The ultimate Yes

Two of the quotes Simon Carey Holt uses in his Easter Sunday sermon, Yes! reproduced in his blog.

‘We are a Bible-believing, fundamental, dispensational, non-ecumenical, non-charismatic, non-Calvinistic, anti-liberal, anti-feminist, anti-gay, separatist church.’

Jurgen Moltmann says that ‘True spirituality is the rebirth of the full and undivided love of life; the total Yes to life and the unhindered love of everything living.’

I sat through a sermon on Sunday that seemed to me to be more about the Cross, Good Friday and dying to life/self. Could have done with a bit more celebration....!

Life's big questions

In a few days time Scott Stephens will host the first of an exciting new Compass series called Life's Big Questions. Each episode features Scott talking about the meaning of life with high profile Australians including Matt Preston (from Master Chef Australia), Lindy Chamberlain-Creighton, Julian Morrow, Clare Bowditch, Philip Nitschke and Rolf De Heer.

Scott is the Religion and Ethics editor for ABC Online. Before joining the ABC he taught theology for many years, and even did a stint as a parish minister with the Uniting Church in Australia. He has written extensively on the intersections among philosophy, theology, ethics and politics, as well as on modern atheism's dependence on the Christian legacy. Scott is also a regular contributor to The Drum, Eureka Street and the Times Literary Supplement. He has edited and translated (with Rex Butler) two volumes of the Selected Works of the highly influential philosopher and cultural critic, Slavoj Zizek - including The Universal Exception, which was named by The Guardian newspaper one of its "Books of the Year" in 2007.

Sadly the repeat videos of these programmes won't be available to New Zealand viewers, though there may be transcripts of them at a later point.

Stringfellow on Church

Jason Goroncy on the blog, Per Crucem ad Lucem, has been posting quite a bit of material from, or relating to, the theologian, William Stringfellow. In fact he may have posted the following, but I've just come across it on another site altogether. It's a view of church that might help how we view our own particular small piece of the Church Universal...

The Church exists for the sake of the world into which God enters and in which He acts and for which He expends His own life. One who is a participant in the Church, one who is incorporated into this Body, one who is baptised into this company has not only the personal freedom to expend his own life without guile or calculation or fear of death – or any more minor prudence – but also, characteristically, he is indifferent to whether or not the churches maintain an amiable reputation in society, or whether or not the churches have much wealth and a sound investment program, or whether or not the churches, or the ecclesiastical authorities, have much political influence. On the contrary, the Christian is suspicious of respectability and moderation and success and popularity. And this is so because the genius of the Christian life, both for a person and for the company of Christians, is the freedom constantly to be engaged in giving up its own life in order to give the world new life. All the questions of status and power and reputation, and all defensive, conservative and self-serving questions about preserving the institutional existence of the churches are matters of some indifference except insofar as they impede the ministry of the Body of Christ, entice men into false religion and a wrong understanding of what the Christian society is, and lure them into misleading notions of what the Christian life is all about.

William Stringfellow, A Public and Private Faith

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.

One Generation from Extinction

Mark Griffiths and Simon Parry are conducting a series of workshops/conferences in Christchurch, Wellington and Auckland in early February, on churches reaching out to kids, telling them about Jesus, so that the next generation doesn't grow up without Christ.

You can find out full details here, with venues, information about the two speakers and much more.

I have to quibble about the title of this conference, (which, in spite of my quibbles I would still recommend) and about the title of Mark Griffith's book. Apart from the ambiguity - is he talking about children becoming extinct (unlikely) or children growing up without Christ (possible but also unlikely) - it seems to denote some lack of trust in God's ability to keep on keeping on with his church. If the church survived persecutions, plagues, indifference, the Dark Ages, and much more over the last 2000 years, then it seems likely it will survive the 21st century. Catchy title, certainly, but does it convey what they want it to convey?

Being human...

To be human is to be responsible. That is the inner meaning of the "dominion" of Genesis 1:26, which is a dominion not of domination but of stewardship, taking care of the world's back yard ... God the world-maker is God the care-taker. Humans properly stand over other creatures only as they stand with other creatures, showing them love, giving them space, and granting them "rights."

- Kim Fabricius,
from his book, Propositions on Christian Theology: a Pilgrim Walks the Plank

I thought it was worth adding this from the book's blurb...
In this little book, a kind of contemporary enchiridion [handbook], Kim Fabricius engages some of the main themes of Christian theology in prose, poetry, and song (his own hymns). It does not aim to be systematic or comprehensive; rather it goes straight to the main contested areas in the church today, the red-button issues in doctrine, spirituality, culture, ethics, and politics.
Fabricius's imaginative vision and lively conversational style moving freely between the interrogative and the polemical, the playful and the profound invite us all to the vertiginous experience of faith. The book's concise format and no-nonsense approach make it a perfect guide for inquiring Christians as well as committed disciples and an ideal discussion-starter for both church groups and college classes.
The author's passionate commitment to a self-critical faith is a provocative invitation to religion's cultured despisers to join him if they dare on the plank.

And a little more on Fabricius himself:
After spending most of the 70s wasting his youth (which he reckons is better than having done nothing with it), he was blasted into faith reading Karl Barth’s Commentary on Romans. This led him pretty directly into ministry, which Kim describes as “that wonderful vocation provided by the good Lord for displaced Christian intellectuals who are useless at proper work.”

laughter is the better medicine

I find that if I hang round with people who love to laugh, I enjoy life so much more than when I hang around people who are angry or bitter. I become like those I hang out with and every so often, I find that I need to censor my friendships - not cut those unhelpful friendships off, but certainly to limit them and to spend more time with those who love to laugh, if only for my own sanity.

Sophie Blanc
"Loving life, loving laughter" from catapult magazine

Invitation to Friendship

Charles Slagle, in his book, An Invitation to Friendship (volume two of From the Father's Heart), pg 12. (Published Destiny Image, 1999)

In both these books, the 'letters' are from God to one of his children.

I know that some people would have you believe that you can count on Me...only if I can count on you. What nonsense! You were counting on yourself more than you trusted in My power before My Spirit awakened your heart to know Me.
Why would I send you a message that would catapult you back ino the despair of that dark era? Religious minds are always setting deadlines. I Am Limitless Love, and I Am always extending lifelines.

I love the play on words between deadlines and lifelines here. And I enjoy the humour Slagle provides throughout these books - or God does...

Supporting teens in difficult times

Skylight, a not-for-profit organisation focused on helping kids and teens, has launched an innovative new single edition youth support magazine, ‘The Journey Through’, which honestly and frankly tackles the very difficult issues teens and young people face. It’s been written specifically for young people in New Zealand, and features many stories, words and photos, kiwi teens have contributed.

The media release says: Life can be really tough. The issues teenagers face are diverse and include changing schools, moving to a new city or country, losing your friends, bullying, parents breaking up, living in a blended family or absent parents, peer pressure, terminal illness or death of someone close to them, mental health issue, disability and too often trauma, abuse or violence.

Leaving the Four Spiritual Laws behind...

David Fitch is writing a series of posts entitled 'When They Will Not Come' and in the latest he notes two vital points. The first is this:

In our evangelism-thinking, let’s move from “bridge” to “onramp.” If there is one overriding conclusion for me in all this, it is that missional church leaders must move from
a.) Training people to offer non-Christians a “bridge” to salvation, that is susceptible to making salvation into a transaction, to
b.) Training people to become themselves “onramps” who through their lives offer nonChristian an avenue (themselves) through which people can enter the work God is doing in Christ reconciling the world to Himself (2 Cor 5:19). This concept of moving from a “bridge” to an “onramp” is key for me.

His second point is let’s move from justification before God “by Christ” to living life “in Christ,”
and requires rather more room for him to explain than I have here. Well worth reading.

Happiness is as happiness does

According to the latest UMR survey, the happiest men in the country are in the Nelson/Marlborough region, and the happiest women come from the Bay of Plenty. Wellingtonians, however, are the least happy people in the country.

Interestingly, people on less than $20,000 a year are slightly happier than those earning between $70,000 and $100,00. People earning over $100,000 are the happiest of the lot. People in the middle income brackets ($30-70,000), however, are the least happy. (Which probably shouldn't come as much of a surprise: they'll be the ones trying to bring up a family, pay off a mortgage and so on.)

Wellington.Scoop reports: The key things that make people happy are their relationships with their family and friends and their job. For women, the relationship with their family and children is a far more significant factor in their happiness than it is for men. However, for men their relationship with their spouse or partner, control over their life or destiny, recreation time and hobbies are more important than they are for women.

UMR finds that people are less happy than they were when the previous survey was done in 2007/8, and that overall, females are happier than males. People in mid-life are less happy than the young or old (which is hardly a revelation - who has all the responsibility?!), and ethnically, Maori and Europeans were the happiest groups, with Asians the least happy. (However, with a large number of people classifying themselves as 'other,' ethnically, this area of the survey is somewhat skewed.)

Another not-surprising point: widow(ers) and married people were happier than single and divorced, though there might be a certain irony in the fact that widowers were little happier than widows, and married women were a little happier than married men. Curiously women in de facto relationships were happier than men in the same boat. Which seems almost at odds with how people in these relationships are generally viewed.

People living without children are happier than those living with children. At first this seems a point that doesn't bode well for our future, until you realise that it's the lack of dependent children that makes people happier.

And just to prove that we're a quirky lot: Labour voters are happier than National voters. Go figure.

UMR comes to this conclusion: If you want to keep happy through the recession – socialise, keep in close touch with family or friends, have an interest in sports, a hobby or the arts and feel good about yourself.

Where would we fit in, as a Church, on the happiness scale?

Photo by Jill Greenseth from 'Four Happy People'

In your face video about suicide

Life: a Message of Hope for a Generation in Despair.

This British-made video (from Wales) is about ten minutes long, and consists of an introduction in which a guy with a shaved head goes full on at the camera telling us that the suicide is one aspect of the approach of the 'thief who comes to destroy', and that Jesus came to 'give us life'. Following this are three young people, all of whom have tried to commit suicide as well as self-harming on several occasions. Their testimonies have an edgy and scary reality, and they don't hold back on what's happened to them. In each case, Jesus has literally been their salvation. The video ends with the first guy inviting people to think about what they've seen and get in touch with them at igniteme.org.

It was made in response to a recent spate of youth suicides in South Wales, and stars Ignite's Mark Beacher, Dai Hankey, Richard Stanton and Jess Wilson.



Check it out: it's a great and sobering resource for young people, and may well save lives.

So your church is dying?

Here's part of what Steve Taylor suggests on his sustain-if-able kiwi blog if it seems as if your church is dying:

Keep meeting at 10:30 am Sunday. Keep the doors open. Keep the coffee fresh. Keep the muffins warm. But stop the sermons and stop the singing. Take all that energy and reclaim the time for mission. Read a creed. Dwell in Luke 10:1-12. Initiate some listening experiments. Share stories. Foray into the community for simple acts of service. Return to share stories. Re-read a creed. Re-dwell in Luke 10:1-12. Initiate some more listening experiments. Share stories. Foray into the community for further acts of service.

You can read the rest of the post here.

Pastors and dying churches

Regarding pastors being called to dying churches.

Some of us believe pretty strongly that churches in the inner city and the rural areas also deserve good pastors. We also affirm that many churches in some of the dying denominations deserve to have good pastors. Not every pastor is going to have the privilege of pastoring a thriving church, and not every church is going to thrive no matter who the pastor is! Pastors are primarily called to shepherd the flock. I believe that people at every stage of life deserve to have good pastoral care. Many of us are going to spend most of our pastoral careers in small- to medium-sized churches. Hopefully we can teach the Word of God and nurture the believers who happen to be part of that community.

There are plenty of churches that are going to hold on to some traditional ways of doing things. This doesn't mean that God can't use some of those old ways to nurture and protect His children. There are a number of us pastors who probably secretly, sometimes openly, admit that we yearn for simpler times and methods. We wish that we didn't have to keep up with all the new ways to reach people and grow churches. There are many people who wish that church was still a place of dignity and traditions because that is the way they learned to worship God. So much of our culture is changing so rapidly that many older people in the church wish that the church could be a shelter from all that change and that they could have some of those traditions to hang on to.

I do believe that God may call some of us to minister among people who don't want to change styles and we may be there to help them prepare for their dying. Sometimes, in dying churches, there is also the possibility of a resurrection as people return to a traditional church after being disillusioned with the trends of the contemporary church. My prayer is that we can be the shepherds who truly minister to the people whom God has given us at this time.

from the Pastors' Weekly Briefing newsletter, Dec 5th, 2008

Heard of LifeChurch?

Heard of LifeChurch.tv...? Can't say I have, although the name kind of rings a bell. Anyway, LifeChurch.tv is:

#1 on 2008 America’s 25 Most Innovative Churches

#31 on Outreach magazine’s 2007 101 Fastest-Growing U.S. Churches

#5 on Outreach magazine’s 2007 100 Largest U.S. Churches

#5 on The Church Report’s 2007 50 Most Influential Churches

• LifeChurch.tv meets in twelve locations in six states, reaching over 22,000 people weekly through 49 worship experiences every weekend
  
• Has an Internet Church
• Has started a church in Second Life (don't know what that is? Check out the notes below.)
• Has developed an interactive online Bible: YouVersion
• Hosts One Prayer - a daily devotional focused on prayer
  
• Gives all their resources away for free to other churches

Second Life is an Internet-based 3-D virtual world which enables its users to explore, socialize, participate in individual or group activities, and create and trade items and services from one another. In Second Life, users create avatars (3-D characters) that they use to interact and communicate with each other via a text chat (audio chat is coming soon) or by making gestures.

Second Life was launched in 2003 and has grown significantly in recent months. In October 2006, Second Life reached the 1 million registered accounts mark and quickly grew to over 6 million registered accounts by May 2007.

What is significant about all these items: Internet, Internet, Internet. (While I don't agree entirely with Tony Morgan that print is dead, Internet is certainly alive.)

Abortion

"The abortion law certainly asserts a state interest in protecting the unborn child, and not merely an interest in ensuring that women may have safe and legal abortions."

Justice Miller, June 2008

Justice Miller, the Judge who heard the case in which Right to Life, a pro-life charity, had taken the ASC to Court alleging they have been failing to fulfil their duties and to ensure the law is being interpreted as intended. Justice Miller agreed that at the moment in New Zealand we seem to effectively have abortion on demand, with figures showing that some certifying consultants decline very few or no abortions whatsoever. Justice Miller found that the ASC were wrong in their interpretation of the law that they had no power to "review or scrutinise" decisions made by consultants, and that this is in fact one of their functions. While Right to Life's argument that an unborn child should have a legal right to life was not upheld, Justice Miller held that our abortion laws show that "the unborn child has a claim on the conscience of the community."

Justice Miller's judgement is here.

Review: Surprised by Hope by Tom Wright

Tom Wright has several things he wants to put across in this book, but there are two particular ones that stand out for me. Firstly he wants to encourage the church to change its view of what happens to us after death, and secondly, and even more important, he wants us to realise the extent to which we're affected, in every aspect of our lives, by Jesus' resurrection from the dead, and our own future resurrection in the new heavens/new earth.

I must confess I'm a person who likes to read books that speculate as far as possible on where (and what) we'll be in the post-death future. I sometimes feel a little alone in this, as, to my surprise, many Christians don't appear to care overly much. For them vague thoughts of 'heaven' are enough. However, Wright isn't prepared to let us away with any kind of vagueness. He spends a good amount of time dealing to the usual idea of 'heaven,' which he says is not only inaccurate, it's not even Scriptural.

For him the resurrection of Jesus is of utter importance in relation to our future. The resurrection will sweep up everything in this world and recreate it in the new. For Wright, everything that's of value here will have value eternally, and he's not just talking about 'spiritual' things, but about creative things, about work and love and kindness and relationships and all manner of other aspects of our everyday lives. The 'first' resurrection happened here, in this world, and it will ultimately affect everything in this world. The new creation will incorporate the old, making all the old of immense value.

But this is just part of the message in the book. Wright presents a wide-ranging and accessible theology of the resurrection, of Easter itself, of the Christian's hope as it was understood in the early church, of what Jesus' judgment of this world means, of whether Purgatory and Paradise have any relevance to us.

And in his final section, where some of the best material lies (in a book full of good material), he writes of hope in practice: how the resurrection affects the mission of the church.

If you've ever felt that we've lost the point of Easter, that the resurrection was a one-off and rather odd event, and that our deaths are fairly irrelevant in the scheme of things, read this book. Even if you don't agree with all Wright's theology – as some (plainly misguided critics) don't – I'll be surprised if you're not inspired by at least some of what he has to say.

reviewed by Mike Crowl

Let Your Life Speak

In the article quoted above, Caliguire mentions Parker Palmer’s book: Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation.

Parker is a gifted academic who formerly combined a college teaching career with community organizing. He took a year's sabbatical to live at the "intentional" Quaker community of Pendle Hill in Pennsylvania. Instead of leaving at year's end, he became the community's dean of studies and remained there for 10 years. In this book he shares the lessons of his vocational and spiritual journey, discussing his own burnout and intense depression with exceptional candor and clarity. In essays that previously appeared in spiritual or educational journals and have been reworked to fit this volume, he suggests that individuals are most authentic when they follow their natural talents and limitations, as his own story demonstrates. Since hearing one's "calling" requires introspection and self-knowledge, Palmer encourages inner work such as journal-writing, meditation and prayer. Recognizing that his philosophy is at odds with popular, essentially American attitudes about self-actualization and following one's dreams, Palmer calls vocation "a gift, not a goal." He illustrates his point with examples from the lives of people he admires, such as Rosa Parks, Annie Dillard and Vaclav Havel.

You can read a sample chapter of this book by clicking here.

More from Tim Keel

Two more quotes from Mr Keel, and then I'll give him a rest:

I am discovering that our postmodern world is consumed with questions of creation—even if they are not framed that way explicitly. We can hear these questions whenever our contemporaries ask, "What does it mean to be human, especially as more and more of life is influenced by and even dependent on technology?" "How do we understand gender and sexuality and how both are expressed?" "How do we live in an ecologically responsible way?" "How might a just economy function sustainably?" Have you had these conversations? Have you talked to the teenagers among you who are verbalizing these concerns? These are the questions our culture is wrestling with.

People are not asking the traditional gospel question much anymore. Asking, "If I died tomorrow, where would I end up?" does not generate much life. But asking people, "If you had just a few years left, what kind of life would you want to live?" generates enormous energy. It is a question of hope, something our balkanized world sorely needs.

Being Missional and the way it affects our finances

A blog post by Mark Broadbent (of City Life Chrisitan Church) on the way they choose to deal with finances in their church. There are several good points including:

As missionaries, we are not called to give 10% to the local church. Rather we are called to surrender 100% to God.

From day one, City Life has allocated 10% of its budget to outside causes.

We encourage everybody to be generous with their whole lives.

You can read the full post by clicking here.

The photo shows Mark Broadbent in a somewhat excited mood.