taking a long view

Every now and then, we in the church need to step back and take a long view. God’s kingdom is beyond our efforts, even our vision. In a lifetime, we participate in only a fraction of God’s work. While we cannot do everything, we can do something. Incomplete as it may be, it is a step along the way, a beginning, and something for God to bless. God’s grace does the rest. End results? We may never see them but only hold them trusting in God’s future promises. We are servants, not saviors. We are ministers, not messianic figures. We are prophets of a future not of our own making but for which we hope and for which we make a defense in our life. We believe God will create a new heart in us and a new world out of the old.

Peter Steinke, A Door Set Open

speaking the language of Jesus' heart

Commenting on Paul's words in Romans 8:14-16, Mark McIntosh says,

Paul is saying that what the Spirit does in us is to draw us into a relationship, a loving relationship into which we are adopted as children of God. This relationship is the relationship between Jesus and his Abba or Father. As the Spirit brings Christ's life to birth in our life, we find ourselves sharing with Christ in the most central and characteristic aspect of his life - namely the relationship that defines him and marks him as God's beloved child, his relationship with God as the loving source of his whole life. And more wonderfully yet, we find that we do not remain mute observers of this relationship but that the Spirit actually teaches us the very language of Jesus' conversation with the Father. The Spirit puts Jesus' words of loving adoration and trust in our own hearts and makes it possible for us to speak them ourselves.

(Mysteries of Faith, p.15)

learning from philip gould

A number of things struck me from Alistair Campbell's reflections on the death of his friend and Labour colleague, Philip Gould - for example, that focus groups were more about making sure lower/middle class views were not overlooked (and, so, were an expression of justice, not pragmatism). But it was this paragraph that most caught my eye, partly because it reflects some of the strengths that pastors need to display:

Like most meaningful activities, campaigns are team games. Philip was the ultimate team player and team builder; keeping spirits up; staying calm when others were falling out or falling apart; never losing sight of the big goals. Perhaps alone of the key New Labour figures, he made few, if any, enemies. He was a healer. Even in these past few weeks, he has been trying to heal some of the rifts and scars of the New Labour years.

your number's up

Apparently (althought I harbour some doubt as to accuracy) I am the 3,214,534,297th person to have been born into the world.

You can find out your own number here.

how to disarm jeremy paxman

This is a great example of clear, gracious, winsome speech.

HT: David Murray

the affections of unbelief

Nick Nowalk has a great piece over at The Harvard Icthus entitled The Christian Epistemology of Narnia. Apart from a long and judicious quotation from The Magician's Nephew, Nick offers his own thoughts on unbelief, including this:

it cannot be the case that people fail to believe in Jesus because they are not intelligent enough or incapable of evaluating the evidence coherently.  While sin smears the ways we choose to perceive the world, it is ultimately our affections that are the problem, not our brute capacity for seeing what is there.  Human beings would not have had higher IQ’s if they had not become sinners.  They would simply be more open to the truth in love instead of suppressing it in unrighteousness.  For Christians, the primary epistemological problem is humanity’s hardness of heart toward spiritual beauty.  We simply like the fantasy worlds of our own construction (where we are at the center) better than the real world where there is an awesome Lord who stands over against us in judgment and grace, calling us to account and beckoning us to align our perception of reality around Him.  

downtime & sacred space

Scott Belsky makes some fine points in this article about the need for downtime and sacred space.

It doesn't take much imagination to see his points are all grounded in a biblical understanding of life in God's image, even where unacknowledged.

the transfer of emotion

In the course of an article on Really Bad Powerpoint, Seth Godin makes these remarks:

Communication is about getting others to adopt your point of view, to help them understand why you’re excited (or sad, or optimistic or whatever else you are.)  If all you want to do is create a file of facts and figures, then cancel the meeting and send in a report.

May be some stuff in there for preachers to mull over. In a phrase, his point is that "Communication is the transfer of emotion", not just information.

being a disciple

Watching this conversation with Matt Chandler made me realise, again, that all Christians - no matter what their service - are first and foremost disciples of Jesus.

What would it take for you to believe in God?

Philip Pullman was recently interviewed (for the 5-minute interview slot) by Matthew Stadlen. Asled if he was an agnostic or an atheist, he said that, strictly speaking, he was an agnostic since he could not know for sure, but on a small scale (having seen no evidence to convince him) he was atheist. Stadlen then asked what it would take for him to believe in God - his reply was:

A direct experience of some sort, I imagine. I don't think rational argument would ever do it.

Mull that one over.

a competent minister

Maybe your ambition is to be described in somewhat more glowing terms than 'a competent minister'. But that's Paul's claim for himself and his companions (2 Cor. 3:4-6). I wonder what comes to mind when you think of that phrase: someone who can preach an ok sermon, has a good bedside manner for hospital visiting and feels at ease with young people? A competent minister.

I think Paul might be claiming something different and something more. He speaks about them being made competent (notice the source of the competency) "as ministers of a new covenant - not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life."

There is a real need for those who handle God's Word to know how to handle the transition from old to new covenant and what that means for those called to live as followers of Jesus. It isn't a sermonising skill - far from it; it is broader and deeper. It's being able to navigate waters of interpretation and application that honour Christ and the Spirit, that breathes life and vitality and newness, that addresses life in the Spirit in the here and now. That doesn't mean it's about how you handle the charismatic issue (that would be a shallow conclusion), but how we promote and cultivate and teach a life that is built on the reality that "Christ is the end of the law" (Rom. 10:4) and that radiates the glory of the new covenant (2 Cor. 312ff).

Perhaps your prayer - like mine - is to be made competent, knowing how demanding the task is and not claiming anything special for ourselves.

China: more at church than in the whole of Europe

See this article from the BBC.

You can listen to the radio show here.

Paul Helm on Christian Hedonism

In concert with reflections on religious affections, Paul Helm has also written a couple of pieces on the topic of 'Christian Hedonism'. I think he makes some very helpful and, although his interest in not aimed at this, some pastorally-necessary observations.

Part 1 - Baring Our Souls

Part 2 - Further Thoughts

Middle-aged & gloomy?

Then you might want to have a read of this...

a Christological defeat

Christianity Today has published the reflections of several prominent church leaders to the events of 9/11 and the decade that has followed. Here are the thoughts of Will Willimon, presiding bishop of the North Alabama Conference of the United Methodist Church. (HT: Scot McKnight - with apologies for replicating his post)

On 9/11 I thought, For the most powerful, militarized nation in the world also to think of itself as an innocent victim is deadly. It was a rare prophetic moment for me, considering Presidents Bush and Obama have spent billions asking the military to rectify the crime of a small band of lawless individuals, destroying a couple of nations who had little to do with it, in the costliest, longest series of wars in the history of the United States.

The silence of most Christians and the giddy enthusiasm of a few, as well as the ubiquity of flags and patriotic extravaganzas in allegedly evangelical churches, says to me that American Christians may look back upon our response to 9/11 as our greatest Christological defeat. It was shattering to admit that we had lost the theological means to distinguish between the United States and the kingdom of God. The criminals who perpetrated 9/11 and the flag-waving boosters of our almost exclusively martial response were of one mind: that the nonviolent way of Jesus is stupid. All of us preachers share the shame; when our people felt very vulnerable, they reached for the flag, not the Cross.

September 11 has changed me. I'm going to preach as never before about Christ crucified as the answer to the question of what's wrong with the world. I have also resolved to relentlessly reiterate from the pulpit that the worst day in history was not a Tuesday in New York, but a Friday in Jerusalem when a consortium of clergy and politicians colluded to run the world on our own terms by crucifying God's own Son.

in my seat

Events do not shape leaders; decisions do

A very interesting article over at HBR about a leader's role in a crisis. Worth pondering for anyone involved in serving the church, not only in times of crisis but more generally.

the ambiguity of all language

Over at Koinonia, Bill Mounce asks the question, Who reigns in the millenial kingdom? Maybe not the kind of question you worry about too much, but his point is more about language and translation and interpretation. His concluding paragraph makes salutary points:

I am coming to believe that language is the stringing of one ambiguity after another. Having served on two translation teams has only strengthened this conviction; what one person hears is not always what the other person hears. An important point for all preachers to ponder. For the exegete, we must see that language is not always precise, and so our exegesis must see the range of meaning for a word or grammatical construction, and then as always make a decision in light of the context.

metaphors for ministry

Over the summer holiday, I read John Stott's fine book The Preacher's Portrait. These were addresses given in 1961 at Fuller Theological Seminary in which he considered 5 metaphors used in the New Testament for the work of ministry: Steward, Herald, Witness, Father and Servant.


A similar track is taken by Derek Tidball in his helpful work Builders & Fools: Leadership the Bible Way. He also explores ministry metaphors, choosing to focus on Ambassador, Athlete, Builder, Fool, Parent, Pilot, Scum and Shepherd (he kindly arranged them in alphabetical order, for the obsessives amongst us....).


Both books I've found really helpful, in all sorts of ways, but I want to ask some questions and to invite you to help me think some issues through (there is some overlap in how I've framed them):


i. To what extent are the metaphors used in the New Testament tied to their cultural situation or would you see them as trans-cultural?


ii. How transferable are they? How ought we to appropriate them? How would you, for example, apply the metaphor of 'herald' today? How do we delineate the notions behind the metaphors?


iii. Ought we to also seek to employ metaphors for ministry from today's world? If so, what might they be? Do they need to be modern equivalents of the biblical ones or can we expand the list - that is, are the Bible's metaphors descriptive or prescriptive?

overwhelmed with stuff to do?

Need to make your to-do list actually doable? Maybe the good folks at Lifehacker can help you.