Barneys

For those who are interested, I have whipped up a basic website for Barneys. You will find it here.

The Love of God

Not everyone's cup of tea style wise, but this is pretty special.

The irony

Something I have long observed is an interesting paradox but I never made comment on it(plenty of others have). It is the paradox you see on an almost daily basis, ardent exponents of naturalistic evolution (usually going under the title Atheists) as the most public vocal supporters of minority rights and fringe elements.

So what?? I have made my way through Origin of the Species, The God Delusion and other tomes espousing naturalistic evolution and the resulting atheism. Combined with my memory of uni science lectures, the message that is top of mind is clear, it is all about survival of the fittest. The strong win, the weak just shrivel up and disappear. That is the way the world is.

So why is it, that so many of these same people and their children in the faith are so desperately championing the the weak, cotton balling those who naturalistic evolution has designated to eventual extinction? Surely it is as futile as holding back the tide with a sandcastle?

Maybe they have a conscience and compassion? But where did that come from? Certainly not evolution itself.

And I have to admit, it really gets up my nose when people assume that evolution per se disproves God, quite the contrary.

Synod 3

The other interesting topic has been the whole youth ministry strategy in the Diocese. It has been good to get more clarifications on the strategy and it is heartening to see an active and passionate advocating to support it, even with a certain pain involved in selling assets to fund it.

Good news for the North. The youth work has been growing rapidly in St Johns and it is reaching into other parishes so extra support to keep up with the growth is very welcome.

A fair bit of the proceedings has been tedious and Paul Chew and I have been seeing who can get through our respective books first. He is reading The Year of Living Biblically, a story of a Jew who tried to keep all the Old Testament regulations. I am reading The Sound of One Hand Clapping by Richard Flanigan.

Listening to a talk by Bush Church Aid Society. A great supporter of ministry in Tasmania and supporting the uni work at St Barneys.

Synod 2

The environment policy was presented this afternoon and it generated a fair bit of debate. It contains considerable detail some ok and some in my opinion based on poor and inaccurate assumptions. But my real beef was less with the detail and more with two principles.

First the policy seems to focus on the environment as an end in itself. The idea of stewardship is not explicit and very loose. But as a Christian Church what we will be held accountable for is not the final condition of the world but our stewardship of the resources we have been given to look after.

Second, reporting on compliance with a detailed environmental policy strikes me as a diversion and distraction from our core business of proclaiming the good news of the death and resurrection of Jesus. We have enough trouble getting people involved in 'core' activities.

That is not to say we should ignore our responsibilities in this respect. But rather than legislating , stewardship including of our natural resources, should be a consequential result of the Lordship of Christ. And practical pointers in stewardship in this area can be helpful.

In the end while the report was received, the pointy end of requirement to report annually on environmental performance was defeated soundly. And I got tp make my maiden synod speech.

Synod

It has been a long day at synod. There have been a couple of interesting issues which caused some debate. I was part of the imagine project presentation last night which was good. Fresh expressions is a useful term I think to indicate non-traditional mission in a local church context. A term which was used to describe some of the emerging fruit of those projects is 'green shoots'. Reminiscent of the green shoots which emerge after drought, but still early days.

Also interest was an environmental policy which got me a bit hot under the collar. More in the next post.

A few good men...and Christmas

About time to start blogging again. And what do I start with but….Christmas again. So this post is dedicated to the Baddelims who goaded me. You would think I couldn’t get enough of it. Actually, while lying on the beach generating my daily dose (or perhaps months dose) of vitamin D, two thoughts struck me (metaphorically of course).

As Christians we could follow the line of forgetting rear guard action when it comes to keeping Christmas Christian. After all it was a pagan festival that was given a Christian flavor so why not just let it go and just have a nice time and a happy holiday.

And really, it is Easter that is the real deal for Christians, there is much less about Jesus birth in NT compared to his death.

And the world has much more trouble with Easter. Yes they may try some altruism and so depending on your predilection, you can choose between the Cross or the Bilby, and commercialism still figures but culturally Easter really does still belong to the Church.

So why not just give up the vain fight to keep Christmas Christian and focus on the real deal where we still have a decent cultural grip, Easter. We don’t have enough troops or resources to spread ourselves too thin in the culture wars so punch a pack on what matters.

And yet, despite the inherent appeal of this line of thinking maybe, just maybe, deserting the culture war that is Christmas is the equivalent of allowing evil to triumph because a few good men do nothing, they retreat.

After all, he (or she) who writes history wins. And while we do not depend on mere mortal histories for our victory which is already secure in Christ, there is a certain imperative as witnesses to Christ to maintain that witness culturally as well as individually. And it does appear that God is interested in mere mortal history, he broke into it as one of us and rewrote it. To redeem us as individuals yes but surely no less to redeem and transform our culture to his praise and glory.

Sort of like watching footy replays, you know the score because you saw it in the paper but it does not change the fact that you sit there and shout and throw things at the screen, tense in anticipation of the finish. Our loyalty, our witness to our allegiance remains as visible as ever. We know the end score, Jesus the Lord will have the victory but should that mean we do not engage in the cultural game, the war, the battle as a witness to our allegiance to Christ and his glory?

And so while it may be the easy option to retreat and do nothing, good men though we may be, if we retreat then what was claimed for Christ is abandoned to the world without a whimper.

Does it matter? Should we be in the culture wars, in the Christmas culture war? I have almost convinced myself it does!!