-
I got this on email from Dan Wilt.
It was the most stunning thing I have read this Christmas, that moved me to worship. Have a great Christmas and see you all in the new year.
Within Your Present: A Christmas Encouragement
Through your past, within your present, and into your
future, the living Christ walks with you.
Know this about your Lord and Master – flesh and blood
adorn him, not as decoration, costume or mask, but as his
very state of being. To be God and man, is to be the living
Lord Jesus, the Christ of Christmas.
Continue reading »
-
We had our church communities main christmas celebration last sunday, being the 4th sunday of Advent.
I loved this poem ‘mashed’ up by my wife, that was used as a reading (and not just because she is my wife).
I’m always a little ambivalent about Christmas as the secular debt fuelled affair that is has become. This poem helped me smile and re-connect to something other than my inner Grinch.
TWAS THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS
T’was the night before Christmas, And all through the town
Not a sign of baby Jesus, Was anywhere to be found
The people were all busy, With Christmas time chores
Like decorating, and baking, And shopping in stores.
No-one sang “Away in a manger, No crib for a bed”
Instead, they sang of Santa, dressed up in bright red
Mummy watched Delia, Dad sat with beer on his lap
As hour upon hour, The presents they’d wrap
-
Nancie Carmichael is a well known writer and was a student in one of the classes I taught last year at George Fox Seminary.
We talked about the topic of abuse and depression, and some of my story (I wrote about some of it here and here).
I’d forgotten that Nancie had asked to use some of my story in her latest book, ‘Surviving One Bad Year’, until a copy arrived in the post for me yesterday.
Made me think again that one day I might take my experiences and flesh them out into a book, a christian approach to abuse, depression and finding healing
in church community.
-
(The post below was written by me for the Advent series led by Christine Sine, ‘What are we waiting for?’)
After the first temple is built by Solomon and on the day of it’s dedication by him, Solomon declares, ‘Can it be that God will actually move into our neighborhood? Why, the cosmos itself isn’t large enough to give you breathing room, let alone this Temple I’ve built.’ (1 Kings 8:27). The absurdity that God could fit into the universe let alone a temple is immediately revealed.
Yet the Advent hope of Christmas is that God has located himself in relationship and proximity to us, such that (John 1:14) ‘The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighbourhood’.
If you are anything like me, I find that my life doesn’t fit into my own life, let alone the creator of the universe moving in. Too often He is crowded out and left to fit in when I remember Him, need something from him, am in trouble or worried about others. But most of the time, it seems He is squeezed out of my life and neighbourhood.
I’ve also noticed something about the Advent stories, that the people in them have lives that are at least as ‘over-full’ as mine. So how does Jesus move into their neighbourhood and how might he move into my overpacked life?
Too often we think of inviting Jesus into our lives, the Christian cliche of thinking that we open our lives and let Jesus in, ask him in, when we can remember to. The problem, like the people in the Advent story is that he just doesn’t fit. Something else seems to take place in Advent, as Jesus moves into the neighbourhood and invites people into his life, rather dramatically.
Continue reading »
-
Fernando Gros said something on his blog a few months ago, about the demands of time by church upon people. At least I think he did, as I can’t find what I think I read on his site at present.
What he wrote (or I thought he wrote), got me thinking about the demands of time and participation our church makes upon people. And the complaint I’ve heard over the years about our community expecting too much time from people.
I know on the one hand I don’t want a church life where everyone is in church meetings, but on the other, as a bunch of missional activists we do expect we do ask a great deal of people. Our community is not a comfortable place to just hang out in, with no demands on your time, energy and money. (NOTICE: This post is not an argument or apologetic for church as sunday services and endless committee meetings. It’s about the challenge of ordering life around faith with others in a liberal secular society).
As I began mulling that over, the main thing that strikes me with regards to time demands in a time poor society, is how we can give ourselves to almost anything, be that sport, music, motorbike riding (my current favourite hobby), any interest at great length and at great cost, with no question.
But when it comes to church, somehow there is something almost obscene and abusive about the giving anywhere near the same commitment, or even the slightest commitments. So how did we get here, and what might be a way to respond?
One of the things that has happened is that church life not just been relativised, it has been demeaned, through a process over time something like this (perhaps):
1. Enforced:Church life at one time was a question of Christendom, with political and cultural participation. By being English you were a Christian, and Christians fought to discover personal faith beyond and within cultural structures. Choosing the nature of your faith was unusual, and difficult.
2. Voluntarism: Then in the 19th century voluntarism explodes on the scene. With the emergence of nation states, capitalist markets, huge increases in income and leisure, the freedom to choose faith arose.
And for many Christians the ability to choose faith, and it’s shape and form was liberating. But by and large these formulations of faith, still ordered the rest of life and leisure.
3. Relativisation: But the freedom to choose soon becomes the freedom to choose anything other than participation in Christian community and mission. There is a direct correlation in the UK with increases in income, leisure and decline of church involvement (things get very different compared to the US with factors of lack of state church, welfare state and republican democracy)
After the second world war churches watching the rapid decline in church involvement, decide to let their building to leisure activities, the reasoning being that it was better to have people come through their doors than not at all. So yoga, badminton, and karate become the main experience for people with a Church.
This act can been seen as the final relatvisation of Church, and reduction of Church as one personal interest and hobby amongst all other leisure choices.
4. De-relativised: Then we arrive where things seem today. Church is not just one choice among many, it is a lesser choice. It’s not even a valid hobby for people. To give time to church is to invite criticism in public by anyone who wants in ways that would never happen about other personal interests.
Continue reading »
-
The E.A DigiMission event has taken place and there is now a slew of online resources from the event.
The latest Slipstream podcasts are out now. This month we feature a DigiMission extravaganza with talks and interviews coming out of our 1 December DigiMission event.
You can download them from here.
Also available this month –
* Watch video clips from DigiMission on uStream:
* Listen to talks from the day
* The introduction to Shane Hipps’s Flickering Pixels
* Twitter as a spiritual discipline by Gerard Kelly
* “Tim Keller is not your pastor” by Scott Mclellan
* Plus statistics on “digital Britain”
-
When we planted our church, back in April 1997, and the enormity of what we had undertaken had begun to hit
me, I started looking around for resources on church planting.Stuart Murray-Williams book on church planting, came along in 1998, became one of the first books I remember that opened my eyes to to our post-christian, and missional context for church planting.
It remains a great book for anyone thinking about church planting. Stuart is part of the Incarnate network, which is focused on baptist church planting in the UK. But their events and resources are open to anyone.
Incarnate are meeting for two days, 23-25 March 2010 (according to their site) to ‘explore church planting themes; using stories of church planting, discussion, coaching, shared meals and workshops.
We share barn-conversions around the courtyard, eating in our houses: relaxing, relational and a great way to network and support each other. Whether you are a newbie to church planting, a veteran or overseer you will find other people here like you and will be warmly welcomed whether from the UK or mainland Europe.’
Looks like a great event for any church planters out there.
-
After her series on ‘What is a Spiritual Practice?’, with over 30 bloggers from around the world (I wrotethis piece in that series), Christine Sine is running a new Advent Series.
It’s called ‘What are you waiting for this Advent season?’ and promises to be as rich and collaborative as the last series. I’m still trying to work out what my piece will be on.
Do pop over and take a look the series looks open to everyone, you may want to take part.
-
In the New Year, I’ll be leading our church community in a series on ‘Evangelism’. In the 12 years of our church plant I’ve never undertaken such a series.
We’ve certainly explored what evangelism isn’t, or at least the kinds of evangelism that seem so alienating and ineffective, from many of our previous church experiences.
And it’s heart we’ve been convinced that a community of people passionately pursuing Jesus is the best form of evangelism.
But we’ve come to a point, where it seems time to explore evangelism more explicitly. At a time when it’s far easier to share with others loss of faith, doubts and de-conversion, where and how do we have confidence to see our friends, relatives and communities hand over control of their lives to Jesus with others?
So as I collect my thoughts and start outlining that series, I wondered what resources you might recommend to me and our community?
