Category Archives: Spirituality

So How’s Your Church Going?

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So there’s an interesting question.

My mate Travis asked it today as we chatting. Its not a question that produces an easy answer because it begs the response – ‘what do you mean by that?’

Do you mean ‘how’s the numbers’, do you mean vibe, do you mean the strength of discipleship and mission? Do you mean the funkiness of the band?… the quality of the programs… etc

When I get asked that I tend to do a scan across the ‘flow of energy’ in the community – whether its on a trajectory towards Christlikeness and the kingdom of God or whether we are becoming increasingly selfish and inward focused. As a leader I feel like I have (and ought to have) a pretty good finger on the pulse in that regard.

There have been times when the ‘flow of energy’ in the church has been depressingly self focused and unChristlike, there have been times when I feel like we are are really getting places, but most days it looks something like the image below.

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These days when people ask me how church is going I find myself drawing an imaginary normal distribution curve in the air…

‘Well its like this – some folks are fired up, renewed in faith, powering ahead and inspiring the rest of us. Some are doing well – growing, moving and changing. Some are in the game but preoccupied, struggling to create space for God to work, while others are either disinterested, struggling or plain difficult and resistant.

I’d suggest that at any one time all of those people are likely to exist in our community, and they probably exist in ‘normal distribution’ form. Very few at the front end, very few at the back and the largest number in the middle.

I’d also suggest that we all move through different zones from time to time in our faith journey too. Sometimes I find myself further along the curve and other times further back (sometimes all in the same week) Perhaps the bottom axis needs to be entitled submission to Jesus with the left side being ‘all in’ and the right side being ‘not for me thanks’. The vertical axis would then be the number of people in each space at any given time.

Perhaps this is why in one shape or form, I find preaching and leading to be largely centred around moving people towards submission to Christ in whatever place they are in and the people who I find most difficult to work with are those Christians who are either disinterested or preoccupied. (Its a whole different ball game when we consider the folks in our communities who aren’t followers as our expectations of them need to change accordingly)

Using this paradigm its quite possible for the church to be led by people who are living at the right end of the axis – un-submitted to Jesus – but are capable managers. Its possible to get the mechanics functional while the heart is empty. In that case ‘church’ can look the goods but lack any real energy.

My hope for our own church is that we will increasingly see people move to the ‘submitted’ end of the spectrum whatever form that takes and whatever that looks like. I think the danger is in being over prescriptive on this one. It looks like more regular attendance, less swearing and better behaved children… really?…

So when you ask how my church is going don’t be surprised if I find it difficult to answer because its actually a very complex question. You could ask me how I’m going and I could probably locate myself somewhere along the X axis but it will vary at times too.

It also makes me consider that one of the significant functions of a church leadership team ought to be that of challenging, encouraging and supporting one another in our move towards living Christlike lives. If our leaders are not well up the front end of the curve when taken as a whole, then I’d suggest a church is in trouble.

It also gives me some sense of focus when it comes to who I seek to work with. I don’t think time spent with the resistant and difficult is ever time well invested. If you don’t want to move then that’s ok. Good luck with that… In the short time I have to invest discipling and spurring others on I want to spend it on people who are willing to rise to that. Maybe that sounds harsh, but maybe its why the title ‘pastor’ doesn’t fit me too well some days.

So how’s my church going?… Just like the curve suggests. Some are leading the charge, some are digging their heels in, most are somewhere in the middle either hoping for more or lost in their own busyness. But I get the impression that this is how its always going to be.

That’s not at all a defeatist position, but possibly a way of surviving the inevitable variance that will always be there in any community. On the day you ask me that question I may have just been hanging out with those at the front end of the curve and I will feel alive and hopeful. If you catch me when I have been stuck around negative, difficult people then I may well be about to toss it in because it feels like a waste of time. Truth is those realities always exist.

I know as pastors we often get plagued by the question ‘why do we bother?…’ when church feels flat, people fight and squabble or just seem disinterested in anything that requires commitment. But in those moments there are always a few at the front end of the curve who say ‘whatever it takes…’ Whatever it takes to follow Jesus and see his kingdom come – count me in.

So long as those people exist there is great hope for the church.

Oh… and how are the numbers?…. In case you hadn’t guessed I really don’t care…

 

The Good Life

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So I wonder how many of you can remember ‘The Good Life’?…

No I don’t mean life before kids… although that was magical…

I’m referring to that wonderful British sit com about Tom and Barbara who give up the rat race and decide to live make their way by turning their back yard into a small farm complete with pigs, chickens and even a methane powered car (that didn’t work so well) much to the consternation of Jerry and Margo, their snobby and pretentious upwardly mobile neighbours.

It was a fun story back in the 70’s but for some it has become their goal – to choose an alternative path – to opt out of the way things work in the world. Barbara Cockburn is one such woman who decided to build a straw bale house (as you do…) and try to live without money for 6 months as they sought to be self sustaining. She wrote ‘Finding The Good Life‘ and has documented her experiences here – an interesting read and she is one of many.

For some this is the good life – running counter to the mainstream – while for others it is to get ahead of the rest – to ‘win’ at this thing we call life. A few weeks back I stumbled on a show called Grand Designs an ABC show that follows the lives of people seeking to build their dream homes or mansions – in pursuit of ‘the good life’. These are massive structures and grand statements about the affluence of the people who build them, but the looks on their faces and the anxiety that is palpable in these shows tells me that these folks definitely haven’t found the good life. Most state ‘we’d never do it again…’

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Then this week I took some time to read Hugh Mackay’s latest offering entitled (wait for it…) ‘The Good Life‘ where he does his social commentary thing on Australia and then goes on to offer his own recipe for shaping and living a ‘good life’. Mackay is another one of our secular prophets and we need to hear what he says. He begins by writing of what he calls the utopia complex and says:

Being twenty-first-century Westerners living with unprecedented material prosperity, mobility, convenience and comfort, who would dare say we’re not entitled to the best of everything And yet, the more you examine our Utopian fantasies and our energetic attempts to turn them into reality, the more you wonder if the very things we’re so desperate to acquire as symbols of this imagined good life may be insulating us from deeper and more enduring satisfactions, fuelling our dreams while limiting our vision, encouraging us to settle for the most trivial and fleeting meanings of ‘good’

 

When we surrender ourselves to the Utopia complex, we can too easily forget who we really are.

No kidding…

Mackay suggests that ‘If you were to espouse happiness as the appropriate goal of your existence, you’d be perfectly entitled to use ‘feeling good’ as the benchmark for assessing whether you were having a good life.’ So if you don’t feel good – if things are not going well for you – then you are not having a ‘good life’.

It all led me to pondering just how Jesus would frame ‘the good life’. What would it look like to really find life and live it as he would hope for us?

I have been reading Ecclesiastes lately – a bit of a mixed bag really – but there the author’s big theme is how achievement, success, wealth etc are all meaningless outside of a bigger purpose. He takes several different tacks throughout his writing, but circles back to one theme that he states more succinctly and clearly at the end:

Now all has been heard;
here is the conclusion of the matter:
Fear God and keep his commandments,
for this is the duty of all mankind.

Fear God.

That’s what he comes back to.

And my guess is that no one really needs me to explain that we aren’t to fear God like we would a serial killer on our doorstep with a gun… (But I just did…)

The writer of Ecclesiastes concludes that the Good life is not found in what you achieve, what you acquire or what you know, but is found in ordering your life in such a way that it is aligned with God and what he hopes for us.

The reality is that whatever we give our life to will shape who we become and I get the sense that Solomon had given his life to the pursuit of pleasure and happiness and it had left him unsatisfied.

And the pursuit of the good life can take us in more than one direction. Some (perhaps many) give their lives to climbing the ladder, to affluence, wealth etc while others may give their lives to the dream of alternative lifestyle, downward mobility and living on less. While one may appear more noble than the other neither is the source of life.

In one of his other books way back in the 20th C Mackay wrote this of the search for prosperity:

 “There’s nothing wrong with a bit of material comfort and prosperity as long as you don’t expect it alone to bring you happiness. If you do you might discover what late 20th century westerners have been discovering in droves – that when materialism is unrestrained when  it is enshrined as a core philosophy it rots the soul – but it might take half a lifetime to detect the smell.”

The smell of rotting soul is why suburbia can be such a difficult place to live – or it can be difficult because we become immune to its stench and we just play along.

Its why Tom and Barbara did their thing. Its why Linda Cockburn jumped ship and sought an alternative.

But I think the bigger challenge – the more realistic challenge is to ask how do I live within the every day constraints of the reality we are faced with – because most of us simply cannot do a ‘good life’, alternative, hippy transition. Nor may we want to…

How do we find life in the middle of a very ordinary 9-5, 2.4 kids + mortgage situation?

I believe that the central teaching of the Bible is that the good life we seek is found when we get that its more about an orientation and an attitude than it is about an activity.

Contentment is never found in the next acquisition – nor is it found in asceticism and downward mobility – because its neither the acquiring nor the releasing of things that makes a life.

Jesus didn’t say they will know you are my disciples by your rolls royce, nor did he say they will know you are my disciples by your poverty. (Although I will certainly acknowledge that the most likely source of idolatry in our society is always the former.)

But the key is where we find our hope and our meaning. Most Australian Christians pursue ‘the good life + God’ but what if God is the good life?

What if the life he calls us to is better than anything we can be tricked into believing is good – whatever that looks like… The struggle for most of us is that the illusion of a good life via the Australian dream is often attainable – often within grasp so it would seem.

So its good to hear Paul’s words to Timothy again:

17 Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. 18 Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share. 19 In this way they will lay up treasure for themselves as a firm foundation for the coming age, so that they may take hold of the life that is truly life.

You don’t have to live poor. You just need to know where your hope is and live in line with him – to find the ‘life that is truly life.’

It was Paul who said ‘to live is Christ’. To live is Christ… to die is gain… But the focal point of his life was Christ.

Not complicated really…

Jesus said ‘I have come that you might have life – life in all of its fullness’ But his call is also one of submission and of putting ourselves under his authority.

The whole trajectory of scripture is neither to affluence or asceticism but it is towards Christ and in him to find life.

To fear God… perhaps…

As Mackay develops his idea of goodness he finishes up writing of wholeness and notes that it is not far from the biblical concept of holiness.

Of being who you were originally created to be – of giving rather than taking – of being generous and kind rather than self obsessed (which incidentally sounds a lot like what Paul wrote to Timothy…)

Helen Keller said ‘happiness is not achieved thru self gratification but thru fidelity to a worthy purpose’. The call to Jesus is a worthy purpose, but hardly an easy one. To follow Jesus is to pick up our cross. To follow Jesus is to say no to temptations to find life in our own achievements and actions. Its to follow him where he leads and to be his disciples right there.

Or as CS Lewis put it

‘Give up yourself, and you will find your real self. Look for yourself and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.”

 

A Way to Be Good Again?

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I’ve been getting into some novels again lately and enjoying it. This time of year is great for lying in the hammock, kicking back and reading and I’ve been able to slow the work rate with the business down so it’s been nice to be able to settle into a few books.

 

Also at QBC we have been working our way thru the gospel of Mark and have cleverly managed to land up this week with the Easter story… Its a bit back to front when it comes to the church year, but that’s where its at for us.
As I was preparing my teaching for this week focused on Mark 15-16 – the death and resurrection I found myself drawn back to some of the novels I’ve been reading and the redemptive themes that seem to pervade them.

Eyrie by Tim Winton is the story of a 49 year old man whose life has just fallen apart. Tom Keeley was environmental activist who went too far one day and lost his job, his wife and his cushy lifestyle and now finds himself holed up in a dingy one bedroom Fremantle high rise. His life is on the skids, he drinks too much and takes too many pills.

He grew up in a family of faith where his dad was a rough working class bloke who found God. Winton describes him as ‘half Billy Graham and half Billy Jack’. He was a protector of others and a man who was known for his muscular faith. He defended those who couldn’t look out for themselves and one of those people was Gemma, a young girl who lived down the street, who men took advantage of, until Nev gave them a hiding (in the name of Jesus)

Now Tom finds himself living next door to this girl from his childhood with her autistic son. She is a bigger mess than ever and he finds himself drawn into her life – to help – but also conflicted by his own selfish needs.

He wants to find his way again in life but he doesn’t know where to start… He wants live a decent life but what does that look like?

Then there’s Barracuda by Christos Tsoilkas, author of The Slap. Danny grows up in a working class Aussie family and discovers he is a good swimmer. He earns a scholarship to an elite boys school where he goes and swims expecting to make the Olympics. He does very well, but in the world of elite swimming he is not elite enough. He fails, his dreams are shattered and he can’t cope with his failure. He ends up assaulting another swimmer and going to jail for a short time and his life comes unstuck in every way.

This novel is about Dan trying to figure out what it ‘means to be a good man’. He works with the disabled – he inherits a large sum of money and tries to give it to his family all as a way of making up for his failings. But he is on a quest to ‘right his life’. Barracuda is actually a very good story and intriguing in the way it follows Danny’s screwed up life and his desire to make things right.

My next read is Khaled Hossein’s new one ‘And the Mountains Echoed’. Hussein is another writer who regularly writes stories of people seeking to live lives of goodness – seeking redemption and wholeness often out of great darkness.

If you’ve read the Kite Runner you would remember that Amir’s quest throughout the book is to make up for his abandonment and betrayal of his friend Hassan. He watches him get beaten up and raped and says nothing – in fact he has his father dismissed from his job as a servant in their home because he can’t live with his shame.

The book opens with the words ‘there is a way to be good again’. And the rest of the story looks at how Amir seeks to atone for his failures. How he tries hard to find his way in life again – to be ‘good again’.

And my hunch is that that theme is so common in literature – because it is so common in humanity. The quest for a life that is noble and honourable and good. The desire to overcome the evil that lurks in us and to somehow ‘right the ship’.

With few exceptions, (because there are some wackos out there) none of us wants to live a bad life. None of us wants to screw up our own lives and the lives of others.

But because we are naturally self centred – because it is part of our DNA to seek our own best interests first – that is the trajectory our life will take unless there is another power at work. And unless a new imagination of life can grasped, we will inevitably find our lives veering in that direction. Like a car with steering problems it takes all of your effort just to keep the thing on the road.

Most people live trying to balance the scales of life in favour of ‘good’ never really knowing if they’ve done enough – or if they’ve done enough if that ‘enough’ was done with the right motives – and will it count?

What does it mean to live well – to live a full life – to live in ‘shalom’ – peace – wholeness and goodness as God intends?

No one ever wants to think of themselves as a bad person… Why is that?… Why does goodness matter even to people who aren’t that good?

And you know in your gut that this is true. Its what we contend with. Our own brokenness and fallibility – our own darkness constantly reminding us that all is not well.

Sooner or later as you go thru this life you come to the dark realisation that you are broken – that you are messed up and your brokenness affects everything about you and everything you do.

Some of us hide that well – we appear to be ‘together’ – while for others of us it just leaks out all over the place and there is a big ‘mess’. And I’m not talking about being criminally messed up – I’m just talking about realising that because of who you are life does not seem to work as it should.

Because of who you are you never feel content. Because of who you are your marriage is always on the edge. Because of the person you are its hard to keep a job – or its hard to have friends. Because of who you are your finances are in a mess. Because of who you are your kids are living dysfunctional, destructive lives.

And you hate that. You despise your part in your own dysfunction

But you don’t know what to do… You don’t have an answer…

And even if your life is not in chaos – you still know that something is not right. The quest to attain to the kind of life we hope for feels always out of reach.

Its where the Jesus story offers such great hope. There is a ‘way to be good again’, but it doesn’t stem from our own efforts and our own ability to right the ship. It comes from his willingness to take the penalty for our sin and to rise again and offer that power to us to follow him and live differently.

There is way to be good again, but it s rooted in grace rather than in earning. It is an act of God that restores us rather than our own performance. Its totally counterintuitive and it isn’t  a theme we see in much literature. Most of it is people pulling themselves up by their bootstraps and ‘making good’.

Les Miserables is possibly the best picture of the nature of grace and the way it can transform in a way that effort never could. Valjean experiences love and grace at the hands of the priest who could have sent him back to jail and it transforms his life for ever. Javert lives by the law and finishes a broken man.

There is a way to be good again, but it finds its life in the gracious salvation God offers through Jesus rather than in our own moral actions.

As I read the end of Mark’s gospel again this week I am reminded again of God’s plan of redemption, from creation to the cross and beyond – to see his kingdom come and the world renewed, all hinging on the death and resurrection of Jesus.

And then our willingness to surrender and follow him, believing he is the one who offers us the shalom we seek.

Messy Kids

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Last week I listened in on the speech given by Alan Chambers, leader of Exodus International as they closed their doors and publicly apologised to those around them for some of their practices over the last 35 years, particularly their method of reparative therapy – ie trying to make a gay person straight. It seems the apology generated a fair amount of cynicism – which seems sad to me as I’d like to always give someone the benefit of the doubt.

That said, it is a statement with significant implications. It seems that ‘people in the know’ are saying that it doesn’t work to try and straighten someone out – in fact more than that, the apology indicates that it is destructive to try and do so. I am inclined to listen to those who have spent 35 years in the trenches.

If I read between the lines correctly, it seems that Chambers continues to hold what would be considered biblically conservative views on the subject of homosexuality. So while he sees wrong done to people in their attempts to ‘re-orient’ them he still would not affirm gay sexual practice.

I find the whole subject quite a conundrum and much easier to discuss in the absence of real people who are in the midst of varying degrees of struggle. Theories are much easier to work with than human beings… But theories are useless if they can’t hold up in real life.

I have long had a conservative view on this issue – formed both by scripture and my evangelical culture. I find it very hard to read scripture as affirming of gay relationships. I don’t find it at all difficult to imagine gay people in relationship with Jesus though.

I do often wonder if this is another issue we have been wrong on not unlike our views on women. At this stage I can’t say my views have shifted although they have been shaken. That said I am listening more carefully and trying to revisit my reasons for where I sit because I think this will be one of the pivotal issues of our time in regards to the church and I could be wrong.

One of my biggest struggles is with our own internal inconsistencies – allowing divorced people in leadership (the Bible is much clearer on divorce than homosexuality) or even porn addicts – but not gay people… We seem to be much more lenient on the sexual sins we struggle with and tougher on the ones that we can attribute to a less powerful minority.

Another struggle is that I think we (as evangelicals) have been largely responsible for the emergence of gay churches or the like because we have been so vehement in our response to gay people. We have denied any possibility of real faith while a person is gay. So now expecting them to find a place in any of churches would be like asking them to enter what is perceived as a lions den. I know there are some exceptions to this.

I was discussing the issue with a friend this week and the difficulty we have in speaking of it. Even to raise the issue is to hold up a ‘hit me’ sign to the group you don’t side with. It seems the options in front of us so often appear to be either ‘condemning’ (albeit ‘nicely’ at times) or ‘affirming’ and neither sit well with me.

Is there a different path that we can take that avoids either affirming or condemning and simply points people to Christ and allows him to do whatever work he wants to in their lives? Because he is the one who is best placed to make any judgements and offer direction.

I’m guessing there may come a time when we can speak more freely on the topic and when the heat will have gone out of it. Now isn’t that time. We are always treading carefully – partly because it is hot and partly because we are actively trying to re-think and re-assess – a process that is not easy when your views are so entrenched and your culture so polarised.

What I liked in Alan chambers speech was his comment that God would ‘rather have messy kids than no kids’. If his gay kids are ‘messy’ albeit in a different way to ‘straight kids’ then he would rather have them close to him than far away. It was a statement that rang true and carried the vibe of Jesus who never seemed at all bothered by the ‘messy kids’. And they liked him too – not something we can easily say of the church and the gay community.

So as I consider my own response at this point in time – and perhaps permanently – it will be to point people to Jesus and help them really encounter him. Because he seems better at helping people find life than I am and he is well used to ‘messy kids’. (And yes – I understand that this is simple discipleship for everyone – but I don’t think it has ever been seen as this simple.)

I have never written a post on this subject before as I haven’t wanted to deal with the barrage of hate mail that inevitably goes with the territory. That said – my views are now out there and you can do what you like with them…

Children of the Western World

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I’m old enough to remember Steve Grace as a legend of Aussie Christian rock music and one of his songs that struck a chord with me back then was ‘Children of the Western World’, a prophetic challenge to western lifestyles.

Currently at QBC we are looking at the New testament letters and considering some of the issues that faced the early church and some of the heresies that had infiltrated those first communities. Gnosticism , arianism and the like were all first century mutations of the original gospel, often tampering with Christology. They were not exactly blatant and obvious heresy, but they were usually believable enough to sit alongside, slowly become entwined with and eventually take the place of the true gospel. (I’d suggest that if you can upend Christology then eventually everything topples.)

Perhaps if you ignore something for long enough, or if you accept something for long enough it just becomes a part of your modus operandi.

It begs the question what are the heresies that infect and cripple us?

My guess is they are less overt and destructive and more sly and insidious. The chances of conservative evangelical western Christians denying the resurrection are fairly slim… but the chances of that same group of people being seduced by the dominant values of the culture are fairly high.

Its hard to acknowledge our heresies because in many ways they are our blind spots – and you simply can’t see your own blind spots (that’s why they are called that…) or they are our deepest desires and passions that we struggle to admit to – much stronger than our desires for the kingdom.

As I was teaching I mentioned again that in my view the ‘holy trinity of suburbia’ is career, house and family and Jesus is often invited to mold his call on our lives around those 3 priorities. These markers are set down before anything else and he can fit around them.

At face value it might seem like an extreme statement, but my hunch is that our ‘heresy’ is found in these areas. (And no – I’m not using ‘heresy’ in a technical sense) When career takes the place of vocation and our life is driven and shaped by our employment then we will struggle to hear the voice of God calling us to consider unconventional options. Surely the next move is upwards and will result in more $$?…

Or when we desire a certain kind of home so much that we are prepared to go into mega-debt for 30 years just to have it, then surely we have to ask what will our life now be shaped by? Of course it will be shaped by the need to repay a huge debt – and we will then be compelled to whatever that takes. I’m not a fan of big mortgages unless there is simply no other way to have a family home, but when monster mortgages are chosen over small mortgages I scratch my head.

Then there’s family… And this one is even more dangerous to critique, but for some the worship of family and all goes with it renders them useless to a God who is not so concerned for safety, security and comfort. I wonder how many times God’s call is ignored or  simply unheard because ‘it wouldn’t be good for my kids…’

Each of them alone are enough to wrench us away from the life God has for us, but when the whole package kicks in, then we see churches like we have in suburbia today. Busy, heavily in-debted people giving lots of time to their families, but churches that struggle to be more than a pitstop on the way to the next week of slog.

Instead of a beautiful picture of the kingdom we often end up with lame religious versions of everyone else’s life. We pay lip service to Jesus but all the time pursue the God’s of our culture wondering why we aren’t content.

Most church leaders seem to be equating regular church attendance to 1 Sunday in 3 these days. It seems an odd number to equate with the word ‘regular’, but busy, overworked people need to find time to be with family…  and Sunday becomes that… which wouldn’t matter a great deal if there were spaces for discipleship and formation outside of Sunday, but I’d suggest that for many these don’t exist either.

We are on a disturbing trajectory and the only way to respond to it is to choose to live differently – to choose a different path and to show people an alternative to the story that is told to them loud and clear.

I’d suggest this is the core of discipleship in western churches now – simply teaching people how to live. Jesus said ‘seek first the kingdom… and then the rest will be taken care of…’ Surely this is the start of life?

As a church leader I find myself wondering that means for how we lead a community, how we challenge people and nurture them towards the life of the kingdom rather than simply falling in line like lemmings and waiting for their turn to jump.

But of this I am convinced – to disciple is simply to ‘teach people how to live’…

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(This blog post comes with all the usual disclaimers about wealth not being evil, home ownership not being bad, and family being a blessing… yada yada yada…)

The Bible Says It – I Believe it – That Settles It

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Really?…

I grew up with this statement ringing in my ears and I am guessing I may have even cited it a few times myself in my younger and more ‘knowledgable’ years.

It sounds convincing, authoritative and difficult to argue with. But it isn’t a statement I see much value in these days at all.

Now its more a case of ‘the Bible says it’, ‘I believe it’, but chances are you may read the same Bible, be a genuine follower of Jesus and arrive at a totally different place to me in your convictions.

And that’s ok…

‘The total statement offers an apparently logical progression in thought, that is actually far from logical. The first part is fine. The Bible does ‘say it’. But the fact that I believe it actually settles nothing. It simply offers you my take on how I see the text. Any student of hermeneutics (biblical interpretation) will know that few things are as cut and dried as this statement makes them sound. In practice, this claim really means, “My view of the Bible is the ultimate authority.” It doesn’t allow any room for debate or disagreement, because you would be arguing with the Bible…

The statement has its roots in a fundamentalist paradigm – one that will call people back to the Bible as an authority (which is all well and good) but that will only read it one way – their way.

The other day Sam asked me if the story of Jonah is historical or allegorical. He has asked me about the flood – a worldwide flood?… Really dad?… He’s only ten but he’s wondering about stuff. Its easy to refer him to the above statement and simply say ‘yes – the Bible says it – it is therefore as you read it.’

Except that plenty of people from the evangelical tribe would choose to interpret differently these days. These are people who hold the scriptures as authoritative and inspired but who ‘read’ these stories thru a different lens.

I can’t give my son short answers to questions that I also hold. I have no doubt that God could have made a fish swallow a man, or flooded the whole earth – but I also know its possible to read these texts differently.

Those who may come from a more fundamentalist perspective generally don’t make their wives wear head-coverings to church… even though Paul clearly states it. Why not?…

Why not ‘believe’ that part of the Bible?…

We all have our points of interpretation and our texts that are not negotiable. But the great danger in speaking ‘biblically’, as Rob Bell has said, is that we can use that word as a weapon to batter others into submission. I reckon he’d be feeling just a little smashed around by it at the moment.

Bell isn’t towing the party line on gay marriage and this follows on from his rather ambiguous discussion of hell in Love Wins. He is a high profile Christian leader in the US – – but I continue to be stunned at the way the guy gets belted for no longer fitting within the fold.

I get that he’s a teacher and an influence on others, and therefore has a higher level of accountability, but he’s not advocating salvation by works, or denying the deity of Christ. He’s switched teams on an issue that matters deeply to evangelicals and for that he will ‘pay’.  Those who are ‘in’ have been very quick and decisive in now locating him as ‘out’. I can’t say I see that as a wise decision let alone a grace-filled one. There has to be a better way to navigate paths of difference than hanging someone out to dry because they no longer wear the uniform.

Earlier I said that its ok to read the Bible differently – and in case you are wondering I don’t offer that as a blanket statement, true of every aspect of belief. I think there are some core convictions that will see us come unstuck if we let them go, but outside of them I’m happy to accept that the family is bigger and broader than I had once thought and that God is more generous with who he welcomes than I might be.

Do You Want to Get Well?

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I read a great book a couple of weeks back – Renovation of the Church – the story of a church that hit the ‘seeker church’ line very hard and then (as they say) took a ‘jackhammer to their foundations’  as they realised they were creating a monster rather than leading people to Jesus.

Having been down that track (a long time ago now) I remember well the challenge of spinning all the plates and keeping everything running yet feeling like we weren’t necessarily seeing people becoming more like Jesus. They were busy – no question – but many were ending up as religious consumers rather than disciples.

One of the central themes of their book is taken from the story of Jesus approaching the lame man at Bethesda and asking him if he wanted to get well.

It isn’t a ‘given’.

He asks because the truth is that the man may not want to get well. His ‘sick’ life may be working for him and he may prefer to stay there. People carry him around… he doesn’t have to work… and to ‘get well’ could be a whole conundrum of expectatons. Likewise when it comes to discipleship. To ‘get well’ – to become like Christ – comes at a cost. We choose to forgo our immediate pleasures and sources of contentment and pursue Christ.

To get well costs but it is where life is found.

CS Lewis puts it like this:

“It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”

We settle for sensual pleasures and temporal desires when God calls us to recalibrate our thinking and living so that we want what he wants and we seek him.

To ‘get well’ means believing that the rule of God is a better way than the pursuit of our own desires. We don’t always believe that…

Which is why so man of us remain sick for a long time

 

Stepping Thru The Wardrobe

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thru_the_wardrobeI decided that this year might be a good time to invest in the process of spiritual direction and see where that leads. I haven’t taken this route before, but I’m ready for some new paths. On Monday I met with Jennifer to talk about what I am hoping for and where I hope things might go.

I have been feeling lately that I have hit a bit of a ceiling when it comes to my relationship with God. Its like knowing there is more to be had, but not quite knowing how to access it – or maybe even how to describe it… knowing there is a world that I am yet to encounter. As I described what I was feeling on Monday I spoke of it as wanting to ‘step thru the wardrobe’. It was just an image that popped into my head as I was articulating what I was hoping for, but its stuck with me.

Do you remember Lucy’s face when she landed on the other side of the wardrobe? I want to say ‘wow’ again as I meet with God and I believe that is possible. I’m just not sure of how I get there on my own.

I feel like I could sit where I am now and ‘manage’ just fine for the rest of my life, but I also feel like I’d be settling for meat and potatoes when there is some beautiful food to be had.

I love an adventure and I feel like this might be the start of a new one so I’ll let you know where it heads.

We are leading our church in this direction too over the coming year so I’m hoping that others will want to step thru the wardrobe too and join me in a new and unfamiliar place… and say maybe get to say ‘wow…’ again…

A Vicarious Spirituality?

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I don’t talk to many people who are content in their spirituality.

I don’t talk to too many who say they are enjoying their relationship with God and feeling good about it.

It seems we are in constant struggle to grow and develop our own spirituality. Perhaps that’s why we are attracted to apparently successful images of church. I say ‘apparent’, because some genuinely are ‘successful’ and others are just apparent.

By being part of a happening church, where the worship is intense and the preaching is powerful I can feel like I am in a healthy place. I can feel like I am a powerful, victorious go ahead type of Christian. I think there are many who do actually develop vicarious spirituality – where their own faith is lived through the vibe of the church or the charisma of the leader, but it doesn’t actually take root in their own heart.

That’s a scary place to be, because all you have to do is ask the ‘what if?’ questions.

What if the church splits?
What if the preacher leaves?
What if you get a new job in another city?

More to the point…

What if you wake up one day and realise your spirituality is a thin veneer covering a vacuous space? What if you were to face reality and say that there is no ‘me and God’ there is only me and the ‘Sunday gathering’ and thru this event I meet God?…

What if you find yourself in a place where church fails to cut it for you?

I am all for inspiration, all for creating a vibe that engages people, but I am concerned that there are people living off the fumes of a ‘rockin church’. I am concerned that people have outsourced their own spiritual development to either a pastor or a ‘church’. And church is in inverted commas because I don’t think this really is church anyway.

Sometimes our structures tap into the dark places in our hearts and work against genuine spiriutal formation.

The solution? I don’t think we should seek to be less inspiring, less engaging. But somehow we need to create a space where people are both challenged and encouraged to ask the hard questions of themselves and then to take personal responsibility for their own discipleship – to form a faith that isn’t dependent on the competence of the worship leader, the charisma of the speaker or the vibe of gathering.

When we centre our efforts on creating an event that wows people we can only expect this kind of response. If we were to centre our efforts on helping people get to know Jesus then we probably won’t need to create such events. They may exist and may serve a purpose, but chances are they won’t undermine what we actually hope to do – to help people stand on their own two feet and know who they are in Christ.

 

 

 

With What Remains

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Around a BBQ at our home a conversation started with a friend the other night about age. She is turning 40 this year. It seems many of my friends are now in this category… I think the word people use is ‘old’.

I mentioned that this year I am 49 and next year 50, which just seems weird. Who’d have thought I could ever turn 50? I remember thinking of 50 year olds as people in a queue for a funeral. Now I am one of them… and I don’t see it like that any more oddly…

My friend asked me ‘so what do you hope to do with what remains of your life?’

I chuckled because it felt like a question you should ask of someone terminally ill. But I also  found myself saying ‘I want to get to know God better’, (which sounds kinda pious and noble) except that as I said that I felt in my gut ‘yep – that’s it. I WANT to do that. I really want that.’

Not in a know about God, understand theology better kinda way, but in a ‘I really think this matters more than anything’ kind of way. As I began to speak of it I said that I don’t want to be one of those people who approaches death with dread, fear and trepidation. I am sure the unknown will hold some of that. But I want to be one those people who is so genuinely connected with God, that I am able to anticipate what lies ahead with joy – that I long for what is to come.

I haven’t felt this way much before. I certainly didn’t feel like it at 30. There was too much world to conquer and not enough time to do it in.

But as I spoke those words the other night I felt I articulated something that has been gestating in my soul for a while now – a genuine longing to know God better – perhaps in a new way? I’m not even sure quite what I mean and in some ways words are a little inadequate to describe what I feel.

But I’ve been conscious that at times I get a sniff of a life that could be and I want to chase it. I get a glimpse of a life filled with greater peace, contentment and joy than I currently know and I believe that has much to do with how I choose to connect with God.

So, part of the journey this year is to make time to connect better – to put some practices in place that create space in my world and give this intention a chance of becoming an action. There is nothing wild and crazy, but some simple things shaped by a sense of intent that I am hopeful with be productive.

I doubt it will happen this year, but perhaps at 60 I will look back on this post and observe that I actually made some choices that formed my future and my own identity differently.

And if I’m still blogging at 70 or 80 (and I don’t see why I wouldnt be)  I’ll let you know what I have discovered…