Stott on miracles

IS NOT the most helpful way to approach the gospel miracles to place them within the familiar and inescapable tension between the already and the not yet, kingdom come and kingdom coming, the new age inaugurated and the new age consummated? To the skeptical (who doubt all miracles), I want to say "but already we have tasted the powers of the age to come." To the credulous (who think that healing miracles are an everyday occurrence), I want to say "but not yet have we been given resurrection bodies free from disease, pain, infirmity, handicap, and death.

John R. W. Stott, Evangelical Essentials

Don't make worship useful

An emphasis on what we "get out" of a worship service - above all, that we feel good about ourselves - displaces the theocentric praise of God with anthropocentric utilitarianism. Since the worship of God is an end in itself, "making worship useful destroys it, because this introduces an ulterior motive for praise. And ulterior motives mean manipulation, taking charge of the relationship, thereby turning the relation between Creator and creature upside down."

Dawn (quoting Keck), p88.

Widows

Please Do, and Please Don't

Suggestions for encouraging widows.

Miriam Neff Christianity Today 1/18/2008

Apart from the outreach of the church, there are many ways individuals can encourage widows on their journey. But it's often hard to know what to say, for fear of making things worse. So let me offer some "Please do" as well as some "Please do not" suggestions.

1. Please do stay connected. Do not assume we need "space" to grieve. There is already a huge hole in our universe.

2. Please do say you are sorry for our loss. Do not tell us you understand, unless you do from personally experiencing the loss of a spouse. We would rather you tell us you do not know what to say than tell us the story of losing your friend or even close relative. We may be able to listen to your story later, but not now.

3. Please call and ask specific questions, such as "Can we go for a walk together? May I run errands for you? Meet you for coffee?" Do not say, "Call me if you need anything."

4. Please refer to our husband's acts and words, both serious and humorous. We are so comforted by knowing our husband has not been forgotten.

5. Please invite us to anything. We may decline but will appreciate being asked. Do not assume we no longer want to participate in couples events.

6. Please accept that we are where we are. Marriages are brief, long, healthy, dysfunctional, intense, remote. Death comes suddenly or in tiny increments over years. Again, our experiences are so different, as are we. So are our journeys through grief. Do not assume we go through the grief process "by the book."

7. Do say, "I've been thinking of you" rather than make a conversation-only offer, such as "We'll call you, and we'll go out to dinner"—unless you can follow up. We'd love that, too.

Between odd and imersion

The primary key for holding the two poles of this dialectic [being out of the world & relating to culture, holding tradition whilst reforming] is education - teaching the gifts of the faith tradition to those who do not yet know and understand them and teaching those who love the heritage some new forms in which it can be presented to others.

Dawn, p59.

Tradition breakdown

"Tradition is the process whereby one generation inducts its successor into its accumulated wisdom, lore and values. the family once served as the chief conduit for this transmission, but the family is now collapsing, not merely because of divorce but as a result of affluence and the innovations of the technological age....Film and television now provide the sorts of values that were once provided by the family. And public education...has also contracted out of this business, pleading that it has an obligation to be value-neutral. So it is that in the new civilisation that is emerging, children are lifted away from the older values like anchorless boats on a rising tide."
(David Wells)
In its desire to hold on to the traditions of its faith and to pass them on carefully, the church is, to some extent, alien to this new civilisation.

Dawn, p58-59.

Dawn: Subversive worship

If the Church's worship is faithful, it will eventually be subversive of the culture surrounding it, for God's truth transforms the lives of those nurtured by it.

Dawn, p.57

Dawn: Don't dumb down

When we allow our society to force us to "dumb down" the Church, we kill theological training, inhibit the forming of character, prevent appreciation for the rich gifts of the Church's past. Most of all, we miss the infinitely faceted grandeur of God and destroy the awe and wonder that characterized worship before God became only a "buddy" ill-conceived and only subjectively experienced.

Dawn, p55.

Celebrity

Celebrities are not heroes; they foster instead narcissistic idealisation, spectacle, and passivity.

Christopher Lasch, quoted in Dawn, p.51

Marva Dawn at the Zoo

Recently Myron and I spent my birthday at the Portland zoo, which among other wonders, features an extraordinary glass house of African birds. In my wheelchair I sat astounded by the birds of many shapes and colours and habits. Because of my visual handicaps, Myron pointed out to me various things that I couldn't see and helped me locate what I couldn't find. We tried to share with others our interests in what we were seeing and hearing, but all sorts of people walked into the building, spent two minutes and hurried out. They missed everything that could be caught with a little silence,some reflective waiting, and the sharing of community. but they had "done" the zoo - efficiently.

This is a commentary in itself, but the next paragraph starts with the disturbing words:

We can observe the same patterns and habits in some congregations...

Marva Dawn, Reaching Out Without Dumbing Down, p.49

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?