Books

I was pointed towards a brilliant site, Library Thing. A great site for book lovers with some cool widgets for blogs.

Audio and Video of Brian McLaren

From the front page of the EA Scotland site you can listen to Brian McLaren speaking at St Paul and St George's on Love Came Boldly (1 John 1:1-4) and view a video of Brian, a podcast recorded during his visit to Scotland in Dec 08.

Both well worth checking out.

Unity2transform

During 2009 EA Scotland in partnership with a number of other groups will be hosting prayer events in 10 towns and cites around Scotland under the banner Unity2transform.

It is always good to encourage prayer and to meet for prayer, there is no other reason needed. However, to unite in prayer with the aim of seeing transformation is exciting.

We are holding one of these events in Stranraer on Sat 30th May - watch out for more details later.

I was reflecting on this banner and the word transform. Our initial thought might be that we are uniting 2 transform someone else, or something else. Our community, our nation, our neighbours, our church and yes, all of these need transforming.

What about ourselves? Don't we need to be transformed? In prayer do we seek to change God, or have God change us? Surely it is the latter. In our uniting for prayer we will be the ones who are transformed. In this we will become agents of transformation in our communities, our nation, our neighbourhoods, our church.

Which culture?

At the CWW re-energise 4 conference a minor theme that came through was the enslavement of the gospel to a modern, rational culture. The challenge was given to free the gospel from this cultural slavery and re-engage with the gospel.

I've only got two problems with this.

1. Even the presentations asking us to free the gospel from a modern culture were at best asking us to locate the gospel in a different cultural expression. We are all creatures of our culture and it is difficult, if not impossible, to wholly step outside our culture. Perhaps the best we can do is be aware of our cultural preferences.

2. The Kingdom of Heaven, which is the theme of the preaching of the Lord Jesus, is counter-cultural. It is not counter one culture, e.g. a modern culture, and at home in another culture, whether ancient or post-modern. The Kingdom of Heaven is counter-every-human-culture. The life of a citizen of this Kingdom, as described in the Sermon on the Mount, cuts across every human cultural pattern and expectation.
The call of the Lord Jesus to live as citizens of his Kingdom is a call to a radical discipleship that will have us live against the grain of our received culture or any new culture we may adopt.

The way is narrow and the road is steep.

Not My BBC

The BBC are refusing to show an appeal from the Disasters Emergency Committee to seek aid to send relief to the suffering people of Gaza.

Read the BBC News report.
Visit the DEC site for information

This isn't about impartiality, it is about suffering and compassion. We all know that the politics of the Gaza/Israel situatin are complex, no one has an easy answer. But we must recognise the needs of the suffering and hear the cry of the needy. The only side such an appeal is asking us to take is the side of the poor.

Visit the DEC web site, watch the appeal on one of the other channels, pray for the poor and needy in Gaza.

Listening to Brian McLaren (3)

This is the last of my posts on my 24 hours with Brian McLaren. Thanks to Keith, Alistair of the New Evangelical Theological Symposium for the opportunity to be with you all.

Brian McLaren on the Big Questions
Speaking to a gathering of over 100 Brian addressed the big questions. He opened with an illustration from his time as a youth leader. He asked the young people what were the questions occupying their church groups, and then he asked what questions they discussed at school with non-Christian friends. The two lists were completely different and there could be no doubt which one was the more significant list. The point is that not only are our ‘church questions’ not relevant to our community beyond the church they are insignificant before a holy God who loves this world.

Brian has been studying the global problems we are all facing and asking what does the message of Jesus say about these problems. You can read of this in Brian’s book Everything Must Change. Brian has identified four global crises:
1) Our prosperity system can’t stop growing beyond the limits of sustainable growth,
2) The growing gap between the rich and the poor is stretching our equity system to breaking point,
3) Our security systems can’t cope with the anger of the poor and the fear of the rich,
4) Our world’s religions are failing to provide a story capable of dealing with the first three crises.

Does our telling and re-telling the story of Jesus and the good news of the Kingdom of God address these pressing crises? If it does not have we misunderstood the message of Jesus? Are we in fact misrepresenting the good news of the Kingdom which Jesus came to announce?
Clearly Brian is not replacing a set of irrelevant questions asked within our churches with a set of culturally relevant but equally irrelevant questions. Every culture does have its own irrelevant questions and the church exists to challenge these with the questions posed by the announcement of the Kingdom. Identifying these crises in this way may well be an example of how God uses such crises to recall his Church to a faithfulness to the good news of the Kingdom from which we have slipped. These are the big questions we must answer, knowing that Jesus and his message of the Kingdom provide the answer for us.

One of Keith Green’s songs had a line about how Jesus rose from the dead but the church is asleep in the light. Brian McLaren should serve as an alarm call to us. If we read or hear what he says we are challenged to reflect upon how we live and tell our Christian story. Even if we do not agree with Brian and find we need to change our thinking about the gospel, our serving of the mission of God in the Kingdom will be more faithful for having reflected upon a challenge offered to us from a brother engaged upon a common quest with us of serving Christ in our generation.

Pray for Zimbabwe

A Day of prayer for Zimbabwe

Tearfund are calling upon Christians to pray for Zimbabwe this Sunday. I know that many of us pray regularly for Zimbabwe and long for the justice and peace of the Kingdom of God to reign there. There is a good report of recent events within Zimbabwe which have prompted this call to prayer on the tearfund website, you can find it here - Pray for Zimbabwe.

I have the tearfund website on my places to visit list in the side bar. Please do look at this site and learn something of the work being done by tearfund, who celebrated their 40 anniversary last year.

Tearfunds ten's year vision is: to see 50 million people released from material and spiritual poverty through a worldwide network of 100,000 local churches.

Something new

I don't know if there is any connection between Bonhoeffer and the Fleet Foxes, except they are both new to me today.

Last night I was browsing around iTunes Stores, skipping from artist to artist, and came across the Fleet Foxes first disc. The price was so attractive I downloaded it. What a wonderful suite of songs. Great harmonies and guitars, a wonderful listen, if you haven't heard it yet, it is recommended.

I first read Bonhoeffer's Discipleship (published as The Cost of Discipleship) more than 20 years ago. Just after Christmas I ordered this new, hardback edition by Fortress Press with a splendid introduction by Geffrey B Kelly and John D Godsey. An English translation of the works of Bonhoeffer are now available in 16 volumes, a real gift to the English speaking church in our generation. If you haven't read Discipleship it is even more highly recommended than the Fleet Foxes, but with a warning, your Christian life won't be the same after reading it.

The Burden of Expectation

What a wonderful picture. Full of hope, excitement and expectation.

It's been a long time comin' but I know change is gonna come.

The burden of expectation can crush anyone. The election and today the inauguration of Barack Obama have been built up to an unprecidented level. How can a young man (I think 48 is still to be considered young!) bear such a burden of expecation. There is so much to do, what to do first? There have been so many speeches filled with hope and the promise of change, how to make good all the promises made and expectations raised?

I hope he finds a way, let's pray together for that.

Listening to Brian McLaren (2)

More from 24 hours with Brian McLaren

Before you read my thoughts, take a moment to read Brian's meditation on this inauguartion week - Inaugural Week Meditation: So Happy

Let's keep on praying for Obama and the USA.

Brian McLaren on the Biblical Narrative
Brian holds that Western Christianity (i.e. Northern Europe and North America) is not the religion of Jesus but a synthesis of Judaism and Greek-Roman philosophy. In particular the Biblical narrative many of us have grown up with is flawed by this influence. Our received Biblical narrative is in six parts: Eden, Fall, History, Redemption, Heaven, Hell. This narrative pattern is read in terms of Platonic/Aristotelian ideals. Brian suggests that the Exodus provides a more Biblical narrative shape: Creation – Liberation – the Peaceable Kingdom. The question then is what happens to Jesus and the message of Jesus when we read it in this narrative shape? The characteristic message of Jesus about the Kingdom of God suddenly takes a more central place than in the received six line Biblical narrative in which the Kingdom is pushed forward in to Heaven.

I am grateful to Brian for this challenge to think more deeply about the received shape of the Biblical narrative which is so prevalent within our evangelicalism. However, Brian is very anxious to remove the Fall from his narrative shape and I would prefer he spoke more clearly about what we call Redemption. Even if we talk about Liberation on what basis is someone liberated and what about those who resist or reject any offered liberation? We might not like the answers Brian gives, but if we are to hold onto this traditional form of understanding the Biblical narrative we can’t do that because this is the way it has always been, we have been challenged to articulate a more meaningful and Biblical reason for reading the Bible in this way.

No one reads the bible without prior influences or presuppositions. It is time to be honest about this. What are our presuppositions as we approach the bible? How does our cultural background influence our reading of Scripture? These questions have been brought with increasing force before us over the past 30 years or so, it is time to work out some answers.

Continue praying for Gaza

As the BBC news site reports the announcement of a ceasefire and we all instinctively give thanks, let's do that, for this is good news.
Not news that can stop us praying:
that the suffering thousands in Gaza will receive the aid and support they need;
that the violence will cease;
that a new way of living together between the Israelies and the Palestinians may be found;
for our sisters and brothers in the Church as they bear witness to the Lord Jesus Christ in this situation.

There is much still to pray for as we think of Gaza.

To Do Lists

The to do list seems to be an essential component of organised life. Yesterday I had a good day with my to do list, lots of things got scored off. Guess what? Today wasn't so good.

At best the to do list should be a reminder to us that we should not allow the immediate to drive out the important. There are many things that could be done, many things that should be done, but what is important, what really needs to be done today? That is what we should do.

Listening to Brian McLaren

24 Hours with Brian McLaren

At the beginning of December around 30 of us gathered in Perth to meet and discuss theology with Brian McLaren. Brian is a theologian who arouses strong passions and opinions all over the world; no one it seems is lukewarm towards Brian. I found him to be a most gracious and humble scholar, in this a real example to us all as we engage with one another, especially when we disagree with one another.

Brian McLaren on the Bible
For many evangelical this is the shibboleth question, what do you say about the Bible? Brian spoke of three ways in which the Bible can be read and suggested a forth which he preferred. Some people read the Bible flat, like a legal constitution; it doesn’t matter which bit you pick up it all has the same value and legal significance. Some people allow the Old Testament to set the framework within which the whole Bible is read, others allow the New Testament to dominate and read the whole Bible through this lens of the New Testament. What happens if we recognise the unique role of Jesus as the Word of God and read both the Old and New Testament in the light of Jesus and his revelation of God?

This is a real challenge to us, do we allow Jesus to be the hermeneutic which governs our reading of the Bible or do we allow the Bible and our way of reading the Bible to govern what we think about Jesus? I would have liked to have more time to hear Brian giving examples of how this different hermeneutic works out in handling specific passages and across the sweep of the whole Bible.

For example, how do you read the OT with Jesus as the controlling hermeneutic without abusing the OT? Certainly the OT finds its fulfilment in Jesus but how do we read that in the OT?

The major question for me here is this, which is the touchstone for us the bible or Jesus? The principal element in our Christian faith must be this Jesus who is proclaimed as Christ and Lord, to whom the Scriptures bear witness. No one is saved by what they believe about the bible, but by Christ.

Pray for Gaza

The BBC web site today announces that more than 1,000 people have been killed in the recent round of violence in Gaza.

This is not a post seeking to take sides, to blame one or the other, violence is violence whether by terrorist rocket or state funded aircraft or army.

Pray for the suffering people of Gaza. May the God of peace bring an end to this time of conflict and teach the Israelies and Palestinians to live together as neighbours in this part of the world. Pray for the International community that we would use all possible means to end this violence and bring aid to those suffering. Pray that our sisters and brothers in the church in both Palestine and Israel may live the blessed life of those who make peace and are known as the children of God.

CWW Re energise 4

Since Sunday I've been at the CWW Re energise 4 conference at Aviemore. This was a wonderful time and I'll be blogging on my reflections on these days as I get round to reflecting upon them.

Thanks to Albert, David and all the planning group for this event.

'Sing it in your own vioce.'

This is one of the stand out quotes from the three days. A real encouragement to us that we don't need to sing our songs in a mid-West American accent, or any other kind of accent, just our own. Not only do we have a song to sing, we are allowed, encouraged to sing it in our own accent. Let's get singing!

Welcome

Welcome to my blog.

I started this blog some while ago and it fell by the way. At the beginning of the week I was encouraged to start up again, so here goes.