What my identity is

Richard Floyd writes in his latest post: I have always had an allergy to identity politics, and question whether it is helpful for one to think of oneself as primarily identified by race, gender, sexual orientation, or for that matter, disability. If pressed for an identity I would pick a really big one, such as “created in the image of God,” and its new creation correlate, baptism. I say this because I believe that any identity that ignores our relationship with God is bound to be too narrow, and lead to some form of self-deception.

His post is mostly about an accident he had a number of years ago which caused brain injury, being regarded as 'disabled', and the way in which we live in hope of a resurrection where all tears and pain will be wiped away.   Oh, and did I mention it's about grace? 

Changing Face of Church?

In a short(ish) piece, Todd Rhoades and Dave Travis outline what they think is the changing face of today's church.

Some of their suggestions may be temporary - multi-site churches, for instance, seem to be a fairly controversial approach in some quarters, and may not outlast the idea that church is local. (See David Fitch, for example, on the topic.)

The widespread adoption of social media - not necessarily in church, as in using tweets to tell the preacher what you're thinking - but in the culture at large.

Internet campuses, online giving, the use of iPhones, more multi-racial churches....and the list goes on. I'm sure there are other trends we should be keeping an eye on - Rhoades and Travis don't make any mention of the Saga Generation, though of course they talk about young people (who apparently are 'flooding' non-institutional churches).

What's your take on the changes?

Stopping Violence

In an article entitled, Rethinking Stopping Violence Programmes, Stuart Birks, the director for Public Policy Evaluation at Massey University, says this:

One of the most puzzling aspects to me is that we allow interference in our lives to an extreme degree, up to and including the routine destruction of relationships between parents and their children. This is permitted despite the open admission that the theories are questionable, the data are problematic, and the effectiveness of the interventions is unknown. The people proposing and implementing these policies are subject to limited accountability and may not have the training, skills, experience, awareness and impartiality to justify our confidence in them.

Most of Stuart's article is about male/female violence and the ways our society is dealing with it, such as recent ideas that different races should be treated differently. He expresses a number of concerns, looks at readings of data that may be false, and wonders whether we're really making any inroads into treating violence - and whether there are other agendas at work complicating Government policy on the matter.

A Multicultural Witness Against the 'homogenous unit principle'

Two quotes from an article by Jin S Kim, on the church, racism and multiculturalism.

The church moves toward reconciliation not because it will lead to numerical success but because the church has been called to faithfulness. As part of this faithfulness, the legitimacy of the "homogenous unit principle" needs to be questioned. I believe this "principle" has given theological justification to ancient tribalism and the idolatry of division. It does not call us to be a new creation but entrenches the old.
Two thousand years ago the church was small, renegade, and countercultural. Local congregations were radical communities of love and compassion. Their very existence as a community defied the claim of imperial sovereignty. These congregations overcame the prevailing social barriers of race, class, and gender and showed compassion to the rejects of society. The early church posed a serious threat to Roman hegemony and social order. It was its witness as a kingdom-oriented community that had a powerful effect on the empire, not the size or political connections of the church. The early church was not so much about church growth as about parabolic witness. How does a band of 10, 20, 50 people demonstrate the power of God's redemptive love by example? How do these individuals live the Christian life together as a living parable? How do they serve as a parabolic witness to the world? That was the fundamental evangelical question.

This is only the first part of Kim's article. But the points he makes about multiculturalism apply just as well to New Zealand as to the United States.