that I can’t ever forget how deeply, how perfectly, how wonderfully I’m loved.

When Miles finally jumps, the glass shatters, it’s stuck to his fingers because he isn’t relaxed about it, he’s scared – it’s a jump into the unknown but one that he can now make. And he doesn’t fall forever. He soars.

Miles as Superman rises between buildings, joyfully shouting ‘WOOOO!’

Kids in Church

Whether you have just 2 kids in your church or 20 or 80 who are regularly there you need to think about how to include them in your church family - both in services which they stay in for but also if they’re going out to a Sunday School or a creche.

The Gospel Coalition recently published this article: 25 Tiny Ways to Welcome Kids in Church which contains very helpful ideas for the adults in the congregation to know, love, serve and engage the kids. There’s only one idea here I disagree with: under love it suggests you carry a treat - but unless you know the allergies of and have parental permission for every child and are prepared to find every kid and give them all a treat I do not recommend this as a good tactic.

Since you’re likely to have kids in services over Christmas and you’ve got a chance to rethink how yo do things for the next year, check out my favourite ways to get children an young people involved in the life of the church.

Easter Saturday: Not exactly a walk in the park

Today I sat on a bench by a pond. The sun shone in a cloudless sky (most unusually for Hamburg in April) yet the cool breeze made it bearable. The birds chirped a constant tune, quietly enough so it didn’t irritate, and the geese honked; loudly, but only a couple of times before they flew away. Trees, hedges and grass blended into a lush green watercolour-esque background, punctured by the occasional pops of yellow and purple flowers and the still water reflected it all back to me.

The bench was in the Friedhof Ohlsdorf, the largest cemetery in Europe and the fourth largest in the world. The flowers were those laid by headstones or planted on the graves, and I could hear the birds because of the hushed tones people tend to use around the dead. And I discovered, against all expectation, that a cemetery is the perfect place to spend Easter Saturday. Whether your cemetery is full of mossy crumbling gravestones around a village church, gothic Victorian marble mausoleums or neat rows of identical military graves, there are two good reasons other than peace and quiet to visit one on Easter weekend.

Cemeteries are a reminder of our own mortality. We use hushed tones out of respect for those mourning, but there is also something quietening about the realisation that death comes to everyone. In western cultures we are normally kept distanced from death; even in a global pandemic most of us knew death only as an ever-climbing number on our screens, only occasionally reminded that each of those numbers represented a person who was loved and who would be missed daily. Surrounded by names, birthdays, death dates and messages of love carved into headstones; we have to face that death is personal and that, on an unknown day, we too will pass away. At a time when the shops are filled with spring pastels and chocolate and bunnies, what a much-needed reminder that Easter weekend begins with death. The painful, naked death on a cross of a man who had brought life to so many others.

But there is so much more than death in a cemetery in spring. I saw flowers blooming and cherry blossom petals falling like gusts of snow, the terrapins clambered onto a log to sunbathe, and some plants that were probably asparagus spears (although they could have been the start of a completely different plant) were poking six inches out of the riverbank. I imagine some of the birdsong was probably about eggs and hatchlings and there were two adorably fluffy goslings following a mother goose across the grass. In the midst of death new life was everywhere. Even in the southern hemisphere where Easter arrives in the early autumn there are so many reminders of life being given and sustained, as the harvest is gathered and celebrated. It’s a reminder of the glorious resurrection, that the man who was God defeated death, not merely surviving it but reversing it and living again without death.

Easter begins on Good Friday with death and darkness but by the time the sun rises on Sunday morning we’re celebrating that new life has broken through. What could be a more appropriate way to spend the day in between then in a place where both the sadness of death and the joy of new life meet and mingle.

Joshua is my (accidental) favourite...

In 2016 I was co-organising the children’s work for my church’s weekend away. Where possible, we wanted to cover the same theme that the adults looked at, but then they chose this title for the weekend ‘Looking in Back in Thankfulness and Looking Forward in Dependence’ which doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, and 4 -12 year olds don’t always carry the kind of context which makes them able to talk about church life in those terms.

After some careful thought we decided to take the beginning of the book of Joshua as our theme. Standing on the boundaries of the Promised Land he must look back at the rescue from Egypt and all that God did for them in the desert, and he can look forward to all the goodness of the land God has promised them and look out for the dangers that are sure to come. Perfect! I enjoyed planning and running that very much, we even wrote a song, in which we rhyme way with quail.

Perhaps it was these fond memories that made my brain leap to Joshua when we needed a theme for a holiday club in the autumn of 2021. The children’s pastor here wanted to do something Old Testament, because all of our online videos were stories out of the Gospels and my notes say that my first option was doing several OT heroes whose lives all point to Jesus (much like the New and Better series). But we ended up running with that theme in our Sunday school classes, across all campuses, and we just so happened to get to Joshua by the time the holidays came round!

I could have used some of the material from the 2016 weekend away, as I’m now in a different country so it would have been new for the kids, but while there’s some natural crossover I wrote 5 days of brand new material! I do really love that new project feeling, so of course I started a new one, but I also get those same vibes from the Israelites standing on the edge of the Promised Land.

Also, you can see in Jesus is the New and Better Joshua that the parallels to the one who brings us into a new land are great, and natural, and easy to make and if there’s something I love more than talking about Joshua, it’s talking about Jesus.

That’s how Joshua turned out to be my accidental favourite.

Pastors, are you preaching to children?

I was reading Gentle and Lowly by Dane Ortland and he made a passing reference to the pastor and theologian of the Great Awakening, Jonathan Edwards, preaching to the children in his church.

This was the first time I had heard that. It doesn’t fit how we usually think about the man who preached ‘Sinners in the hands of an angry God’ - he is far too serious surely? It turns out that was normal for Edwards to preach, while everyone was there, to one particular age group. Harvard’s collection of the Works of Jonathan Edwards has counted 3 sermons just for 1-14 year olds between 1739 and 1742 - which is one a year. That doesn’t sound like very many but it is three times as many sermons as he preached specifically to the elderly or to the middle aged. (I should mention that his normal practice seems to have been to preach to everyone there and attempting to apply it to a wide range of his congregants.) It shows how much Edwards valued the children.

We so often say we want our kids and our youth to feel part of the church, but we have difficulty putting that into action - I’m including myself in this. Edwards shows us one way to do this, one way to show them that they are loved and that they’re wanted in your church is to have the pastors (or vicars or elders) teach them. There are a bunch of ways that this could be done:

• Have a pastor teach in Sunday School as a one off

• Have a children’s talk in your Sunday Services

• Preach a sermon for just the kids in your normal service

• Have an elder give their testimony at a kids event

• Get church leaders involved in after school clubs

• Have preachers on the Sunday School rota

What have you already tried and which of these ideas appeal to you?

If you’re inspired by Jonathan Edward’s example then you should read Ricky Njoto’s article on Three Things Jonathan Edwards Teaches Us About Youth Ministry.

Jesus is the New and Better...

There’s a new series of lessons for Sunday Schools, aged 4-11, and I’m so excited for what it teaches kids about who God is. This is one of my favourite themes in the Bible, I’ve already taught this series in two different churches, and I love how the whole Bible is set up to show us who the Christ would be and then in the New Testament who Jesus is.

I got the idea for this series from this clip of a TIm Keller sermon, and somehow misremembered the title as New and Better instead of True and Better - but I think that New is a category that works better for children anyway.

It is glorious news! That Jesus is honestly the best of all the Bible heroes and that God knows what he’s doing enough to make such an incredible and complicated demonstration of what Jesus would be like.

Epiphany

I remember sitting in my then pastors office as he explained the meaning of Epiphany to me. We got as far as “…and ‘Phany’ means…” before descending into giggles and I don’t remember if we ever finished that conversation.

Since this is much less amusing to explain in writing let’s give it a go:

• Epi
  is a Greek preposition which doesn’t map on to our English ones very well; it can mean on or above but to is also acceptable and the one that seems to be in use here.

• Phany
  is also from the Greek meaning to show, to display or to bring to light.

What’s this got to do with January the 6th? Well, it’s the day we celebrate the Wise Men visiting Jesus. Of course, we don’t have exact dates for when this happened in relation to Jesus’ birthday, but it does seem to be closer to 2 years later rather than just 12 days (so maybe we’ve just marked Epiphany for Christmas 2019!) But it is very much something worth celebrating!

Why celebrate Epiphany? The arrival of the Wise Men, from somewhere to the east of Israel, demonstates that this isn’t just a local event or even one solely for the Jews. Christmas is marked by God himself coming to the poor, the lowly, the outcast - Mary, Joseph and the Shepherds, but they’re all Jewish. They’ve been waiting for the Messiah all their lives, and it’s a joy for them to see God’s promises fulfilled. But Epiphany brings the God Man to light for Gentiles, unbelievers, those who lived far away and looked to the stars, not the scriptures to find meaning and purpose. Yet God used what they knew to reveal to them that he had come for them!

On Epiphany we remember that God came for Jews and Gentiles, which is good news for both Jews and Gentiles as we meet the God who came to save the whole world!

Also Happy Christmas to Eastern Orthodox believers in Russia, Egypt, Greece and whereever in the World you’re worshipping today!

Coming Soon in 2022: Planning for Sunday School

I do have an ideal plan for what I would like to do through the year in Sunday School. To no-one’s surprise I’ve never done it and it’s not going to happen this year either. But also I’m not very good at sticking to my plans so we’ll see if that does ever happen…

I have some of a plan for this year - in the Sunday School I’m teaching we’re following the sermon series for the first quarter and I’m super excited about families being able to have conversations over lunch about the passage they’ve both just heard. I’m also interested to see if I’ll feel more or less like I’m missing out on services when we’re doing the same thing.

On the blog we’re starting with lessons from the Old Testament - how Jesus is the New and Better version of many people (and occasionally things) in the OT - this is one of my favourite themes and it’s so good I’ve taught it twice! After that we’re moving into Esther, which is such a good book and there’ll be lots of great conversations to be had, then just before the summer I’ll share a Holiday Club plan with you! I haven’t decided yet which of them it’s going to be but I should probably go New Testament for reasons of balance so maybe you can look forward to some Acts then.

That’s as far as I can plan at the moment; and there are, of course, a few surprises coming that I haven’t yet shared with you - we’ll see how well the Disorganised Sunday School Blog lives up to it’s name!

Bigger on the Inside: A Special Doctor Who Christmas

"It's bigger on the inside!" is the cry of everyone going into the TARDIS for the first time. Through those blue wooden doors is a space that could make your brain dribble out of your ears, metaphorically, and possibly quite literally as well. It's an impossible, unimaginable thing and yet, there you are. When you should be in a space smaller than a student bedroom, you're in a room large enough for a school assembly with an untold number of corridors leading to rooms including, but not limited to, a library, a wardrobe and even a swimming pool.

It's life changing for the Doctor’s companions. Rose Tyler and Bill Potts get to exchange their mundane jobs for the beauty of the universe and saving the world. Even for Dr Martha Jones and Police Officer Yaz Kahn traveling in the TARDIS with the Doctor completely changes how they see the world. As the 12th Doctor himself says (when he's pretending it's his first time):

"My entire understanding of physical space has been transformed! Three-Dimensional Euclidean geometry has been torn up, thrown in the air and snogged to death! My grasp of the universal constants of physical reality has been changed [dramatic pause] forever."

And we haven't even mentioned that when you exit through those doors you could be anywhere in time and space. If only such a place existed, outside of good editing and great set design. If only, if only, bigger on the inside were possible...

The worlds of Harry Potter and Mary Poppins use magic to create rooms, and extremely useful bags, which are bigger on the inside. And don’t we all wish that we could have a bag like that? Unfortunately, we can’t use magic outside of stories and, as the 13th Doctor makes clear, science is not an option available to us either:

Graham: How do you fit all this stuff inside a police box?
Doctor: Dimensional engineering.
Yaz: You can’t engineer dimensions.
Doctor: Maybe you can’t.

The Doctor is right, we live within the dimensions of both time and space and there’s no sign of us being able to change that.

But good fiction does reflect reality and in the final book of the Narnia series, The Last Battle, CS Lewis mentions a time that ‘bigger on the inside’ happened in the real world. On entering a stable that opens not into the inside of a stable but an entire world, Lucy comments, "In our world too, a stable once had something inside it that was bigger than our whole world." Narnia may be fictional, but Lucy was right, in our world you could have seen that stable, about two-thousand years ago in the little town of Bethlehem.

Inside that little town would have been a small unremarkable house, and inside that small house would have been a room which was used in the winter as a stable. Any sheep would have been moved outside (and cared for by shepherds) in order to make enough space for a young couple to come and stay. And inside that room the small food trough would have been emptied of food and lined with something soft and warm so that it could be a safe place for a baby boy. Inside that baby would have been all the potential of a human life; he might grow up to be great or good or kind or clever, just like any other baby.

Unlike any other baby, Jesus had in him something much bigger than any other human. As well as being totally human he was God. The God who made the stars and planets now looks up at them from the earth. The eternal God in a growing body, and a mortal one.  The God who made humanity to be like him, became one of us, just like us, because he wanted to be with us. God incarnate; God made flesh; God with us; Emmanuel. Could there have been anything more incredible, more impossible, more strange or more beautiful inside that stable than what was actually there?

As she realises that the TARDIS is bigger inside than out, Bill is filled with amazement, asking “How is that possible? How do you do that?” The Doctor’s robotic companion, Nardole, carefully breaks it down for her:

Nardole:  First you have to imagine a very big box fitting inside a very small box.
Bill: Okay.
Nardole: Then, you have to make one. It's the second part people normally get
stuck on.

There are similar questions to ask about the incarnation: How is it possible for Jesus to be both human and God? How does all of God’s glory and goodness fit inside a baby? These are fantastic questions, but the answers can be as hard to understand as making a very big box fit inside a very small box. The questions that change how we see God, the world and ourselves, the questions that change our lives, begin with a different word: why? Why did God become a human like me? Why would he choose to live on earth within the boundaries of the dimensions he created? Why would he exchange all the beauty of heaven for a mundane human life? Why was rescuing me important enough that he would do the impossible? And, of course, why does this matter?

---

This new version of Away in a Manger is not only musically superior to the one we all know from our childhood but the lyrics have been dramatically altered to reflect some of the wonder of that first Christmas baby and his almost paradoxical nature.

Away in a Manger (All Glory to Jesus)

If you enjoyed the mix of Doctor Who and big questions of faith and wish I’d said more about how that connects to what Christians believe. This amazing and short book by Rebecca McLaughlin does exactly that; answering some of the questions you might have off the back of this: Was Jesus Even a Real Person? How Can You Believe in a Virgin Birth? Can We Take the Gospels Seriously? And Why Does It Matter?

You can get the ebook version of Is Christmas Unbelievable? here for less than £2 which is a very good price for some big answers to some very big and important questions.

Love Came Down - Interview with Author Bethan Lycett!

God loved the world so much, that he gave his one and only Son… is the central theme of Love Came Down by Bethan Lycett, and I was so excited to be able to ask her a few questions about her book. Do read on if you’re looking a book to give away this Christmas:

Tell us three things we should know about you...

I am a wife, and mum to 3 boys. I am someone who loves cooking and crafting. I’m a big maths and engineering geek having taught maths for 13 years (I do still tutor maths and mark exams since leaving the classroom 3 years ago).

What inspired you to write Love Came Down?

I wrote a nativity book 3 years ago and the aim of that book, The Nativity, was to tell a more biblical account of the nativity story without extra things that have crept in over but aren’t mentioned in the bible (donkeys, kings, etc) and also to include things that often get missed out (Elizabeth, Zechariah, the trip to the temple with Anna and Simeon etc). Having written that I didn’t think that I would write another Christmas book, I’d almost ticked that box. So when I was asked if I had any ideas for a Christmas book my initial answer was no!
But I decided that a book which tied together the whole story of the bible would work. So in some ways, Love Came Down isn’t actually a Christmas book, its a book that tells the story of the whole Bible through John 3:16 as the basis, but obviously that includes Christmas when God sent his only Son! It is well suited to give away at Christmas, but actually is a book I hope is read all year round.

Why did you decide to write the 3 different types of book?

Initially the book was written just for preschool children. One of the Facebook groups I’m on for leaders of toddler groups around the country had been saying that many books could be too wordy and difficult for really little ones to understand. So I asked the question, “What would the perfect toddler book be like be?” The answers came back: a board book, short words, short sentences and at a good price! So that is what I set about doing. Once I had completed the toddler book and 10Publishing liked the sound of it I was then asked to write a version for older children. With my previous Christmas book, The Nativity, I wrote the older children’s one first and then condensed it into a simplified version, but this time I was going the other way which is actually a bit harder! I had to flesh out the story to make it clearer for an older child, but still make it understandable.

Previously we had done a colouring book to accompany The Nativity, but for this one I really wanted an activity book because my own children aren’t too bothered about colouring but would do a word search or a maze, so I decided to adapt the different parts of the book into different activities, while still keeping elements of the story being told. Hopefully this means it is a resource that can be used across a wide age range from babies right up to top primary school.

What was your favourite moment of writing and preparing?

When you try and write in rhymes like I do sometimes finding the perfect couplet can seem like it’s never going to happen. This can be a real problem when you’re trying to tell biblical truths. Writing a made up, fictional story, gives you the flexibility to be able to add in words and phrases that suit the rhyme. However, when you’re trying to stick to the truth of the gospel you don’t have that license and so it can take a while to find the correct phrases. Sometimes it’s a bit of a eureka moment when you find something that works and sometimes I can be literally anywhere when that happens, so I have to get out my phone and make a note of it before I forget! I also always enjoy seeing what my illustrator, Hannah Stout, has transformed the words into when she is doing the illustrations. She is so talented and created a whole back story of a parent and child which weaves through the book.

Who do you hope will read Love Came Down?

I hope that many children get a chance to read Love Came Down from both non-Christian and Christian families. Having read it to my own children there are so many important truths that it is good to remind them about, and certainly the rhyming story sticks in your mind. That’s why this book is also great for non-Christians, and my hope is that it will be given away widely through toddler groups, church clubs, and other outreach activities, so that children might understand why Jesus came, why he died, and how we can respond to him.

What’s next for you?

In terms of writing, I have a few ideas for an Easter book, and also a short booklet for giving away around Halloween time, as I know these are other key points in the year when non-Christians are keen to engage in the community. In terms of reaching out with the gospel, I try and look for opportunities as an individual, and also through the church, to engage with non-Christians and point them to Jesus. I also edit the Life Magazine, which is an evangelistic resource which can be given out throughout a community, so I’m always looking out for great stories of lives changed by Jesus, and ideas for other interesting articles too, from recipes to money saving ideas or home tips!

Do head on over to 10ofThose where you can buy the books as presents or in bulk to give away (at any time of the year!).