realising my eschatology

I’ve just spent the last two days at Youthworks’s’s annual Youth Ministry Conference. I love that thing. Always makes my brain hurt though.

Ed Springer spoke about real hope … to sum up all that he said, basically it’s that we evangelicals have reacted to some who preach/teach based on an over-realised eschatology … that is, they expect all the blessings of heaven now. We’ve reacted by going to the other extreme, an under-realised eschatology, where all we can expect in this life is suffering and our hope is an abstract hope of forgiveness and heaven. Which is an unacceptible hope to our world. I saw a video on the prosperity gospel in Africa that suggested something similar, but that’s for another blog post.

Interesting. He accused us (and himself) of preaching a Christian life that is like waiting at a bus stop for the bus to arrive, and telling ourselves that it’s important to try and get other people to get their ticket and wait for the bus as well. He said that our gospel is the story of the Crucifixion and the Ascension … we skip the resurrection.

So we need to correct ourselves, and get back to holding the tension of the ‘now and the not yet’. We have the blessings of heaven now. But not yet. We live in the kingdom of God now … but the fullness of that is not yet.

So the big question is: what changes? What does a resurrected life look like in 2010?

Ed suggested we get passionate about social justice – hope inspired justice (pointing out that Christians fought against 1st Century class distinctions – the rich opened their homes to the poor and fed them, and that Christians fought against the slave trade), saying that the great social injustice of our time is the unequal distribution of wealth. And it’s our responsibility to fight against that, as Wilberforce and co. fought against slavery. Amen!

He also suggested ‘hope inspired beauty’ … ie getting back to good Christian art. Modern art is full of hopelessness and idolatry, and we Christians need to inject our hope filled/inspired art into that. I’m keen to think more about this.

And lastly he spoke of hope inspired mission; with BOLD and CLEAR preaching – clear on what Jesus is offering people, clear on what Jesus has saved people to be now, and clear in that our message is backed up by our witness. Again, a whole-hearted amen from me!

That said, Ed spoke some hard words that I need to think more about. Things like (and please don’t take this out of context!) ‘The real business of the gospel is not saving souls for heaven. It’s bigger than that, it is bringing God’s rule to earth.’ At some points, it sounded like he was putting up social justice/welfare ‘mission’ at the expense of proclaiming the gospel, but speaking to him afterwards, that’s definately not the case.

I wish I was smarter so I could process all this better! I’ve had a few thoughts on why we’ve been like this, related to the last big fight for truth being the reformation, which was all about souls going to heaven … yeah, need more brains.

p.s. if you came here looking for hope, check out this.

this one goes out to all of my fans. all 1 of them!

gratuitous, pointless batmobile photo for Katie H-B.

caption comp: I’ll shout a coffee to the author of the best caption for this awesome photo.

The Big Idea revisited.

A few months ago, I wrote a sort-of review of Dave Ferguson’s ‘The Big Idea’; I’d just started reading this book from Zondervan/The Leadership Netword Innovation Series.

The first section was good: Focus the Message, Multiply the Impact. I liked his ideas about preaching simpler messages, and focussing all other aspects of a Church program (children’s talk, songs, message on the notice board out the front etc) on that one idea, so that people go home from church with one idea in their head, rather than potentially hundreds of little , often disconnected ideas. The theory being that if people remember one thing, they’re more likely to talk about that one thing, and more likely to act on that one thing.

The book has a good section on seeing church as a Community of Transformation, not Information, and Creating Missional Velocity. The rest of the book is a sales-pitch for their Big Idea Network, and a handbook for how to structure your church as a Big Idea church

However. I’m not a fan of the direction the book took when it comes to working out that one big idea. Perhaps it’s indicitive of my background as a Sydney Evangelical, and Dave Ferguson’s background as an American Independant Evangelical/whatever he’d call himself - I work hard to make sure my one big idea comes from a thorough study of the set text – whereas Ferguson advocates working the other way around – selecting a year-long program of big ideas, and then finding Bible verses which speak to those ideas.

I’ve got a few fears in working that way:

1. You can make the Bible say almost anything you want. Just take bits out of context.
2. I fear that working this way doesn’t train our listeners to read and understand the Bible for themselves. Working systematically through Bible books/letters etc seems to open up the Bible for people, and allows it to speak for itself.
3. I fear that preachers would end up always preaching about what they like, and what seems ‘best’ to the team. It’d be tempting to avoid tricky passages/topics, or to emphasise favoured points of theology, rather than teaching ‘the whole council of God’. eg; the crusader group I run at school is working through 1 Timothy this term. I had to teach on 1 Tim 2:11-15 … not a favourite passage of mine to try and explain! If I was working the ‘Big Idea’ way, I would have been very tempted to avoid that passage altogether…

I still like the idea of a Big Idea though. I’d hate to read people’s minds after an average 25 minute sermon from any given sunday. I wonder if most people go home reflecting that the sermon was long, complicated and a bit boring, rather than interesting, informative and challenging. And I think working towards the Big Idea that each passage is getting at, and showing the transformational aspect of that passage is the way to go. Keep it simple, Biblical, practical.

10 years in and here are some things I’ve learnt…

I’ve been working in a paid-capacity in ministry for almost 10 years now. 8 years full-time (ish) and before that, 2 years part time as a student. It’s been a real roller-coaster ride – tremendous highs and crushing lows and everything inbetween. Sometimes all that in the one week!

Here are some reflections on the day-to-day tasks of ‘ministry’ that I’ve had over the last year or so. What can I say? I’m a slow learner… please forgive my rambly-ness here, there’s no real plan to what I’m about to write.

• I thought it would just be teaching the Bible. And at it’s heart, it still is – I give up to 6 different talks/studies a week, and I was trained well for that at Youthworks College. But here’s the catch – teaching the Bible does not mean just giving Bible Talks and running Bible Studies. There is a lot of what Peter Adam calls ‘ministries of the Word’ … training the saints for service, one-to-one evangelism, apologetic stuff in Christian Studies classes @ Arden … and the harder stuff like rebuking people.
• I didn’t expect there to be so much conflict. I guess I’m kind of an idealist here … at the outset, I guess I expected Christians to just ‘get it’ when it came to living out their faith. But I’m slowly learning that not everyone sees things my way, not everyone is as committed as they could be, and not everyone feels the need to repent of their sins. And sometimes that means being confronted by other people, and sometimes that means confronting people. I’m a conflict avoider by nature, but I’m slowly learning to embrace conflict as a growth opportunity. Which is probably good because lately it seems that as soon as one conflict is over, another one begins!
• Leadership is so much more than I thought it was. It’s more than teaching the Bible. It’s selling a vision, setting goals, working out strategies to achieve those goals, it’s mentoring and investing in others, it’s recognising that people watch me, and then realising that I need to set a good example in stuff I’d never even thought about before, it’s challenging/rebuking/correcting people, it’s apologising when I get it wrong, it’s creating conflict and then resolving it, it’s being a good people manager, a good money manager, a good resource manager, it’s being a counsellor, a friend, an enemy and so much more. Even my mood at leaders meeting before youth group has influence over the other leaders – if I’m tired and lethargic, that rubs off on them.
• Leadership can be incredibly lonely. This has become more apparent to me lately; being in Youth Ministry, a big part of my role is to get alongside the kids at church, get to know them, and love them. That means spending time with them, and that’s really cool, I love it. It also means setting that example to older people, of getting alongside the kids. But the tension I’m feeling is between how much time I spend with the teenagers, and how much time I spend with people my own age. I think I’ve tipped the see-saw in favour of time with kids, at the expense of closer friendships with my peers. And to be honest, it gets a bit lonely watching people meet each other and form good friendships, and feel kind of like I miss out because my focus is on the kids.
• Leadership starts with leading yourself. It’s so easy to go through the motions in leadership – to pray without feeling it, say stuff without feeling it, do stuff without feeling it. Yet I reckon that to be serious about leading others, I need to lead myself well. That’s meant becoming more disciplined in reading my Bible and praying, and more honest with God. Being more reflective of my sinful attitudes and actions, and then working to correct them (like the coffee thing recently).

They’re some of my thoughts … I didn’t mean to come across as so whingey - I’d love to hear yours!

Biblical Bromance

 

Mark Driscoll often laments about the lack of blokes in church, and talks about the church as having become a place for “nice, soft, chikified church dudes”.

Dave Miers tweeted an interesting article about ‘metrotextuals’ … blokes who end texts to each other with ‘xoxo’ and affectionate stuff like that.

I wonder if part of the solution to the lack of men in church has something to do with metrotextuals … what I mean is real Biblical Bromance. Where, as Aristotle described, “It is those who desire the good of their friends for the friends’ sake that are most truly friends, because each loves the other for what he is, and not for any incidental quality”.

Think of David and Jonathon in 1 Samuel 18:1-4: Jonathan became one in spirit with David, and he loved him as himself. This is not a homosexual relationship … this is real, Biblical bromance.

What about Psalm 133? How good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell together in unity … like oil running down the beard. I’ve never actually had precious oil running down by beard, but I get what David is saying.

I wonder if the blokes at church really loved each other, were really open and honest with each other, really cared for each other and were more open with our brotherly love for each other … would blokes be more keen to turn up?

Some old school friends have a ‘man-lunch fraternity’ … they meet up for lunch once a month to talk about how things are going – not in a superficial ‘everythings fine’ kind of way, but in an open, honest kind of way. From what I can tell, they talk about everything, and try to help each other out. These aren’t Christian blokes, by the way.

A very good (Christian) friend of mine has started referring to me as ‘dearest brother’ in emails, and to be honest, I know he’s genuine, and it’s kind of nice to be called that. I gave it a go too – I ended my last text message to him with Philippians 1:8 … ‘God can testify how I long for all of you with the affection of Christ Jesus’, kind of for a laugh, but also kind of seriously – I hadn’t caught up with him for a while, I love having a coffee, sitting on the beach at South Cronulla and chatting about life and ministry with him. And I missed not having been able to do that for a month or more.

Is this weird? Or is this really missing from our churches – a genuine expression of love for our brothers in Christ?

p.s. to all my brothers out there, I love you man.

EDIT: some questions I’m keen to explore: is Driscoll’s idea of the ’soft chikified dude’ more a representation of a polite, unoffensive kind of Chrisitanity? If so, is that why blokes don’t really talk about stuff more openly and honestly with each other? Or is it because we’re too proud to admit weaknesses to other blokes?

dropping my standards

Most people know me as a coffee-nazi. Coffee snob. Coffee obsessed nut. Coffee connoisseur (my personal favourite title). And it’s kind of true. I love freshly roasted coffee with a passion. Not for the caffeine hit, but for the flavour.

For example, at White Horse Coffee yesterday, I had two different coffees; an El Salvador Cup of Excellence that tasted of light, sweet, milky chocolate (no really, it did), and an Ethiopian something-or-other (I have a short memory) that tasted of berries and stone fruits, but had a bit of a funky aftertaste (kind of like dirty socks? Not that I’ve ever put dirty socks in my mouth). I’m not making this up – it’s just flavours and smells in the coffees that remind me of these things.

So I love good coffee. I love fresh coffee (ie; roasted in the past week, stored in an airtight container in a cool dark place etc etc). I love well-made coffee, because those amazing smells from the grinder get transferred into the cup, then into my mouth. Yum.

But here’s the problem: being in ministry, we eat out at people’s places a lot. We get invited over for lunches, dinners, or even just to pop in for a … coffee. And people know about my obsession with coffee. That I used to buy unroasted coffee beans from a roaster friend in Marrickville, and roast them in a popcorn popper down in the garage. That I spent over $1000 on a coffee machine, and over $700 for a coffee grinder. That for our first wedding anniversary, Keren got me a custom made coffee tamp, with a heavy stainless steel base, and a red gum handle, engraved with a nice message (I love my wife). That when, on my bux night, my mates got a lady at the charcoal chicken shop in Cronulla to make me a jumbo latte with luke-warm milk and a whole tin of International Roast, and then I spent most of the train ride, and most of dinner in Chinatown doubled over with stomach cramps (I had to drink it all, as one of my challenges). And they get very nervous about offering me a coffee. And if I do accept a coffee, they become very anxious to find out if it was up to my standards.

I don’t think that’s very helpful in a ministry context. It struck me recently that it’s actually pretty judgmental of me, even if I never intentionally set out to be judgmental of other people’s coffee-making ability. Even saying ‘I’ll just have a  cuppa tea’ translates as ‘your coffee isn’t good enough for me, I would never let that swill pass over my hallowed tastebuds’.

So that’s why recently, I drank instant coffee. That’s why from now on, if someone offers me a coffee, I’ll say yes. Not very deep, I know … just if I’m going to offend people, I’d rather the truth about Jesus offend them, than my love of coffee.

Just don’t get suspicious if I add sugar.

what is the world coming to?

I drank instant coffee today.

And yesterday.

And the day before.

It’s only been once a day. And only in the afternoon, well after I’ve already enjoyed good ‘real’ coffee from Pablo+Rusty’s.

p.s. the new header: a double shot of espresso being poured into a glass of hot water, and backlit with my 430ex speedlight, off-camera, firing through a piece of A4 paper, set up behind the shot of espresso. Then I cropped the photo weirdly for the header. 

models of youth ministry

A couple of weeks ago at All Saints, I was preaching on Psalm 78, with a focus on telling the next generation the praiseworthy deeds of the Lord. Basically I was talking up Youth Ministry and trying to encourage everyone to give it a go, even if it’s just befriending a younger person at church.

Early on in the sermon I was sharing a bit of the history of Youth Ministry, and a bit about different models of youth ministry came up. I remember sitting around at College years ago in between Ken Moser’s Youth Ministry lectures, talking about different models of ministry, their strengths and weaknesses etc etc.

There’s a whole heap of Youth Ministry models, they probably all claim to be the most biblically faithful, and the most effective at helping kids to follow Jesus. There are models like ‘the funnel’, which probably most youth groups are: fun events/games/things that draw lots of kids in – a simple gospel is presented at these evens in the form of a Bible talk. Kids that respond get funnelled into Bible Study groups, kids that cope with those get funnelled into Church. That’s a simplisitc overview. There’s also what I call the ‘fun-church’ model: running youth group with a more overtly Christian outlook – Bible Trivia Games,  Memory Verses, Sharing Times, Prayer Times … basically like a Church service but heaps more fun. There’s the chillax model: no real plan or structure to the night except for a Bible talk, some small group time then just hangin out, with a strong focus on leaders building relationships with the kids. There’s the ‘cocktail’ model: a blend of fun+games, fun+church, and chillaxin.

Here’s the thing: all the models have huge strengths and weaknesses. All the models rely on a solid platform of good leadership. I don’t think there is any one model that can claim to be ‘more biblical’ than any other model, so long as the model doesn’t deliberately set out to trick or decieve kids into hearing about Jesus, or distort or compromise the message. A lot of Youth Ministers have said to me that not all models work in all churches.

But I wonder if the discussions about Youth Ministry Models miss the point … is Youth Ministry really all about the form of our youth groups and our structure of youth ministry?  Psalm 78 and Titus 2 seem to suggest that it’s all about telling the next generation the praiseworthy deeds of the Lord, and training them in their faith.

Here’s my theory: the purpose of Youth Ministry is to 1) communicate the gospel to teenagers and 2) facilitate relationships between teenagers with Christian peers AND adult leaders. If that’s correct then any model of Youth Ministry should simply be seen as a vehicle to communicate the gospel, and a tool to facilitate discipleship relationships. And that means however you do it, just do it: preach the gospel, love the kids. Do you need a funnel to teach them and love them? Cool. Would a ‘fun church’ work better for your kids? Great! Would your kids find it too hard to sit still for an hour, and in order to love them, you need to mix up the program with a bit of pointless running around? Sweet! (I’m one of those kids)

However you do it, just do it!

Amos & reflecting on the prophets pt. 2

We’re doing a three week series on Amos at our youth group next term. I read Amos a couple of weeks ago in my quiet times, and must’ve been inspired enough by it to want to do three youth group talks on it.

Alec Motyer wrote a good commentary on Amos that I’ll be using, and here’s how he sums up Amos’ message:

His message is relevant, humbling and frightening. It rebukes the ‘eleven and six thirty’ of our formalism; it offers the salutary reminder that a tradition of the church may have lasted two hundred years only to be as false at the end as it was at the beginning; it insists that the church loses the centrality of the Word of God to its eternal peril; it exposes the sin of religious self-pleasing; it describes a religion which is abhorrent to God and calls for its replacement by a resting upon divine grace in faith and repentance, a commitment to God’s law in obedience, and a ceaseless concern for the needy among men. Without these, there is nothing so effective as religion to separate us from God’s love and cement us to his wrath.

Amos was a shepherd and fuit picker who lived in a really rich part of Israel’s history. He went on to become a prophet, and spoke out boldly against the sins that went along with prosperity: that their worship of God became dry ritual, mixed in with idol worship, and that they neglected the poor and needy.

Do you think Christians in rich sydney need to hear the message of Amos today? Is our worship in danger of becoming dry ritual, mixed in with idol worship? Do we delegate the care of the poor and needy to charity organisations, rather than make it our own personal priority?

afflicting the comfortable…

…and comforting the afflicted.

That’s one thing I was told about preaching when I first started out, almost 10 years ago. That as we preach, we want to show how God’s word brings comfort to those who are afflicted, whether by sickness, persecution, hardships, whatever. But at the same time, we also want to show how God’s word should shake the comfortable into action.

Well, I think I shook the comfortable. I don’t know if they were shaken into action though. I do know that I offended a whole bunch of year 12 students, their parents and some of their teachers…

I was invited to speak at Arden Secondary Schools final chapel service for year 12, just last week. No big deal, I work in the school one day per week, I know the kids, I’ve spoken at chapel regularly. Only this time I got to choose my message. What do you say to a group of year 12’s, about to face the HSC and then off into the big unkown?

Ecclesiastes. After thinking and asking God for guidance, that’s what I prepared. I didn’t want give a sugar-coated message, I wanted to tell them the truth. A message based on the message of Ecclesiastes. At the start, I wanted to show them the bigger picture, give them a sense of perspective, that while these exams are kind of big, in the grand scheme of life, they’re not that big. I spoke about our memories of the previous year 12 students, that we don’t remember them for their results, but for their personalities.

But then at the end of chapter 1 in Ecclesiastes, we read this:

There is no remembrance of men of old,
       and even those who are yet to come
       will not be remembered
       by those who follow.

I basically told them that in a few years time, no one would remember them, not even if they got their name on the Honour Roll. I reflected on my time in High School and said that while I had a good time there, when I go past my old school now, none of the students know who I am, not many of the teachers would remember me … and the same thing would happen to them.

I went on to explore what life is about; gaining wealth? Meaningless. Working hard and building an empire? Meaningless. Gaining as many friends as you possibly can and having as much fun as you can manage? Meaningless.

A bit different to a normal year 12 farewell speech, huh.

I finished up at the end of Ecclesiastes, which tells us to:

Remember your Creator
       in the days of your youth…

because even if we forget these students, God knows them, God will remember them, and God has considered them so important that he has died for them (I paraphrased Romans 5:8). I thanked them for their friendship and then sat down.

Here’s the interesting part: most of the Christians liked the talk. Everyone else pretty much hated it. Apparently one of the english classes spent the whole next lesson debating about what I’d said. A Christian teacher told me that the staff members who aren’t Christians, hated it. The Chaplain, who invited me to speak, said it was ‘a bit unexpected’.

Wow. I’ve never had such a polarised response to a talk in my whole life!

In all this, there’s two struggles for me:

• The feeling that I’ve caused hurt, which has potentially damaged some relationships. I’m a people pleaser, so I’m hating myself at the moment!
• The feeling that I’ve drawn attention to myself for giving a controversial message, rather than drawing attention to Jesus and his controversial message.

Strangely enough, I read this in my quiet time today (2 Corinthians 7):

⁸Even if I caused you sorrow by my letter, I do not regret it. Though I did regret it—I see that my letter hurt you, but only for a little while— ⁹yet now I am happy, not because you were made sorry, but because your sorrow led you to repentance. For you became sorrowful as God intended and so were not harmed in any way by us. ¹⁰Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death. ¹¹See what this godly sorrow has produced in you: what earnestness, what eagerness to clear yourselves, what indignation, what alarm, what longing, what concern, what readiness to see justice done.

If you’re a Christian reading this, please pray that Paul’s words would be true for those who heard, and were offended by my message, that they would be feeling a godly sorrow that leads to repentance.