Lately every time I read the book of John, (and I’ve been doing it a lot), I see Jesus seriously headbutting the Pharisees and the religious system of his time.

I thought maybe it was just me and my own disdain for pharisaism that was shaping what I see, but I’m not sure that’s it any more. Over the first 10 chapters of the book Jesus just seems to be in constant conflict with them and at times he is vitriolic in his critique. In fact Jesus is hardly ever gentle and understanding in these conversations / confrontations.

Its been a while since I have read John in great depth, but I have been deeply impacted by how strong Jesus’ opposition to them is and how hard he goes at them. I’ve found myself wanting to focus on something else in my teaching, but its hard to avoid the dominance of this group if you approach the book systematically.

Over the last week I came to the conclusion that maybe we just need to face the significance of Jesus’ concern and recognise that all of our communities are inherently prone to head in this direction if we lose touch with the gospel of grace and with our own identity. Perhaps Jesus hits this so hard is because it is so deeply a part of a fallen human psyche to make rules and then beat people into submission with them, or to want to control others in the name of God.

You certainly couldn’t say we no longer do that as churches…

In all of that I am aware of my own inner Pharisee who sometimes creeps up and bites me on the butt. Hypocrisy and self righteousness can be hard to shake unless we live in communities where authenticity is permitted and where failure is not seen as the end of the world. If we aren’t allowed to be real then the only option we have is that of pretense followed by grappling with the inner demons of deception that remind us of who we really are.

I have been reminded again that for us to be any use at all as a community we must start by acknowledging that we are broken, messed up people and while we are created in God’s image we so easily veer away from there.

I am starting to wonder if one of the biggest assets a Christian community can have is authenticity and then one of the most serious cancers would be pretense. No great surprise there, but perhaps the question that arises is why (if we know this) we still don’t do it more fluently.

When your ‘time budget’ for a sermon is a maximum of 8 hours you need to find a plan to make sure you use that time well.

I am a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to communication and several years used to spend probably twice that time in preparation. I guess when you’ve got the time you can do that. These days I neither have the time available nor would I like to use it that way if I did.

So I have made a commitment to spend no longer than eight hours in sermon prep. If after 8 hours its rough and dodgy well then so be it. I think sometimes the difference between 8 hrs work and 16 hrs work is incremental and the 80/20 rule probably applies. While I find that a little hard to come to grips with at times, it is where I am at and I am learning to be content.

What I have found to be invaluable is what I will call the simple process of ‘gestation’. I spend 3 or 4 hours on Monday doing reading, study and writing, just gathering ideas and forming thoughts about what I will be teaching. Then I don’t touch it again until Friday and almost invariably in the time in between a sermon has formed. The ideas have taken shape, the emphasis of the passage of scripture has become clear and the sense of ‘God’s voice’ has had time to penetrate. On many occasions I sit at the computer on Friday morning and am finished with it by lunchtime.

And today was one of those days. As well as meeting with a mate and doing some retic for a friend I managed to write a sermon. It took 2 1/2 hrs but its done.

Ok its going to need a couple of fine touches but I’ve managed to get the guts of it on paper. I even like how it is looking. If only I’d known about ‘gestation’ 7 years ago…

To be fair I think what is actually happening is that there is a part of my brain ‘on the job’ 24/7, like a computer program running in the background. While I work digging trenches and laying turf something is ticking away in the back of mind forming and developing. At times it can be hard to trust that it is actually happening, but so far that’s how its been.

Now if only I could get it down to 2 hrs prep I could fit in another 6 hours of surfing…

Lately I’ve been doing some reflecting on the gospel of John – just looking afresh at Jesus and trying to remove some of the cultural conditioning we place around him to be a certain kind of person.

If you look at Jesus in John then he really is quite a disturbing person. He just doesn’t fit in like he is supposed to, hangs out with all the wrong people, doesn’t pander to the ones who hold the power and is a very bad example of a Christian…

I really don’t think Jesus would get a gig as a local church pastor – or if he did he wouldn’t last long.

He picks fights with powerful people, hangs out with losers (I’m told ‘you can’t build a church out of losers’) and doesn’t seem to be able to be diplomatic with his words. He confounds his own disciples and regularly behaves in a way most unbefitting for a Rabbi.

Gotta say… I like him.

He’d make a bloody good Aussie!

Recently I have been pondering how I should approach these various ceremonies and considering whether I should be available to ‘one and all’ in the community or simply to people with whom we already have a significant relationship.

Up to now I have generally maintained a pretty open and flexible approach being willing to try and accommodate what people are seeking with what I hope to convey and I have generally tried to provide for anyone who has been interested. Its meant I have done a few baby blessings and an occasional wedding.

It was only as I was conducting a wedding a few weeks back that I had a sense of dis-ease about my approach to these events. I was doing it for a retic customer, someone I hardly knew, but who was a decent bloke. As I was fixing his retic he discovered I was a celebrant and offered me the ‘job’. I said ‘yes’ not really giving it much thought. We had met once before the wedding and I was simply the person with the legal right to pronounce them man and wife.

It felt a bit cold and hollow from my perspective and it has made me think twice about conducting these types of events with people I don’t know. Turning up to ‘officiate’ is very different from marrying people you are connected with.

Last night I had a call about ‘doing a christening’ and that sense of dis-ease flared up again. As I spoke with the person I found myself not sitting well with the idea, partly because of lack of relationship and partly because I felt myself slipping into that role of being the religious celebrant.

As we talked I explained that in Baptist churches we don’t christen but we do ‘dedications’, where we thank God for the child and the parents dedicate themselves to raising the child in the ways of Christ and to being part of a community that will support on them on that journey. This seemed to be ok with the person but I am not sure they grasped the implications.

As I spoke with the person last night on the phone I sensed someone who wanted an official religious person to perform a ceremony for them, because they had it done to them as a kid and it ‘would be nice’ for her daughter. It would also add weight to their private school application.

I see that we can look at this from two perspectives – the first is that it is an opportunity to help someone along on their spiritual journey and possibly to find faith. I have always held this perspective high. However the other way of looking at it is that someone simply wants to use the religious institution to perform a ceremony which has little real significance other than to be a family tradition and a rite of passage. I have no interest in being an offical holy man for people who have no real desire for faith.

I attended a sham of a christening when we first came here and watched two people make vows they knew they would never keep, we knew they would never keep and the minister knew they would never keep. It was a very disturbing service to be part of.

So last night on the phone I found myself asking a fair few penetrating questions to try and assess where this person was at and the responses really weren’t satisfying. I decided to be very blunt about the importance of raising a child for a Christlike life and the necessity of being engaged in a faith community for that to occur.

At first I was getting fairly simple ‘no worries’ type responses as if we were simply going thru some formalities, but as we went along and I expressed that I would want to meet with the parents to discuss their faith journey and the process from here in terms of helping the child on the faith journey I noticed the interest tempering.

So today I find myself ambivalent about this situation.

I have left the woman to consider whether she wants to take the next step of me meeting with her and her husband to discuss what is involved and what my expectations would be or if she wants to talk to another church.

My sense is that if nothing else my questions will have given her plenty to ponder and if we do end up meeting it will be interesting to see if they want to be part of a Christian community and to be helped in the process of raising a godly child.

I’d be interested to hear how others process this stuff.

Here’s a challenging quote from Bonhoeffer for you this morning.

“God hates visionary dreaming; it makes the dreamer proud and pretentious. The man who fashions a visionary ideal of community demands that it be realized by God, by others, and by himself. He enters the community of Christians with his demands, sets up his own law, and judges the brethren and God Himself accordingly. He stands adamant, a living reproach to all others in the circle of brethren. He acts as if he is the creator of the Christian community, as if his dream binds men together. When things do not go his way, he calls the effort a failure. When his ideal picture is destroyed, he sees the community going to smash. So he becomes, first an accuser of his brethren, then an accuser of God, and finally the despairing accuser of himself.” (Life Together)

While I think its a slight overstatement, I also believe he’s right onto something important. When we dream up our big plans for the community we run the risk of actually destroying what we would hope to achieve.

I do think God gives us visions, but I also think that sometimes we feel pressure to deliver a vision – any vision so that we can justify our existence – and in that there is great danger.

If it fails we blame others, blame God and sooner or later ourselves.

Surely there is a better way?…

Today I am a pastor of a pretty regular church again – Quinns Community Baptist Church – and I imagine I will need to do some adjusting.

The last time I did this was at Lesmurdie where I was the pastoral team leader for a couple of years before heading off to Brighton. It wasn’t a long enough stint to really settle into the role and the last 6 years have been very different from what is required here.

As I have alluded to before ‘Pastor’ is a pretty bad description for my role, but there you have it. I describe myself as a ‘church leader’ rather than pastor, but perhaps that’s just me being pedantic.

Two of the challenges I face immediately are those of trying to balance a normal working life with church leadership responsibilities as well as trying to become a little better at having a regular day off. I am not seeing myself going back into full time church work as I reckon it is of real value to be working in the community and to be experiencing the stuff everyone else does.

Last night we had our monthly leaders meeting and I had just spent 8 hours digging and fixing people retic. I was pretty wiped by 7pm and happy to see a short agenda. These days I am reminded that most people come to meetings after a hard days work and don’t have the option full time pastors do of having a ‘quiet afternoon’ in lieue of an evening meeting. It has increased my sympathy for the non-paid leaders!

Taking a day off will also be a challenge. Because we have lived at such a steady pace over the last 6 years I haven’t been too concerned to be highly regulated with a sabbath. I have had plenty of rest spaces and life has never got too busy. I don’t expect it will ever get ‘too’ busy again, but I would like to be a little more dedicated to a sabbath.

Currently Saturday looks like the best day to fit with the rhythm of our family and community. It just means I have to get my act together early in the week if I have a teaching role on Sundays as its easy to leave stuff to the last minute and then wipe out what was going to be a day off.

A week day off would be nice, but its prime earning time for my business and Saturday is part of our rhythm as a family now and is probably where we should stay.

I just need to get organised earlier to make sure it actually works…

Does it ever strike you as odd that while many churches appoint ‘pastors’ and may even call them ‘Pastor X’, they don’t do the same with apostles?…

In my own tribe we don’t have much problem with the role of pastor, teacher or even evangelist, but when it comes to prophets and apostles we seem a little less interested, maybe even averse. I can tell you many churches that have appointed ‘pastors’, but none that I know of that have intentionally appointed an apostle or a prophet.

Why would that be?..

Doesn’t it seem odd that of the 5 broad areas of gifting described in Ephesians the role of apostle and prophet are most often left out of the 21st c church?

I was discussing this with a mate recently who has gone to the dark side and joined the AOG (humour… in case you are getting offended…) where there is a very strong emphasis on the importance of the apostle in church leadership, even to the point of people calling themselves ‘apostle X’. Leaders are intentionally appointed as apostles and their role is developed to reflect that kind of gifting.

I imagine we will have a tough time really developing apostolic leaders while we continue to refer to those in church leadership as ‘pastors’. If you’re actually gifted and wired as a pastor, then the role description of ‘pastor’ fits perfectly, but if people were to call me ‘pastor’ they would inevitably end up disappointed.

I know there are plenty of ‘apostles’ in pastor’s clothing in the churches I mix amongst, but I wonder what that does to their sense of identity and to the expectations of the people they lead?

Could it be that in a consumer driven world we like to hire pastor/teachers because they care for us and look after us and teach us , while the apostle’s primary focus is on new work and beyond the congregation which doesn’t represent good value for money to the average paying customer?

I would actually find it very wanky to be called ‘Apostle Andrew’ and I am not at all arguing for the use of titles (I neither want to be called ‘rev’, ‘pastor’ etc for similar reasons) but I am concerned that in a missionary context we recognise the unique gift of the apostle and prophet to the church every bit as much as the other three.

At what point should a government be able to over-ride parental rights and concern for children?

This was an underlying question to emerge from a story we watched on TV recently and that has been making news in Perth.

Last Sunday night we watched the ‘Sunday Night’ show as it told of a father and mother who have taken their 10 year old daughter out of Australia and back to her mothers home country to receive natural treatment for her liver cancer.

The story in brief is that during consultation with Princess Margaret Hospital in Perth the parents had been told that the best option for their daughter was chemotherapy, which gave her a 30% chance of life. (On the TV interview they increased this to a 50-60% chance…) However as parents they decided this was not a great option and wished to treat their daughter with natural remedies from El Salvador.

In response the hospital actually took legal action to force the family to have the daughter treated with chemo. If I remember the story correctly, it was on the night before the court verdict was due to be handed down that the mother and daughter fled the country and headed overseas to try and implement their own treatment methods.

A ‘complicating’ factor is that the family are Christians and see that God plays a part in whatever outcome occurs. Some would see this as another example of faith gone mad and put them in the wacko category. Phrases like ‘God gives and God takes away’ are true, but need to be used cautiously and with some caveats on television, especially when the intention of the story is to make you look foolish.

What made this story more interesting personally was that I watched it with the brother of the man involved – uncle to the little girl – and was privy to some inside information that was not shown on TV. The Sunday Night show chose a very definite ‘angle’ – that of parental neglect/stupidity and went after this man hard. (I am not mentioning the names of those concerned here to try and dodge the google searches). .

Perhaps the most serious issue arising from the story is that of ‘who decides what is best for my child?’

In this case the ‘state’ was almost certainly going to subject a young girl to a treatment of chemotherapy despite it having a very poor chance of success and despite it being against the express wishes of the parents and the girl herself. While it may be the best we have on offer, a 30% chance of success would probably see me asking ‘what else is out there?’ and should I pursue it.

But I may not have permission to do that.

The story showed the parents shunting their daughter off to a dangerous ‘third world country’ and using mud and herbal tea as remedies. It did everything it could to portray them as gullible, faith blinded people who were both naive and fatalistic. It was convincing and I’d have to say that agreeing to go on TV certainly did them no favours.

Regardless of the methods used and the failure or success of them, the question that stuck with me was ‘where does my parental authority cease to exist?’

I know we have child protection workers in our country who look out for children who are in genuine danger and being abused, but what about when the waters become murky and it is not abuse that drives parents to non conformist practices, but love?

I can’t say I was inspired by watching them administer the natural remedies, but then I have lived my whole life in a scientifically focused western world that has little time for alternative medicines. It’s a perspective that is strong and hard to sway away from, but what if this is actually the answer, or what if God chooses to heal?

As we finished watching the segment you literally had to scrape back the legal debates and questions over medical expediency and see a 10 year old girl who is sick and who needs help.

We prayed for her.

It might be simplistic too, but I happen to believe it is probably her best shot.

Did you see the show? If so what are your thoughts?

No.

I realize that’s a short abrupt answer, but I don’t think we would struggle to hear it as much if it were framed the other way.

Try it.

Can a pastor survive as a pioneer?

No. Of course not. That’d be a silly thing to expect of a pastor!

Ok, maybe ‘survive’ is a little strong… but only a little. Certainly neither will thrive in roles that direct their best energies into tasks for which they are neither gifted nor inspired and eventually both will reach a point of either frustration or incompetence that may well see them walk away in disillusionment and /or despair.

Let’s not try and make pioneers into pastors and pastors into pioneers. The kingdom needs both to do their job and do it well, but we also need to accept that they are very different animals.

While I’m making bald statements I’ll make another, a personal one. I am a pioneer, but I am not a pastor. My friends will attest to this. I can dream up new ideas, I can inspire people to give them a go, I can even work with people to make stuff happen, but I am not very good at the ongoing nurturing and caring work that is integral to classical pastoring.

I used to be ashamed of this and felt my deficiencies regularly (and deeply) as people in the church community would tell me I was ‘unrelational’ or ‘task oriented’ always with a deprecatory tone about it. I guess telling them to ‘piss off because I am busy’ didn’t help (only joking…) but it was true. I am naturally task oriented and while I do enjoy people, I don’t get energy and joy from some of those specific pastoral activities that are required to make any community healthy. I am definitely not a ‘cups of tea’ person…

If your church is unhealthy and in a mess then I am not the bloke you want to come and help you heal thru the pain. I recognize that there are gifted godly people with these skills and passions and I am grateful for them, but I am not wired that way. However if your church is keen to explore new initiatives and wants to enter some fresh territory then I reckon I have some skills to offer you and the energy to make it work.

An obvious issue is that we call paid church leaders ‘pastors’ and naturally we then expect them to function in that way – as a caring shepherd. When a person is task oriented, fast moving and outward focused they don’t seem to fit the typical pastoral profile, but speaking as one of those people, I need to say that in my 20 years of leadership there has always been a great sense of care, love and responsibility for the people in my community. I hear Paul say that every day he feels deep concern for the churches under his care and I resonate with that, but it is less care for the specific needs of individuals and more care for the overall health and well being of the community. A pioneer/apostle will guard and protect a community theologically and they will seek ways to help the body maintain health – all big picture stuff, but they may be less involved in the minutae of people’s every day lives.

One problem, that has been discussed around the web in various places (see my previous post) over the last week is that our tendency is to expect pioneers to morph into pastors once a project is established or once a church is planted. But this is a sure way to kill both pioneer and church!

I think most pioneers can make the shift incrementally to a point, but it is not a sustainable arrangement. These days if I were leading a community I would be seeking to identify the ‘pastors’ in the community and helping them to get on with that job amongst the rest of us. Equally I’d be seeking out the other pioneers /entrepenuers to so that we should share ideas and energy.

I was just chatting this around with Mrs Backyardmissionary (who is very pastoral and nurturing) and she suggested that part of the reason we seek to convert pioneers into pastors is that we aren’t sure the project/church they have initiated will survive in their absence. A church can become unhealthily dependent on the founding leader, but ultimately that co-dependence is a failure of the leader to empower and hand over and the community to take up the responsibility.

This ‘start up’ focus of pioneers can also present problems if we see mission as long term and relational, because many pioneers do get bored easily and feel the need to move on to new ventures. I know I feel this regularly and need to ‘tame’ the wandering spirit. (I’m sure this is partly why I got married!) My own solution to this has been to make sure I am free to create and develop new ideas within the longer term setting. If I am able to have an outlet for creative ideas where I am then I am less likely to seek a whole new experience. However if I am asked to simply ‘grease the wheels’ then I will get bored in days and start vomiting soon after.

When Ephesians 4 speaks of prophets, apostles, evangelists, pastors and teachers it is a picture of the diversity of gifts required for a body to be healthy. Simply pioneers and pastors are not enough either – we need the whole lot.

Sadly the giftings of one skill set can highlight the inadequacies of the other and unless we are secure enough in ourselves then we can find ourselves trying to be omnicompetent and doing everything. A bad place to be…

So can we let pioneers be pioneers and pastors be pastors?

I think we’ll find it hard but why don’t we give it a shot?

If you would like to read a different perspective then head over to Steve’s blog where he explores .

Other posts:

who started the conversation

Yesterday as we were travelling from The Great Lakes thru to Muswellbrook I was discussing with Danelle Steve’s post about where children fit in regards to membership in Baptist churches.

Steve writes:

Sunday morning service included the welcoming of 6 new members at church. This included a family of 5 from the Philippines and made for an exciting service.

On the way home my children floored me. “Dad, are we church members? We listened to what you said (by way of introduction). You talked about membership as belonging, and membership as participation. So we can be members. Right?”

As baptists, we have a number of rites of “theological” passage: membership, baptism and communion. Historically, they are not generally reserved for children. But looking at my kids, I’m suddenly not actually saw why not. If my kids participate and feel they belong, why can’t they be members?

The post prompted some interesting conversation and I thought I’d flesh it out a little here. Having been a long term ‘baptist’ (small ‘b’ intentional) I am interested in this subject and more broadly how we organise ourselves as the church.

My bottom line statement on this issue would be that if we don’t engage children in our churches in every way that is reasonably possible then we lose the contribution of one part of the body and we suffer because of that.

Of course that statement does have the ‘reasonably possible’ caveat attached and that is where we start to enter grey areas.

Steve mentioned participation and belonging as key elements of membership and I would agree strongly here, but would also add ‘responsibility’. My favourite biblical metaphor for the church is that of extended family where every person is valued and has a role to play. In the family (in its best sense) there is a sense of feeling connected, a willingness to get involved and a recognition that we have certain responsibilities and even obligations.

I am in favour of children:

– taking communion when they declare that they know and love God

– being baptised when they are ready and can articulate (however simply) their faith journey.

– becoming members of the church in some way

The last one is more nuanced than the first two, partly because there are legal obligations involved with membership. We also need to pay attention to the child’s stages of faith, social and cognitive development. The question Steve asks is an important one. How do we engage kids in the life and decision making of the church in a way that both values them and protects them?

If we don’t have their input we are poorer for it – but kids also see the world thru a very small lens so we need to guide them.

As we have travelled we have made most of our decisions as a family, however there have been times when as parents we have simply had to make decisions for our children as they would not have the necessary cognitive development to do so competently. Ellie wanted to fly across to the US… so we could go to Disneyland… She didn’t get all of our adult reasoning, but she knows we think that is a really bad reason to spend $12K!

Kids will ‘get’ some of what we discuss as churches, but much of what happens in church meetings will be over their heads or completely irrelevant to who they are.

So, do we adjust the way we do meetings and decision making to include them?…

One of the challenges of our Baptist system has been described well here by Neo-Baptist. The implicitly adversarial approach of our meeting procedure is highlighted and the question is asked ‘how do we do things better?’

I think Neo-baptist’s point is that we need to allow people room to think, discuss and discern without the ‘vote’ hanging over them. To arrive at a meeting to vote is quite naturally to ask people to take a side before entering and then to allow debate to ensue. This can bring out the worst in church meetings as people fight for their position (and some don’t fight clean).

This is an environment where kids would not be safe and no one where they would want to be. In fact lets face it – very few adults would feel safe or want to be there!

As I write this I am wondering if the best way for issues to be considered is by family groups within the church. We as a family can discuss and consider an issue and then come to a meeting to offer what we believe is the best way forward and to listen to the conclusions that other families have reached as they have had similar discussions.

I don’t see that we can ever avoid ‘meetings’ per se, but we can frame them differently so that they become more in line with what the original Baptists intended – a collective discerning of the will of God rather than a system of political maneuvering and ultimately voting.

Even as I write this I am aware that some of it is quite idealistic and that the real world is more messy. We have had some difficult situations recently where the only solution has been to use the political process to win the day. While I hold my ideals, I am also pragmatic enough to know that sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do… cause if you don’t the consequences will be worse. But my thinking is that if we start with our best ideals in mind then we may at least do a reasonable job. If we start from the point of believing that all hope is lost then that will affect the process too.

So I would like to see us completely revisit how we listen to God as a church and how we make decisions. There will come times when it is necessary to have ‘a vote’ and that is ok, but there is much that will already be decided long before a meeting and a vote will simply be a legal requirement of a constituted body.

So… getting back to the question… can kids be members?

I would say absolutely, but as churches we need to ‘parent’ our little ones as we would our own children and involve them where possible and protect them where necessary. They don’t need to know all that goes on (good or bad) but they do need to be nurtured and valued in the community. They need to know that they can contribute and that they will be listened to. They need to know that sometimes their parents will not agree with them and they will choose not to run with their ideas. They need to know that sometimes their parents will get it right and sometimes they will mess it up.

In fact just giving thought to the place of kids in our midst actually challenges us to reframe some of how we do things and that is a good thing I reckon.

Of course we haven’t touched on the issues of ‘listening to leadership’ and running with their recommendations, or on how church size affects this process, because it does… I know from my varied experience of church community that there are many ways to make decisions and no-one has the mortgage on the best way.

Does this actually do anything to change our missional impetus in the world?… Well… It might… as we re-imagine ourselves not as a collection of power brokers but as an alternative community who listen to the voices of all – not just the influential – and who allow them a voice.