This Fathers Day

This Fathers Day, don't buy your Dad a damn thing. He has more than enough shit already.

This Fathers Day, don't make a long trip. If you really cared about family you wouldn't have moved so far in the first place, and those long, fuel hungry trips mean people are losing their Dads in cultures that actually do value family.

This Fathers day, don't eat meat. Which dumbass came up with the idea that eating meat was somehow more 'manly'? Maybe historically men ate more meat, because they had more physical work to do, and well, were just more important than the women. But these days men and women both eat lots of meat, because someone else does the physical work for us, and well, we are more important than the half the world that can't feed itself. Who cares how much farmable land we take up with our insatiable desire for flesh?

This Fathers day, pray with your Father to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, that he would teach us to love mercy, live justly and walk humbly with our God

We must change how we live

We need to learn a new way to live.
Not because christianity gives us a definite form of life, somehow trying to recapture 1st Century palestine.
But because the western consumerist way of life is destroying the world.
As a church we have a choice.
We can be at the vanguard of thinking through how to live responsibly with this information.
Or we can trundle along with a destructive system.
We need to think about how our decisions today will affect the witness of the church in the future.
There will be a time of reckoning in the future. There may even be a backlash.
If we are tightly allied to the people and systems that are destroying the earth, we will be tainted in the future.

The church isn't really in a position to turn the western world around. It is too busy worshipping mammon. But we can think about how to live gracious and full lives in a new ecological and economic situation. We can offer a vision of community and even (what appears to be) asceticism and restraint in production and consumption. We can offer a vision of individuality and particularity that is given by the spirit, rather than by what style of products you buy.
The big question is whether we can do it without becoming a cult.

All theology is contextual theology

All true theology is contextual theology.
When we attempt to speak of God in the abstract, in a way that doesn't address the situation in front of us, that pretends to come from nowhere, whatever the content of our speech might be, we present a God who has nothing to say to these particular people, this particular situation. We pretend that our knowledge of him is divorced from our reception of him in the narrative of our lives and communities.
That aint the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
This isn't to say that our theology must be driven by the questions and concerns of a particular culture. We may have a word of judgment, that says 'Look what you have missed, the real question which is most important!'. But even when we do that, we speak from a particular place and to a particular place.
We sell ourselves way short if all we focus on is what God has said, and not how it is God's word for today . This is an incredibly important thing to do. It is what we generally call 'Biblical Theology'. In our circles however 'Biblical Theology' isn't theology at all, but 'How do read the Bible well'. Incredibly important. But if that is all we do, then we haven't done theology.
For example, you may notice that part of God's promise to Abraham is that he would have a land, you may notice the connection back to the garden in Genesis 1, you may see that promise being played out in the Exodus and conquest, thwarted in the exile, even fulfilled and expanded in Jesus' ascension as Lord of all. But until you can go out into the backyard, pick up the dirt and say, this is God's earth, Jesus is Lord over it and will renew it in the new creation, well you haven't done theology. All you have done is an interesting literary study.
The point of theology is not that we would read the Bible better, but rather, having read the Bible better, we would learn to read the world and our place in it biblically. To do that we will need to pay attention to the world around us. We will need to pay attention to the other ways the world may be spoken of, that are presented as 'obvious' or 'inevitable' ( not least our obsession with economic growth). And then we will need to speak to that situation of our triune God.
I've been reading Augustine's 'City of God' recently. It is an amazing biblical theology. Yet the first half of the book is a detailed evaluation, history and critique of the situation Augustines current culture is in. It seems this is often ignored as people mine it for theological quotes.
If we are to address the joys and sorrows, the successes and failures of our own time and place, it will not be good enough simply to regurgitate Augustines theology, or Calvins, or anyone elses for that matter, but having learnt from them to search the scriptures and pay close attention to the world, we might speak God's word of life to it.

Grumblers Go to Hell

Been thinking about the Israelite wanderings in the desert. They grumble for a couple chapters on the way from Egypt to Sinai. At Sinai they grumble. Then when they leave Sinai they grumble up to where they send spies into the promised land, who advise them to grumble about entering.

What's so wrong with grumbling?

It denies God's past salvation and the promised future hope. Hebrews makes much of God swearing in anger, 'They shall never enter my rest.' The warning to Christians is to trust God's provision of a future, to persevere during this life, and to encourage each other against hard hearts.

Last night on the way home from church my wife and I yet again dissected and critiqued what happened. Particularly annoying are the teenagers who talk during prayer time. To our shame this can be a regularly frequent occurrence. If I'm honest I grumble about lots in my life not least my Christian leaders (compare Num 12 with Heb 13:7-17).

What's the antidote? Just trust more?

Actually I think a far more powerful way to respond is being thankful in prayer. "Don't worry about anything, but in everything, through prayer and petition with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God." (Phil 4:6) So last night we sat down and thanked God. About the people who annoyed us. About church and college that frustrate us. About the great work of God in our lives. About God's promise to renew, restore and resurrect by his Holy Spirit. And sure enough, those hard hearts were given peace. (Phil 4:7)

God promises to bring his people to perfection. Christ has authored that and will complete it. Life in this life involves HOPE.

Friends, if you find yourself grumbling about God, or his church, or Christian people, or ministries, or relationships, or our Christian leaders... today is the day to repent. And be thankful.

Never enough

generations squeezed into the soil
Aiding and abetting the cover up
the land still sucks it up
like petrol on a fire

tears soak into sheol
the sandy sponge aint full enough yet.
I have a drink of tea, some Tv, a cake, a sleep, a think, lunch and second lunch.
the belly certainly protrudes but
it is never enough
there is no new life.

The best possible ministry training?

Anglican Youthworks and Presbyterian Youth have joined forces to provide an exciting new form of ministry training called The Timothy Partnership.
The Timothy Partnership provides an online diploma in theology. It isn't just a correspondence course where you get dumped a bunch of notes. You get genuine interaction with a qualified lecturer and tutor online.
The course is three days a week and qualifies students to receive Austudy, so churches only need to raise a small amount for a ministry trainee to have a couple of days of ministry and a couple of days of training.
The partnership between Youthworks and the Presys is perfect. Youthworks prides itself on teaching anyone to do youth ministry, Presbyterian Youth prides itself on training young people to do any ministry. The combined effect is a program that can teach anyone to do any ministry.
The best part is that it resists the pressure to remove people from their local contexts to train them. (and they actually get a meaningful qualification at the end)
This has obvious benefits for rural churches, even overseas churches. But I think it even has benefits for city churches, as our current training models still tear people out of their contexts.
You could even use this training model for an evangelist reaching their own network, instead of removing them from that network to watch how you do (sometimes less effective) ministry currently.
This is a total win for the kingdom!

The gospel is God's summing up of ALL things into Christ their head, (for the sake of the church)

Some people found my post on the Phillipian jailers question a bit depressing.

Here is an antidote

Ephesians, life the universe and everything summed up in one talk.

If you don't like the speaker, I don't know, close your eyes and think of Carson or something

Fabulously meaningless

I've been thinking about unanswered prayer recently. I've been wondering what our current unanswered prayer will look like to us from the other side of the resurrection.

Most common christian piety answers that we will see that everything had a reason, or was necessary in some way for God's plan. I find this utterly unsatisfying, so I am going on a journey of complete speculation.

The teacher in Ecclesiastes says that everything is meaningless, a chasing after the wind. Often as Christians we see this as a position of despair, and want to temper it by saying we know what finally has meaning.

In The Hunting of the Snark, Lewis Caroll says it a little differently, "The snark was a boojum after all". The object of the ridiculous absurdist chase turned out to be the thing that brings existential nothingness. The crazy prattle and ambition, identity and peculiar useless talents of each of the protagonists, existing simply to tell the silly tale of their desire for snark appears to come to nothing.
As does searching for some deep allegorical meaning in the story.
Yet does it come to nothing. Well, not quite. What is achieved is a funny absurd joke. None of it is necessary, and that is it's joy.

I wonder if this is how we will view the history of our lives and the universe from the viewpoint of the kingdom, as one joyous and unecessary joke. If the characters in Carolls poem had caught the snark it would be quite boring. It would affirm their silliness as worthwhile. I feel the same about unanswered prayer; perhaps we are chasing a snark, and from the position of the abundant goodness of God's kingdom, it is very funny that we dont find it.
To be freed from necessity, to be freed from some hefty, underlying meaning, the contingent, unecessary, even absurd universe we live in can be enjoyed for the joyful romp that it is.

hmm or not

What must I do to be saved?

How did the question of the phillipian jailer (what must I do to be saved?) become the only real question that the content of the gospel could answer?

In evangelical circles this question is often smugly paraded as the smackdown to all discussions of what the gospel is (yes yes.. but if a dying woman rang you up and asked 'what must I do to be saved, what would you say).
This is annoying for a number of reasons,
it reduces the possible situations the gospel might address to individual, deathbed conversions
it ends up with a gospel whose focus is on the individual rather than on Christ
it ignores Paul's own description of his gospel
it (often) ignores Paul's own answer 'believe on Christ', or imports a whole bunch of other things that of course Paul 'must' have meant when he said 'believe on Christ', usually a mechanism of penal substitutionary atonement
it ignores the content of the gospel proclaimation in acts, not least he first one by Peter, which was responding to the question 'are these guys pissed or what?'
and most most most most annoying is the simple fact that most people are NOT running up to me and asking 'what must I do to be saved?'. They have all sorts of questions though, that the genuine gospel can address, and yes their own salvation is part of that. But if we think the content of the gospel, at it's most purest is the simplest possible answer to the question 'what must I do to be saved', then we will try and manipulate people into asking this question, so that we can give them the answer.

It is just dumb. I cant believe this kind of dumb crap still gets bandied about. But hey, even our lecturers do it. Lets talk about Jesus, lets talk about his saving death, lets talk about the kingdom breaking in around his person an in his resurrection,lets talk about his ascension and rule and his return, and giving thanks to god and turning from idols and his fulfillment of Israels hopes and his penal , substituting death (two mentions just to be safe), and the gathering in of the gentiles and the pouring out of the spirit and the transformation of ourselves and the witness of the unified church, and his power for holiness and love and new life and his grace for sinners and his return from exile and his pilgrim people and their cruciform life and his new creation and his grace and love for you and me and his restoration of the failures, and his shaming of the powers and authorities and his intercession for us and his faithfulness to Abraham.
but who needs all that... that would just be gospel plus right
let me draw you six boxes

Jesus rose early, while it was still dark

Jesus rose early in the morning, while it was still dark.

I got up early this morning (4:30), for no reason, except that my body was ready to get up.
I pottered around the house a bit, the air was stuffy warm with a tinge of bloody freezing radiating off the windows. Made myself a cup of tea and took the opportunity to read some of Robert Jenson's Systematic Theology. I remembered that he is one of my favourite theologians. A lutheran, deeply influenced by the Cappodocians, who gets Thomas and loves Jonathan Edwards. And on top of that he keeps going back to the Bible and especially the resurrection. Beautiful. Today I was reading on God's relationship to time and space, as well as some stuff on sexuality and politics.

I felt particularly alive this morning. Every now and then I get these moments of clarity where I feel alive, normal, energetic. I've been pretty sick the last week or so, fuzzy head, no voice. And realistically, I've been pretty sick the last year or so. But every now and then, I snap out of it, the world seems, well, more real. I feel like a teenager again, I feel in the moment.
Often these moments come after sickness. I get a migraine that knocks me out for almost a day and I wake up feeling wonderful.
When they come, you realised how impoverished your perception of life is at other times.
I wonder if this is what the resurrection will feel like.
More aliveness. Like we have been sick the whole time and only now are well.

Jesus rose early while it was still dark.
True of the resurrection too.
It is still dark.
I have a funeral on Friday. An uncle died of cancer. He was a very lively man. He taught me how to make pizza.
I cant wait for the whole earth to wake up.

Is all 'reformed theology' this kooky?

I just read this article by Vern Poythress. It is about John Frame's multiperspectivalism. While I'm all up for a single truth with multiple perspectives, some of this article is just plain weird.
Weirdest is the way in which Frame and Poythress take a phenomenon or idea, break it up into three categories, and then say that this is somehow a 'trinitarian' structure, because the three categories relate to each other. I dont mind breaking things down into categories, that can be helpful, but claiming divine sanctioning for those ideas, because there are three, is weird.
Then they take this observation about their observations and claim that there is a trinitarian structure to all knowledge, because there is a trinitarian structure to all being!
All it takes to poke at this house of cards is adding another observation to their groups of threes.

My wife has a friend who sees the pattern of 48 everywhere, sounds somewhat similar

Tell me, you who are into this american reformed stuff, is it all this kooky?

Pastoral statistics

Do we do any better in Australia?


consider the conclusions found in the USA and published recently by The Fuller Institute, George Barna and Pastoral Care Inc., namely that:

* 90% of the pastors report working between 55 to 75 hours per week.
* 80% believe pastoral ministry has negatively affected their families. Many pastor’s children do not attend church now because of what the church has done to their parents.
* 95% of pastors do not regularly pray with their spouses.
* 33% state that being in the ministry is an outright hazard to their family.
* 75% report significant stress-related crisis at least once in their ministry.
* 90% feel they are inadequately trained to cope with the ministry demands.
* 80% of pastors and 84% of their spouses feel unqualified and discouraged as role of pastors.
* 90% of pastors said the ministry was completely different than what they thought it would be like before they entered the ministry.
* 50% feel unable to meet the demands of the job.
* 70% of pastors constantly fight depression.
* 70% say they have a lower self-image now than when they first started.
* 70% do not have someone they consider a close friend.
* 40% report serious conflict with a parishioner at least once a month.
* 33% confess having involved in inappropriate sexual behavior with someone in the church.
* 50% of pastors feel so discouraged that they would leave the ministry if they could, but have no other way of making a living.
* 70% of pastors feel grossly underpaid.
* 50% of the ministers starting out will not last 5 years.
* 10% of ministers will actually retire as a minister in some form.
* 94% of clergy families feel the pressures of the pastor’s ministry.
* 80% of spouses feel the pastor is overworked.
* 80% spouses feel left out and underappreciated by church members.
* 80% of pastors’ spouses wish their spouse would choose a different profession.
* 66% of church members expect a minister and family to live at a higher moral standard than themselves.
* The profession of ‘Pastor’ is near the bottom of a survey of the most-respected professions, just above ‘car salesman’.
* 4,000 new churches begin each year and 7,000 churches close.
* Over 1,700 pastors left the ministry every month last year.
* Over 1,300 pastors were terminated by the local church each month, many without cause.
* Over 3,500 people a day left the church last year.
* Many denominations report an “empty pulpit crisis”. They cannot find ministers willing to fill positions.

And the #1 reason listed in that survey for why pastors leave the ministry was that ‘Church people are not willing to go the same direction and goal of the pastor. Pastor’s believe God wants them to go in one direction but the people are not willing to follow or change’. Perhaps this reflects MacDonald’s statement above.

And Anne Jackson, in her recently published Mad Church Disease: Overcoming the Burnout Epidemic (pp. 48–9), lists the following (sobering) figures on (US) clergy health:

* 71 percent of all ministers admitted to being overweight by an average of 32.1 pounds [14.59 kg]. One-third of all ministers were overweight by at least 25 pounds [11.36 kg], including 15 percent who were overweight by 50 pounds [22.73 kg] or more.
* Two-thirds of all pastors skip a meal at least one day a week, and 39 percent skip meals three or more days a week.
* 83 percent eat food once a week that they know they know they shouldn’t because it is unhealthy, including 41 percent who do this three or more days a week.
* 88 percent eat fast food at least one day a week, and 33 percent eat fast food three or more days a week.
* 50 percent get the recommended minimum amount of exercise (30 minutes per day, three times a week); 28 percent don’t exercise at all.
* Four out of ten ministers (approximately 39 percent) reported digestive problems once a week, with 14 percent having chronic digestive problems (three days per week).
* 87 percent don’t get enough sleep at least once a week, with almost half (47 percent) getting less sleep than they need at least three nights a week. Only 16 percent regularly get the recommendation of eight hours or more per night.
* 52 percent experience physical symptoms of stress at least once a week, and nearly one out of four experiences physical symptoms three or more times a week.



H/T Jason

Being a kinesthetic learner and thinker is tiring. I have to do laps and laps of parramatta park just to get one paper written. By the time I get back to my computer, I'm stuffed!
Anyone else out there have to move to think?
How do you get around it?

Plagues, Exodus, separation, eucharist

Peter Leithart, a reflection on the plagues, God seperating his people in the passover and the Eucharisthere

Consumerism is one big pagan orgy

There would not be a market for all the goods that are produced in an industrialized economy if consumers were content with the things they bought. Consumer desire must be constantly on the move. We must continually desire new things in order for consumption to keep pace with production...The shaving razor with one blade had to be surpassed by the double bladed razor, which was bested by three blades, then four, and now an absurd five blades on one razor. This is more than just a continuing attempt to make a product better; it is what the General Motors people called the organised creation of dissatisfaction" How can we be content with a mere two blades when the current standard is five? How can we be content with an ipod that downloads 200 songs when someone else has one that downloads a thousand? THe economy as it is currently structured would grind to a halt if we ever looked at our stuff and simply declared "It is enough, I am happy with what I have"
The truth is, however, that we do not tend to experience dissatisfaction as merely a negative. In consumer culture, dissatisfaction and satisfaction cease to be opposites, for pleasure is not so much in the possession of things as in their pursuit. There is a pleasure in the pursuit of novelty, and the pleasure resides not so much in having as in wanting. Once we have obtained an item, it brings desire to a temorary halt, and the item loses some of its appeal. Possession kills desire; familiarity breeds contempt. That is why shopping, not buying itself, is the heart of consumerism. The consumerist spirit is a restless spirit, typified by detachment, because desire must constantly be kept on the move.
Will Cavanaugh Being Consumed, 46-47

"So I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking. They are darkened in their understanding and seperated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts. Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, with a continual lust for more.
Eph 4:17-19

Is that the way you came to know Christ? A rejection of this continual lust for more?
Do the people in your churches resemble the pagans or not?
What are your church leaders doing about it?
I cant count how many preachers I've heard say that consumerism is greedy idolatry, that shopping malls are the cathedral of our cultures Gods.
Well, you have a sledgehammer, go and bust the freakin thing up then!
Why do we allow people to prostitute themselves working in retail?
Or perhaps we are ok with a bit of synchretism in our churches, a bit of paganism never hurt the church did it?
I feel like the church has mostly remained silent and abandoned her people to sad lives of idolatry, as though challenging these really challenging these false gods ( in a real, tangible way) somehow compromises the gospel of grace.

What has 'stranger danger' achieved?

"Our society seems to be increasingly full of fearful, defensive, aggressive people anxiously clinging to their property and inclined to look at the surrounding world with suspicion, always expecting an enemy to suddenly appear, intrude, and do harm"

Henri Nouwen Reaching Out: the three movements of the spiritual life New York: Doubleday 1975. 73

Links to thoughts on impassibility

David Congdom for passibility, but not soppy co-suffering

Mark Thompson summarising Weinandy against passibility

Seamus on Weinandy

Leithart anti anti anthropomorphism

Thoughts on gender and authority in the church

only one man can lead the church. Jesus.

this has something to do with the order of creation, HE is the new adam

his bride should obey him by receiving his grace and gifts.

those gifts don't confer ontological status, but different gifts are given to the church through different people, and that is a good thing. That is, people, are equal, but different.

we complement each other, whether we are male or female

it is incredibly difficult to map current church practices onto 1st century practices, and so everybody has to do some hermeneutical wrangling when applying scripture today (there is no 'simple' reading, whatever anyone says, they are simply equivocating)

everybody is inconsistent at some point, you just have to figure it out in different contexts.

college lecturers who don't buy the 'equal but different (and we will tell you how you are different)' mantra should let rip a little more often on the people who push it, if only to get rid of crazy arguments from primogeniture and to expose unbiblical assumptions.

appeals to courage in the face of...(the nasty secularist world, or oppressive patriarchy) are attempts to bias a discussion by smearing anyone who disagrees with you. Your discussion is usually with other christians, not the world.
I believe we need to learn to love each other.

dead baby Jesus

I cant tell you that he died,
before you had a chance to know him,
before you even knew he lived.
I cant tell you if he even did
inside that empty mocking tomb,
or if, prepared and placed
and left and left he left that space
I cant tell you
Because you cant tell me
'he will rise'

never the bride

I'm so happy for you. I'm so happy for you. Wow, really! I'm so happy for you. I'm so happy for you. Congratulations! I'm so happy for you. I'm so happy fo ryou. I'ms ohappy for you. Ims ohap pyf ory oui mso hap pyf ory ouim soha ppyf oryo uimso happy