Marilynne Robinson, God and Calvin

Just re-read an article from The Guardian, published last year, on the above subject. If you've read any of her novels, or have an interest in Calvinism, you might want to read it too.

books on finding God's will

are probably legion - but here are 3 that seem to offer real help (judging by sample chapters via kindle)

Kevin DeYoung - Just Do Something (surely deserving of an award for best sub-title...)

Jerry Sittser - The Will of God as a Way of Life

Bruce Waltke - Finding the Will of God: A Pagan Notion?

your children will be what you eat (and do)

This piece in the Guardian caught my eye - makes for interesting reading.

Whilst pondering the issues it raises, I couldn't but think that epigenetics sounds akin to 'the sins of the fathers being visited on their children for generations'. It also speaks to the corporate nature of humanity and the solidarity of the human race.

(nb: the piece isn't sympathetic to creationist views)

elemental preaching

There's a very rewarding, challenging piece over at LeadershipJournal.net by Mark Labberton.

In his search for stability in his Christian life, visiting a variety of churches, he says he was looking for a preacher "with theological gravity at the core." What would that look like? "No escapism, no denial of suffering, no spiritual pretense."

It's an article to ponder slowly.

Try these paragraphs:

In part, the power of the gospel's gravitational pull lies in its totality, the sheer scale, the utter range and depth of God's creation and re-creation. It's all this in joy and in pain, in beauty and in tragedy, in assurance and in struggle. The attraction of personality, humor, intelligence, form, and style of some preachers can no doubt be attractive, even controlling. But there is no true north in these qualities. Our complex and needy lives, individually and collectively, cannot find hope in the preacher. Hope is only found in the grip of God, whose love and power are sufficient for our story and the whole story.

In my travels to different churches, I did find preachers and congregations among whom I sensed the great pull of the gospel defining and clarifying, healing and renewing the core of their lives. It was not evident because of any particular communication skill. These pastors were varied in age and tradition, but there were some things they had in common: they exuded a life that primarily bore witness to Jesus Christ in character and in attitude even more than in word. They simultaneously conveyed both an honest discipleship and an honest humanity; they seemed to know suffering, their own or others. They were not glib about their role; they had discovered in weakness that Christ was the Center who could and did hold them together.

His comments on the light and air of preaching are truly weighty.

an all-round ministry

I was thinking the other day about preaching - about the need to preach full-orbed sermons that don't moralise, even whilst they instruct and call for faith and obedience etc. That seems, at times, like quite a hard call.

But then it struck me (sometimes I'm pretty blind to the obvious) that when we then sit around the Lord's Table (as we do) after the sermon, whatever I may have failed to say well enough, or fully enough, is now being portrayed for all to see. They're tasting - and seeing - that the Lord is good.

And then, yesterday, it also occurred to me that, in fact, the praying and the singing and the reading and the fellowship of God's people are all a part of that same witness to God's grace too. And so I don't need - am not called - to do everything in the preaching. Yes, to preach Christ as well as I can - not moralising but preaching grace. Yet such preaching is not being done in a vacuum; God has many ways of displaying truth.

Those thoughts don't make me feel that sloppy preaching is okay, but they do give me a sense of liberty and security in seeking to minister faithfully.

friday night spotify: walk under ladders

Been waiting for this for a while and now they've got it up on spotify - Joan Armatrading's 1981 album, Walk Under Ladders.

I remember my good pal Garry Fenley having the cassette of it and it's a real treat to hear it again. Very poppy and possessed of one of the best tracks of all time, The Weakness In Me.

Sweet memories.

wired for words

When the iPad was announced, I posted some thoughts and linked to an article that postulated some possibilities. Here's a video of what things might look like in the future...



(HT: Matt Perman)

the excellence of ridderbos

You'll already know, avid reader (I don't presume that you are plural), that I've found Herman Ridderbos on John's Gospel to be extremely helpful. I want to just flesh-out why that is, with reference to his treatment of the woman at the well in John 4.

It's a favourite account with preachers and has so much to go at, in psychological terms - married five times, living with a bloke, trying to divert Jesus' attention from her sin and onto extraneous religious issues. Thing is, John's account doesn't support that interpretation. As Ridderbos demonstrates, it's far more about the salvation-historical significance of Jesus and his ministry.

For instance, the repeated emphasis upon Jacob - it's his well, a gift to his people. Is Jesus greater than he? Then there's the focus on water and living water - terms that are pregnant with OT symbolism of God's coming kingdom and reign.

And when Jesus displays his prescience regarding her marital state, she responds to his prophetic status by asking about how God can be truly known. Instead of saying, 'Whoah, I haven't finished with your sin yet, lady', Jesus answers her in explicitly salvation-historical terms: an hour is coming...and has now come. And his answer is not only to her but is a message for all the Samaritans (verses 21 & 22 speak in plural terms - this is not so much about her as an individual as about them as a group).

All this (and more), Ridderbos sees here and expresses its meaning with clarity and richness.

evernote: sheer class

I may have mentioned Evernote before but I want to highlight a feature I've never used but which works amazingly well.

I took a photo on my phone (a Nokia N79 for those who'd like to know the details) of my whiteboard with notes on it (essentially, the same photo that's on this blog but with a few extra scribbles). I emailed the photo from the phone into my Evernote account. It duly showed up on my PC.

Now, here's the really clever thing: when you do a search in Evernote, it scans photos, too, and if it finds the word in the image, it includes it in the results. To test it out, I searched for the word 'Spirit', since it was written fairly plainly in the whiteboard photo (albeit written as 'Spirit/Truth'). Evernote found it.

I was impressed but assumed Evernote would be hampered by my untidy writing (using a whiteboard is new to me, you understand). So I did a search on the word 'Prescience' (in the photo, it looks more like the word 'Prescence', apart from the dot which hints at an 'i' in the word). Again, Evernote found it.

Now THAT'S impressive.

the return from atheism of peter hitchens

There's a fascinating piece by Peter Hitchens here - not simply in terms of the debate between theism and atheism but also in terms of family histories and issues that are deeper and more important than the mechanics of debate.

Well worth a read.

sharing playlists on spotify

OK, so you probably already know all about this feature on spotify - but here's my first shared playlist. It's a collection of some of Neil Young's longer, guitar-drenched songs and some shorter workouts too.

Here ya go.

an office addition

A whiteboard, for sketching-out sermon thoughts etc - and probably shopping lists left surreptitiously by the wife....

music to work to

Looking for some music that will help you focus and get things done? Maybe the Ambient series by Brian Eno will do the trick:

Ambient 1/Music for Airports

Ambient 2/The Plateau of Mirror (with Harold Budd)

Ambient 3/Day of Radiance

Ambient 4/On Land

William Deresiewicz wrote a fascinating piece on leadership and solitude. Part of his intention was to stress the need for leaders to develop the ability to think and to think for themselves. A prerequisite for that, he suggests, is solitude. But he then gives that a subtle twist:

So solitude can mean introspection, it can mean the concentration of focused work, and it can mean sustained reading. All of these help you to know yourself better. But there’s one more thing I’m going to include as a form of solitude, and it will seem counterintuitive: friendship. Of course friendship is the opposite of solitude; it means being with other people. But I’m talking about one kind of friendship in particular, the deep friendship of intimate conversation. Long, uninterrupted talk with one other person. Not Skyping with three people and texting with two others at the same time while you hang out in a friend’s room listening to music and studying. That’s what Emerson meant when he said that “the soul environs itself with friends, that it may enter into a grander self-acquaintance or solitude.”

Introspection means talking to yourself, and one of the best ways of talking to yourself is by talking to another person. One other person you can trust, one other person to whom you can unfold your soul. One other person you feel safe enough with to allow you to acknowledge things—to acknowledge things to yourself—that you otherwise can’t. Doubts you aren’t supposed to have, questions you aren’t supposed to ask. Feelings or opinions that would get you laughed at by the group or reprimanded by the authorities.

This is what we call thinking out loud, discovering what you believe in the course of articulating it. But it takes just as much time and just as much patience as solitude in the strict sense. And our new electronic world has disrupted it just as violently. Instead of having one or two true friends that we can sit and talk to for three hours at a time, we have 968 “friends” that we never actually talk to; instead we just bounce one-line messages off them a hundred times a day. This is not friendship, this is distraction.

I know that none of this is easy for you. Even if you threw away your cell phones and unplugged your computers, the rigors of your training here keep you too busy to make solitude, in any of these forms, anything less than very difficult to find. But the highest reason you need to try is precisely because of what the job you are training for will demand of you.

I found what he said really helpful. Every pastor needs a friend like that. But it also occurred to me that what he wrote could also be thought of in terms of prayer, too.

(HT: Matt Perman)

two free audio books

You likely know that Christian Audio give away a free audio book each month. Well, this month it's TWO free audio books - the classic Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonheoffer and the other is Fifty Reasons Why Jesus Came To Die by John Piper.

What good reason do you have not to download them?

the great albums (3) - wilder

Growing-up is hard. Or so this album by The Teardrop Explodes says. From being a boy, falling-out with your mates and the storied reality of rafts and ships and shark attacks, to the confusion of life's demands as an adult. No wonder you'd storm out of the culture bunker with your finger on the pin.

Right from the off, 'All my life I've been bent out of shape' sings Cope, but this isn't going to be bedsitter-fodder. It's way too smart for that and isn't really about falling in and out of love. It's bigger in scope and scale; seven views of Jerusalem and talk of great dominions - it's epic and it's one tiny bit manic.

Cope has a way with words. They don't always make (apparent) sense but they always make an impact - 'the bitter concealed has now congealed' is a worthy image and it isn't alone. Maybe the centrepiece of the album is Tiny Children (Oh I could make a meal of that wonderful despair I feel but, waking up, I turn and face the wall') but it's buttressed by the energetic Passionate Friend ('celebrate the great escape from lunacy dividing') and is, ultimately, outshone by the closer, The Great Dominions ('Mummy, I've been fighting again').

Is it immediate? No. Is it sustained brilliance? Not really - there are gaps. But the best moments more than make up for any inadequacies.

The album was released in 1981 and I bought it in late January '83. For years I regarded it as lightweight and pretentious. Perhaps it is. But maybe, just maybe, it's a deliberate ploy and is the reason why it can detonate profound reactions.

Is it fun? Yeah, of course it is - but what, and who, are you laughing at?

(nb: the spotify album has extra tracks - the original album only has tracks 1-11. i haven't listened to the extra tracks and offer no comment on them)

preacher, it's not about you

A couple of interesting pieces on giving a presentation from Psychology Today.

Worth a quick gander.

How to Give a Presentation Part I: It's Not About You

How to Give a Presentation Part II: Tell A Good Story

do real men knit?

You could do worse than to ask Bezalel, Oholiab and their colleagues:

Then Moses said to the Israelites, "See, the LORD has chosen Bezalel son of Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah, and he has filled him with the Spirit of God, with wisdom, with understanding, with knowledge and with all kinds of skills — to make artistic designs for work in gold, silver and bronze, to cut and set stones, to work in wood and to engage in all kinds of artistic crafts. And he has given both him and Oholiab son of Ahisamak, of the tribe of Dan, the ability to teach others. He has filled them with skill to do all kinds of work as engravers, designers, embroiderers in blue, purple and scarlet yarn and fine linen, and weavers — all of them skilled workers and designers. (Exodus 35:30-35)

walt & wilf in preaching

Chatting to a teacher the other day, we spoke about looking for outcomes from the lesson. One way that is handled is by each lesson having a WALT ('We Are Learning To') and a WILF ('What I'm Looking For') - what is the intended outcome of the lesson (WALT) and what is the evidence it has been achieved (WILF).

It struck me that it might be useful to adapt that approach to the preaching context - having established the lines of meaning and application in the passage, to ask what I hope people will know, feel & do as a result of listening to the sermon and what the evidence of that might consist in.

It's not particularly revolutionary but maybe it helps to focus thinking on the hearer, rather than the deliverer, and on genuine transformation of lives rather than simply transfer of information.

kindle: sample chapters

Avid readers of this blog (as distinct from aphid readers of this blog, of which there are swarms) will know that I do not have a Kindle, the Amazon ebook reader (again, please feel free to rectify my lack), but that I do have the freely-available PC and iPhone Kindle apps . You buy books in the same way and get to read them on your PC or on your iPhone.

Well, I thought you'd like to know that, most of the time, a sample chapter or so can be downloaded for free, to see if you'd like to buy the book. Yesterday, I downloaded about seven such chapters of books by Don Carson, William Willimon, Craig Blomberg and the likes.

So, my advice is pour yourself a coffee and settle down to read - think of it as a leisurely browse without the prospect of a shop assistant demanding to know if you intend to buy the book and, if not, please put it back on the shelf. And if you've creased the spine, you're paying for it.