Archive for the 'Church' Category

Resurrection Life

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Published
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bcg
on 25 March 2008
in Church and Theology
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On Sunday I preached on the final day of the college mission to Larkhall, Bath.  The text of the sermon can be found here.

Rather than preach directly from a passage, I preached on the meaning of Jesus' bodily resurrection, both for life in the future, and life here and now.

Since working at A Rocha two years ago, I have become more and more aware of how important it is that a) Jesus was incarnated, b) he spent three years preaching and healing the sick, c) he was raised bodily from the dead.

All these things amount to a wholehearted affirmation of God's good creation.  Many evangelicals seem to be drifting to an almost gnostic position, hugely prioritising the 'spiritual' over the 'physical'.

We must remember that when God's kingdom comes, we will not be living in a vacuum, floating on clouds in the sky, but on this earth, transformed.  Heaven comes down to earth, not the other way round.

A further thing I have often wondered is if we should translate 'spiritual' in the New Testament as 'Spiritual', i.e., of the Holy Spirit.  I'm sure someone has thought this before!

The Jesus Storybook Bible

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Published
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bcg
on 21 March 2008
in Bible, Church and Reviews
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This week I have been on a mission in Bath (I am currently on my day off!).  One of my primary roles has been to go into the Junior School for assemblies and class visits.

For the assemblies we made up some dramas, and read out some stories from the Jesus Storybook Bible, by Sally Lloyd-Jones and illustrated by Jago.  The Amazon page has a couple of critical reviews, but we found the stories really very good, and the illustrations too.

One of the main criticisms of the book on the Amazon page is that it downplays sin and judgement.  I disagree.  The section on the crucifixion (called 'The sun stops shining') tells the real story:

Even though it was midday, a dreadful darkness covered the face of the world.  The sun could not shine.  The earth trembled and quaked.  The great mountains shook.  Rocks split in two.  Until it seemed that the whole world would break.  That creation itself would tear apart.

The full force of the storm of God's fierce anger at sin was coming down.  On his own Son.  Instead of his people.  It was the only way God could destroy sin, and not destroy his children whose hearts were filled with sin.

Now, of course it isn't perfect.  No translation is perfect, and this isn't a translation, or even a paraphrase.  It's a way of telling some of the main stories in the Bible.  It will only 'do much harm' (again, from the Amazon reviewer) if it is used as the only way of telling Bible stories to children.

We used it in our assemblies as the frame for telling the stories.  Some of the phrases are brilliant, like this one:

And Peter told them the wonderful Story of God's Love - God's Never Stopping, Never Giving Up, Unbreaking, Always and Forever Love.

What the book does best of all is show how Jesus is at the centre of the whole Bible, how 'every story whispers its name' (the tagline from the book cover).

I would recommend this book, especially if you do children's work and can use it in assemblies.

Church blaze at Radford Semele

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Published
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bcg
on 21 March 2008
in Church and Life
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I was rather shocked on Sunday morning to hear that one of my Dad's churches has burnt down.  The blaze was so fierce, all that's left are the stone walls.  At its peak, there were fifty fire-fighters trying to bring the fire under control.

Fire destroys Radford Semele church

The fire services are still investigating how the fire started, and haven't yet ruled out arson.

Pissing against the wall

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bcg
on 10 March 2008
in Bible and Church
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I'm not sure if this is very funny or extremely sad, but I found a video of a Baptist preacher preaching talking about the phrase 'pisseth against the wall' from the King James.

Baptist preaches on KJV "him that pisseth against the wall"

This is the verse he preaches from:

Therefore, behold, I will bring evil upon the house of Jeroboam,
and will cut off from Jeroboam him that pisseth against
the wall, and him that is shut up and left in Israel, and will take
away the remnant of the house of Jeroboam, as a man taketh away dung, till
it be all gone.

1 Kings 14.10 (KJV)

From this verse the preacher's message is that real men (as opposed to 'males') urinate standing up.  The problems in America are caused, it seems, by men urinating sitting down.  How he manages to ignore the fact that in the context of this verse is that urinating standing up is not a good thing: doing it will get you 'cut off' from the people of God.  I don't claim to understand what's going on here, but I'm pretty sure it's not what this guy says!

He also uses manages to rant about how the King James is better than all other translations, for saying 'males', editing out 'Hell' and 'Jehovah' (which is the name of God).  From a bit of research on the internet it seems that this isn't the only strange thing this guy has said.

Paul’s gnosticism

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Published
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bcg
on 18 January 2008
in Bible, Church and Theology
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I am currently reading through Romans with a friend at college, and we are up to Romans 7.  One of the things we mentioned was how easy it is to mis-read Paul and interpret what he says as gnostic.

For example:

7.5 For while we were
living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at
work in our members to bear fruit for death. 6 But
now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us
captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the
old way of the written code.

Not only does Paul set up a radical distinction between 'the new way of the Spirit' and 'the old way of the written code', he also locates sin at work in 'the flesh', 'our members'.  Equally, in the previous chapter Paul writes:

6.12 Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions.

His emphasis is so strongly on our sinful bodies, on sin which works in our 'mortal body', that it is not a big step to gnostic theology, where the spirit is holy, the flesh evil.

It is also not a big step to the neo-dualism of contemporary evangelicalism.  Now there's a sentence and a half!  When I worked for A Rocha in London, one of the things I did was go around churches giving talks about the biblical basis for creation care.  A regular comment that many of us encountered (and no doubt they still do) was that God is more interested in saving souls than restoring creation.

There is undoubtedly some truth in that statement.  God has a special love for humans, made in his image to worship, glorify and love him.  However it is no different to the gnosticism that was denounced as heresy, and completely fails to understand the Old Testament, and much of the new.

When Paul locates sin at work in mortal flesh, he is not saying that God will do away with physical bodies.  He is not saying that all material things are evil and that what is important is our soul.  What he is saying, is that God needs to transform our mortal bodies if we are to obey him.  The very next verse in Romans 6 is this:

6.13 Do not present your
members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present
yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life,
and your members to God as instruments for righteousness.

God wants us to use our bodies, our minds, our strength, our souls - all of ourselves - to serve him.  He is not interested in disembodied children, but children in his image as he made them, bodies and all.  The 'newness of life' that Paul talks about earlier in Romans 6 is the basis on which we are able to 'present' our 'members to God as instruments for righteousness'.

6.4 We were buried
therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ
was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk
in newness of life.

Just as our baptism is a physical event, and just as Jesus' resurrection was a physical event, so also our newness of life is a physical event.  So, coming back to Romans 7, serving God in the 'new way of the Spirit' is correctly interpreted and capitalised by the ESV as the 'new way of the Holy Spirit': i.e. the new bodied life in the power of the Holy Spirit, not a new life somehow disconnected from our bodies, and purely 'spirit'.  The true meaning of the word 'spiritual' is not 'the life of a spirit', 'but life in the power of the Spirit', mind, body, soul and strength.

I am sure that no self-respecting and thoughtful evangelical would disagree with what I have just argued.  Why is it then that the focus of 'gospel ministry' is so often proclamation on its own, without the accompanying care for people's 'fleshy' side?  I myself have been guilty of this mistake, but hopefully no longer.

Wearing my A Rocha hat (A Rocha is a Christian environmental charity, seeking to transform communities and ecosystems in Jesus' name and power) I would go further still, and say that God's concern is for the whole of creation, not just humans.  After all, Revelation teaches us that heaven comes down to earth, not the other way around.  The whole world will be transformed by God, not just those people who call on Jesus' name.  (For more on this, please look in the Sermons section, or search for 'creation care' or 'hope for the planet'.)

When we pray 'your kingdom come', what we are praying for is the full and complete kingdom, which includes the transformation of the world, as well as the transformation of the people within the world.  The latter concern for people's physical well-being is being rediscovered by the church, but we are still lacking the former concern for the world.

The challenge is this: have we sold out to a gnostic dualism between spirit and flesh?  Have we in practice (if not in theology) ignored the fleshy side of life in favour of the spirit side of life?  If we have, we need to do both to be doing full and proper 'gospel ministry'.

Open and liberal evangelism?

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Published
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bcg
on 9 January 2008
in Church
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You may have seen that my college, Wycliffe Hall, has been in the press again.  Yesterday the college authorities settled with Elaine Storkey, admitting that she had been unfairly dismissed.  Astonishingly however, that is not the end of the matter.

Storkey is now suing James Jones, the bishop of Liverpool and chair of Wycliffe's trustees, for religious discrimination!  I was quite astonished when I read this:

The case has now been adjourned until June, at which point the three
members of an employment tribunal will have to decide whether Storkey's
liberal feminist brand of evangelical Anglicanism constitutes a
religion, as compared with other evangelicals running Wycliffe Hall.

...

Following the resolution of the unfair dismissal claim, Charles Crow, representing Storkey, turned to the remaining matter.

"Within
Christian evangelism there are two determinate strands; conservative
evangelism and an open and more liberal evangelism," he said.

"Those
are open and definable strands and as an open and clear proponent of
one of those strands, she [Storkey] has been discriminated against."

Theologian to sue bishop in Oxford college row

First, I think it's amusing that Storkey's own lawyer doesn't understand the difference between 'evangelism' and 'evangelicalism'.  Given that, what understanding can he really have about the theological debate?  (Either he got it wrong, or he was misquoted by the Grauniad..)

Second, what does she think she's doing?  Does she really want to separate 'open' and 'conservative' evangelicalism legally?  Such a result could surely have no effect but to divide further the evangelicals in this country.

Third, my friend Custard asks if there really is such a thing as 'open' or 'liberal' evanglicalism.  Certainly 'liberal evanglical' is 'oxymoronic', given that evangelical theology is by nature conservative, and in part a reaction against liberal theology.  The question of an 'open' evangelical is perhaps not quite the same.  To be sure, some mean 'liberal' by it, but others mean 'not quite as hard-line as some of the conversatives I know, and not quite as whacky as some of the charismatics I know'.  This discussion is probably for another blog post.

Finally, I am pleased that the chairman of the tribunal has shown some common sense:

Arranging a preliminary tribunal hearing for June 10 this year,
Robin Lewis, chairman of the tribunal, highlighted the difficulties
inherent in a theological dispute being thrashed out in a secular forum
and urged the two parties to reach an agreement.

"One part of the tribunal's regulations was not to resolve theological disputes within certain colleges at Oxford.

"It was to protect people from discrimination.

"I very much hope that the remaining hearing that has been timetabled won't be necessary. I hope that it can be resolved.

"What
I would ask the parties is how useful an adjudication might be by the
three of us, sitting in this building, on theological matters?"

Theologian to sue bishop in Oxford college row

Hopefully Storkey can be convinced to drop the case, which is a mis-use of the employment tribunal, potentially very damaging to the church in the UK, and ridiculously unbiblical.

Church Growth

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Published
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bcg
on 4 January 2008
in Church
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At the end of last term we had a study week on Church Growth & Church Planting.  It was a good week - one of the better study weeks.

One of the points of interest for me was that, although the week was focused primarily on numerical growth and planting, there were a couple of sessions about discipleship.  I have often placed more emphasis on discipleship than evangelism, thinking it more important to grow deeper before growing wider.

However, I think that each is equally important, and that each feeds the other.  The more people existing Christians see coming to faith, the deeper their own faith becomes.  Equally, people with a strong and deep relationship with God become more like him, and therefore more attractive and able to share their faith in a non-threatening and powerful way.

Many Anglican churches are stuck in 'discipleship' mode; and even that has been watered down to little more than maintenance of what is already existing.  Without new Christians, a church becomes stagnant, and without depth new and existing Christians wither and die.

The challenge to me, and to the Anglican church, is a renewed focus on evangelism and numerical growth, which is after all a sign of the kingdom throughout the New Testament.  God still wants people who know him more and more, and people to know him for the first time.