Tag Archive for 'Reading'

A way of travelling

Published
by
Graeme
on August 21, 2008
in Faith
. 2 Comments

One of the more controversial Bishops I have ever met was the former Primus of the Scottish Episcopal Church, Richard Holloway. If anyone hasn’t heard of him then let’s simply say that given his very liberal viewpoint it wouldn’t be that common for me to quote him. However, in the latest issue of ThirdWay which dropped through my letterbox this morning there is a transcription of a discussion between the most famous of the so-called ‘Militant Atheists’ Richard Dawkings and Richard Holloway. Whilst I can’t agree with a lot of what is said I had to agree with the former bishop when he said this:

“…Christianity is not a noun, it’s a verb. It’s not a faith that you can hold in any abstract way, it’s a journey, it’s a way of being, a way of travelling.”

Maybe if more church-goers saw Christianity in this way we would be closer to fulfilling God’s plan!

Packing and prayer

Published
by
Graeme
on August 9, 2008
in Prayer and Reading
. 0 Comments

This afternoon we did some more of the packing, which means that all but a handful of books are now safely packed away ready for the move. A few had to be left out because I need them for the sermons I’ve got planned for my last two Sundays (17th & 24th August). So for the first time this year I’m virtually bookless! This is not a state that I like to be in as I really do enjoy reading!

On that note, last night around 12:40am I finished reading the latest book, Pete Greig & Dave Roberts Red Moon Rising. Zoe read this before me and really enjoyed it and I finally got round to reading it over the last week or so. It has solidified a few more thoughts in my mind about the need for prayer and in many ways confirms just how poor my own prayer life can be. I’m definitely going to be signing up for regular sessions in the college prayer room (they do have one don’t they?)

It’s also proven to me how easy it is to settle for a mundane type of faith. The only differences between any Christian and the amazing stories in the book is an openness to God’s leading, a willingness to listen and follow, and a belief in a God that is able to do more than all we can ask or imagine.

the uprising II

Published
by
Graeme
on July 25, 2008
in Holiness and Reading
. 0 Comments

Well, I finished ‘the uprising’ last night and would again say that it’s the best book I’ve read on the subject, possibly because it is written in a fresh, up-to-date style. It make not be a Brengle or Coutts type tome but it is full of no-nonsense, in your face, holiness teaching. It’s aimed at young people, but this 39 year old felt challenged by its call to holiness. I just wish I’d read something as accessible as it 20 years ago!

Thanks Stephen and Olivia for a great book!

the uprising

Published
by
Graeme
on July 21, 2008
in Holiness
. 0 Comments

If you want to read one book on Holiness but can’t face the thought of reading Brengle or Coutts or even Wesley, then my suggestion would be ‘the uprising’ by Olivia Munn and Captain Stephen Court.

It is, quite simply, the best book on the subject that I’ve ever read, and I’ve not even finished it yet! The chapters are short and snappy and at the end of each are some quesitons you can work through to ask yourself or in a cell-group!

Some of my favourite bits so far are:

“…what needs to change is our view of normality. Normal humanity is looking out for yourself. Normal Christianity is living for the good of others, and doing anything for Jesus.”

“The holiness to which God calls us and for which he empowers us includes a perfection of intention and motivation that makes us blameless.”

“unless the Bride of Christ is holy, no one else in the world will meet the Lord. Without our holiness, they won’t see the Lord.”

The above are just a taster, to read more you’ll have to get the book yourself!

By the way, Stephen, if you don’t already know, blogs over at the armybarmy blog and Olivia does the same on her own blog.

The book is published by Australia Southern territory of The Salvation Army and should be available from wherever you buy your TSA stuff.

Seeing bigger II

Published
by
Graeme
on July 16, 2008
in My Pilgrimage
. 0 Comments

Following on from the last post, in Donald Miller’s ‘Searching for God knows what’ there is a section where Miller talks about how big we see God. Basically, he takes us to the burning bush encounter where Moses asks God who he should say sent him to release the enslaved Israelites. Of course God responds simply, “I AM who I AM”

Here’s what Miller says:

God did not answer, “I EXIST,” of offer one of His names, all of which are metaphors invented for humans, but rather, “I AM.” Climbing inside letters, God explains, I encompass, I am beyond existence, I am nothing you will understand, I have no beginning and no end, I am not like you, and yet I AM.
pg 147 - Miller, D., (2004) Searching for God knows what, Nelson Books

We try so hard to define God by adding to His name. Of course we have to try to make sense of Him as we learn about Him, but we should not limit Him to our own understanding or thoughts.

I suppose it comes down to what sort of God we want to have a faith in. Do we want to have a faith in a God that we can understand and doesn’t make a mess of our lives? Or do we want to have a faith that constantly challenges the boundaries of our perceptions; that is constantly stretched so that we grow deeper in our faith because the God we worship is always surprising us by revealing something new about Himself?

Choosing the life

Published
by
Graeme
on July 4, 2008
in discipleship
. 3 Comments

Last night I finished reading Choose the Life by Bill Hull a book on discipleship, very much in the same sort of role as David Watson’s classic text Discipleship. It’s taken me virtually a month to read through this as there is something challenging on almost every page, but it’s been well worth the effort.

Early on in the book he says:

The average group of professing Christian’s would agree that we all should love and obey God, that the Great Commandment and the Great Commission are our main purposes, and that we should share our faith and give sacrificially of our time and resources. The problem is that while we say these are what should define Christian character, Christians themselves do not exhibit these qualities.

Whilst he writes from a North American perspective, this situation is evident across the church here in the UK as well. There are many good Christian people who are experiencing only a pale imitation of the life that Jesus offers us as abundant life, what Hull calls ‘nondiscipleship Christians’.

In his opinion, the main reasons for this is the lack of accountability that Christians really have and our general unwillingness to train more disciples. We have a church leader/pastor/officer who has spiritual oversight of us but rarely do we ever submit ourselves to them to such a degree that we allow them to ask the really searching questions of our relationship with God. Those self same people who we don’t truly submit ourselves to are the same people we expect to do all the training of new disciples.

Of course the real blame lies in the fact that the Church has pretty much sold out to the ‘cinema model’ of church. We go to church to get something for ourselves, rather than to offer something to God. We expect to entertained, although we probably don’t realise that this is even the case, and so we are faced with the situation where the person teaching on a Sunday is looking out over a morose group of people, few of whom ever react in anyway to what the teacher/preacher is saying.

Real discipleship is costly! Dietrich Bonhoeffer speaks of the ‘Cost of Discipleship’ and James, the book I’m reading at the moment, speaks in depth about what this cost is. It’s costly in terms of attitudes, actions and discipline, but the rewards for that sort of living at greater than we can even imagine.

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.