The WA govt is considering making it law for young people (non full fare payers) to stand for older people on public transport.

What is the world coming to when we have to make a law for people to do what people ought to do?

I think its an idea fraught with difficulty and the time/money would be better spent developing a culture where age and maturity is respected. No easy task I know, but to legislate for people to be nice is to say ‘we have failed’.

And… FWIW In my experience I am yet to be on a train where younger people have not given older people a seat.

Here are some more thoughts on my recent post where I raised some questions about church and how we do it.

I was discussing this last night with Danelle and some friends. My friend’s church has a recently been experiencing a ‘fading attendance’, with 110 or so ‘on the books’, but only 50 or 60 there on any given Sunday. Ironically their offerings are going thru the roof and they have a huge cash surplus. It seems the people are still committed enough to give large slabs of money even if they can’t get to the service each week. Are they really committed to the community if they don’t front at the Sunday AM gig or is their offering just a conscience appeaser?

I tend to lean towards believing the people are very likely committed to the church in their minds, and they don’t notice or don’t get concerned if they miss a few Sundays. Its usually us as pastors who notice most if people don’t come. It raises the question again ‘what priority do we need to place on attendance at a service?’ Maybe it is worth asking do we expect people to attend too many services?

As I was driving home with Danelle we began to talk about her creative memories stuff (scrapbooking) and how that operates.

As a committed consultant she has the opportunity to attend 2 or maybe even 3 meetings a month to help her develop in her skills and abilities. She goes to just 1. It is enough to help her feel connnected and to keep her inspired. She said that if she were able to go to more she would probably feel more inspired and would be a better more effective consultant.

As well as these meetings she catches up regularly by phone/email/coffee with the other girls ‘up’ from her and ‘down’ from her. It seems this is all she needs to keep cruising along in her position.

Some girls have dropped out of their consultant roles, usually because they are not committed to the task firstly, but also because they do not access the support services that will keep them charged up.

The parallels are obvious.

Danelle is a passionate scrapper and very committed to the whole scene, but it doesn’t take two meetings a week to keep her focused.

Maybe we need to learn from that. Perhaps we can also learn from the way scrappers spread their virus. Of course once you add in $$$ everything shifts in balance a little.

I guess I am still wondering about how we really discern what is our tradition and what is core to the gospel. Perhaps even beyond that I ask ‘what is good healthy tradition?’ and what is binding us up?

We had a really good meeting this morning as a ‘church’. It wasn’t rocket science, but it was as significant as we were willing to make it. Something is stirring in me as I wonder what we need to cling to and what we need to hold loosely. The struggle for me is that in holding some stuff loosely we may ‘blow it up’, whatever that looks like. But I sense we  need to push the boundaries of our ecclesiology quite a bit more to see ourselves functioning healthily in this culture.

Sometimes I let my mind wander onto questions of ‘what really constitutes a church, or maybe its just ‘church’ with no ‘a’?’

Is what we are doing in our churches, whatever flavour they take, part of God’s plan, or are these just our own ideas on organisation and practice that we are baptising?

Is ‘structuring’ a church our idea or God’s idea? Do we need to organise it at all?… Can we validly be the church (and be effective in our mission) with no formal structures, no regular gatherings and no designated leaders? I know churches in the NT had structures (elders, deacons etc) but was that because God intended it that way or because we wanted to organise them?

If the church is (in its most basic form) where 2 or 3 come together in Jesus name then do we have to develop a letterhead, logo and vision statement to actually make it ‘a church’? Is it enough to simply ‘be the church’ when we meet with another person or group?

Can two families simply be a church? Obviously the biblical and practical answer is ‘yes’. Can one family be a church? Danelle, Ellie, Sam and I?… Are we a church? Or are we ‘church’ (There are four of us!)

What was Jesus on about with building his ‘church’?

One of the great insights from Roland Allan’s ‘The Spontaneous Expansion of the Gospel and the Causes Which Hinder it’ was that our own need to control the process is often critical in inhibiting the spread of the gospel and the growth of the kingdom. Of course this isn’t new. When the Gentiles started getting in on it the Jersualem council made sure there were four rules for them to obey!

Was that God’s will, or just them making sure the Gentiles didn’t get carried away with this ‘freedom thing’?

I have been thinking about the ‘new age movement’ or whatever you prefer to call it and the way it has spread so rapidly and pervasively across the globe with no central leader, no regular organised meetings and no formal structure. It just went ‘kaboom’. Is that more like what God intends for the church?

While some would say the new agers have no common creed and no textbook there are some definite commonalities all round the place. They seem to have hung together in a network or loose alliance and have infected all of our society. The dominant way of thinking about spirituality in the west today is from an alt spirituality framework ie pick and mix, no absolutes, tolerance etc. (yes I am generalising)

But as I look at the new agers I wonder what we can learn from them. Yes they have festivals and some common practice meetings/events, but few (none that i am aware of) have the same degree of structure / formality as most of our Christian churches. And yet their ideas and ethos has permeated all of our culture.

I’m sure Phil or Matt will fill in where I am ignorant here.

I am feeling toey about some things at the moment and trying to articulate them here for discussion.

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I am concerned about creating a structure that we then need to serve and maintain. I wonder if in our selfishness we would be able to be church and do ‘church stuff’ without some level of committment to one another. Could we stay focused on growing as disciples and leading others to Christ without a bigger community of people to meet with regularly?

behind locked doors dvd download If I understand alt spiritualities right there seems to be more of a ‘personal benefit’ that comes from whatever spirituality the person taps into, hence it can appeal to our selfishness. Whereas when the call we make is ‘deny yourself, take up your cross and follow Jesus’ . I’m guessing that ideology has less appeal for today’s religious consumer!

Am I making any sense here?

Anyway… All I am doing here is tumbling out some random thoughts that have been percolating over the last few weeks as I have considered how far we need to go with structure and how far we can push the boundaries of ‘unstructuredness’ and still do what we are called to do and grow into who we are called to be.

Any thoughts out of that mess?

Too messy to touch?

In one of my coaching conversations today we were talking about a church that had ‘lost its saltiness’.

As we spoke we both then said ‘so what does this mean’?

(Mat 5:13 NIV) "You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men.

I have been developing what I consider to be my own personal understanding of mission – how I see it biblically and practically and trying to shape it into a ‘model’ of sorts.

One of the exercises this weekend is for the crew to take a maximum of 5 of these words and shape a model / flow chart for mission that is well grounded biblically and practically. Mine has morphed over the last few years to a point where I now feel reasonably confident with it.

If you’d like to have a go… the words are:

obedience, guilt, love, inspiration, action, serving, presence, relationship, proclamation, hell, heaven, Jesus, conversion, death, life, passion, witnessing, church, sin, grace, bridge (just in case you need it 🙂

Last time I shared my model I realised it needing modifying so we’ll see how it shapes up this time.

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I obviously haven’t had too many thoughts to offer lately, but here’s a quote from Miroslav Volf, via James that I am thinking about.

"There is no church without the reign of God and there is no reign of God without the church."

True?

This is a great article as we think about developing church communities that make a difference.

This is a great article as we think about developing church communities that make a difference.

We sometimes ask that of old schoolfriends, but what about this bloke?…

Here is an extract from Robert Drewe’s autobiographical book The Shark Net.

He devotes one whole chapter to the Billy Graham phenomena in 1959. He describes the climactic moment of the service:

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His arms swept up. His hands were cupped, seeming to draw us in to him. ‘Christ stands with the man and woman in the street,’ he said. ‘Repent. Believe in Christ the Lord. Be saved.’ Then suddenly quieter now, he invited everyone to come forward and receive Christ. A tremor flickered through the audience.

It seemed a lot of

Perth

people were aching to be saved. In every row people shifted in their seats and began to stand, to respond, to join him on the stage. Soon they were deciding for Christ all over the place – healthy people, cripples, old and young, the well dressed and the casual. He kept quietly urging and beckoning us to join him. It was hypnotic. It was contagious.

The people getting up from the seats didn’t look like religious maniacs. They looked like your average movie audience on a Saturday night. I recognised neighbours and a contingent of biys from

Wesley

College

whom I’d played sports against. I saw my friend John Sturkey. I saw the chemist’s wife and my old math’s teacher. Two rows along I saw Eric the Dunlop delivery driver, sitting by a sign saying ‘South Perth Methodists’. People stood up all along the rows of chairs and people began sliding down from the roofs of the cattle, horse and pig pavilions. The chemist’s wife stood up. Eric stood up and joined Billy Graham. People were having conversions all around me.

Why is this significant? Because the ‘Eric’ he mentions is the infamous WA serial killer – Eric Cooke who wreaked havoc in the western suburbs of

Perth

in the late 50’s and 60’s, with two innocent people getting charged with his crimes.

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So – let’s assume Eric made a genuine decision to follow Jesus that night (he was probably well aware of his sin). And yet he continued to kill other women.

Where is Eric now? Is the grace of God so huge that a one off commitment ensures one’s eternal destiny, or do we need to ‘prove’ our salvation in some way?

This morning I had breakfast with the Baptist Youth Ministry exec team and we spent time discussing the future of the whole BYM scene.

The morning began like this:

‘G’day Thaddeus (not his real name) How are you?’

‘Busy.’

‘Oh right – is that good?’ I asked…

We began to discuss if being busy is a bad thing. Just as we were getting into the conversation Bartolmew (also not his real name) arrived.

‘Hows it going Bart?’

‘Fla… good thanks – busy but good’.

As we waited for Judas (yep!) to arrive we got into conversation.

The key question was, if we are enjoying what we are doing and if we are people who are energised by activity and productivity is that a bad thing? Busyness does seem to get a bad rap at times in Christian circles. Sometimes with due cause, but I am wondering is it another one of those pendulm swings…

Is it that we once so deified busyness that now we have overcompensated and elevated ‘stillness’ to a place where God did not intend either?

Or is it just that we are all wired differently?

I think it is usually unhealthy to be too busy, but then what’s ‘too busy’ for me may be a walk in the park for you. On the other hand you may look at my schedule and feel weary just thinkng about it.

When we speak of too busy we need to ask ‘too busy for what?’ I gauge my own level of busyness by how I am connecting with Danelle and my kids, how I am going in my disciplines (spiritual and physical) and also how much I am feeling in control of life.

Typically Danelle warns me if I am pushing the ceiling (hasn’t happened for about 4 years now) and I am pretty well aware myself now of what is a healthy pace to run at. I am happy to accept busy periods and to see life as happening in a rhythm. Some months I take it easy, some I go like crazy.

I am a person with a pretty high capacity for work and I enjoy doing a whole heap of things, so to have a fairly mundane job with little challenge would kill me quicker than being overworked.

People speak of ‘burnout’, but I am reminded that burnout is not so much caused by overwork as by a lack of hope. Its when we are working hard for no result and nothing looks like developing that we are likely to find ourselves struggling.

Too busy?

Hmm… what do you say?