Credit Crunch

What's the answer to today's financial crisis? Getting another credit card? I don't think so. Thanks to Mark Sayers for the link to this disturbing advert.

Over at Between Two Worlds, David Kotter has some thoughts about the current situation - also from an American perspective - that are worthy of note for Christians. I found this article via Tallskinnykiwi and then Christian Personal Finance. Thanks guys!

Everyday the news seems to indicate that we are moving into a recession and people fear that their livelihood is at risk. For those not eligible for housing benefit or a council house, privately renting can be very costly. Getting a mortgage is thought to be a prudent move by many. In some parts of the UK it may even be cheaper to buy than to rent. But then there is the risk of getting into debt. Of course, taking out a secured loan such as a mortgage isn't debt in itself but defaulting on the repayments is. With falling house prices and a stagnant market a home owner could end up with massive debts. People now need to be more careful than ever if they are not to end up losing their homes.

Our church has just started a mission initiative towards the homeless. There is an ever present need for this but, I was just thinking, with the ways things are going we might be seeing even more people in debt who could end up on the streets in the near future.

Perhaps it is time for Christians to start seriously praying for the economy? What do you think?

See also Credit Crunches by Cross Rhythms' Mal Fletcher.

UPDATE: There is a fascinating money programme article which is linked to an episode this BBC series screened in November. Property: The End of the Affair basically argued that renting could be a lot more prudent than buying. Many first time buyers today can’t get a mortgage and feel they are missing out while others are desperate to hold onto their property ownership. Yet economically it could make a lot more sense for people in the UK to rent, as is the norm in many other countries, rather than buy – especially in the current financial climate. They argued that buying property could be just as risky as borrowing money to buy shares – which as we all know may keep falling.

The Future Direction of Worship

On Thurday and Friday Jonny Baker took part in a symposium on worship at the London School of Theology. I know Jonny through CMS events and worship sessions at Greenbelt but mainly through his blog. He has been asked to be part on a panel of experts on worship that also includes among others Graham Kendrick and Joel Edwards. They are discussing the future direction of worship. To help Jonny out I left a couple of comments on this blog here - a long with a lot of other people - the gist of which Jonny tried to weave into his contributions.

Jonny has outlined some of the thoughts of his fellow panellists here, some of his own contributions here, and his summary of the arguments here. I am following this with great interest and commenting on it as it goes - sometimes with more than one comment on a post. There are some very open and honest thoughts in this discussion, some of which I think are pertinent to our worship experiences in Church Alive. Of course I am not denying that we have some good times of worship - I just want to go further.

Please let me know your thoughts by leaving a comment.

Greenbelt 08

Highlights for me at this year’s Greenbelt Festival included Molten Meditation - a fusion of charismatic and contemplative worship lead by Robin Vincent. As well as in his own session, I saw Robin Vincent in the Proost Lounge – a showcase of new talent from this label who were celebrating their first anniversary. But apart from this I didn’t get to much music. For one thing the Performance Café was always packed out. Does taking part in the hymn singing at the beer tent count? It was amazing.

So what did I get to?

Ikon led what was really an 18 point sermon on lessons they had learnt as a church. It lasted an hour and half but it was brilliant. Every point had a visual illustration and/or activity associated with it - pillows, balloons, video, discussions and lots of laughs.

This year I went to a couple of new venues:

1. St Ethelburga’s Tent where I did a little biblical meditation and heard a discussion on whether Eastern religions could give us any insights into Christianity and…

2, The Breathing Space Yurt where I took part into an insightful yet whimsical event called a Tea Ritual where we heard stories, quotes and demonstrations centred around the hospitality of drinking tea. Then we served each other a genteel cuppa.

Also I deliberately made Callie a priority, queuing to get her into the Children’s Festival and taking her to events such as an all-age service called Trinity Twister on Sunday morning, where we learnt about the trinity, played twister and took communion.

I’ve now downloaded a couple of excellent talks that I missed while I was with Callie: Jenny Baker on gender roles and Brian McLaren on post-colonialism. I might blog about them later and perhaps mention one or two more things.

As usual it was a great time.

When Christian Ministers Fall

As humans we are all fallible including those whose work is serving God. It is sad to hear news of Christian ministers stepping down from their work because of personal issues. It may need a lot of forgiveness if these people have taken a stand against the things that they have done. It may need even more forgiveness when we see that issues have been covered up for some time and that those close to them have either been complicit or naïve. But still they need our prayers more than ever. And let us pray that their behaviour doesn't shake the faith of others.

Recently we have heard rumours of revival in Florida linked to the ministry of Todd Bentley. After stepping down, it is now clear that Todd had a drink problem and an affair. He has now separated from his wife and at least some of the healings Todd claimed have failed to been verified by his associates. Also in the news, Australian youth leader and musician Michael Guglielmucci, whose song Healer appeared on a Hillsong album, has been exposed as faking his fight with cancer, perhaps hoping to claim a miracle in the future. These are just a couple of recent examples that I feel free to quote as they are so well known.

Just because the messenger is imperfect doesn’t necessarily invalidate their message. We need to go back to God to see how much we agree with what such people have taught and practiced. I have always been sceptical of the methods used in the recent ‘revival’ but I do believe that God heals today. If this revival does continue without Todd it may well give it more credibility. But let us not turn our back on what we have learnt from such people just because we hear about them behaving in ways we would not condone.

As reformer and martyr John Bradford once said, "There but by the grace of God go I."

Sharing God

Going to the Eid Mela celebrations on Sunday reminded me that in my banner it says that I am blogging about the Awareness Course this year. So I thought I'd better keep you informed about how it is going.

I am very impressed that this course gives the most positive portrayal of Islam that I have ever heard from a Christian perspective. We looked briefly at the origins of Islam and its early history in this module. It really emphasised the good things in Islam such as how it stands for justice and helps the poor.

Yes, our church is still running the Awareness Course. We are studying next two modules which now involves two or three of us getting together to work through the material once a week. More people in out church studied the first module which I discussed earlier this year.

In module two 'Sharing God' - which compares Judaism, Christianity and Islam - we have also had some interesting discussions about a number of topics such as…

We looked at how to understand the early accounts in Genesis as mythology. However the course wasn’t saying they were untrue. I think the main idea was not to be too worried about the scientific or historical accuracy of these accounts but to see that they teach spiritual lessons.

We couldn’t quite see the idea of Yahweh developing from being chief among the God’s early in the Old Testament, but it was interesting to see the influence of other religions - such as the Midianite God who was also called Yahweh.

At the moment we are on a break for the summer holidays and hope to start again in September.

Who will succeed Terry Virgo?

At the recent New Frontiers conference ‘Together on Mission’ Mark Driscoll brought a prophecy exhorting Terry Virgo to make a five year plan that involved seeking God about who should succeed Terry in the leadership of New Frontiers. In this clip of an interview with Adrian Warnock, Mark Driscoll talks about the prophecy and his time at the conference.



Any comments?

Christians and Blogging

I just found this brilliant quote from Mark Greene. You can read his article in full on the LICC site (London Institute for Contemporary Christianity).

"[Blogging] …raises important questions about how the Church chooses to communicate – and our need to combine personal conviction with openness to listen. This applies not only in the way we seek to talk to people who don’t know Jesus but also whether we genuinely seek to create space for open communication among those who already do. One of the common criticisms of church culture by Christians is that it is often extremely difficult to voice dissent, explore a contrary point of view, and, more significantly, find a context in which to be emotionally and intellectually honest. Can we create contexts for ‘good conversation’? Of course, at its worst, blogging, particularly pseudonymous blogging, can simply be a self-indulgent way to sound off. At its best, however, it can provide an authentic way to express our true humanity and begin a conversation with other like-hearted humans who are seeking truth, life and a way to live it in a distinctively personal, creative way. And it’s hard to be anything but enthusiastic about that."

Any thoughts?

Technorati Tag: christian blogging

Romans Disarmed

Last month I went to Birmingham Cathedral to hear Brian Walsh and Silvia Keesmaat on Romans. Sorry that I haven’t got round to blogging about this sooner, as it was really good. Having read their book on Colossians I was excited about what they would do with this epistle. The day was organised by CMS as part of their Blah series and also advertised in the Hope 08 newsletter. Richard Sudworth introduced them and you can read his comments on the day here. Walsh and Keesmaat’s site is also worth checking out.

I liked Walsh and Keesmaat’s teaching style; they were very good at getting interaction with us even though there were about fifty of us at a guess. They looked a lot at the context of the book and drew out some interesting parallels between the culture of the time and our culture today. Although there are very clear differences they looked at some points which are analogous. They used drama to great effect by acting out someone reading a section of Paul’s letter for the first time with someone heckling.

Their emphasis on the corporate life of the church rather than on personal salvation was something else that I liked but I wouldn't go as far as they did in saying that this is what Romans is all about. But I did like what they said about about not being ashamed of your difficulties from Romans 8. And they saw Paul’s words as subversive and so gave a very interesting interpretation of Romans 13 pointing out that the Roman authorities would not been pleased with what Paul was saying. Rather than making good citizens Paul was criticising the Roman authorities – who denied publicly that they ruled by the sword. Fascinating.

I found listening to this couple for a few hours that Tuesday was a real treat.

Prince Caspian

On Sunday, Nettes arranged a babysitter took me to see Prince Caspian for a belated birthday present. We originally planned to go in May for my birthday but that was the date it opened in the States not in Britain. At last the time came yesterday afternoon. We walked down to the cinema and dropped Callie off on the way. Lots of thanks to the Naylors for looking after her.

The movie? Well... some brilliant special effects. A lot more fighting than expected. It had the message that they should have listened to Lucy and waited for Aslan. In the Bible when Israel went to war without God or turned to false gods they didn’t win. They needed the prophets to seek the Lord. Similarly Prince Caspian and the children needed Lucy to seek out Aslan to bring them victory.

Of course they downplayed the spiritual message. Nevertheless a good film and a good present. Thank you Nettes.

Build a Bear

Saturday I took Callie to a party at the Build-a-Bear Workshop. After games and making wishes on little hearts to go in the bears our party host stuffed the bears and the children promised to look after them. No hard sell of the clothes you could purchase but perhaps that was because we went straight on to Pizza Hut. Thoroughly enjoyable.

Rumours of Revival

Recently I posted about the rumours of revival in The Florida Outpouring. Steve, elder of our church, went to one of the meetings Dudley that are an offshoot of this and I think it is fair to say was not impressed. But I know of one of my friends on facebook who has been over to Florida and is setting up his own meetings up north. Personally I think that it is a mixture: God is moving but people are getting in on the act and hyping it up. I joined a group on facebook to discuss this but found camps sadly divided between those who were saying ‘Oooh! Isn’t this great!’ and those who were saying ‘It’s all of the Devil’. When someone complained of receiving hate-mail I left the group.

I found a much more reasonable discussion on this cartoon on ASBO Jesus. And here are a few more interesting links that I have found as I have followed this discussion across the internet. There was an intelligent reply to criticism by revivalist John Crowther and a positive article by Pete Greig of 24/7 prayer on what is happening. But I found a more reserved approach from another part of 24/7 prayer network. Also Terry Virgo - head honcho of big charismatic house-church network New Frontiers - has plenty of reservations, yet he thinks there may be something in it, especially in the light of this testimony. And interestingly in this recent faithworks article Jim Wallis (author of Seven Ways to Change the World) does say that revival is coming but sees it as more related to Christians impacting social change... So the discussions carry on.

If anyone finds anymore links or thoughts feel free to post them in the comments section below.

Training Courses

As a college lecturer, it’s about this time of year that I get to go on training courses. Increasingly students need activities and support from new technology and can't cope with just lectures. But this requires skills and time. We do have staff development days at college every now and again. But it’s much better to get out and do something organised by others.

This time I’ve been to a training day at Manchester that was not just about teaching tips but also specific to my subject - psychology. I came away from Want To Be A Brilliant Psychology Teacher with a CD of presentations and resources for activities with lesson plans a bit like a cook book. Because they are all on disc I can modify them as I see fit. But if short of time there are some things that I can just use as they are. Wow!

And at the same time over the next few weeks I am doing an online course that is teaching me how to design online courses. Well, at least produce support material for my classes online using an application called Moodle. It actually produces an online environment where students can chat and discuss the material, access material and take online tests.

An increasing part of being a teacher is to update knowledge and skills. To this end all college lecturers are now part of the Institute For Learning and have been given a disc which among other things helps us to keep track of our continual professional development. So I better get working on that.

Blog Spring Clean

Yes, my blog spring cleaning is finally done. Not only have I added links to my most recent Cross Rhythms Reviews but also some extra links including some new blogs that I have found. You may notice that I have divided my blog links from my other links to make a proper blogroll at last. And I have added links to my other Web 2.0 profiles such as facebook and flickr under the heading Life Streaming. Also note that is where my crossrhythms reviews have put. Why not have a look down the side of my blog and explore some of the links?

Is This Revival?

Last night I heard that some people in our church were visiting meetings in Dudley with a guest speaker from the States hotfoot from a mini-revival. Yes, there are rumours of revival going on again in the States particularly this time in Lakeland Florida. Names that I am hearing include Todd Bentley and John Crowther. I am so glad when people truly experience God yet I think we also need discernment. Some of these people’s ideas and practices appear pretty whacky to say the least. Visions and angelic visitations abound. People are not just drunk in the Spirit as they were back in the days of the Toronto Blessing but are ‘sloshed’ and even ‘high’ in the Spirit. BTW thanks to Robbymac for the artwork.

This appears to be something more than just another series of meetings as there are many claims of supernatural healings. But I think people need to be careful about putting these things on a par with some of the great moves of God in the past. There are now meetings being broadcast daily on God TV and plenty of clips available on YouTube. I don’t doubt for a minute that the Holy Spirit is actually working in these gatherings and that some of these healings are actually real. I think it is sad that some Christians are not even to open to things like this happening today. But I am also concerned that media can easily hype things.

Personally I don’t get too excited about appeals in meetings with ministers walking down the lines laying hands on people expecting them to fall over and even less so when it comes to gold dust falling or milk dripping from walls. Perhaps not trickery - as these people do appear honest – but there could be a lot of Derren Brown like suggestion going on. But here is one case of a little girl being healed of a broken elbow that includes the X-rays. Now that would be pretty powerful suggestion! I would be interested in some more objective research into these healings and I think that more medical verification would actually give more credibility to what is happening.

So is this revival? I trust that my comments are balanced. What are your thoughts? I would really appreciate it if people could help me on this one and post their perspective on this, in the comments section. Thanks.

Global Day Of Prayer

Our church is taking part in a massive joint meeting this Sunday to which all the churches in Birmingham have been invited as part of hope 08. This is our part in the Global Day of Prayer on Pentecost Sunday. Our homegroup is having lunch together and then we are meeting up at our church premises in the afternoon to walk into Birmingham for an open air gathering in the grounds of Birmingham Cathedral. Like many churches we are taking this as an opportunity to pray for our city as we walk down aswell as joining with the rest of the Birmingham Church when we get there. Read more about this event here.

Glastonbury

We’ve just got back from a weekend at Glastonbury where we went for the arts festival in our circle of churches. As we did last year, we braved the bank holiday traffic, climbed Glastonbury Tor – this time the easy way, visited the mediation gardens and the Abbey as well as dipping into Glastonbury’s Café culture. For Nettes the high spot was seeing Lynne Robertson Hay’s one woman show, for me it was hearing Bosch at the barbeque on Monday.

The Future Of Christian Music

I found this article by Charlie Peacock about the future of Christian music. Mike Rimmer who had just got back from the States said it was causing quite a stir. I think what Charlie Peacock says in this article makes a lot sense. Christian music does appear to be aimed too much at youth and so many people grow out of it. I wonder if Christian music not designed to be used by the church would be better off side by side with other music of its own genre rather than being marketed just to Christians. That is the way he sees it going anyway. Any thoughts?

The Best Homegroup Meeting Ever

A simple old-fashioned conversational Bible study of Psalm 23. Best ever? Well it did go really well!

Give Yourself A Whack On The Side Of The Head

I've just found Roger Von Oech's blog the author of the Creative Whack Pack - a great aid to creative thinking.

My Easter Holidays

Hi! Today I am doing some shopping including getting stuff for a salad and a couple of pineapples for a ‘bring and share’ meal at our church on Sunday. You see this weekend is our church weekend at home. That’s right - at home. It’s like our weekend away but instead of going miles away to a residential conference centre we’ve hired the premises of big church in Birmingham for Saturday and then are at our usual Sunday venue a bit longer. We’ve got guest speakers for the adults and the children, competitions, a talent show and chillout time as well as lots of meals together. Most are catered for except for the 'bring and share' on Sunday.

Just as our weekend away did before - this marks the end of our Easter holidays, which have gone too quickly. The Thursday before Good Friday, Nettes & I took the homegroup in a simple time of remembering the cross using some story telling with some slides on our laptop. On Saturday Callie helped build the Easter Garden - at a local parish church - to be used in an Easter Vigil service later that day, which I went to - just like last year. This year I also went to early morning communion there before getting to our pre-meeting prayer time before anyone else. As a family we later had a wonderful roast lamb for dinner that Nettes cooked this time.

When I’ve had chance over the holidays I’ve been drafting out some thoughts on the theme of identifying with Jesus. These thoughts use some of my insights from psychology in looking at the Bible’s accounts of Jesus. I think these may make it into the blog one day as an occasional series of articles loosely gathered on this theme. They might include such ideas of our longing for Jesus, the incarnation, Jesus’ mission, spiritual disciplines, the atonement, living the resurrection life, the body of Christ and our longing for his return. But this is a long term plan so don’t hold your breath.

BTW I've just noticed that David Matthew has been reading some interesting books on atonement and justification.