The blogger and author Keith Giles recently interviewed Neil Cole and Frank Viola together on the subject “What is organic church?” – read the interview here.
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Matthew Smith – Lord Jesus, Comfort Me (A Communion Hymn)
Mark Sayers – Boundaries and the meat bikini
Mark Sayers posted a really insighful post on his blog a few days ago called ‘Boundaries vs Meat Bikinis’:
Last week Lady Gaga incensed animal rights activists by appearing in an Italian magazine wearing a Bikini made of raw meat. This was the latest effort a long line of media attention grabbing stunts in which various cultural, religious and sexual boundaries were crossed by her Gaganess. However the obsession with pushing boundaries and crossing lines in not restricted just to Lady Gaga, paradoxically it is tradition within modernity…However boundaries are essential to human life. Distinctions and separations are key not only to human life, but to the whole of creation. The piercing truth of this reality was brought home to me recently as I accidentally opened the unlocked door of a plane bathroom to be greeted by the shocked face of a woman – how shall I say? – not expecting to be disturbed. This moment of embarrassment reminded me that boundaries offer us dignity, they make us human.
Read the full article here.
British church attendance turns a corner
From an article on the Christian Today website:
For years now, the words ‘church attendance’ have rarely been read apart from the rather gloomy utterance of ‘in decline’.
But it seems there may be more to smile about than any of us realised as the latest figures out from Christian Research show that attendance in the Catholic Church and Church of England have stabilised, while the Baptist Union has seen sizable growth.
Read the full article here.
Never take someone for granted
Taken from: xkcd
The Times Opinion – An alternative to the porn script
There was a really interesting article by Janice Turner in the Opinion section of The Times last Saturday, 11 September 2010 entitled ‘Girls need an alternative to the porn scipt’:
“It is clear now that several generations of teenagers have grown up adsorbing the script of pornography. It is time to offer an alternative. In the discussion of Wayne Rooney’s exploits the distinction was made between the heartless hoooker and the long-suffering wife. But the choice is not slag or WAG. “Empowerment” is not about having breasts that boys on Facebook think are great, or bagging a rich meal ticket.”
Unfortunately, I can’t give a link to the article on The Times website due to restrictions in accessing the site without paying. However, I do think it is an article that you should read and so I have attached a PDF of it scanned from my paper copy of the newspaper – bought by me on Saturday. I don’t know if I am infringing any copyright restictions – and if I am then I am more than happy to remove the document – but I hope that I am not and that you can read the article in this instance without having to pay to do so.
The intrepid blogger returns…..with a note about Quran burning
The summer is coming to an end, my holidays are over, and so is my blogging break. I’m back, whether you like it or not, after a four week rest – and am glad to say that I have loads of things to write about – plenty to keep me going into the autumn as the nights draw in to shorter days.
One thing I couldn’t avoid during my time away was the fun and games over in Gainesville, Florida where Pastor Terry Jones and his 50-member congregation church threatening to spark global conflict between Islam and the West by his ‘Burn a Quran Day’ event, which, thankfully, didn’t take place as planned last Saturday. Instead, so it seems, Pastor Jones found a more peaceful and conciliatory way to respectfully commemorate the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Centre nine years ago.
But the whole ‘Quran burning’ debacle has raised some serious questions that need to be answered, one of which is why the World leaders who have been so quick to speak out in condemnation of the actions of Pastor Jones don’t condemn with equal force the continuous and unabated persecution of, and injustice shown towards, Christian believers across the Islamic world, frequently as a result of much less provocation than the burning of a copy of the Quran?
Don’t get me wrong on this – I, along with the large majority of Christian believers, do not, and would never, support the malicious burning of the Quran by Pastor Jones or anyone else. How such a blatantly controversial act can be squared up with the Christian message of love, grace, mercy, forgiveness and dignity is beyond me – and only seems to be fuelled by hatred and fear, which, as I understand it at least, are alien characteristics to a true understanding of the Kingdom of God.
Islamaphobia is alive and well, and to a large degree I understand why this is the case – but the fact that it is being preached and practiced by people who claim faith in God’s eternal saving grace in Jesus truly saddens me.
Why? Because in Jesus we have nothing to fear from anything this world can throw at us.
As Dallas Willard explains in his book The Divine Conspiracy:
….this is a God-bathed and God-permeated world. It is a world filled with a glorious reality, where every component is within the range of God’s direct knowledge and control – though he obviously permits some of it, for good reasons, to be for a while otherwise than as he wishes. It is a world that is inconceivably beautiful and good because of God and because God is always in it. It is a world in which God is continually at play and over which he constantly rejoices. Until our thoughts of God have found every visible thing and event glorious with his presence, the word of Jesus has not yet fully seized us.”
We have no reason to react to anything with hatred and fear, because, as Willard continues later in the book:
“With this magnificent God positioned among us, Jesus brings the assurance that our universe is a perfectly safe place for us to be”
A perfectly safe place for us to be.
Think about that for a while.
Whether our situation is good or bad, hard or easy, the world is still a perfectly safe place to be because it is God-bathed and God-permeated. We might not understand the purposes of God, but that doesn’t mean he is not in control!
So, as good Christians, does ‘turning the other cheek’ mean we have to ‘humbly’ stand aside and allow evil and injustice to reign unopposed? No, not at all! The exact opposite in fact. We stand against evil and injustice because our experience of the love and justice of God constrains us to do so, but with grace and mercy rather than hate and fear.
Am I a pacifist – no. Do I believe there is such a thing as a just war – yes.
The responsibilities of government before God are many – but as I understand it from the Bible, my individual response to the love and forgiveness I have received in Jesus is to love the Lord my God with all my heart, with all my soul and with all my strength and with all my mind, and to love my neighbour as myself.
No mention of Quran burning anywhere…..
Summer Blogging Break
I will be taking a break from blogging over the next few weeks as I go on holiday with my family and generally have a Summer rest.
All will be back to normal in mid September – but until then, I wish you all a blessed few weeks.
See you all then.
The Perils of ‘Wannabe Cool’ Christianity
Brett McCracken has written an interesting article, published in the Opinion Journal of the Wall Street Journal:
Recent statistics have shown an increasing exodus of young people from churches, especially after they leave home and live on their own. In a 2007 study, Lifeway Research determined that 70% of young Protestant adults between 18-22 stop attending church regularly.
Statistics like these have created something of a mania in recent years, as baby-boomer evangelical leaders frantically assess what they have done wrong (why didn’t megachurches work to attract youth in the long term?) and scramble to figure out a plan to keep young members engaged in the life of the church.
Increasingly, the “plan” has taken the form of a total image overhaul, where efforts are made to rebrand Christianity as hip, countercultural, relevant. As a result, in the early 2000s, we got something called “the emerging church”—a sort of postmodern stab at an evangelical reform movement. Perhaps because it was too “let’s rethink everything” radical, it fizzled quickly. But the impulse behind it—to rehabilitate Christianity’s image and make it “cool”—remains.
I’m not quite sure he has quite ‘got’ the concept of ’emerging church’ – reports of it’s death are a little premature and exaggerated – but the overall principle of his article is sound and worth reading – and I like his conclusion:
If the evangelical Christian leadership thinks that “cool Christianity” is a sustainable path forward, they are severely mistaken. As a twentysomething, I can say with confidence that when it comes to church, we don’t want cool as much as we want real.
If we are interested in Christianity in any sort of serious way, it is not because it’s easy or trendy or popular. It’s because Jesus himself is appealing, and what he says rings true. It’s because the world we inhabit is utterly phony, ephemeral, narcissistic, image-obsessed and sex-drenched—and we want an alternative. It’s not because we want more of the same.
Read the full article here.
Karen Sloan on new monasticism
I found this video of Karen Sloan talking to Spencer Burke about new monasticism on ‘theooze.tv’ and thought it was really interesting:
Any thoughts?
Have a look at other videos on ‘theooze.tv’ site here.
Deliberate Disciple 