Multicultural Ministry Matters

Lesslie Newbigin is a significant theologian of mission and missional church. I mentioned him in my missional church posts . I just discovered a searchable website with a lot of his material. http://www.newbigin.net/ . Enjoy!

As part of my prep for sermons on Romans, I'm reading Douglas Moo's NICNT commentary . Highly recommended. I happened upon Moo's website , with links to his articles. Also highly recommended.

More insight on human foibles from Colin Dexter - this time on an adulterer's self-condemnation. Quite poignant and sad, actually. It would have been a huge relief to have ended it all long ago, above all, to have broken free from the web of lies and deceit he had spun around himself. Yet how beguiling had been those prospects of extra-marital delights. Conscience. Damned conscience. Nurtured in a sensitive school. Fatal. Though not a believer himself, Bernard conceded the empirical truth of the Pauline assertion that the wages of sin is death. He wanted desperately to be rid of the guilt and the remorse, and remembered vaguely from his school days in the bible-class how lustily they had all given voice to many a chorus on sin: "Though your sins be as scarlet, scarlet, scarlet, They shall be whiter, yea, whiter than snow." But he couldn't pray these days - his spirit was parched and desolate. His primitive, eager religiosity was dulled now and overlaid with a deep an...

An atheist was walking through the woods. He admired the trees. He inspected the intricate designs of the leaves, and the way they carried the life-giving sap to the rest of the tree. He basked in the warm sunlight that powered the photosynthesis that gave the tree its life. And he breathed deeply, enjoying the oxygen that the tree had put in the atmosphere for him. All put there by the impersonal, uncaring forces of evolution, of course. All that evidence of design and purpose and life and joy – he knew better than to trust what his eyes told him. Coz he was an atheist! All of a sudden he heard a growl behind him. It was a bear! The atheist ran for his life, crashing through the forest. But the bear was catching up with him. If the atheist had really believed in survival of the fittest, he really should have gone to the gym more often. Maybe then he would have been fit enough to outrun this bear. The atheist tripped and fell. The bear towered above him, paw raised to strike. The ath...

This is my final post on missional church. Chris Wright, of Langham Partnership , can have the final word. He bases his understanding of missional church on the biblical presentation of the missional God: In [...] trying to come to a biblical definition of what we mean by mission, we are in effect asking the question, whose mission is it anyway? [...] Since the whole Bible is the story of how this God, 'our God', has brought about his salvation for the whole cosmos [...] we can affirm [...] 'Mission belongs to our God'. Mission is not ours; mission is God's. Certainly, the mission of God is the prior reality out of which flows any mission in which we ourselves get involved. Or, as it has been nicely put, it is not so much the case that God has a mission for his church in the world, as that God has a church for his mission in the world. Mission is not made for church; the church was made for mission - God's mission. A missional hermeneutic of the Bible, then, b...

This continues my series on missional church. Over the last few decades, Lesslie Newbigin’s work, and the concept of missio Dei, has been allied with a recognition that the West has moved into ‘post-Christendom’. It was [Lesslie] Newbigin who, after returning from a lifetime of work in India as a missionary, saw how pagan Western civilization really was. He began to articulate the view that we need to see the Western world as a mission field, and that we as God’s people in this context needed to adopt a missionary stance in relation to our culture – just as we could in India, for instance. Alan Hirsch , The Forgotten Ways (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2006): 81 As noted previously, traditional missiology and ecclesiology have assumed the existence, in the West, of a shared culture and worldview which has been heavily influenced by the gospel, whether or not people recognise or accept it. Over the last few decades, that shared, Christianised culture has been steadily breaking down. Complex an...

Another quick break from the missional church posts - just to let you know... Over at Complementarity and Culture , Sarie King has an excellent post on how sex is being treated like a commercial commodity, to be bought & sold, rather than a deeply personal relational act to be treasured and enjoyed. Why I’m Not Having Sex And (or in) The City... Back to missional church tomorrow.

This continues my series on missional church. Missional ecclesiology began in part with a ‘Copernican revolution’ in missiology itself. Traditionally, missiology was itself founded on Christology: the churches saw themselves as participating in Christ’s mission by sending missionaries to ‘all nations’, in fulfilment of the Great Commission (Matt. 28:18-20). At the meeting of the International Mission Council (“IMC”) at Willingen in 1952, missiology was reoriented, in a Trinitarian form, around the ‘missio Dei’. The 'missio Dei' looks first at what God is doing in the world, and only secondly at how we respond to, and co-operate in, God's action in the world. The Triune God was on a mission in the world, building his kingdom. The church, as both the first-fruits and agent of that kingdom, is to participate with God in his mission. This theme was developed and advanced by Lesslie Newbigin and the Commission on World Mission and Evangelism of the World Council of Churches, whi...

This continues my series on missional church. An early wrong turn in missional church thinking was the radical secularisation of God's mission. The kingdom of God was tightly connected with secular well-being. Bodily health, freedom from oppressive political structures, and the like, were identified as the kingdom advancing. The church has always been positive towards social action – witness the establishment of missionary schools and hospitals, and the political activity of people like William Wilberforce. But, these matters have been seen as an outworking of love of neighbour, not ‘mission’. Traditionally, ‘mission’ has been identified more closely with activity akin to the New Testament apostles: the verbal proclamation of Christ’s person and work, an explanation of the claims of Christ upon the hearer, and a summons for the hearer to respond to Christ. In contrast, this radical secularisation meant mission lost its redemptive edge and became indistinguishable from social, envir...

This continues my series on missional church. As noted in my previous post, ‘mission’ has traditionally been focused on the ‘non-Christian’ world, and only ‘one of’ the functions of the local church. In contrast, missional ecclesiology insists that any understanding of God’s assembled people – any ecclesiology – must be founded upon a deep conviction that that those assembled people are themselves, as an assembled people, sent by God to the world. Ed Stetzer asserts that in the Creed’s affirmation that the church is ‘apostolic’: […] apostolic is more than a “position”; it is a “posture”. […] [T]he root of the word apostle is “one sent… with a message. So we should be an apostolic church. Ed Stetzer , Planting Missional Churches (Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 2006): 29, emphasis in original. Harrison et al. capitalise on the connection between kaleo (‘call’) and ecclesia (lit. ‘called-out’; traditionally translated ‘church’), and also assume that the ‘called’ community – the ch...

Crossway have created ESV online , a free online Bible study website. If you register, you can create your own notes, highlight passages, place bookmarks, and customise your own view. All of this for free. Note: they've provided a 30-day trial access to the ESV study bible notes & resources. But after the trial, you have to pay for it. Cunning... :D Incidentally - I have no personal or financial interest in Crossway - I'm just glad to see useful bible study resources made available.

I'm kicking off a series of posts on missional church. Missional church involves the application of missiology to eccelsiology. Missiology is the art of systematic reflection upon the propagation of the Christian faith. It has traditionally been applied to theological and practical reflection upon spreading the Christian faith beyond Western Christendom. Christendom refers to countries where the prevailing culture has been deeply impacted by the gospel, viz: Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand . These countries have a shared Christian history of the Constantinian settlement of the church, medieval Catholicism, the Reformation, and the Enlightenment and Modernism. Two millennia of shared Christian heritage have given these nations churches, denominations and theological traditions which are relatively stable and mature. The task of spreading the Christian faith in this context has traditionally been called “evangelism”. The theology and practice of evangelism ha...

A great post over at The Gospel Coalition on how a leader is always in the public eye & can never relax. I've noticed this myself. One of my church people mentioned in passing how he watched me as I interacted with a visitor. And just this week, I kicked myself when I made a comment as a joke, only to have it taken seriously - but thankfully the person asked, so I could backpeddle. 1 Peter 4:11a: If anyone speaks, he should do it as one speaking the very words of God.

Colin Dexter , in one of his Inspector Morse novels, gives us a really good insight into the mind of a gambler. The urge to gamble is so universal, so deeply embedded in unregenerate human nature that from the earliest days the philosophers and moralists have assumed it to be evil. Cupiditas , the Romans called it - the longing for the things of this world, the naked, shameless greed for gain. It is the cause, perhaps, of all our troubles. Yet how easy it remains to understand the burning envy, felt by those posessing little, for those endowed with good aplenty. And gambling? Why, gambling offers to the poor the shining chance of something for for nothing. Crude analysis! For to some it is gambling itself, the very process and the practice of gambling, that is so immensely pleasurable. So pleasurable indeed that gambling needs, for them, no spurious raison d'etre whatsoever, no necessary prospect of the jackpots and the windfalls and the weekends in Bermuda; just the heady, heavy...

At the beginning of the service, the person leading the meeting stood on the podium, and in a solemn voice read from Psalm 46:10: "Be still, and know that I am God!" A little voice whispered from the front pew: "Is he really God, mummy...?" After a church service on Sunday morning, a young boy suddenly announced to his mother, “Mom, I've decided to become a minister when I grow up.” “That’s great dear - but what made you decide that all of a sudden?” “Well,” said the little boy, “I have to go to church on Sunday anyway, And I figure it will be more fun to stand up and yell, than to sit and listen.” A 6-year-old was overheard reciting the Lord’s Prayer at a church service: “And forgive us our trash passes, as we forgive those who passed trash against us.” A little girl became restless as the preacher’s sermon dragged on and on. Finally, she leaned over to her mother and whispered, “Mommy, if we give him the money now, will he let us go?” Ms. Terri asked her Sunda...

This is a section of a military action thriller I've got in my head. In the style of John Grisham . Or Clive Cussler . Maybe Dale Brown . Or should it be Jack Higgins ? I'd really like to follow the footsteps of Tom Clancy and Frederick Forsyth . Well, you get the idea. *** A loud tone started pinging in Nate’s ear. “Not good, buddy,” he heard Shane growl. “We got a Tejas interceptor coming up behind us. They’re a helluvalot faster than this old bucket of bolts.” “Now what?” Nate queried. “Now it’s a race!” Shane slammed the throttle forward, to maximum afterburner. Nate gasped as the acceleration pushed him back in his seat, forcing the air out of his lungs. Despite the padded seat, and the automatic inflation of air cells in his survival suit, he felt like all his internal bodily organs were about to rip through his back, and be left behind in the blazing wake of the Chinese Su-30 fighter plane. Even Shane was finding it hard to speak through the incredible g-forces...

Prof. Mike Goheen will be delivering a public lecture on Missional Church at the Presbyterian Theological Centre , Tuesday 25th May, 2:00-3:15pm. Lecture and Q&A followed by afternoon tea. Cost: $10 visitors, free for PTC students. Prof. Goheen is Professor of Worldview and Religious Studies, Trinity Western University, Langley, BC, Canada. He operates the Scripture & Worldview website along with Craig Bartholomew. You can access his resume at that website. "Missional Church" involves the application of missiology - the study of missions - to ecclesiology - the study of church. Basically, it assumes that church should be, in its very nature, "missional" - outward focused, engaging the world. Church must not be just for insiders, but also for outsiders. I would say that I'm in favour of missional church, in that I agree with the above statement. I hold that church - the people of God, in relationship with God and each other - exists not just for themsel...

This one's a bit old, but still relevant. You might remember how Richard Dawkins and other militant atheists funded a series of bus ads in the UK that said "there's probably no God". There's at least three problems with that statement: I think it is, on the face of it, simply wrong. Even without Jesus and the Bible, I think there's evidence that there probably is a God. (a) The universe is full of evidence of purposeful, life-giving design (purposeful creation); (b) the life-giving inter-connectedness of the universe points to a good, life-giving creator who gives life through relationships (God the Holy Trinity); (c) the human tendency towards religious feelings and "worship" demonstrates there is an irreducible God-directed aspect of human nature (anthropology is necessarily theological and doxological); (d) and, purely on statistics, atheism represents a tiny minority of the world population - are we really going to say that almost everyone throug...

I led my first funeral this week. The text of the sermon I delivered is below. I'd like your feedback on it. My aims in this sermon were: 1. clearly and simply point people to life in Jesus (= “preach the gospel”); 2. point them to the genuine, deep long-term comfort that Christ provides; 3. give them a positive experience of “church” and “Christianity” in a time of need, so as to increase the chances of them listening to the gospel again sometime in the future. I’d like your thoughts on (1) these three aims, and (2) whether you think this talk achieves them. I’ve censored the names of the deceased, and his family, in this text. I don’t think they’d mind it being published – I only say nice things about them – but, I’ll err on the safe side. Passage : John 11:25-27: Main point : we need to give over our deceased, and our selves, to the risen, living Christ. Intro We have come here today to thank God for Deceased; to support each other, and share each other’s grief; and to give o...

Official movie site . Rotten Tomatoes review site .

Committees are very important to Presbyterian functionality...

From Swisstoons :

Of all the crazy places to find a reference to Jesus & his death in our place - Clive Cussler ! While Giordino and his passengers were in the lock, Pitt quickly turned his attention to the boarding of the second submersible. He ordered the NUMA team women to enter first. Then he silently nodded for Stacy to follow. She hesitated at the hatch opening, shot him a strained, questioning look. She was standing quite still as though stunned by what was happening around her. 'Are you going to die becuase I took your place?' she asked softly. Pitt flashed a madcap smile. 'Keep a date open for rum collins at sunset on the lanai of the Halakalani Hotel in Honolulu.' [...] As the submersible rolled into the air lock and the door closed with a sickening finality, Plunkett slapped Pitt's back with a great bear paw of a hand. 'You're a brave one, Mr Pitt. No man could have played God better.' Clive Cussler, Dragon , pages 80-81.