Today video on children

There's a fun and snappy 4 minute video on a site called max7.org which can be used as a tool to inspire leaders, churches and ministries with the story of what God is doing across the world, specifically in relation to children. I can't download the video to this blog (at least as far as I can figure out) so you'll need to go to the site to watch it or download it yourself.

You could use it as part of a training presentation, in your church or at a missions conference. Though it's simply done, it's designed to think about the big picture of children in the Bible and across the world, without shying away from the challenges that children are facing.

Max7 resources have been freely donated for people's use so the video can be used widely (as long as it's not sold).

Lausanne Congress

The Third Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization in Cape Town, South Africa starts next week.
There'll be nearly 5,000 delegates representing over 200 countries. Cape Town 2010 will be the most diverse gathering of church leaders focused on mission in history.

The Lausanne Movement was launched by Billy Graham and John Stott in the late 1960s. The first congress occurred in Lausanne, Switzerland in 1974. Time magazine called the meeting “a formidable forum, possibly the widest-ranging meeting of Christians ever held.” Out of that first congress came the Lausanne Covenant--a widely affirmed and celebrated document of Christian conviction and mission.

A second Lausanne congress was held in Manila in 1989. This gathering is where the "10/40 window" idea was widely introduced to the global church. It led many denominations and missions agencies to focus their efforts for the next two decades on the unreached nations in the

Many church leaders felt that a third congress was necessary to address the enormous changes that have occurred and the new challenges facing the church's mission. In Cape Town six key issues will be the focus of the conference:

1. The Challenge of the New Atheism.
2. The Impact of Hedonism.
3. The Reality of Islam.
4. The Globalized World.
5. The Brokenness of Our World.
6. Seismic Shifts in Global Christianity.

Within these six issues groups will gather to discuss and work on matters of global poverty, justice, evangelization, church planting, Bible translation, and many other topics. As well as the above, theologians from around the world, led by Christopher Wright, will be working on new papers to give the church a firm doctrinal foundation for missions in the 21st century. And a significant number of younger global church leaders will convene to develop new partnerships.

Thanks to the Out of Ur site for this summary.

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!

Pauline Stewart on creative kids

The following is extracted from the latest Love Your Neighbour ezine,
Pauline Stewart, minister at St Heliers Bay Presbyterian Church and Community Centre said this in an interview some months ago: “Most of childhood should be joyful preparation for adulthood, but instead we entertain them to the point where they are almost throwing up. Kids really just want to be a part of making something significant happen. Jesus never entertained anyone.”

By giving children opportunities to serve others and through modeling it ourselves, we ensure that others-focused ministry will not just be a wave that passes, but a sustainable movement. When we fail to do so, in the words of George Barna “each generation feels it is re-inventing Christianity”.

Checking back on the interview mentioned above, it's worth quoting a couple of other things Stewart said.

“Lots of programmes let you be creative, but our aim is to help kids produce something of value. Rather than encourage creativity in a vacuum, Stan and I say 'let your ideas explode; but we will help you turn those ideas into something.'

and:

My philosophy is, the church should empty itself in preparing people for the world. We should be preparing people to be the best politicians and the best leaders of this country. Sometimes we think 'I've got to run these programmes so that I can fill up the church' – but you actually have to run these programmes to fill up the world, and then the church looks after itself. I'm totally committed to that journey. I am constantly looking at children to see what they are good at, and I will say to the parent 'he is good at that, you should encourage him'. “

Crouch Touch Pause Engage

Crouch Touch Pause Engage?

What in the world is this? The title of some new martial arts movie? Nope, it's the Christian Sports Network (CSN) strategy to help the church in New Zealand take advantage of the World Cup. (I have to admit I wouldn't notice if the World Cup never happened, but I know I'm in the minority here.) I didn't even know there was a Christian Sports Network in New Zealand (or anywhere else for that matter), nor that they have big plans for the people - players and fans alike - who'll be visiting NZ in 2011.

Nor did I know that there were now twelve trained sports chaplains in New Zealand - Australia has 200 and says it could do with 2000. Unfortunately the CSN site is very much out of date: on its home page it's advertising something that was happening in 2008, its news stories all date from 2007, and its one article on a Christian sportsman dates from 2006. Time for a bit of an overhaul, CSN, I think!

It may be that the people running CSN are more interested in getting on with the job at ground level rather than running a website, so it's good that the Vision Network people (who are partnered with them) have done some promoting for them (see the first link above). You'll find more information there.

Photo by digiarnie

Lots of new neighbours

This may either scare you or inspire you.

The world population is heading towards hitting the 7 billion mark. According to some calculations - those who like to predict absolutely everything down to the day - it will happen on the 9th April this year - in other words, around about a fortnight away.

This may or may not be a bit over-the-mark. At present the World Population Clock is showing 6,834,880,600, as I write. However with the speed of the meter it looks as though it'll hit the 6,834,881,000 mark before I've finished this post! [Yup, it did.]

That's a lot of little persons arriving in the world.

We hit 6 billion on 12th October, 1999 - now known as 6 Billion Day (although I can't say I've ever heard if called that). Of course, that was an estimate, like everything else to do with population. We were up to 6.5 billion sometime in 2006. Seven years for half a billion; four years for the next half a billion. It kind of makes your head explode.

Now if God is keeping track of all the hairs on everyone's head, how many hairs does He know about?

Mike Yaconelli

From Mike Yaconelli

 

See what the battle in the church is today?  It is not abortion.   It is not pornography.  It is not homsexuality.   It is reality.   It is honesty.   We are afraid to be ourselves, to let ourselves be known, to come out of hiding.   What the world is longing to see in the church is not moral purity as much as moral reality.   The world wants to see a church that is made up of people who are not afraid of their blemishes, because their blemishes only point to the unblemished character of Jesus.   What we don't understand is that when people look at the church and see only imposters, they conclude that Jesus is an imposter.  But when they see followers of Jesus who are real, they see a Jesus who is real.   The church does not need to fabricate holiness, it needs to seek holiness.  Holiness is not where we arrive, but where we are going.  The power of the church is not a parade of flawless people, but of a flawless Christ who embraces our flaws.   The church is not made up of the whole people, rather of the broken people who find wholeness in a Christ who was broken for us.   The church points to Christ, not to ourselves. 

Quoted by Sam Harvey on page 279 (chapter 20) of NewVision New Zealand vol III (2008); no source given. 

World of Difference

The following notice appeared in the latest Mental Health Foundation ezine:

Want something different to do in 2010? Social networking media: Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Twitter, texting and blogs!

If you are not frightened by that headline, really know how to use social networks to communicate with young people, and want to make a positive difference in their lives, here's an opportunity to work on an exciting new project in 2010.

The Mental Health Foundation wants to engage with social networking sites and other innovative ways of communicating with young people, so we're shaping up a project to do just that. As with most not-for-profits, we partner with other organisations to support our work and this is why we are looking to the Vodafone World of Difference programme to help us make this project happen.

Each year the Vodafone programme pays the salaries of six gutsy people who want to make their mark on the world by working with Kiwi youth, and you (or someone you know) could be one of them!

If you're interested in taking a break from your current employment for a year and coming to work at the Foundation, check out the Vodafone New Zealand Foundation, or contact our friendly fundraising team for more information.

This seems to me to be a great opportunity for some young Presbyterian worker to get involved in....!

You can see more about the World of Difference and their projects here.

The world goes back to being the world

Postmodernism helps us to understand that, as ethicist Stanley Hauerwas of Duke Divinity School puts it, after a few centuries in which the culture at large snuggled up to the church and was its ally in forming a least-common-denominator sort of civic faith in its citizens, the world has gone back to being the world. While we may intially hear this word as bad news, Hauerwas insists it is good news in that it gives us permission (not that we ever really needed it) to go back to being the church, to being a human community shaped by the particular worldview of scripture.

from The Postmodern Parish: new ministry for a new era, by Jim Kitchens. Published Alban Institute, 2003, page 14

Wendell Berry

In an essay from 1993 entitled, Christianity and the Survival of Creation, author Wendell Berry writes

I have been talking, of course, about a dualism that manifests itself in several ways; it is a cleavage, a radical discontinuity, between Creator and creature, spirit and matter, religion and nature, religion and economy, worship and work, etc. This dualism, I think is the most destructive disease that afflicts us. In its best known, its most dangerous, and perhaps its fundamental version, it is the dualism of body and soul. This is an issue as difficult as it is important, and so to deal with it we should start at the beginning.

The crucial test is probably Genesis 2:7, which gives the process by which Adam was created: "the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life: and man became a living soul." My mind, like most people's, has been deeply influenced by dualism, and I can see how dualistic minds deal with this verse. They conclude that the formula for man-making is: man = body + soul. But that conclusion cannot be derived, except by violence, from Genesis 2:7, which is not dualistic. The formula given in Genesis is not man = body + soul; the formula there is soul = dust + breath. According to this verse, God did not make a body and put a soul into it, like a letter into an envelope. He formed man of dust; by breathing his breath into it, he made the dust live. Insofar as it lived, it was a soul. The dust, formed as man and made to live, did not embody a soul; it became a soul. "Soul" here refers to the whole creature. Humanity is thus presented to us, in Adam, not as a creature of two discrete parts temporarily glued together, but as a single mystery.

Berry has more to say about God's economy as opposed to economics, about Christianity's willingness to be part of the destructive forces of the world, about its culpability in not seeing this world as Holy, and about a number of other related issues. It isn't an essay that will encourage most of us in the way we presently conduct our lives; that's not Berry's intention. His aim is to give such breadth to our view of Creation and our part in it that we'll deeply reconsider how we behave within this world.

And just to give you a little more taste of Berry's writing, here's a quote from the title essay of his book, Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community: Eight Essays. It was published in 1998.

"If you destroy the ideal of the "gentle man" and remove from men all expectations of courtesy and consideration toward women and children, you have prepared the way for an epidemic of rape and abuse. If you depreciate the sanctity and solemnity of marriage, not just as a bond between two people, but as a bond between those two people and their forebears, their children, and their neighbors, then you have prepared the way for an epidemic of divorce, child neglect, community ruin, and loneliness. If you destroy the economies of household and community, then you destroy the bonds of mutual usefulness and practical dependence without which the other bonds will not hold."

Pubs as Church?

Back in July, Todd Rhoades set off a great debate on his Monday Morning Insight page, when he wrote a British Christian couple who've not only taken over a pub, but have confronted their customers about swearing, but have banned gambling on horses, and removed the dart-board. On top of this they walk around with a Bible in their hands.
Rhoades himself doesn't comment on this innovative way of doing church (!) but the people who read his page certainly do. It sets off a great argument about the rights and wrongs of the way the couple are going about 'being Christians' in this setting.
Well worth reading the comments as a way of thinking about the debate regarding Christians in the 'world'.

Social Gospel

Any gospel which is not social is not gospel. God so loved the world that.... He didn't just sit in His great theological rocking chair stroking his white beard and glory in His love for the world. He did something about it. He became social in the form of His Son. He lived, interacted, and behaved in a real social environment, disclosing God's social way. In the incarnation the spiritual "word" became a social "event." To say it another way, the social event was itself a word which communicated to men. Word and deed are inseparably cemented into one in the incarnation.

Donald Kraybill
The Upside-down Kingdom

Simple Church

There is [a] kind of simple church that understands complexity. This kind of church realizes that things are not always what they appear. They know that what appears as an “out” to some may also appear as “safe” to others. They realize there’s two ways to spell grey. This kind of simple church critically embraces cultural change in order to communicate the gospel faithfully within complex cultural shifts. This people understand that the difference between “the world” and “the church” is not black and white. They strive to bring Scripture to bear upon the grey of culture and their relationships. As a result, they are constantly theologizing. They realize that theology is not inspired and neither are they. They struggle to take inspired stories, letters, and gospels and learn how to bring them to life in variously delightful and decadent cultures. This process forces them to deal with the complexity of suffering, human flourishing, common grace, and human indifference and come through the other side with a simple, accessible, thoughtful, and reproducible way of following Jesus.

From Two Kinds of Simple Church, by Jonathan Dodson

Child stats in NZ

The Otago Daily Times' editorial this morning uses a number of highly emotive words in its discussion of child injury and death in New Zealand. The writer tells us that two children die every week as a result of accidents, and that we are killing our children in their hundreds.

But a look at the Ministry of Health figures, rather than World Health Organisation or Unicef Report Cards (both of which have are flawed because they don't always compare like to like) show that between 1991 and 2005 the unintentional injury death rate for children under five dropped from 23.1% for males under five to 15.1%. The female figure, on the other hand, grew a couple of points from 12.8% to 14.14%.

In the 5-9 age range, both male and female figures dropped, from 12.8 and 9.5 respectively, to 6.7 and 6.3.

10-14 year-olds showed the same downward trend: males down from 20.4 to 8.7 and females down from 6.3 to 3.3.

Part of the issue of using international comparisons is that reporting is inconsistent. Reports may not relate to the same years or the same basic standards, and many countries take time to catch up with reporting on issues. The current reporting on bullying dates back to the early part of this century, not only in NZ, but also abroad.

In the editorial, Jean Simpson, of the Injury Prevention Research Unit, is reported as saying, 'compared with other wealthy nations our statistics are appalling.' Unfortunately, like so much else in this editorial real stats are not actually given, only an emotive statement.

According to my reading of the Ministry of Transport's graph on Road traffic injury and death rate per 100,000 population aged 0–14 and 15–24 years, 1985–2007, deaths from road accidents for the period have dropped, rather than increased.

The Ministry of Social Development report on Children and Young People: Indicators of Wellbeing in 2008 (Safety) states,

In 2006, New Zealand’s road death rate for youth aged 15–24 years (16.9 per 100,000) was just above the OECD median of 15.8 per 100,000 for that year. New Zealand ranked 18th out of 27 OECD countries, a considerable improvement compared to 2005, when New Zealand ranked 25th with a rate of 22.4 per 100,000. New Zealand’s 2006 rate was similar to that of Canada (16.4 per 100,000 in 2005) and Australia (15.8 per 100,000 in 2006), well above that of the United Kingdom (11.2 per 100,000 in 2006), but well below that of the United States (25.5 per 100,000 in 2005).
[This report can be downloaded from the Ministry of Development]

Stats are a useful tool, but always need to be checked, double-checked and possibly triple-checked. In one episode of TV series, The West Wing, Sam Seaborn commands his staff to find the stats on some obscure area, and to get three different lots of stats, so that he can compare what is being reported. Clarity is always an issue.

Equally, stats tell us nothing of the pain and anguish of those involved with the death of a child. The recent Nia Glassie trial was atypical in showing adults expressing little concern over the death of a toddler; most parents and relatives are deeply shocked in such circumstances.

Thus, while any decrease in deaths from unintentional injury is something to be rejoiced about, there are still many people out there who have lost someone precious to them. And that should always be a concern. Guilt trips from anonymous editors do nothing to help.

Blog Action Poverty Day 2008

By the time you read this, Blog Action Poverty Day will be well over. This is just a bit of feedback on some of the stats related to this rather amazing day in which thousands of bloggers around the world raised some consciousness regarding world poverty, by all writing about it on the same day (Oct 15th). I missed doing so on this blog, but did write about it on one of my others, a couple of times.

The day brought 12,800 Bloggers together on the same topic.
They wrote 14,053 Blog Posts, big and small, important and not so important.
There were some 13,498,280 Readers - don't ask me how that was figured out, but it's pretty impressive.
17 Top 100 Blogs were involved, along with lots of non Top 100 Blogs, like my own.

If you go to the Blog Action Day site, you'll find a bunch of the posts, and how they focused on ways the world has been helped, who helped, and how it was done.

Through this Action Day, Kiva was brought to my attention. It's the online equivalent of World Vision or CCF, except that through it people can lend money to individuals or groups around the world who need some additional funding to improve their lifestyle. It's a superb approach, and easy as pie to join. Recommend it highly.

The State of the Art

Technorati was one of the early birds in the blogging scene, and they've managed to outstay many other competitors. Their status is such, now, that they were able to produce a major report on blogging globally, based on a substantial survey amongst bloggers in the US, Europe and Asia. If you have time to read the stats, there are some interesting points. Here's the introduction.

Welcome to Technorati’s State of the Blogosphere 2008 report, which will be released in five consecutive daily segments. Since 2004, our annual study has unearthed and analyzed the trends and themes of blogging, but for the 2008 study, we resolved to go beyond the numbers of the Technorati Index to deliver even deeper insights into the blogging mind. For the first time, we surveyed bloggers directly about the role of blogging in their lives, the tools, time, and resources used to produce their blogs, and how blogging has impacted them personally, professionally, and financially. Our bloggers were generous with their thoughts and insights. Thanks to all of the bloggers who took the time to respond to our survey.

Just a few of the many intriguing stats:

Who are the global bloggers?

• Two-thirds are male
• 50% are 18-34 (so 50% are over 34 - in fact, age isn't necessarily a restriction in the blogging world)
  
• More affluent and educated than the general population
  • 70% have college degrees
  • Four in ten have an annual household income of $75K+
  • One in four have an annual household income of $100K+
• 44% are parents
• The survey was only administered in English, but Technorati heard from bloggers on six continents (although they're sure someone is blogging from Antarctica). They had respondents from 66 countries, who publish blogs in 20 different languages.
• 43% of blogger respondents live in the U.S.
• 72% publish their blog in English (the survey was only provided in English, so it may have excluded a large number of Asian bloggers)

A Gospel Approach for Postmoderns

We hear a lot about postmodern people these days, and how difficult it is to get the message of Jesus across to them.
One worker in college ministry in the States has come up with a simple way of doing this. James Choung believes that young people are well aware of something being wrong with the world. They may not call it sin (at least not before they become Christians), but they know that things are awry.
On one hand we have beauty and perfection and wondrous design; on the other we have ugliness and mess and distortion, things that upset our sense of balance in the world, and make us realise – even if we won’t say it – that things aren’t what they should be.
Choung’s simple way of taking people from that point of dissatisfaction through to belief in Christ can be drawn on a paper serviette.
First he talks about the longing in our hearts for a world that’s free of wrongdoing and evil and other garbage. People have an understanding that things aren’t the way they should be, and can easily agree that the thirst for a more perfect world may well be evidence that such a world has existed, or will exist in the future.
At that point they need to face the fact that in spite of their best intentions they all contribute to the mess in the world; no one is free from guilt in this regard. Their unwillingness to help others, to clean up the problems they create, to refuse to do good when they could - and a host of other things – all show that their failure to love others is also a failure to love God.
Choung says we still need to ask people to “repent” – literally, to change their mind” or to have a new way of thinking. They have to let their selfish lives die with Jesus – so they can have a new life of loving Him and their neighbour. Choung says, ‘That’s a huge call to faith for this generation.’
Jesus often simply said to people, Follow Me. He didn’t require them to be without sin before they did so; he wanted them to be willing to change. That’s the step postmoderns often want to skip: having realised the wrongness of things, they think they can get straight on and make things right on their own – without any help from Jesus.
But Choung tells them that only Jesus can put to death the selfishness of their lives. Without Him, moving onto ‘saving’ the world is just an empty dream.
The fourth step in his diagram is also important: once they accept Jesus, they need to see that He’s sending them on a mission; He’s not just giving them eternal life without any need to call others to Him. And within that call are all the areas of mercy, justice, acting rightly that Micah talks about.
On the surface, Choung’s approach isn’t particularly radical. Helping people face their understanding of a world gone wrong is maybe a slightly different but more ‘user-friendly’ starting point. It obviously works.

An article on Choung and his four circles appears in the July 2008 Christianity Today. It can be found online.

The best of creation

Here's a quote some might agree with, some might dispute. I don't know that Mr Marshall is saying he's sure of this, or whether it's something he hopes for.

Our works, here and now, are not all transitory. The good that we have done will not simply disappear and be forgotten. This world is not a passing and futile phase; it will be taken up in God's new world. Our good buildings, our great inventions, our acts of healing, our best writings, our creative art, our finest clothes, our greatest treasures will not simply pass away. If they represent the finest works of God's image-bearers, they will adorn the world to come.

Paul Marshall
Heaven is Not My Home

The role of the artist

James Joyce viewed the role of the artist as that of a kind of priest who can convert the seemingly mundane daily bread of common experience into the radiant body of everlasting, neverending life…. Such transformations are perpetually in progress whether we go to the trouble of paying attention or not. The feverish activity of accumulation and mismeasurement by which we order our existence, and which we foolishly call self-interest, is exposed as silly and short-sighted in the light of apocalyptic art that unveils the fact of the matter: The kingdom of the world is becoming the kingdom of God, and it doesn’t depend upon our acknowledgment or faithfulness to it within our highly-charged present. It’s coming anyway. It was and is to come. We have the privilege of watching and praying and noticing in the glorious meantime, especially in what appear to be the unlikeliest of corners. To reimagine now is our work and our pleasure. Look harder. It is at hand.

David Dark
Everyday Apocalypse

Trivial

Many Christians place great legalistic, spiritual importance on abstinence from relatively trivial things (from dancing to movies to swearing to card playing to mowing the lawn on Sundays). This is because Christians aren’t much different from others in relation to important things (basic values and behavior concerning wealth, power, prestige, justice, security, peace, work, time). Christians know they should be different from the world in some way — otherwise, what would Christianity mean? So, in an effort to establish some kind of Christian distinctiveness, they focus on the trivial. And the trivial is that which does not require us to make difficult changes in our lives… Like the Pharisee, we “strain out the gnat and swallow the camel.”

From Christian Smith's book: Going to the Root: Nine Proposals for Radical Church Renewal (published 1992, so probably a bit hard to get. Let me know by email if you'd be interested in a copy and I'll see what I can do.)