Monthly Archive for September, 2006Page 3 of 4

Thou shalt not vs Thou shalt

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Graeme
on September 18, 2006
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If you look around The Salvation Army’s blogging community there is a great deal of talk about Holiness and Righteousness. This is of course to be expected given the Army’s roots in the Holiness movement and the often lamented lack of good holiness teaching in today’s Army. For me though there is a real problem in a lot of the views that are being expressed.

The first view seems to be that the central problem with Holiness in The Salvation Army is due to our failure to put aside sin. Regardless of what else this particular camp says it always comes back to our problem being Sin. Now don’t get me wrong, I am all for us as Christians not sinning, but I think the emphasis is in the wrong place. If we focus on our sin as being the problem and teach accordingly, what comes out can be seen as incredibly judgemental and can elicit the “let he who is without sin cast the first stone” type of response from those who hear the message.

The second view, and contrasting view, appears to be focused far more on what we should be doing. Holiness wrapped up in community, righteousness being displayed through justice issues and similar thoughts. Again, this is something I believe strongly in and know that the Bible teaches. The danger is though that we end up concentrating on doing stuff and in many ways this has been part of the cause of the falling standard of Holiness teaching. The Salvation Army has been so busy trying to live out the practical side of the Gospel that in some places the spiritual core has disappeared.

The problem is that both these sides of the coin are missing the real point. Holiness is not about not sinning and its not about being in community. Holiness is more about constantly living in the love of God. That means for me Holiness is better worked out from Jesus’ instructions found in the greatest commandment “The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.” Mark 12:29-30Open Link in New Window

If we spend our lives with this goal as our focus then everything else slots into place. It’s about keeping our eyes focussed on the Lord and coming before His throne each and every day.

Missing the point

Published
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Graeme
on September 16, 2006
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Over the last few days news has been coming out of Australia about possible revenge attacks on Stingrays because of the death of Steve Irwin. If they prove to be true it amazes me that people who are angry enough over the death of someone they supposedly revere, can have missed the point of his life’s work so much. This man who has spent so much time trying to educate people and strived to open peoples eyes to the beauty and wonder of nature, would have been horrified by this pointless mutilation of a beautiful creature. Can his TV programmes really have failed to get the message across so spectacularly?

On a very simple level this goes issue of completely missing the point transfers across to the church as well. There are countless people who have been going to church for years and have completely missed the point of what Jesus came here to do.

They’ve missed the point that He came to set us free and through His death and resurrection we have eternal life if only we choose to believe. They have missed the point that we have available to us a fulness of life that is only possible because of the sacrifice He made for us? Can His church really have failed to get the message across so spectacularly?

Welcome to my own domain

Published
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Graeme
on September 14, 2006
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I’d like to welcome you to my new blog which is being hosted on my own domain now. The main reason for this is the flexibility this will give me to add new things in the future.

My thanks go out to Patrik for his support and his willingness to host my blog for the last few months.

So update your links and RSS feeds and if you want follow me on the journey God has planned for me.

God Bless

Graeme

Out of the box

Published
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Graeme
on September 12, 2006
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This post has been hanging around for two or three weeks now and today I sat down to finish it, only to completely rewrite it as a new thought came to mind.

Last week I was teaching at our training college and trying to put across how important it is for the cadets to know the community that they will eventually be placed in, and giving them a couple of tools they can use to get to know it better. Over the course of the next few months they are supposed to use these tools so that they can start thinking about Mission opportunities for the corps they are placed during training.

One of the reasons that this is so important here in Latvia is that it is very easy for the corps to fall into the trap of doing the things that come with the territory of being a country making the transition from Communist to Capitalist state. These things are normally the immediate need meeting things like soup kitchens, showers, clothes distribution etc, which are of course very important with a population of around 28%-33% under the poverty line. However, these do not really do justice to the deeper transformational quality of the Church’s mission.

For many years the Church has had an “Out of the Box” mission mentality. We look at what happens at the church down the road, or what we other churches have been doing for the last 1500 years and simply copy it. This has often led to ministry that has no apparent success. This system perpetuated things and every so often someone would break out and do something new. Martin Luther, John Wesley, the Morovians, William Booth and I could go on!

The secret was that instead of taking the same old “out of the box” ministries, they started to “Think outside the box”. I celebrate the fact that now instead of stale old ministries being kept alive simply because we have always done it that way, christians are starting to follow that lead and find out what works in the community that they find themselves. There is a place for every sort of ministry in the church, as long as its relevant and fulfilling God’s mission!

Looking to the past

Published
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Graeme
on September 11, 2006
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Back in June I made a conscious decision to put aside my normal reading practice, which was to read for entertainment sakes, and read more Christian books. I’ve found this difficult as I have always tended to race through the books I read, which is nigh on impossible with Christian books as you invariably miss something.

So at the weekend I moved onto the next book in my burgeoning library, Rob Bell’s Velvet Elvis. No-one I know personally has read this one, but it seems like it is one of the must-read books at the moment.

And so I start to read and almost immediately come to a comment that struck me like a hammer!

Here’s what often happens: Somebody comes along who has a fresh perspective on the Christian faith. People are inspired. A movement starts. Faith that was stale and dying is now alive. But then the pioneer of the movement [...] dies and the followers stop exploring. They mistakenly assume that their leader’s words were the last ones on the subject, and they freeze their leader’s words. They forget that as that innovator was doing his or her part to move things along, that person was merely taking part in the discussion that will go on forever. And so in the commitment to what so-and-so said and did, they end up freezing the faith.

What struck me is that I see this amongst some of the different expressions of Salvationism that we see in today’s Salvation Army. All too often people are returning to the past and looking at what William Booth, Catherine Booth, George Scott-Railton, etc have to say about a subject and categorically state that these are the pinnacle of the Salvationists’ expression of Christian faith. It’s argued that if we return to this way of thinking then all the problems of the Salvation Army as a denomination will be solved.

The problem is that whilst there is an element of truth within that we cannot ignore that almost 100 years have gone by since most of this stuff was written. Yes it’s true that much of our first love appears to have been beaten down by the struggles of living in an increasingly secular, media led society, but there have always been a faithful remnant who have looked at how we Salvationists can keep our faith both relevant and moving forward.

Now if I make it sound as if I want to change the Army I’ll get in trouble, but that’s not what I want anyway. I want to see people challenged in their faith.

Simply reiterating the past will not make better disciples. Instead we need to take the teaching of the last 140+ years (plus of course the previous two millenia), start looking ahead and work out what is needed to live our lives in today’s world. We need an ever increasing number of people who will challenge themselves to find out how discipleship in the 21st Century should be expressed.

What does it mean to be a Salvationist or any other Christian? What should we be doing to make this world a bit more like Heaven and less like the fallen world we live in? How can we live holy lives and encourage others too, when the pervasive nature of 21st century media is all around us?

Journeying Out

Published
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Graeme
on September 9, 2006
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For the last month I’ve been slowly reading my way through Ann Morisy’s Journeying Out having read good reviews. On the whole the book is superb.

As Salvationist’s we have sometimes been guilty of doing social and community work for its own sake, rather than to reflect God’s Kingdom and fulfill the Great Commission. This book challenges that stance and offers a series of thought-provoking reasons for change.

For me personally, the biggest thing that came out of the reading of this book was the power that stories have in our lives. The experiences of our lives produce stories and these can have either a positive or negative influence. Communities that only have negative experiences end up spiralling down into disharmony and discord. When we in the Church enter those communities and reflect God’s Kingdom through our interactions with individuals God is able to provide new stories that have a positive effect and breed a new sense of hope.

Here are a few of the phrases that leapt off the page at me:

Using social action as a means to an end must not be allowed to pass as a full-bodied expression of holistic mission.

Some minimal structure that enables active participation is essential if discipleship of the venturesome love king is to be tangible and move beyond pious words and naive optimism.

We have to take seriously the possibility that being alongside those who are poor and who know deeply the reality of struggle may be a thin place where God reveals himself in a very mysterious and indisputable way.

The only check on negative stories is to counter them with other, more positive stories.

In our history, the Church has operated as if it was in full possession of all understanding. The parallel is, of course, with the Pharisees and the way they behaved in Jesus’ day. [...] In a post-modern world it is wiser to exchange power for authenticity.

Cadets

Published
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Graeme
on September 7, 2006
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I’ve been at Latvia’s School for Officer Training the last two days doing some teaching and am really excited by the promise that these 6 cadets show. It’s so easy to get diverted by the everyday stuff and its wonderful to see a group of people dedicated to following God’s will!