Cool things:

• Met lots of lovely, gospel-hearted, supportive women pastors
• One pastor who had gotten angry at me for something I didn't intend to do approached me and sought to resolve the matter at the beginning of the conference. They didn't want this misunderstanding to get in the way of them benefiting from my preaching
• I got a book called 'Supporting Christians at Work' by Mark Greene which looks like just the thing for me and my church
• I really like the idea of having a good solid church service each morning at a conference, rather than getting all sloppy
• I don't think there was much I said that wasn't in the prayer book stuff we recited before my sermons. This is a good think about the prayer book.
• (I don't think there was much I said that wasn't in the prayer book stuff we recited before my sermons. This is also bad think about the prayer book: they don't listen when it's in the prayer book, but only when it's preached.)
• The bishop set his vision for the Tassie Diocese, and it was a good, exciting, Christ-honouring vision
• There was a lot of talk about 'giving the Diocese a language for talking about discipleship.' I think this is really positive.
  

Strange things:

• A tab on the bar one night before dinner
• Cable television in our roooms
• A prayer book service first thing each morning (Rather than a couple of praise songs before the sermon)
• A lot of women pastors
• Golf and winery tours in the afternoon
• Visiting the Door of Hope megachurch to hear Philip Yancy one evening
• Grindelwald
• The resource-review involved getting handed around a pile of free books or sample DVDs... we even got an entire photocopied book handed to each of us with these words: "I got permission from the publishers to photocopy the whole thing. The actual book is on order and I will give that to you when I get it"
  

I was invited to speak at the Tasmanian Anglican Clergy Conference this week. Monday-Thursday @ Grindelwald, a mock-Swiss town just outside of Launceston. I told Crossroads that this was a week that woudl be exciting, scary and funny all at once. I preach three times on the topic of life (to tie in with 'Jesus All About Life').

Some favourite words and phrases used over the week:

• connect
• journey
• conceptual framework (not model)
• mutuality
• conversation
• context
• community
• engagement

Some gifts they gave me:

• A 2002 Pinot Noir
• A Phantom comic
  

I have another little blog that I imagine very few of you will like.

I have heard several preachers (including a guy at the recent MTS Challenge conference) argue for a different the meaning of 'Give us each day our daily bread'. Often it is boldly claimed that the verse literally reads 'bread for tomorrow'. What do we think?

1. Like a lot of claims made from the Greek text, it is a little inaccurate to claim 'oh it literally says this', because a literal word-for-word translation doesn't necessarily convey the phrase's intended meaning in social/literary context.
2. How much more inaccurate is this claim when this particular word is so rare in ancient literature that Origen could suggest that Matthew and Luke (or Jesus?) coined the word.
3. It is true that quite a few early commentators interpreted this request in an eschatological way - bread for tomorrow = spiritual bread = foretaste of heaven. But we must be careful with early church exegesis. Sometimes early church commentators can claim a spiritual/eschatological meaning of the text without necessarily denying its immediate literal meaning. See Paul's discussion of Oxen in 1Corinthians 9 as an example.
4. The Lord's Prayer becomes a very limited prayer if 'daily bread' is interpreted spiritually. It becomes: "God be praised. God's kingdom come. God sustain us spiritually, restore us spiritually and protect us spiritually. Amen". It's possible, but it feels a little narrow.
5. The prayer is otherwise quite prosaic. It is strange to find a slightly obtuse metaphor in the middle of it.
6. Eschatological bread is not a really explicit and dominant theme in either Matthew or Luke.
7. The spiritual importance of daily provisions as we serve God in this life is a dominant concern in Matthew and Luke.

It's hard to cope with God's relative silence on issues that we feel so strongly about: slavery, abuse of women, rape, torture, war, genocide. Richard Dawkins already struggles to believe in God already, it's even harder for him to accept that the Bible is his Word, when it remains silent, condones, or at least permits a stack of grisly things.

Four things have occurred to me since reading The God Delusion. I write them here, fearing, but also expecting to be confusing to my readers and misunderstood by my readers. Well, I'll do my best:

1. In his dealings with humanity, God chose to take to task the most important issues. These issues are the ones about which God is adamant in the OT: the worship of God alone, the honouring of human life, the importance of justice, and so forth. God comes to the human race in the midst of their sin, confusion and corruption. He doesn't build a perfect society through the Law. But he introduces good and right laws that rightly respond to the state of human and social sinfulness and corruption at that time.

This reminds us that although we feel strongly about certain issues (racism, slavery) that this doesn't make them the most important and fundamental issues. The most fundamental ethical issues remain the same.

2. It was because your hearts were hard that Moses wrote you this law," Jesus replied (Mk 10:5). This is a helpful principle for grasping the OT legislation, and God's interaction with humanity in history. God tolerated, permitted and restrained human evil. This does not mean God is supporting or condoning, much less commanding, these things.

3. In reading Old Testament Ethics for the People of God by C. Wright, I was reminded that OT ethics are not just culturally determined in their actual content (permitting slavery, warfare etc) but in their literature. And this is the challenge. Ancient people wrote about warfare, for example, with a triumphalism and extravagance that we find offputting. Ancient writing had different literary assumptions and styles.

4. On another level, our modern horror for things such as slavery, limited women's rights, warfare, the death penalty and so on has an in-built historical snobbery. This is explicit in Dawkin's book when he speaks about a moving (and progressive) zeiteist which develops human morality over time.

In doing so, our extreme reaction against even slavery or warfare or the death penalty relegates the vast majority of human history to immoral, unethical barbarism. A naturalistic evolutionary framework may sit comfortably with that. But is it really a good idea? Are we really going to say that modern women's rights or modern pacifism are so extremely morally important as to declare most human civilisations as barbaric?

On the other hand, the fundamentalist can tend to assume because God permitted it at one time in human history, therefore we must do preserve it in our age. God used monarchy then so we must, God used the death penalty then so we must, God's people spoke about warfare with bloodthirsty boldness therefore we must.

What middle ground might there be? Well, we must temper our modern over-reaction to OT legislation. We must be willing to bear the thought of slavery, or curtailed women's rights, or war, or the death penalty. We mustn't so oppose them in our day that our rhetoric takes over our emotions and our mind. And yet at the same time, we must be open to the fact that over time certain things have become clearer to us, or our context has enabled us to develop our morality in certain ways. Therefore what God permitted in the past need not be preserved in the present.

Whence arose the great readiness of the scribe to prepare himself immediately to accompany Christ, but from his not having at all considered the hard and wretched condition of his followers? We must bear in mind that he was a scribe, who had been accustomed to a quiet and easy life, had enjoyed honor, and was ill-fitted to endure reproaches, poverty, persecutions, and the cross. He wishes indeed to follow Christ, but dreams of an easy and agreeable life, and of dwellings filled with every convenience; whereas the disciples of Christ must walk among thorns, and march to the cross amidst uninterrupted afflictions. The more eager he is, the less he is prepared. He seems as if he wished to fight in the shade and at ease, neither annoyed by sweat nor by dust, and beyond the reach of the weapons of war. There is no reason to wonder that Christ rejects such persons: for, as they rush on without consideration, they are distressed by the first uneasiness of any kind that occurs, lose courage at the first attack, give way, and basely desert their post. Besides, this scribe might have sought a place in the family of Christ, in order to live at his table without expense, and to feed luxuriously without toil. Let us therefore look upon ourselves as warned, in his person, not to boast lightly and at ease, that we will be the disciples of Christ, while we are taking no thought of the cross, or of afflictions; but, on the contrary, to consider early what sort of condition awaits us. The first lesson which he gives us, on entering his school, is to deny ourselves, and take up his cross, (Matthew 16:24.)

Simplifications are necessary, but sometimes unfair. A couple of simplifications in the area of eschatology have started to annoy me more and more:

1. Dismissing all premillenialism as pre-tribulational premill

It's not fair to oversimplify all premills as people who believe in literal fulfillment of promises regarding Israel, a rapture and so on. It's unfair on early church writers, it's unfair on many modern-day Christians.

Go ye to wikipedia and learn the important difference between pretrib premills (the rapture gang) and posttrib premills: millenial views diagram.


2. Dismissing all believe in a personal antichrist as premill

In certain amillenialist circles, the belief in a personal antichrist and a final tribulation is also lumped in, along with the rapture and the literal reestablishment of Israel with premillenialism. Not fair.

Some amills interpret the antichrist passages symbolically (somewhat difficult when it comes to 2Thess 2, but they do). But some amills believe both that we are in the 1000 years now, where there are many antichrists and ongoing tribulation and yet there will also be a personal antichrist and final tribulation.

Some interesting bits from Leroy Eims' groovy little book 'The Lost Art of Disciple Making':

1. I was in the middle of an organse farm, but the diner couldn't make me organge juice because their juicer was broken. Their problem wasn't lack of juice. It was over-dependence on a machine. In the same way many Christians rely too much on the Sunday sermon. They may be surrounded by Bibles, but don't know how to get sustenance out of them. they are like babies in a pantry of canned goods.
2. Is the reason for the 'socialism' at the end of Acts 2 because the disciples had decided to stay on longer than anticipated in Jerusalem because of they were converted and wanted to be discipled?
3. Is the reason that only the apostles stayed in Jerusalem after the persecution of Acts 8, becuase they enjoyed the asylum of Gamaliel?
4. Would you rather have 100 people in your church who are 90% committed or 10 people who are 100% committed?
5. Steps in discipleship: a) Motivation to grow b) Growth in personal devotion c) Willingness to witness.
   

Sorry for long delay between posts. I have been holidaying and being busy with things and begetting a little daughter (Esther Kate) and other lam excuses...

I heard a cool startegy for small group Bible study writing just recently. It's a compromise between the convenience of using pre-written Bible studies and writing your own.

Whoever is in charge of writing Bible studies doesn not prepare a complete Bible study package. Rather, they prepare at most one double-sided A4 page of notes on the passage including exegesis, key turning points, suggestions for leading, ideas for application.

This then leaves it up to the individual study leader to decide what to do with this. They could use these notes to help them as they lead a loose discussion. they could use these note to write a Bible study. Overall it is more 'manpower' (since each leader has to develop this page of notes in some way). However it is less time investment for the Bible study write.

Moreover, it has three advantages. First of all, it may promote a slightly higher rate of study leader preparation. After all, even with pre-written studies, the study leader is meant to spend time preparating. Perhaps it actually reduces overall work time?

Secondly, it is teaching the study leader how to think through the study leading process much more thoroughly, therefore it is training them more.

Thirdly, it prevents leaders from assuming that the entire goal of study leading is to answer the questions on the page or criticising the wording and clarity of the questions.

Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, Bantam: London, 2006

"Pantheists don't believe in a supernatural God at all, but use the word God as a non-supernatural synonym for Nature or for the Universe, or for the lawfulness that governs its workings. Deists differ from theists in that their God does not answer prayers, is not interested in sins or confessions, does not read our thoughts and does not intervene with capricious miracles. Deists differ from pantheists in that the desit God is some kind of cosmic intelligence, rather than the pantheist's metaphoric or poetic synonym for the laws of the universe. Pantheism is sexed-up atheism. Deism is watered-down theism.... Einstein was using 'God' in a purely metaphorical, poetic sense. So is Stephen Hawking, and so are most of those physicists who occasionally slip into the language of religious metaphor." (pp. 18-19)

Some thoughts:

1. A helpful corrective for scientists. Dawkins avoids using 'God' in this sense, and considers it confusing and politically expedient. He has a point. Francis Schaeffer warns of the same thing is liberal Christian theology, where people who have basically denied the existence of God continue to use God-language in order to smuggle in greater emotional and spiritual significance to their otherwise-atheism.
2. It is not fair to say that all pantheism is merely sexed-up atheism. I can think of at least four ways that this comment could be engaged with:

• Some atheists use pantheistic language, and mean nothing by it, as Dawkins suggests. At worst, they are doing this is a politically expedient way, for which his derision is perhaps justified. Such pantheists are really de facto atheists.
  
• But properly speaking, pantheism is an ontological claim. It is the belief that there is a quality or value to the natural world that is more than the sum of its parts. There is something spiritual about the natural world. This is not merely sexed-up atheism, but a philosophical system.
  
• However, some atheists use pantheistic language because they truly want to say that there is something meaningful, valuable and significant about the natural world, while still denying a spiritual world. At times I feel that Dawkins wants to speak of good and evil with a force that really goes beyond his scientific naturalism. I think that this is because we do have an innate (not psychologically/biologically required) understanding that there is more to life than the merely physical. You could say that these atheists are de facto pantheists.
• But you could say that pantheism has no proper ground for its belief in a spiritual dimension to the created world. You could say that when taken to its logical conclusion any belief of supernatural value to the created world is intangible and meaningless. You could thus argue that intentionally or not, all pantheism is ultimately atheistic.
  

1. There are times and seasons to 'go hard' for the gospel, even if your church style is not necessarily of the 'better to burn out than to fade away' variety. I like the idea of having a few times a year where you prep up and pump up the church to 'go hard'. A season of sacrificial service for the sake of outreach is good for the communal soul.

2. I had a pastoral encounter the other night where I rediscovered the emotional importance of the doctrinal hell. For someone who has been visciously hurt by the wickedness of people, and who longs to lash out in vengeance and violence, 'forgive your enemies' is a massive challenge. I believe that the first step is for them to let God be Judge, and to take comfort in the fact that God's wrath is a far more fitting punishment than personal violence or even State punishment.

3. It is hard to be a part of a church that is shrinking in numbers because people are going away to Bible College or the mission field elsewhere.

But it is wonderful to see that the story of your church is bigger than the amount of current members. Even the local church stretches backwards and forwards in time. Part of the excitement of being a part of Crossroads is sharing in the growth of future pastors and evangelists currently @ Bible College, and in the ongoing service of those who have gone out from us to serve in other congregations around the country and the world.

And isn't this the first step in grasping a little more fully the truth of the Universal Church?

4. A little reflection on committees and commissions of higher courts of my denomination: They tend to be governed by rules and regulations which are (rightly) focused on maintenance and sustainability. As a result, however, the oversight of such committees don't go far beyond this. Unless the convenor is particularly visionary, the reports are often a little mundance.

Over the next year I hope to introduce the expectation that all committees develop a 1-2 yr and a 3-5 yr plan. I hope that this will drive us to prayer and (even) entrepreneurialism.

Great warnings to bloggers and blogophiles alike can be found at Bernard and Katie Cane's blog:

A Reflexive Post: On Blogging your reflections

Also check out Katie's thoughtful post on being a Bible College student's wife:

'The Wife'

Quote from a friend:

"I am listening to a serious, but often funny, program right now on radio national about how christinatiy has become a dirty word. The show profiles various people - authors, priests, everyday christians - who discuss the often extreme reactions people have in the wider secular world when they mention their faith. It's about the blemishing of language, the 'polluted stream of language' and the baggage that gets attached to these concepts, "god" being a dirty word etc. Anyway, this one woman has started a thing called the Canadian Centre for Progressive Christianity which has been developed in contrast to institutional christianity. She considers herself to be an active and proud christian and i think she works as a priest or something like that. But occassionally she will be in a social situation where she is meeting new people but she doesn't want to have to deal with the shock and repulsion that a lot of people have when she mentions that she works for jesus. SO instead she often tells them that she is employed as a public relations consultant for a middle eastern organisation."

From 1st December 2003:
1. Don’t forget about cold-contact evangelism. It doesn’t seem to work but it is so good for getting to the gospel, taking risks for the gospel, getting to know people who are outside the church. It’s also a great way to bond with Christians, cause you then feel like you’ve been in ‘Nam together.

2. If you ask people to read out a passage for you during a sermon, make sure you thank them before you carry on blasting away (Nikki rebuked me for not doing this!

3. If you won’t to have some input in people in your church’s life but have no idea what to “do” with them to stretch them in some way, get them to do sermon reviews. This is great: the preacher benefits, they listen carefully, they have a say in how teaching is done, they learn a little of how to preach and its easy to organise.

4. In Presidential election debates (so someone told me) you can tell who is the more insecure speaker by the way he modulates his voice to follow the patterns and rhythms of the more secure speaker…. Does this have any relevance to anything? I dunno.

5. If you are invited to speak or lead at a camp or church as a visitor try the following:

• Set “ministry of the pew” goals: eg, I will speak to 3 people and one of those I will aim to have a spiritual conversation with
• Look out for people to have long-distance ministry to: maybe I could put someone on my newly born “christian reflections” mail out?
• Look out for someone to give something to: e.g. at the end of the conversation say, I have a great book on that topic, give me your address, I’ll buy and send you a copy…

6. In this book “Christ our righteousness” by M Seifrid he deals with James 2 – works and faith. He says that the difference between what James says and Roman Catholicism is this: Roman Catholicism says faith makes you a bit righteous and works adds the rest. James doesn’t say works adds a little. He says works adds the lot: we are justified by works alone. That is, from the perspective of conversion, we are justified only by faith in Christ and made 100% righteous; while from the perspective of the second coming we are justified only by works that have been produced by that faith and by the spirit of Christ working through us which will make us able to stand on the last day 100%. Sound alright?

1. I sat under a great sermon last week. It has motivated me again to work hard at preaching. When you are reminded of how powerful and encouraging and rebuking listening to preaching is, it motivates you again to work hard at preaching.

2. So I hae gone back to one of my favourite books on preaching: expositional preaching by Haddon Robinson. Should I call my next child Haddon (regardless of gender)?

3. Haddon reminded again of the big thing: the Scriptures must govern my sermon. My sermons shouldn't just be biblical or jumping off a Bible.

4. Haddon urged me to try to find the big idea with crispness and clarity. A big idea is a subject (What I'm talking about) and the complement(s) (What I'm saying about what I'm talking about).

5. On top of that I should know what functional question I'm answering: is it a truth question? A relevance question? A practicality question?

1. A thought came to my while I was attending a 'Ten Days on the Island' forum thingo. I looked around and saw that the room was 'filled' with middle-aged arty women. And I thought:

'I wonder how well the church is going at reaching this group'

And then I tried to do some (no doubt flawed) assessment of how this audience would respond to the average church: male leadership, famiy focused, not very high brow...

And I thought that you would need a sort of specialist women-minsitry to reach them.

And I thought: It's hard to balance the rightness of building and healthy biblical model of Christian community, and yet also encouraging the church to have a form that is accessible for outsiders, whose cultural structures are vastly different.

And I thought of the teenager emo's who were turning up for the next forum, no doubt because they were on an excursion with their art class. And I thought: yet again, the form of community they are used to is the absolute opposite of Sunday morning church with lots of kids and mums and old people.

On the one hand, the countercultural nature of the church community is ultimately appealing, that's true. But in the first place? I wonder...

2. At the church planting conference that I have referred to in previous posts, Martin Robinson talked about how to church plant in regional areas. He suggested that perhaps 'cluster planting' was a good option, so that from the word go, you have a network of churches that can support one another.

This is an interesting idea. I wonder what other contexts might suit this strategy?

1. Is it working? Are people reading it? How many? How do you download those 'hit counters' to tell?
2. Is it worth the time? Should I give more time to it?
3. Is the text too small? Is the blogger template ugly? How do I change it?
4. Does it still serve its original function? When Xn Reflections started in 2003 as an email, I did it:

• to keep contact with people I don't see so often and share some of my thoughts about theology and ministry
• give another type of input to those Christians I see everyday
• have a way to record those random reflections that come to you that you don't know where else to file them

5. How many people have I lost now that it's not an email? Do less internet savvy people just see the hypertext in my occasional reminder emails and swoon?
6. How many people I don't know read this?
7. Would I get more hits if I wrote about my internet girlfriend? (blogger in-joke referring to this blog)
8. Should I do something else with the material that goes up here?
9. Should be active in getting more of the local church crew reading it?
10. Did the guy who left a comment and recommended I visit his casino site *really* like Xn Reflections, or was it just spam?

So I've been directed to a Philosophy Now article that tells me that postmodernism has been replaced by pseudomodernism. I'm not sure what to make of this yet, nor what implications, if true, it may have on Christianity, preaching and church.

But it got me thinking about complaints that are starting to be made more and more of the pseudo-modern, Gen Y sort of crew. And I would like to soften these criticisms and try to offer some words in their defence.

The Gen Y crowd are apparently individualistic, self-absorbed, naively optmistic, incompetent with basic life skills and non-committal. They are the STABO generation (Subject To A Better Offer). They can be berated for letting church down by not commiting to ministries, not signing up to conferences soon enough.

There's plenty of truth to this no doubt. At the very least, these sins are to a certain extent common to all people. But what might be said to balance things out? Well I've just got two things to get the ball rolling:

1. If they *are* more individualistic and uncommitted, this is at least in part because of the failure of the Baby Boomer and Gen X parents and church leaders who failed to teach and train them in these areas. This rebuke is also a call for us to be more dilligent in our leading of those under our care.
2. We don't want to judge what commitment and competence looks like by yesterday's standards. Punctuality looks different in Africa than it does in Germany. Restraint looks different in Britain than it does in Australia. The Gen Y has grown up in a world of multiple commitments, vast amounts of information and networks of powerful relationship technology. They may be less reliable in certain relationships, but in others they are far more realiable than a Baby Boomer technophobe, or a Gen X internet pragmatist.

What does this mean to me as a church leader? I think I need to see future generations less as 'normal' people. Everyone is a manager now with a mobile centre of operations (PDA, iPod, mobile phone). Everyone is connected to a vast network of information and relationships.

I can't just expect reliability and commitment from people as if all they have to juggle is their A5 2007 diary with a TODO list in the margin. Now, everyone is a manager of a department: their life. I need to treat every under-30 in my church the way I would only treat the CEO of earlier generations.

If all someone has is a diary, then they are only disorganised in one place. Now, people are disorganised across several galaxies of technology. As a leader, if I want to promote reliability and commitment, I need to be committed to serving people with providing a user-friendly interface that will help them.

1. My friend Matt recognises that busy, educated, affluent people often have plenty of friends and feel they don't need to me Christian friends on top of it all.

*But* such people are often too busy and spread themselves too thin... they have lots of relatoinships but none are very deep. When they get a taste of that in the church, perhaps they will see the appeal.

That presupposes we are any different in the church...

2. At a recent conference the speaker suggested this definition of a worldview: 'What you think when you are not thinking"

3. I am about to preach on Luke 8. In verses 16-18 we find these familiar words:

16"No one lights a lamp and hides it in a jar or puts it under a bed. Instead, he puts it on a stand, so that those who come in can see the light. 17For there is nothing hidden that will not be disclosed, and nothing concealed that will not be known or brought out into the open. 18Therefore consider carefully how you listen. Whoever has will be given more; whoever does not have, even what he thinks he has will be taken from him."

Now Jesus often uses very similar phrases and ideas in different contexts. He can even mean different things by the same parable or phrase. I think this is the case here. I was reading this passage in the light of Matthew 5 (you are the light of the world... let your light shine before men) and Matthew 10 (proclaiming from the rooftops). As a result I took the things that are revealed and brought into the open (Luke 8:17) to be the truths of the gospel.

But on reflection, and carefully re-reading, I don't think so. I think this whole passage us about the light of God's word shining into our lives, exposing the secrets of our hearts. That explains the 'therefore' at the start of verse 18 too.

4. At this churchplanting conference by Martin Robinson, when he spoke on gathering and training a core group/launch team, I was expecting lots of hints and tips and practicals about skill-sets and group dynamics. Instead he spent most of an hour talking about godliness, spiritual discipline and so on. It wasn't generalised, superspiritual stuff, but really good quality, practical application.

It was a good reminder: a core group has its greatest potential in the way it establishes the spiritual DNA of the church, its values, culture, conversation and mindset.