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.

Is the Use of Holy Spirit Gifts in Decline?

Several weeks ago Nettes forwarded me an email from a friend of hers Alison Hull who was writing an article for Christianity magazine and asking people for comments. The article was about the charismatic churches discussing the decline in the use of gifts of the spirit that she has noticed. I emailed Ali my observations and thoughts and amazingly a quote from my email wound up in the article along with a number of quotes from Christian leaders and ex-leaders. My response was as follows:

“Though it may not be exactly what you were after these are my honest thoughts on the subject in our situation. In a small church like ours I would say that how people use gifts in public meetings changes as people with different gifts, styles and temperaments come and go. It is also the case that we all hopefully grow in our own faith and experience of God over time so it is difficult to be objective about such trends. That said, I have noticed some possible changes over the past ten years or so…”

It was this next part of my answer that was quoted. ”…The way people speak nowadays is much more down to earth and less hyped than it used to be. I don't hear people whipping up the crowd with meaningless jargon anymore. I think we are less dogmatic that everyone's experience, for instance with baptism with the Spirit, should be the same, and I also feel that we are now on a verge of beginning to use people's gifts in more creative planned activities. I wonder if these changes simply reflect changes in society as a whole that is more sceptical of hype and more tolerant of differences and desire more creativity.”

The full article is called 'Hands Down' and is the lead article in the March issue of Christianity. You can read it here if you have a subscription. Otherwise you will need to see if you can find any copies of this issue that have not sold out yet.

Citizens of Two Kingdoms

The final part of the Awareness Course was a rather short section that encouraged us to be secure in our own faith as we discuss it with others and to bring in God’s kingdom in all that we do. I have really enjoyed this course and it is good to hear people in our church discussing issues to do with culture. I found it provided an essential backdrop to where we are as a church in Birmingham and a context to where the church in Britain and worldwide is currently at. Our church has more modules of this course but we have not quite decided how to work through them with, what will probably be, a smaller number of us who wish to continue.

Fear, Faith and Change

This week on the Awareness Course we were looking comparing what Christian believes about the authority of the scriptures and comparing that with Islam and Judaism. Apparently a major difference is that Islam sees the Quran as the ultimate authority. Every word is believed to be the word of God hence they read it in its original language and revere the actual books themselves. Interpretations or Sharia decide what is the correct meanings and application of the scripture i.e. what is Halal – the right thing to do. Similarly our Old Testament particularly the Torah is treated similarly by the Jews.

However these interpretations tend to be very literal whereas usually when Christians interpret the Bible we would tend to approach it differently. For instance we would attempt to understand the style of writing, take into account the context of a verse in the whole Bible and attempt to understand the cultural context in which it is written. We would then apply our understanding of these principles with an awareness of our ever changing cultural context. Though it is scary this means that we are forever journeying in our faith re-applying it to new cultural contexts in are ever changing world.

As Christians rather than saying that our ultimate authority is the Bible many would tend to say that our ultimate authority is Jesus. We would use the Bible as a sign post to point us and others to Christ rather than a finishing post. Of course we love the Bible and it is very dear to us but we do not exalt it to a place of authority above God himself. But rather than simply using our logic to prove points of doctrine from texts in the Bible we are thrown back on God himself to discern how to apply the Bible to our situations that will involve relating to people who may be living very differently from ourselves.

BTW you might be interested in David Matthew's notes on this book that challenges the idea of the inerrancy of scripture.

Half Term News

Half term has nearly gone and I’ve still got lots of marking to do. As well as playing on facebook, I have so far managed to catch up with some reviews for Crossrhythms and be part of an interesting discussion on mission in our church.

But I have had some time with my little daughter Callie. One day we went to Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery again and did another workshop at the icon gallery. We also popped into the Halcyon Gallery on the way.

I’ve also been catching up with the news. I’ve been following the recent debate in the news about the role of Sharia law. I think that these comments by Richard Sudworth are the most sensible response that I have found so far. What do you think?

Tolerance, Dialogue or Embracing Diversity

We had another interesting discussion last week in the Awareness Course. This time it was on how to dialogue with other faiths. The main emphasis was on humility. By this we meant realising that our faith is ‘incomplete’ in the sense that we are all on a journey trying to understand our faith better. We wouldn’t say that all faiths lead to God but we had to admit that Judaism is based on God’s revelation in the Old Testament and Islam appears to have some Christian roots. Even though we may disagree with the teachings of these faiths we still wondered if someone of these faiths – or others for that matter – who were sincerely seeking God may find him without hearing the message of Jesus.

Anna did a great job pointing to the idea that since Christ died for all then all or justified, for which there is possible support for in scripture. She deliberately presented this as an interesting idea but quite as a convincing idea. What would be the motivation for mission if this was the case? We were a little more convinced that as God reveals himself in creation then there may be a possibility that someone could come to know God without hearing the message of Jesus. But I think in this section we were saying more about what we didn’t know than what we did know. But that isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Also we discussed how we may learn from other people who are not Christian ways of outworking our faith. For instance, Eastern culture can teach us a lot about hospitality that we don’t practice in the West as we are socialised to retreat into our own private worlds – especially as we are so busy with our stress filled lives. But hospitality is more than having people round for a meal. Helen mentioned the idea of imaging we are the host wherever we go and so making sure everything is alright for everyone. Finally we were challenged to think of who we know who has a different faith and how we can be hospitable to them.

Mission Shaped Intro

Another course that is worth a look is this one on Mission Shaped stuff from CMS. Follow the PowerPoints and PDFs and find some interesting thoughts on rethinking church to reach contemporary culture. One difficulty I have with this is that it is obviously aimed at people in settings such as Anglican and Methodist and feeling a bit ineffective. Not that any type of churches have all the answers but it would be interesting to adapt this to take other types of churches, such as ones like ours, as starting points in the re-thinking process.

The Resurgence of Religion

Today in the Awareness Course we were discussing religious fundamentalism and how this as increased across the world in recent years as a reaction to increased secularism in Europe and yet has different roots in the Middle East and America. Fundamentalism is often viewed negatively. To be fundamentalist as it is associated with very arrogant thinking and literal interpretations of scriptures. None of identified ourselves as fundamentalists but maybe we would have done many years ago. Unfortunately we didn’t really get a chance to discuss evangelicalism.

We had a bit of a history lesson not only looking at how the Enlightenment in Europe heralded the way for secularism but more interesting tracing history back to Middle East we were also noting that there was a time when Christians, Jews and Muslims lived together in a greater harmony than today. Eventually their cultures were suppressed by the Ottoman Empire which apparently they have never recovered from and they are still trying to re-establish their cultural identities today but very much in conflict with each other. I wondered what they had in the past that we don’t have today.

We then briefly turned our attention to the States. It was interesting to note that Americans prefix their national identity with say English-American or Afro-American. We discussed how this American identity is reinforced seeking a common enemy – terrorism today – ‘reds under the bed’ 50 years ago. We finished off mentioning that although associated with influences of moral majority/right wing fundamentalism it is surprising how much immorality comes out of American media.

How to download videos from YouTube

I recently saw this little ad on anorexia. I’ll be teaching anorexia at college soon. Although it is great that we can show the internet in class through the computer projectors it is frustrating that videos are blocked. I found it on YouTube and thought that it was a pity that YouTube doesn’t let you download the videos. 'Is there another way?' I asked. Well a colleague showed me keepvid.com. If you copy the address of your video into this site then it will save it for you. The downside is that you need to install the video player from keepvid's site in order to watch the video. So though this will enable me to play any YouTube video when I’m offline on my laptop I still can’t use it at college because the college system won’t let me install the player. Oh well! Never mind.

Living in a Global Village

Globalization was the topic for this week’s Awareness Course. Our fast developing communications technology means that it feels like the world is getting smaller. Increasingly your location on the globe becomes irrelevant as you can talk to anyone anywhere and have products transported from anywhere to your doorstep. Time doesn’t matter that much either out of season as fruit and vegetables are increasingly available. This has produced improvements in the quality of people’s lives especially in the West but at what cost?

Some of the effects that we discussed included how graduates in developing countries are likely to end up with careers in call centres, and how the vast majority of say our toys and shoes are made in China because labour is cheap there. But with raising fuel costs and increasing awareness of these conditions for how long can this keep prices down. Might the decline of farming and manufacturing in the West mean that we may not be in any position to compete?

The course argues that developing worlds perceive the influx of media technology (e.g. flat screen TVs, mobile phones, internet connections etc.) as a deliberate attempt by the West – especially by America – of exporting their culture. They see this as today’s imperialism or colonialism. New technology is resulting in a decline in respect for elders whose wisdom is becoming seen as dated. In a similar way they ask ‘Why should thousand year old civilizations be told what to do by a nation that is only a couple of hundred years old?’

On the other hand Westerners may feel invaded by the waves of immigration that have occurred in recent years. Whereas ethnic minorities to some extent may have retreated into ghettos we should remember that the Bible encourages us to be hospitable to aliens. We discussed how the Bible seems to affirm the idea of nations although it comes second to our citizenship of God’s kingdom and certainly should not be expressed at the expense of others. One interesting comment was that the sort of political correctness in local government that aimed to impose these minority cultures on the masses probably peaked about five years ago.

Conflict of Cultures in the Third Millennium

The Awareness course kicked off this morning and very quickly we got into a very interesting discussion about what it is like to live in Birmingham where so many cultures live side by side surprisingly peacefully despite the flare ups of the odd race riot that we thought is probably due more to poverty than ethnic issues. Which is worthy of note as the aim of the course is after all to help us as Christians living in a multi-cultural society to be aware of and to develop our understanding of other faiths and cultures in order bring peace.

The course discusses the fact that in a world recovering from colonialism people are asserting their own ideas of spirituality. It was commented that we are continually encouraged by our culture to be tolerant but the meaning of this term – as is the case with so many terms today – is mutating and coming to mean agree with or condone. Christians cannot afford to be like some of the puritans who withdrew from their culture but instead needs to be incarnational within it, i.e. we are to bring the attitudes of the Trinity into our relationship with others.

We are today in the UK living in post-Christian culture. There are still many principles in our laws that are grounded in a Judeo-Christian viewpoint such as being innocent until proven guilty by the testimony of witnesses and principles of hospitality to the foreigner. Interestingly we can see recent changes in the Government’s approach to multi-culturalism as the buzz word of ‘diversity’ is giving way to the new buzz word of ‘commonality’. Gordon Brown talks about what we all have in common as British citizens such as the values of fairness, respect and tolerance which we were saying is in effect an ‘over tolerance’.

So how are we as Christians to transform our culture? On one hand we can come over as too aggressive but on the other we can be like, “The man who marries the spirit of one age and becomes a widower in the next”. We discussed the values of complaining to the media and petitioning parliament as the ‘Christian Institute’ does and thought that it was more important to petition for laws that were issues of ‘justice’ to others rather than ‘righteousness’ for instance against laws that would impede us in to preach the gospel. But complaining or petitioning we said often come from an idea of defending God especially when people complain to media say about blasphemy. But our God does not need defending as “our saviour has already been humiliated”.

We wondered if we need to shift our focus on transforming our culture from one that complains and lobbies to one that says, let us do our work in a godly way just as Christians called to politics do their work in a godly way. We finally discussed how we are to both educate others and ourselves about our faith as we do this. It is as we apply our faith (and explain it to others) that we really come to understand it.

The Awareness Course

I am very excited about the a new midweek teaching programme that our church is about to embark on called ‘The Awareness Course’. This course was co-written by Father Nadim Nassar who spoke recently at Celebration 07 – the annual conference for our group of churches - and he is part of an organisation called the Trinity Foundation for Christianity and Culture. The course can be run in any type of church or denomination. It is designed to explore what it means to be a Christian in a multi-cultural world that embraces many different faiths. It discusses how we can hold on to our unique faith whilst still appreciating and respecting others as part of our diverse culture. To this end this course enables Christians to be strengthened in their own faith and to learn about other faiths at the same time. One of its stated aims is to reduce fear and ignorance, bringing peace and understanding whilst examining the world of the 21st century from a Christian viewpoint. It looks like this will involve both presentations and lots of discussion. Three of our church members have been trained to deliver this material and there are PowerPoints and lots of handouts that accompany this course. It all looks really good. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Merry Christmas

A very special welcome to everyone who is visiting after receiving our annual newsletter and wondering what the Derbyshire household are up to over Christmas. Well we have been hanging items on our Jesse Tree for most of advent and it will soon be complete. This year Nettes did a brilliant job of painting some branches that she found and we have one or two new figures. Having just had the living room plastered and painted we are wondering where to stick our autumn leaf card holders and I am getting ready for one of the big food shops early tomorrow morning.

I think we will start our family tradition of our twelve days of Christmas on Sunday. We have twelve nice meals and exchange small gifts each day usually after the meal. Our most special meal we will have on Monday and this time it is a Thai Green Vegetable Curry. This year will be a bit different as Nettes is doing a spot of agency work and will be helping out in a care home on Tuesday and Wednesday (Christmas Day and Boxing Day) and maybe on a couple of days the following week. But we are happy with this and will no doubt enjoy all our twelve days equally well.

The Golden Compass

Nettes & I recently had a night out watching the Golden Compass, the first film adaptation of Phillip Pullman’s trilogy: His Dark Materials, thanks to Ruth who babysat for us. Being a fan of science fiction/fantasy and having read these brilliantly written thought provoking novels some years ago I certainly enjoyed this adaptation. It is never quite the same watching a film after reading the books, the story did seem to whiz by far too quickly and I must admit to feeling a little cheated as the final scenes of the first novel have been held over to the next film. Nevertheless it was acted, well written and the special effects were breathtaking. I would say that it is well worth seeing.

It is not surprising that some Catholic organisations are calling for a boycott of the film as the baddies are a religious authority albeit in the film called the Magisterium rather than the Church. One thing I enjoy about His Dark Materials is the way that it shows that there is a place in our culture for stories that discuss serious issues in allegorical ways. I just cannot understand Christians who demand boycotts or banning of something just because they might disagree with its message. But as it is a children’s film the question this raises is if we disagree with its message should we take our kids to see it? If you watched the film you might wonder what all the fuss is about. Many films rely and magic and portray behaviour that we wouldn’t encourage in real life. What is disturbing about these stories is much more subtle than this.

You see there is actually a lot in these novels that is good but there is a sting in the tail, so to speak. Pullman critiques the abuse of religious power well even exposing that the force behind it is spiritual and that it can give a false hope in the afterlife. I think that we must be careful not to misunderstand and therefore defend what Pullman rightly criticises. I would see the story as a modern day allegory akin to the fall of Babylon in Book of Revelation or Jesus' parables that criticised the Pharisees. What Pullman offers as an alternative to this false belief in the end is a belief in human freedom. This is a good point but it ultimately stops short the true spirituality that is my own experience. It is not really until the final pages that Pullman’s fervent atheism becomes crystal clear as he preaches, and he does preach, about the ‘Republic of Heaven’ which is ultimately a secular humanist message that I must reject.

This raises an important question of to what extent we should shelter our children from ideas, messages and worldviews with which we differ. On one hand we have a responsibility to teach what we believe to be the truth. But on the other we need to make it plain that there are many other beliefs and ideas out there. They need to be familiar with these if they are ever going to have an impact for God. And as they learn about these we need to trust God that he will lead them into the truth. There are dangers in not letting our children watch the movie that we appear like the Magisterium who hush up dangerous thoughts. Yet if we do choose to encourage seeing this movie we would need to feel conversant enough with the issues raised to be able to discuss them meaningfully with our children and to encourage them to discuss this story with others putting forward their faith as the true answer. With older children who are already secure in there faith this could be helpful both as a critique of power abuse and as a discussion starter with their friends as long as parents are willing and able to enter into these sort of discussions with their children.

So should you take your kids to see it? You've heard what I think. Here are two very good articles discussing the issue further. Kester Brewin says yes. Simon Dillon says no. The choice is yours.

Homegroup on Mission

Last week our homegroup was discussing some of the past teaching in the church. Our focus was one message on Mission. We were saying how practicing the presence of God then this will enable us to have an influence for good on those around us. Luke 4 shows us that Jesus came to deal with poverty (spiritually and physically) and to bring insight and bring liberation from oppression and debt. Yes, we too have the same mission. Where are we doing this? We talked about projects such as our kids club and youth club but also our partnership with Karis Neighbour Scheme. But also we can help the poor and oppressed by changing our shopping habits e.g. consider how products are made or farmed, buy fair trade & not trade with companies that oppress people. We also noted the importance of peace (Hebrew: shalom = wholeness) in John 20::21 "Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I am sending you." and that Jesus gospel involves teaching all principles including shalom and liberation not just what we thing of as ‘the gospel’ in Matthew 28:19-20 "Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you". We were asked at the end what one thing we could put into action this week as a result of this word. I said that we would buy fair trade coffee for the church on Sunday morning before anyone else got a chance to buy any other coffee!

Men's Breakfast with Hudson Luwi from Zambia

I’ve just got back from a men’s breakfast with Hudson Luwi from Lusaka in Zambia. Seven of us ate and chatted with Hudson at the Reservoir Café and then we adjourned to the Ledbury Centre. I was struck by how Hudson is so humble and unassuming. It was only as the morning progressed that I realised that he leads a church of about 300 and then later that he has responsibility for a few other churches of similar sizes and teaches at a Bible College. It is clear that he lives by his motto of leadership that it is relational, that we lead by influencing people and that we can best influence people by having relationship with them.

How had he managed so much with so little resources? In the West we have so much that our first port of call is to those resources. When we have no access to these things then our first call must be on God. Another insightful comment that he made about Britain is that Christians talk about their faith very quietly. He was saying that we should not be ashamed but be proud to be Christians and not divide our spiritual life from our ordinary life. He encouraged us to be talking about spiritual things at work say just as we do at church.

Hudson was talking about how his church was active in the community for example by giving away clean water. Rather than expecting people to come to their meetings they were actively going into the community not so much to knock doors or preach in the streets but to be available to serve people. He said that they had seen big evangelists breeze in and make many ‘converts’ whom they never saw again. He would rather see Christians building relationships, having one-to-one conversations and serving people.

But what is our ‘clean water’ with which we can serve our community? I wondered. Hudson was saying that rather than making great plans and budgeting lots of money they had followed Jesus’ call to come and follow him. When Jesus called the apostles they knew that the end result would be but not the exact steps to get there. Jesus led them one step at a time. In the same way he talked about how he had taken one step at a time to build their church building from which they are now giving away the clean water and how with God’s help they had even survived opposition from urban gangs.

I am looking forward to seeing more of Hudson and his family on Sunday.

Spiritual Formation and Mission – Part 3

At last here is the long awaited third part of my treatise on evangelism.

I think a very important aspect of my spiritual formation is reading and meditating on the scriptures and sharing my thoughts on these with others. The Bible is my spiritual food so why do I starve myself by avoiding reading it or thinking about it's implications on my life? It is not just reading and re-reading the Bible that is important but understanding what it means to me so that I can apply it to my life. Over the past year once a month in the small groups we have been discussing how what we are learning as a church can be applied to our lives. One theme that keeps coming out in our group is that it is important to take the next step and discuss these issues with those who do not share our experience. A scary thought. Yet passages such as Luke 10 remind us that God sends us out into the world on a mission and though we sometimes feel he is distant actually he is always present. Our security stems from God’s parental care for us. He gives us a secure base from which to venture into the world and initiate such discussions. Often we are afraid to make these true two way discussions. The world has plenty to learn from us and God’s presence with us means that we can learn what is good from anyone as God will lead us into all truth.

But of course sometimes it can be difficult to have meaningful discussions with people unless we have some form of relationship with them. It is very easy to be an inward looking group and just relate with other Christians. In my teaching on the psychology of relationships I point out that there are two important factors in who we tend to relate to. We tend to form relationships with those that are similar to us and think the same as us. And we tend to form relationships with those who we perceive to have desirable characteristics. I think that this is very relevant to Christians. Our teaching often implies that those outside the faith are different and offer nothing except to fulfil our need for evangelism and could even lead us astray. So it is no wonder that we tend not to develop genuine relationships with them. And that we don't see them as equals with whom we can have an honest two way discussion when it comes to talking about spiritual matters. If we cannot even cross this divide how are we ever going to reach those that differ from us in other ways such as in culture, sexuality and class? Perhaps it is time that Christians learn the true meaning of agape, caring for, having fellowship with, facing up to and having spiritual discussions with people that are outside the church just as we do with people in the church.

Any thoughts?

Book Preview: Everything Must Change

From reading reviews about Brian McLaren’s new book ‘Everything Must Change’ it appears to basically look at how Christians can engage in our culture to change the world. Brian sees Jesus message as one that is revolutionary to the world and has implications both sociologically and politically. It’s a great step forward for an American Christian to talk about fair trade and to attack the fast food industry. Where I hear caution about this book in the free use of ideas from Latin American Liberation Theology. I think he might be in danger of being dismissed by American fundamentalists as going liberal. I understand that his view of the end-times is what is called a transmillenial position so that he thinks that even the second coming and resurrection have already happened. I struggle with the implications of this for our individual eternal life. Perhaps he is merely redirecting the focus to a 'Kingdom Now' viewpoint. If so he's saying nothing more than many of us have said for a long time. Elsewhere Brian says that he does believe in the need for hope beyond death but as far as I can see he does not take this to be what salvation is all about. Perhaps he overstating the point but nevertheless this book does appear to be a very interesting landmark in Christian publishing that really does suggest ways of bringing in the kingdom at an international level addressing such areas as our damage to the environment, lack of peace in the world and the growing problem of proverty.