From Resurrection of the Son of God:

1. 'Spirit'/'Spiritual' versus 'Flesh'/'Natural' is not the distinction between physical and non-physical. But the distinction between being empowered and animated by the Spirit of God or this natural world.
2. Our ultimate destiny is not going to heaven, but Christ coming from heaven to the new creation.
3. When we die, we don't get fast-forwarded to judgment day, but there is an 'intermediate state' of some kind, where we wait for the final judgment.

Are you one of those people who tends to leave everything to the last minute? Know someone keen to church plant who is a little like that? Then this reminder is for you.

Registrations for our first In The Chute conference close in five days. That's right, the doors close on Sunday November 29. So don't miss your chance to:

• Hear key Christian leaders (Al Stewart, Jim Wallace) and church planters (Andrew Heard, Paul Dale) talk on the nuts and bolts of ministry in Australia
• Meet up with other Christians determined to plant new congregations
• Be assessed as a church planter by The Geneva Push

Getting there couldn't be simpler. Just click here to register for In The Chute online.

Al Mohler writes:

I cannot and do not sign documents such as Evangelicals and Catholics Together that attempt to establish common ground on vast theological terrain. I could not sign a statement that purports, for example, to bridge the divide between Roman Catholics and evangelicals on the doctrine of justification. The Manhattan Declaration is not a manifesto for united action. It is a statement of urgent concern and common conscience on these three issues -- the sanctity of human life, the integrity of marriage, and the defense of religious liberty.

My beliefs concerning the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox churches have not changed. The Roman Catholic Church teaches doctrines that I find both unbiblical and abhorrent -- and these doctrines define nothing less than the Gospel of Jesus Christ. But The Manhattan Declaration does not attempt to establish common ground on these doctrines. We remain who we are, and we concede no doctrinal ground.

H/T Craig's shared items

Check it out!

While the whole scope of Christian moral concern, including a special concern for the poor and vulnerable, claims our attention, we are especially troubled that in our nation today the lives of the unborn, the disabled, and the elderly are severely threatened; that the institution of marriage, already buffeted by promiscuity, infidelity and divorce, is in jeopardy of being redefined to accommodate fashionable ideologies; that freedom of religion and the rights of conscience are gravely jeopardized by those who would use the instruments of coercion to compel persons of faith to compromise their deepest convictions.

Signatories range across quite a spectrum of Christian denominations, which makes it quite strange. Feels like it blurs important distinctions between the denominations and swallows them all up as 'fellow Christians' and 'fellow believers'. Evangelical signatories that I and my readers may know of include Charles Colson, Tim Keller, Bryan Chapell, Wayne Grudem, Josh McDowell, Al Mohler, Jim Packer, Cornelius Plantinga, John Woodbridge and Ravi Zacharias.

The statement itself seems like a pretty good statement to me, on some interesting and important issues; well worded and grounded.

Some good moments:

• On abortion: "Our commitment to the sanctity of life is not a matter of partisan loyalty, for we recognize that in the thirty-six years since Roe v. Wade, elected officials and appointees of both major political parties have been complicit in giving legal sanction to what Pope John Paul II described as 'the culture of death.'"
• On marriage: "The impulse to redefine marriage in order to recognize same-sex and multiple partner relationships is a symptom, rather than the cause, of the erosion of the marriage culture.  It reflects a loss of understanding of the meaning of marriage as embodied in our civil and religious law and in the philosophical tradition that contributed to shaping the law. "
• Again on marriage: "We further acknowledge that there are sincere people who disagree with us, and with the teaching of the Bible and Christian tradition, on questions of sexual morality and the nature of marriage.  Some who enter into same-sex and polyamorous relationships no doubt regard their unions as truly marital."
• On religious liberty: "Restrictions on the freedom of conscience or the ability to hire people of one's own faith or conscientious moral convictions for religious institutions, for example, undermines the viability of the intermediate structures of society, the essential buffer against the overweening authority of the state, resulting in the soft despotism Tocqueville so prophetically warned of."

H/T Margaret.

Rodney Stark writes;

Having surveyed a large number of [new religious movements] ... I noticed that it was typical for the founding generation to apparently lose hope of saving the world, and to turn their movements inward, as they neared the end of their lives. That is, unless something comes along to renew hope and commitment, as the first generation evaluate the results of thirty or forty years of conversion efforts and see that they have succeeded in attracting only two or three thousand members (if that many), they are inclined to lose heart. As this takes place, often a new rhetoric is voiced; this de-emphasizes the importance of growth and explains that the movement has succeeded in gathering a saving remnant, which is all that was ever intended, actually.
Rise of Christianity, p. 185

Watched this video today. There's a Driscoll sort-of-from-the-text application at the end, encouraging 'the best of men' to consider marrying single mums.

This is awesome and I pray God continues to provide Christian single mums with mighty dads to be brave enough to dive in the deep end, loving them and their kid(s).

Rodney Stark writes:

Exclusive [religious] firms engage in the collective production of religion... Nonexclusive firms cannot sustain collective production and therefore specialize in privately produced religious goods. As defined by Laurence Iannaccone (1995), privately produced religious commodities can be transferred from the individual producer to an individual consumer without involvement by a mediating group. New Age crystals are a current example of a privately produced commodity, as are astrological charts, or psychic healing....
Exclusive firms are far stronger organizations, far better able to mobilize extensive resources and to provide highly credible religious compensators, as well as substantial worldly benefits.
The Rise of Christianity p. 203-204

Revivalism in all its forms is kind of yucky. It despises the normal, power-in-weakness way that the Lord works and always hang out for the big waves of conversion. It is always slave to a particular recipe that will somehow guarantee revival.

Today revivalism appears in those who hunger for 'movements' and want to find how to magic these into existence. But it's still just revivalism.

It tends to confuse consequence with cause as well. Often 'revival' behaviour is the result of God working in people's hearts. But revivalists (or movement mongerers) somehow thinking that if we can get these behaviours happening they will cause a revival/movement.

One thing that I don't like about old-school revivalism is the prayer-meeting thing. Somehow mid week, whole church prayer meetings are more powerful:

• than praying in the Sunday service
• than praying in private or in the family home
• than praying in small groups

But I don't know exactly why.

Murray posts ten points.

Great advice from Eugene:

If someone approaches me and asks me to pronounce the invocation at an event and I say, "I don't think I should do that; I was planning to use that time to pray," the response will be, "Well, I'm sure you can find another time to do that." But if I say, "My appointment calender will not permit it," no further questions are asked. If someone asks me to attend a committee meeting and I say, "I was thinking of taking my wife out to dinner that night; I haven't listened carefully to her for several days," the response will be, "But you are very much needed at this meeting; couldn't you arrange another evening with your wife?" But if I say, "the appointment calender will not permit it," there is no further discussion.

The trick, of course, is to get to the calender before anyone else does. I mark out the times of prayer, for reading, for leisure, for silence and solitude out of which creative work - prayer, preaching, and listening - can issue." (Contemplative Pastor, 31-32.)

What things do you make a point of marking into your diary early?


H/T Al

Andrew Heard's first article for Geneva.

The kind of gritty practical wisdom (rather than no concrete advice), biblical argument (rather than crummy biblical proof-texting/character studies) and God-glorifying outlook (rather than mere how-tos) that we hope to sustain.

This post argues that we lose something when certain psychological disorders are understood merely in medical terms:

One of the concerns with the medical model is that what used to be framed in moral terms is now being framed in medical terms (e.g., addiction). This is worrisome for a couple of reasons. First, it undermines personal responsibility. I'm not bad, I'm just ill. I can't, because of this illness, be held accountable for my actions. Second, if I'm ill my treatment is in the form of a pill. But no pill creates virtue. In short, the medical frame causes us to look for "treatment" in all the wrong places....

In trying to explain evil, identifying its causes, we unwittingly tame it. To explain evil, to understand evil, is to lessen evil. True evil can't be explained by psychology or history. Evil is inherently inexplicable. That is the source of its horror....

In short, even as a psychologist, committed to identifying the causes of behavior, I feel the need to keep this superstitious term, this term of darkness from an ancient enchanted era. A era of angels, devils and demons. A era of good versus evil.

There seems to be something important here. We need to keep a moral dimension to our understanding of psychology, even psycholigical disorders. Both a religious and a medical explanation can be unhelpfully exclusive.

The religious person argues, 'Because it's demonic, it must not be treated medically'. The medical person argues, 'Because it's medical it must not be treated religiously'.

Why not both? Could a demon not cause harm that might be alleviated with medicine? Could not an illness need to also be dealt with religiously?

At least, I don't think it'll replace email. Email ain't broke. It don't need fixing.

Also, when talking about Google Wave, let's not confuse the actually product with a bunch of sexy, but supplementary features that are also involved in its release.

But although it won't replace email, it'll be pretty useful in certain contexts. Here's five use cases.

Very nice.

The argument from Exodus 3 that Jesus uses to refute the Sadducees is normally taken this way:

If God says that he is (present tense) the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob,
And if God is the God of the living,
Then Abe, Zac and Jake must be living.

This is fair enough, even if it feels to put a lot of weight on the present tense! After all it could just mean, I am the God who was the God of Abe etc.

But I was thinking today that it could be taken slightly differently:

If God was the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob when they were alive,
And if to be their God was to be faithful to his covenant with them (what this phrase 'the God of Abe, Zac and Jake' normally alludes to),
And God's covenant faithfulness ensures life to his people,
Then Abe, Zac and Jake must look forward to life from their covenant God.

What do you think?

Andrew has posted some great advice on how to mobilise the church well through 'structured freedom'.

I particularly like two ideas:

1. Offering both program and project roles for people in church. The program is the ongoing commitment, the project is the seasonal commitment.
   
2. Providing a 'link person' and a 'project brief' to a team of church members running an event.

Often we can either control a project, or else kind of support if from afar, letting go of the reins almost entirely. The idea of providing a 'project brief' (the equivalent of a job description in the world of ministry programs) is very helpful.

But the other thing that is very important, is good 'face time' making sure the project leader actually, actually reads and understands the project brief.

This vox pop is very moving.

Have you come across this show? It's worth watching, I reckon. Not polished, and pretty mixed bag in terms of content, but as a result, it's very fresh.

Did you hear about their marketing scholarly report hoax? Cheeky.

It's a frustrating show, because it flits between quite heavy reporting and political comedy skits. Kind of Chaser with more heavy content. Perhaps like U2 interviewing people in Sarajevo during ZOO TV. Veeery pomo.

Will suggested that it might be:

Should we be open to question about our ethical purity if we quote from a newspaper in our sermon or use brand names in our allusions to popular culture? How about if I read out the lyrics to a popular (or unpopular) song? What about if I hum the theme song to a TV show to make a point?

Can anyone confirm this on the basis of Australian copyright law? I'm not interested in what you think should be the case but what legally is the case.

They've organised a community event in Moonah to reach out to the (generally poorer) Northern Suburbs. The highest 'ranking' pastor involved is Jake Bevan, a first year MTS apprentice.

Featuring BBQ, live music, entertainment and a short talk by Jimbo Mobbs (NSW)

Call it initiative, or call it mental, either way, it's pretty good, huh?

On Sola Panel.

This is a great post because it doesn't just do a crummy surface-level Christian critique of the books/films, skimming over the surface and attacking the boringly obvious. It takes time to really get a feel for the book, its characters, its author and its readership. And it comes in on a surprising and fresh angle:

Observing the Twilight phenomenon, a friend remarked to me that now a whole generation of young men will grow up to hate Edward Cullen the way men throughout the centuries have come to despise Pride and Prejudice's Mr Darcy—for giving women an unrealistic portrait of what to look for in a mate

I really think SP are getting into their stride. Seems like the best bloggers are becoming the most consistent, and the content is getting more juicy too.