Nostalgia: last year's t-shirt

people

Most of the Christians I know are disappointed with their church, finding it to be either too traditional or too modern. The sermon is either too theological or not theological enough. The people, too cold to one another or too cliquish. In the end, the root problem is always the same. It is the people.

John Koessler

Postman: technopoly

...consists in the deification of technology, which means that the culture seeks its authorisation in technology, finds its satisfaction in technology, takes its orders from technology. This requires the development of a new kind of social order, and of necessity leads to the rapid dissolution of much that is associated with traditional beliefs.

quoted Dawn p29

Dawn: intimacy & worship

Living far apart from each other, members of a congregation do not hold each other as their primary community. Consequently churches do not experience the deep intimacy that could characterise our times together. We might know some facts about each other, but we do not actually know who our fellow congregant really is, so we talk about trivia when we gather. We do not know how to share what genuinely matters, how to deal with the real lives and deep hurts or doubts of honest people, or how to speak the truth. Lacking sincere intimacy in congregational fellowship, we often put false pressure on worship to produce feelings of intimacy...

Marva Dawn, Reaching Out without Dumbing Down, p.28

Disney: celebrity

As far as I can remember, being a celebrity has never helped me make a good picture … or command the obedience of my daughter or impress my wife. It doesn't even seem to help keep fleas off our dog, and if being a celebrity won't give one an advantage over a couple fleas, then I guess there can't be that much in being a celebrity after all.

Walt Disney

Fenelon: die every day

Bear your cross. Do you know what this means? Learn to see yourself as you are and accept your weakness until it pleases God to heal you. If you die a little every day of your life, you won't have too much to worry about on your final day

Fenelon: peace

Encourage peace, become deaf to your over-active imagination. Your spinning imagination will harm your health and make your spiritual life very dry. You worry yourself sick for no good reason. Inner peace and the sweet presence of God are chased away by restlessness

Fenelon: suffering

God never makes you suffer unnecessarily. He intends for your suffering to heal and purify you. The hand of God hurts you as little as it can. The yoke that God gives is easy to bear if you accept it without struggling to escape.

François Fenelon

Church Removal

HISTORIC CHURCH DRIVEN TO NEW HOME

Removers this week delivered a 700-year-old church to a new location after strapping it to the back of a flat-bed truck. The Migbrag mining company paid £2 million for the removal job after learning that the Emmaus Church and surrounding village of Heursdorf, near Leipzig were sitting above 50 million tonnes of brown coal. The road trip represented a victory for the 320 residents of the East German town who had refused to leave the village unless the church went with them.

Sources: The Guardian (1/11); The Times (1/11)
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article2781251.ece
http://www.guardian.co.uk/germany/article/0,,2202902,00.html

Piper: fight

This faith will fight anything that gets between it and Christ. The distinguishing mark of saving faith is not perfection. It is not that I never sin sexually. The mark of faith is that I fight. I fight not with fists or knives or guns or bombs, but with the truth of Christ. I fight anything that diminishes the fullness of the lordship of Jesus in my life. I fight anything that threatens to replace Jesus as the supreme treasure of my life.

John Piper, quoted CT (also in When I Don't Desire God)

Just a thought....

Do you think the reason God has not revealed the date of the Second Coming, is that some church members' would vote against it as being on an inconvenient day?

Vision and obedience in preaching

Only after people have a vision of God (the love, beauty, justice, and power of his kingdom) will they be ready to intentionally seek and employ the means to experience him through obedience—an aspect of spiritual formation that occurs most effectively in smaller settings through the medium of relationship.

Skye Jethani, CT.

Media dumbing

"When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby-talk, when, in short, a people become an audience and their public business a comedy show, then a nation finds itself at risk."

Schoerghofer, quoted CT 8th October 2007

CSL: Books in heaven

"Yes", my friend said. "I don't see why there shouldn't be books in Heaven. But you will find that your library in Heaven contains only some of the books you had on earth." "Which?", I asked. "The ones you gave away or lent." "I hope the lent ones won't still have all the borrowers' dirty thumb marks", said I. "Oh yes they will", said he. "But just as the wounds of the martyrs will have turned into beauties, so you will find that the thumb-marks have turned into beautiful illuminated capitals or exquisite marginal woodcuts."

"Scraps", in Christian Reunion, p69

CSL: Thinking Sins

Those who do not think about their own sins make up for it by thinking incessantly about the sins of others.

'Miserable Offenders', in Christian Reunion, p80.

CSL: the wrong way of hating yourself

The other kind of self-hatred, on the contrary, hates selves as such [as opposed to the self-centred self]. It begins by accepting the special value of the particular self called me, then, wounded in its pride to find that such a darling object should be so disappointing, it seeks revenge, first upon that self, then on all. Deeply egoistic, but now with an inverted egoism, it uses the revealing argument, "I don't spare myself" - with the implication..."I need not spare others"...

CSL, "Two Ways with the Self", in Christian Reunion.

Breeding out atheism

...recently the most common explanation atheists give for religious belief is that such belief is evolutionarily favored: that is—for reasons which some atheists guess at, while others decline to speculate—religious belief in a person increases the chance that that person will pass on his or her genes to another generation.

Now, an atheist saying this immediately has a new problem, especially if he or she thinks that religious belief produces violence and intolerance—which is what many atheists, most notably Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris, have shouted from the world's rooftops. Anyone who holds both these views is in an interesting position, to say the least. Do we say that if I am violent and intolerant toward others I am more likely to pass along my genes—perhaps because I kill or injure those who do not share my religious beliefs before they can reproduce? If we do say that, then the atheist who protests against violence and intolerance will have to argue that we should behave in ways that do not maximize the likelihood of passing along our genes.

But this is a bad situation for an atheist to be in...If religiously inspired violence and intolerance are evolutionarily adaptive, and the blind processes of natural selection are the only ones that determine reproductive survival in the long term, then people who argue against religion and its accompanying pathologies are certain to diminish in numbers and eventually become totally marginal—nothing more than the occasional maladaptive mutation. The selfish gene will ultimately, necessarily, win out over the altruistic one.

Alan Jacobs, Christianity Today Books & Culture

Public art

The problem was that, squatting in an area that the county wanted to convert into office space, there was a large ugly wad of metal, set into the concrete. So the county sent construction workers with heavy equipment to rip out the wad, which was then going to be destroyed.

But guess what? Correct! It turns out that this was not an ugly wad. It was art! Specifically, it was Public Art, defined as ''art that is purchased by experts who are not spending their own personal money.'' The money, of course, comes from the taxpayers, who are not allowed to spend this money themselves because 1) they probably wouldn't buy art, and 2) if they did, there is no way they would buy the crashed-spaceship style of art that the experts usually select for them.

Dave Barry

Peterson: remembering spiritual direction

I was angry over what had been said about me personally and I was concerned about the seeds of dissent in the congregation. And what was I going to do about it? I was going to confront the people who were criticizing me behind my back and force them to deal with me face-to-face. And 1 would rebuild the peace of the congregation through visitation and preaching. Actually, it was routine pastoral work. He interrupted my conventional approach. “Don’t you think there might be more to your anger than righteous indignation? Don’t you think it could be a symptom of pride that you didn’t know you had? Why don’t you explore the dimensions and ramifications of your anger? And as to the unrest; what if the Spirit is preparing something new in the congregation? What if the whitecaps on the recently smooth waters are caused by the wind of the Spirit, not the whispers of critics? Isn’t it possible that you are working for a premature and bland peace when something deeply creative is in motion?” He named the anger as sin; he discerned the unrest as Spirit. He directed me to the essential work of dealing with my sin and responding to the Spirit. The things I had set out to do still had to be done, but they were mere footnotes to the major work that he set before me. He directed me to the obvious, but in my passion to clear myself and to have a smilingly harmonious congregation I hadn’t so much as noticed the obvious. That is why the work of spiritual direction is essential — because we need to deal with the obvious, with sin and with the Spirit, and we would rather deal with almost anything else.
In these moments when we are in conversation with another and spirit touches spirit, “deep calling to deep,” there is often a confirming sense that we are doing our best work. So we don’t need to be talked into doing this, at least most of us do not. For most pastors being a spiritual director doesn’t mean introducing a new rule or adding another item to our overextended job descriptions, but simply rearranging our perspective: seeing certain acts as eternal and not ephemeral, as essential and not accidental.

Eugene Peterson, Working the Angles, p152-3

CSL: improving poetry

Those who read poetry to improve their minds will never improve their minds by reading poetry. For the true enjoyments must be spontaneous and compulsive and look to no remoter end.

CSL, "Lilies...", Christian Reunion, p26.

CSL: being religious

The word religion is extremely rare in the NT or the writings of mystics. The reason is simple. Those attitudes and practices to which we give the collective name of religion are themselves concerned with religion hardly at all. To be religious is to have one's attention fixed on God and on one's neighbour in relation to God. Therefore, almost by definition, a religious man, or a man when he is being religious, is not thinking about religion; he hasn't time. Religion is what we (or he at a later moment) call his activity from outside.

CS lewis, "Lilies that Fester", in Christian Reunion and other Essays, p23.

Desire

IT IS THE DESIRE for God which is the most fundamental appetite of all, and it is an appetite we can never eliminate. We may seek to disown it, but it will not go away. If we deny that it is there, we shall in fact only divert it to some other object or range of objects. And that will mean that we invest some creature or creatures with the full burden of our need for God, a burden which no creature can carry.

Simon Tugwell, The Beatitudes (Christianity Today quote)

Narrative context

It is fatal to exegesis when this narrative sense is lost, or goes into eclipse. Every word of Scripture fits into its large narrative context in one way or another, so much so that the immediate context of a sentence is as likely to be 85 pages off in words written 300 years later as to be the previous or next paragraph. When the narrative sense is honoured and nurtured, everything connects and meanings expand, not arbitrarily but organically - narratively. We see this at work in the narrative-soaked exegesis of a preacher like John Donne whose texts always lead us "like a guide with a candle, into the vast labyrinth of Scripture, which to Donne was an infinitely bigger structure than the cathedral he was preaching in." (Northrop Frye)

Working the Angles, p124

Tribal brands

Depending on your Unique Buying State, you can join any number of tribes on any number of days and feel part of something bigger than yourself. You can belong to the Callaway tribe when you play golf, the VW tribe when you drive, and the Williams-Sonoma tribe when you cook a meal. Brands are the little gods of modern life, each ruling a different need, activity, mood, or situation. Yet you're in control. If your latest god falls from Olympus, you can switch to another one.

from The Brand Gap by Marty Neumeier (AIGA, 2006)
Christianity Today

Patronising the poor

This could be a bit wrong, but I was wondering about attitudes toward charity.

I have often heard it said (by ordinary plebs like us, and concerned celebrities and politicians) that the two-thirds world must have access to clean water and sufficient food. We must wake up and respond to this charity bash, to this appeal, and be like them: crusading concerned people of conscience. And when we have done so, we will have helped them.

And yet, whilst stating righteously that these are the things they need, we also know we would never settle for these ourselves. Here in the West we would never vote for a government that promised only clean water and sufficient food. Those are invisible givens: we also want tax breaks, mortgage relief, private healthcare, motorways and multiple vehicles, spare cash for gadgets, fripperies and booze...and on and on. These are our needs.

So whilst we virtuously demand basics for the developing world, we retain our basics at a massively inflated level. Why? Presumably because we are more important than them, so our basic needs are much greater.

So even in charity, we can patronise the poor.

Bible reading for money

This acquisitive mode is so culturally expected and congregationally rewarding that it cannot fail to affect our approach to the Scriptures. When we sit down to read the Scriptures we already have an end product in view: we want to find something useful for people's lives, to meet their expectations of us as pastors who deliver goods. If someone says to me, "I don't get anything out of reading Scripture", my knee-jerk response is, "I will show you how to read it so that you can get something out of it". The operative word is "get". I will help you be a better consumer. By this time the process is so far advanced it is nearly irreversible. We have agreed, my parishioners and I, to treat the Bible as something useful for what they can get out of it. I, a pastor shaped by their expectations, help them to do it. At some point I cross over the line and am doing it myself - looking for an arresting text for a sermon, looking for the psychologically right reading in a hospital room, looking for evidence of the truth of the Trinity. The verb looking has taken over. I am no longer listening to a voice, not listening to the God to whom I will give a response in obedience and faith, becoming the person he is calling into existence. I am looking for something that I can use to do a better job, for which people will give me a raise if I do it conspicuously enough.

Peterson, Working the Angles, p98-99.

Sabbath

It is no use claiming "I don't need to rest this week and therefore will not keep the sabbath" - our lives are so interconnected that we inevitably involve others in our work whether we intend to or not. Sabbath-keeping is elemental kindness. Sabbath-keeping is commanded to preserve the image of God in our neighbours so that we see then as they are, not as we need them or want them.
Working the Angles, p.71.

Happy birthday to me!

Just noticed I have been blogging for a year. And thanks to Dickie Mint who talked me into it (at least the blog didn't cost anything...)

Outrage & Blasphemy (prayer)

Most of the people we meet, inside and outside the church, think prayers are harmless but necessary starting pistols that shoot blanks and get things going. They suppose that the "real action", as they call it, is in the "things going" - projects and conversations, plans and performances. It is an outrage and a blasphemy when pastors adjust their practice of prayer to accommodate these inanities.

Working the Angles, p46

World perspective

One gets an impression that because of the numerical strength of Africa's church, Africans Christians can be equal partners with their Western counterparts. But we cannot pretend that the power of America does not exist. There is a new desire to learn from one another, but how deep does the learning go? I have a hard time getting a serious answer when I ask American churches what they have learned from their African "partnerships." Perhaps instead of spending $2.5 million on a building, they scale it down to $2.3 million. But they're still constructing baptismal fonts that automatically adjust the temperature! In a world where millions of Christians have no clean water, how much has been learned here?

Emmanuel Katongole

Prophets, prayers, psalms

Pastors who imitate the preaching and moral action of the prophets without also imitating the prophets' deep praying and worship so evident in the Psalms are an embarrassment to the faith and an encumbrance to the church.

Working the Angles, p40.

Giving cemeteries the vote

What is the most important pastoral act for maintaining your identity? GK Chesterton said that tradition is the only true democracy because it means giving a vote to your ancestors. If we count only the votes of those who happen to be on their feet at the moment, we are letting a small minority make the decision, and a not very distinguished minority at that. Chesterton argued for extending the franchise to the cemeteries. When we do that, the ballots naming "prayer" come in with an overwhelming majority. For the majority of Christian centuries most pastors have been convinced that prayer is the central and essential act for maintaining the essential shape of the ministry in which they were ordained.

Eugene Peterson, Working the Angles, p26

Peterson's triangle

Most of what we see in a triangle is lines. the lines come in various proportions to each other but what determines the proportions and the shape of the whole are the angles...

Working the angles is what gives shape and integrity to the daily work of pastors and priests. if we get the angles right it is a simple matter to draw in the lines. But if we are careless or dismiss the angles, no matter how long or straight we draw the lines we will not have a triangle, a pastoral ministry.

Eugene Peterson, Working the Angles, p5.

Peterson: sinner church and pastor

The biblical fact is that there are no successful churches. There are, instead, communities of sinners, gathered before God week after week in towns and villages all over the world. The Holy Spirit gathers them and does His work in them. In these communities of sinners, one of the sinners is called pastor and given a designated responsibility in the community. The pastor's responsibility is to keep the community attentive to God. It is this responsibility that is being abandoned in spades.

Eugene Peterson, Working the Angles, p2.

Prayer: the delight of God

The reason our hope is a pleasure to God is because it shows that all our joy comes from the bounty of His grace. And the reason our prayers are a pleasure to God is because they express this God-exalting hope. It is a precious thing beyond words - especially in the hour of death - that we have a God whose nature is such that what pleases Him is not our work for Him but our need of Him....

The most wonderful thing about the Bible is that it reveals a God who satisfies His appetite for joy by answering prayers. he has no deficiency in Himself that he needs to fill up, so He gets His satisfaction by magnifying the glory of His riches by filling up the deficiencies of people who pray.

John Piper, The Pleasures of God, p.215-216 (commenting on Proverbs 15:8)

Life in commuter suburbia

Incomprehensible Worship

In his sermon "The Divine Being," medieval mystic Meister Eckhart quotes Augustine, Bernard of Clairvaux, Gregory the Great, and the Bible to remind his listeners about a commonplace of Christian theology. At one point, he sums it up by saying:

To know him really is to know him as unknowable … . God is something which is in no sense to be reached or grasped … . God's worth and God's perfection cannot be put into words. When I say man, I have in my mind human nature. When I say gray, I have in my mind the grayness of gray. When I say God, I have in my mind neither God's majesty nor his perfection.

In other words, God is anything but "meaningful," "understandable," or "intelligible." And worship, if it is authentic worship of the biblical God, will, at some level, remain incomprehensible. Worship that enables us to encounter the living God should leave worshippers a bit stupefied; they should leave their pews, pump the minister's hand, and enthusiastically blurt out, "I didn't understand large portions of the service. Thank you!"

As noted, our desire for worship that is "understandable" is, well, understandable for evangelistic reasons. But there is a less seemly side of this desire: It's sometimes about worshipping a God we can control. Just as we furiously pursue some line of study in order to "master" a subject, so we are tempted to pursue God in an attempt to master him. As A. W. Tozer put it in Knowledge of the Holy:

Left to ourselves we tend immediately to reduce God to manageable terms. We want to get him where we can use him, or at least know where he is when we need him. We want a God we can in some measure control. We need the feeling of security that comes from knowing what God is like.

Mark Galli

Nouwen: theological leadership

The Christian leaders of the future have to be theologians, persons who know the heart of God and are trained - through prayer, study, and careful analysis - to manifest the divine event of God's saving work in the midst of the many seemingly random events of their time.

In the Name of Jesus, p.68

Discipline against sin

In the same way, our patterns of disobedience to God have been developed over a number of years and are not broken easily or without discipline. Discipline does not mean gritting your teeth and saying, "I'll not do that any more". Rather, discipline means structured, planned training. just as you need a plan for regular Bible reading or study, so you need a plan for applying the Word to your life.

Jerry Bridges, The Pursuit of Holiness, p.100-101

Frightening but true

When we are looking at the internet we are looking at ourselves.

Andrew keen, Google Authors Lecture

Nouwen: power leadership

What makes the temptation of power so seemingly irresistible? Maybe it is that power offers an easy substitute for the hard task of love. It seems easier to be God than to love God, easier to control people than to love people, easier to own life than to love life.

In The Name of Jesus, p.59

But I read it....

Andrew Keen commenting on Freidman's view that we have canine hearing when it comes to the internet (ie.we only hear what it says about us):

The climax of Friedman's talk focused on the flattening of truth and fiction on the Internet. He told the story of Muslim woman in the Middle East who was against Al Gore because he was Jewish. When he tried to correct her, she refused to believe him:

"But I read it on the Internet," she insisted.

Friedman has got the species right, but the body part wrong. It's not dog's hearing that we've acquired -- but a canine soul. I read it on the Internet has become the equivalent of a dog's faith in their master's voice.

http://andrewkeen.typepad.com/the_great_seduction/2007/05/but_i_read_it_o.html

Amish technology

The Amish are the most technologically sophisticated people on this continent, the best at picking and choosing among innovations, deciding which ones make sense and which ones don’t….

The larger society at the moment has a primitive and superstitious belief that we must accept new technologies, that they are somehow more powerful than we are. Which makes the Amish in some ways the most modern American subculture—far more modern than some fellow with a cell phone who doesn’t really like how it changes his life, but has one just because it seems “normal.”

Bill McKibben,

Divine honour

The great God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob remains forever committed to claiming the honour and glory due His holiness, and when the time is right, He will ensure that every divine action is praised as faithful and just.

David Crump, Knocking on heaven's Door, p86.

Education, education, idolatry

There are some subjects which must be approached with caution and trepidation, because their content is so accepted that to question is to vandalise. Here is a subject which, if I question, I will be seen not as iconoclastic or revolutionary, but as needing therapy or possibly clinical restraint for my own good. The subject is: education.

Now let me qualify this: I don’t want to question the concept, necessity or validity of education. Education exists in our nation largely through the efforts of many Christians who saw it as a way of making God’s word accessible, of providing opportunities for the deprived, and of driving forward social progress.

The concept is not my problem. My issue lies elsewhere; and I should say at this point, that the questions I am about to raise are not ones I have had to face as yet. I ask them as a concerned onlooker, not knowing whether I am right or not. Here is my concern: evangelical Christians are in danger of turning education into an idol. The next few paragraphs outline what I mean in two areas.

The first is, I think we are in danger of becoming part of a new class movement. One of many twenty first century ironies is that, having thrown off the oppressive class regimes of previous eras, we have simply invented new ones. Witness the apparently irrepressible urge to push one’s spending to the limit in order to buy a 4X4. Not that we go off-roading, or live up a mountain (in fact most of us live on large housing estates with very nice lawns), nor do I own livestock and need to drive through bad weather and over rugged territory in order to feed them. In fact I have little or no practical reason for owning a vehicle approximately the same size as a Chieftain Tank with the fuel consumption of Lithuania. No. I need one because it shows who I am. It shows how much I earn. Because other people do not have one, and I do. In other words, we have bravely cast off a class system based on birth and money, and replaced it with a class system based on just money.

And I am uncomfortably suspicious we do the same with education. Once upon a time, of course, very few people got to go to university and the opening up of space for young people from all backgrounds was a tremendous achievement. However that is not the same thing as saying that everyone is academic, or suited to university life, or indeed that universities are able to teach something appropriate to everyone’s inherent gifts (I know a gifted salesmen for whom university would have been a complete waste of time, but who now earns substantially more than many graduates, whilst also earning the respect of his staff and witnessing effectively for Christ). But increasingly we seem to be ignoring this. The idea was that universities be opened up to all, that those suite to it should be able to attend. Now the attending part is the crucial element. The government has not helped by stating its aim of getting 50% of young people into university: this makes the assumption that everyone at least ought to be academic in a way that benefits from university education. And here’s the problem: many of us are buying into this.

Is this a problem? It could be, because we teach our teenagers to find their identity entirely in academic achievement. From an early age all they hear about is the need to strive at school, pass SATS, aim high, do lots of GCSEs and many A levels. That’s OK so far as it goes. But what happens if a child is not academic? Struggles with reading? With numbers? Or that their abilities are simply not in processing information through pen and paper? This is why I think it my be a problem: we’re turning academic success into a new class system. If you don’t get into university you are not as worthy as those who do. If you get an apprenticeship, or start in a shop and work your way up, then you are somewhere further down the scale than those who have a degree (by the way, if you think this is the disgruntled rant of an academic failure, I have an honours degree).

Let me illustrate with a genuine situation. In discussing the future of someone’s teenage son, education inevitably came up, and with it mention of university. What reduced this mother’s face to an expression bordering on horror? The suggestion that if the lad was not academic he could do something else. Nope. There was no question: he’s going to university, because if he doesn’t…well!

So here is my fear: Christians taking the profoundly positive concept of education, and making it almost the purpose of one’s early life. Narrowing personality, gifting and achievement to what can be measured within the confines of academic life. And looking with horror upon anyone who doesn’t make it.

Why is this such an issue? Because, along with many other pressures upon the young, it tells them their image, identity and purpose lie here. And what if they fail? What if they aren’t academic? What if their gifts would be best served outside of education? What if they aren’t ready, and in the loneliness of life in a faraway city they fall into wrong habits and company to comfort themselves and forget their failure? It used to be that the well to do would want their son in politics or the army or the church. Well, there is no kudos in the church any more, and no one wants their kids in the middle east - so it’s off to university you go!

It may be your child will excel at university. Maybe they won’t. Either way, what they really need to know is that their identity is as an image bearer of God; that no amount of exams will take away their sins; that in Christ they are safe and have a purpose and ‘career’ that God will carve out for them in good works; and that the only thing that endures is not a certificate, but Christian character.

My other point focuses a bit earlier on the transition from junior to senior school, and the incredible amount of energy used by parents to get their children into the ‘right’ institution. Now I must reiterate: I have not had to make this decision, so I may contradict what I am about to say in the decades to come, but I want to raise the question.

When parents are obsessed with getting the right school, the best school, when they fake addresses on forms, or keep moving house through terror that their kids might go to a less academically certain school - is this sending the right message? What I mean is this: are we implicitly telling our kids that it is absolutely essential that they go to the best places and mix with the best kids? Well, you may reply, so what if we are? God has given care for the family as a priority, and we are providing the best for our children.

True enough, and who can question that? And that’s the problem: we dare not question a decision based on “the best for my family”, because it is self-evidently true. However, that isn’t the whole story. We should indeed question our definition of ‘best’. Many times I have heard people say the reason they provide their kids with every conceivable toy and gadget is because they want the best for them - whilst they as parents are working 70 hour weeks to provide these trinkets, thereby hardly ever seeing the aforementioned children who are traded between grannies, clubs, childminders etc. In other words, ‘best for my family’ is not a universal absolute; it is as polluted by sin as any other motivation we have.

Now the reason I mention this is because it gives us an opening into the whole moving/catchment area/best school thing. “We moved three times in order to make sure we were in the catchments of the schools whose league tables showed the best academic results, and the areas were nice and peaceful; we do the best for our family”. And I can understand that, I imagine that one day I will feel like that. But I also feel, right now, when I watch the horrors on the news, that I would like to move my family up a deserted mountain in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by a security fence and guarded by 4x4s adapted to carry 4 inch Howitzers. It may be for the best reasons, but it doesn’t work and it doesn’t fit with God’s plan for my children. They have to be in the world to serve Christ, I can’t create some kind of pseudo-Eden in which they never fail at school and they never meet nasty people. If they don’t learn how to fail, and how to cope with obnoxious people, they will never survive this world.

So my point is this: is the constant desire for better areas, better schools, no failure, killing the sense of mission which God wants for my children? Numbers of missionaries from the UK have dropped.. Is this related to the fact that missionaries go to difficult places, with difficult people, in difficult circumstances, with no status, possibly no clean water, no promotions, poor housing etc - whilst all through their lives we have taught kids that the best thing in life is keep going where its nicer, don’t fail, stay away from failures, get good qualifications, so you can get a good job and earn good money and have a good house etc etc.??? Over 25 years ago Roy Joslin noted that people converted in the inner city became more responsible at work, earned better money, moved to the suburbs and the inner city people were being left with decreasing gospel witness. Are we, inadvertently, worsening the situation through our idolising of education?

I’m aware you may be very upset as you read this. Please remember I’m only asking the question, and I know how strong the urge is to protect one’s child from failure and the world’s ills. But in the same way we have heard that our obsession with cleanliness has led to a fall in child immunity, maybe our drive for perfection has led to a loss of sense of mission.

I know, I’m being hard. And I can imagine this conversation:

Annoyed parent: “But God wants the best for our kids! God the Father cared for His Son as His Beloved!”

Me: “Yes he does love Him infinitely. But when Jesus was incarnated, where was He born? At the margins, on the edge of empire, in a nowhere place, in a shed, with no healthcare and only shepherds for company, with the outcast, the failure; in the dirt, with lowest, the most needy”

Annoyed parent: “Yes it may have been a shed, BUT! It was in a good catchment area”.

Nouwen: servant leadership

The leadership about which Jesus speaks is a radically different from the leadership offered by the world . it is a servant leadership - to use Robert Greenleaf's term - in which the leader is a vulnerable servant who needs the people as much as they need him or her.

In the Name of Jesus, p.45

t-shirt 7: for the affectionate church

Baxter: Limits of knowledge 2

When man was made perfect, and placed in a perfect world, where all things were in perfect order, the whole creation was then man’s book, in which he was to read the nature and will of his great Creator. Every creature had the name of God so legibly engraven on it, that man might run and read it. He could not open his eyes, but he might see some image of God; but no where so fully and lively as in himself. It was, therefore, his work to study the whole volume of nature, but first and most to study himself. And if man had held on in this course, he would have continued and increased in the knowledge of God and himself; but when he would needs know and love the creature and himself in a way of separation from God, he lost the knowledge both of the creature and of the Creator, so far as it could beatify and was worth the name of knowledge; and instead of it, he hath got the unhappy knowledge which he affected, even the empty notions and fantastic knowledge of the creature and himself, as thus separated.

Richard Baxter, The Reformed Pastor

Baxter: Limits of knowledge

A world of business they make themselves about nothing, while they are wilful strangers to the primitive, independent, necessary Being, who is all in all. Nothing can be rightly known, if God be not known; nor is any study well managed, nor to any great purpose, if God is not studied. We know little of the creature, till we know it as it stands related to the Creator: single letters, and syllables uncomposed, are no better than nonsense. He who overlooketh him who is the ‘Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending,’ and seeth not him in all who is the All of all, doth see nothing at all. All creatures, as such, are broken syllables; they signify nothing as separated from God. Were they separated actually, they would cease to be, and the separation would be an annihilation; and when we separate them in our fancies, we make nothing of them to ourselves. It is one thing to know the creatures as Aristotle, and another thing to know them as a Christian. None but a Christian can read one line of his Physics so as to understand it rightly. It is a high and excellent study, and of greater use than many apprehend; but it is the smallest part of it that Aristotle can teach us.

Richard Baxter, The Reformed Pastor

Nouwen: irrelevance

I am telling you all this because I am deeply convinced that the Christian leader of the future is called to be completely irrelevant and to stand in this world with nothing to offer but his or her own vulnerable self...

...one of the main sufferings experienced in the ministry is that of low self-esteem. Many priests and ministers today increasingly perceive themselves as having very little impact...The secular world around us is saying in a loud voice, "We can take care of ourselves. We do not need God, the Church, or a priest. We are in control. And if we are not, then we have to work harder to get in control..."

But there is a completely different story to tell. beneath all the great accomplishments of our time there is a deep current of despair. While efficiency and control are the great aspirations of our society, the loneliness, isolation, lack of friendship and intimacy, broken relationships, boredom, feelings of emptiness and depression, and a deep sense of uselessness fill the hearts of millions of people in our success oriented world...
...and the cry that arises from all this decadence is clearly: "Is there anybody who loves me; is there anybody who really cares? Is there anybody who wants to stay home for me? Is there anybody who wants to be with me when I am not in control, when I feel like crying?...

It is here that the need for a new Christian leadership becomes clear. The leader of the future will be the one who dares to claim his irrelevance in the contemporary world as a divine vocation that allows him or her to enter into a deep solidarity with the anguish underlying all the glitter of success and to bring the light of Jesus there.

Henri Nouwen, In the Name of Jesus (1989)

Sayers: dogma drama

Official Christianity, of late years, has been having what is known as a bad press. We are constantly assured that the churches are empty because preachers insist too much upon doctrine—dull dogma as people call it. The fact is the precise opposite. It is the neglect of dogma that makes for dullness. The Christian faith is the most exciting drama that ever staggered the imagination of man—and the dogma is the drama.

Dorothy L Sayers Letters to a Diminished Church

The interface of prayer.

Prayer comprises the interface between human frailty and Divine power. Yet, connection and comprehension are two very different things. Trying to peer from our world into that other domain is a bit like opening your eyes under water. It is possible to see, somewhat, but not easily, not far, and not without considerable distortion. Light is refracted, distances are difficult to judge, size is deceptive, sticks appear to bend at the surface, brilliant underwater colours vanish when raised to the surface. We may be able to explore both worlds, but it is painfully apparent that we are better suited for the one than the other. This should not stop us from trying to understand how the two realms relate; it ought, however, to curb our human penchant for dogmatism, replacing heavy-handed solutions with a healthy dose of humility and a very gentle touch.

David Crump, Knocking on Heaven's Door. pg 14&15

Bridges: enemy within

The Bible tells us that the heart is deceitful and unsearchable to any but God alone. Even as believers we do not know our own hearts. None of us can discern fully the hidden motives, the secret intrigues, the windings and turnings of his heart. And in this unsearchable heart dwells the law of sin. Much of sin's strength lies in this, that we fight with an enemy we cannot fully search out.

Pursuit of Holiness, p61.

Focus, focus...

In 2005, a psychiatrist at King’s College in London administered IQ tests to three groups: the first did nothing but perform the IQ test, the second was distracted by e-mail and ringing phones and the third was stoned on marijuana. Not surprisingly, the first group did better than the other two by an average of 10 points. The e-mailers, on the other hand, did worse than the stoners by an average of 6 points. (BBC News article)
There is a psychological switching of gears that can require up to 45 minutes to resume a major task that has been interrupted. More than a quarter of each 9-5 period (28%, or 134.4 minutes) is consumed by such interruptions4, and 40% of people interrupted go on to a new task without finishing the one that was interrupted. This is how we end up with 20 windows open on our computers and nothing completed at 5pm.

Multi-tasking is dead. It never worked and it never will. Intelligent people love to sing its praises because it gives them permission to avoid the much more challenging alternative: focusing on one thing.

Timothy Ferris

Population time-bomb

World population is still increasing by some 77 million annually. That's equivalent to adding a whole new country the size of Egypt every year. Yet here is a curious fact few people know: the number of children under 5 in the world is actually smaller than in 1990.

How can this be? Mostly it is because of the massive global decline in birthrates. Now, in literally every region outside of sub-Saharan Africa, the average woman no longer bears enough children to replace the population. For now, world population continues to grow, though at a slower and slower rate, primarily because of the enormous increase in the numbers of elderly people. But many countries, such as Russia and Japan, are already shrinking in absolute size, and on current trends, global depopulation will occur within the lifetime of today's young adults...

The high incidence of childless and single-child families in the West has one big implication many overlook. It means a very large proportion of the children that are being born are being produced by a small subset of the current population. And who are the people who are still having large families today?

The stereotypical answer is poor people, or dumb people, or members of minority groups. But birth rates among American racial and ethnic minority groups are plummeting. The more accurate answer is deeply religious people.

To be sure, religious fundamentalists of all varieties are themselves having fewer children than in the past. But whether they be Mormons, Orthodox Jews, or Islamic or Christian fundamentalists, devout member of these Abrahamic religions have on average far larger families than do the secular elements within their society.

In Europe, for example, the fertility differential between believers and nonbelievers has recently been estimated at 15-20 percent. Though children born into religious families often do not become religious themselves, many do, especially if they themselves go on to have children. Meanwhile, of course, the childless stand no chance of passing along their values to their progeny.

The faithful thus begin to inherit society by default. The West's total population may fall or stagnate, perhaps for quite awhile; but those who remain will be disproportionately committed to God and family, whether they be Christians, Muslims, Jews, or members of new pro-natal faiths. Let us just hope that this new age of faith will also be an age of peace.

Philip Longman, Books & Culture May/June 2007

Says it all...

Plushy sward

This is from a Hopkins poem describing the retreat of the physical sense as a way of obtaining a transcendent experience of God. I''m not sure about the philosophy, but the poetry is beautiful, and it was this verse that called me into the poem:

O feel-of-primrose hands, O feet
That want the yield of plushy sward,
But you shall walk the golden street,
And you unhouse and house the Lord.

From The Habit of Perfection.

Michelangelo & David

Michelangelo Redeems Broken Marble

In 1463, members of the City Council of Firenze (Florence) Italy decided they needed a monument to enhance their city. They commissioned a sculptor to carve a giant statue to stand in front of city hall. Someone suggested a biblical character wrought in the neoclassical style, an expression of beauty and strength.

They approached Agostino di Duccio, who agreed to their terms. Duccio went to the quarry near Carrara and marked off a 19-foot slab to be cut from the white marble. However, he had the slab cut too thin. When the block was removed, it fell, leaving a deep fracture down one side. The sculptor declared the stone useless and demanded another, but the city council refused. Consequently, the gleaming block of marble lay on its side for the next 38 years, a source of embarrassment for all concerned.

Then, in 1501, the council approached another citizen, the son of a local official, asking him if he would complete the ambitious project, using the broken slab. Fortunately for them, the young man was Michelangelo Buonarroti. He was 26 years old, filled with energy, skill, and imagination. Michelangelo locked himself inside the workshop behind the cathedral to chisel and polish away on the stone for three years. When the work was finished, it took 49 men five days to bring it to rest before the city hall. Archways were torn down. Narrow streets were widened. The people from across Europe came to see the 14-foot statue of David relaxing after defeating Goliath. It was even more than the city fathers had envisioned. The giant stone had been transformed from the massive fractured waste of rock to a masterpiece surpassing the art of either Greece or Rome.

Leadership 10/4/07

Pursuit of holiness

Just finished Thomas a Kempis, onto Jerry Bridges now. here's the first quote:

Our first problem is that our attitude to sin is more self-centred than God-centred. We are more concerned about our own "victory" over sin than we are about the fact that our sins grieve the heart of God. We cannot tolerate failure in our struggle with sin chiefly because we are success oriented, not because we know it is offensive to God.
(16-17)

Spring

LOVELY spring: Beautiful spring!
The woods with vocal welcomes ring,
And we a grateful offering bring
To our God who sends the spring.
Shaker hymn, "Welcome Spring"

Science

Whilst having some degree of respect for scientists, I feel that complete trust is misplaced. These are the people who said, after all, that Windscale was safe and that Haribo sweets contain food.

This nervous approach has been justified after a scientific journal ("What's on TV") published an article detailing a new project. It said:

The 6 Billion Dollar Experiment: one-off documentary looking at a hugely expensive experiment involving a large Hadron Collider - essentially an attempt to recreate the Big Bang.

OK. Now, I already have troubles with this philosophically and financially, but the real problem comes in the next sentence:

If it is successful, the LHC could provide the key to understanding the very essence of the universe, but the failure could lead to the creation of a black hole.

Doesn't anyone suspect there might be something wrong with one of these outcomes? Now, I am only an amateur but over the years I have accumulated understanding in several branches of science (mostly from watching Dr Who) and I know that the proper scientific term for this project is: totally, catastrophically, brainlessly, stupid.

What worries me nearly as much is why don’t other scientists see this? Why don’t they stop them? The only answer I can think of is that they know this experiment is a waste of time and won’t work, but is part of an ongoing competition between different universities to see who can get the biggest grant for the most stupid project.

But even so, what is wrong with the people who control the actual funds that supplied the six billion dollars? How did they arrive at the point of awarding the grant? What does it tell us about financiers?

“Let’s see…Hadron Collider…if successful may help us understand the beginning of the universe (practical applications: zero)….if unsuccessful may create black hole (practical applications: total destruction of planet earth, the solar system and everything else for 50 squllion miles)…hmmmm: great! I wonder if there’s a Happy Meal franchise in this?”

I despair.

The Old 100th!

This is my 100th post, since being persuaded by Dickie Mint to get one last July. I will let George Herbert do the talking:


The Dawning

Awake sad heart, whom sorrow ever drowns;
Take up thine eyes, which feed on earth;
Unfold thy forehead gathered into frowns;
Thy Saviour comes, and with him mirth;
Awake, awake;
And with a thankful heart his comforts take.
But thou dost still lament, and pine, and cry;
And feel his death, but not his victory.

Arise sad heart; if thou dost not withstand,
Christ's resurrection thine may be:
Do not by hanging down break from the hand,
Which as it riseth, raiseth thee:
Arise, arise;
And with his burial-linen dry thine eyes:
Christ left his grave-clothes, that we might, when grief
Draws tears, or blood, not want an handkerchief.

Removing roof tiles

Roof-tile Syndrome is when we are so caught up in the preaching of Jesus, we turn our backs to the needs of those still outside the building. We become barriers and not gateways. It's when we care more about keeping things intact than about restoring lives that are shattered. It's when we're more upset when stuff gets broken than excited when the broken are mended. It's when church gets reduced to the preaching of Jesus so that we fail to notice that we're seeing very little of the forgiveness and healing of Jesus. It is when we are so fearful about upsetting the religious folk (or homeowners) in our midst that we stop taking risks to get people to Jesus.

It's when my program, my office, my title, my privilege, my influence, my comfort takes precedence over others' needs.

It's when the church exists for itself; to hell with the rest of you.

Mark Buchanan

Obsolete children (genetics)

So let’s say baby Sophie has a state-of-the-art gene job: her parents paid for the proteins discovered by, say, 2005 that, on average, yielded 10 extra IQ points. By the time Sophie is five, though, scientists will doubtless have discovered ten more genes linked to intelligence. Now anyone with a platinum card can get 20 IQ points, not to mention a memory boost and a permanent wrinkle-free brow. So by the time Sophie is twenty-five and in the job market, she’s already more or less obsolete—the kids coming out of college just plain have better hardware….

It’s not [, Gregory Stock adds,] “so different from upgraded software. You’ll want the new release.” The vision of one’s child as a nearly worthless copy of Windows 95 should make parents fight like hell to make sure we never get started down this path. But the vision gets lost easily in the gushing excitement about “improving” the opportunities for our kids.

–Bill McKibben, Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age (2003), 34-35
as quoted on Fire & Knowledge

Peterson on life in death

The land of the living is obviously not a vacation paradise. It's more like a war zone. And that's where we Christians are stationed to affirm the primacy of life over death, to give a witness to the connectedness and preciousness of all life, to engage in the practice of resurrection.

We do this by gathering in congregations and regular worship before our life-giving God and our death-defeating Christ and our life-abounding Holy Spirit. We do it by reading, pondering, teaching, and preaching the Word of Life as it is revealed in our Scriptures. We do it by baptizing men, women, and children in the name of the Trinity, nurturing them into a resurrection life. We do it by eating the life of Jesus in the bread and wine of the Eucharist. We do it by visiting prisoners, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, welcoming the stranger, healing the sick, working for justice, loving our enemies, raising our children, doing our everyday work to the glory of God.

When I go through a list like that, the first thing that strikes me—and I hope you—is that it's all pretty ordinary. It doesn't take a great deal of training or talent to do any of it. Not the training of a brain surgeon, let's say, or the talent of a concert pianist. Except for the preaching and sacraments part, children can do much of it as well or nearly as well as any of us. But—and here's the thing—all of it is life-witnessing and life-affirming work. And if the life drains out of it, there is nothing left: It's just Godtalk.

Eugene Peterson, Leadership April 07

Skunk

In a poem about meeting a skunk one morning, and fearing it's awful, deathly,scent, Mary Oliver says:
[it is]
unendurable
like tragedy
that can't be borne,
like death
that has to be buried or burned-
but a little of it is another story-
for it's true, isn't it,
in our world,
that the petals pooled with nectar, and the polished thorns
are a single thing -
that even the purest light, lacking the robe of darkness,
would be without expression-
that love itself, without its pain, would be
no more than shruggable comfort...

from "A Certain Sharpness in the Morning Air"

Subverting the devil

I try to subvert the devil by giving thanks. Desire triggers a prayer in me, something like this: Thank you, God, for giving me eyes to see and for sight. For giving me dreams to dream and for dreaming. For the beauty that suffuses the world.

It's not a formula, and it's not a given. It may not work for everyone. But for me, it's a way out. I refuse to wallow in guilt over getting caught in sudden delight, something that God—as I readily point out to him—wired inside me. So I thank him instead. Once an honest conversation takes place between me and God, the misguided desire loses its intensity. "There, there," I say to it. "You've made your point. I am alive in a beguiling world."

Agnieszka Tennant, Christianity Today, 29/3/07

Dying slowly

Healthy people often say they want to die suddenly, says Ira Byock, author of Dying Well and director of palliative medicine at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center, yet quick deaths leave much uncompleted. They are the most difficult type of death for families to accept. "In contrast to an abrupt, easy death," writes Byock, "dying of a progressive illness offers precious opportunities to complete the most important of life's relationships."

Often relationships cannot be completed—which Byock defines as having nothing left unsaid—without forgiveness. From the Cross, Jesus says, "Father, forgive them, for they don't know what they are doing." Jesus forgave the very people who mocked and killed him. If we hold grudges or harbor anger, those who work with the dying say, peaceful deaths only come after we offer forgiveness. Forgiving is a Christian duty throughout our lives, but it is an essential part of the work of dying. Seeking forgiveness is equally important. Asking for forgiveness helps complete relationships with friends and family. And knowing that we need forgiveness helps us overcome the temptation of spiritual pride.

Rob Moll, Christianity Today 5th April 2007

Choosing elders 6 (preparation)

Stop thinking short-term. Like a good shepherd of sheep, think and plan long-term. Look for young men in their teens and early twenties who show spiritual interest and potential. They are your future leaders. God has placed them in your care for moulding. Don’t fail them!

...Give potential leaders gradually increasing responsibility in serving, leading, and teaching. Strategically open doors for ministry for them in the church. This is the best training ground. Monitor their service. Communicate with them regularly about how they are doing. And invite them, for a specified period of time, to visit your elders’ meetings. This is another significant training ground. Cast the vision before them that shepherding Christ’s blood-bought flock, the church, is truly fulfilling work. It is a high calling and privilege to care for God’s people.

Part of the responsibility of pastoral oversight is to see that there will be qualified shepherds to lead and teach the flock in the future. It is your job to take the initiative in this matter, to reach out to young, potential shepherds, to be proactive and not reactive, to take interest in their lives and future, to spend time with them, to direct them, and to warn them of the many dangers young men face (1 Tim. 4:16; 2 Tim. 2:2, 15, 22). Continually be mindful that you are an example to them, and encourage them in their own spiritual growth. You have the power to influence key individuals for God and the future of your church. Use that influence or you will lose it.

Alexander Strauch, 9Marks Feb.07

Choosing elders 5 (plurality)

In place of such human alternatives, we have pondered afresh Christ’s words on worldly leadership: "It shall not be so amongst you." We have learned how important it is to immerse ourselves in what Scripture teaches about plural leadership and to be vigilant about ways in which the biblical pattern can be subtly eroded. For example, members not fully committed to eldership may still be seduced by the siren song of single leadership, eyeing the deceptive attractions of powerful preacher-pastors around them and longing like ancient Israel for "their own king." New elders or pastors, though grounded in plural leadership, may need to adjust to the way a principle like mutual submission, which has broad application across different cultures, must find local expression amongst a particular group of elders. We know that ahead of us lie the dangers of established eldership: the risk that plurality may relax its watch and dwindle by degrees into a comfortable club which, in effect, abdicates leadership to a CEO pastor.

Philip Pedley, 9Marks Feb07

Choosing elders 4

Look for men whose lives exhibit the spirit of, as well as an intellectual grasp of, sound doctrine. Orthodoxy with approachability is a great desideratum in an elder (approachability being the very least that "hospitable" means; Tit. 1:8)...
Avoid appointing those who would commit to loving the flock if they were asked to be elders. Better by far to have men who love the sheep than men who love being shepherds (the former will become the latter, but not vice-versa)...

Sinclair Ferguson, 9Marks Feb.07

Choosing elders 3

In either context, I look for proven faithfulness, particularly in discipling one's own family. This does not mean that single men cannot be elders, but a married man must be modeling, teaching, and training his own family. Properly managing one's own household is a prerequisite for serving as an elder in church. If a man is not discipling his wife and children, I would not suggest recognizing him as an elder, regardless of how fruitful his ministry might be in other arenas.

Ed Roberts (pseudoname), 9Marks Feb.07

Choosing elders 2

If I’ve learned anything "the hard way" over the years, it is that the best way to identify potential elders is in the normal flow of church life. They are evident by their response to what’s being taught; by their willingness to serve; by the abundance of spiritual fruit in their lives; and by the many ways their giftedness is manifest in the church before they are ever singled out for leadership.

John MacArthur, 9Marks email Feb.07

Choosing elders

One of the lessons I’ve learned and re-learned in more than one church is the danger of selecting a man to serve as elder who has a history of protracted, repeated, and/or unresolved conflict. On more than one occasion I have overlooked conflict in a man’s life, reasoning either that it was justified by the circumstances, a function of immaturity that has been outgrown, or foisted upon him as the innocent party.

The fact is, however, that even when circumstances or theology vindicate his side of the conflict, a man can still be a quarrelsome man. This may demonstrate itself in a lack of gentleness, a propensity to taking rigid positions when none are required, an inability to lose graciously, or simply an over-love of debate. Whatever the form it takes, quarrelsomeness is a serious impediment to effective service as an elder; unchecked it is a clear disqualification (1 Tim. 3:3).

Michael Lawrence, 9Marks email Feb.07

Prodigal love

Commenting on the 'moral influence' model of the atonement, Stott mentions that proponent sof the theory who reject SA, claim that some parables show salvation without reference to any kind of propitiatory sacrifice. Then he says:

So in his book The Cross and the Prodigal Dr Bailey, who has for many years taught New Testament at the Near East School of Theology in Beirut, takes a fresh look at Luke 15 ‘through the eyes of Middle Eastern peasants’. He explains that the whole village would know that the returning prodigal was in disgrace, and that punishment of some kind was inevitable, if only to preserve the father’s honour. But the father bears the suffering instead of inflicting it. Although ‘a man of his age and position always walks in a slow, dignified fashion’, and although ‘he has not run anywhere for any purpose for 40 years’, he yet ‘races’ down the road like a teenager to welcome his home-coming son. Thus risking the ridicule of the street urchins, ‘he takes upon himself the shame and humiliation due to the prodigal’. ‘In this parable’, Kenneth Bailey continues, ‘we have a father who leaves the comfort and security of his home and exposes himself in a humiliating fashion in the village street. The coming down and going out to his boy hints at the incarnation. The humiliating spectacle in the village street hints at the meaning of the cross’ (pp. 54—55). Thus ‘the cross and the incarnation are implicitly yet dramatically present in the story’, for ‘the suffering of the cross was not primarily the physical torture but rather the agony of rejected love’. What was essential for the prodigal’s reconciliation was a ‘physical demonstration of selfemptying love in suffering . . . . Is not this the story of the way of God with man on Golgotha?’

The Cross and the Prodigal (pp. 56—57).
Quoted in The Cross of Christ, by John Stott.

No comment

Turkey Mourned as Model Member
Lambs United Methodist Church, Wales Township, Michigan, held a moment of silence last week to honour one of their model members — a wild turkey. The Rev. James Huff, pastor of the church, said the turkey regularly attended Sunday services and greeted people as they arrived. "He would kind of wait for me to come in," Huff told the Times Herald of Port Huron. "He knew when I got there. Service was about to begin, and then he would sit on one lady's car until we were done."

Area residents reported that the turkey died last week after it was hit by a car on a road near the St. Clair County church. Congregation members immediately noticed that the fowl was absent, since he never missed a service.

Cooke on TV

Television is a gorgeous girl led astray early in life by a travelling salseman. She is taken round the country as a come-on for his detergent...

...for every shining hour there are days and weeks of dross...

He stated that networks trimmed content according to

Moron's Law: that what is most popular is also best...bad tatse and complacency sell goods.

From the biography by Nick Clarke (quotations date from the early 1960s)

a Kempis 15

And I - miserable and most worthless of men - how shall I bring Thee into my house, I who can hardly even spend half an hour properly in prayer? And would that for once I could spend half an hour rightly!

...Alas how little it is that I do, how short a time do I spend in preparing myself for Communion! Seldom am I wholly recollected, very seldom entirely free from distraction.

Yet surely in the life-giving presence of Deity no unbecoming thought should arise; nor should any creature occupy my mind; for it is not an angel, but the Lord of Angels, Whom I am going to receive as my Guest.

Book 4, ch.1

Trees

Until this morning, the end of our road was marked by two huge willow trees. Every year I watch as they turn from a mass of bare, brown , spindles into a feathery green haze. Then I know spring has come.

When I got home an hour ago, I found the council had started taking them down. A few years back I discovered one or two residents who live by the trees wanted them removed because they didn't like sweeping up the fallen leaves in the autumn. Maybe this is why the council are removing them.

This might sound too sentimental - I know not everyone loves trees like I do - but this situation has saddened me. These are two beautiful trees that have grown there for well over 50 years. And simply because some people who have since moved in don't like them, the local authority has decided to kill them. To me, something is very wrong with this; and it certainly suggests that people think they are at the centre of the universe. These willows have taken decades to grow into majestic structures that will outlast all the residents in this street - but they mess up some paths for a couple of weeks a year - so down they come. Convenience over history and wonder.

Having said all of this, my depressed reaction created some questions for me personally. I still maintain it's completely stupid to cut them down - but also, how can I get so upset over trees, when I am not sure I think so deeply about the people in this area who, every day, come to the end of their lives without receiving forgiveness of sin, and so go away to judgement forever. Does that make me like Jonah? Distressed at the loss of his plant, but not so distressed over the final destruction of Nineveh.

It also alerted me to something else. Have I forgotten that this world is temporary, that I will see much more destruction before I die, and that a new earth which is also heaven awaits God's people? Wilful destruction of beauty is an ancient component of life in a fallen world. Do I look to the next world? If there is a new earth, then I assume it will be of infinite beauty, the fulfilment of the shadows of beauty we see in this present creation. Whilst this would be rather pathetic as the centre of my hope, there will be trees there. I will dwell with God in a perfect creation. Maybe I will see a seed planted, and watch a tree grow; and a thousand years later both I and the tree will still be there. And how big is a tree which grows unhindered for a thousand years? Or fifty thousand years?

Lewis on 'simple' faith

It is no good asking for a simple religion. After all, real things aren't simple. They look simple, but they're not. The table I'm sitting at looks simple: but ask a scientist to tell you what it's really made of—all about the atoms and how the light waves rebound from them and hit my eye and what they do to the optic nerve and what it does to my brain—and, of course, you will find what we call "seeing a table" lands you in mysteries and complications which you can hardly get to the end of. …

Reality, in fact, is always something you couldn't have guessed. That's one of the reasons I believe Christianity. It's a religion you couldn't have guessed. If it offered us just the kind of universe we'd always expected, I'd feel we were making it up. But, in fact, it's not the sort of thing anyone would have made up. It has just that queer twist about it that real things have. So let's leave behind all these boys' philosophies—these over-simple answers

CS Lewis

Where you are

Indeed, the great point for our comfort in life is to have a well-grounded persuasion that we are where, all things considered, we ought to be. Then it is no great matter whether we are in public or in private life, in a city or a village, in a palace or a cottage. The promise, 'My grace is sufficient for thee,' is necessary to support us in the smoothest scenes, and is equally able to support us in the most difficult.

Happy the man who has a deep impression of our Lord's words, 'Without Me you can do nothing'—who feels with the Apostle … likewise a heartfelt dependence upon the Saviour.

He is always near. He knows our wants, our dangers, our feelings, and our fears. By looking to him we are made strong out of weakness. With his wisdom for our guide, his power for our protection and his fullness for our supply, we shall be able to 'withstand in the evil day, and having done all to stand.

May the Lord bless you. May he be your sun and shield, and fill you with all joy and peace in believing.

Newton to Wilberforce, following the 1796 defeat of the Abolition Bill.

Writing & Speaking

[Journalistic writing]...is a matter of falling back on purely literary habits - the sentence composed on the reliable architectural principles of the right noun, a couple of odd or 'sensitive' adjectives, the clauses disposed and balanced according to foot rule. Writing for talking is no less than abandoning architecture altogether and trying to imitate the movement of a bird or river.
Alistair Cooke, quoted in The Biography by Nick Clarke. (303)

Prayer

When we pray we are at our strongest; because we have surrendered the false notion that we are facing a problem as God, and instead finding the blessing of facing it under God.

Peter Brain

Kingsley on misery

If you want to be miserable, think about yourself, about what you want, what you like, what respect people ought to pay you and what people think of you.

Charles Kingsley

Unhurried

One fruit of rest and refreshment is the ability to be unhurried. This wonderful characteristic communicates a welcome to church members that hurried pastors can often forfeit. Thus more will be achieved, since people will feel comfortable about coming to see the pastor.

Peter Brain, p.232.

Perfect Pastor

When a pastor believes that it is his task to do everything perfectly, everyone is in trouble. It is made doubly difficult when the church expects their pastor to be perfect.

Peter Brain, Going the Distance, p210-11.

More Peterson

The secularized mind is terrorized by mysteries. Thus it makes lists, labels people, assigns roles, and solves problems. But a solved life is a reduced life. These tightly buttoned-up people never take great faith risks or make convincing love talk. They deny or ignore the mysteries and diminish human existence to what can be managed, controlled, and fixed. We live in a cult of experts who explain and solve. The vast technological apparatus around us gives the impression that there is a tool for everything if we can only afford it. Pastors cast in the role of spiritual technologists are hard put to keep that role from absorbing everything else, since there are so many things that need to be and can, in fact, be fixed.

But "there are things," wrote Marianne Moore, "that are important beyond all this fiddle." The old-time guide of souls asserts the priority of the "beyond" over "this fiddle." Who is available for this work other than pastors? A few poets, perhaps; and children, always. But children are not good guides, and most of our poets have lost interest in God. That leaves pastors as guides through the mysteries. Century after century we live with our conscience, our passions, our neighbors, and our God. Any narrower view of our relationships does not match our real humanity.

If pastors become accomplices in treating every child as a problem to be figured out, every spouse as a problem to be dealt with, every clash of wills in choir or committee as a problem to be adjudicated, we abdicate our most important work, which is directing worship in the traffic, discovering the presence of the cross in the paradoxes and chaos between Sundays, calling attention to the "splendor in the ordinary," and, most of all, teaching a life of prayer to our friends and companions in the pilgrimage.

http://ctlibrary.com/13127

Life of salvation

I suggest that we tend to confuse the beginning of the faith journey with its entirety. Yes, believe in Jesus—that's the first step. Yes, invite Jesus into your heart as your personal Savior. Then, empowered by God's grace, embark on the journey of discipleship, in which you seek to love God with every fiber of your being, to love your neighbor as yourself, to live out God's moral will, and to follow Jesus where he leads you, whatever the cost.

David Gushee, Christianity Today 6/3/07

Brain on Peterson on Pastors

…it is difficult to break out of a routine long enough to put in place work practices that will contribute to renewal and refreshment…Eugene Peterson suggests we are busy because we are lazy. He explains:
I indolently let other people decide what I will do instead of resolutely deciding myself. I let people who do not understand the work of the pastor to write the agenda for my day’s work because I am too slipshod to write it for myself. But these people don’t know what a pastor is supposed to do. The pastor is a shadow figure in their minds, a marginal person connected with matters of God and good will. Anything remotely religious or somehow well-intentioned can be properly assigned to the pastor. Because these assignments to pastoral service are made sincerely, I lazily go along with them.

Going the Distance, p172

Discipling

Conversion to Christ does not isolate the convert from his or her community. It begins the conversion of that community. …Discipling is a long process—it takes generations. Christian proclamation is for the children and grandchildren of the people who hear it.

Andrew Walls

The spread of the gospel is often presented as inexorable progress outward, like an inkblot, but Walls saw that time and again the real story was of ebb and flow. The loss of Christian territory happened not just on the periphery but at the heartland. Jerusalem was the first heartland until the Romans leveled it, and the Jewish church all but ceased to exist. Then came Rome, until the northern Vandals sacked it; Constantinople, until Islam overran it; northern Europe, before Enlightenment skepticism cut its heart out. At each turning point, the gospel made a great escape, crossing over into an unknown culture just before disaster struck. History suggested that Christianity lives by this pilgrim principle.

ChristianityToday, on Walls' thoughts on church history.

Thoughts on the Lord's Prayer

I think in free-churches there has been a movement away from reciting the Lord's Prayer in congregational worship. This has been going on now for many years. I understand why: we don't want to get caught in meaningless routine. But I also find it interesting to consider how often I have heard the forlorn cry "I'm struggling with prayer - I just don't know what to pray about!"

Granted that speaking to God should be more than just repeating the Lord's Prayer (Jesus couldn't have taken all night just to pray these sentences), it is yet Christ's direct response to the request for help in praying. This is the way we pray. These are the 'headings', the structure of prayer for Christians.

Perhaps we could say this: the Lord's prayer lists the titles of the chapters, and we write the book with our prayers.

If we memorise and repeat the chapter headings, then we always will know what we should pray.

a Kempis 14

Grant me, O Lord, to know what I ought to know, to love what I ought to love, to praise what delights Thee most, to value what is precious in Thy sight, to hate what is offensive to Thee.

Book 3, chapter 50.

a Kempis 13 (so it's always happend!)

O what do I inwardly suffer, whilst with my mind I am occupied with heavenly objects, lo, presently a crowd of carnal thoughts and temptations interrupt my prayer!...Cast forth Thy lightning and scatter them; send out Thine arrows, and let all the phantoms of the enemy be dispelled...
...pardon me also, and mercifully look upon me, as often as I wander from Thee in my prayer. For I must truly confess, that I am accustomed to be very distracted. For I am often not there where in body I am standing or sitting, but I am rather there where my thoughts have borne me.

Book 3, chapter 48. Emphasis guiltily mine.

Painful humility

In the church, this "non-strategic ministry of the mundane" means sometimes I must be interruptible for tasks not on my agenda. I need to be available to pray with troubled people whom I will not be able to cure and who have no ability to contribute to my success. Sometimes in meetings I need to remain silent even when I have a thought that might impress somebody. Sometimes I need not to seek out information, even when I could get it and it would make me feel part of the inner ring.

Sometimes, non-strategic ministry just involves following the rules everybody else follows. Muhammad ("I am the greatest") Ali once allegedly refused to fasten his seatbelt on an airplane. After repeated requests from the flight attendent to buckle up, he finally said, "Superman don't need no seat belt." To which she is said to have replied, "Superman don't need no airplane."

...For God's great, holy joke about the messiah complex is this: Every human being who has ever lived has suffered from it, except one. And he was the Messiah.

John Ortberg (Leadership email, 30/1/07)

A bit more irony

Thomas Jefferson, U.S. President:

"I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man."

...which is interesting when you consider he owned many slaves, and opposed abolition.

Painful irony

In a discussion with other pastor-types recently, the topic rolled around to the state of our souls. "I don't mean to whine," said one of us (who shall remain nameless, though I'm certain it wasn't I), "but I actually found it easier to pursue spiritual health when I was not in ministry." Almost everyone agreed: we felt hurried, overloaded, drained, and often taken for granted.

This wasn't the first conversation I'd heard along these lines. We often talk as if working at a church gets in the way of living the gracious, winsome life Jesus calls us to. After a while the question is bound to surface: What is happening when involvement in "ministry" seems to produce less spiritually vital people?

I had breakfast recently with a friend whose father has ministered in Christian circles for close to fifty years. His dad said to him recently, "Well, son, we'll have to get together soon, as soon as I can get my schedule under control." His son commented: "For all thirty-nine years of my life, my dad has talked about what we're going to do as soon as he gets his schedule under control. He actually seems to believe that someday his schedule will come under control. He refuses to talk about or even acknowledge the real reason why his schedule is out of control."

I remember a church-planting consultant who warned a group of us that we would need to pay the price if we wanted a successful church plant. We'd have to do whatever it took: let our marriages suffer, put our children on hold.

But it seemed to me then, and it does now, that this cannot be the way God intended ministry. If the purpose of ministry is to convince people to live the kind of life Jesus invites us to live, how can the church be built on people who give up living the kind of life Jesus invites us to live?

...If ministry is being done right, it will aid in having Christ formed in me. My involvement in ministry (using ministry in the narrow sense of service to the body of Christ) needs to be seen in light of an overall way of life designed to help me become transformed. If it is not doing this, something, somewhere, has gone wrong.

John Ortberg, Leadership email 23/1/07

a Kempis 12

Never study for the purpose of appearing learned; but strive to mortify your evil passions, which will be a greater benefit to you than knowledge of many abstruse matters .

Book 3 Chapter 43

Pastoral t-shirt 6

This is in memory of a small friend called Harold who, when very small, had a joke which he tried repeatedly. He would place the fist of one hand (representing the cheese) on the palm of the other and then ask his victim "Smell my cheese?" - and then biff them up the conk when they did.
For all those horrid questions we would rather avoid, but are backed against the wall - Harold, thanks for this t-shirt.

Poem

A while ago, my tiny children and I composed this:


Last night mummy went to a party,
She danced on a table whilst there,
She waved her shoes at strangers
And wore bananas in her hair.

Last night mummy went to a party,
She danced on a table all night
She made hysterical gestures
And gave all her friends a fright.

Last night mummy went to a party,
She danced on a table - it's true!
She threw some trifle at vicars
and had to hide in the loo.

But really...

Last night mummy went to housegroup
She talked about God whilst there;
Can that really be as exciting
As dancing and bananas and hair?

postscript

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2007/january/20.26.html

Growing pain

I have a suspicion (and I am not alone here) that a good deal of society's confusion, unresolved problems, and the source of an awful lot of unhappiness, can be traced, if not completely then substantially, to this fact: people just do not grow up anymore.

From serial marriages, to yobbish behaviour, to watching 8 hours of TV a day, to trying to fit 25 stone bodies into size 8 dresses, to lack of consistency and commitment, to vast credit problems - the fact is people are behaving like children. And often spoiled children at that. It's children that make and break a half dozen friendships in a week, get stroppy when they can't have their way, become mesmerised by pointless TV shows, are fickle in their moods, will spend all their savings on some temporary toy. But the difference is: that is how children have always behaved, not how adults have always behaved; they behave like that because they are immature, adults are supposed to grow in maturity. So, what is acceptable and expected in kids has now transferred to large numbers of adults where it is unhelpful and unattractive. We just don't grow up properly.

Why in our generation is it suddenly not only OK but even desirable to act like this? Carl Truman has made the point very well (www.reformation21.org) that when ‘youth’ is desirable, even admirable to those who are older, the unfortunate side effect is that what is ‘youthful’ (i.e. immaturity) is also esteemed. In other words, we behave like children because our ability to deal with age and aging is incredibly poor. We are so desperate to stay young, that we think it helps to not grow in maturity.

This is sold to us as an advantage: we stay youthful, don't get set in our ways, live exciting and full lives, never become old fuddy duddies. Hooray!

Hmm, there are a number of problems with this. Firstly, we are going to get old and slow down and no amount of surgery is going to stop this (eg.Joan Rivers). Secondly, although this philosophy should equip us to be appealing to younger people, thereby gaining credibility through association with them, it is these very young people who can detect a middle-aged man or woman masquerading as youthful from 500 yards, and take necessary evasive, or possibly offensive, action. Thirdly, it makes you look stupid.

What is more frightening are the ramifications not only for society, but also the church. We are called to be mature in Christ, and this is dependent to some degree on a co-ordinate general maturity as a human being. Being like Jesus means being grown up as Jesus is - we could say He is the ultimate grown up, entrusted with running the universe, upholding every atom and saving humanity. You don't get to do that without being 'grown-up'. But as Christians absorb the yoofy-ness of culture, and the contingent age-ism, then problems develop.

For example, a colleague was asked, by a Christian from another church, "What is the secret of the blessing you're receiving at your church?" The answer was, in effect, "Prayer - why don't you attend your prayer meeting and make a difference?" Answer: "Because it's full of old people"

Right. Well, number one: it isn't full of old people - but then you can't know that if you don't go. Number two: so what if it is? When did God say: "do not associate with older people, they can't pray properly, they're a right nuisance, and they smell bad"? I can't get my Bible to say this, even if I use The Bible Code. In fact it is a reversal of the biblical dynamic of older, more mature (yes, I admit that older doesn't always mean more mature, but bear with me) Christians training up the younger generation from their well of experience (e.g. Titus 2). This powerful tool of God, using older saints to help younger saints to avoid pitfalls and go further and faster than they did, is killed off. So it's discriminatory and it's church-damaging, because we don't get mature as quickly or as well as we ought.

And where does this idea of come from? Certainly not from the Bible. It does not use the trite phrases we commonly find about older people being stuck in their ways and not moving with the Spirit, and younger people being 'on the edge' etc. In fact at Pentecost, as Joel's prophecy is fulfilled in the outpouring of the Spirit, the people affected are sons, daughters, young men, old men, menservants and maidservants. No age restrictions.

Now, I know plenty of older Christians who would warn me that it's easy to get stuck in one's ways, and new times need new approaches. But that isn't the same as writing off anyone over 60 (or 50 or 40, depending how young the writer-offer is). If you are one of those people, you should think very carefully. It really will not be long before you are that age, and if you have taught your youthful disciples that anyone older should be pensioned off, what do you think they will do to you when you reach that age?

All these things miss a big point: God is the source of life, not youth. Yes, your joints work better - but that in itself is not life, certainly not life abundant. To have God in one's life is the source of our life, His unending youthfulness is in the heart. Youthfulness in the sense of never aging, waning, slowing; and with it wisdom more ancient than the stars. With such Life in the heart we have the capacity for a deep wisdom, with a vitality that age cannot diminish. You see, the important thing is not to try to stay young and give the semblance of energy; but to be truly, completely alive every day through the life of God. And to be truly, vibrantly alive at every stage of life in the way God intends for it. Our culture has got the idea that youth is life, so we should stay youthful; and Christians who live that way have not received such an idea from the Bible, but from the world around them. In so doing they actually strangle God's purpose for them and their churches. God wants us to be utterly alive in a way that fits whatever our physical energy, calendar age, experiences, knowledge of the Bible, our ministry life, wisdom, holiness and so on, is right now. Instead of greeting the next birthday with dread and depression, we should be able to ask: what is it that God will do with me next, now I have reached this point? What is it I shall do and be that I have never done or been before? Once we stop idolising youth and start worshipping God with our years, then this backward looking regret, or frantic grasping of the vestiges of youthfulness diminish. Because we know that we shall be more alive even as we grow older!

In the song that became Psalm 90, Moses prays "So teach us to number our days". Help us to be aware of the brevity of life, making days count, treasuring and learning from memories. Why? "So that when I realise how old I am I will scare myself rigid and buy midriff-revealing tops and tight cycling shorts". Er, no. "That we may gain a heart of wisdom" (v12). The wisdom of God, the wisdom that brings light and life.

And that's what our young people need. They emerge into a post-Christian society where the media and society will be against them. To survive they need wisdom, not yoofyness from their elders.

And it's what our churches need. Nowhere in the Bible is there a segregated church: young people over here, oldies over there. A church is the gathered people of God, centred on Jesus Christ irrespective of race or age.

So, please, be who God intends you to be, bringing life, and light and wisdom wherever you go, especially in God's house. Be alive with God's life, whatever your age. It will make you a lot more joyful than hanging your happiness on the hope that other people will notice how youthful you are. And it's a lot less embarrassing than wearing stuff three sizes too small or twenty years too young, which reduces your YP to hysterics on the back row.

If you want me, I’ll be on the back row, sniggering.

(Copyright: The Masked Badger)