The odd reflection

Barneys

2009-07-24T23:29:00.001-07:00

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

The Love of God

2009-07-24T23:18:00.000-07:00

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

The irony

2009-07-24T22:43:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-23T03:29:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-23T03:07:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-23T00:44:00.000-07:00

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

2009-01-22T04:28:00.000-08:00

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!!

Not what I would have thought...

2008-12-15T02:52:00.001-08:00

TV Reviews

The Christmas wars....sort of

2008-12-14T12:52:00.000-08:00

It seems everyone is weighing in on how we should think about and react to Christmas. Two that struck me as most thoughtful

RC Sproul

and of course our own Will Briggs

Christmas follow up post

2008-12-11T22:35:00.000-08:00

I just couldn't leave it alone, like a dog with a bone. I was reflecting again on the whole Christmas thing. I have been reading a few other blogs and the like whose authors have been doing their own reflecting on the topic and they range from

I'm not very convinced that Christmas is a very good evangelistic opportunity. Well it is, in the same way that a wedding and a funeral are. Minimal. I do completely believe in the incarnation of Christ, but when we write tracts and sermons asking "What's the true meaning of Christmas?" I don't think anyone actually cares.

As for "reclaiming the Christian view of Christmas". May as well reclaim the pagan view of Christmas. The true meaning of Christmas now is family. And family is good. Christians believe in family too. So I propose: rather than fighting some silly rear-guard acton trying to make people care about the spiritual significance of Christmas, and consequently ruining Christmas day with a church service... why not instead just use the time to love your family, write cards to distant relatives and eat a nice meal?

to

Focus Action has launched a nationwide grassroots campaign to challenge the secularization of Christmas. Called "I Stand for Christmas," Focus Action is using radio, e-mail and the Internet to ask concerned Christmas shoppers like you to sign a petition calling on retailers to stop purging Christmas.

and

Cancel Christmas - Jesus was born June 17, say scientists. It may not be too late to send the presents back, as astronomers have calculated that Christmas should not be celebrated on December 25 - but on June 17 instead.Researchers tracked the appearance of the 'Christmas star', which the Bible states three wise men followed to find Jesus.

to (actually this one was from the local rag)

Anglicare Tasmania chief executive Chris Jones said Christmas was a particularly trying time for the State's homeless. "At Christmas people particularly feel the anxiety of not having a permanent home," he said. "We need to be conscious of that, that people do need a home to celebrate Christmas in."

There are all sorts of takes on what we should or shouldn't think about Christmas (including a sermon I did last year here) but it struck me that while we (I) get all het up over the detail of what we should or shouldn't think and do about Christmas as Christians, it really does play a role in the world. In a non specific way there is a sense of "peace", at least at a macro scale, that decends at Christmas time. Even wars have been stopped for the day, cities basically shut down and most macro hostilities cease as we retreat to our own villages and families.

So, beyond what we as Christians do and think about Christmas, regardless of when the real event happened (irrelevant anyway) and how the meaning may have been twisted almost beyond recognition, Christmas does to some degree and in a very distorted way embody the "peace to men" that was proclaimed so long ago. Of course this is not real or lasting peace which only comes when we submit to Christ, but it is still a peace of sorts for which we should be thankful given that it is an increasingly rare commodity.

It is this that does make it all the more difficult for those who have no family or home, they struggle to participate in this "peace", they have no escape from their circumstances, they have no village of family to retreat to.

So, despite my previous post, my theme for this Christmas is "peace". Practising peace and good will to my family, friends, Christian brothers and sisters and the world at large. Proclaiming peace through the cross of Christ.

Little 8lb 6 oz. perfect newborn baby Jesus, in his perfect golden fleece diapers

2008-12-08T00:56:00.000-08:00

Warning: if you take offense at Christmas bashing don't read any further!!! If you must leave comments on my irrationality or missing the point of Christmas, I've heard it all before.

We have an interesting time at Christmas. Pretty much like any other holiday week just with some extra effort put into countering all the avalanche of messages the kids hear about Christmas. We don't have a Christmas tree or do the gift thing and rarely do the Christmas lunch thing (only if we are invited over to someone's place who doesn't have family around either).

In part this is because we used to work at Christmas time when we were married and in part because I have this phobia and fundamental aversion to Christmas, at least in it's western incarnation. Now I know some people will accuse me of throwing out the baby with the bathwater but I really cannot stand the spiral of increasing value reciprocal gift giving (and all the guilt that goes with giving something of a lesser value than you received), the utter "me" focus of so much of what we do at Christmas from the gifts to meals to the glitter and tinsel marketing. And I am afraid to dip my toe in it because as I watch from the sidelines because it looks like a whirlpool, once in, the suction to the center, to conform, just gets stronger.

Some people counter this by making sure they go to church (which is good, we do too and absolutely can be a great opportunity for evangelism), help out at the local soup kitchen, (haven't but certainly once the kids are older it is a very likely option) have people over who are alone or not well off enough to have a traditional Christmas (we have been recipients of this) but I still struggle with it all and so we just don't have Christmas, at least not in any traditional sense. We do our normal bible lessons with the kids, head to Christmas day service, tell them that Santa is pretend (and tell them not to tell their friends) and generally just carry on with life.

Maybe one day I will change, but this clip reinforces for me, not just the reasons I struggle with perpetuating the traditional western take on Christmas, but that for those who do give Jesus a fleeting thought, at Christmas or any other time, the tendency to make him in our own image, make him what we want him to be.

So my advance Christmas thought before I just get on with life, may God help us to all see through the "little 8lb 6 oz. perfect newborn baby Jesus, in his perfect golden fleece diapers" and see the eternal God who pitched his tent with us, crucified and risen in glory as the King of all kings.

Skin Deep

2008-12-07T01:30:00.000-08:00

I happened to pick up a tin of my wife's face cream (at least that is what I think it is, not sure where else you would put it) attracted as I was to the name, "everything balm". On the side I found this

"everything in here is real [duhh...] and natural and has no preservatives, creating beauty that is only skin deep, because no-one really cares about having good looking tonsils".

Besides the stupid proclamation that the contents are "real", the blatant "only skin deep" line hit me. Most advertising is more subtle than that. And then I was cleaning out some papers and found a journal from a leadership retreat and read these words I wrote quite some years ago, "You are what you are in the dark. Authenticity and not front is what I need, fronts crumble".

It caused me to reflect again on the lie of our culture that we so easily fall for, as long as the outside looks good, live for the now not the future....

I preached last Sunday from Ephesians 1 and what struck me most as I was preaching was the depth of truth that Paul is expressing. He uses what seem to be superlatives to describe God but each of them are deliberate and meaningful. His desire for the Ephesians is far more substantial than a "nice" life, he longs for them to connect completely with the Almighty, the One who words cannot describe so that even Paul himself, with his grasp of language speaks in tongues of angels to express his praise at times.

And it is this God who holds us, delivers us, adopts us, seals us who gives us eternal life itself which is more than skin deep. So why, as I challenged my congregation, do bad things happen to good people? Well I don't really know. I have all the normal answers but when it happens, what matters is not primarily my apologetic for why bad things happen to good people but that God because of Jesus and by his Spirit has me firmly placed in his keeping and he will only do what is good.....for his glory and so ours by proxy.

And so I reflect again that, while I may not literally need good looking tonsils, I need to grasp and re grasp that life must be more than skin deep. So that when bad things happen and the hard times come and the facade crumbles, what is left standing counts. I need to grasp the sovereignty of God and his reality time and time again in the face of the constant din of voices to "put on the cream and ignore the tonsils".

To live for the long time, not just the mean time.

The Curried Egg Retreat

2008-11-21T16:51:00.000-08:00

I am just finishing a 3 day retreat prior to ordination this afternoon. We have been going through the book of Ephesians and along the way writing our own letter to our congregations/ministry area based around Ephesians.

First, the thing that has most struck me afresh is how Paul, while very concerned about conduct and holiness always has in mind the end result, that all heaven and earth, principalities and powers would be caused to proclaim just what a great and magnificent, glorious and gracious God God is. It is easy to look at a letter like Ephesians and draw 'moral' lessons about behavior when in fact there is a far deeper issue, that of right and appropriate response to this glorious and magnificent God and his Son Jesus.

Secondly, I had never quite noticed just how extravagant the language is. I am not usually one for extended superlatives but in Ephesians Paul exceeds all bounds of good use and lavishes on God his full range of expression.

Thirdly, I have never thought much about the importance of telling the people that God has given to us to serve, just why we are serving them, what our deepest desires are for them. Yet this seems to be one of the objectives of this letter, so that they might understand the end goal and be encouraged.

Fourthly, Ephesians so thoroughly reinforces the trinitarian nature of Christianity. The 'formula' comes through time after time, the Father through the Son by the Spirit. I have been greatly encouraged to make my thinking and speaking and preaching and praying more specifically trinitarian.

It has been a great time to reflect on the way God calls all of us to his service and to serve one another and with the call to ordained ministry the incredible responsibility for deliberate dedicated service of the people of God. Just as important we have been challenged to put God first, family second and ministry third. This remains a helpful reminder for me that after God my first responsibility is to my wife and children.

I thank God for this opportunity to 'draw aside' and spend dedicated time in the Bible, in prayer and in reflection. May he grant me faithfulness to Christ through the Spirit and to his people as I seek to serve and lead them in the way of truth so his name is praised.

And the curried egg?? We spent significant time over meals debating the food of true Anglicanism and curried egg sandwiches came up trumps. We have just finished our final lunch together and what was served??.....you guessed it, by sheer providence curried egg sandwiches!!!

Sent from my Nokia E71

Trapped in Neverland

2008-11-13T02:00:00.000-08:00

I have to confess to enjoying a bit of scathing sarcasm, bluntness and wit in print. Carl Trueman epitomises this from within the evangelical tradition. He also makes some very good points. His latest blog post here is a good and insightful read, all the more pleajavascript:void(0)surable if you enjoy his style.

Zine 2 is up!!!

2008-11-13T01:55:00.000-08:00

Zine 2 of sackclothandashes is now up!! Includes The NOT made up News and Heresy of the Month amongst other selected articles. You will find it here. Enjoy.

Influence or insulation

2008-11-12T01:52:00.000-08:00

Only one week until I go on retreat before I am ordained as a priest on the 22nd. So what am I thinking about. Here is some rambling thoughts from the last few days.

I was at an event on Monday lunch and was having a conversation with a prominent Christian business man who I have huge respect for. He had heard I was to be ordained and when I told him that I would be staying in my existing CEO role along with my role with St Johns and St Barnies, he expressed relief. Curious at this reaction I kept the discussion going and he expressed the view that we need more Christian people in positions of business, political and community leadership and he lamented the drain of these to full time christian ministry. The premise I assume was that we need to influence the world through building numbers of Christians in positions of influence. This gels with a book I have just finished which works from the same assumption, A Guide to Christian Ambition.

It goes completely counter intuitive to the way I was bought up and much of the teaching I have imbibed over my more formative years. That is, a Christian should not worry about such things, influence and power is fleeting and usually corrupts. It is the preaching of the Gospel and the change in peoples hearts which matters and the rest will follow.

So what are we to think. These are two quite different views of how a Christan should view our role in the world. In fact they are really incompatible to a large degree. The problem with the first view is that it really does place a person in the path of temptation, the heady world of money, power and influence can and often does corrupt the best intentioned person and has ruined many a witness for Christ. How much influence does such positions of influence wield, really. The problem with the second view is that it tends to reduce the whole issue of Christianity to an individualised internal process and easily develops into insular protectionism and cotton balled christian communities. It is safer in many ways but maybe not....pride easily becomes the rot which undermines the reality of the gospel in such communities.

To make it even more difficult, there are examples of both in the Bible. There were people of influence who became disciples of Jesus and we don't read of them giving up their positions. In fact many Old Testament saints were extraordinarily influential in political and community spheres. There are a myriad stories of moderns who developed highly influential positions in both politics and business spheres. Robert LeTourneau, John Anderson and Sir Norman Anderson are three who stand out for me. But there are even more examples of people who forsook position, power and influence for the sake of the gospel. Saul of Tarsus being exhibit number one.

Maybe there is another dimension to this. The principalities of this world and powers of darkness are real. And while we should never kid ourselves that we will ever overcome them, we are called to fight against them. I have the privilege of spending every second Monday morning praying with our Mayor along with a few other "influential" Christians and generally the focus of our prayers is on the city as a whole and for those in power, that the influence and oppression of the evil one is diminished and that freedom and the power of the Spirit of God is given free course. We "claim" the city for God just as Caleb asked God for the mountain. I have noticed that these people of influence are primarily concerned for freedom for the gospel, a collective response to the gospel, for credibility that comes with the working out of the gospel to the "widow and orphan" the helpless and less fortune. They are concerned to see our city "influenced" through it's structures and leadership for the honor of Christ.

On the other hand many of our churches (particularly evangelical) tend to focus on the individual, the individual response to Christ, the nurture of the individual. Sure there is things we do for the community, demonstrations of the gospel in action but the preoccupation is the individual. The basic thrust is that peoples hearts are evil and corrupt and until that root cause is addressed the rest is smoke and mirrors. I have to confess to a certain strong sympathy to this view. The logic is compelling and certainly the biblical case is strong.

But maybe we do need both. While there are not many wise, many rich, many influential as Paul points out, there are some.

So maybe having a "formal" foot in both worlds is not such a bad thing after all. I am in no way depreciating full time gospel ministry or full time positions in the systems of this world. But as I lead up to the retreat, I have reflected on the ability to be part of both worlds and the perspective that brings. I pray that God will give me the grace to be faithful in both worlds to proclaim his glory. That what ambition and small influence I may have will bring honor to the name of Christ. That if it comes to it, I will gladly "regard disgrace for the sake of Christ as of greater value than the treasures of influence, because I am looking ahead to the reward".

For the reward is compelling, worth giving my life for, that I would find my complete satisfaction in God.

More climate change....

2008-10-31T00:18:00.000-07:00

Literally. Climate change conference number ummm...lost count. But this one was a bit different. It was an international carbon conference and had some of the best minds there with some up to date and original thinking. I am more convinced as to the validity of climate science behind IPCC and other such reports. And yes we do need to be taking some serious action to address the issues, if for no other reason than global social stability and a certain collective moral imperative. The use of carbon trading as a mechanism to transition to a low carbon economy remains to be tested but it does seem to be the best guess at how to do this transition with a minimum of inequity. It does seem to have captured big business and their language is slowly turning to sustainability.

But there does remain the elephant in the room. More than one speaker has spoken about carbon as a social engineering tool, the mechanism to change behaviour. A kind of intellectual utopia that all will be well if we can just engineer it right. This was captuered in the comments of a government minister, "...this crisis [financial crisis] provides us with an enormous opportunity, not only can we recreate an economy which is sustainable for the environment, we have the opportunity to engineer happiness into our future society."

Add to this that the focus is on letting the market have its head in the process and I fear that we have not learnt the lesson of the current financial crisis, nicely summed up in Alan Greenspans admission that the market is not the objective dispassionate self regulator that economists think or would like us to think. Short selling and market manipulation and the likes will find their way into the carbon market as sure as the sky is blue.

The problem remains.....peoples hearts are bad and greed will become the unspoken byword in the new carbon economy, despite the very best of intentions. Happiness based on this new economy is a foolish delusion at best.

So....yes let us be reminded of our duty as stewards of this good earth, let us participate in and support the initiatives which are done to try and address this "moral" issue, let us take and promote individual action but let us not miss the elephant in the room and be fooled that this is the answer to the mess we find ourselves in or to our happiness.

That issue remains our hearts and their propensity to greed and idolatry. The answer remains our thoughful and intellegent response to our use of God's good gifts.

Sent from my Nokia E71

A pallet of ESV

2008-10-14T02:36:00.000-07:00

I have been an ESV fan from the start but this (follow the link) really got me salivating, a whole pallet load of them, straight into the pews of one of the US's largest Anglican churches....wow

New blog....sackclothandashes

2008-10-12T01:22:00.000-07:00

I have just created a new blog. It is dedicated to serious Christian satire and mainly I will be posting old articles from Sackcloth & Ashes.

Sackcloth & Ashes was a satire site which a friend and I and many people found both edifying and very funny. It disappeared from the face of the internet and we thought we had lost this great resource. Thanks to the Wayback machine, all is not lost and the original articles will be reproduced for others to enjoy.

This same friend and I used to reproduce these in a now retired journal, along with original material. The last one ended up online and can be found here.

The drought...and suicide

2008-10-11T22:58:00.000-07:00

I was able to get to clergy conference last week for some of the time. It was good to catch up with a few people and it is always good to spend more time under God's Word and in prayer with fellow Christians. In particular I found one conversation both fascinating and disturbing. It was on the subject of the current drought gripping our State and Nation, the extraordinary number of men suiciding as a result and the question of what to do??? (and it is not just limited to Australia as this article demonstrates)

It was obvious that there were a few different perspectives sitting around the table (as you would expect in an Anglican context). I must admit my gut reaction was, give them the Gospel, that's all they need!! That probably reflects more on my Christian cultural worldview that came with my church upbringing more than anything else. A perspective from another person boiled down to "we should be the link between these people and professional organizations (mainly secular) who deal explicitly with depression". Another perspective focused on putting ourselves in their shoes, trudging the fenceline of the farm, demonstrating empathy as a means of showing the reality of Christ. Another perspective focused on the development of a strategy which equips clergy to deal with the issues directly including the need to retrain them in the lost art of cold calling. In amongst it all was the acknowledgment to varying degrees that Christ and the Gospel was a part of the response, although that seemed mostly assumed.

Of course I am not meaning to pin peoples theological stance from their responses during in a relatively short conversation but given the variety of those responses I have been thinking ever since, just how should we respond. I also realize that this is difficult territory given the complexity of what drives these suicides and I am the last to imagine I truly understand it. As one person in the discussion pointed out, many of these men are 5th and 6th generation farmers with the burden of keeping the farm in the family, or will have the ignominy of being seen to have failed (which in the psyche of many an Australian farmer is cause for such action). So I do not take this lightly. But yet as Christians, I believe the Bible has something to say to point us in the right direction.

While not new or earth shattering, my conclusion is straight forward. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also (Luke 12:34). That seems to me to be the fundamental issue at stake. The fundamental issue that the farm and the farmers own identity wrapped up in the culture surrounding the farm is an idol. If they don't have that, then they do not have hope. And without hope, what else do you have. So in one sense my gut reaction is right. It is the hope of the Gospel which can transcend the loss of identity, purpose or even the inability to keep the well intentioned promise. It is the hope of the Gospel which transcends the incredible attachment to "place", in this case land.

But what I took away from that conversation is that the hope of Gospel, the Gospel itself needs to be incarnational in these circumstances, perhaps even more so than other situations. And that comes through being one of them, of being there in amonst the pain. And so the idea of cold-calling, of trudging around the farm fenceline, of listening for hours, of crying in mutually felt pain becomes the channel through which the hope of the Gospel, the Lord Jesus himself can be presented as the real hope, the real treasure.

Of course there will be those who do not respond and all we can do is grieve, but in such desperate conditions, we are forced to think about where our treasure lies, and convincingly present it to desperate men.

Dramatic....

2008-10-07T23:59:00.000-07:00

One of my recent favorites on the web is Ryan Ferguson doing a dramatic recitation of Hebrews 9 and 10. It is powerful stuff and needs no commentary with it. Of course certain passages lend themselves to this more than others and Hebrews is sometimes thought to be a sermon written or transcribed. So for those who may have missed it, here it is below plus links to new ones of three Psalms.

Psalm 22

Psalm 25

Psalm 145

Hebrews 9 and 10

Preservation or progress.

2008-10-06T02:31:00.000-07:00

I have been to Canberra regularly for the past few months and the other week spent forty minutes with Peter Garrett (of Midnight Oil fame). Given his past record as an environmental crusader, the inevitable compromise he has to make as a politician (take the Gunn's Pulp Mill) and the fact he is a fellow Christian, I got to wondering again about the underlying philosophy that we should have as Christians towards the environment and how that should play out in real life. The conversation with Peter, while focused on some specific issues gave rise to the inevitable question, should we be passionate crusaders for the environment or ardent consumers of the natural resources. Most of us would of course answer somewhere in the middle.

I was forced to think about this again today in preparing a talk for a group of business people. How passionate, how consumed should we become over the environment, either for it’s use or it’s preservation. Should I be an evangelist for the environment itself, or the development of the environment, for preservation or progress.

But it strikes me that this is not a first order question, even though it is the popularised dichotomy. Put aside the moral question of stewardship for a moment, the real question seems to be whether what we do with the physical earth around us matters in the long term. This goes to the heart of what God intends to do with this earth. Is it, as someone proclaimed to me yesterday, all destined for flames with complete discontinuity between this earth and the new earth or is it as NT Wright would understand it, a continuity with a renewal? On the one hand, the earth will be literally destroyed and replaced, on the other it will be renewed and what we do now contributes to that renewal.

I am not sure this is the main question for the Christian either. It must be more fundamental. The Bible seems as concerned about the motivations for our actions as the actions themselves. The actions are the outflowing of right motivation. Thus the idea of stewardship, of caring for what we have been given, regardless of whether it is to be consumed or not, is the important thing. In a way, the same goes for social issues. The bible does not seem overly concerned with slavery per se, what it is concerned about is our relationships, not overly concerned about eradicating poverty per se, but concerned about our use of what God has given us to those less blessed. It is this then that will be judged on the last day. Not whether we have halved world poverty by 2015, achieved the Millennium Development Goals or reached our Kyoto targets but whether we were good stewards, gave a cup of cold water in Jesus name or obeyed our earthly master.

In case you think I am against eradicating poverty and slavery or reducing our consumerist footprint on the earth, I am not. Collective action on these issues is important.

I just want to get the main question right.

The chair.....

2008-10-06T00:06:00.000-07:00

I am a Frank Peretti tragic. He never fails (by book or in person) to both amuse me and challenge me.

or if you have time for the longer version

God through Jesus.....and evangelism

2008-10-05T02:28:00.000-07:00

Suppose you knew nothing at all about God’s character, but you had spent a lot of time with Jesus. What would you have learned about God from him?

God is holy and righteous – Jesus would have modeled holiness in all of his dealings and relationships of life but on a number of occasions he demonstrated the holiness of God through his anger at the desecration of holy things. One example of this is in the temple, where the money changers and merchants had used the temple as a place for amassing wealth. Jesus resulting white hot anger and actions would have clearly imparted a sense of righteousness anger, the basis of which id his own holiness.(Luke 19)

God is all powerful – John 11 demonstrates the power that Jesus had as God, he was able to raise a dead man back to life after he was clearly dead and decomposing. No-one else could demonstrate this type of power. The myriad of other miracles that Jesus undertook throughout the Gospels also showed that this power was not limited to a small range of circumstances but that any situation, Jesus had the power to change the natural order.

God is loving and compassionate – John 8 shows Jesus as compassionate and loving with the woman caught in adultery. His response to those who were looking for vengeance and his subsequent “neither do I condemn you” to the woman displays God’s compassionate nature very poignantly. In the same way that he weeps ove the nation of Israel in

God is a God of complete wisdom – Jesus demonstrated the wisdom of God in so many ways. Jesus clearly talks about the fact that he has the wisdom of God. He claims to have wisdom greater than Solomon (Luke 11) but this is seen in Mark 12 with Jesus’ reply to those who were out to trick him and his incredibly wise reply, "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's." The people marveled at his wisdom.

Our evangelism and discipling must not shy away from telling the truth, from declaring the holiness of God and our failure as human beings to meet that standard. It requires the teaching and nurturing of repentance. It also requires that we proclaim a sovereign God who can indeed provide power over sin and can do the seemingly impossible. The other side of the coin, our evangelism, set against this backdrop must continue to portray the mercy and grace of God and we must strive to develop in disciples a wisdom that comes through the study of scriptures and the Spirit.

If you can keep your head....

2008-10-04T02:30:00.000-07:00

For anyone interested, here is the article I referred to last weekend. It is worth the read.

Straight words.

2008-09-30T01:04:00.000-07:00

At staff meeting this morning (St John's) we looked at the passage in Mathew 7:15-23. The main observation was the bluntness and purposefulness with which Jesus spoke. He never shied from calling a spade a spade, or a heretic a heretic. In the passage he encourages us to discern, to strip away the external appearance to see reality. He makes it clear that it is the reality of the foundation, the ground on which the tree is planted which matters, not some spectacular prophesying or wonderful backslapping works or even an impressive round of exorcisms. It is simple fruit, the work of the spirit in a true believer. What does this look like? How about love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Pretty ordinary really but the stuff that real fruit is made of, the stuff that could create world peace, halt financial collapses, finish wars, eradicate world poverty, slow global warming......

But what is striking is that Jesus isn’t being nice and putting a positive spin (like I have just done) on the benefits of this fruit…no!! He is giving a warning in no uncertain terms that those who are not grounded in the only true foundation, grafted into the true vine can do all the speccy deeds they like, even in Jesus name, and will be cast out of the kingdom. People who look the real deal but who have ulterior motives and bring unrest, bondage and domination, encourage heresy and send people to hell in the process.

That’s what makes me so mad with liberal “Christian” teachers. Bishop David Anderson puts it well.......”In many ways, the spiritual/ecclesiastical Anglican Communion meltdown is comparable to the financial meltdown in the US business world. In the latter, people bought sub-prime loans that were in effect bad paper, passed them on to others as if they were the real thing, trust was broken, and lies and deceit led to the economic ruination of many - and it isn’t over yet! In the spiritual/ecclesiastical realm, church leaders in North America (and all false teachers for that matter) put together sub-prime, bogus spiritual truths, passed them on to others as if they were the real thing, persecuted those who raised the alarm, and as a result, trust has been broken, lives spiritually ruined, lies and deceit have caused many to leave their churches...... The problem with spiritual ruination is that you might wind up in hell”.

No wonder Jesus didn’t pull punches with false teachers when the problem with spiritual ruination is that you might wind up in hell.

Bring on the straight talk!!

Bring on the real game!!

2008-09-29T04:22:00.000-07:00

I was at a climate change conference today, yet again. I must admit I am a bit over it. I worked out that this is the 11th climate change talk (or in today’s case, series of six talks) that I have heard in the past three months and they are all starting to sound the same. The same graphs come out, ripped off the same websites, the same gloomy predictions with no answers dragged out of the same 10 inch thick reports. What amuses me is that if you take some of these predictions literally, the end of the world as we know it is just around the corner. And here we are sitting in a stuffy room squinting at a series of multiple squiggly lines on a minuscule x/y axis, all colored for confusion especially if you are color blind. All the while shaking our heads and muttering about how the government needs to do something about it.

If we really believe this stuff we should be going crazy, evangelizing, pleading with people to stop driving their cars and get on their treadley, lighting our candles instead of light bulbs and eating local fauna instead of those darn methane machines called cows!!

Well, not quite. One speaker was talking up the stats which indicate that over 70% of the Australian public want action on climate change. Now, darn it!! That was why we turfed the last government out after all. They were just too slow. This is urgent after all remember!! Small flash back to the drive to work this morning......ABC radio.......journo reporting on latest national survey on peoples attitudes to climate change.......over 70% (that number seems familiar for some reason) of Aussies would not be willing to pay more than $10 extra a month on their electricity bill for clean green electricity.......whoaaaaaa......did I just miss something. The math just does not work!!!!

The moral of the story, the hip pocket will always come before climate change action. Actions speak louder than words. Seriously, I think the jury is still out on just how much climate change is more than variability, at least in the longer term, and just how much the human footprint really contributes. The real story is that as Christians we shouldn’t need climate change to swing us into stewardship mode. We are called to be good stewards of all the resources God has given us, natural resources, people resources, spiritual gifts and resources ......they do actually exist for his pleasure after all so the least we can do is look after them.

But ultimately I am reminded of a comment that Mike Raiter made about a year ago when I was speaking at the BCV business breakfast. There were the inevitable questions about climate change after my talk and in wrapping up Mike quoted Hebrews 9:27, “..after this, the judgment”. The point, climate change is not the real game in town folks, the fight for the souls of men and women, for the honor of God is the real game. Those words have not left me to this day…

After this…..the judgment!!

Note to self: Round pegs do not go in square holes

2008-09-27T23:56:00.000-07:00

This mornings sermon had a slight twist to it. The story of the cripple that Jesus healed while waiting for the stirring of the waters in Bethesda is generally told as just another gracious healing by Jesus. It is that of course, but the ugly side of this man formed part of the back bone of this sermon, in particular the indication that he was at best a hypochondriac who found meaning and purpose for his existence in his illness, at worst a bitter and twisted old man who was more interested in blaming others for his condition while finding meaning for existence in it to the point of possibly not wanting to be healed. (That would mean losing his purpose in life!!!)

This take on the story bumped right up to an article in this weekends Weekend Australian magazine; Sobriety? I’ll drink to that. Rather Augustinian like, Will Storr writes,”…for people like me hedonism is terrifying, an infernal force, because it provides everything we need most in a form that couldn’t be more dangerous for us. You see, we’re full of holes, and in our hopeless attempts to fill them we crave love, attention and respite from anxiety. Hedonism provides all these things. Stimulants give us the confidence to talk and act like those miraculous people we see on TV. They enable us to negotiate dirty encounters in strange bedrooms and experience total acceptance in a concentrated dose. But the trouble is, we’re not strong enough for it.” and so on……quite an enlightening read and rather brilliant cultural exegesis in total, even if the conclusions tend toward fulfillment through esoteric pomposity and cultural asceticism.

The point of all this being that round pegs do not adequately fill square holes. The round pegs of self-pity, hedonism or asceticism give us an instant shot of satisfaction which like a drug, wear off rapidly and leave us hating ourselves, needing yet more to make the hate go away. At the end of the day we have been created with purpose beyond our miserable self absorbed existence or indulgent hedonistic rampages. As our fathers in the faith hammered out word by word on the anvil of the bible, “Man's chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.”

Of course, the square peg can be a bitter pill (excuse the mixed metaphors) for most of us given it involves renouncing our own desires and accepting that someone else, like God of all people, just might know best how to fill that hole. In fact it might just be that God himself is the square peg or as that great converted hedonist Augustine opined, “You have made us for Yourself O Lord, for you alone our God, and our hearts are restless until they rest in
you.”

So, note to self, round pegs do not go in square holes!!

Anyone up for a dose of square peg repentance, faith, losing your life to save it, mortification of the flesh, cups of cold water in Jesus name, looking for the city that is to come??

Church Growth

2008-09-25T04:00:00.000-07:00

“When the issues that divided the Christian community were squarely faced and constructive action taken, church growth resulted.” (Trites 2005) This implied willingness for corporate repentance and confession (along with individual confession and repentance) and following that with the constructive action (renewal) was no doubt fundamental to early church growth. The paucity of anything genuinely resembling this type of reflection and repentance and renewal today means that we as a church no longer recognize our sinfulness and need of renewal and so become just like the world around us, a club marketed to the pious and religious. (Of course, we as Anglicans have the framework for this within book of common prayer, it is more a question of making that framework "incarnational", to use an emerging church phrase.)

The things that set the church apart are lost in the race to be like everyone else, usually in the name of contextualization or relevance, (or our fear of suffering or ridicule) and in the process we lose our relevance because we have nothing to offer more than the club down the road. The result, people choose the club down the road because at least they at least know why they exist and stick to it.

We so often remove the offense of the cross, the need for repentance, the lordship of Christ and his demands for those who would follow him and in return we get a church that is declining firstly spiritually with the inevitable numerical decline following and a geographic decline to those pockets of the church which remain faithful to the faith once delivered.

Contextualization, Syncretism and the Gospel

2008-09-20T21:58:00.000-07:00

Contextualization must mean the communication of the gospel not only in ways the people understand, but in ways that also challenge them individually and corporately to turn from their evil ways. This is one of the underlying dangers of contextualizing Australian churches, we may end up communicating the message in an understandable way but lose the edge, the challenge that the gospel (and the church itself) should bring to the culture that it is speaking to. Seems somewhat paradoxical but that’s the gospel for you.

Contextualization can easily create such an affinity between a particular culture and the church that it becomes an addition to the gospel. This sometimes does not become obvious until a church planting exercise is undertaken in a distinctly different cultural or sub cultural setting. In a more general sense the syncretism that occurs in many church settings can be an “unconscious” contextualization, sort of like the frog in hot water theory. The desire to be “mainstream” and attractive from a program/church perspective potentially contextualizes us into conformity to the non-Christian standards.

Given the extremely multicultural society that Australia is, the segregation issue is a particular danger. Contextualization of the church itself must always take into account the mandate of the gospel that ”the two (Jews and Gentiles) are made one”. It is too easy for contextualization to become the end in itself. There appears to be elements of this in the “emerging church” movement, at least at some of the more extreme ends.

Mission and the Authority of the Bible

2008-09-20T21:51:00.000-07:00

The degree with which mission is a priority is linked to our degree of “conviction about the authority of the bible”. This can be clearly evidenced in as far as the denominations, or rather sections of denominations which are most active in mission are the ones who hold the strongest conviction that the bible is authoritive and does compel us to mission.

The bible presents a vision of the Kingdom of God as the compulsion (and joyous privilege) to mission. This is in stark comparison to the typical Australian vision of the kingdom of self gratification (material or spiritual). This difference in vision is one of the key driving forces in the apathy to mission for the kingdom of God.

Some of the ignorance comes from our emotional detachment from other cultures as a result of our increasingly affluent self contained society. We have become content with paying a minister/missionary/organization to ease our consciences and run mission, either here or overseas.

We are more influenced by a post modern and pluralistic worldview than we realize at times. We feel a little uncomfortable with the idea of “forcing the issue” with the Gospel, we have lost the sense of conviction that there is one way and that mission is God’s message, not ours to rationalize as Chris Wright points out.

A return to a passion for mission will require a reaffirmation of the uniqueness of Christ, as sense of concern for others, an acceptance of the authority of the bible and a renewed vision of the kingdom of God and our role in it.

Mission and Indigenous Churches

2008-09-13T23:16:00.000-07:00

Short term there is a strong future for indigenous churches in multicultural and pluralistic settings. The assimilation of multi cultures into a new setting is a slow process and the specific forms of church that relate to their culture are not easily dispensed with. The rise of ethnic specific churches is a normal process while generational assimilation occurs. This allows for the progress of the Gospel and the meeting of a variety of cultural specific needs and expectations.

Longer term, the distinction between indigenous in a historical sense and the “new” culture becomes blurred as cultural assimilation occurs. This provides the opportunity to liberate the church from a dominant cultural baggage that may have been part of the historical “indigenous” culture. It provides an opportunity for the demonstration of the Pentecost reality of Jews and Gentiles worshiping as one people of God in the one place. Having said that, it is the responsibility of the “indigenous” culture to ensure that pluralism does not become the focus, but rather the Gospel is maintained as the tide of cultural change sweeps through.

Mission in the OT and NT

2008-09-13T23:15:00.000-07:00

Mission in the Old Testament is primarily centripetal. Exodus 19 portrays God’s chosen nation, the Israelites as the focus for the salvation of the world, “out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” This mediation was further focused around a temple and all people were called to that place to worship the one true God.

Exodus 9 implies that rather than serve God as missionaries where they were (which the New Testament would) the Israelites need to be given a and of their own in which to worship and serve God, from where God’s name would be known. Opposed to this is the primarily centrifugal, or a decentralized model in the New Testament which was the sending out to all the world instead of the calling in.

The Genesis 12 passage focuses on the development of a foci, a nation through whom God would be known. It would be the nation and God’s faithfulness to them that would be the centre of God’s witness to the world.

From an overview approach the differentiation can be helpful but the distinction can be extrapolated beyond that and become unhelpful. There is still an activity of calling in, in the New Testament, Christians are called to care for one another, to love one another and so “be attractive” to non-Christians and to let God’s faithfulness in our lives be known. This is a centripetal concept and likewise, dispersion in the Old Testament had an effect of centrifugal mission. The unhelpfulness of the concepts arises when they are used to develop a rigid model of mission.

Creating awareness of frontier missions

2008-09-13T22:34:00.000-07:00

Strategic steps to create a greater awareness of frontier missions.

Have a deliberate inclusion of mission in the churches vision. This would include the development of a clear understanding of the sender role, a deliberate equipping strategy for those with gifts directly relevant to missions. This would require facilitation resources to adequately involve the majority of the congregation in exploring and incorporating the role that frontier missions will play in the life of the church. The resultant ownership (as opposed to a small “missions group”) will ensure a “prolonged investment on the part of both church leaders and members”.

Building a prayerful awareness of frontier missions. “The first step is to see the harvest.” This step focuses on making people aware of the harvest through specific prayer and would primarily consist of the promotion of existing CMS missionary prayer book by buying one for each person in the parish and providing updates as a means of connection and prayer stimulus. People willing to commit to praying would be assigned a country (and associated missionaries) to pray for on a regular basis. This could be rotated on a yearly basis.

The inclusion of mission into the life of the church. This would include “mission moments” in services and an annual missions focus event/period such as a missions week. This would require primarily human resources to organize for the content to be available and presented during the mission moments. The development and regular use of a mission focused liturgy (such as http://www.fwworldmission.org/library/brochures/MissionLitany&Prayers.pdf ) would be an appropriate way to incorporate mission awareness into services. An annual missions event/period would require the commitment to developing a program of information and presentations.

Develop live interest events based on missions. These events would include missionaries and frontier mission promotion. This would require prior planning to access missionaries on home duties and the resources to bring them to the event. Such events could also include music/band based events which have a missions focus (such as Bill Drake) or a strong audiovisual focus to make the realities of frontier missions a little more real.

Utilize technology to engage a younger generation. Build an online blog site for interactive discussion with missionaries (where possible) and discussion about a specific frontier mission.

Steps to further the involvement in actually reaching unreached peoples.

The promotion and or development of a short term mission program. This would have a dual purpose, both exposure to frontier missions for those who go but just as importantly to send teams in a manner so that “missionaries are encouraged more than they are interrupted” and so build an additional support mechanism for those long term missionaries. Participants in short term missions would be followed up and mentored to maximize the benefits from the trip.

The adoption of a country of interest and associated missionaries. This development of partnership is based on “the koinonia that Paul and the Philippians enjoyed [which] was a partnership “in the gospel”. Steven Hawthorne points out that “God has entrusted the very same assignment to both the missionary and the senders as a shared grace”. George Miley goes further and comments that “sometimes churches as a whole come to recognize that God is entrusting them with a specific part of the task” and that this can lead on to significant partnerships such as sister church plants.

Provide a range of opportunities for carrying out the sender role. Gifting in the church vary and “the unique God given potential within each one of us becomes even more effective when it is blended together and expressed in harmony”. The recognition of gifting within the missions context and equipping is a key role in effectively involving people in frontier missions, whether as missionaries or senders.

Deliberate, regular and passionate prayer. This would occur through the development of prayer cells with specific focuses. Resources for this could include the CMS prayer book, mission agency prayer updates and direct missionary contact. This is a direct support and involvement strategy based on Philippians 4:15.

Teaching on the role of money and our obligation to the gospel. A regular sermon series on the role of our resources and their role in the mission of God. This is clearly taught as an obligation and privilege (Philippians 4:18). This would be accompanied by specific opportunities to support financially which have been prayerfully considered by the church as a whole.

Strengths of the approach

The approach outlined above is a strongly inclusive one which would develop a high level of ownership and participation within a congregation and parish. It seeks to clearly define specific roles and focuses for the churches efforts in engaging with frontline mission thus avoiding the ad hoc approach. It provides for people at various stages with ongoing awareness programs aimed at a variety of generations along with active participation and support for those who have moved beyond just awareness.

The approach seeks to engage all age groups and learning styles while retaining core focus on the basics.

Weakness’ of the approach

The approach described above has potential weaknesses in as far as it is very resource heavy. While this is fine for a church the size of St John’s, it could easily become overwhelming. It is also potentially weak in that it primarily promotes narrow partnership with the denominational missionary agency (Church Missionary Society). This may not provide opportunities for people who have interests in mission agency activities beyond CMS and it’s style of missions.

The odd reflection debut

2008-02-17T00:59:00.000-08:00

Hi and welcome to the odd reflection. Odd as in quantity rather than quality. At least I hope the reflections will be substantial and sensible. But I only intend to add something if and when I have something to say rather than promise overly regular entries.

I have been meaning to enter the blog scene proper for a while now (resisting all the while) and have to admit to an ulterior motive which has kick started it all for me. I was spurred into action by a subject that is of particular interest to me, the insipid decline in the quality of content of Christian church music. Much of it is, I suspect, sheer laziness, giving the masses what they want and songs which require little reflection of depth of understanding. The consequences of this laziness (and sometimes downright false teaching) will be reaped in future generations and so it rests with those of us who have this burden to act prophetically within church culture to promote music which is both substantial and artistically meritorious.