Church So Simple Even You Could Do It

Church doesn't have to be complicated. Mostly when people think of church, they think of the more complicated versions. Weekly Sunday services - with musicians and singers, a minister who prepares and preaches a sermon, pews and notices and morning tea and children's programs - then of course youth groups, women's groups, charity programs, small group networks.... and when you've done it one week you start organising the next one. Imagine starting a church like this! I know some people who have and it's a huge process that requires a lot of time, vision, planning and clever people, not to mention a pastor with serious credentials (ministry qualifications, years of experience etc). Most of us would never imagine that we could do something like this. Even many pastors, like myself.

But church doesn't have to be that complicated. Church is not the programs and preaching and preparation of all this stuff. Church is people. If you boil it down to its simplest ingredients, church is a group of people who are following Jesus together, looking after each other and making a difference in the world. This might involve weekly sermons, services and staff, or it could just be a handful of people who catch up in a park every couple of weeks to chat, eat food and encourage each other. That's what our church looks like. Maybe you could start one like this too.

It's called a simple church, and there are more and more of these popping up all over the place. One of the advantages of keeping church simple like this (and there are many!) is that many more people can actually do it. Like running a mobile coffee van instead of a 3-Star Restaurant. If you can get people together and find some content that helps you centre around Jesus, you can probably lead a simple church. And there's a huge amount of great content out there. Through my organisation, OurPathway, I can even plug you into some great support for simple church leaders. Information, resources, stories, a network of people with a range of different simple churches.

How good would it be if there was one of these simple churches on every street? People who are living out Jesus' way of life, bringing heaven into their local communities, and sharing countless stories of what God is doing in all those different places. If you've wondered about something like this before, don't let that idea go! If you don't fit in with the more complicated versions of church, or if you are frustrated with it for some reason, then do something about it! Keep praying, and check out www.OurPathway.com, and start some conversations with your friends about it. And if you want to chat more about it all, let me know and we can have a coffee together.

Right throughout the history of the church, it has been simple groups of Jesus followers who have changed the world. From Jesus' own handful of disciples to the house churches in Acts to the early fathers, small groups of nuns, and wild Celtic monks who transformed whole nations. God has always used simple, unsensational, behind-the-scenes, slowly-growing groups for his powerful, life-changing work. Like yeast in dough, or a tiny seed in the ground. Maybe you could be one of those seeds. And even if that's still not you, please pray for more people who will do it!

How to Change the World With Fruit Punch

I have some interesting conversations in my work as a highschool chaplain. Yesterday I had a good one with one of the teachers at school about cultural differences. It came about because she wanted to support the chaplaincy program by putting on a morning tea and inviting the other teachers. For me that would have meant buying some bikkies and cordial and cracking out the plastic cups; for her it meant treating us all to a feast, with home-baked cakes and Anzac bikkies, exotic fruit platters, lamingtons, secret-family-recipe fruit punch, and so on.... My one job was to provide a table, and my contribution gradually looked more and more pitiful the more food she brought out.

"This is amazing!" I said, as she thinly sliced some limes to place in each glass. "You've done this before."
"Oh, you obviously didn't know that I'm married to a Samoan," she explained. "This is every Sunday for me." And she went on to tell me about some of the other differences between our cultures.

One part of the conversation that particularly stood out to me was when she talked about how they do funerals. In Samoan culture - or at least where her family is from - family and close friends come from all over to stay with the bereaved family, to be with them, help them grieve, support them, cook for them, look after kids, help them talk through the pain and share stories of life shared and lost. Not just for a week though. This could go on for months, she said. And there's no polite avoidance of the painful topics. In her family, people will doggedly persist with the hard questions until they're honestly answered and then can be worked through together. By the time everyone has gone home, the bereaved family is well-and-truly working through their grief and learning to live again despite their loss. It's the responsibility of the oldest in the family to be there until everyone else has gone, however long that takes.

This comes as quite a contrast when compared with how the western world typically operates. Yes it's messier, yes it's more complicated (imagine 20 people living in your house for a month!), yes it's in-your-face, bare-your-soul honest - but as this teacher talked all I could think was "This sounds a lot like Jesus." When I read the gospel stories, I feel that Jesus' home culture seems more like Samoa than America or England.

If you were to use only a few words to describe the way of life that Jesus showed to his disciples, "hospitality" would have to be one of those words. Take Easter for example. On Easter Sunday Jesus beat death for all time, forever altered history by guaranteeing the awesome hope of the gospel, and became the king of the universe. And then he returned to spend a little more time with his followers. Everything had changed, and Jesus now had all the power in the universe at his disposal. What would he do? What would he show his disciples? What would he tell them to do? If you read the stories, it's a little underwhelming how it played out. Jesus had a meal with his disciples. He walked along a road chatting with some confused friends, then joined them for dinner at their place. He went fishing with his mates, and cooked breakfast for them on the beach. Ordinary, everyday things, simple things, hospitality things - the kinds of things he'd been doing with them all along.

Everything had changed on a cosmic, eternity level. But on the practical, everyday, human level the plan was still the same. God was communicating to us "These simple things really are important. Just keep doing what I showed you!" Share life together, eat together, walk together, laugh together, grieve together, learn together, and help more people to do the same.

It's not rocket science. But Jesus knew that simple things like this really do have the power to change the world. So may we take some cues from our Samoan friends, and from Jesus himself, and learn to live our lives with more and more depth and generosity, honesty and compassion... and more lime-garnished glasses of secret-family-recipe fruit punch.

The World Vision Decision

Recently Richard Stearns, CEO of World Vision, announced that they would not make a theological statement over same-sex marriage, but that they would continue employing people in same-sex marriages. And then apparently all hell broke loose.

Many "Christians" announced that they would be pulling their support from World Vision as a result, and some other high-profile "Christians" then blamed the gay community for causing hunger and suffering to the children WV works with.

I am so angry with this that I'm going to pass you over to a more calm person for a response. Take a moment today to read this brilliantly perceptive and gracious article by Rachel Held Evans on the situation.

http://rachelheldevans.com/blog/world-vision

Women and the Church

I recently had the pleasure of being the guest speaker at another church, and in conversation with one of the elders afterwards (while sipping the usual Nescafé Blend 43 and eating an iced vovo) I discovered that they don't allow women to preach. Now before I go any further, it's worth making a very strong note that I am not going to lay out what I think on the matter in this very short article, nor give a theological treatise on the topic. My intention is just to open up the topic, so that you intelligent readers can have the conversations, because I believe it's an important conversation to have.

Now a few observations. First, without going into any of the details, it needs to be said that the culture in first century Palestine where the church first started is not the same as the culture of 21st Century Australia. With that in mind, the answers the New Testament church came up with to various questions (including this one) may not always fit as snugly in our world today. Whatever answers we come up with today (to any of the "how to" questions) need to reflect both the way of Jesus and the needs of our own culture. I'll leave you to nut that one out.

Secondly, it might be worth pointing out that women feature much more in the New Testament than people usually suppose. Jesus' official twelve disciples may have been men, but there were also at least a handful of key women who seem to have been very supportive of Jesus - some scholars even suggest they may have been providing financial support to his missions.

Now look at the conversations. Through the gospels on almost every occasion the general impression is that most people - including the twelve - basically had no idea of what Jesus was on about. Yet there are at least two significant recorded occasions where Jesus seems to be impressed that someone actually got what he was saying... both times with women (John 4, Mark 7).

Fast-forward to Good Friday, where all of his followers have run away in fear. Wait, all? No, not all.

"Some women were there, watching from a distance, including Mary Magdalene, Mary (the mother of James the younger and of Joseph), and Salome. They had been followers of Jesus and had cared for him while he was in Galilee. Many other women who had come with him to Jerusalem were also there." (Mark 15:40-41)

And they stayed with him, following when his body was taken down from the cross, to see where it would be placed. Then as soon as the sabbath ended and shops opened they purchased spices to prepare his body. Everyone knows the rest of the story. Sunday morning the women were there at the crack of dawn and were the first to discover that Jesus was alive - and not only that, but it seems they believed it before any of the men. They rushed back to tell the disciples (and where were the disciples? Hiding in a room). In the meantime, the resurrected Jesus thought it important to make a short stop off on his way back to the Father to have his first conversation, with who? Mary Magdalene. Read it again and notice how much women feature in this the climax of the story. In a male-dominated culture, what do you think this said?

It doesn't end with the gospels. In a culture filled with male leaders, the early church features a significant number of key women as well. At the end of his letter to the believers in Colossae, Paul writes, "Please give my greetings to our brothers and sisters at Laodicea, and to Nympha and the church that meets in her house." At the end of Romans: "I commend to you our sister Phoebe, who is a deacon in the church in Cenchrea. Welcome her in the Lord as one who is worthy of honor among God’s people. Help her in whatever she needs, for she has been helpful to many, and especially to me. Give my greetings to Priscilla and Aquila, my co-workers in the ministry of Christ Jesus. In fact, they once risked their lives for me. I am thankful to them, and so are all the Gentile churches. Also give my greetings to the church that meets in their home.... Give my greetings to Mary, who has worked so hard for your benefit." Women play significant roles and feature in prominent places right through the New Testament. It seems that the early church had no problems with women in influential roles.

What about your church? Does it show the significance of both genders in its organisation and leadership? Are there any "rules" in place (even unspoken ones) that might need to be reconsidered? Could your church benefit from some more feminine creativity?

Recently I've been hearing a fair bit about how previously male-dominated fields - such as science and technology - are discovering just how much women can add to the conversation. Personally I would like to see the church leading this charge, and benefitting just as much from the new and fresh ways of thinking that women can bring.

Over to you.

How to Evangelise Without Evangelising

One of the electives at conference today was on how to be a spiritual support in your school. There are so many questions around this topic that I get the feeling we could have talked all day. What are we allowed to do? What are we not allowed to do? What's in our job description? What does the government say is in our job description? And it gets even trickier when you start bringing up specific situations.

As far as the government is concerned, chaplains are in schools to be a spiritual support to the students. However we have our hands tied a bit. There's a long list of things we can't do, like evangelising or proselytising (what is that again?). It's a topic that's been drilled in so often that you can start to feel a bit like a chef who's not allowed in the kitchen. Or like a black knight with no arms or legs. It's fair enough too. We want non-Christian people to be comfortable with us in schools. I have an atheist mate who has some very strong reservations about school chaplaincy and I completely understand why.

But there's also a lot we CAN do, and it's brilliant that we have the opportunity. Here's how I look at it, and I hope you find this helpful as well....

A few years ago some friends of mine in a simple home church decided to go through the four gospels and try to find out what Jesus actually wants us to do. If we're meant to be living Jesus' way, they asked - following Jesus, trying to be "little Christs," - well what actually is that way? What did Jesus actually tell people to do?

So this group went through all the things Jesus said (all the red letter passages) and took note every time Jesus told his followers to do something. It was quite a long list when they finished, but as they started to take out the repetitions and collate the similar phrases, in the end it all boiled down to seven ideas. Seven things that Jesus wants us to do. This is the way of Jesus right here. Ready? Here they are.

Love your neighbour.

Love your enemies.

Trust God (eg "don't worry about tomorrow").

Follow the Spirit (or "receive the spirit").

Hold your possessions loosely.

Reform yourself, not others ("take the plank out of your own eye...").

Be humble.

If people are doing those seven things then they are living Jesus' way. This is what it means to be a Christian.

And here's the helpful bit for chaplaincy. As I look at that list there are really only two that I can't push much in schools: trust God and follow the Spirit. The other five I can preach everywhere, to anyone, as much as I like. I can tell students that they should love their neighbour and no one will stop me. I can speak strongly about how important it is to be generous, and everyone will agree. At the moment there is a lot of discussion about refugees in Australia. I can have significant conversations with students about how we should treat all people with dignity and compassion wherever they're from - and what I'm actually doing without anyone knowing is echoing Jesus' words to love your enemies.

Five out of seven's pretty fantastic if you ask me. We can essentially help people to become quite a bit like Jesus without them even knowing it. These five ideas are well-respected in our culture (and most others) even if they're not lived out by many people. We just have to affirm them and demonstrate how to do it. And that's all before saying anything about God.

So don't feel that you can't say anything. You can actually say quite a lot of Jesus' message AND help people to start living it. There's of course a lot more to the good news than that, but I think it's a pretty huge head start.

Hope you find that helpful!

Our Church: Small and Simple

If we can't fit in a home, we'll start another group.

Small, simple groups have many advantages over big congregations (which is why big congregations work hard to get everyone into a small group!). Here are just a few....

Community. It's easier in a small group to get to know the other people, do life together, and look out for each other. Small is easier for food and conversation. Small groups grow community more naturally – you don't have to work so hard on community; the struggle is trying to avoid it! You can't go unnoticed in a small group - you are involved whether you like it or not. Small church becomes like a family or team more easily than an organisation.

Simplicity. Practically, small, simple churches have many advantages over more complicated ones. They are much easier to start up, sustain and adapt. Many more people could run a home group than could run a big church, which means we could potentially grow many more churches by using simple church thinking. Pastors of big churches have to be extraordinary. The bigger the church, the more exceptional the pastor must be, and if a pastor finishes up, it can take months to find someone else for the role. Simple churches, on the other hand, can be run by more everyday people, because there are no teams, programs, strategies, administration, services, sermons or staff to worry about. Any problems can be worked out by the group together, with extra wisdom from outside experts wherever needed. And small groups are much more flexible if changes are required. These are some of the reasons why simple church expressions might be an effective way forward for the church in Australia.

Mission. This flexibility means that small churches can more easily reflect the surrounding culture, work their way into existing communities and influence them from the inside out. Smaller groups can connect more individually with people outside the church, although this generally happens more slowly. Jesus compared the kingdom of heaven to a mustard seed, which slowly grows into a not-particularly-large weed-like bush that is very difficult to get rid of and tends to pop up all over the place.

Large churches with many ministries require many people to keep them running, and the best church members gradually spend more and more of their time on the church community (services, home groups, playgroups, music teams, camps, leadership, youth/men's/women's/children's ministry and so on) - which can sometimes lead to spending less time with the non-church people in their life. Simple church recognizes that everyone is already a part of various communities (work, school, uni, mums groups, sports teams) and we try to encourage members to connect with the people in these communities better, to be Jesus where they already are.

Our church has only one official get-together a week, so as to make room for real life: dinners, coffees, BBQs, sports, picnics, family days, school prayer groups, fishing, community festivals, watching the footy, and so on....

Discipleship. Churches have for many years recognised that discipleship happens best in small group settings where there is space for conversation. People grow at different rates and God is doing something different in everybody's life, and the best discipleship adapts to these changes as they come. A small group conversation allows for personal questions (try sticking your hand up during a sermon to clarify something or offer a different perspective!) and provides the space to relate Jesus' message and way of life to people's individual lives - to their particular work setting, family environment, personality, skill set and to their own dreams for the world.

There are just a few to whet your appetite.

Review: Dirty God

I just finished "Dirty God," by Johnnie Moore, generously provided by BookSneeze.com. The book is all about grace and it's written in two parts: "Getting Grace" and "Giving Grace."

I loved the first part. The author writes so poetically, explaining with clarity and passion what God has done for us, leaving behind the riches and control of heaven to move into our neighbourhood. As Moore puts it...

"Jesus didn’t keep his distance from the messy world that he descended into when he left heaven’s golden streets for earth’s dusty Middle Eastern villages, filled to capacity with the poor and frustrated, the disenfranchised and the rejected. Jesus didn’t revel in his priceless glory—rather, he gave himself completely to the opportunity to make the inglorious feel that they mattered to God.”

It's amazing grace, and it's not just for the best of us. Jesus chose to spend all of his time with everyday people - people from small fishing towns, not the big city. Ordinary people, not superstars, not overly smart, spiritual, or even ambitious. The grace God gives us is for anyone.

I reckon this book should have been two books. The second half is good too, but it kind of moves the book in a different direction and offers a bit more of the author's own perspectives on what everyday life should look like for us. I would rather if those questions ("How can we pass this grace on?" etc) were woven into the first part of the book and not answered as much, so that the whole thing remains focused on God's grace and the practical questions of everyday life are left open for readers to answer themselves.

Just my thoughts. Well worth a read anyway.

Feeling Guilty About the Crusades

Every Friday afternoon during the last period of the school week I find myself helping out in a year 8 class discussing history. I assist this entertaining group of students a few times each week (one of the various things I do as a chaplain), but for some reason Friday afternoon history is my favourite.

Last week as the lesson began I learned that the topic they were learning about was the Crusades. A brief explanation in case you were doodling and passing notes in year 8 history....

As per my recently refreshed knowledge thanks to Mrs Caple, the Crusades were religious wars fought by Christians against (mostly) Muslims between the 11th and 16th centuries with the aim to recover Jerusalem and the surrounding area ("the holy land"). Jerusalem was important to both sides for religious reasons. The Pope kicked it off, the Catholic Church repeated the call and the kings dutifully led their armies out (at this point the Catholic Church had a huge amount of power, even and especially with the monarchy). Several hundred thousand soldiers responded, some for glory, some for adventure, and many for more basic reasons: they would be fed. It was a violent and dark time in history, and the "Christian" church were the main perpetrators.

As the lesson began - well aware that my chaplain hat was unavoidably atop my noggin - I thought to myself "This could be awkward."

As a pastor and as a Christian I've had many conversations with non-Christian folk where I've tried to explain how good and worthwhile Christianity is - how great it would be and what an amazingly different world we'd have if more people lived Jesus' way.

"Well, what about the Crusades then?" people have replied. That was a time in history, they point out, where entire nations were "Christian" and yet took it upon themselves to slaughter everyone else (not just Muslims). It's a pretty crushing response and it's been very difficult in these conversations to find anything else to say. Even though it was hundreds of years ago in a medieval world, I've felt a fair bit of guilt over this dark part of history.

There has been a lot of church-bashing going on in the last few decades and the Crusades is one of the more well-worn blunt instruments.

Recently at a pastors conference that I attended, one of the speakers (who'd had similar conversations with his buddies) encouraged us to take the humble approach: although it wasn't us fighting those wars, we need to own up to it and just wear it because we wear the Christian name. (Similar to how our prime minister Kevin Rudd said sorry to all indigenous Australians on behalf of... who exactly?)

I think humility is definitely the right course of action whatever we do, but I also believe that in this instance that answer might actually prove to be a little unhelpful. Here's an illustration....

This week the Australian Rugby League State of Origin is on, for which I'm a very proud Queensland supporter. Suppose that in a club somewhere on Wednesday night a drunken fight breaks out over a dodgy ref's call and a QLD supporter leaves a NSW fan in a coma. Should I then hang my head in shame for the rest of my life because like that drunken thug I also support Queensland?

Or suppose it was discovered that during the world wars of last century one of the secret Nazi organisations devoted to wiping out the "inferior" races was code-named World Vision. Should today's World Vision aid organisation hang its head in shame and wear the wrongs of that Nazi group?

Or suppose someone was to steal my identity and then under my name start up a crack-dealing crime syndicate. Should I then go and apologise to anyone who's affected? "It was all done under my name. I'm so sorry for ruining your life. I'm heading to the cops now so they can lock me away." Of course not. That would be ridiculous. Once it was established that someone was using my identity I'd be perfectly in the clear. "It was just somebody using Ben's name."

I think you get it. Jesus himself said once "You can tell a tree by its fruit." If you go to Bunnings and buy a lemon tree and find out later that it grows oranges, it doesn't mean you should call David Attenborough because you've discovered an amazing new variety of lemon tree. It means someone at Bunnings put the wrong tag on the tree. If it grows oranges, it's an orange tree.

Although the Crusades were fought under the "Christian" name, they were nothing at all like Christ. They were in fact pretty much the exact opposite of Jesus. Jesus was a compassionate, inclusive and accepting, humble man devoted to peace. While many of his fellow Jews wanted to stage a violent military revolution against the oppressing Romans, Jesus taught about sacrificial love, unrelenting grace and above all he painted a vision of a future world that could include everyone, free of pain and heartache, violence and corruption.

The word "Christian" literally means "little Christ." It was originally given to Jesus' followers in the first century because people looked at them and thought "These people are just like Jesus."

Last week in that year 8 history class, I found that I don't feel guilt anymore when someone talks about the Crusades. Because to me, those soldiers, those kings and the violent, power-hungry "church" were not Christians at all. They were not "little Christs." They were not like Jesus at all. I similarly disown the violent and racist "Christian" groups of modern-day times. There are a lot of "Christians" in the world but a lot fewer people who actually look like Jesus.

Don't look at the tag. You can tell a tree by its fruit.

The apostle Peter was married with children

I was privileged to do a baby dedication (plus first birthday celebration) a few weeks back for a friend of mine, and at the morning tea afterwards I found myself in a bizarre theological discussion with an old retired minister. During the dedication I'd talked about how much God cares for children, using Psalm 127:3, "Children are a gift from the Lord." The old minister let me know that what I had said was true (phew) and went on to list a few more references I could have used. I find this kind of thing happens a bit after preaching.

"Oh and of course the 18th chapter of Matthew," he went on (because since I am a pastor I would obviously know the exact passage that he was referring to. We ministers have most of the Bible memorised, in case you weren't aware...).

"Sure," I said, knowing he would elaborate.

"Yes, when the disciples are arguing over who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. Jesus calls over a little child and says, 'Anyone who wants to be great in the kingdom has to become like a little child.'"

"Oh yes," I said, as I remembered the story. At the same time I was thinking that this particular passage might be a bit of an obscure way to show that God cared about children, but we were at a one-year-old's birthday party so I didn't really want to get into a theological discussion. At this point I was just smiling and nodding.

But the minister wasn't finished.

"Now think about this," he said. "If I were to call over one of the kids here, the only reason they would come to me is if they already knew me, right?"

"Ok," said I, noncommittally.

"So obviously," he said, "Jesus had already developed a relationship with this child. He'd spent the time getting to know them, probably years. The child obviously knew Jesus well."

Finally following his line of thought I ventured, "Ah I never thought about that. Maybe it was a child of one of Jesus' followers, one of the disciples maybe?"

The old minister nailed it home then: "It was Peter's child." Said with absolutely no doubt or room for questions.

"Oh right," I said with even less commitment.

"Peter was the only disciple to be married, and therefore the only one with kids. It was Peter's child Jesus called over."

I politely backed out of the conversation. As I walked away chuckling to myself inwardly, my mirth gradually turned sour as I contemplated the tragic use of the Bible I'd just experienced. This was clearly reading something into the text that was not there. Fortunately in this instance it was more humorous than harmful, but if the minister was that cavalier with his exegesis of this passage, what other passages had been similarly mangled? Over the many years of ministry, through hundreds of sermons to attentive listeners. And probably what troubled me most was not the tenuous leaps he'd made in his theology, but the way he then spoke his interpretation as absolute fact. "It was Peter's child."

It's all a bit scary really.

Pastors, please be careful with your Bible reading, because people are listening. People, please don't just accept everything you hear from the pulpit. Check it out for yourself. Pastors can make mistakes too, even and especially the ones who seem to have no questions or uncertainty themselves.

A Bit About Preaching

Here's a small portion of an interview I found a while back. Mike is a pastor who developed the LifeShapes material for spiritual growth, and it's well worth checking out the ideas if you're a church leader and haven't heard of them before. I was interested in this bit for what it said about preaching and discipleship though.

---

Aidan: I’ve heard you say before not to teach LifeShapes in a sermon series. Why do you feel so strongly about that?

Mike: From my personal experience and watching other pastors, I’ve seen that if you do a sermon series with it or teach it all the time, people naturally categorize it as more information to be forgotten. Unfortunately, people rarely remember what we say in a sermon. I think they say the average person can remember most of the points from one sermon a year. The point is that this isn’t random information from scripture, this is spiritual formation language and is meant to be used, not stored.

I’ve found it much more helpful to introduce it in Huddles, which is a discipling context with 4-10 people. As people are discussing about what God is saying to them and you give them an insight to their specific situation, they respond, “How were you able to apply that particular truth?” As we know, Truth sets us free, but we then want to know how we can set other people free! “Teach me to do that!”

For too long we’ve seen, sometimes foolishly, I think, discipleship as the impartation or reception of information rather than what scripture and the great saints of our history have said it was: Imitation of someone’s life.

So principally, LifeShapes were made to fulfill the principle design of Jesus: Discipleship.

The Other 99 Sheep

Jesus told a parable about a shepherd who has 100 sheep. As he's doing the regular roll call, the shepherd notices that one has gone missing. So out he goes, searching high and low for the lost sheep, until finally he hears the pitiful bleat in the distance. Then he lovingly carries the sheep home on his shoulders and throws a party to celebrate.

It's a story that's been told over and over again in churches, and it's one of my favourite books to read my children (check out "Cecil the Lost Sheep" by Andrew McDonough). It's a simple little story and it's pretty easy to figure out what Jesus was saying through the parable. God looks for the lost people, even the ones that other people overlook. And when a "lost sheep" is found, he celebrates!

Often I've heard a different message preached from this little story though. What happens sometimes is that when pastors preach on the same passage a few times, and when listeners have heard it many times, the preacher tries to find something new to say that hasn't been said before. This is not a bad thing. The Bible is an amazing book and God is a multi-faceted being, and sometimes you can read a passage a hundred times and still find something new to understand.

A few times now - mostly amongst church pastors and leaders - I've heard people point out that in the process of looking for the lost sheep, the shepherd left the other 99 where they were. "Who knows what might have happened to them?" The message being that as leaders we should do everything we can for the lost sheep (non-Christians), even if it hurts the people in our churches, "because the other 99 are already saved, right?"

Of course whether or not this is a good plan all depends on the circumstances. In this post I just want to point out that the parable doesn't read like this at all. The shepherd doesn't leave the 99 sheep in wild country to fend for themselves. An experienced shepherd who cares about even the 100th sheep wouldn't do this. It just doesn't work like that - and remember, shepherding was a common profession among Jesus' listeners. The shepherd would of course make sure the sheep he's got are ok first. He's probably counting them in for the night, and he'd most certainly find someone else to watch them while he's gone.

The lost sheep are more important than the people in your church? I really don't think Jesus would have said anything like this. A good pastor is missional, but not at the expense of the people already in his care.

It's our love for each other that shows we're Jesus' church.

Dirty God

I'm reading a great book at the moment. Check out these little passages from the chapter "The God with Dirty Hands"....

“The Bible teaches us that God “demonstrates his own love for us” (Rom. 5:8) in how he came to us in Jesus. He didn’t expect us to climb up to him. He climbed down to us. He got his hands dirty so that we could have our hearts cleaned.”

“Jesus didn’t keep his distance from the messy world that he descended into when he left heaven’s golden streets for earth’s dusty Middle Eastern villages, filled to capacity with the poor and frustrated, the disenfranchised and the rejected. Jesus didn’t revel in his priceless glory—rather, he gave himself completely to the opportunity to make the inglorious feel that they mattered to God.”

Excerpt from Johnnie Moore's “Dirty God.” Thomas Nelson, 2012-11-19. iBooks.

Very nicely put!

God's Creation Project

From "Simply Jesus," by Tom Wright.

Footsteps in the sand

A Grain of Wheat

John 12:24-25

Unless a grain of wheat dies, buried in the ground, it will stay just a grain of wheat. Useful, but in a very minor way. Ready to be eaten or crushed.

If we hold on to our life, wanting to stay in control, calling the shots, doing what we want, we will never be anything more than what we are now. Useful in a minor way.

But if that grain of wheat dies, buried in the ground, it will sprout and reproduce itself many times over. Completely transformed, no longer anything like a grain. It turned into a plant!

If we can manage to let go of our life, hand over the reins, stifle our selfish desire to be in control, living generously for others and for God, "reckless in your love," imagine what might happen! The grain was totally and irreversibly changed. What might a transformed human look like, with our much more complex bodies, personalities, imaginations, desires, compassion, spirit?

But how do we do it?

I find it tricky to contemplate how to go about dying to my self. I find proclamations of "I will die to myself and live for God today" largely unhelpful. It's a bit vague. However if I translate it to "I will live for others today; I will put others first," it becomes a lot more doable, at least for me.

Review: I Am a Follower

I recently read a copy of Leonard Sweet's book "I Am a Follower," thanks to the BookSneeze program. They give you books for free, so long as you write a review on your blog. It's quite a good system. At the beginning I wondered that they were giving books out for free (you only have to have a working blog). But I published a book last year and so far it's sold about 5 copies - at a rate slightly less than one a month. At this point I'd be happy for anyone to be reading it, whether they pay for it or not. And a review is certainly not something to be sneezed at (see what I did there?).

Right, on to the review. From memory I think this is the first of Leonard Sweet's books that I've actually finished, and as I was reading I started to realise why. It's not the content. The content is great. Sweet has been an out-of-the-box thinker for years, and I love hearing his ideas. I love hearing his take on church and Christianity. I'd love to go to a conference with him as the main speaker.

The beauty of a conference is that the speaker condenses everything into a handful of sessions, and then you can discuss it together afterwards. I imagine Leonard Sweet would make a great speaker, and it'd be stimulating discussion. But in a book? I feel like he got the main points across in the first few chapters of the book, and they were brilliant. But the book has over 50 chapters. Thankfully short chapters, but still. 50 different thoughts is a lot, and there was a lot of repetition. It's like Sweet did a conference and then included transcripts of all the discussion groups afterwards, looking at the topic from every possible angle. It was too much.

I do think it's a good book, and I think he has some great stuff to say about leadership, church and following Jesus. There are a lot of great quotes in here. I wholeheartedly recommend you put aside some time to read this book. A lot of time.

Like maybe a year.

Marriage and Choice

Covenant relationships are an uncommon thing in our culture - many people don't even know what the word means. It sounds so old-fashioned. We're used to contracts - relationships that benefit me, usually without a real person on the other end, that I can get out of if I find a better offer. And we've heard the phrase "friends with benefits" frequently, which is a kind of anti-marriage - the sex without the commitment, which gives me freedom to use the "friendship" however I want, or until it doesn't benefit me anymore. No wonder marriages are breaking so frequently. We've been set up for it.

Jesus' view on marriage is a little different. If you marry a divorced woman, Jesus says, you're committing adultery with them. If you divorce your wife, you're causing them to commit adultery. Yes it's that strong. According to the Bible, the basic rule is "One person for life."

There's an escape clause if your spouse has been unfaithful, and I would add abuse to that too. Sadly this happens. But for most people it's not some kind of tragic event that drives them apart. I would argue that at the heart it's just selfishness. Because in our culture, selfishness is seen as a good thing. Keep your options open, our culture says. Something better might come along, or you might need to back out. Just do it now while it benefits you. You're worth it. Stay free.

One person for life? You can hear the objections already. What if I stop loving them? What if they get boring? What if an opportunity comes up and I'm tied down? What if they've got issues? What if their personality starts to annoy me? What if it stops me doing the things I like? "For life" is such a long time - who can really promise something that far in advance? Life happens, you know. Things change. And on and on....

We've heard them all so many times that we've started to believe them. It sounds like truth.

It's not.

Covenant relationships acknowledge that things won't always be good, that different life pathways will present themselves, that better things might come up, that the romance will go up and down and sometimes I won't be able to stand being in the same room as you, that at times you'll be boring, angry, depressed, anxious, annoying, obnoxious, irritating, unattractive, exasperating. But even if all of that happens in the same week, I am still committed to you and I will be for the rest of our lives.

I'm yours for life, for better or worse, in sickness and in health, til death do us part. Those words were written before covenant relationships faded out of our culture.

I want to bring them back. I hope you'll join me. For marriages, and also for friendships. Long-term, unselfish commitment, whatever happens. It's things like this that will change the world.

(Read Mark Sayers' book, "The Road Trip that Changed the World," for some more in-depth thoughts on these subjects, and a more intensive perspective on our culture.)

The Bible Story in Pictures

I did these for my high school chaplaincy students. It's amazingly difficult to tell the Bible story in a lunch break!

Sunday Morning Evangelism

It's worth posting this one again...

"Sunday morning in church is the one place where evangelism cannot take place in our generation because the lost are not there..." - from "Everyday Church," by Tim Chester and Steve Timmis

Jesus' Dream Now on Amazon

Quick update. Pretty self-explanatory if you read the post title. The short course/discussion series on Jesus that I've written this year is now available on Amazon, for any Kindle devices.

Check it out here...

Jesus' Dream: an intro to Jesus in six sessions

Love to hear your thoughts! Thanks.

Ben