The Normality of the Bible

"When you compare the Bible to the scriptures of other religions, what is striking is the normality of the Bible. There are not gods or spiritual entities under every rock, or exhaustive descriptions of heavenly battles. Abraham is not taken away from the earth to another spiritual realm. God does speak to him, but the arena for his discipleship is the everyday. His relationship with the spiritual does not drive him away from everyday life, but instead pushes him deeper into it. The transcendent is to be found in the midst of the ordinary."

- from "The Road Trip that Changed the World," by Mark Sayers

Our Church: Monks, Cheerleaders and Activists

Our little home church has been going for a couple of years now, and I thought it might be a good time to write down a few of the things we care about. Some of these we've worked out ourselves, and a lot of it we've gratefully taken from our friends at Postcard Radio...

1. Monks, Cheerleaders and Activists
We are committed to helping each individual – adults and children – to be a monk, cheerleader and activist in their life.
Monks. Learning about who God is, his words, his way, his story, what he cares about, and who we are in relation to him. This means worship, prayer, reading the Bible, living like Jesus, etc.
Cheerleaders. Encouraging, supporting, praying, looking out for each other and the people we're connected to – in the bad and the good times.
Activists. Figuring out where each of us can make a positive difference in the world, to help bring Jesus' kingdom of heaven to earth.

More to come!

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

Review: Why Men Hate Going to Church

David Murrow begins this book with the harsh reality that most churches have fewer men than women, and because of this and various other reasons, church has gradually grown to reflect this. Church has largely become a place where women are comfortable and men are not. And thus begins a downward spiral. Church becomes slowly more feminine in its style because of the higher proportion of women, and as it does, men become less comfortable and men's numbers dwindle, which makes the church more feminine, which makes....

Although the descriptions of men/women seem a little exaggerated (not every man likes baseball and chainsaws) there are lots of helpful insights, advice on how to do church with men in mind, ways we are unintentionally marginalising men, and other practical tips.

I learnt a lot from this book. I'd really recommend it to any church leader. Church needs men. Especially now. It was Jesus' simplest strategy, and as Murrow points out: where there are men, the women, children and young people will want to be there too.

An interesting tidbit from the book to finish on (there's loads of research to back it all up)...

• When Mom is a regular churchgoer but Dad attends infrequently (or never), just 2 to 3 percent of their kids go on to become regular churchgoers.
• When both Mom and Dad attend church regularly, 33 percent of kids grow up as regular attendees.
• Here’s the shocker: when Dad is faithful but Mom never attends, 44 percent of the kids end up as regular churchgoers. This is the highest outcome of any scenario.

Read that again.

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

Jesus Dream Short Course

Why is Jesus so important? What on earth was he on about?

Last year I became friends with a guy who wanted to know more about Jesus. I didn't want to just give him a book about it, and I thought the best thing would be for us to lock in a time each week, have a coffee, and go through one of those new-Christian discussion guides. But when I looked at what was available, I didn't find any that I thought would work well for an everyday Aussie guy - especially someone who hasn't grown up in a church (which is most Aussies now).

The ones I found were either too long (who will commit to a 10week religious course?), too impractical (watching a 40min sermon is not a normal thing for non-church people), too advanced (using theological concepts that are only familiar to people who've grown up in church) or misrepresented Jesus or the gospel. Some I felt just started in entirely the wrong place for non- church people (like calling for a commitment in the first session or starting with "you're a sinner" - which Jesus never did).

In the end I thought I'd just start the conversations myself and see where it went. In the process, through the conversations, questions and inevitable extra research by me, I ended up discovering a lot more about Aussie culture and about Jesus and his way of life. Most of all, I've discovered that Jesus and his way of life fits our culture to a T. He's the kind of guy that Aussies - even Aussie males - really respect.

So this year I've put together my own short course on Jesus that aims to fit Aussie non-church culture better. It starts where Jesus himself started, by calling people to dream with him about a new world. A better world of beauty and colour, free of pain and disaster, full of hope and light, creativity and passion, food and fun. It was a brilliant place to start, by a brilliant, visionary, revolutionary leader. So I figured I couldn't do better than start there myself. Jesus' dream is something we can all relate to.

This short course looks at Jesus' dream, his inspiring way of life and his amazing story. It's in six sessions for small groups or individuals.

After months of writing, editing and formatting, it's finally available on the iTunes iBookstore. Here's the link to the ePub version (which will work on most devices). And there's also a version specially designed for iPads.

http://itunes.apple.com/au/book/jesus-dream/id565908659?mt=11

Please go and check it out! I'd love to hear your thoughts. There's even a sample chapter there for free. And if you're using it somewhere other than Australia, I'd be especially interested to know how it goes. Thanks!

Church Size

From Lloyd Pietersen's "Reading the Bible After Christendom"....

"I am privileged to belong to Bristol Peace Church, a small group of currently six people, who meet every Sunday at 5.00pm... At the heart of the liturgy is Bible study and this is followed by a period of prayer informed by that Bible study; we then conclude with a meal together... As eating is central to our ecclesiology, we are committed not to grow beyond a number that can fit round the meal table. Further growth would result in breaking into two groups...."

Ha! My church is twice the size of yours Pietersen.

Review: "Mondays with My Old Pastor"

"Mondays with my Old Pastor" is the journey of a disillusioned pastor, encouraged by his wife to go and talk about it with his old pastor - an 83yo man who was pastor of the same church for 50 years but is now retired. So he goes and meets with the old man each monday, and these are the conversations. I love the concept, and when I saw this book I was looking forward to hearing the wisdom and sharing in the conversations. But it didn't quite work like that.

It feels like a fiction book, but unfortunately not a great one. One of those mass-produced romance ones. The old pastor is too perfect and everything he says and does is unrealistically perfect, relevant and inspiring (the word "spellbinding" is used...). The old pastor comes across as some kind of all-knowing, all-understanding super-pastor, so much that after the first meeting, without even really revealing his struggles, the author walks away both weaping and shouting verbal hallelujahs, smelling the old pastor's perfect roses with their perfect little water drops, rejoicing while watching the perfect setting sun cast a perfect cross shadow on the ground (caused by the author's raised arms), and arrives home to be lovingly greeted by his perfectly understanding wife.... I couldn't read more than two chapters.

It made me wonder, Is this guy really a pastor? It almost feels like he's a fiction writer who's done some very basic research into what it's like to be a pastor, in order to use one as his main character. I realise this all sounds harsh, and maybe it's just culture differences (this was originally written in spanish), but as an everyday Aussie, it kind of feels a little insulting to my intelligence. And it's a little preachy, like he's put his own words into his old pastor's mouth in order to preach to his readers. I can't say I want to keep reading and wait for the "old pastor" to come up with the perfect gem in each meeting.

Real pastoring is not as neat as this. It's messy, because people are messy - even old pastors are messy (unlike this one, who apparently is super-organised - possibly the clearest sign he might not be a real pastor!). If your ministry isn't messy, you've probably stopped working with people.

I like the idea behind the book - describing a pastor who is struggling, discouraged, burnt-out, and disillusioned with their ministry. It's a common story in the real world, and we need more books and conversations to help them. But I'm not sure this is one of them. I'd recommend Brian McLaren's "A New Kind of Christian" series, or Ian Morgan Cron's "Chasing Francis," or something by Larry Crabb.

Review: The Realms Thereunder

What if there were ancient British knights sleeping beneath London, enchanted so as to wake up in the last days? A question I often ask myself. Or at least, it's a great idea for a fiction book series, which is what The Realms Thereunder heralds.

It's the first in the Ancient Earth series, by Ross Lawhead. You may recognise the surname from my other reviews (assuming you actually read these book reviews, which I pretty much do just to get free books from BookSneeze.com); yes, he's the son of my favourite fiction author, Stephen Lawhead. How could I not give this book a go?

And luckily for me, Ross writes in a similar style to his old man, although maybe with not quite the same depth... yet? I'm looking forward to seeing the works he comes out with. He's certainly got an amazing talent for storytelling, and a brillant imagination.

Anyway, I really enjoyed the book, and I'm looking forward to seeing where the story goes when book 2 comes out.