Living in Hurricanes territory is hard work for a Blues supporter. I have been trying to keep my mouth shut but I can't help it. A few weeks ago I predicted that the 'Canes had as much chance of winning the Super 14 as the Blues. Well, this has turned to custard and the 'Canes are in the final with the Crusaders this Saturday. It hurts to say it but:
GO THE CRUSADERS!!! PPPPLLLLEEEEAAAAASSSEEEE!!
I mentioned a quote from Friedrich Buechner a couple of weeks ago in a sermon (something like): 'questions and doubts are the ants in the pants of faith. They keep it alive and moving.'
I have two recent questions (as well as many others...) that are causing ants in my pants:
1). This one comes from Guy Sayles and his blog at First Day. We often focus on the question of "Do you believe in Jesus?" This is an important question and rests at the heart of the Christian faith. But sometimes we, wrongly, stop at that question, as if saying yes settles all matters of faith and discipleship. There is a second and also very important question to ponder after asking "Do you believe in Jesus?" and it is: "Do you believe what Jesus believed?" Go check out Guy Sayles thoughts on this one here. It's a very important question for followers of Jesus.
2). The second question follows the readings I've been doing for our forthcoming retreat for our worship team. There is a lot of focus on the need for worship to be authentic today. It's been something that I've focussed a lot on. Today I read an article that gave me a kick in the pants. The article is by Graham Redding who is the Minister at St John's in the City, a Presbyterian church in Wellington. In the article he asks "What is authentic worship? Authentic to whom?" Is it most important to be authentic to the people gathered to worship (in which case, who decides if the bar of authenticity has been reached?) or to the Triune God of grace revealed in Jesus Christ? Who is worship directed towards, the people gathered for worship or the Triune God of grace?
I've found out over the last few weeks that some of the people I went to Bible College with have entered blogdom. I'm not on-to-it enough to figure out how to create a links thingy at the side of the blog, so the best I can do is give them a plug.
Alister is a good guy and a smart chappie (not sure what he's up to in terms of job etc now). He's now blogging at Kiwi and an Emu
Sean Du Toit (N. T. Wright's biggest fan!). I see Sean's giving a lecture on the Da Vinci Code at Stellenbosch University. He blogs at Primal Subversion.
Melissa Powell is a pastor at Cession Community. She is a very clever woman, and I would imagine, an outstanding pastor! She's blogging at Pensees (as in Blaise Pascal).
We four did a lot of papers together at Uni and it's interesting to see what they're up to now.
There's something special about scoring a treasure you never expected like the lost and found passages of Luke 15. Well, this week I reckon I've found a treasure. This week I bought my first ever Christian music CD. Call me whatever you want but I find most Christian music CDs just too syrupy for me. I can't connect with the stuff they're singing about. Anyway, this week I went into our local Christian bookstore (something I don't often do for the same reason as the Christian CD issue - the books are a bit too syrupy for me) and bought a new Bible because mine had literally fallen apart and disintergrated (always a good look for a pasta!). While I was there I browsed through the CDs and the lady recommended a couple of bands to listen to after I told her of my dilemma with much Christian music. I listened to the ones she recommended to me through the store headphones and they didn't really ring my bells. When I put them back on the shelf I saw a CD by a band called The Normals. I thought "that's me, I'm pretty normal" I put the CD on the store CD player and just loved the music. Very U2 and Radioheadish. Not only were the tunes great but the lyrics were fantastic - they sung stuff that I connected with. Here's some of their lyrics:
Have you ever been scared? Everybody's been scared. I've been scared. God, I've been scared.
Have you ever felt pain? Everbody's felt pain. I've felt pain. God, I've felt pain.
Chorus
But I'm the King of the world today. I've got this whole dirty place wrapped around my finger and I think I'm finally on my way home.
Have you ever had doubt? Everybody's had doubt. I've had doubt. God, I've had doubt
But it will get better and it doesn't matter because I feel loved. Oh God, I feel loved.
Chorus
I'm the King of the world today. I've got this whole dirty place wrapped around my finger and I think I'm finally onmy way home.
This is where grace becomes my mother 'cause I can be one man today and tomorrow another...
Or another song called 'Innocence':
Innocence, you were taken so slowly. It hit us suddenly and now I can't leave my room 'cause the lights of the city are just hiding from the dark.
Innocence, we never got to say goodbye but the glory of redemption is the wisdom that we find has taken it's place...
Or 'Brittle Bone':
Down here the well has been poisened. Now everything's dying. Some sell forgiveness on Gospel TV shows and I wonder why anyone's buying? 'Cause the truth is a hard sell for it burns out the lies
Great stuff. I went to the band's website The Normals and found that they too didn't like too much modern Christian music. They found that record companies demanded that they have a high JPM (Jesus Per Minute) and sing about happy, sugary stuff instead of gritty life stuff so that they'd get good sales on the Christian consumer market. Another group called The Frantics tried to write some gritty lyrics. Annoyed at these issues in the Christian music industry they wrote these lyrics:
Everyone's already been bought and sold. Got to get ahead. To fill their luxurious homes. Where all their lies resound again and again”
At one point in the Nashville session, one of the label executives stopped the session, recalled Shandrow (the band leader). The executive said something wasn't clicking. He had Shandrow spend some time with a studio employee to make the song more Christian.
The Frantics then recorded it again. The executive, said Shandrow, exclaimed, "That's the God I serve! Yes!"
And Shandrow's thought on it: "That's the God they want to sell."
Go here to read the full story.
A couple of years ago Laurie Guy published a book called Worlds in Collision:The Gay Debate in New Zealand, 1960-1986 (with a lovely pink cover) which looked at the response of the NZ churches to the Homosexual Law Reform Bill. The book is a fascinating read and a wonderful contribution to NZ church history, the history of homosexual law reform in NZ and NZ social history during these turbulent years. I think the title of the book is a pearler and so I've used it for this blog post even though this post is nothing to do with homosexuality.
This week I've been reading from a book called The Prodigal Project and one particular story struck me as a perfect example of 'worlds in collision'. The world of church worship world in collision with the society its trying to reach. Mike Riddell, one of the authors of the book, wrote this story:
"A young girl lived with her family next door to a Baptist church. Her parents were not churchgoers, but they made use of the Sunday School to get their daughter out of the house on a Sunday morning. Each week she would attend Sunday School, and then stay on for the church service which followed. Family life was not pleasant, and she enjoyed the welcome relief of a different group of people who seemed much 'nicer'.
The church was charismatic, and on one particular Sunday, there was the usual long bracket of choruses at the beginning of the service. A very worshipful atmosphere developed as the congregation continued to sing songs over and over. Eventually, after a particularly moving chorus, a silence fell over the assembled people. It was one of those times in which worshippers are caught up in the presence of God, and hold their breath in expectation of some prophecy or exhortation from the Lord.
This time, however, the silence gave way not to any encouraging word, but to the sound of screaming from next door. There was the unmistakable noise of a woman being beaten; a succession of wailing and weeping interspersed with the thud of fist on flesh. The young girl, together with the rest of the congregation, listened in horror. She recognized the voice of her mother crying in anguish, and knew once more her father was erupting in violent anger. She waited in anticipation, to see what would happen.
The worship leader was tense. He had planned carefully the sequence of songs to lead to this very point, where people might 'break through' into the presence of God. And now instead, the whole atmosphere was being destroyed by this unwelcome intrusion of the outside world. He did the only thing he could think of; he led out in another song of praise. The congregation welcomed the opportunity to move on and drown out the ghastly sounds assaulting their ears. As they sang, the worship quickly shut out the noise from next door. The incident stayed with the young girl for the rest of her life, though she did not understand until much later why it made her so angry."
I'm still doing some reading for the forthcoming worship seminar for our church. I've just read an article by David Dockery on Southern Baptist worship and his cry for renewal in Southern Baptist worship. Whilst the Southern Baptists have their own definate characteristics I still found it very interesting. Dockery says this about worship: 'Worship is the foundational activity of the Christian church. It defines the life-giving functions of the people of the new convenant and the new age. Worship is a joyful experience for the believing community and is as necessary for spiritual life as air and food for physical well-being...Worship [in the New Testament community] was a vertical movement, that is, the praise of humanity to God. But there was also a horizontal movement because wprship is celebrated with others. Therefore worship was a community act, and the relationships between the members of the worshipping community were of the highest importance.' With the New Testament itself, Dockery identifies 3 groups from which the early church developed. The first group, identified as Jewish Christians, was characterised by a continutiy with temple worship (Acts 2:46; 3:11-26). The second group he refers to as Hellenistic Christians. The worship of this group is characterised by the renunciation of Jewish ritualism (Acts 6:1-7:50). Jewish rituals were reinterpreted as having been fulfilled in Christ (Heb. 7-10). The thrid and largest group by the end of the first century was comprised of gentile Christians. Gentile Christian worship was exhorted to be orderly (1 Cor. 14:40; 1 Tim. 3:15) since it had developed out of pagan origins. Worship became Christocentric and content orientated (1 Cor. 14:6-26) as preaching and the Lord's Supper characterised its major aspects. Also, worship became more organised and structured as the community developed.
There's some interesting things to consider here as the NT church changed and shaped its worship within different contexts.
The Princeton Theological Review has released its latest issue (Spring 2006) and it is dedicated to the work of the late Stanley Grenz (an outstanding Baptist theologian). One of the essays in it, 'Straddling the Tasman', is written by Brian Harris - one of my old lecturers and now Principal of the Baptist Theological College of Western Australia. In his essay Brian looks at how Grenz's theology can speak clearly and thoughtfully into the Australiasian context. It is well worth reading. I was particularly struck by Brian's comments on how differently the Chrismatic Renewal impacted the church in New Zealand to how it impacted the church in Australia.
I have been doing some preparation for a forthcoming worship team retreat. It'll be a time when we try to expand our understandings of worship together. I came across this piece of advice that the pastor of Fivehead Baptist Church in England (I know, Fivehead is a bizzare name for a church - sounds like some sort of evil beast coming out of the sea in a Sci-fi movie!!) gives to their worship leaders: "Do not pray that God enables us to put ‘all the troubles and hardships of the week to one side’, thus leaving us free to worship Him. To do so is to drive a wedge between our worshipping life and our real life. Our Sunday worship is not an escape from our real life, it is an expression of it, and an opportunity to transform it."
I've also come across this quote from Gerald Manly Hopkins, Poems and Prose quite a bit recently:
"It is not only prayer that gives God glory, but work. Smiting on an anvil, sawing a beam, white-washing a wall, driving horses, sweeping, scouring, everything gives God some glory if being in His grace you do it as your duty. To go to communion worthily gives God great glory, but to take food in thankfulness and temperance gives him glory too. To lift up the hands in prayer gives God glory, but a man with a dungfork in his hand, a woman with a slop pail, give him glory too. He is so great that all things give Him glory if you mean that they should. So then, my brethren, live."
Following the last post, I read a blog post by Frank Rees today that stirred my heart. One was about a Pastor who inspired a generation of leaders within his local church by being willing to sit down with them at his home after a Sunday night sermon, light his pipe and deeply explore God and Christian faith together so that God might deeply explore them. Frank says that no topics were banned and anything could be explored from predestination to masturbation. The other figure was an Old Testament lecturer who inspired a generation of pastors, lecturers and denominational leaders. Go and read it for yourself.
Last week I was asked, as a recent graduate of Carey Baptist College, by Charles Hewlett (Director of Ministry Training at Carey), to write a brief article (250ish words) on how Carey prepared me for pulpit ministry at Napier Baptist. It was for a College publication called The PLer (that gives information about Pastoral Leadership training at Carey) to go out to NZ Baptist Pastors. I was honoured to be asked, and a little daunted, but found I really enjoyed reflecting on the question. Below is my brief entry:
Someone once told me that preachers can tend to fall into two categories: those who have something to say but don’t know how to say it and those who know how to say it but have nothing to say. I can assure this person that Carey College tries very hard to produce preachers that have something to say and know how to say it. Whilst Carey, importantly, places high emphasis on learning the art of preaching, it prepared me in a much deeper way for pulpit ministry. Carey prepared me through Biblical studies, Systematic Theology, Church History and Pastoral studies. In Biblical studies I was not given a bag full of sermons to use in ministry but rather key tools that helped me to deeply exegete the Word so that the Word could deeply exegete me. In Systematic Theology I did not learn all the important answers about God and the Christian faith but rather I learnt how to ask important questions of God and the Christian faith and that through this God could ask important questions of me. In Church History I learnt how God has shaped and transformed the community of Jesus Christ through time so that I might better sense how God is shaping and transforming the community of Jesus Christ today. In Pastoral studies I learnt that preaching is always spoken into the lives of fragile, messy people, just like me, who God intensely loves. Finally, at College we learnt about preaching through the staff modelling excellent preaching to us at Chapel services that we wanted to emulate. Carey prepared me for pulpit ministry through holistic training within the context of the community of disciples that is Carey Baptist College. I thank God for Carey College.
A deeply exegeting and exegeted; deeply questioning and questioned; deeply transforming and transformed; deeply shaping and shaped; deeply vulnerable and honest community that is aware of its humaness as well as God's transforming power and is glued together by the grace and truth of God – a volatile combination and wouldn’t it be awesome to be a part of??!!
This year at Napier Baptist we're attempting to journey a little more through the whole Easter story rather than Easter Sunday being just another Sunday where we sing with more gusto. We are adding in a Last Supper/Passover meal on Maundy Thursday (6pm) and a Tenebrae service on Good Friday (8pm). This year we want to try and journey through the upper room, through the darkness of Good Friday, the abandonment of Christ on the cross and then into good news that God raised Jesus from the dead and vindicated him and his ways and not our ways. Through this journey I want to invite you to recognise yourself within the drama of the Easter story, to see yourself within the Easter story.
William Loader has a brilliant reflection this based on Lk. 23:34 and our need to see ourselves within the story of Easter:
"The war crimes tribunal was assembled. Caiaphas and his cohorts, Pilate and his, were marched in. There were other charges against Pilate. For this session all stood accused of conspiracy to murder an innocent man, Jesus from Nazareth. The judge read the charges. Immediately from the gallery a voice cried out, ‘But he said, "Father, forgive them for they know not what they do." The judge responded: ‘Forgiveness is only possible when people realise what they have done. Until then their guilt remains and failing to appreciate the dimensions of their act they cannot forgive themselves and cannot receive forgiveness from others.’ ‘Crucify them! Crucify them!’ others shouted. The judge replied: ‘Why answer violence with violence? Why mourn love with hate?’ ‘Let us beat them, whip them, punish them,’ cried others. ‘Punishment,’ replied the judge, ‘is an admission of failure, a strategy of despair.’ ‘What, then, are we to do with these who killed the Christ?’ the crowd retorted. The judge stood to his feet, looking left and right, then turning to the accused, he said: ‘Your sentence is to hear the story again and again every year, until you recognise your part in the drama, see yourselves in the scene.’"
The Easter story calls us to recognise our part in the drama, to see ourselves in the scene. We hope that through this year's Easter journey we might have a deeper appreciation of Christ's sacrifice and what is truly good news to all people. That the darkness and terror of Good Friday (the gravitiy of sin and Christ's crucifixion) is organically linked to what makes Easter Sunday and the resurrection such Good News.
Hope to see ya there...
I've just been trying to sort out some new resources for our church community. A while ago I was looking at issues around equipping people for the workplace and 'faith at work'. I stumbled across a website called Christian Life and. It has some great resources that come from London School of Theology (previously London Bible College) - an outstanding Bible College. I found that they not only have a resource for Christian Life and Wrok but also Christian Life and... : Global Mission; Today's World; Children. I think these are fantastic resources. Many of today's resources aren't exactly transformative. Many are too simplistic and get you to do things like fill in the missing word in a simple sentence (e.g. Jesus is ... (you write in the word 'Lord')). The Christian Life and series promotes a nice combination of knowing, being, doing and feeling for the sake of transformation. For example, in the Christian Life and Children series, you speak about your own thoughts and feelings about children and their faith; you interview a child; you watch children's TV programmes and browse and children's toy catalogue (try to understand the world of children); you are introduced to developmental models for children and their faith (stages of faith) and then you have to do a SWOT exercise (strengths, weakness, opportunities and threats) on your church and their attitude to children and then consider what might be some of the practical implications for your church. I think that this will be more transformative (in terms of discipleship and church life) than simply filling in the missing word.
Have a look at the website and let me know what you think...
For anyone who's interested in all things 'emerging church', Paul Windsor's written a very thought provoking article. We all tend to view Christ through our favourite lenses (e.g. preachers think Jesus was all about preaching) and I think some of the emerging church tends to see Jesus through 'postmodern' lenses rather than 'postmodernism' through the lens of Jesus.
Paul's point that history's more of an 'adding lanes to a highway' than an eclipse model could be made even stronger. I don't think postmodern thought is anything terribly new. It has strong historical antecedents in Romanticism, Pietism and the Renaissance. There's an outstanding article by Martin Sutherland (a historical theologian) called "Pine Trees and Paradigms: Rethinking Mission in the West" in a collection of essays for Brian Smith that critiques much of the simplistic talk about 'paradigm shifts' in culture. If you're interested in getting a copy then please let me know - I'll do my best.
Sheesh! Rob Kilpatrick and the team at Tranzsend won't let us off the hook easily will they? Last week the theme of Self-Denial was they (the poor) are found wanting. This week the theme is we are found wanting. The Tranzsend handout says:
Millions of people in the world are exploited for their labour. Slavery still exists. Bonded labour and sweatshops entrap millions including children. We can change that. By setting up business enterprises that teach skills to the unskilled, pay fair and just wages, pass the profits back into the communities, and encourage self reliance, we are effecting change for generations. No longer do these people have to sell themselves into a hostile labour market or worse. If we do business for the right reason, from the right world view then we are doing mission. If we fail to ensure justice exists then in God's sight, we are found wanting.
This week's message is that God holds us accountable for the poverty of others. That God will judge us not just for the bad we have done but also the good we have failed to do (e.g. turn a blind eye to exploitation and child labour). How do you feel about this? On the one hand I feel worried whilst on the other I feel a bit beaten up by some of these things. How does this make you feel?
This week we begin our annual Tranzsend Self-Denial appeal. This year the theme is "found wanting". This week's message is based around the theme they (the poor) are found wanting support. I did quite a few history papers in my theology degree. What struck me most in reading about the church's history is how often we separate personal morality from systemic morality. For example, we're quite happy to shout and yell about what goes on in the bedroom (sexual ethics) and homosexuality but we're often silent on issues of war, poverty, famine and justice. It's interesting to notice how much air time the Civil Unions Bill got in the Baptist (our deniminational newspaper) compared to how much air time the issues in Zimbabwe (or AIDS or Fair Trade or atrocities in Sudan or poverty in Africa or even the G8 summit) got. There were pages and pages of debate on the Civil Unions and our silence screamed on these other issues. When we turn to look at Jesus we find that he said a little bit about sex and nothing explicitly about homosexuality! And this was in a culture where homosexuality was rife and would make our society today look very Victorian! On the other hand, Jesus' favourite topic was the Kingdom of God and he spoke most about poverty and money. Now, I don't want to open up the can of worms that surrounds homosexuality but I do want us to consider the fact that often what's important to us wasn't important to Jesus and what was important to Jesus sometimes isn't important to us. Perhaps this Lenten season part of us realigning ourselves with God's purposes means realigning what's important to us with what's important to Jesus. Any thoughts? And especially any thoughts on how we might support the poor and needy - those who are found wanting.
This week's sermon text is Lk. 10:38-42 - the story of Mary and Martha. We have to be a bit careful about how we make sense of this passage. It seems to me that Martha gets a rough deal. She slaves away for Jesus in the kitchen, preparing a, no doubt, fantastic meal that would've taken hours to prepare and Jesus seems to tell her it's not good enough. Does Jesus want us to let the dishes pile up so we can all sit starry eyed at his feet? If I was Martha, I think I'd be banging the pots together and making as much noise as I could in the kitchen to give Mary the hint to get up off her backside and come and give me a hand in the kitchen as well!! Fred Craddock says "if we condemn Martha too harshly she may abandon serving altogether. If we commend Mary too profusely she may sit there forever!"
What strikes me as important is asking what is Martha's point of reference. When Martha speaks she reveals where her interests lie: "Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her to help me." Martha is anxious to get Jesus to help her achieve her goals. Martha tells Jesus what she wants him to say whereas Mary sits at Jesus' feet listening to what he does have to say. It's interesting to compare Martha's request with Jesus' request of God in Gethsemane. "Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me; yet, not my will but yours be done". But is this still condemning Martha too harshly?
A couple of blog posts that might be of interest - Paul Windsor's asking some good questions about the modern obsession with spiritual gifts. Last week Joseph and I went to hear Brian McLaren. It was nice to hear and meet someone in the flesh who you've only known through reading their books. Steve Taylor, who was involved in organising the visit, had Brian speaking at Opawa Baptist last week and he has some really good notes and reflections on what Brian spoke of here; here; here; here; here; here; here; and here. It's well worth a read. Stu McGregor also had him at Mt Albert Baptist and felt that some of the people there finally got the point that the Kingdom of God does not equal heaven.