Monthly Archive for April, 2008

Western Christian culture - oxymoron?

Published
by
Graeme
on April 30, 2008
in Ramblings
. 0 Comments

Ok I’ve officially had enough. Over the last few weeks I’ve seen a tendency for people to call for a return to Christian values in society as an answer in all sorts of discussions. When all else fails in a discussion on the falling moral standards in Western society, people resort to calling for a return to the Christian principles on which Western society is supposedly founded. Breakdown in family values; let’s return to Christian values. Immigration; force people to adhere to the Christian values our society was built upon. The problem is that I’m not sure Western society was ever really founded on Christian values!

Ok, a sweeping statement I know, but lets have a think about it for a moment!

Yes our legal system is built on Judeo-Christian ideals with the 10 Commandments being quite high up in that basis. The ‘Church’ has certainly been a major social player over the centuries, and still is in some areas. But can we really say that Western society was ever really Christian? If so when?

You see I look back and see the values of social elitism being a dominant factor is western society for centuries. Colonialism and the subjugation of whole people groups is hardly a Christian principle! Using the Church to keep the peasants under control is not really Christian.

In reality classic western Christian culture is as much, if not more, influenced by Greek influence as it is by the teachings of Jesus.

Changing places

Published
by
Graeme
on April 29, 2008
in Holiness and discipleship
. 2 Comments

Churches are meant to be places that can change abnormal people into normal people. People who are shadows change into real people. People who are half-dead in their addiction to destructive habits of selfishness and egotism, change into rich, fully alive human beings, knowing how to love, even when it hurts. At the same time they are also to be places that transform the life of the communities and societies around them by this very same power.

So says Graham Tomlin on page 120 of The Provocative Church.

One question that I have that isn’t answered in this book is, “Why do we major on evangelism now when the early church didn’t?” Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean that the early church didn’t evangelise, its simply that they didn’t make it the focal point of their teaching. One answer to the question could be that it is because so few of the people are involved in evangelism and I’m certain there are more than a few who would accept this premise.

However, I’m not so sure that we are focussing on a symptom rather than the cause. Pushing an agenda that highlights evangelism as the most important role of the church seems to distort what the church is really about. It is not about bringing people to a crisis point in their life and getting them ’saved’, it is about being a community in which people are transformed into people in whom the glory of God is seen.

Let me make it clear, I believe that the Salvation Army was called into being to reach souls for the kingdom. I believe that this is our first and greatest mandate. I am not though convinced that in your face evangelism is the ‘be all and end all’ of our effort. In fact I think that the real reason for our success was not our skill at evangelism, but rather our position of being firmly entrenched in the holiness movement.

Graham Tomlin’s book (and I promise this is the last mention of it for a while) actually is not so much a book about evangelism but is a book about holiness. He might not call it that, but the core of his argument is that for us to be truly evangelistic in our efforts for the Kingdom we must live holy lives. Without this basic holiness then ultimately no amount of evangelism will bring the numbers to the Lord that we would like. For me personally, this is why Jesus didn’t turn round and tell us to only get people saved, but instead told us to go and make disciples. Only disciples who seek to live the holy life that Jesus did; disciples who are being increasingly human; are going to influence a real and lasting difference in the lives of those asking the questions.

Church as God’s manifold wisdom

Published
by
Graeme
on April 28, 2008
in Community, Mission and Reading
. 0 Comments

Over the weekend I managed to finish Provocative Church and can honestly say that I have enjoyed it immensely. Not only have I enjoyed it, but it has also given me a real challenge in how to respond, especially in regard to leading my current congregation forward into mission and evangelism.

What’s particularly good is that this book emphasises the need for holy living, both as individuals and as congregations. In this respect Graham Tomlin recognises the need for the church to put the emphasis on discipleship, something that is to me fundamental if we want to see both change socially and within the church. This emphasis on the local congregation becomes even more obvious when the following is taken into account.

God wants to show off his wisdom and craft to the rest of the cosmos. God the divine artist wants to hold an exhibition of such beauty and power and wisdom that anyone who looks on, whether they come from earth or heaven, will be overcome with wonder and awe. It is to be a display of his ‘manifold’ wisdom.

Yesterday, Zoe & I took part in our very first Rogation Sunday procession. This is a traditional part of the church year which is still carried out in many parishes, around the UK at least. We went to support the band who have been processing with the congregation of a tiny Surrey village, called Peper Harow, for the last 40 years. The idea of Rogation processions is that they go round the village and ask for God’s blessing upon it, particularly through the blessing of the land and crops.

What strikes me is that yesterday the procession wasn’t going around the village praying simply that Christians would be blessed, but that the whole community would be regardless of their faith or beliefs. The only agenda was that the earth would blessed and that through this God would be glorified. Surely through this blessing asked for by the church on behalf of its community, the people who were looking on, slightly bemused in many cases, were given the opportunity to see God’s people in Peper Harow reflecting the glory of God. Many in today’s church would probably write off the ritual and ceremony as archaic and irrelevant to our post-modern world, but just for a moment yesterday we were part of God’s manifold wisdom for that small corner of His creation.

How to glorify God

Published
by
Graeme
on April 23, 2008
in Holiness, Reading and discipleship
. 0 Comments

I’ve mentioned before that in my Google Reader I get a daily quote/thought from a sight called inward/outward. The quote that is provided is not always great and sometimes I disagree fundamentally with them. However, this morning’s is a Thomas Merton quote, and whilst I’m not in agreement with it, it did make me think. The part I want to share with you is this:

A tree gives glory to God by being a tree. For in being what God means it to be it is obeying God. It ‘consents’ so to speak, to God’s creative love. … This particular tree will give glory to God by spreading out its roots in the earth and raising its branches into the air and the light in a way that no other tree before or after it ever did or will do.

Merton goes on to say that every being gives glory to God by being the thing that He created them to be. In my opinion this is definitely a thought that shows Merton’s Zen influences, but I do think he has a point.

The problem though comes with us humans. Do we reflect God’s glory simply by being human? I would say that we don’t because in actual fact the majority of humanity are not ‘consenting’ to God’s creative love. We are not actually being who God created us to be and we’re certainly not obeying God.

As I said in my last post I’m currently enjoying reading Graham Tomlin’s The Provocative Church. There are numerous passages highlighted already, with quite a few scribbles in the margins, but here is one that I feel is pertinent to this post:

[loving the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength] means a reorientation of our lives towards learning to love God and learning to love other people, rather than the sef-indulgent and self-oriented lives we’re used to.

This is the message that I’m trying to get across in our morning meetings at the corps at the moment. We are working through the various Fruit of the Spirit and I’m trying to explain how these are the real signs of spiritual maturity, rather than what we do in church. For me the real test of an individuals holiness is the manifestation of these fruit. In my mind it doesn’t matter how much an individual expresses their love for God; it doesn’t matter how much they do in church. What matters is whether their lives are increasingly loving, joyful, peaceful, patient, kind, good, faithful, gentle and self-controlled.

This is how we, as humans, give the glory back to God. As we grow in the fruit of the Spirit, as we allow the Spirit to work within us and convict us of sin and shape us into holy people, then we become more like the people God intended us to be. So Merton has a really good point, but we have to allow the Holy Spirit to shape us in order to really reflect God’s glory.

Provoking a response

Published
by
Graeme
on April 19, 2008
in Mission and discipleship
. 0 Comments

When we think about being provocative I would guess that a lot of people would see this as a negative thing. I suppose this is mainly because provocation is one of those words that seems to be a bad thing. We think of people being provoked into an argument or of someone hitting someone else after being provoked. So when a book suggests that the church should be provoking a response from people it could well get assigned to the spiritual dustbin, along with terminology such as ‘getting out of comfort zones’ and ‘taking risks’.

However, a few months ago a book that does exactly that was recommended to me. At that point I didn’t get it, but then as I was browsing the shelves of my local Christian bookshop about a month ago there it was simply begging me to buy it!

On Sunday night I finally got round to starting to read it, and so far I haven’t been disappointed. Its actually a book about evangelism, although I suspect that some reading it might not agree with the methods it suggests. What is refreshing though is that this is not a book that consigns verbal evangelism to the scrap heap, but instead elevates it to its rightful position within the church, front and centre.

By the way the book is Graham Tomlin’s The Provocative Church. The basic premise is that unless an individual, or a congregation, live their lives in such a way as to make people start asking questions about the way they are living no amount of evangelism is ever going to make an impact. One quote that stood out on the first page of Chapter 1 was,

Sometimes Christians assume that people ‘out there’ are eager to listen to what the Church has to say. The only problem is learning how to say it louder and more clearly.”

It immediately made me think of the stereotypical ‘Brit abroad’ picture. We have a reputation for talking to people who don’t speak English ‘loudly, slowly and clearly’ so that they will understand what we are saying. Of course the real problem is that we aren’t speaking their language. The same mentality still exists in some circles of the church, including The Salvation Army. It doesn’t seem to matter that people no longer speak our cultural language. All we have to do is say the same things louder, slower and clearer and everything will be ok.

As someone who has never felt entirely comfortable in traditional evangelistic methods this book is really speaking to me and I’ve been thinking in depth about possible efforts that we could get involved in here in our location. I’m well into chapter 5 and have numerous thoughts coming out of it, so I’ll probably be posting more on this.

There may be no such thing as a free lunch, but…

Published
by
Graeme
on April 18, 2008
in My Pilgrimage
. 0 Comments

The best thing in life really is free! Thanks Jon for the reminder!

The Last Gospel

Published
by
Graeme
on April 14, 2008
in Reading
. 0 Comments

For the first time in a few months I’ve been reading a novel. I saw the book on the shelves of Waterstones and simply felt that I wanted to have a read. The book is called The Last Gospel by archaeologist turned novelist David Gibbins. The story is actually quite an interesting read, but I suspect that we could be looking at the next Da Vinci Code once some Christians pick up on it.

The idea is that the Roman Emperor Claudius met Jesus before he started his ministry and Jesus gave him the only text he actually wrote. So potentially traumatic was this ‘Last Gospel’ that Claudius hid it from view and the book revolves around an archaeologists attempts to recover the text. As always in this type of book the main protagonist is the Roman Catholic church, some members of which will not hold back from murder to protect it from potential scandal or alleged heresy.

Whilst the book is a good read it must be remembered that this is a work of fiction. Unfortunately, if that group of Christians who seem to be more interested in lambasting anything that remotely threatens the ‘truth’ of the faith pick up on this it is likely to become the latest in a increasingly long line of books, films etc that are deemed to be detrimental to our faith. Personally, I couldn’t see anything remotely threatening in it. It simply attempts to perpetuate some of the ridiculous ideas that have been trumped before, including the one about Jesus & Mary Magdalene having a baby!

One positive note is that the book ends with the alleged last words of Christ himself and actually these have some value:

“The kingdom of heaven is on earth.
Men shall not stand in the way of the word of God.
And the kingdom of heaven shall be the house of the Lord.
There shall be no priests.
And there shall be no temples…”

Maybe if we weren’t so caught up in the structures of church, in perpetuating a temple and priestly order; maybe if we concentrated more on being the kingdom then maybe, just maybe the books and films that threaten the established order wouldn’t offend us in the same way.