I have seen this article linked to on a few sites now and thought it was time I read it. Its well worth the effort.

Eugene Petersen debunks some crappy thinking on spirituality and what it means to be a Christian.

But he also presents some thoughts on the church as ‘anti-cultural’ and doesn’t seem to have a lot of time for incarnational approaches to mission.

He’s been around for a while and seems to have formed up some pretty strong views on things which he isn’t afraid to throw out there. Its a good read, if for no other reason to challenge your thinking.

A couple of days ago I sent out our latest ‘backyard missionaries’ newsletter to people who like to stay in touch with what we are up to. (Drop me an email if you’d like a copy)

It was interesting that two of the first responses were from other ‘missionary’ friends around the world.

When I got home yesterday there was an email from a guy I went thru Uni with who is now a missionary in Malawi. He wrote at length about how much he appreciated what we are doing and told us he and his wife wanted to support us by praying for us and by giving us quite a significant sum of money.

I didn’t know what to feel at first… humbled is probably the word that comes to mind. Don’t you need it more than us?…

Last year in September I approached 5 churches in regard to supporting us as we live as missionaries. So far three have said ‘no’ and 2 are still considering. I have a sense that if we were overseas missionaries it would be a bit easier to raise that support.

And then out of the blue I hear from my friend… he ‘gets it’. There was an old slogan that Billabong used to put on their surf shirts – ‘only a surfer knows the feeling’.

I have a sense that in this regard maybe only a missionary knows the feeling

download crow the

. We are very grateful for people like him who listen to God and share their stuff with us as we serve.

Does he need it more than us? Maybe.., but it seems as hears the spirit he is wanting to give to us.

One thing I have learnt in this adventure is that God looks after those who trust him. The old saying ‘God helps those who help themselves’ doesn’t carry a lot of weight biblically. In fact if anything the biblical idea is that God looks after those who help others.

God will look after my friend as he looks after us.

“The real problem of the Christian life comes where people do not usually look for it. It comes the very moment you wake up each morning. All your wishes and hopes for the day rush at you like wild animals. And the first job each morning consists simply in shoving them all back; in listening to that other voice, taking that other point of view, letting that other larger, stronger, quieter life come flowing in."

C.S. Lewis, in Mere Christianity

The animals have been particularly wild lately. Its time to start shoving back harder. little nicky movie download

As we go into the healing festival at Quinns shortly I’d like to have some kind of course available for people who are seeking answers to their spiritual questions.

I’m thinking the following might do the job.

What do you reckon? These will be business card size and might generate some interest. Front and back… and yes it costs $60.00 because people don’t see free stuff as having any value.

download natural born killers dvd

A few days ago I spotted a sign on the local Supa Valu notice board advertising a ‘healing festival’ to be held in the local area over the weekend of Feb 19 & 20. There are over 40 different forms of healing going to be doing their thing over those two days… but I didn’t see anybody practicing ‘prayer healing’.

Now I wouldn’t say I have any kind of ‘gifts’ in healing per se, but I believe God heals and I believe I can pray…

So I figured I’d give the coordinator a call and see if we could have a space in the hall to do our thing alongside the 40 different new age healing specialities. She wasn’t real keen at first… bad experiences with Christians… bad experience growing up pentecostal… bad experience being told she is a devil worshipper (by Christians) because she is a ‘pagan’…

But even when we got past that and had a few laughs she still had no spaces to give me… All gone… join the queue… maybe next year… bugger…

I was rapt to hear that Dennis, my friend from the Uniting church had managed to find a way in and was going to do some ‘prayer healing’ so even if we couldn’t get there he would be able to take the opportunity to mix it in this environment and provide a different spiritual perspective.

Then tonight Dennis rang and told me he can’t use the spot and we can have his spot if we want it…

Two days at a ‘healing festival’ with all the local new agers and heaps of people from the community coming thru. Sounds like a ‘too good to miss’ opportunity.

I reckon these guys will be there, this mob and this crew as well.

So my question to all you incarnational thinkers and missioners is ‘how would you go about being a part of this festival’? Leave me your ‘tips’ for how we could be most effective in this context.

Crap like this happens because we don’t take discipleship as seriously as church attendance.

escape from the planet of the apes dvd download

Its a long article and there are few surprises – which ought to disturb us in itself – but here are a few quotes to whet your appetite:

Scandalous behavior is rapidly destroying American Christianity. By their daily activity, most "Christians" regularly commit treason. With their mouths they claim that Jesus is Lord, but with their actions they demonstrate allegiance to money, sex, and self-fulfillment.

Today’s evangelicalism, Wolfe says, exhibits "so strong a desire to copy the culture of hotel chains and popular music that it loses what religious distinctiveness it once had." Wolfe argues, "The truth is there is increasingly little difference between an essentially secular activity like the popular entertainment industry and the bring-’em-in-at-any-cost efforts of evangelical megachurches."

"American Christianity has largely failed since the middle of the twentieth century," Barna concludes, "because Jesus’ modern-day disciples do not act like Jesus."

Pretty damning stuff, but if we want to see change then we need to start by facing the brutal facts (to quote Jim Collins)

Found via Steve

One of the challenges I have taken up this year is that of the ‘one year Bible’, reading the whole Bible thru in 12 months. It means a fair bit of reading each day and I’m not sure I’ll make it… but so far so good. I particularly like that I can read it online and make notes alongside in a word file as I sense God speaking. Although going from OT to NT to Psalms and then Proverbs is a bit tricky.

I’ve just been reading Genesis the last few days, about Jacob and Esau, the mum who loved Esau more and led him to him rip his brother off, the dad who got tricked, the family feud that followed and that brought years of anguish.

Then there was that jerk Laban who screwed Jacob over with Leah and then another 7 years of work before giving him Rachel. Laban is a nasty character all round only concerned with himself.

Then of course there’s the rape of Dinah followed by the slaughter of the Caananite men after they have all been under the knife and lobbed the ends of their willies. I like the clever way Jacob got them all laid up before finishing them off!

But its not a pretty story – the Bible is full of mess and crap and well… real life. If I were still a preacher I reckon I’d be firing up some thoughts on ‘life in a family’. There is plnety there!

So much crap happens in families that no one ever knows about and because they are family you can’t just dump and run.

Anyway… I’m not a preacher so I’ll just rant on here instead!

I remember coming back from the Philippines at 22 years of age absolutely convinced that we had way too much stuff over here and that we all needed to live lives of poverty and simplicity.

When I saw how people struggled to live on so little while we wallowed in such wealth I was appalled. When I read the Bible after that trip I saw it in a whole new light. I had some genuine revelation.

The problem came in that I began to decide what was an appropriate standard of living for others – I became the Holy Spirit to them and my standards (while I would never have admitted it) became law. I was for selling unnecessary luxuries and living with as little as possible. I wanted to be ‘radical’ in this stance, but I kept on tripping over myself.

If I sell my car and give the money away, is that better stewardship? Is it smarter to catch the bus and waste time rather than money? Should I have a bike? Isn’t a bike a luxury too if some people can’t afford bikes? What is really essential? And should a follower of Jesus be permitted any luxuries at all?… Or is that just selfish indulgence?…

Over the years I have softened in this radical stance towards possessions and I cringe every time I am confronted by someone who is decreeing that wealth is evil or that we ought to sell all of our stuff and give the money away. Truth rarely lives in extreme places – especially places that we choose to create. Its why I find extreme views on war so difficult to come to grips with. Can we really conceive of Jesus as either a complete pacifist or a militant agressor? Either view is a simplistic response to a complex question and leaves me cold.

money train free

At various times in the last few years I found myself wondering if we ought to sell up, give our money away and rent a house instead – which would mean paying nearly twice as much for accomodation as we currently do… Seems kinda false logic, but some of my more radical friends would argue that my home ownership ties me to ‘materialism’. Maybe it does, but does not owning a home make a person less covetous?

All the evidence I have come across would seem to say ‘no…’ Should I be racked with guilt if I buy something others will never be able to afford – if I drink bottled wine rather than cask wine?

Ideals are wonderful things, wihtout them we lose hope, but when they are translated into false laws that others must abide by then they become nasty tyrants.

I have many friends who have chosen paths of self sacrifice and voluntary poverty. Some of them do this with grace and an appreciation that their way is not ‘God’s way’, while others do it with an aggression, self righteousness and judgementalism that infuriates me. If the bane of evangelicalism is mediocrity and banality then the achilles heel of the social justice crew must be the self righteous attitudes that condemn others with more possessions or different political views.

I have been blessed to know some people who work for justice who exude that gracious spirit, who make me want to be like them because they have Jesus likeness about them, but I have also been assaulted by those who would call me a ‘wealthy middle class prick’ because I own (part of) a house, two cars and a boat even though the total value of cars and boat would be less that $10K! 🙂

Anyway just don’t give me simplistic answers to complex questions. I might turn a bit nasty…

I’m not a big fan of Christmas – this pic pretty much says it all. Found courtesy of Jonny.

download 007 man with the golden gun the movie

Anyway… enjoy the day…

I might be back some time in the next two weeks, or I might go blow up another one of our cars…

I like what Dallas Willard has to say about discipleship. He calls it like it is but does so in a way that makes you want to ‘give all’ rather than seeing discipleship as a list of ‘musts’.

The overshadowing event of the last two centuries of Christian life has been the struggle between Orthodoxy and Modernism. In this struggle the primary issue has, as a matter of fact, not been discipleship to Christ and a transformation of soul that expresses itself in pervasive, routine obedience to his "all that I have commanded you." Instead, both sides of the controversy have focussed almost entirely upon what is to be explicitly asserted or rejected as essential Christian doctrine. In the process of battles over views of Christ the Savior, Christ the Teacher was lost on all sides.

Discipleship as an essential issue disappeared from the Churches, and, with it, there also disappeared realistic plans and programs for the transformation of the inmost self into Christlikeness. One could now be a Christian forever without actually changing in heart and life. Right profession, positive or negative, was all that was required. This has now produced generations of professing Christians which, as a whole, do not differ in character, but only in ritual, from their non-professing neighbors; and, in addition, a massive population has now arisen in America which believes in God, even self-identifies as "spiritual," but will have nothing to do with Churches–often as a matter of pride.

What is new in the current revival of interest in spiritual formation is the widespread recognition that by-passing authentic, pervasive, and thorough transformation of the inner life of the human being is not desirable, not necessary, and may be not permissible. We are seeing that the human soul hungers for transformation, for wholeness and holiness, is sick and dying without it, and that it will seek it where it may–even if it destroys itself in the process. We are seeing that the Church betrays itself and its world if it fails to make clear and accessible the path of thoroughgoing inner transformation through Christ.

Via Darryl