Shibboleth

New blog site

2010-03-17T16:28:00.001Z

Shibboleth has moved - find me at http://stallberry.wordpress.com/

The cross without the resurrection: punishment that never becomes atonement

2010-03-15T18:12:00.004Z

Michael Jensen's column over at SydneyAnglicans is always worth a read. This week he strikes a real chord on the resurrection:

A theology of the cross with no resurrection is a gospel of condemnation without forgiveness, of punishment that never becomes atonement, of a human Jesus but not a divine saviour, of a world condemned and abandoned but never redeemed and transformed.

And it didn’t stop there: the resurrection of Jesus in the body supplies the ground from which the NT writers can claim that God has not abandoned, but rather reclaimed the created order from the effects of sin and death, and from the monstrous regimes that assert their power in the world in the present time.

All the ho-humming and tut-tutting by liberal theologians about the resurrection as an internal, personal experience of faith makes the gospel into nothing more than a warm inner glow. But that is not the New Testament gospel. The gospel of the apostles is the declaration of the present rule of the Son of God with power and in the flesh.

Take the Resurrection Test

2010-02-20T16:41:00.008Z

Here are a couple of quick tests to see if the resurrection has the right place in your thinking:

1. If you've ever used the gospel outline '2 Ways to Live', what do you say when you get to box 5? Do you have a message, or do you just pass over this box as being no more than 'the next bit of the story'?

The resurrection is not just a matter of chronology ('and then he rose again'). It is a matter of theology ('and then he rose again and this is what it means').

2. Does your understanding of what Jesus accomplished on the cross require him to have been raised?

Does your version of the cross require a resurrection? If Jesus could have accomplished all you believe he did without rising again, you are not preaching the apostolic message of the cross. The cross of the apostles was an empty cross, and no resurrection means no salvation:

'He was delivered over to death for our sins and raised to life for our justification.' Rom. 4:25

'If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins.' 1 Cor. 15:17

On maximizing an All-You-Can-Eat buffet

2010-02-13T12:15:00.002Z

So the other matter that has been absorbing me during the week in Dundee has been how you make the most of an all-you-can-eat buffet. Probably the biggest-attended event of the mission week was an evening at Jimmy Chung's - a full Chinese buffet with a talk from me based on 1 Timothy 1:15. (If you're wondering how to make a connection from such a context to that verse - well, you really have to WANT to see it!) As well as many stimulating conversations and questions that arose out of the talk, I was left pondering this: how do you get your money's-worth out of these sorts of places? I offer the following suggestions:

1. Don't eat too much, and don't eat too little in the run-up. You obviously don't want to go into the pray already weighed down from a large meal, but you also need to avoid the temptation of eat hardly anything as well. Going in having skipped lunch means your shrunk stomach will fill that much quicker.

2. Do some reconnaissance. Before wading in and loading up willy-nilly, take an exploratory tour of all that's on offer and start to plan a little. Worth having checked what all the mains (and desserts) are before starting to assault the crispy duck.

3. Less is more. Avoid the temptation to slap as much of everything as you can on the plate. There is lots of time so pace yourself. It's a marathon not a sprint. I find it best to limit myself to three foodstuffs per plate. Too many flavors on one plate leads to the culinary equivalent of white noise. Three at a time (plus rice) is plenty.

4. Ditch dessert. Chinese food has never been about dessert. Skip it. Max on the mains. Have a biscuit when you get home if you need something sweet. Have as much of the proper stuff as you can.

Any other wisdom?

Lessons from Mission week

2010-02-13T10:43:00.002Z

Well I'm just on my way home from a week of missions events with Dundee University CU. Was great to get to know the guys in the CU, as well as the good folk from the UCCF Scotland team who were helping out as well. Dundee justifiably holds claim to being the sunniest city in the UK. What with that and a 24-hour bakery, there are worse places to live.

Two particular lessons have stood out for me this week:

1. Sharing the gospel is a terrific way to preach it to yourself again. I lost count of the number of times it happened. Talking about how we can be confident in God's love; how it is the death of Jesus brings about full forgiveness; why it is Christians go to church - it was such a reminder to me of what a great privilege it is to be a Christian. There's something about explaining it to someone else that really serves to underline it in our own affections. Hence, of course, the illustration of the Christian life needing to be like the Sea of Galilee and not the Dead Sea: having an outlet is what keeps everything fresh and living.

2. I've also been struck abut how important it is to speak about the Trinity in evangelism. It is surely no exaggeration to say that one of the greatest tragedies in the contemporary church is how little the Trinity is considered, let alone celebrated. Yet according to Matthew 28:19-20 it is the name into which we are baptized as Christians - that which now characterizes and defines our new life and identity. As such, is it vital in explaining just who this God is we now claim to know and follow. More than anything else it demonstrates the uniqueness of the Christian faith, explains how someone else can pay for our sins and makes sense of reality. Three consecutive conversations one evening, with a Muslim, Hindu and then Buddhist highlighted just how much I needed to talk about the Trinity if they were to have any chance of understanding God.

4 Marks of a Missionary Church, # 3: Be Proactive

2010-01-21T15:44:00.003Z

So far the spread of the gospel in Acts has been rather ad hoc: in response to circumstances, such as the outbreak of persecution against the church in Jerusalem which forced Christians to move out to Judea and Samaria; and through God arranging for people to bump into each other, such as Philip and the Ethiopian, Peter and Cornelius.

But in Acts 13 we see the church becoming more proactive:

So after they had fasted and prayed, they placed their hands on them and sent them off. (Acts 13:3)

The church sends out its first missionaries. Not because human circumstance has meant they have to leave: no one is chasing them out; it's not as if their lease has expired and they have to move. It is all to do with the burden of God's mission. The church is becoming proactive, taking godly prayerful initiative.

This is a challenge for us, corporately and individually.

As a church we need to think proactively about the mission opportunities we have. Opportunities for cross-cultural mission in other places - whom might God be raising up among us to give to this gospel cause? Opportunities for cross-cultural mission closer to home - what are the openings God has given this church in this context? For the sake of which unreached local people groups do we need to start taking prayerful initiative?

We need to think proactively as individuals, too. Thinking about:

1. The people we have access to: seeing ourselves as missionaries in our places of work, study, our homes and neighbourhoods.

2. The resources we've been given: money, time, our home. What is the most we could be doing with it?

4 Marks of a Missionary Church, # 2: Be Devoted

2010-01-19T19:45:00.002Z

We're told that the Antioch leaders were 'worshipping and fasting' when they received instruction from the Holy Spirit (Acts 13:2). 'Worshipping' here is literally 'serving'; many think the context was a prayer meeting of some kind. In any event, it was in this context of devotion and consecration that the message came.

Luke doesn't tell us how the Spirit spoke. Was is an audible voice? Or a conviction that arose among them? Or a message to just one, then relayed to the rest? However it came. the message was clear: Paul and Barnabus need to fulfilling their calling. Paul's calling we already know (Acts 9:15); it seems Barnabus was called to work alongside Paul - his wingman for the westward mission. Their calling, established in the past, is now to be actioned. Their part in global mission is to begin in earnest.

There's a lesson for us. Their role became apparent in the context of their devotion to and service of God. It's not to say that every time we hold a church prayer meeting the Spirit will announce who's to go where, like the Sorting Hat in Harry Potter. It is to say that we need to consciously give ourselves to God's service in order to understand the role he has for us, being open to what this might involve and where it might lead. A danger for us in the West is that we are so used to planning our lives we are not as ready as we should be to pray for God's guidance and leading. It is easy to assume we know what God wants for us to do. We need to so devote ourselves to God we would do anything and go anywhere in his service, even if it derailed what we had hoped and planned for ourselves.

Clarity in guidance comes not as we sit back and wait for God, but get up and wait on God: serving his purposes is the key to discovering our place in them.

Mark Meynell reviews 'Lifted'

2010-01-19T18:56:00.003Z

Mark Meynell, whose blog is one of the few must-read blogs out there (not least for the regular 'Q Marks the Spot' posts), and is author of the excellent 'Cross-Examined' has posted a review of Lifted on his blog and on Amazon.

The book has now been released from the publisher and should be in bookstores, actual and online, any day now.

4 Marks of a Missionary Church, 1: Be Diverse

2010-01-18T16:18:00.005Z

Luke's brief portrait of the fledgling church at Antioch has much to teach us. This was not just the first fully-fledged Gentile church. It was a key launch-pad for mission. Acts 13:1-3 shows us the four marks of a missionary church.

First up is its diversity. Luke wants us to take a look at the church leadership:

In the church at Antioch there were prophets and teachers: Barnabas, Simeon called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen (who had been brought up with Herod the tetrarch) and Saul. (Acts 13:1)

There are five prophets and teachers. We're not told which was which or whether they were all both, or even what it would have involved. It's not what they do but who they are Luke wants us to see. Barnabus, we already know from Acts, is a Cypriot; Simeon most likely a black African ('Niger' means 'black'); Lucius is from North Africa; Manaen is from aristocratic stock (a childhood buddy of Herod); Saul a hotshot Jewish scholar from Tarsus, now apostle of Christ.

Luke wants us to see that at the heart of this church is a diverse team working side by side for the gospel. This church has already learnt that Christ transcends our cultural, economic and racial diversity, and so its no surprise that this church is about to become the first ever sending church.

The challenge for us is to make the most of the cultural diversity God has given us in our own churches. We waste such opportunities if our close friends and ministry only really involves people who are the same as us.

A church that embraces cross-cultural fellowship will become effective in cross-cultural mission.

Have a break and solve this puzzle

2010-01-11T17:07:00.005Z

Was happily distracted for half an hour by the following puzzle. (HT, Tom Watson)

There are 30 books of the Bible in this paragraph. Can you find them? This is a most remarkable puzzle. It was found by a gentleman in an airplane seat pocket, on a flight from Los Angeles to Honolulu, keeping him occupied for hours. He enjoyed it so much, he passed it on to some friends. One friend from Illinois worked on this while fishing from his john boat. Another friend studied it while playing his banjo. Elaine Taylor, a columnist friend, was so intrigued by it she mentioned it in her weekly newspaper column. Another friend judges the job of solving this puzzle so involving, she brews a cup of tea to help her nerves. There will be some names that are really easy to spot. That's a fact. Some people, however, will soon find themselves in a jam, especially since the book names are not necessarily capitalized. Truthfully, from answers we get, we are forced to admit it usually takes a minister or a scholar to see some of them at the worst. Research has shown that something in our genes is responsible for the difficulty we have in seeing the books this paragraph. During a

recent fund raising event, which featured this puzzle, the Alpha Delta Phi lemonade booth set a new record. The local paper, The Chronicle, surveyed over 200 patrons who reported that this puzzle was one of the most difficult they had ever seen. As Daniel Humana humbly puts it, "The books are all right here in plain view hidden from sight." Those able to find all of them will hear great lamentations from those who have to be shown. One revelation that may help is that books like Timothy and Samuel may occur without their numbers. Also, keep in mind, that punctuation and spaces in the middle are normal. A chipper attitude will help you compete really well against those who claim to know the answers. Remember, there is no need for a mad exodus; there really are 30 books of the Bible lurking somewhere in this paragraph waiting to be found.

Mark Dever on Lifted

2010-01-07T17:06:00.004Z

Mark Dever is Senior Pastor of Capitol Hill Baptist Church, president of 9 Marks and, I recently discovered, a formidable Settlers of Catan opponent. Here's his verdict on Lifted:

"Sam Allberry has written a wonderful book on the significance of the resurrection. Full of great images, clearly organized, encouraging, humorous, Biblical, insightful--I could go on. Reading this little volume on this central but neglected topic will benefit your life. If you would like more assurance, transformation, hope & purpose, this book shows you how we get all that from the resurrection of Christ."

Daniel Newman on Lifted

2010-01-07T00:45:00.002Z

Daniel Newman, who works at Christ Church, Moscow, Idaho; and who blogs at Ad Trinitatem has written an extensive review of Lifted here. All these reviews have been both encouraging and instructive in large measure, and Daniel's is no exception.

I'm pleased to say the book came off the press a month earlier than expected, in mid-December. I've appreciated the opportunity to hold it in my hands, read it in it's objective, really-out-there 3-D form and share it with family and friends before it is published at the end of next week. I imagine it to be something of a cross between having a baby and releasing a child into the big wide world (having personally experienced neither).

A friend who has recently published a book for the first time said his reaction was similar to that of his first child's birth: 'Will people think it's ugly...?'

Jonathan Carswell on Lifted

2009-12-22T23:26:00.004Z

Another very encouraging comment about Lifted. Jonathan Carswell, Managing Director of Ten of Those Ltd., has said it's one of 2010's three books that he is most excited about. The others are an as-yet-untitled book by Don Carson on mentoring and the Passion for Life evangelistic book. As part of an interview over at Blog of Dan, Jonathan had the following to say about Lifted:

"Lifted did my soul good. As someone who struggles with depression this book helped raise my eyes from this earth to the transforming power that brought the resurrection."

Michael Jensen on Lifted

2009-12-17T22:44:00.003Z

Another review of Lifted has just come in, the first from overseas:

Australian theologian, good friend and my erstwhile Calvin-reading-buddy Michael Jensen has just posted his thoughts on his blog: http://mpjensen.blogspot.com/2009/12/lifted-by-sam-allberry.html

Reviews of Lifted

2009-12-15T12:05:00.002Z

Early reviews of Lifted have now been published on the following 'blogs. (If anyone would like a review copy for a blog or website do let me know.)

The Undercover Theologian:
http://undercovertheologian.wordpress.com/2009/12/15/review-lifted/

Audience of One:
http://audienceofone.org.uk/2009/12/lifted/

Shiny Ginger Thoughts:
http://danielblanche.blogspot.com/2009/12/lifted.html

I'm told there are more to come over the next week or so - I'll keep you posted!

Lifted

2009-11-17T11:55:00.004Z

A few folks have asked about the availability of 'Lifted', both here in the UK and overseas.

It is due out in January, but is now available to pre-order from:

MOT your small group

2009-11-17T11:28:00.003Z

Am encouraging our small-groups to give themselves a yearly MOT. Sometimes it's easier to identify weaknesses in particular when there's been permission given, in the form of a meeting put aside specifically to review how things are going within the group.

The way this has worked so far is that the group members receive the following questions a week or so in advance to take home and think over; everyone then hopefully has had a chance to reflect on the issues and come prepared for the review. I tend to chair the discussion, making it clear it's not the church equivalent of an Ofsted inspection. I'm not reviewing the group and the group isn't reviewing the leader - the group is reviewing itself. It sometimes helps to have someone outside chair the review as their questions will not be seen as loaded!

Small Group Review

Healthy small groups love

The Scriptures: getting to grips with Scripture and allowing it to stretch, encourage and challenge us.

One another: sharing our lives with and growing in our love and support for one another.

To pray: calling on God together as we respond to his word and each other’s needs.

The church: supporting the wider family at church

1. Reviewing the Group

What are the group’s strengths and weaknesses in each of these areas?

Are you getting to the heart of the passage being studied? Is there discussion of how the main thrust of the passage applies to us?

Are openness and honesty encouraged within the group? Is it easy to share difficulties? Do you feel you’re getting to know one another better? Is there enough social time together?

Is there enough time spent praying? Do you have a sense of one another’s prayer needs?

Are we being a blessing to the wider church? Do we encourage one another to prioritise coming on Sundays? Do we support the monthly church prayer meetings?

2. Reviewing your involvement

What might be your strengths and weaknesses as a group member?

What are your particular needs/expectations from the group?

How regular is your attendance? How might this impact on others?

What would you see your main contribution to the group as being? Is there any way you’d like that to change?

Harvest

2009-10-03T16:00:00.002+01:00

Here's my latest for the local paper:

I seem to have an unfailing ability to kill whatever plants are unfortunate enough to exist in my house – even the ones that are meant to be indestructible, like spider plants and cacti. It’s not intentional, but does seem to be inevitable. Recent casualties have included a peace lily and some fresh coriander. There is a once glorious pot plant in the corner of the room. Just one of the six main branches has any leaves, and those are now withering and looking a distinctly unhealthy yellow. So I’m probably not the best person to be talking to you about Harvest.

But strange as it may seem, the withered plant is a pertinent image for us. God, we’re told, has made us to be fruitful – to live lives to his praise and glory. Yet left to our own devices we’re the spiritual equivalent of the scrawny stick poking out of the plant pot in the corner of this room.

Enter Jesus, with a typically momentous claim: ‘If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing’ (John 15:5). The way to bear the fruit which God longs to see in us is to come to Christ. Not just to acknowledge him in a respectful but arms-length manner, but to entrust ourselves to him such that we live in him and he in us. Do that, Jesus says, and we will bear much fruit – the abundant harvest for which we were made.

Guest blog

2009-09-04T08:04:00.002+01:00

I'm guest blogging today over at Adrian Warnock's on a theme of ongoing concern to me: the decline of Trinitarian thinking in the evangelical world. If we get this wrong, it's hard to think of what we can honestly say we're getting right.

Public prayer

2009-09-02T12:11:00.002+01:00

Some thoughts for those involved in public prayer ministry.

1. Remember you are praying

All Christian prayer takes its cue from the gospel, from who God is rather than what we do. When Jesus teaches his followers how to pray he gives them thoelogy not technique. Christian prayer is, strictly speaking, evangelical: its impetus, shape and and direction come from the gospel. It is therefore trinitarian: we pray to the Father through the Son by the Spirit (Eph 2:18).

The NT gives a number of examples of Christians praying directly to the Son. This is a legitimate expression of Christian prayer, and there are times when we want to pray directly to Jesus. But the norm in Scripture is to pray to the Father.

Presumably it is not 'wrong' to pray to the Spirit, but given there are no examples of this in the Bible, and that the ministry of the Spirit himself is to point us to Christ, it would seem good for normative prayer to be to the Father.

We need to be attentive to this trinitarian framework, and not jumble up the members of the Trinity; for example, thianking the Father for his death on the cross.

2. Remember you are praying publically

We need to think about our motives for praying publically. Jesus rebuked those who prayed to be seen (Matthew 6:5). We are not to pray to try and impress others. We may win their admiration; we won't win God's.

We also need to think about our example. Jesus prayed in such a way as to teach hi sdisciples; it is no less authentic as prayer for that reason.

Public prayer will need to be:

Corporate. We are praying on behalf of others, and so our language should be corporate, not individual; 'we' rather than 'I'.

Prepared. It is good to have thought through how we are going to pray before we stad up to do so. For most this will involve writing something down. The number of people able to pray thoughtfully and coherently off the top of their heads is significantly lower than the number of people who try. Taking care to craft prayers thoughtfully makes them no less 'from the heart'.

Intelligible: Our prayers need to be those to which others can give a hearty 'Amen'. They need to be audible and free of technical theological jargon.

The home group leader's job description

2009-08-31T09:24:00.002+01:00

From what we've seen about the priorities for home groups, leaders need to be committed to the following:

1. To watch

Their own life and doctrine. Leaders need to be faithful Christians modelling the Christian life with integrity. It might be useful to ask leaders to sign a statement of faith as a condition of being appointed.

2. To belong

Leaders need to belong to the church family. This will involve belonging, in a regular committed way, to at least one of the Sunday congregations. It will also involve prioritising the monthly church prayer meeting.

3. To pray

Leaders need to be praying for their group members regularly.

4. To teach

Leaders are responsible for ensuring the Scriptures are taught with care. All the groups studying the same material is desirable (for it is an expression of our being part of one church family and enables cross-fertilisation between the groups) but is not essential, though leaders should consult with the homegroups coordinator about coming up with an alternative program.

5. To equip

The leaders are to equip their group members for works of service, including identifying potential new leaders.

Five Marks of a healthy home group

2009-08-28T09:40:00.002+01:00

(Part two of our series looking at pastoral care and home groups.)

Given the importance and nature of pastoral care, healthy home groups will be:

1. Led

It is not enough for groups to have ‘facilitators’ or convenors; they need to have leaders. Our mutual care is the fruit of godly, able leadership. A leaderless group will not be receiving adequate pastoral care.

2. Accountable

Home group leaders are providing pastoral ministry on behalf of the church leadership, who themselves are providing it on behalf of Christ himself. Leaders should not be self-appointed. Any leaders should be appointed with the agreement of the home groups coordinator on behalf of the overall church leadership.

3. Scriptural

The core business of the group must be Bible study of some kind. The normal healthy diet would be to study passages of scripture together, but it can also be good to vary the diet once in a while, such as by doing topical studies or looking at a good Christian book.

4. Relational

Home groups should not be less than Bible-studying, but they must be more. The value in studying the scriptures in this sort of context is that we are doing it together, and so a group should not feel like a tutorial. We need to work hard at getting to know one another. It is important for groups to have regular social activities.

5. Prayerful

Given God is the pastor, it is imperative that, as well as being attentive to his voice, we also call on him as his people. Prayer is the most easily squeezed part of a home group meeting, but it is vital. We need to remember we meet in God’s presence, and just as we don’t want the ‘horizontal’ dimension to our groups to be unrelational, nor do we want the ‘vertical’ to be so.

Foundational truths about pastoral care

2009-08-26T09:50:00.007+01:00

Having taken most of the summer off from blogging, it's time to re-emerge. I'm currently thinking through the relationship between pastoral care and small groups at church, and begin with the following observations about pastoral ministry in general.

1. God is the pastor

Scripture repeatedly speaks of God as being the ‘Shepherd’ of his people, most famously of course in Psalm 23. Under his care, his people lack nothing.

At times, he contrasts his own pastoral leadership with that of his people’s disobedient leaders. In Ezekiel 34:10-16 the ‘false shepherds’ who have been [mis]leading Israel are roundly condemned. God promises to remove them and to come himself to lead and shepherd his people.

This promise reaches its fulfilment in the claim of Jesus to be ‘The Good Shepherd’ (John 10:14-16). It is in Jesus that God has come to be the ultimate shepherd to his people.

2. Pastoral care is bringing people under the word of Jesus

Jesus knows his sheep, and his sheep recognise and follow his voice (John 10:27). Pastoral care is received ultimately through him as his sheep hear his voice. As we hear Jesus’ word we can be led by him. Pastoral care is not the attempt to meet human needs with human answers. It is the service by which Christian men and women come to know the scriptural will of God in their lives. All of our Bible ministry to Christians is, strictly speaking, pastoral care.

Our ministry to those in particular need will include practical and emotional support, but if it is to be pastoral it must also involve (gently and appropriately) the application of Scripture to those needs.

3. Inasmuch as leaders engage in pastoral ministry, we do so as under-shepherds

Jesus himself is the true shepherd. Pastoral ministry is that which points to his pastoral care. Peter describes his own role and the role of church leaders as that of being a shepherd under Christ, the ‘Chief Shepherd’ (1 Peter 5:1-4). It is his work and ministry; it is his flock. We are but junior colleagues. This designation applies to all involved in pastoral care, including homegroup leaders. All Christian leadership is the work of under-shepherding.

4. The whole church is to engage, to some extent, in pastoral care.

As we grow together under the word of Christ, the whole church family has a ministry to one another of mutual encouragement and up-building in Christ. The purpose of our meeting together is to ‘encourage one another as [we] see the Day approaching’ (Heb 10:25). We all have a stake in one another’s spiritual well-being. We are instructed to ‘bear one another’s burdens’ (Galatians 6:2). As well as providing pastoral care through their leadership, church leaders are to facilitate and act as a catalyst for the mutual pastoral care of all God’s people. The ‘pastoral care team’, is, if you like, the whole church family.

2009-06-22T11:10:00.002+01:00

It has been a joy over the past couple of weeks to reacquaint myself with the writings of C S Lewis; The Great Divorce, Miracles, and - at the moment - Surprised by Joy.

The following paragraph, from Miracles, describes the Christian hope of physical resurrection and sums up every good thing about Lewis' writing.

These small and perishable bodies we now have were given to us as ponies are given to schoolboys. We must learn to manage: not that we may some day be free of horses altogether but that some day we may ride bare-back, confident and rejoicing, those greater mounts, those winged, shining and world-shaking horses which perhaps even now expect us with impatience, pawing and snorting in the King's stables. Not that gallop would be of any value unless it were a gallop with the King; but how else - since He has retained His own charger - should we accompany Him?

Things they do better in America

2009-06-09T22:17:00.003+01:00

Am holidaying with friends in the Commonwealth of Virginia and trying establish, among other things, why Virginia thinks of itself as a Commonwealth. To divert me from such investigations I am compiling a list of things they do better than us in the U.S.

Lemonade. I mean - really - it has proper lemons in it over here. I have been delighted to see children selling home-made lemonade from little stalls at the end of the driveway. I thought they only did that in Peanuts cartoons.

Customer service. Rather than the grunt mustered by the adolescent service assistants back home, folk here give you a chirpy greeting, ask you how your day has been, thank you for your custom (even if you haven't bought anything) and grant you every benediction for the reminder of your life. And they sound like they mean it.

Architecture. Possibly because there are virtually no buildings over twenty years old over here, Americans seem to take more care in making new buildings attractive. Contrast the smart elegance of Reston Town Center with the concrete-and-brick bad hair day that is Maidenhead town centre and you'll see what I mean.

Geography. OK, so there's not much we can do about this, but they do mountains and rivers properly over here. Driving over the Potomac into central D.C., the width of the river makes you realize that they've got a whole continent back upstream.

Bookstores. With the one exception of Blackwell's in Oxford, of course, Barnes and Noble have everything a bookstore should have: wide selection, plentiful armchairs at regular intervals, Starbucks, and aisles broad enough that you can bend down to look at the lower shelves without risk of knocking over an entire row of bookcases behind you with your backside.

And all this from day one...

The Pursuit of Happiness

2009-06-04T12:51:00.003+01:00

The latest piece for the Maidenhead 'Tiser

The Pursuit of Happiness

The American Declaration of Independence famously affirmed that all humans have the right to ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.’ They have become some of the most famous words in history and have (obviously) had an electrifying effect on the U.S. and beyond.

But some have suggested the real genius of the Declaration comes in that last phrase, for it recognises something very important about the character of happiness: for many of us it is much easier to pursue than attain. We sense we are made for it, that it is part of our human dignity to chase it. And yet it seems so elusive.

So we might raise an eyebrow at these words from the Apostle Paul: “I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want” (Philippians 4:12).

Paul’s contentment is not just a manifestation of his personality type (he had to learn it) or based purely on circumstance (he wrote from a Roman prison). It came from the unchanging reality in which he had earlier encouraged his readers to delight: “Rejoice in the Lord” (4:4). It is more than belief or mere understanding: Paul knew the God who had made himself known in Christ. Paul trusted him – the Lord had proved himself beyond all doubt through his death and resurrection. Knowing him – having a relationship with him – gave Paul the strength to find joy in all circumstances.

Ascension Day

2009-05-21T13:34:00.004+01:00

Well I think today is Ascension day and I'm off to speak to our Thursday afternoon "Fellowship Hour" group. Here's what I'm sharing with them.

The ascension is to the resurrection what the burial was to the crucifiction. It is the physical outworking and confirmation. That Jesus died was shown with finality when they buried him. In the same way, his exaltation to resurrection life finds its fulfilment and completion in his ascension. His final destination was not with his brethren on earth, but at the right hand of God in heaven.

Paul shows us how and why he is exalted in Philippians 2:5-11

⁵Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:
⁶Who, being in very nature God,
      did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
⁷but made himself nothing,
      taking the very nature of a servant,
      being made in human likeness.
⁸And being found in appearance as a man,
      he humbled himself
      and became obedient to death—
         even death on a cross!
⁹Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
      and gave him the name that is above every name,
¹⁰that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
      in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
¹¹and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
      to the glory of God the Father.

How: He is given the title "Lord".

Used of God countless times in the Old Testament, it is now applied by Paul, consciously and without embarrasment, to Jesus. With it comes due veneration. Before him every knee will bow and tongue confess his sovereign majesty. The ascension means every pretender to human adoration will be seen by their followers prostrate before Christ: Darwin, Marx, Buddha, the Dalai Lama. All will one day profess that Jesus is Lord.

Why: For the glory of God the Father.

As Jesus is honoured God is glorified. To worship Jesus is not to take anything from God the Father; it is in fact to ascribe greatness to him for exalting the Son. To worship Jesus is to worship God: you cannot do one without the other.

Pillow-talk

2009-05-15T10:16:00.004+01:00

For those in Christ death is as sleep. The NT frequently speaks of believers who have died as those who have "fallen asleep".

But the reverse is also true: sleep is as death to us. We are physically weak. Even the "youths grow weary" Isaiah tells us. It is a mark of our humanness. Sleep speaks to us of limitation and mortality. We spend a third of our lives asleep - around 25-30 years each in total. Sleep is not just a physical necessity; it has theological significance. So the puritans prayed:

May my frequent lying down make me familiar with death, the bed I approach remind me of the grave, the eyes I now close picture to me their final closing.

That is, sleep is a sacrament of death. We are daily forced by our physical limitations to adopt its posture.

The difference between morality and values

2009-05-13T13:49:00.004+01:00

This is still a work in progress.

An observation would be that there has been something of a category shift in recent years about how people describe their moral goodness. An earlier generation would have spoken in terms of 'morality'; today's tends to talk of having 'values'. The shift reflects a change in mindset.

'Morality' was something of an objective category. It was something recognised and defined that you signed up to. 'Values' are subjective.

'Morality' was societal; 'values' are individual.

'Morality' was defined by others - it was a broadly agreed concept. 'Values', crucially, are defined by yourself (or by your sub-group).

'Morality' was accepted by others - you were deemed 'good' by other members of the community. 'Values' may or may not be accepted by others. What is crucial is that they are accepted by me - that I am being true to myself.

'Morality' required conformity; 'values' require individualism. The God of the 'moral' person was respectability; the God of the 'values' person is self-definition and self-actualisation.

God's message to the former was, "You can't do it. Your inability to live up to the code to which you ascribe authority shows that you are not a moral person. If you can't reach your own standard you will never reach mine. You need grace." God's message to the latter is, "You can't do it. You don't even know who you really are. You were made to find identity and purpose in me. Your failure to embody your own values shows your sense of who you are is flawed and inauthentic. You need grace."

Both, of course, are ultimately an expression of sin. For both, we need forgiveness.

Grace in Genesis 3

2009-05-09T16:04:00.002+01:00

Genesis 3 is one of the starkest and most tragic sections of the Bible. Following the temptation and capitulation to sin we see God's response: seeking out his people, confronting them with their actions and spelling out the judicial consequences of that action. It is a passage of judgement.

But it is remarkable to note in such a sobering passage the extent to which God’s grace is evident. In such a dark sequence we find a number of shards of light:

Though the actions of the serpent will have far-reaching consequences, God promises to one day overturn them. At great cost, the serpent will be crushed (v15). Humanity will be returned to God and restored in this image – and this is the story of the rest of the Bible.

Though the tasks of filling and subduing the world have been made painful and difficult, they are still possible. Humanity still retains the dignity and privilege of serving God in his world.

Death is inevitable through the withdrawal of access to the tree of life. This in itself is actually merciful: it would not be gracious to allow sinners to live forever in their rebellion against God. Yet while death is inevitable, it is not immediate. God would have been just to have brought death straightaway to rebellious Adam and Eve.

Adam names his wife “Eve”, confident that she would indeed be the mother of all living. Death will eventually overtake these first humans, but they will be succeeded. The human line is going to continue, and though their relationship is distorted, Adam and Eve are still able to lie with one another and produce offspring (4:1).

God makes garments for Adam and Eve to replace the initial coverings made of fig leaves. Significantly, these coverings are made from skins: the gracious provision has cost the life of another.

'Gay Marriage Would Undermine a Sacred Institution'

2009-05-04T22:23:00.004+01:00

I posted a while back on the challenge the church has to articulate the historic Christian understanding of marriage, and our discomfort with society allowing same-sex relationships to be regarded on an equal legal footing as marriage. The challenge is not in understanding the Christian view - it is plain in Scripture, but in finding a way to articulate it in the midst of a highly-charged debate that is thoughtful, clear and sensitive. Andrew Goddard has done us a great service in doing just that in a recent piece for the Guardian (and since added on the Fulcrum website). He hits the nail square in the head. I commend it highly and reproduce it below.

Why are the overwhelming majority of Christians opposed to "gay marriage"? Is this just homophobia? While homophobia sometimes plays a part, it would be unwise and unfair – perhaps even ignorant and prejudiced – to dismiss concerns in this way. Much more serious issues are at stake.
Christians, like other major faiths, have always believed that marriage is ultimately a gift of divine creation. Aspects of its form clearly vary across time and space but it is not a totally malleable human construct that we can simply redesign at will. We believe that the distinction between men and women is an important part of being human and that to commit to a loving, life-long, life-giving, exclusive union between a man and a woman is something special and unique in human life. This is not simply a fundamentalist reading of Genesis or a late Christian development. It is a vision shared by Jesus and based on his words.
He argued that even the law of Moses was subject to a deeper law – the law of creation. In teaching about marriage he quotes Genesis – "at the beginning of creation God 'made them male and female.' 'For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.' So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate."
Any attempt to redefine marriage so it need not be entered into as a life-long commitment – Rod Stewart once claimed that "the vows should be written like a dog's licence that has to be renewed every year" – is therefore unacceptable. So are claims that marriage should cease to be exclusive and UK law should recognise polygamy, even though there are possibly thousands of UK residents who would welcome this. Similarly, a claim that marriage should not have to be between a man and a woman is also a denial of the reality of marriage as God made it.
Does this mean gay marriage is a "religious" issue? For many the most obvious religious aspect is the Christian claim that marriage points to God's commitment to be in a life-long, life-giving, relationship of love with each person he has made. Marriage between a man and a woman is seen by many Christians as a sacrament – a special sign and means of God's grace. To make such a claim for same-sex sexual relationships – which both Old and New Testament consistently portray as against God's will – is therefore to declare holy what Christians have traditionally viewed as sin. But it is wrong to think these are the only "religious" beliefs about marriage or objections to gay marriage.
Christians believe God is concerned with every aspect of our lives – all of life is religious – and that marriage as traditionally defined is a distinctive, universal, created good. Although a personal vocation and not a universal right, marriage is something God has given which benefits everyone, married or not, religious or not. It is the basis for stable and fulfilling family relationships for atheists and agnostics as well as believers. It is good not just for the couple but for all of society. Marriage is therefore something unique which should be recognised and supported by the law and honoured by all if society is to flourish.
But surely Christians have no right to impose their own understanding of marriage on others? This argument fails to recognise that this is not some new imposition but a vision that has for thousands of years shaped diverse societies. Even advocates of gay marriage admit that historically marriage has always been between men and women. That should lead to great caution in radically and rapidly redefining marriage.
More seriously, the allegation of unjust Christian hegemony ignores the fact that any legal definition of a status or institution such as marriage "imposes" a particular philosophy or worldview on society. It should therefore be a definition which has overwhelming support, not something amended because of a vocal minority. Few seriously believe there is a groundswell of popular demand for marriage to be re-defined. Even among gay and lesbian people there is major debate as to whether or not "marriage" is a helpful term and framework for faithful loving same-sex relationships.
Western society has, over recent decades, seen major changes with the erosion and sexualisation of friendship, the weakening of marriage and the rise of alternatives to it, including gay relationships. One reaction is to affirm and encourage these developments by imposing a legal redefinition of marriage to fit this new situation. It would be better to keep marriage's long-standing definition and privileged legal status while ensuring those in non-marital relationships have sufficient legal protections from abuse and injustice. In that context we may be able to find ways of having a serious and honest discussion about the good and the harm experienced by individuals and society as a whole through the major social and sexual experiment we are undertaking. Then we may discern together as a society – across various religions and those whose faith is not "religious" – whether recent developments and proposed redefinitions of marriage serve or undermine genuine human flourishing.

Favourite Reaganisms

2009-05-02T22:47:00.002+01:00

Reagan was surely the true successor to Lincoln in terms of the quip. Here are some highlights:

Sometimes our right hand doesn’t know what our far-right hand is doing.
A recession is when your neighbour loses his job. A depression is when you lose yours. And recovery is when Jimmy Carter loses his.
It’s true hard work never killed anyone but I figure, why take the risk?
The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help.
Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.
I have left orders to be awakened at any time in case of national emergency, even if I'm in a cabinet meeting.

Our Unashamed Saviour

2009-05-01T10:15:00.004+01:00

I've been away this week at the Proclamation Trust's Spring Younger Ministers' Conference - which included some wonderful teaching on John 13-16.

Maurice McCracken has just alerted me to this passage, from a letter by John Newton dated November 23, 1774. I need to get to know this man better.

I have gained that which I once would rather have been without, such accumulated proofs of the deceitfulness and desperate wickedness of my heart, as I hope, by the Lord's blessing, has, in some measure, taught me to know what I mean, when I say, "Behold I am vile!"
And, in connection with this, I have gained such experience of the wisdom, power, and compassion of my Redeemer; the need, the worth, of his blood, righteousness, attention, and intercession; the glory that he displays in pardoning iniquity and sin and passing by the transgression of the remnant of his heritage—that my soul cannot but cry out, "Who is a God like unto you!" Thus, if I have any lower thoughts of myself, Eze. 16:63, and any higher thoughts of him than I had twenty years ago, I have reason to be thankful. Every grain of this experience is worth mountains of gold. And if, by his mercy, I shall yet sink more in my own esteem, and he will be pleased to rise still more glorious to my eyes, and more precious to my heart—I expect it will be much in the same way. I was ashamed when I began to seek him; I am more ashamed now; and I expect to be most of all ashamed when he shall appear to destroy my last enemy. But, oh! I may rejoice in him, to think that he will not be ashamed of me.

Empire Strikes Back

2009-04-24T22:37:00.004+01:00

I've long felt Empire magazine has been on the decline for the last few years now: too many articles about the "50/100/120 Best Movies Ever" that just seem to recycle movie blurbs; too much having the feeling of being Loaded Goes to the Cinema; fewer articles and more pictures and adverts than I seem to remember.

BUT: two things redeem them: their latest edition - a 20th anniversary special edited by Spielberg no less and chock full of all manner of treats (the Goonies reunited being the highlight); and their online poster mash-ups (see left) which consistently make me laugh out loud.

The Flat-Earth Society

2009-04-21T22:12:00.004+01:00

I am enjoying Thomas L Friedman's stimulating The Earth is Flat: the Globalized World in the Twenty-First Century. Friedman's thesis is compelling and has enormous implications. It is summarised as follows:

...Right around the year 2000 we entered a whole new era: Globalization 3.0. Globalization is shrinking the world from a size small to a size tiny and flattening the playing field at the same time. And while the dynamic force in Globalization 1.0 was countries globalizing and the dynamic force in Globalization 2.0 was companies globalizing, the dynamic force in Globalization 3.0 - the force that gives it its unique character - is the newfound power for individuals to collaborate and compete globally.

Friedman attibutes the rise of Globalization 3.0 to the convergence of technological advances in personal computers, fibre-optic cabling and work flow software. All of which means I can write this post on my own computer, you can access it from anywhere else in the world, and we can get together (virtually) and talk about it. (A new widget I've installed tells me that in the last seven days this blog has been accessed by people in the U.K., U.S., Singapore, the Philippines, South Africa, Canada and Romania.) The playing field has been significantly levelled.

The challenges and opportunities for Christians are similarly mind-boggling. The second most popular entry in the Google search engine is "God". ("Sex" being the most popular.) We are less restricted by our geography and background than ever before. And I take it that is largely a good thing. If I can learn from the teaching of pastors in other contexts, I am less effected by the blind spots of my own. Our sub-cultural weaknesses need not be endlessly replicated by following generations.

There are dangers too of course. I can become a vritual Third-Culture Kid and never develop adequate relational moorings in any one community. The capacity for being rootless is endless: forever chasing the latest leader or fad and never being close enough to real people for actual accountability and service.

But - boy - we live in exciting times.

Reasons to avoid the Trinity

2009-04-18T19:55:00.005+01:00

I've just returned from a week's holiday in the Lakes. This is the iconic Striding Edge as seen from the summit of Helvellyn. For the geographically-minded, it is an arete - a sharp ridge formed by two glaciers scooping out parallel U-shaped valleys. ('Arete' should have a circumflex over the middle 'e', but I haven't figured out how to do that.)

Christian theology is integrated, so we can't really have favourite doctrines, but if it wasn't and we could, mine would have to be the Trinity. It is hard to think of anything meaningful or delightful about God or reality that doesn't flow from it. But it wasn;t always that way. Here are some of the misconceptions that kept me from studying the Trinity for too many years, and which I suspect still keep many Christians from enjoying it.

1. It doesn't make sense. God is One, but Three. It doesn't add up. We can't really understand it and there's not much point trying.

2. It's not meant to make sense. It's just one of those things. It's not supposed to be understood. It's a mystery and we mustn't pry. To try to analyse it in some rational, systematic way would be to miss the point. It might even spoil it. Better to leave it be: it's mystical, it's more deep that way.

3. It's too technical. To get anywhere you need to be a theologian. Once you do start to scratch the surface of this doctrine you run into a sort of multi-syllabic Neverland. Ask an even rudimentary question about the Trinity and the theologians will fire back terms like "perichoresis". They may as well be speaking Klingon. In fact, they might well be. It's great that someone is thinking all these technicalities through; I'm just glad it's not me.

4. It's embarrassing. We commend the Christian faith on the basis that it makes sense - it coheres. It's not irrational. But then someone asks us about the Trinity and we're flummoxed. It's not explainable. We hope it doesn't come up.

5. It's irrelevant. Assuming we bust our way through all the jargon and find some way to explain it, what are we meant to do with it. Yes - one God, three Persons; but - so what? What practical difference could it possibly make to my life? It has about as much bearing on my daily Christian life as the quadratic equations I learnt at school.

Chat with Adrian Warnock about the Resurrection

2009-04-09T16:39:00.002+01:00

Well, just back from a terrific few days in north Wales at New Word Alive. Many highlights - the singing led by Keith and Kristyn Getty; time to catch up with old friends and the gang from Maidenhead (more often than not over successive games of Settlers of Catan); powerful teaching and some lovely weather (except the evening the main Marquee nearly went into orbit).

I also had the chance to meet the convivial Adrian Warnock. Both of us have recently completed books about the practical implications of the resurrection, both due to arrive January 2010. We had a chat about the two projects, taped for Adrian's blog, and you can watch the results above.

Father, Son and Holy Spirit - book review

2009-04-02T12:48:00.004+01:00

The Trinity is surely the most important and least understood doctrine in the church today. For many Christians this doctrine belongs firmly in the drawer, for reference, rather than on the desk, for use. Treatments that help us understand the Trinity are welcome. Those that overwhelm us with the wonder and beauty of it are rare indeed, and so let me commend Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: Relationships, Roles and Relevance by Bruce A. Ware (Crossway, 2005). Simply put, it's one of the most heart-warming reads I've enjoyed for a long time.

Though Ware is an academic his writing in this book is easily accessible (the content was originally delivered as a seris of talks and something of that flavour remains). It's also fairly short, clocking in at just over 150 pages: you'll make it to the back cover just fine.

Introductory chapters outline the importance and articulation of this doctrine, both in Scripture and church history. Technical theological terms are explained rather than assumed. But the real meat comes in chapters looking at each person of the Trinity and their distinctive relationship to the others. Ware mounts a sustained and compelling case for the roles of the persons being different, but more than that shows the beauty and application of their complementarity. Here is a typical section:

While those in authority need to be more like the Father, who lavishes favour on others by calling them to participate in his work, often putting the spotlight on them for their labors of love, those under authority need to be more like the Son, who gratefully and obediently embraces the work given him by his Father, and gives highest honor to the Father for all that is accomplished. (p. 67)

Each chapter heading begins "Beholding the Wonder of...", and through Ware's writing we certainly do behold the wonder of the trinitarian God. Here, in the differing roles of Father, Son and Holy Spirit perfectly executed, we find true harmony; not the white noise of postmodern diversity, nor the air-horn blast of uniformity found in Islam.

The unforgivable sin

2009-03-29T16:26:00.004+01:00

Thoughts from a recent sermon at St Mary's on the Unforgivable Sin.

“And so I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but anyone who speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or the age to come.” Matthew 12:31-32

For obvious reasons this has been a verse that has caused many a Christian significant unease. So many words come out of our mouths each day; so many of them are ill-considered. I’m bound to have said something stupid about the Holy Spirit at some point. Assuming I have, this would seem to mean it’s curtains for me. This – and Jesus is clear here – is unforgivable.

We need to think about the context. Quoted in isolation (as above), this verse is very stark indeed. But Jesus didn’t suddenly announce it one day in a historical vacuum: it flows out of what has just been happening. And what has just been happening is rejection of his message.

Rewind to a few verses before the passage. Jesus has healed a demon-possessed man who was blind and mute (told with enormous economy in verse 22). The people are amazed (23); the Pharisees less so, saying:

“It is only by Beelzebub, the prince of demons, that this fellow drives out demons.” (v.24)

Their claim is simple: Jesus’ power is Satanic. His control of these demons indicates (so they say) that he has significant ranking in the demonic hierarchy. His authority comes from being higher up the ladder than the demons. The Pharisees don’t deny the miracle has taken place; they are forced to account for it as an expression of satanic power.

Jesus takes them to task in the next verses. The size and effect of his power indicates he is stronger than Satan. He is robbing the “strong man” of his possessions: people. The New Testament describes Christians as those who have been “rescued from the dominion of darkness and brought… into the kingdom of the Son”. This all comes by through Jesus’ death, by which we have “redemption, the forgiveness of sins” (Col. 1:14).

It helps to remember that in the Bible the devil is often called “the Accuser”. His trump card is our sin; it is his boast and claim on us. Through the cross Jesus pays for our sin and provides forgiveness, and so Satan is plundered. He has no claim over us any more.

This cross-work is anticipated by Jesus when he describes himself as the “binder” of Satan (Matthew 12:29), and previewed by the deliverance of the demon-possessed man. It is this work of Jesus that the Pharisees attribute to Satan himself. Jesus is destroying the work of the devil and the Pharisees call this evil. The were not the last to describe Jesus' means of binding Satan immoral. It is in this context that Jesus warns of the unforgivable sin: blasphemy against the Spirit.

We need to understand the significance of the Spirit to Jesus’ ministry. By the Spirit Jesus is bringing the kingdom of God (v.28). By the Spirit Jesus was led to the wilderness to confront Satan(Matthew 4:1). By the Spirit Jesus offered himself as a sacrifice on the cross (Hebrews 9:14). By the Spirit we are able to see the truth of all this (John 16:13).

Blasphemy of the Spirit, I take it, is therefore the ongoing refusal to see the goodness of Jesus’ work in defeating the Devil. It is blasphemy against the Spirit because it is by the Spirit Jesus does this work. It is unforgivable because it is a rejection of the only means by which we can be forgiven in the first place. It is the spiritual equivalent of sawing off the branch you’re sitting on.

Three things follow:

The person who worries that they might have committed this sin almost by definition has nothing to worry about. The concern that you might have out-sinned the forgiving death of Jesus is not one that would be shared by someone who regards that death as immoral.

If you were blaspheming or had blasphemed the Spirit, you would not be worried about it.

Whatever you have done that you are worried about – look again at the first half of verse 31, “Every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men.”

You've watched the West Wing too much when...

2009-03-21T14:12:00.003Z

This has been brewing for a while, and has been inspired by a discussion over at the Internet Movie DataBase (imdb.com). I won't tell you how many times I've watched seasons 1-4 (5-7 don't really count; they're like the Star Wars prequels and the Gnostic Gospels).

You've watched the West Wing too much when:

1. You've tried (and failed) to put your jacket on the way Martin Sheen does.

2. You know the plural of Surgeon-General is Surgeons-General.

3. You're uncomfortable with maps based on the Mercator Projection.

4. You don't shut up about the uncanny parallels between the 2008 Presidential contest and the WW season 7 counterpart.

5. You've attempted (and failed, miserably) to do The Jackal.

6. You're impressed with how like the WW set they've made the actual White House.

7. You talk faster than you used to.

8. You've attempted to make people say "Foggy Bottom"

9. You no longer like the name Mandy

10. When you hear "Hallelujah" you don't think of Pop Idol, but instead spare a thought for poor CJ.

11. You've suggested couples walk up the aisle to the theme tune. (You're glad they didn't, it would be a crushing disappointment to hear the music and then have a wedding ceremony come next, rather than an episode.)

12. You blog about it.

Any others??

Getting to know You

2009-03-21T13:27:00.003Z

For all those keen to think through their self-identity but who, in the present crisis, do not have the money to backpack round Laos in order to do so, Michael Jensen has given us an alternative that is considerably cheaper and much more useful.

YOU: An Introduction came out just before Christmas and let me tell you why it's well worth a read. For starters, it adheres to that all-important but under-populated category of Christian literature which I classify as Bedtime Reading. Its not one of those books that needs a flask of strong coffee, a dictionary and an occasional hard slap to face in order to maintain concentration. It is chatty, thought-provoking and personable in style. Michael peppers his text with cultural references, especially song lyrics - for someone like me, who has long since given up trying to locate the cultural pulse, this is all very revealing and helpful; as well as quotations from commentators such as Anthony Giddens.

But underneath the breezy style is an important message. Our varying degrees of confusion about who we are reflects how we have each burnt the bridges of our self-understanding in turning from God. What Michael Jensen has managed to do is provide handles on the biblical witness to who we are in a way that is fresh and engaging. We probe what it means to be physical, relational and spiritual; chapters include bodies, speech, gender, dreams and death.

Chapters end with some of the comments from Michael's original 'blog posts, all of which helps the feel of the book to be more a conversation/thought-process starter than something definitive. This widens the group of people for whom this book would be helpful considerably; I've enjoyed leaving it on the coffee table and seeing what different people have made of it.

In the UK it's available here. The sequel, HIM, is being currently blogged.

Christonomics

2009-03-18T12:37:00.002Z

I'm planning a sermon series on Jesus' teaching on money and wealth. It's eye-opening to see (1) how much he has to say on the subject - he talks about it a huge amount, and (2) how unexptected much of that teaching is ("Use your worldy wealth to gain friends for yourselves...", for example).

This is the plan so far - I'd love any thoughts anyone has: is it a balanced representation of Jesus' teaching? Key things left out?

CHRISTONOMICS: What Jesus teaches about wealth

Luke 17:13-21 Wealth and folly (the rich fool)

Mark 10:13-31 Wealth and humility (the rich young ruler)

Matthew 6:19-24 Wealth and investment (1): Heaven (treasure in heaven)

Luke 16:1-9 Wealth and investment (2): People (the shrewd manager)

Luke 16:19-31 Wealth and compassion (the rich man and Lazarus)

Mark 4:1-20 Wealth and deceit (parable of the soils)

Luke 19:1-10 Wealth and repentance (Zacchaeus)

Mark 14:1-11 Wealth and the cross (the woman who anoints Jesus)

For this reason

2009-03-18T12:09:00.003Z

Some musings on Genesis 2:24

For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.

This verse from Genesis 2 is arguably the foundation verse on marriage. The writer interrupts his own narrative of the events to bring us this observation about what was evidently common practice among his readers. The custom of marriage owes its origins to the work of God in this passage. Two things follow:

Behind the human customs associated with marriage, which will vary from culture to culture, lies a God-given institution. Marriage is not just a cultural phenomenon (though its expression may be peculiar to the cultural context), but a creational one. It may be the custom within a particular culture to do it in a particular way, but that does not mean marriage is just a cultural thing. Marriage flows from how God has made humanity. Citing this verse in Matthew 19, Jesus attributes these words to the Creator: God has said this. Marriage is God's application of God's work.

The Fall in Genesis 3 does not fundamentally change this. The provenance of Genesis is such that the original readers addressed in this verse clearly practised marriage and did so as fallen humans. Our sin means that we cannot experience perfect marriage, not that we shouldn't try.

Marriage exists because of gender. Adam alone is not sufficient to fulfill the vocation God has given him; God creates the woman as his partner. She is like him and unlike him; "Bone of my bone" - of the same stuff as him, but also "woman" not "man". She is what is needed precisely because she is different. She is a different kind of the same thing. And for this reason, men and women get married. Marriage exists because gender exists. It is predicated on the difference between the sexes (and hence is heterosexual in character).

This is not to say gender exists solely for marriage. Our complementarity as men and women finds multiple forms of expression outside the marriage context. The unmarried are not androgenous or less "gendered". Gender exists without marriage. But marriage does not exist without gender.

Implications of God's Oneness

2009-02-20T10:08:00.001Z

Michael Jensen has prompted a discussion about the implications of the Oneness, Glory and Wisdom of God. Here are some thoughts about God's Oneness off the top of my head:

1. There is a unity and cohesion to the universe which means that integrated knowledge is possible. It is hard to imagine the concept of a university developing without Christian monotheism having been part of the framework of Western Europe (as Rodney Stark points out).

2. Christian doctrine and behaviour are also integrated. On the former, it means that no two biblical truths are in conflict even if they might appear to be (e.g. God's sovereignty and human accountability). On the latter, there is no real tension between differing demands made of us by God. There is not a "tension" between social concern and evangelism, for example, although the two are sometimes spoken of as if they are a threat to each other.

3. The persons of the Trinity cannot be played off against each other. Statements like, "Ours is a 'Jesus' church; yours is a 'Spirit' church" (as I've heard as being able to account for the difference between charismatic and evangelical churches) are inadequate.

Flakey thinking

2009-02-03T23:20:00.004Z

About once a term I get to write a short piece for our local rag, the Maidenhead Advertiser. Here's my latest offering:

It’s all beginning to melt. The snowman across from my house is now listing like a torpedoed warship. Everyone is due back at school tomorrow and the two-day hiatus is at an end. The only silver lining is that more snow is expected at the weekend.

For all the frustration it causes commuters, the sight of fresh snow is still somewhat magical for many of us. Everything looks better for it. Nature looks charmed. Even drab buildings get a bit of a make-over.

But some things look worse. The car that’s normally gleaming white is now decidedly off-colour. Sheep now look grubby. Snow reminds us what pure white is really like. It provides the true benchmark.

A similar effect takes place when we encounter God. Most of the time we seem to scrub up pretty well, morally speaking. We’re not conspicuously bad. Most people would say we’re decent. But next to true goodness – the goodness God has made us to be – it’s a different story. All the grubbiness is plain to see. Our character is decidedly off-white.

And yet one of the great promises God makes in the Bible is to make us “white as snow” (Isaiah 1:18). The only human ever to display this kind of pure moral whiteness is Jesus Christ. By his death, he claimed to pay for all our wrongdoing. Sin is dealt with, and if we trust in him we can find forgiveness. Though our sins are as scarlet, they can be white as snow.

Honour your father and your mother

2009-02-02T12:12:00.003Z

An outline of my sermon yesterday, for those who didn't get all the references.

Introduction

“Youth today love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for truth, no respect for older people and talk nonsense when they should work. They contradict their parents, talk too much in company, guzzle their food, lay their legs on the table and tyrannise their elders.” Socrates

Some things have not changed: in each age there is a generation gap: a difference in experience, language, culture that leads to a disconnect between younger and older.
Many things have: generation gap widened by technology, politics and culture. Family, traditionally understood is being undermined and redefined.

1. The shape of the commandment

Honour = show due weight to
Note:
- BOTH parents to be honoured (neither role is second class)
- Commandment is not conditional: it’s based on their position not performance.
- Applies to all God’s people: we are to honour our parents beyond our childhood and their lifetime.

2. The importance of the commandment
Reflected in the Bible: Death penalty mandated in the Old Testament: Lev 20 for cursing parents, Deut 21 for disobeying them.

Explained in the Bible:
- Societal importance
Promise (Eph 6:1-3): that you may go well in land. Not promising longevity to each individual but health to society in which role of parent is upheld.
Disobedience to parents is put alongside murder in the NT “vice lists” (Rom 1:29-31, 2 Tim 3:1-5); sign of a society in decline. Destroy the family and you’ll destroy society

- Spiritual importance
Eph 6:1-4: Paul brackets obedience to parents with fatherly responsibility to teach the faith: this is the normative way in Scripture for each generation to receive the gospel. The father is the family pastor.

3. The application of the commandment

In childhood: honouring parents = obedience (Eph 6:1-3)

In adulthood: command to obey not given; relationship changes as move from child to adult.
“When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years” Mark Twain
Teens = still children (so obedience is the norm) but learning growing independence.

When children marry: Gen 2:24. New family unit formed; relationship with parents will change again. Danger of newly-married child not having emotionally left home yet, and of parents expecting same level of involvement and not giving space.

When parents are old: Prov 23:22; 1 Tim 5:3-4 & 8. We are to care for them: financially, medically, emotionally, practically. Doing so is repaying them and pleasing God. Caring for elderly parents puts our religion into practice; not doing so denies our faith.

Mark 7:9-13: not to justify neglect with “spiritual” reasons, e.g. using church commitments as excuse for not spending time with them.

Just as when we were young, by obeying our parents we are obeying God; so too when they are old, by serving them we are serving God.

After they have died: honouring them in how we speak of them and how we bear the name they have given us

4. Our response to the commandment
Two principles:
- Godliness, Prov 10:1, 17:21: honour them by living godly lives
Jesus rebukes people for repeating sins of forefathers, Luke 11:47-8
- Communication: involve them in lives, speak/see regularly, seek their advice

Two scenarios:
- Those with Christian parents: give thanks, pray for and help them
- Those with non-Christian parents:
Mk 10:29-30 church is also family
Respectful witness (not preach), parallel with 1 Peter 3:1-6
Involvement: parents know us well and have heaps of common sense Christian faith should make you a better child.

Conclusion:
We have all failed in keeping this commandment. Jesus can save because he was obedient (Luke 2:51) and in him we can grow to be too

What gardening has to teach us

2009-01-31T11:57:00.001Z

“How are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come?” (v.35)

Try and imagine your future resurrection for a moment and you begin asking these questions. How will it all work? What age will I be when resurrected – a baby? – a teen? Will I have to go through acne and a squeaky voice all over again? Or will I be old? And what will my body be like? Will I be athletic? Will a broken nose still be broken? Will I have blue eyes this time round?

There are all sorts of details we want to know about all this. Those questions were just a taster. I don’t have a clue how this is all going to work. But given I’m not the one who has to decide how it’s all going to work, I don’t need to worry. In fact, it is plain stupid to worry about it (v.36). There is a difference between not knowing everything, and not knowing anything. And what we can know on this is more than enough to stop us worrying about what we can’t know. So: what will our bodily resurrection be like? In answer, Paul says look at nature. Paul is gloved-up, wearing green boots and heading for the garden. We need to learn some things from nature – three things as it turns out.

Lesson 1: Put death in, get life out...

The first is that there needs to be death in order to be life. “What you sow does not come to life unless it dies” (v.36). The seed “dies” when we sow it. You shove it into the ground and leave it there, buried. It is, to all intents and purposes, dead. Yet from this death comes life, and without this death there would not be life. Leave the seed in the packet or on the table and not much is going to happen. It has to “die” first. Death is a condition of resurrection. It’s true of seeds and it’s true of us. Our bodies need to die in order to be raised up in new physical life. The transformation God wants to bring to us physically can’t happen unless our present body dies.

Lesson 2: What you get out wasn’t what you put in...

New life comes from death, but the second lesson is that the new life which emerges is different to what was sown. “When you sow, you do not plant the body that will be, but just a seed, perhaps of wheat or of something else (v.37). Paul is a little unrealistic about the level of interest I have in gardening, but I made a trip to the local garden centre to buy some seed and investigate for myself. I have before me some seed for sweet corn, carrots and cauliflower (sorry, Paul, they were out of wheat). There is little correspondence between what it looks like as a seed and when fully grown. The carrot seed (much to my disappointment) is not orange and carrot-shaped – a smaller version of the final product. Without the packet to tell me, I would have no idea what kind of seeds they were. I certainly couldn’t have guessed just from their appearance. But “God gives it a body as he has determined,” (v.38).

It is Agriculture 101: what you shove into the ground is different to what you dig up out of it several months later. Our new, resurrected body will be different to the old. It’s not that absurd an idea – it is all around us in nature.

Lesson 3: Like, dur...

The third lesson Paul has for us from nature is more broad: “All flesh is not the same: Men have one kind of flesh, animals have another, birds another and fish another” (v.39). It feels a little patronising to be told this – I can tell the difference between a goldfish and an elephant, thanks – but that is precisely Paul’s point: God is pretty experienced when it comes to finding appropriate bodies for things. We may be floored by some of the questions that come to us about the resurrection of the dead, but do you really think that God, who has made the countless kinds of creature on this earth, is really going to struggle to make an appropriate body for those who are raised in Christ? Look down at the creatures; look up at the heavens (v.40-41). There are seemingly infinite bodies is this universe. There are more than 13,000 species of fern and 12,000 species of moss. This is something of an area of expertise for God: do you really think he will have trouble providing a resurrection body for you? The huge variety in creation shows we have no worries here. God is not limited to what we can imagine or understand. His creative power is boundless.

Christmas Service

2008-12-19T11:59:00.004Z

We tend to measure someone's power by the extent to which they are served. The greater their authority, the higher number of minions at their beck and call.

I once stayed in Bangkok with the family of a man who was very senior in a multinational. He was extremely powerful. I was picked up by a driver. When I arrived at their front gate, security guards saluted me. I was given the number of the chef downstairs should I have a hankering for anything to eat. In the short period of time it had taken me to use the en-suite someone had evidently made up my bed with fresh linen.

Jesus describes himself as a man of power: "the Son of Man." This title belongs in the Old Testament to the one to whom God will endow his authority and power - basically, the one who's going to run things for him. Jesus bears that title and is up front about that. But he gives it a twist that human history is still turning round to catch up with:

"For even the Son of Man came not to be served,
but to serve and give his life as a ransom for many." (Mark 10:45)

It's unheard of. But he makes it very clear: he's the most powerful human in history - with the very power of God at his fingertips - and yet he comes to serve. This is the real paradox of Christmas: not just divinity in a nappy, but unfathomable power in service.

But that is the God who is there. One who sees us not in terms of our looks, salary, job prospects, achievement, grades, friendships or family. God sees us as beings made by him and worth his while serving.

This service is not a contradiction of his authority - it's an expression of it.

Mike Huckabee and Jon Stewart on gay marriage

2008-12-18T16:20:00.006Z

Former Arkansas Governer and presidential cadidate Mike Huckabee was recently on Jon Stewart's The Daily Show promoting his book Do The Right Thing. In the second part of the interview the conversation turned to the issue of gay marriage, which Huckabee has consistently opposed.

What interests me is actually the comments made by Stewart: in my mind the clearest insight into where much of Western Society is on this issue, and a reminder of how much work the Christian community has in trying to articulate clearly and compassionately its own understanding on the matter. On suspects that, had he been subjected to fewer interruptions, Hcukabee would have had some thoughtful responses.

Sorkin, footie and WW2

2008-12-02T16:16:00.002Z

Well, it's been too long; so to get the ball rolling here are some thoughts Aaron Sorkin recently posted on his Facebook page responding to the U.S. involvement in WW2 and the accusation that English soccer is not a proper sport:

My favorite part of the game is when a player falls down in agony for no particular reason. I think Beckham sat out all last season with a bad haircut. This in stark contrast to an a quarterback who's trying to throw ta perfect spiral 60 yards downfield to a streaking blurr of a receiver while 7 guys who weigh 260lbs are trying to kill him. The quarterback will be quickly diagnosed with a concussion, asked if he knows where he is and if he can even come close to the right answer, gets thrown back in the game.

As for the War, yes we did show up tragically late, but in our own defense, coastal Europe was pretty heavily blockaded by the German U-Boats and there simply wasn't an entry point until the Enigma Code could be broken. Also maybe if Lord Chamberlain hadn't taken the Germans out for ice cream cones it's possible we'd all have a lot more relatives.

Of course we'd make up for our tardiness in Europe by showing up early in Vietnam and Iraq.

So watch all the soccer you want (I'm crazy about sports) but what the game is missing is the ability to savor situations. "Bottom of the ninth, two outs, one run game, men on first and third, left handed pitcher/right handed batter, two balls, two strikes, and here comes the pitch!....".

Still, we make great allies, don't we?

You

2008-11-04T09:53:00.003Z

Ever wondered what it would be like to have a book written about you?

Wonder no more...

The first chapter and contents can be downloaded here.

Caption Competition #3

2008-10-28T22:46:00.002Z

Living on the edge, as always...

Musings on truth and experience

2008-10-13T18:58:00.003+01:00

Biblical truth is experiential. Spiritual experience is cognitive. The words of Scripture are propositional, but not merely propositional. They are to be felt and our affections roused by them. An experience of spiritual reality will be emotional, but not merely emotional. It comes with the grasp of God's revelation.The heart burns when we understand Scripture:

"My heart grew hot within me, and as I meditated, the fire burned" (Psalm 39:3)

"Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?" (Luke 24:32)

The Word, rightly understood, is incendiary. We need, therefore, to politely reject the following statement:

"The Word without the Spirit dries you up; the Spirit without the Word blows you up!"

The Word and Spirit are not opposing forces in need of balance. The Word of God is not a dry, dusty thing that has the effect of an industrial-strength de-humidifyer. The Spirit is not some chaotic force that gets carried away like a child who's had too much Coco-Pops for breakfast. Word and Spirit come together as speech and breath. Truth and experience are a happy marriage, not an adolescent couple forever breaking up and getting back together again.

We are not forced to choose between empty-headed experientialism and cold-hearted cerebralism; between a tangled jungle and an arid desert. That is a choice between two inauthentic forms of Christianity, where what passes for worship is little more than musical manipulation, and what passes for preaching is little more than expository exegesis.

The shape of Lamentations

2008-09-30T18:22:00.003+01:00

It is not just the content of a biblical passage that constitutes its revelation, but its form. Both what is said and how it's said are part of the message we need to receive. Theological truth can be conveyed in different written ways; that God should convey a particular truth in a particular way is surely significant. The role of the preacher is therefore to convey both proposition and packaging, content and form.

This was recently highlighted for me while studying Lamentations. Two things are true of this book at the same time:

Intensity: probably the five most emotionally-intense chapters anywhere in the Bible. As we read, the feelings are raw, exposed and unmissable. This is not heart-on-sleeve, but heart-all-over-the-floor-and-spilling-down-the-stairs. It is a jading experience to read it all straight through. We almost feel we are intruding.

Formality: strangely (to us, at least) this most emotionally-charged book is also the most carefully-structured, incredibly so. Four of its five laments are acrostic in form (each successive verse starts with the next letter in the Hebrew alphabet) and one is a triple acrostic (first three verses begin with the first letter, next three with the second, etc.).

What does all this tell us? Well, that structured formality is not the enemy to emotional depth. But more: the poet adopted one of the most time-consuming, intricate forms to express the most incredible personal suffering. He goes out of his way to spend time reflecting on what has befallen his city.

In other words, this particular tragedy calls for deep and unflinching reflection. It is the most awful situation to experience and witness, but God stands behind it and his purposes for it are clear. Through these events there is a message to consider.

Even more, the bloody chaos described is given shape, form and cohesion through its scriptural expression. That itself may be part of the message God has for his people in the light of it. From chaos, order; both in literary and experiential terms.

U.S. Election: Bartlet weighs in

2008-09-30T12:48:00.003+01:00

Well the big news from the States is not the US$759,736,897,645 trillion rescue deal for the economy, nor the recent Obama-McCain debate, but the latest news that former President Jed Bartlet has broken his silence and voiced his opinions of the campaign so far.

You can read it all here.

Fruedian slip?

2008-09-11T12:20:00.003+01:00

A young teenage girl from the church here was in an RE lesson dealing with the differences between Catholic and non-Catholic churches. The teacher asked if any in the class went to a church, and the girl dutifully put her hand up.

"What kind of church do you go to?" Asked the teacher,

"I'm an Anglican Prostitute", came the reply.

Against lazy blogging

2008-09-10T10:37:00.003+01:00

This from the Borowitz Report, a favourite site for U.S. political satire. The blogging equivalent of this laziness is just to quote a whole piece by someone else with a quick introductory comment, as if doing so constitutes a proper post.

In Week Before Labor Day, Pointless 'Filler' Columns Abound
Lazy Columnists Pad Out Stories by Quoting Experts, Experts Say

In a phenomenon that occurs every year in the week before Labor Day, national columnists across America file pointless, content-free "filler" columns, enabling the lazy scribes to hit the beach earlier, according to observers who have been following this trend.

The "filler" columns are churned out in a matter of minutes with no loftier goal than meeting a deadline and filling up space -- meaning that columnists will often resort to using the same words or phrase again and again and again and again and again.

And rather than doing any original writing, the slothful columnists will rely on so-called "experts" to supply them with quotes to fill up space, experts say.

"They'll often quote people you've never heard of," says Harold Crimmins, an expert in the field of filler columns. "It's pretty shameless."

The typical "filler" column is often a reprint of a previously published column, but the writer will later plug in one cursory reference to current events, such as the 2008 Beijing Olympics, to disguise this fact.

And in order to fill up space even faster, Crimmins says, the lazy beach-bound columnist will compose his summer "filler" columns with short paragraphs.

Many of these paragraphs will be as short as one sentence, he says.

"Or shorter," he adds.

There are other telltale signs a reader can look for in order to determine whether a writer has, in fact, filed a so-called "filler" column, according to Crimmins.

One of these is a tendency to repeat information that the reader has already read earlier in the article, with columnists even stooping to using the same quote twice.

"They'll often quote people you've never heard of," Crimmins says.

Another tip-off is if the column ends abruptly.

Caption Competition

2008-08-30T09:48:00.003+01:00

Time for another caption competition!

The caption judged to be funniest will be regarded as worthy of a prize.

Mr Sorkin and the Facebook thing

2008-08-29T08:06:00.006+01:00

Well the big distraction from sermon-writing this Friday is the discovery that screen-writer Aaron Sorkin has arrived on Facebook. In a rare moment of total access, he's taking questions from people as part of research for a new project. Below is my comment to him. I'll let you know if I get a response - but does anyone else have an answer to the question I pose?

Aaron Sorkin!

You write dialogue like Mozart wrote music, and thanks to you I now want to present a live cable show, be the U.S. President and yell at Jack Nicholson. Thank you for the pleasure your work has given us.

The Facebook project is fascinating. It is a phenomenon that will keep sociologists off the streets for decades to come. At its best it has democratised socialising, granting universal suffrage to any would-be friends and reducing the degrees of separation between us all. We're now all to networking what Kevin Bacon is to movies.

At its worst it has redefined and cheapened friendship. Anyone I know of (and quite a few people I don't know of) is now a "friend" when once they would have been a contact. We now think we can have friendship without relationship.

But my question is, and it may be too early to answer: what will be the lesson for us to learn from your telling of the Facebook story?

Foot therapy

2008-08-28T05:12:00.004+01:00

It's not every day I have someone offer the opportunity to have small fish nibble my feet at the "Cute Fish Spa". But then it's not every day I'm wandering through KL's labyrinthine Central Market with nothing better to do. This is foot therapy Malaysia-style.

According to the blurb this treatment has a fine pedigree, originating in Turkey and recently popular in southeast Asia. All you need is 5 Ringit (for ten minutes), weary feet and the ability to overcome squeamishness at what is about to happen.

I asked what kind of fish I was subjecting myself to and the only answer I could find was "Spa Fish", which I don't recall being a species, but by this time I'd already paid up and taken my shoes off. Apparently they are toothless and attractd to dead skin which they nibble off (or, gum off, more accurately), leaving the healthy skin and allegedly revitalising the foot. It's something to do with science, they tell me.

So: I took my chair at the side of the small pool, and slowly lowered my feet. A swarm of the little critters sensed fresh western blood and made a beeline for me, specifically for the gaps between the toes and the soft skin on the underside of the foot - basically anywhere they know will tickle unbearably. It's a very strange experience as they munch away, nipping and poking. It is slightly painful and not wholly unpleasurable, though I still feel an affinity with Robert Shaw's demise in Jaws.

Once the time was up I did a quick count to confirm all toes were still present and felt reassured by the lack of blood (though it has occurred to me to return with a sachet of fake blood at some point to frighten off the other customers). For the rest of the day my feet had a slight tingling feeling, as if being very mildly electrocuted.

How the fish felt, I've no idea.

Meaning of life: 42. Meaning of Anglican: 39.

2008-08-28T04:27:00.002+01:00

A while ago I was playing The Settlers of Catan with some new opponents. This being the first time we had played each other, it became apparent we’d each evolved some slightly different additional rules. These were straightened out easily enough. More troublesome (from my perspective) was that this particular couple had not only added to the rule book, but also subtracted from it. So long ago, it seemed, that they had no notion at all that this had even taken place. As I came to make a particularly advantageous move in the game there were howls of protest at what I was doing, and an insistence despite my protestations that my move was illegal. There was only one way to settle this: dig out the rules, and find out whose version of the game was actually authentic.

It is obviously an imperfect analogy, but it won’t have escaped many people’s attention that the Anglican Communion is somewhat fraught at the present time. More than one version of Anglicanism is being advanced and there seems no common way forward under current conditions. The only tangible outcome from the recent Lambeth Conference seems to have been a £1 deficit.

The 39 Articles are hardly the rules for the Anglican Communion, but they at least give expression to the official convictions that have always stood at the heart of her practice. It does us Anglicans great good to turn to these in the current climate to get a sense of what authentic Anglicanism should be concerned with and excited about. They warrant close reading and reflection.

With this in mind, it is timely that Michael Jensen is offering a theological exposition of the Articles at a special blog here. I recommend it highly.

Praying in the Spirit

2008-08-25T14:14:00.003+01:00

Twice in the New Testament we are commanded to "pray in the Spirit" (Eph 6:18, Jude 20). Such prayer is not defined, but we can observe the following:

1. It is essential

Paul tells us to pray in the Spirit "at all times" and "with all prayers". It is not an option. Praying in the Spirit is to characterise all our praying. It is not a special category of prayer that can be used at certain times; all our praying is to be praying in the Spirit. I take it, then, that prayer in the Spirit is prayer that is Christian, and prayer that is not in the Spirit is not Christian prayer.

2. It involves self-control

We are to pray in the Spirit, and "to that end keep alert" (Eph. 3:18). We are to be alert and ready, poised and clear-minded. Praying in the Spirit is not prayer that is out of our control. We are not passive, "taken over" by the Spirit. Prayer in the Spirit is encouraged by alertness.

The wonderful documentary Planet Earth had at the end of each episode a short behind-the-scenes vignette. One such introduced us to the poor chap whose job it was to get footage of the notoriously rare Siberian Leopard. He had to endure several weeks in the Siberian winter cooped up in a little hide staring day after day, week after week, out of the window watching and waiting. He couldn't while naway the time with a good book, he had to keep his eyes on the outdoors and be ready.

We are to be alert. As we spend our days in God's world we are to be watching, always at the ready to be praying spiritually for the needs we see around us.

3. It is persistent

"Keep alert with all perseverance", says Paul. Jude tells us that we are to pray in the Spirit while "waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ". We need to keep going, to keep praying in the Spirit. We're to be doing this for the long haul. Things that require perseverance tend not to be easy, or to happen automatically. God is not after a short sprint, but a long marathon.

Jude's instructions are to be received corporately. "Build yourselves up"; "Keep yourselves in the love of God". We do these things together. And all the while we pray in the Spirit. We need not do this alone. We are to be praying in the Spirit as we meet and gather.

What Paul doesn't want you to know

2008-08-20T07:25:00.002+01:00

It shouldn't have come to this. Paul didn't want to have to go here, but he's left in no choice by those doing down his ministry. There's a card in his back pocket he's never wanted to show anyone, and now he's forced to pull it out.

He once had a vision.

He's awkward about mentioning it and at first only does so in third person. But it was certainly him. Twelve years ago he was given a vision of the third heaven, the very presence of God: paradise itself. He's not sure if it was a bodily transportation or a visionary experience - that's beside the point: it was from God, and it was spectacular.

But it was also private. Paul was not permitted to share it. It was between him and God. It wasn't to be part of his spiritual identity or his C.V.

Paul didn't write it up into a best-selling book. He didn't go on a tour to relay all the details. He didn't set up "Third Heaven Ministries". Why? "No one may think more of me than he sees in me or hears from me" (2 Cor. 12:6).

In other words, "there is nothing to be gained" by discussing private revelations and visions (2 Cor. 12:1).

Nothing to be gained - and yet how many today base their entire ministries on such things? That we follow them not based on their conduct or teaching, but on a claimed inside track with God - as if they were his confidante. I wish this verse had been shared with Todd Bentley a few months ago. May God imprint it on all our hearts.

For visiting the sick

2008-08-12T08:05:00.002+01:00

Here's some gold from the Book of Common Prayer, a short piece to use when visiting the sick:

"Dearly beloved, know this, that Almighty God is the Lord of life and death, and of all things to them pertaining, as youth, strength, health, age, weakness, and sickness. Wherefore, whatsoever your sickness is, know you certainly, that it is God's visitation. And for what cause soever this sickness is sent unto you; whether it be to try your patience for the example of others, and that your faith may be found in the day of the Lord laudable, glorious, and honourable, to the increase of glory and endless felicity; or else it be sent unto you to correct and amend in you whatsoever doth offend the eyes of your heavenly Father; know you certainly, that if you truly repent you of your sins, and bear your sickness patiently, trusting in God's mercy, for his dear Son Jesus Christ's sake, and render unto him humble thanks for his fatherly visitation, submitting yourself wholly unto his will, it shall turn to your profit, and help you forward in the right way that leadeth unto everlasting life."

This is an incredibly rich, biblical perspective to share with someone suffering. It reminds us of God's control and of the different reasons sickness may be experienced. It doesn't promise healing, but recognises the goodness of coming before the Father in humble penitence. It repays careful readings, not least in times of illness.

What is "Our labour in the Lord"?

2008-07-17T00:15:00.006+01:00

Some half-formed thinking on 1 Cor. 15:58.

We must give ourselves fully “work of the Lord”: our “labour in the Lord” is not in vain. What is this labour in the Lord? Some take it to mean Christian ministry: Paul is thinking of preaching, Bible-studies, evangelism and such like. So the thinking goes, those are the only activities with any eternal value. They secure and build up souls. I don’t deny the awesome privilege God gives us in being his colleagues in the great enterprise of making disciples. I don’t disagree for a moment that these activities have eternal value – we’ll be looking in the next section about what the resurrection means for precisely this task. But they are not the only activities with eternal significance.

The work God entrusted to humanity back in Eden has not been superseded. In fact, the resurrection gives us renewed motivation in doing the creation work of developing human societies and stewarding this world: the resurrection shows us this world has a future. The good work we do now will not be lost. It is worth doing.

Our labour in the Lord is all God enables us to do for his glory. It might be raising kids, cooking meals, writing a dissertation, preparing a sermon, fixing a bike, tending a patient, composing a symphony or any number of things. To do all that we do for God’s glory is going to be worth it, for God’s plans – for people as well as creation – will not be thwarted. Such labour is not in vain. We can keep going.

So near, but so far...

2008-07-12T20:20:00.001+01:00

About as close as I will ever get to the Oval Office

Some thoughts on hope

2008-07-10T06:15:00.001+01:00

We normally speak of hope as something we do. I hope it doesn’t rain tomorrow, I hope the plane lands on time, hope the meeting goes well and that this cold clears up. Hopes in this case can be significant or insignificant. But they’re pretty much always uncertain. We don’t control the thing we hope for. I have no power over weather, health, aviation and what side of bed the rest of the country decided to get out of. It’s another way of describing wishful-thinking. It’s about things we want, but might not necessarily get. It’s fraught with the risk of disappointment and so we “try not to get our hopes up”, for there’s every chance it’s not got to turn out the way we hoped.

The Bible speaks of hope as something we have. It is about looking forward to something that is certain. I have the hope of eternity with Christ. We still don’t control the thing for which we have hope, but God does and has promised it to us. There is no degree of risk or disappointment. This hope cannot be frustrated by anyone. It is guaranteed by God himself. The gospel promise of sins forgiven bears God’s signature: the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.

This sort of hope makes living possible, for it gives us a future. The capacity to consider the future sets us apart as humans. Our consciousness of the future is unique. It matters to us, and we find ourselves drawn to considering it. We need to. We need to have a future which is, to some extent, sorted out. We need to have hope.

To be without hope is therefore one of the hardest experiences in life. It has been said by those who survived the horrors of the Soviet labour camps in the mid-last century that there were only really two kinds of people: those who had hope, and those who did not. Virtually none of the latter was able to keep going. If you take away a man’s hope, you take away his life. We need to know we have a future to head towards.

This can cause much middle-age melancholy. (So I’m told; I’ll tell you in a few years’ time.) By around a certain age it becomes clear what we are realistically going to be able to achieve in life. We can dream dreams in our twenties; but by our forties, say, our options are more limited and possibilities reduced. It becomes clear that many of our cherished fantasies are not going to materialise – fantasies about family, security, advancement, money, popularity. Where we’ve got to by this stage pretty much indicates where we’ll ever get to. Where we’re at is where we’re at. No wonder they say middle age is the hardest age. We need hope. We need to have a future.

Christians, by definition, are people of hope. Hope that has the fingerprints and guarantee of God all over it. It all has to do with the resurrection: “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead” (1 Peter 1:3).

Still Deeper 2: Darkness around the Cross

2008-07-09T20:09:00.003+01:00

Not the name of a movie, alas, but just wanted to encourage you to come to the second Still Deeper day conference. Bookings now available here.

Here's the blurb for the conference:

Still Deeper exists to encourage people to go deeper in their appreciation of theology, culture and ministry. This is our second day conference, which is focusing on the issue of the Darkness round the Cross. You can read about our previous conference at www.stilldeeper.com.

The day will be a thoughtful, evangelical exploration of the aspects of the cross which we find difficult to face – God's anger, judgement and violence. The day promises a deeper sense of wonder at what God has done on the Cross. It is, of course, also hoped that you will enjoy the opportunity to meet new people. The price includes refreshments - please bring your own lunch or plan to purchase food from Liverpool St station, a few minutes walk away.

Exposition, doctrine and cultural analysis include:

Melvin Tinker – Isaiah 53: The Suffering Servant.
Rev Melvin Tinker is author of numerous books on issues of theology, ministry and culture. He is vicar or St Johns, Hull.
Andrew Atherstone – Divine retribution: a forgotten doctrine?
Rev Dr Andrew Atherstone is tutor in Church History at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford.
Peter Sanlon – Why a violent culture fears a violent atonement.
Peter is the editor of Still Deeper and is writing a PhD at Cambridge University on Augustine's expository preaching.
Sam Allberry – Lamentations: Poetry of Wrath.
Rev Sam Allberry is the student minister at St Ebbe's Church, Oxford.
Lee McMunn – Believing and preaching hell.
Rev Lee McMunn is an evangelist based out of St John's Church, Hull.

Resurrection living: new conduct

2008-07-07T23:04:00.004+01:00

I have a small number of recurring dreams. One involves intruders in the home in the middle of the night, and my trying to escape. Getting out of the house is normally fine: I slip through the window and get down to the street undetected. The problem is then trying to run away; it’s like running through thick treacle: try as I might, I’m unable to move forward at anything above a pathetic speed. Glaciers could overtake me. At some point during this fruitless attempt to move forward, all the while waiting for my assailants to pounce, I wake up in a cold sweat and wondering why the bedding is all over the floor.

One of the other dreams is less frequent for me, but experienced by most people at some point. In fact it’s a classic. In its childhood setting it’s when you turn up to school. For adults it’s when you walk into the office, or are about to deliver an important presentation, or begin the difficult meeting, or as you start to teach your class, or (in my case) step up before the congregation to begin the service. That’s when everyone notices and the awful realisation dawns on you: you’re still in your nightclothes. And as impressive as the Simpsons boxers might be in your own mind, this is not the context to introduce them to others.

It’s associated with anxiety, often about new starts – maybe a new term looming, or event at work, or placement. In this light it’s entirely understandable, even if we feel a little silly about it once we’ve woken up. Our subconscious is really quite gullible. This sort of thing would never happen. You don’t go to work in your sleep clothes, and you don’t go to sleep in your work clothes (well, not much anyway).

But when it comes to resurrection living it’s very easily done. In day-to-day life, we have our morning ritual – our own way of making the transition from night-time to day-time. Coffee. Shower. Dressed. Breakfast. (In whichever order you prefer.) Each of us figures this out as soon as we’re able. And we need to learn to do it again. Resurrection living means a new start has begun for us. The spiritual day has dawned. As Paul says to the Ephesian Christians, “For you were once in darkness, but now you are light in the Lord... Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them. For it is shameful even to mention what the disobedient do in secret. But everything exposed by the light becomes visible, for it is light that makes everything visible. That is why it is said: ‘Wake up, O sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.’” (Eph 5:8, 11-14)

We’ve moved from darkness to light, from sleep to being awake, from spiritual death to life in Christ. We’ve come out of the night of sin and into the new day of life with Christ. The gospel of the death of Jesus has acted as an alarm clock. His word has broken through our slumber and into our consciousness. We’re now up: sunlight is streaming through the curtains, birds are chirping outside the window. So now it’s time to get dressed, and to neglect to do this – to head into the day of resurrection life without having changed our clothes – is like striding into the boss’s office still wearing pyjamas.

Resurrection living: new life

2008-07-06T22:37:00.001+01:00

It is always interesting to hear stories of how people have come to put their trust in Christ. Sooner or later it’s something most Christians will be asked to explain, both by believers and non-believers. It’s a good thing to think through, and as we do we become conscious of some of the key turning points: maybe a particular situation we were facing, or a highly significant conversation, or individual, or sermon. As we look back we might think of particular stages in our becoming Christian, and points we would need to cover in any account of the whole process.

In Ephesians 2, Paul does things a little differently to us – he gives his friends in Ephesus their testimony. He reminds them of how they came to be followers of Christ. And there are two points Paul wants to cover as he reminds them of how it all happened: they were dead in sins, and then they were raised in Christ.

Firstly Paul tells them they were dead in sins:
“As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts” (Ephesians 2:1-3).

That was them to start with – spiritually dead. Three things were bound up with this death, the unholy trinity of the world, the devil and the flesh; a threefold chord binding them in hopeless disobedience. If we have eyes to see it, it is also a description of us in our natural state. Paul is able to recognise himself in there. “Like the rest we were by nature objects of wrath” (3). It is the default setting of humankind. It is where end up left to our own devices. Spiritually dead. Physically alive, and, in our prime, maybe physically powerful. We certainly don’t look dead, but we are. Like characters from a zombie movie we are walking corpses. If we haven’t done so already, it’s a fact of reality we really need to come to terms with. In this state God does not look on us with pleasure. We are objects of wrath; tragic and twisted versions of who he made us to be. We are recognisably us, and yet at the same time dreadfully disfigured by sin. Sadly it is of our own making, as we comply with the agenda of those three forces bearing down on us.

As those who were “dead” there was nothing we could do about it. Our prospects for spiritual life were as promising as those of a bit of road kill for physical life. Just as a rabbit or fox lying on the tarmac with tyre marks across its front is not able to do much to improve the situation, so too we were unable to help ourselves. In such a state morality is not going to help; nor is religious behaviour. Death here is not a metaphor of something less worse. We were not like the movie hero who, just before the climax, is staggering around with a chest full of bullets, and yet, in just a moment, is about to dust himself off and pull himself together for the final showdown. We were dead – not dead-like, or nearly dead – but really dead. Dead in our sins.

Then God did something.

“But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive in Christ even when we were dead in transgressions – it is by grace you have been saved” (Eph. 4-5).
Hear that? Dead – and then made alive. We can almost hear the sound of a Swoosh. God made us alive. Paul continues the story:

“And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus” (6).

Made alive and raised up – and the impetus is entirely God’s love and mercy. We are saved by grace. Grace is when you’re trying to pull out onto a busy road and you can feel yourself physically aging as the constant stream of traffic zooms by, and then someone slows down and flashes you in. Just a little gesture and yet it can lift the mood immediately. That is grace. They hadn’t checked you out first to establish whether you deserved it. They just decided to let you through. Undeserved kindness. And that, magnified a billion-fold, begins to give us a taste of the grace of God in Christ. It wasn’t because of anything in us. It wasn’t that God thought we’d be potentially wonderful Christians, or that he couldn’t possibly imagine the gospel cause advancing without having us on the team. It is all undeserved – hence Paul insists in the next couple of verses that we have nothing to boast about. After we come to Christ, receiving new life, we don’t brag about how clever we were in becoming Christians as if it were somehow a reflection of our superior intelligence. We – still dumbstruck that God would do such a thing for us – can only open our mouths to boast about Christ. It is all from God. If we were dead and are now alive then how could it be anything else? Who else can do that? Dead in sins; now raised in Christ: we have new life.

Resurrection life

2008-07-06T22:28:00.001+01:00

The most famous symbol in the world is probably the Nike Swoosh. It was designed in 1971 by Carolyn Davids and bought by the company for a princely $35. It’s been a hit ever since. Nike takes its name from the Greek godess of victory, and the smooth upward “tick” captures this sense of dynamic success. Let’s face it, it’s a great image for a sportswear company. More than that, and I’m guessing Davids and co. were less conscious of this, it also happens to capture brilliantly the shape of God’s work through the Bible. We see the biblical Swoosh through the Old Testament: God takes dead people and hopeless situations and brings them to new life. It’s the shape of God’s work that is seen most clearly in the life, death and resurrection of Christ. Paul describes this shape famously in Philippians 2:5-11: Christ in his humility comes to this world as a servant and suffers the ultimate humiliation of death by crucifixion. God’s response to this is to exalt him – Christ is raised to highest place and given the highest name. It is the ultimate Swoosh. All that has come before has been a prefiguring and an anticipation of this definitive act of new life by God.

Yet amazingly God applies this work to us today. As those who trust in Christ we become caught up in this great work of God. Through faith we become united to Christ, joined to him in such a way that his death becomes our death – we died in him, and also so that his life becomes our life – we are raised in him. God’s work in us has the same shape as God’s work in Christ. He gives us new, resurrection life. The Swoosh is applied to us. With it we enjoy a whole host of newness – new life, new perspective, new conduct, new power and new ambition. Resurrection life changes everything.

Transition

2008-07-02T13:22:00.002+01:00

Apologies for the long silence. At the end of June I finished my 5-year post with the student ministry at St Ebbe's Church, and in September I'll be starting as the Associate Vicar at St Mary's, Maidenhead (or West Slough as I like to call it). In the meantime I'm staying with some friends in Washington, D.C. for the next three weeks before heading out to Malaysia with a groups of students from Ebbe's.

As such, it has been a very eventful time: packing up and saying goodbyes; attempting to tie up loose threads for my successor; moving belongings into storage in Maidenhead; and getting ready for these two summer trips. Through it all God has again proved his goodness.

My final sermon at St Ebbe's, looking at Isaiah 40, closed with the reminder that those who hope in God will soar on wings like eagles. The good people at Virgin Atlantic attempted to match this by upgrading me to Upper Class for my flight to the U.S., and it made for what was undoubtedly the most comfortable flight I've ever had. It was almost a disappointment to reach the destination. But Isaiah speaks of something far better: the forward and upward thrust that comes from looking to our God for hope and strength. When we see that our creator is also our shepherd, we can begin to work out how to make a sheep fly!

Revival

2008-05-23T08:29:00.002+01:00

Was chatting to a friend this week about revival, and this comment came to mind:

"Revival is seasonal, not perennial. God causes it; we do not. It is the normal ministry of the gospel, not something eccentric or even different from what the church is always charged to do. What sets revival apart is simply that our usual efforts greatly accelerate in their spiritual effects. God hits the fast-forward button." (Raymond Ortlund, Revival Sent from God)

It's a caution against those who would say God is doing a "new thing". It may well be that we need to do the "old thing" in a new way, for our context is ever-changing and our methods in need of ongoing reform. But if we take the sufficiency of Scripture seriously, then just as we can be sure we are not going to discover some new, previously unknown attribute of God, so too we can be sure that God is not going to unveil a new way of bringing his purposes across the world to bear. God's revelation is sufficient.

It is also public. Under the new covenant all have access to the knowledge of God. His revelation is inscripturated; there is no need for a mediatorial prophetic caste. Gone are the days when we need to consult this or that individual to find out what God is up to. And so, again, we need to exercise caution in the face of those who would say God is doing a new thing. For God does not whisper his secrets into the ears of a chosen few. His ways are unchanging and his revelation is public.

Memoirs of an Ordinary Pastor

2008-05-21T08:36:00.003+01:00

Just as the truth can be stranger than fiction, so too the ordinary can be more fascinating than the extraordinary. "Ordinary" in this case describes the ministry of Tom Carson, a man who would doubtless have remained unknown to the vast majority of us were it not for his son, Don Carson deciding to write this short biography of him.

It's an unusual book. Firstly, having been familiar with Carson's usual output, this is unlike his other writing. Not just because it's biography rather than theology or commentary, but because it's so personal. At times it becomes autobiographical. Having known Carson's writings for many years I now feel like I know the man himself. One of the more memorable passages is Don reflecting on a period of his dad's discouragement:

"When I was a young man, I heard D Martyn Lloyd-Jones comment that he would not go across the street to hear himself preach. Now that I am close to the age he was when I heard him, I am beginning to understand. It is rare for me to finish a sermon without feeling somewhere between slightly discouraged and moderately depressed that I have not preached with more unction, that I have not articulated these glorious truths more powerfully and with greater insight, and so forth. But I cannot allow that to drive me to despair; rather, it must drive me to a greater grasp of the simple and profound truth that we preach and visit and serve under the gospel of grace, and God accepts us because of his Son."

Well that was worth the price of the book: that it's normal to feel like that is in itself an encouragement, let alone to see how others respond to it.

It's refreshing to read a book of a Christian leader used in a very normal, low-key context. Virtually every biography I've read is of a "famous" Christian; and very often I find myself rushing through the early chapters to get to all the fireworks. But Tom Carson didn't write a book, wasn't used on the conference circuit and didn't chair significant committees. But he was faithful to his Lord and evidently devoted to praying for the people God had placed under his care. And seeing something of THAT is what made the book so compelling. To remain faithful and devoted in a small and largely unseen ministry is, after all, far from ordinary.

A question

2008-04-16T18:59:00.002+01:00

Why is it the walls/floors of my block of flats are so paper thin I can hear someone clearing their throat 2 floors above me, but I have to lean out of the window to get any kind of signal on my mobile...?

I hope more profound things will come in due course...

Star-gazing

2008-03-28T11:41:00.005Z

Three things to think about next time you're staring up at the stars:

God's glory

The sky is God's daily blog. Each day the message is unchanging, and yet brought to us in an unending variety of ways. In eloquent silence we have the glory of God proclaimed to us (Ps 19:1). We're reminded of God's invisible qualities - his eternal power and divine nature (Rom 1:20). The stars remind us of the scale and dimensions of his creation. The greatest understatement in history has got to be Gen 1:16 - "He also made the stars", as if a casual aside. They speak of his might and our need to worship him. If we see our smallness before the stars (Ps 8), we should also see his greatness.

God's gospel

Abraham is urged by God to look up at the stars, and even to attempt counting them (Gen 15:5)! Imagining the scene without the faint orange glow of light pollution is hard, but Abraham would have seen the night sky lit up like a Christmas tree - a canopy of numberless twinkling lights. "So shall your offspring be", God says to him. Redeemed humanity really will be a vast number, as hard to imagine as the starry night is to take in, and yet what an encouragement. If it's tough soil which God has given us to work on, we can take great comfort. It will not always be so. Christ's people will not be the handful in a lifeboat, or the straggling survivors huddled in a shelter. Each night-time glance at the heavenlies is an opportunity to believe the gospel again.

God's people

As we strive to live together as God people, struggling to share the mindset of Christ as he went obediently and sacraficially to the cross, purging complaint and argument from our communal life, heading a step at a time toward the blameless lifestyle to which we are called, we shine like stars in the night sky (Phil 2:15). Our unity in Christ, worked out in our relationships with one another, sets us apart as clearly as a bright star against the pitch black of night. Our collective Christ-mindedness makes us the glow-in-the-dark people; our fellowship itself becomes a poweful witness: our illumination in this generation hold out the word of life to it. Our shine is not from better health, better looks, better teeth, better success, but from better minds as we follow the example of Christ and consider one another's needs before our own. [Optional cheesy finale: We become the bright stars that the wise follow to find Jesus :-) ]

Islamic Christianity?

2008-03-28T00:14:00.003Z

This is still unformed and unfinished...

It is possible to be confessionally trinitarian, but functionally unitarian; to say we believe in the doctrine of the trinity, but not really to be shaped by it. If this is the case it will play itself out in all sorts of ways, not least in where we want to see our Christian communities going. Our view of God determines our vision for humanity. So if take the doctrine of the trinity, put a big tick next to it, and then stuck it in a drawer somewhere and ignore it, where will it lead us?

At least two things will follow.

Firstly, our view of church will become functional and not relational. We will only meet to “do” things, and will not really see the point of meeting for merely social reasons. Our gatherings will become a matter of utility and not family. Such a tendency, when combined with the more reserved sections of English culture, can produce a relational desert. In churches like this there'll not be much life-sharing. The minister will see his congregation as clients, and his ministry as one of shunting people through the right programs. Under profession, he'll put “Bible teacher”. The people will feel “handled” rather than loved. The church will be the place to grow in understanding for a while, but not the place to find deep Christian community.

Secondly, our aim for church will be uniformity and not diversity. The Trinity shows us a God who is unity in diversity rather than unity in sameness. The Father, Son and Spirit are not interchangeable. They share an ontological unity, but function differently within the purposes of the Godhead. This lies behind Paul's teaching on the variety of gifts found in the church in 1 Cor 12:4-6. Spirit, Lord, God describe the persons of the Trinity; gifts, kinds of service and kinds of working describe the functional diversity of the local church. Our unity-in-diversity reflects God's unity-in-diversity.

A unitarian view of God will lead to a monochrome view of the church. Maturity will be understood in trying to make everyone a certain kind of Christian. Christians will look the same and sound the same. They'll be encouraged into the same kind of ministry. Particular gifting will be the hallmark of the spiritually advanced. In Corinth (reading between the lines) it was the gift of tongues. Today, in many conservative evangelical churches, it is the gift of teaching. Those who are really committed to the gospel will become Bible-teachers (there they are again). There will be cultural and vocational flatness.

Christianity it may well be, but an Islamic form of Christianity.

New mortal sins

2008-03-25T22:23:00.004Z

The Vatican recently updated its list of mortal sins. Newly-included are contemporary bio-ethical and environmental transgressions such as genetic manipulation and pollution. So, ever the opportunist, I thought I'd have a go myself. Should the matter ever be placed into my hands, I would add to the growing list the following

- Misusing the word literally. It's a point of explanation not emphasis. So no, you did not *literally* grab the bull by its horns (more's the pity).

- Visiting the cinema for ANY purpose other than watching a movie. (Especially directed to those in the Bath Odeon during Monday's screening of Vantage Point.)

- Using the self-checkout in the supermarket when you clearly have no idea how it works.

- Driving a taxi well under the spped limit to lengthen the trip and raise the fare, while otherwise haring around the road on two wheels.

Any others to add to the list?

The American Civil War

2008-03-19T23:07:00.003Z

I'm currently still only in the shallow waters of Shelby Foote's magisterial three-volume narrative history of the American Civil War, but have already found it to be one of the most engaging and [bed-time] readable history books I've ever read. It's everything a history book should be, and it takes a novelist to pull it off.

Why the interest in this particular war? Well, this sums it up:

"At 4:30am on the 12th of April, 1861, General Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard directed his confederate gunners to open fire on Fort Sumter, at that hour only a dark shape out in Charleston Harbor. Thirty-four hours later a white flag over the fort ended the bombardment. The only casualty was a Confederate horse. It was a bloodless opening to the bloodiest war in American history.

No one could have predicted the magnitude of the explosion that rocked America following that opening shot... Yet most of what America was before the Civil War went into sparking that explosion, and most of what the nation became resulted from it. Entirely unimaginable before it began, the war was the most defining and shaping event in American history - so much so that it is now impossible to imagine what we would have been like without it."

(Ken Burns and Ric Burns, "The Crossroads of our Being", 1990)

The Resurrection

2008-03-08T22:56:00.003Z

Well tomorrow's the day many of us from the Ebbe's student scene pile off for our student conference at Ledbury, Herefordshire. The theme for the doctrinal talks this year is the resurrection. It has, as ever, been a wonderful time over the last few months considering the implications of this central doctrine. My modus operandi for doctrinal teaching like this is quite simple: to attempt to do with the doctrine what the Bible does. And it's been eye-opening to see where and how the resurrection of Jesus Christ is applied in the Scriptures.

It's easy to think of the resurrection as not much more than the "happy ending" of the gospel: as a friend put it, "the Great Tick after the Great Cross". As though, after the dark climax of the passion, Spielberg was brought in to do the ending. A nice thing, but not necessarily meaningful.

God willing, we'll be looking at all this over four talks, each based on a particular implication of the resurrection, and with memory verse to learn:

1. Salvation: "He was delivered over to death for our sins, and raised to life for our justification" (Rom 4:25).

2. Holiness: "Do not offer the parts of your body to sin, as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life" (Rom 6:13).

3. Hope: "Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead (1 Pet 1:3).

4. Mission: "For God has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to all men by raising him from the dead" (Acts 17:31).

Please pray for us, for nothing less than for this to be life-changing for us all.
See you when we get back!

Leading services

2008-02-21T10:06:00.004Z

Lots of good training out there on Bible-handling and preaching; precious little on how to lead a service. But for ministers, this is a vital skill.

EMU to the rescue! This event is essential, not just for the musicians and singers among us, but for service leaders. Call me Rud Hull, but i'll let EMU do the talking:

The Word In Song music ministry conference is your chance to think seriously about the theology and practice of singing in church. Aimed at anyone involved in music ministry: from musicians, singers, service leaders, sound people and anyone who enjoys singing in church.
Great bible teaching (from Vaughan Roberts, Rector of St Ebbe’s, and Philip Percival, EMU Music) and hands on workshops are aimed to train us both theologically and practically in music ministry.

Practical workshops will include: playing together as a band, song leading, bass guitar, drums, melody instruments, guitar, keyboards – so bring your instruments along to take part.
Date: Saturday 1st March, 2008Time: 10am – 4pmVenue: St Ebbe’s ChurchCost: £10 (£13 including lunch) or £6 unwaged (£9 including lunch).Booking: Essential! Contact Philip Percival on 01865 240438. You can book online at www.emumusic.co.uk

Biblical anthropology

2008-02-20T22:48:00.004Z

Someone once said that all theology was anthropology: it's not really talk about God; it's talk about talk about God. The Christian would ant to say the opposite: all anthropology is really theology. We only understand humankind when we understand what God has said on the matter. The creator has spoken about his human creatures. What he has spoken might, on a good day, be groped at a bit or inferred a little from careful study; but is not properly known outside special revelation. We've got our hands on some of the pieces of the jigsaw, but it's God who gives us all of them. And the box.

A key text for biblical anthropology is Gen 1:26-28. Some observations:

(1) The first thing we see is that the formulae used so far in the creation narrative is changed at v.26. Whereas we'd previously had a passive divine fiat -- "Let there be", "Let the earth produce" -- we now have something active: "Let us make". It's as if God is especially involved in this creative act. It's like Captain Picard. He's saying "Make it so" and having his underlings execute the commands, and then one day getting out of his chair, walking over to the console and pushing the buttons himself. God moves from fiat to soliloquay. Something special is going on. What is about to be created is like nothing else we've seen so far.

(2) The something special is a new kind of creature - one made in the image of God. Something like God, that reflects him. We see humans as being like all other creatures, but at a crucial point quite unlike them. Call it speciesism, but humans are in a league of their own: the climax of creation. That worth applies to all: each and every human, irrespective of gender, race, creed, age, ability, financial value, popularity, usefulness to society, health, development, or general agreeability. The unborn baby; the high court judge; my best friend; mum; the homeless guy who just yelled at me. All worth a whole lot more than money and time. All worthy of love, care and service. Christians are against discrimination and slavery; pro-equality.

(3) What does this image-bearing involve? Lots of things, no doubt; but two things are highlighted in the text.

One is that humanity is profoundly relational. Notice at the very point God comes to create a being in his image, he emphasises his plurality. Not "Let me make... in my image", but "Let us make... in our image." The God in whose image we are made is Trinity; persons-in-relationship; community. It is therefore no surprise to discover that we are profoundly relational. A human in solitude is a virtual oxymoron.

We go on to see that humanity is created as male and female. This is the first mention of gender despite being the last creatures described. We can therefore assume gender is not just a function of reproductive utility, but central to our nature as relational beings. We have here the first indication this male-female mutuality is to be essential to healthy human society.

Image-bearing also involves rule. Not here the negative connotations of domination and abuse: so far our only frame of reference is the perfect, kind rule of God. People are to be as God to his creation; his vice-regents. (For more on which see a couple of posts ago.)

More thoughts to come...

Ministers and hospitality

2008-02-19T22:22:00.005Z

It can be helpful to summarise the qualifications Paul lists for prospective elders (in 1 Tim 3) in the following terms: proven character and proven gifting. On the former, we notice a public consistency when it comes to drink, sexual fidelity, temper, family discipline and money. When it comes to the latter, we rightly note the indispensability of being able to teach: a clear grasp of the faith, and the ability to pass it on to others. We look in a prospective pastor for theological orthodoxy and a proven teaching ministry.

The qualification that fits neatly into neither category is the need for the elder to be hospitable. Indeed, in my experience it is hardly ever mentioned, possibly because it's not a standard self-control issue. We probably wouldn't notice it if it wasn't there. Is it a gift thing, or a character thing?

I suspect both. It's part of Christian character, and all Christians are called to it (Rom 12:13). It's also, in the conext of pastoral ministry, something of a gift. We mustn't boil it down, in English cultural terms, to having the ability to lay on a quite charming dinner party once a month, nor to able to "hold court" round the table when you do. Surely it's much broader and deeper than that. It suggests an openness of life with others (especially the church); an openness of home and hearth; a rapport with and interest in people; an attitude that sees the church in relational, not functional terms; as family not clients.

After all, there's a difference between being friendly and being a friend.

Less measurable, perhaps, than a teaching ability. But no less essential, I suspect.

The correct order for reading the Chronicles of Narnia

2008-02-11T23:26:00.001Z

...is the order in which they were published:

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe;
Prince Caspian;
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader;
The Silver Chair;
The Horse and His Boy;
The Magician's Nephew;
The Last Battle;

and not, as some numpty at the publisher insists, the chronological order of the events the series describes. I gather the impetus for this latter ordering came from a young boy, who wrote to Lewis of his fondness for reading the books this way. Lewis replied that he preferred this chronological order to the alternative the boy's mother had proposed. I presume this was just a courtesy on the part of Lewis. Unfortunatly it was adopted by Lewis' stepson, Douglas Gresham, who then suggested it to the publisher.

Against the chronological ordering is it's inconsistency with the text itself. The Magician's Nephew assumes prior familiarity with the world of Narnia. Lion assumes the readers have not yet met Aslan. The value of Nephew is it's explanation of how the things we know of Narnia have come to be. In the words of the opening paragraph, it "shows how all the comings and goings between our own world and the world of Narnia first began". We see the origins of the by-now-familiar lantern and wardrobe. Having already been introduced to this world we have the wonderful experience of seeing how it began. It might be suggested Lewis had scriptural precedent for this approach.

Take it all with salt

2008-02-04T16:31:00.001Z

Since we all became post-Christian on these shores, various "ism"s have come our way to fill the void. Today I heard of one that I'd long recognised, but not consciously identified: Nutritionism. I only caught a brief snippet of the discussion that was taking place on the radio, but it was enough to see that this has all the hallmarks of what the secularists preoccupy themselves with now they don't do "religion". The speaker on the radio listed four features, which I've expanded on below.

(1) A belief that food is no more than it's constituent, nutritional parts. A carrot, for example, is not a vegetable; it is a source of Vitamin A, beta-carotene and Vitamin C (and much else besides), which just happens to be orange and go well with coriander.

(2) Because such nutritional value is only identified by experts, we are forced to depend on a priestly cast of quasi-scientists for all our nutritional knowledge. I add "quasi-" because it seems to me that their findings seem especially provisional and bound up the manufacturing industry. And because it's all science, we have to go along with what they say.

(3) There are clear goodies and baddies. What these are will change with the shifting consensus of the nutritional priesthood. At one point the clear baddies were saturated fats, and the goody was fibre. Today the goody seems to be Omega 3, and the baddy trans-fat.

The confounding science-speak with which all this is attended reinforces the need for the nutritionists: thank goodness they know what they're talking about. We marvel at their multi-syllabic dexterity and can only nod along gratefully. We become subject to the latest dietary fad, for who are we to argue with the experts. Then the government joins in, recognising we're not to be trusted to feed ourselves any more, and deploys a mean set of regulations to sort it all out.

(4) All this leads to bewilderment. We think about nutrition and not food, and therefore eating becomes primarily an exercise in health-management. We have forgotten what food and eating has so often been about: community, fellowship, family, enjoyment. This is not to denythe need for healthy, balanced diets; it is to say that such considerations are not the point of it all. It does to eating what Sir Humphrey did to the Civil Service: the apparatus becomes an end in itself.

None of this is surprising of course. It is the outworking of a materialist world-view. Nothing is more than its scientifically-determined constituent parts. Scientists become the priests and, with increasingly imperious tones, they define what our lives are to be about. Attaining nutritional well-being becomes our life's meaning.

Nor is any of this exclusive to Nutritionism. As I thought through these four features, it struck me how true they are of contemporary Environmentalism, the other rising new religion of our day. I can't help feeling captive to the experts. In shrill terms we're told daily of how human carbon emmissions are driving us to the brink of an ecological apocalypse. Recycling and air-travel have become (opposite) moral absolutes. As a Christian, I am far from indifferent to the natural well-being of God's world. And yet I remain mistrustful of a scientific band whose ideology is often secularist and unacknowledged, who confer upon their theories the status of absolute truth, and therefore pillory the rising number of other scientists who do not share their assumptions and who question their findings. I don't like being a cynic, and I don't want to become one of those Christians who forever demonises "those scientists", but sometimes the experts leave us no alternative.

John Piper on justification

2008-01-30T11:36:00.001Z

In time, I look forward to reading John Piper's The Future of Justification: a Response to N T Wright (IVP). I have read much by Wright that has challenged and helped me. I'm nearing the end of his definitive book on the resurrection. He is an outstanding scholar with some unusual gifts:- I'm sure it takes me much longer to read his books than it does for him to write them. I have found his views on justification a little hard to understand. What he says seems clear enough, but what it means I'm not always quickly able to discern - hence the anticipation of Piper's book.

Piper is also something of a rarity in the church today. If part of Wright's influence and contribution comes from being a Bishop-theologian, Piper's comes from being a pastor-theologian. Both seem rare today - and both are much needed. I don't have the necessary time and brain-power to read much academic theology; and when I do it is not always apparent what we are meant to do with it in pastoral ministry. So I'm grateful to those who are able to think in both contexts.

To whet my appetite, here is Piper defining justification (from a recent interview):

'In the New Testament, justification is the moment or the event when you put your faith in Jesus Christ and at that moment God is no longer against you—he’s for you, and he counts you as acceptable, forgiven, righteous, obedient because of your union with Christ. You are perfectly acceptable to God and he is totally on your side.

At that moment you are declared and constituted just, even though you’re ungodly. Romans 4:4 talks about the justification of the ungodly, and Romans 3: 28 says that “we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law.”

So that’s the general gist of the doctrine, and I regard it as a matter of life and death. Luther regarded it as the doctrine the whole church hangs on. It’s the moment and means by which we pass from being under the enmity of God to being under the favor of God, from being utterly unrighteous and damnable to being counted righteous in Christ by God so that he’s our father and he’s totally for us.'

The goodness of work

2008-01-28T22:02:00.000Z

Three reasons why work is good.

1. What we know about God

God is a God who works. One of the first things we find out about him in the Bible is that he is a worker. Work is part of his original intention for creation. Work existed before sin, and it will exist in the new creation (i.e. heaven is not just a mammoth lie in). Work is not some sad reality that seperates one weekend from the next. It is something God does, and is therefore not bad, nor merely neutral, but good.

I take it, therefore, that the value of work is not dependent on whether or how much one is paid for it. If work is good, then the manifold forms of work that our society does not finance are also good. The work of parenting is good, even though parents are unpaid. Work done by students, volunteers and the retired is all good. The presence or absense of financial reward for it does not determine it's ultimate worth.

2. What we know about humanity

We are made in the image of this God. Much is implied by this, but in it's immediate context it must mean that we are (a) relational - at the point where God comes to make a being in his own image he highlights his plurality, Gen 1:26; and (b) workers - these image-bearers are made to rule, in some sense to be as God to his creation. As the narrative develops the nature of this work is unpacked: to fill, develop and care for the earth. In other words, humans are not designed to have leisure as their primary activity. Not just the way we work, but also the content of our work is part of our service to God as his people. If it is useful to the ongoing benefit of human society it is morally good and glorifying to God, whether it's programming computers or changing nappies.

3. What we know about creation

The working God creates image-bearing workers because his creation is designed to be worked. That is, the world God has made requires human input, care, ingenuity and labour in order to begin to reach it's potential. It needs filling, subduing, developing and tending. On it's own it does not fulfill the purposes for which it was created. We are not designed to be work-less, and it is not designed to be people-less.

So: though work is spoilt by sin; is hard and, at times, painful; it is nevertheless good. It has doxological, societal, creational and vocational value. As someone once put it, work enables us to "Worship the deity, serve the community and fulfill our humanity."

A favourite verse

2008-01-22T22:51:00.000Z

When confronted with this question it's interesting to see what comes to mind:

What's your favourite Bible verse?

It was the means a friend and I had of postponing the moment when we had to leave the warm confines of Starbucks and brave the rain coming down outside in whole sheets. I hadn't consciously been thinking of this verse recently, but almost by reflex it came to mind; "As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us" (Psalm 103:12).

I've had the privilege a number of times of visiting the East. From this corner of the West it's a jolly long way. You don't make the trip without emerging from the other end feeling several plastic meals heavier, walking like Tin Man, and sporting very messy hair. And that's the point: God has found a way to take our sins a very long way from us; to put them at such a distance that he is no longer able to look at us and them at the same time. They now belong on different horizons.

And it's not just that the distance between the two is very far - it's infinite. The distance between north and south is fixed and finite. There are points on the face of the earth from which it is impossible to go further north or further south. The two are 12,436 miles apart. But wherever we are, it's always possible to go further east or further west. The distance between the two is infinite.

When God sees my sin, he doesn't see me. When he sees me, he doesn't see my sin.

USA 2008 Election

2008-01-16T11:32:00.000Z

I'm increasingly convinced Christians need to reflect carefully and biblically on the world of politics.

What follows is the fruit of NOT having done so. Take with as much salt as needed :-)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I'm not of fan of soap operas, and who needs them when we have the 2008 Presidential Election to follow?

The Rise of Billary

For a country defined by a rejection of hereditary monarchy, US politics has become curiously dynastic of late. If Hillary makes it to the White House and managed to secure re-election 4 years later, then for nearly 30 years just two surnames will have occupied the Oval Office. What's that about?

It strikes me that Hillary's tears, when interviewed on the eve of New Hampshire's Primary, were one of the lowest points in recent US political history. It's not just the calculation that seems to have been behind them - you can almost hear the sound of her internal programming reaching for the emoticon button - it's that it worked. Within 24 hours she turned a certain, whopping defeat into a victory. Can the world cope with another four to eight years of coiffed Clintonism? She may as well have stuck the caption, "For your consideration", at the bottom of the interview and sent it to Jack Valentino. So my choice for the Democrats is Obama.

Huck! Huck! Huck!

His economic policies may be a little naïve (so I'm told), and he may care for guns a whole lot more than I do, but - gosh - he's a nice guy. Of all on the trail he seems the most genuine, and is certainly the best on his feet - both in terms of clear articulation and humour (on the latter he is the natural heir of the Reagan Quip). If character is key, and if I were a US citizen, I'd most likely vote for him, and probably make some calls for him as well. Who am I to disagree with Chuck?

While we're thinking about Huck, if his campaign shows anything, it's that in this day of web-based networking and commentary, the communications game happens on a far-more-even playing field than ever it has before. Whether one likes Huck or not, it's good to see the guy can win a state on a twentieth of the budget of his closest rival. Politics is getting a little more democratic, perhaps.

My predictions? If you want another Republican President, make sure Clinton gets the nomination for the Democrats. If not, Obama will sweep any opponent off the map.

How To Find Yourself

2008-01-15T23:12:00.001Z

There are four ways to recognise a gap-year student:

1. They wear beads.
2. They insist on the local pronunciation of where they've been - Nicaragua becomes "Nicarwagoowaa"; Laos becomes "Laaoow".
3. There is only one, tiny degree of separation between any conversation anyone anywhere is having and their gap year experience. (This was me: apologies to anyone who knew me in 1994.)
4. They've found themselves.

This last point seems to be the primary aim of gap years as far as I can tell. Beads, I presume, are the universal sign language that this is in fact so. But if it's a fad, it seems a relatively recent one. At some point, in the early 90s if my observations are anything to go by, a lot of people seemed to collectively lose themselves. At the very least, at this particular time a whole lot of other people seemed to offer ways for them to find themselves. And many took them up on it, which suggests they thought they'd lost themselves. It was evidently a confusing time. But also a profitable one - finding yourself became something of a growth industry.

One day a lady from Samaria met a travelling preacher from Nazareth. Their conversation covered differing understandings of spirituality and worship, as well as irregularities in her personal life. Having encountered this man the woman took this message back to her townsfolk:

"Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Christ?"

Allowing for the flush of enthusiasm that can lead someone who has just understood who Jesus is into a little hyperbole, this woman's testimony seems to refer to more than Jesus' recognition that her marital history would put your average EastEnders character to shame. More than just her shady past, Jesus knew her. And by the end of their brief exchange so did she.

This remains a powerful apologetic. However little or much self-understanding we possess (or think we possess), we do not truly know ourselves until we have encountered Jesus. It is the gospel lens that brings reality into true focus, and it often begins with us. The words of Christ are double-edged: they provoke us, cut back on us, and challenge us with who we really are. We see ourselves and this world in a true light for the first time.

It is only the Biblical worldview that offers us a coherent explanation for what we experience of this world. The perspectives of atheism and false religion will always be demonstrably deficient. The gospel alone offers existential clarity, and a true account of what we fallen image-bearers are still intuitively able to know.

Things to see before you die

2008-01-09T09:37:00.000Z

If the best-seller lists are anything to go by, then I need to stop writing immediately and hurry out to do lots of things before I die. It seems the fashion now to churn out lists of things to do, things to see, things to eat before we die. Such a trend tells me two things. It tells me marketing types know what they're doing - these books and guides are flying off the shelves. But it also tells me something about our culture.

The eagerness with which these things are lapped up indicates something of a desperation to experience the best of what's out there before it's too late. In a context that faces little risk of poverty or homelessness, the chief concern becomes to squeeze as much significance out of life as possible. The fear is of getting to the end and feeling like we've not had our money's worth, that we've missed out on the best. At a time when we don't know what to believe, all we can do is focus on what we can feel. And so we have an insatiable appetite for experience. Luckily for us, others have done the work of selecting and ranking what needs to be done.

Things to see before you die: including the Masai Mara, Dubai, the Grand Canyon and the Great Barrier Reef.

Into this context we encounter the challenging figure of Simeon, and words he speaks to our world are quite outrageous. He is a man ready to die. Not because he's been dealt a bad hand. He would say the opposite. He's ready to die because he's completed his list. He's seen what he needs to see before he dies. The shock is that there's only one item on his list. And it turns out to be a baby. Clutching the infant in his arms, he can say with joy and sincerity, "Dismiss your servant in peace. For my eyes have seen your salvation."

As Christians who have also embraced this Christ this question now confronts us: are we ready to die? Do we consider our union with him to be the ultimate satisfaction this life has to offer? If now was to be our time to go, would we feel short-changed - that there was still so much that we'd missed out on?

One of the most distinctive fruits of true Christian conversion is surely Simeon's peace at the prospect of death.

Christians and Santa

2007-12-28T23:09:00.000Z

Well it's the time of year again when Christian parents are confronted with the Santa issue. Ignoring the cry that as a non-parent it's none of my business to wade into this, I offer the following thoughts on why I'd hope Christians wouldn't buy into the whole deal, and hope I survive intact at the end.

(1) God commands us not to lie.

(2) That should in all seriousness end the discussion, but for some reason it doesn't. Perhaps we might make an exception in this instance because it's a bit of fun, or because everybody else doing it in society means that we don't want to (a) look weird, or (b) be a nuisance by having our kids blow the whole gaff for everybody else's.

(3) But to make an exception here says something pretty awful about God's demands. It says that we think we have the right to know when they really apply - as if they were general recommendations. After all, God's not the one in our shoes, and so we'll decide what's applicable here. Well for a start that pretty much defines sin; but for seconds, would you try that on with "Do not commit adultery"? After all, it seems fun and everyone else is doing it...

(4) It also says something pretty awful about our view of childhood - that it's ok to lie to them because they're young. But the very openness of little children to believe what their parents say is a precious gift of God. It expresses something of the dependence Jesus has in view when he charges us to receive the Kingdom of God "as little children". To take that dependence and use it as the basis of (admittedly playful) deceit is a very sad abuse of an aid God has granted in training little ones in knowledge of his ways.

(5) Which leads potentially to an enormous risk - if what has been said about FC turns out not to be true, how might children take what has been said to them about Jesus? Will he turn out to be a playful story too?

(6) The FC thing can easily create a mentality that flies in the face of gospel grace. Bound up with the 'Claus is the whole business of being good enough to deserve rewarding. How much better to use Christmas gifts to point to God's underved kindness in giving of himself to us.

(7) Possible social awkwardness has always been an entailment of Christian living. Godly distinctiveness always runs the risk of being perceived as just "weird". All the better to explain it.

Mystery Worshipper

2007-12-21T22:50:00.000Z

Not sure how these things are decided, but I think St Ebbe's must be the UK's most Mystery-Worshipped church - we've just been hit for the 5th time, 4 of them in the last 2 years. For any who are interested, these anonymous reviews (from the Ship-of-Fools website) can be found here (2000), here (2005), here (2005), here (2007) and here (2007).

What should we make of these sorts of reviews (in general, not specifically the above)?

- Well they give a snapshot of what the liturgy, music and teaching are like on a given Sunday.

- The friendliness of a church is much harder to assess accurately from a one-off visit. You might catch a great saint on a bad day, or someone who's social skills are not reflective of the family as a whole, or else encounter someone very unfriendly who might actually be another visitor.

- It's good to get an outside view, even if it might turn out to be very subjective. We're to conduct ourselves in such a way that is intelligible to the outsider overhearing what we're up to. Any feedback from any visitor will help us in this.

- Some of these reviews tell us far more about the reviewer than the church.

- I can't help feeling that for Christians, anonymity is never really the best way forward in anything...

Anyone got any thoughts on this?

Jonah and the fish

2007-12-16T15:52:00.000Z

Having spent considerable time with Jonah over the last couple of months, I've come to the (provisional) conclusion that his time in the fish is not an experience of salvation, but of judgement. It's common to think of the fish as a sort of organic lifeboat. In our mind's eye, we see Jonah as being somewhere dry, warm, soft and pink. Probably with his feet up and a sense of relief about him that his ordeal is over. The belly of the fish is a place of reflection and rest. Somewhere comfy to sit and craft a psalm of deliverence.

But consider the following:

(1) In the OT the sea often depicts chaos, the domain yet to have the orderly stamp of God fully placed in it. The sea monster has a special place in the biblical worldview as being the creaturely embodiment of all tht is far from the completed purposes of God. The appearance of a sea monster is not A Good Thing. To be swallowed by one, I presume, would indicate something even worse.

(2) In the NT, the parallel drawn by Jesus between his time in the depths of the earth, and Jonah's in the belly of the fish, suggests that both are a kind of death, deliverance from which is the vindicating work of God.

(3) In Jonah 1, the point at which Jonah is cast into the stormy sea, is the point at which the sea is made calm. The storm is stilled. Not the best time to get swallowed by a huge fish.

(4) The Hebrew at the end of ch.2 could just as easily be translated into the pluperfect: "God had commanded the fish, and it had vomited Jonah onto dry land." In which case the prayer of ch. 2 would spoken on the beach looking back on his experience of God's judgement in the fish, rather than being in the fish looking back on God's judgement in the water.

(5) In any case, who finds themselves suddenly in the digestive system of an umspecified sea creature, in total darkness and surrounded by gastric acids, thinking that now, at last, they've been rescued? Especially when that experience goes on for three days and three nights?

Jonah was saved wonderfully by God. But he was surely saved when he came out of the fish, not when he went in.

Diversity

2007-12-15T22:54:00.000Z

Here's a thought that has preoccupied me lately: if you take 15 Christians, and over the course of a few years watch them all grow in the faith, then they'll all become more like Christ. But they'll not become more like each other.

Which is not surprising. The Trinitarian God is unity-in-diversity. The Father, Son and Spirit, though made of the same stuff, are nevertheless neither identical nor interchangeable. Not unity-in-uniformity, but unity through being different. God is a God of diversity - and what a glorious thing that is. We see it in the abundance of variety in creation. We see it in the abundance of variety in people - I take it the table of nations preceding the post-Babel confusion indicates a goodness in cultural diversity. We see it in the abundance of redeemed people. Christians can be very, very different to one another. And what a good thing that is. It is the basis for church edification and unity. It is a witness to the world of the kind of God we serve.

Attempts to create uniformity in the church are doomed to fail. They contradict our calling and God's nature. Whether a cookie-cutter approach to discipleship (all Christians attain and express maturity in the same way); the imposition of a particular sub-culture (all Christians end up looking/sounding the same); a one-size-fits-all view of vocation/gifting (all Christians are expected to do the same thing in the same way) - or any number of other things: it's a mindset more akin to Islam than Christianity. Variety is awkward - it fits less neatly into programmes, and creates more work and more thought while demanding more time and more energy.

But isn't it exciting! - I can see any number of different ways of being like Christ. You can become more and more like him without having to become more and more like me. And that should really cheer you up!

Return of the prodigal blogger

2007-12-13T20:07:00.000Z

Time to emerge from a month or so of blogospheric hibernation! Term has ended, students have returned to their places of origin, and I hope to spend a little more time again trying to process various thoughts and attend again to this little blog. I hope soon to post some thoughts on our view of work, and on some lessons I've learnt from Jonah.

In the meantime, something that has made me laugh much of late is Jamie Frost's catalgue of Christian music sound-a-likes. You can find it here. Further suggestions for the collection would be most welcome. (I still think Emu's Behold the Lamb of God shares much musically with Rod Stewart's Handbags and Gladrags...)

See you soon!

Where to begin...?

2007-10-23T22:41:00.001+01:00

A friend has recently expressed an interest in reading the Bible for the first time - in his life I think.

Where should he start?

Is there a theological rationale for how/where we direct people to begin reading the Scriptures?

Emu

2007-10-23T22:14:00.000+01:00

This is the Christian music I'd been waiting for.

For a number of years I'd suspected that there was Christian music out there that I'd love - I just never seemed to find it. It was either lacking musically or theologically and I couldn't quite get it. I love music - always have, and yet so much Christian music seemed to have that kinda drippy feel to it, or else was trying to ape U2 in their late-80s heyday, or else was trying to reacreate some big worship-arena vibe that felt a little contrived.

But then I came across Emu - firstly through singing some of their songs at a church in Malaysia, and afterward through getting hold of their CDs. They're outstanding. Musically, I'm not embarrassed listening to them (the odd OTT sax moment notwithstanding), and am genuinely heartened by the biblical truths they impart.

So it's been a delight, more recently, to have Emu come to the UK, in the convivial form of Philip Percival. His ministry is a great reminder to those who need tohear it that church music is (or should be!) a word ministry. Colossians 3:16 is a programmatic verse for this: singing is a means God has given by which the word of Christ can dwell in us richly.

With Philip's arrival has also come ease of access to the Emu catalogue. No longer is there need to have it all shipped from Sydney. Authentic Media has now secured ditribution rights for Emu in the UK. To mark this, Emu have brought out a sort of greatest hits collection - the best way to introduce new listeners to their music. Sadly eschewing the Now That's What I Call Emu, or The Best Emu Album In The World... Ever! approach, they've gone for New Song in my Heart. Stand out track is the final one, Worthy of all Praise.

So, if you've never heard them - this is the place to start. If like me you have, well this is the lazy man's way to get all the best stuff in one place. Available from here and here. Spread the word!

Jonah

2007-09-27T00:03:00.000+01:00

Anyone know of any good commentaries on Jonah?

The Religious Affections

2007-09-22T23:03:00.000+01:00

Have recently started reading The Religious Affections by Jonathan Edwards. It's early days yet, but despite a tendency on his part to write in the style of Yoda I think we're going to become friends. Here's one of the many highlights from Part I:

If we ought ever to exercise our affections at all, then they ought to be exercised about those objects which are most worthy of them... All the virtues of the Lamb of God, His humility, patience, meekness, submission, obedience love and compassion, are exhibited to our view in a manner the most tending to move our affections of any that can be imagined... How great cause have we therefore to be humbled to the dust that we are no more affected!

Resolved: to read through a gospel slowly; to treat it like a really good meal and take time to savour what is going on. The aim is not the progress of the bookmark, but meditation on "the glory and beauty of the blessed Jehovah".