The goal is love in the midst of all the brokenness.

Joseph Black (Onesimus Online) writes:

Jesus has restored our relationship with the Holy Trinity, but he hasn’t made us whole, the rhetoric of popular Evangelicalism and Pentecostalism notwithstanding. Assuming and believing that rhetoric for decades, I personally longed to be made whole. I carried scars from my parents’ divorce, was sexually abused, have struggled in my most important relationships, been stricken with chronic depression, was unfairly removed from my last pastorate, and been overwhelmed by the scope and depth of my own character flaws. I know what it means to be in a world turned black and to cry out to God for help. I have cried out again and again for mercy, help, transformation, healing – to be made whole. I have asked, but the answer has been ‘No’.

I found the emphasis in Evangelical and Pentecostal Protestantism on being made whole increasingly disorienting in the past decade. The rhetoric I was believing, the rhetoric I was singing, the rhetoric I was preaching was not matching the reality I was experiencing and that I was seeing in others. It wasn’t just that I was not experiencing wholeness, nobody else I knew was experiencing wholeness as well. I continue to hear this rhetoric all around me, particularly from the popular preachers and authors. I do not think anybody is being malicious or is intentionally setting out to deceive. But the effect of this one little tiny misstatement is to set Christianity off in a ruinous direction that puts the emphasis on our experience and performance vis a vis the glorious testimony that ‘Jesus made me whole’. Our goal, as I understand the Christian life, is not the experience of wholeness. Instead, our goal is giving and receiving love in the midst of our brokenness and need.

Read the rest of Black's post - it may help you clarify some of your (erroneous) preaching....

An ex-bookseller dares to speak...

As a Baptist who works with a bunch of people who adhere in their own Presbyterian way to the Reformed tradition (indeed, the catchphrase of the last Moderator was 'Reformed and Reforming') I sometimes have to help them see beyond their Reformed borders. (As, no doubt, they try to help me see beyond my Catholic/Pentecostal/Baptist borders.)

Which is why I'm linking to a piece David Fitch has done on the Out of Ur blog in which he asks, Is the New Calvinism really New Fundamentalism? He makes a good case as having some serious concerns that it may be, and indeed even in New Zealand I've heard the occasional piping Presbyterian voice talking about the 'essence of Presbyterianism' with the kind of (dare I say it) smug tone indicating that Presbyterians (Reformed) have pretty much got it right and most others have got it wrong. Whatever 'it' actually is.

Shoot me down as a hybrid Catholic/Pentecostal/Baptist-ex-Christian bookseller who's been exposed to far to many different Christian viewpoints. That's fine. At least David Fitch appears to making sense.....

Ministers and extra-marital affairs

One of the issues pastors/ministers/priests seem to face - perhaps even more than other men (and I focus on men purposely here) - is that of the extra-marital affair. The consequences for ministry and family can be devastating, as you'd expect.

I came back to the Lord via the Pentecostal scene. In my naivete I thought these Pentecostal ministers were pure in heart and deed, and admired them for their integrity. And then one fell out of the ministry due to an affair, and then another and then another - and another! All within a few short years. Two of these guys were leaders in very large New Zealand Pentecostal churches.

Chad Estes has written two posts recently on the subject. In one he reviews a book by David Trotter called Lost + Found: Finding Myself by Getting Lost in an Affair, and offers some comments about how it can be difficult to maintain friendship with someone who's fallen in this way, but that it's necessary nevertheless. In the other post, Why Pastors Have Affairs, he offers six reasons why men in these positions of responsibility have perhaps greater 'reasons' to have affairs than other men. 'Reasons' in the sense that they can find reasons for the affairs better than some of us.

Tweeting from Edinburgh

Some tweets from the Edinburgh 2010 Mission Conference, which has been taking place over the last couple of days or so. These are rather randomly listed - I copied the ones that most interested me....

First some stats:
In 1910, 80% of Christians lived in countries of at least 90% Christians. In 2010, 33% of Christians live in 90%-Christian countries – from Edinburgh 2010.

Across all faiths, the world is “less religious” in 2010 than 1910 - and yet, the world in 2010 is more religious than it was in 1970.

In 2010 about 27% of all Christians are "Renewalists": Pentecostal, Charismatic, Neo-Charismatic - Todd Johnson's report is context for...?

In 1910, 66% of all Christians were European, with an additional 15% from N America; in 2010, 25% in Europe, 12.5% in N America.

86% of Muslims, Hindus, & Buddhists do not personally know a Christian. This lack of interfaith *friendship* is a crisis in mission.

These statistics mentioned by Todd Johnson for #th2 are from the Atlas of Global Christianity project.

And some pithy statements, some of which take a bit of unravelling:

Fr. Jan Lenssen: Real, radical "communities of hospitality" make more of a difference than sheer numbers of Christians.

1910’s urgency to conquer diversity has paradigm-shifted into 2010’s reluctance to smother diversity..

In order to reach people in contexts of secularism and pluralism, witness must embrace religious tolerance rather than confront it.

*Understanding* other faiths is a priority, before either dialogue or evangelism: there is a place for the Qur'an in Sunday school...[This one struck me as adding more complications - Sunday School often seems to struggle to teach Christianity, let alone the Qur'an!]

priority: Inter-generational dialogue. Dialogue between "native speakers" of modernity and "native speakers" of postmodernity.

priority: Deepening our understanding of God's mission, rather than inventing and carrying out our own.

The secular world also adds to our discourse – it helps us “discern the spirits”. Indeed, we cannot uncritically affirm religion..

Rev Roderick Hewitt from the United Church of Jamaica talks to participants about child resiliency & building ‘youth friendly’ churches. [This should please NZ's Presbyterians, who have a Kids Friendly programme in place, and running very successfully.]

Our plurality today - diverse cultural, theological, ecclesial flourishing - is a sign of hope and vitality, not lack of direction...

"How can we possibly claim to be a credible witness community if we are still far from practicing equality, charity, etc, in our lives?”

How easy it is to be confused or dismayed when what we see in the world does not match our learned categories of understanding!

Out of the blue

I can't resist passing on this video that Bosco Peters posted on his site. It's worth reading his pseudo-serious commentary on this 'liturgical form' as well.



What's intriguing about this is that the church seems perfectly 'normal' one minute - blokes in suits and ties and jackets - and then goes into explosion mode the next. What brings on that sudden move of the Spirit? It'd be great to see this in some churches in New Zealand - none of the Pentecostal meetings I've ever been to were quite this hilarious (hilarious in the best sense of the word).

And I love the way the singer carries on singing, with laughter in his voice - and the bloke dives into the baptismal pool.

Suiting the new generation

The Otago Daily Times published a report last Saturday entitled: Churches work to suit new generation. The interesting thing about it is that it is objective in its approach: apart from the youth factor, there is nothing strongly 'newsworthy' in it.

It looks at three different groups: C3, Catholic youth, and studentsoul. C3 is the new name for Christian City Church, a Pentecostal congregation which has been around for some time. The Catholics have gone onto Facebook (check out Vaughan Hook in the search box), and have started a blog (which at this point has only one entry on it, dated May 13th - need a bit more action there, I think, Vaughan!).

Studentsoul comes third on the list and there are some brief comments from Rev Helen Harray.

The main story is linked to a shorter one that focuses specifically on the C3 youth, briefly profiling some of those attending. One of these, Tami Beckingsale, is paraphrased: She believed more young adults were returning to church once they realised there was value in what it had to offer.

All three groups mention 'relevance' as being key to their ministries.

Steve Graham at Mosgiel

The South Island Pastors' Conference took place last week in Mosgiel, at the East Taieri Presbyterian Church. The main speaker was Steve Graham, the Dean of the Bible College in Christchurch.
I'll be mentioning other books and articles Steve spoke about, but let's start with one that's available on the Net. It's called Teaching a Calvinist to Dance. A couple of quotes:
It can be a little intimidating in a Reformed context to admit that one is Pentecostal. It's a bit like being at the ballet and letting it slip that you're partial to NASCAR and country music. Both claims tend to clear a room. And yet I happily define myself as a Reformed charismatic, a Pentecostal Calvinist.
I started a master's degree in philosophical theology at the Institute for Christian Studies, a graduate school in the Dutch Reformed tradition at the University of Toronto. So my week looked a bit odd: Monday to Friday I was immersed in the intellectual resources of the Reformed tradition, diving into the works of Calvin, Kuyper, and Dooyeweerd.

Steve talked about brokenness in leadership too, but perhaps more of his focus was on the need for Presbyterians to work more in the middle area of the supernatural-this-worldly, in other words, not being content to live just in the natural, with the supernatural as something for the future next world, but to live with a sense of the supernatural in our everyday lives. (This is sometimes called the Flaw of the Excluded Middle.)

We'll look at these other areas further in other posts.