Moving
Thought provoking
Warm
Tender
Unmissable
Latest
Advent Conspiracy
Here is a brilliant video : )
20 things we need to know
I little while ago I spent quite a bit of time in Ephesians.
Here is a summary of things that spoke to me
20 things you need to know
| Know that you live IN CHRIST | 1.1 |
| Know that in Christ every spiritual blessing is ours | 1.3 |
| Know who you are, what was paid for you, where you are heading | 1.4-14 |
| Know that the Holy Spirit lives in you | 1.14 |
| Know the hope to which you have been called | 1.15-18 |
| Know God’s power | 1.19-23 |
| Know where you came from | 2.1-10 |
| Know that you belong together (and so does everyone else!) | 2.11-3.13 |
| Know the full dimensions of the love of God | 3.14-19 |
| Know the full measure of the fullness of God | 3.19 |
| Know that God can do more than you ask for or imagine | 3.20-21 |
| Know that you need the others | 4.1-6 |
| Know that you are needed | 4.7-13 |
| Know how to treat one another | 4.14-16 |
| Know how to live well (sexually pure, speak well, make the most of every opportunity) | 4.17-5.20 |
| Know how to build strong families | 5.21-6.4 |
| Know how to build good working relationships | 6.5-9 |
| Know that we live in a war zone | 6.10-16 |
| Know how to fight the enemy | 6.17 |
| Know how to pray | 6.18-20 |
A history of marriage
I have just returned from holiday during which I read “Marriage, a History: From Obedience to Intimacy, or How Love Conquered Marriage”, by Stephanie Coontz. It was a good read. It stimulated my thinking and gave me much to think about. In it she describes how the meaning and solidity of marriage has changed over time in line with the changes to the things we value most in our relationships. In earlier days it we valued security, position, family, duty, and covenant more than we did love, intimacy, passion, romance. Today these things have been reversed. This raises all kinds of questions for me, especially as I try to minister truth and love in this radically new context.
I’m looking forward to posting a few comments up to help me work some things through.
When is a word of knowledge a word of knowledge
Simply put, I’m just not sure. I’m not sure we’ve got it right. I’m not sure we’re describing it right. I’m not convinced.
For the past few decades I have been part of the church family who rightly expects the Gifts of the Spirit to be exercised in church life today, just as they were in the first Christian communities. It’s where I belong. Nothing tells me that they were only useful for an apostolic era and that they are now no longer valid or needed. If anything they are needed now more than ever and I long for other parts of the church to join us as we experience and share God’s active Spiritual Gifting building each other up.
But having said this I am not uncritical of it all – far from it. And one thing that I am increasingly unconvinced about is the way we conceive and present ‘Words of Knowledge’.
Taking my charismatic reading glasses off for a moment, re-reading 1 Corinthians 12 goes like this…
The NIV translates Paul’s greek in this way:
4 There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit distributes them.
5 There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord.
6 There are different kinds of working, but in all of them and in everyone it is the same God at work.7 Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good.
8 To one there is given through the Spirit a message of wisdom, to another a message of knowledge by means of the same Spirit,
9 to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by that one Spirit,
10 to another miraculous powers, to another prophecy, to another distinguishing between spirits, to another speaking in different kinds of tongues, and to still another the interpretation of tongues.
11 All these are the work of one and the same Spirit, and he distributes them to each one, just as he determines.
Note the phrase ‘message of’ used before ‘wisdom’ and ‘knowledge’.
Now what is a message of wisdom and a message of knowledge?
In the church today a message of knowledge, often linked to and not very clearly distinguished from the gift of ‘prophecy’, is the same kind of thing a Spiritualist minister has. It is the kind of knowing about something that is hidden from view. A spiritual knowing of something that normal people couldn’t know. Mostly this comes out when people are about to pray for healing so that the person ministering reads out a number of words of knowledge about people in the room (“there’s someone here who…”) and asks for those people to indicate who they are and invites them to receive prayer.
Now, on the one hand I am completely happy that God in his grace and in his eagerness to encourage people to trust him, might use this way of communicating to us. Indeed, as many have noticed, Jesus himself seemed to have this ability on a few occasions – most notably the woman at the well (knowing that she was not married).
At meetings today, then, people pray for ‘words of knowledge’, hoping that God will give them specific details about people’s lives that will enable them to open themselves to prayer. in larger meetings this is often the major way praying for healing is expressed. Specific words are given and specific healings are asked for. A more recent for of all this is ‘Treasure Hunting’ where Christians pray asking God to give them specific people to look out for. Then they go out on to the streets looking for these strangers, and if they see them, will tell them that they are their ‘treasure’ and that God has something for them.
But I’m not convinced. I’m not sure this is what Paul was talking about and I’m not sure it’s how God normally acts.
In Jesus’ ministry (our primary model) we see Jesus healing all the time. Yet, was there any occasion where Jesus acted like we do? Did he ever anticipate a healing with a word of knowledge? I can’t find one. Instead he simply healed people, asking them what they had wrong with them and healing them through his own word of authority. Indeed, he asked a blind person, obviously blind I imagine, to describe what he wanted God to do for him.
Did Jesus ever do treasure hunting? Not according to the gospels. Did he ever encourage his disciples to do it? No. Instead he simply told them to go to people’s homes and towns, and heal people who were ill or sick. Did he ever address the crowd and say something like, “There’s someone here with a pain in their left arm”, or “a bowel complaint”… or whatever? No. Instead he let people bring to him their sick friends, letting them tell him what was the problem… and then he healed them.
In Spiritualist churches we see many people convinced by the mystical knowledge of the seer, conned into believing that they really do know something when tests show that in fact they are as wrong as often if not more that they are right. Isn’t our dependence on this kind of seeing also similarly problematic. I am sure that I not the first skeptic in a room of 500 (or even 100) to doubt the words of knowledge given from the front. If God is ‘here to heal’, then why not simply ask people who are ill, and know that themselves, to come forward and receive healing. Why would God complicate things by adding a middle man?
Knowledge is important and Jesus had specific spiritual knowledge to bring us. As Dallas Willard points out very brilliantly Jesus knew things that we don’t about the way things work in reality in this world. He knew that there was nothing to fear if God is with us and that trust is the most appropriate response to this knowledge. Hence we consider the flowers and the birds… Jesus knew that judgement was around the corner for the people of Israel if they continued to believe that God’s biggest concern was to overthrow the Romans. Jesus knew that words had power – power to heal and power to forgive. He knew that he had the words of eternal life.
The spiritual gift of knowing stuff and helping others to know it too is not about knowing where people’s bodies are in pain. It is much more about knowing God, how he works in the world and how great is his love for people. This gift of knowing something is far more valuable and more urgently needed in our churches.
Let us avoid the show of knowledge and return to the reality of letting people with real knowledge of God’s world build us up and show us the way forward.
May God give us more messages of knowledge than ever.
What do you think?
It’s midnight but morning is coming
It’s midnight… All is quiet. Everything is dark. To all sense and purposes it is just another night… It’s midnight but morning is coming
It’s midnight… and Caesar Augustus sits in his throne – ruling his empire with terror… but morning is coming
It’s midnight… he calls a census to rake in yet more taxes from the people he is oppressing… but morning is coming
It’s midnight… and Herod, puppet though he is, fears his own loss of power, and commands that all baby boys under two should be murdered… but morning is coming
It’s midnight… and the world is groaning under the power of the sword… but morning is coming
It’s midnight… and the zealots are aching for a saviour who will conquer their enemies in battle… but morning is coming
It’s midnight… and the religious are longing for a priest who will judge the unclean… but morning is coming
It’s midnight… and the righteous are yearning for a teacher who will separate the good and the bad… but morning is coming
It’s midnight… and the distant echoes of the prophets have grown dim – “To you a child is born and he shall be called wonderful counsellor, mighty God, prince of peace”… but morning is coming
It’s midnight… and the poor have no-one to speak up for them and the bruised reeds are being snuffed out… but morning is coming
It’s midnight… and the young and the old no longer dream dreams but have given up hope… but morning is coming
It’s midnight… and the prayers of the people have grown quiet… but morning is coming
It’s midnight… and people live in fear… but morning is coming
It’s midnight… and Israel feels the weight of her sin upon her shoulders…but morning is coming
It’s midnight… and the light of the world has been hidden under a shroud… but morning is coming
It’s midnight… and each time the baby pushes down on Mary she lets out a cry… but morning is coming
It’s midnight… and honourable Joseph is searching a foreign town, desperately knocking on doors… but morning is coming
It’s midnight… and no-one has any room. No-one welcomes the family. No-one opens their door… but morning is coming
It’s midnight… and all God’s plans rest on an unborn child in an age when the risk of infant mortality was high… but morning is coming
It’s midnight… and there is no midwife, no running water, no-one to help… but morning is coming
It’s midnight… and there is no bed… but morning is coming
It’s midnight… and they have been travelling for days… but morning is coming
It’s midnight… and the world stands still… but morning is coming
It’s midnight… and the angels sing out in the sky… morning is coming
It’s midnight… and the shepherds hear the good news “Today in David’s town is born a saviour”… morning is coming
It’s midnight… and they find him just as they have been told – wrapped in cloths and lying ins a manger… morning is coming…
It’s midnight… and wise men, having followed the star and remembered the prophets, lay their gifts at his feet… morning is coming
It’s midnight… and the child born… morning is coming
It’s midnight… a son is given… morning is coming
It’s midnight… Emmanuel… morning is coming
It’s midnight… God with us… morning is coming
It’s midnight… God for us… morning is coming
It’s midnight in our world too – we all know our fair share of pain, and loss and poverty and sadness and grief… all around us we see the signs of darkness – people needing life and light and hope and joy and peace… MORNING IS COMING
God is here
God has come to us…
That is a most significant thing to me – that we are have received a saviour – someone to set us free
Free from fear and sin and pain and brokenness and poverty…
Jesus
Emmanuel
God with us
What is you picture of God. Christmas transforms mine. I am struck by God’s vulnerability, by the risk he took, by the powerlessness, by the insignificance…
Like a candle…
This God is for us
Is for me
Is for you
Don’t we need this God once again in our lives?
Avon Lady Discipleship
I read the other day the following headline:
“First Millionnaire Avon Lady revealed”
A website called ‘people management’ wrote the following short article:
A woman who was made redundant six years ago has become Britain’s first £1 million Avon lady. Debbie Davis has earned £1.4 million since she started selling the cosmetics brand.
Davis, from Sunderland, now manages a workforce of 8,000 with the help of her partner Dave Carter, who she recruited to join her in the business.
She has made sales worth more than £9 million since becoming an Avon representative and in 2009 her take-home pay was around £300,000.
Davis, whose sales have risen by 25 per cent in the past year, now drives a Mercedes sports car but still makes door-to-door sales.
Avon representatives are given a week’s training on product details and sales techniques by mentors when they join the company.
The cosmetics company did not disclose how many representatives it currently has working in the UK, however a spokeswoman said there were 6.2 million representatives worldwide.
In 2009 the number of Avon representatives grew by 9 per cent. “This growth could well be related to the economic downturn,” said an Avon spokeswoman.
She added that the flexibility of a form of work that allows sellers to choose their own hours appeared to be increasingly popular.“Avon gives you a flexible learning opportunity and allows you to juggle family life along with it,” she said.
It got me thinking… about discipleship… again….
As I understand it, the business model of the ‘Avon’ franchise is to equip as many people as possible to do a very simple thing – invite their friends to buy some well priced cosmetics. It works because it is simple. It is not complicated. And the bar to being involved is set very low. The woman we read about did not make her money selling a million products herself, or by being a brilliant salesperson. No. Rather, she made her money recruiting hundreds of people to sell the products to a few of their friends. The skill is not being the best seller. The skill is to be the best recruiter. The strategy works best when an Avon ‘disciple’ makes as many other ‘disciples’ as possible.
Avon have worked with this strategy for years and it has done them well! 6.2 million representatives (disciples) worldwide is not bad coverage.
What if we applied this strategy to Christian discipleship?
What if instead of training gifted people to set up, plant, build, grow, develop or lead churches (ministers, vicars, pastors, teachers, etc) we simply equipped normal everyday Christians to make disciples of their friends. We have set the bar to discipleship too high. And we have restricted the task of making disciples to the super gifted.
Again and again, we find we have left the task of ‘making disciples’ to experts – preachers, teachers, pastors, youth leaders, minsters… And we throw a lot of moeny and training at them… and some of them are brilliant at it…
But what if this wasn’t Jesus’ big idea? What if Jesus simply thought that a normal guy, like Peter – untrained, uneducated, and unspiritual in worldly terms – could be the foundation of the church simply by making disciples of his friends and neighbours, who would then go on to make disciples of their friends and neighbours?
It sounds like a plan to me : )
So… the questions are these:
How can every disciple of Jesus feel confident about making other disciples of Jesus?
What sould leaders be doing to recruit, train and equip disciples to make disciples?
How can we lower the bar of discipleship making, or simplify it, so that every new disciple of Jesus can easily pass it on?
How can we make discipleship making one of the primary markers of being a disciple, just as recruiting other Avon representatives is part of being an Avon representative itself?
The task is not just to be a great disciple.
The task is to make as many other disciples as possible.
And the crown, the reward for this is more than a mercedes : )
Which comes first? The Chicken or the egg? The Church or the disciple?
Here is a very interesting quote from Neil Cole – of ‘Organic Church’ fame… see what you think…
We must get back to seeing church as a fruit of evangelism not the other way around. The Bible never commanded us to plant a church or even instructed us in church planting. The gospel (the good news of the intimate reality, redemption and rule of Jesus daily) is the seed we plant, not a church. If we sow the gospel much, we will reap many more disciples and a whole lot more churches will be started as well.
Of course we must also shift to a more holistic understanding of the gospel and the kingdom of God than we have had. Simply throwing out a lot of tracts or shouting at people on a megaphone is not likely to reap spiritual disciples or churches. Jesus brought the kingdom with him to the people who needed it most in a very incarnational and transformational manner. That is what He instructed us to be about.
Stop planting churches, start planting Jesus. Don’t build churches, that is not your job or mine. Jesus said, “I will build my church.” What He told us to do is to “Preach the gospel,” and make disciples (or followers) of Jesus. To risk being cliché: the horse must come before the cart. The seed must come before the tree, and the fruit will follow. Plant Jesus, and let him start the churches. Frankly, He is better at it than we are anyway.
This suggests that the fruit of discipleship making is church, not the other way around. I have been living in a world where I have been taught that the fruit of church making is disciples. Growing a church, building it, establishing it, has been my default mission for many years. I am wondering if God is simply reminding me that it’s his church and I should leave building it to him. My responsibility is to teach and to enthuse and to encourage – and to make disciples.
So this is what I am going to do!
And this is what I want my church to prioritise too.
Mission comes first.
What do you think?
A world without planes
Woke up the other day to the Radio and Alan de Botton (philospher) was imagining a world without planes…
Interesting stuff!
The philosopher, writer and recent writer-in-residence at Heathrow airport imagines a world without aircraft.
In a future world without aeroplanes, children would gather at the feet of old men, and hear extraordinary tales of a mythic time when vast and complicated machines the size of several houses used to take to the skies and fly high over the Himalayas and the Tasman Sea.
The wise elders would explain that inside the aircraft, passengers, who had only paid the price of a few books for the privilege, would impatiently and ungratefully shut their window blinds to the views, would sit in silence next to strangers while watching films about love and friendship – and would complain that the food in miniature plastic beakers before them was not quite as tasty as the sort they could prepare in their own kitchens.
The elders would add that the skies, now undisturbed except by the meandering progress of bees and sparrows, had once thundered to the sound of airborne leviathans, that entire swathes of Britain’s cities had been disturbed by their progress.
And that in an ancient London suburb once known as Fulham, it had been rare for the sensitive to be able to sleep much past six in the morning, due the unremitting progress of inbound aluminium tubes from Canada and the eastern seaboard of the United States.
At Heathrow, now turned into a museum, one would be able to walk unhurriedly across the two main runways and even give in to the temptation to sit cross-legged on their centrelines, a gesture with some of the same sublime thrill as touching a disconnected high-voltage electricity cable, running one’s fingers along the teeth of an anaesthetised shark or having a wash in a fallen dictator’s marble bathroom.
Uncynical, unvigilant
Everything would, of course, go very slowly. It would take two days to reach Rome, a month before one finally sailed exultantly into Sydney harbour. And yet there would be benefits tied up in this languor.
Those who had known the age of planes would recall the confusion they had felt upon arriving in Mumbai or Rio, Auckland or Montego Bay, only hours after leaving home, their slight sickness and bewilderment lending credence to the old Arabic saying that the soul invariably travels at the speed of a camel.This new widespread ‘camel pace’ would return travellers to a wisdom that their medieval pilgrim ancestors had once known very well. These medieval pilgrims had gone out of their way to make travel as slow as possible, avoiding even the use of boats and horses in favour of their own feet.
They were not being perverse, only aware that if one of our key motives for travelling is to try to put the past behind us, then we often need something very large and time-consuming, like the experience of a month long journey across an ocean or a hike over a mountain range, to establish a sufficient sense of distance.
Whatever the advantages of plentiful and convenient air travel, we may curse it for being too easy, too unnoticeable – and thereby for subverting our sincere attempts at changing ourselves through our journeys.
How we would admire planes if they were no longer there to frighten and bore us. We would stroke their steel dolphin-like bodies in museums and honour them as symbols of a daunting technical intelligence and a prodigious wealth.
We would admire them like small boys do, and adults no longer dare, for fear of seeming uncynical and unvigilant towards their crimes against our world.
Despite all the chaos and inconvenience of our disrupted flight schedules, we should feel grateful to the unruly Icelandic volcano – for allowing us briefly to imagine what a flight-less future would envy and pity us for.
Resurrection is everything
Have really enjoyed Easter this year : ) The story connected deeply… I am so grateful… Here is what came out on Sunday:
The empty tomb gets you thinking. Dead people stay dead. That’s what the word means… Dead. Dead is unambiguous… Dead is dead. And so the empty tomb gets you thinking… It gets me thinking. As for me I believe that Jesus is no longer dead. I believe that he is alive. I believe that the empty tomb tells us a crazy but simple truth… that Jesus rose from the dead. I believe it… And it shapes every part of my life.
For a start it shapes the way I see God. It demonstrates to me that he is more powerful than death – that other counterfeit power that takes us all one day and stakes a claim to be the power above all powers. It tells me that God is passionate about his creation, about the earth, about people, about flesh – that he has not left it alone, that he has not forgotten it, that he hasn’t written it off, or thrown it away. It tells me that God is faithful – that he never goes back on a promise – that he can be trusted. It tells me that God is joyful – that he is alive with joy
And then it shapes the way I see suffering… my own, and that of others:
Cancer, Parkinsons, Dementia, broken bones, broken hearts, broken lives, abused, and beaten, even killed.
Children, adults, the elderly.
The empty tomb shouts back at the forces of evil, of violence and of anger
It hits back against the wave of fear that sweeps across us all every time we experience pain
The empty tomb cries ‘Victory!’
My body may break, I may suffer, but God is greater.
Death does not have the last word, Life does… Jesus does
‘The enemy comes to steal and to destroy and to kill
But I have come to give you Life’, said Jesus…
The empty tomb says he was right.
And so I confidently say, “Greater is He who is in me than he who is in the world.”
And it shapes my hope, my hope for a world made new,
giving it colour and form and texture, making it real.
Not a world of spirit alone, but a world where heaven and earth are married in beautiful life
Not a world of tears, but a world of dancing, and joy
Not a world of violence, but a world of peace
The empty tomb draws me forward to this world, this new world, this world of life, where death and tears are no more, believing its existence, believing its arrival, believing its reality.
And it shapes the way I see Jesus
Not as a victim, but as a warrior
Not as weak, but as the strongest man there ever could be
Not as mere man, but also as God’s son
Not only as friend, but also as Saviour, and Ransom, and Redeemer, and Victor, and Lord
The empty tomb shapes everything for me…
It shapes the way I live, my behaviour, my choices
The risks I take, the place I bring up my family, the way I spend my money,
the approach I take to possessions, the amount I give away.
The empty tomb makes all kinds of things plausible and possible – wild things, crazy things, ridiculous things, adventurous things.
Things that others would think of as mad, as stupid, as folly.
“I am alive with Christ. For me to live is Christ. To die is gain.”
That could only be true if there was an empty tomb
And it shapes my ethics, my morality, my judgements and discernment about what is right, what is wrong.
It shapes the way I use my body, the places I take it, the way I use it, for if I am united to Christ – raised with him – this has implications!
And it affects the things I think about, the way I use my mind – “Since, I have been raised with Christ, I set my heart on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God… and I set your mind on things above, not on earthly things. For I died, and my life is now hidden with Christ in God.”
But it’s more than that… the open tomb opens things up.
It shatters my fears, my expectations, the boxes I put around things
And it opens up new possibilities, new relationships, new directions
It re-orientates me
It restores me
It redeploys me
My life is no longer my own. I have been bought with a price. It convinces me that Jesus died for me and I am his. that he has declared me free of judgement, that he has forgiven my sin, that he has born the debt and he has cancelled the written code that hung over me, condemned me. It persuades me that he has atoned for me, covered my sin, taken it way, washed me whiter than snow. I am his and he is mine. He lives in me and my life is his. The empty tomb has done all this.
And it sends me out… for through the empty tomb I have been commissioned, given a role. I have authorised, gifted, equipped. I have been enlisted and enrolled. I have signed up. His mission is now mine. His message is now mine. His purpose is now mine. His life is now mine. His way of doing things is now mine. His approach is now mine. His will is now mine. Jesus has promised me his Spirit, his breath, his life, to flow through me, drawing me into relationship with the Father.
The empty tomb is everything for me…
It is my past and it is my future
It is my present occupation
It is everything.
I am an Easter person, a ‘new day’ person, a ‘Christian’
I live in the first of the week, trying to make my life point towards those great truths – the resurrection of Jesus and the life of the world to come…
I reign in life through Jesus’ life.
I receive his life – his humility, love and forgiveness, his integrity, his wisdom, strength, joy, his union with the Father. Christ is now my life, the one who strengthens me.
I receive it with thanks and give it total claim to my spirit, soul, body, my heart, mind and will.
The empty tomb shapes everything
The resurrection is everything to me
It’s all I have to boast in.
It’s all I live for
It’s all I rest in
It’s all I believe in
