Missionary Methods: John's or Ours?

Nearing the end of his gospel, the beloved disciple writes

^20:30 Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. ³¹ But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.

Plenty of people take verse 31 as a purpose statement for the whole book, and rightly so.

Yet most popular preaching I've heard on John uses this verse in the following way.
1. John wrote this so you would believe.
2. I know how to get you to believe (runs through five spiritual laws, two ways to live etc)

Yet John didn't write 'Five Spiritual Laws', or 'Two ways to live'.
He wrote John.
with all it's weird bits, with all it's prayers, with all it's concentration on the Jews and Jewish festivals and Temple and comparison to Moses........ so that you would believe.
To miss that is to miss the potential for the actual book to actually bring people to belief

Sex means something

Other than a pleasurable experience, sex means something. As I've preached through 1 Corinthians 6-7 I've realised how few people - in our churches - believe sex means something.

I mean that the bonding which sex brings is simply not believed. Sometimes people accept it within the context of coupledom but think singles can have 'pleasurable experience' without meaning. Others think that sex always is about the 'pleasurable experience' and that's what gives the bonding, not some tangible transformation that happens through sexual activity.

I've asked around and most people agree their non-Christian friends almost universally think this. Although some married non-Christians still don't think its right to share those experiences outside the marriage.

Two conclusions come from this. First people hear the prohibition against sexual immorality as an anti-pleasure anti-experience stance. But if bonding is true then the prohibition is against self-destruction and other person abuse.

Second, I'm not sure people in our churches understand 'the two will become one flesh'. (1 Cor 6:16) Consequently a key image in the doctrine of union with Christ is not understood. And therefore people do not understand the possible intimacy that exists between two people 'in Christ'.

Thus when I preach 1 Cor 7:38 'he who marries the virgin does right, but he who does not marry her does even better' it is simply unlivable. Who believes marriage is right but unmarriage is better? Certainly not people who haven't grasped their current relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ.

Simply put, 1 Cor 7 makes no sense if 6:12-20 is not understood and believed.

Thoughts from pastoral experience in this...

Principles for preaching- don't explain too much

The Bible contains many different types of speech.
Unfortunately, most of our sermons are dominated by 'explanation'.
The frightening thing about preaching is that if you really boiled down the important bit you had to say, and then added on explanation of anything the congregation REALLY didn't know already, most sermons would be about three minutes long.
What we usually do is fill up another 20 minutes with more explanation.
So here is a crazy idea to try with your next sermon.
Only explain something if the congregation really can't understand it otherwise.
Once you know your points , find the most appropriate expression, and save explanation for what needs explaining.

So, think of the point you want to make.
Would a question make it better?
A preacher I knew, once preached his whole sermon as a story. You would think it wouldn't work, but as I talked to each of the congregation, they got all the points, even though he hadn't given them in propostitions
What a precious delight when a preacher revels in his words!
Who Savours: enjoys, appreciates, relishes, delights in, partakes of, drools over, luxuriates in, enjoys to the full, smacks their lips over.... Savour the flavour of each mouthful
Praise Jesus for his work in that preacher!
"Sing a joyful song to the Lord all the earth"
But my tears of frustration, a never-ending empty lament for the over-explainer.
You! you preacher, you are guilty of this accusation
"Won't somebody please make him stop, I beg you"
I must confess, however, that this list is an ideal for me, and not a reality
Lord, make me a better preacher, I pray
But my weakness doesn't absolve you of this charge
I exhort you, Stop explaining!
And sometimes even just..be silent...........

Jesus blood never failed me yet: a new year reflection and prayer

For New Years Eve this year, I intend to have a time of silent reflection and prayer. To look back on the year that has passed, and God's faithfulness in it. And to look forward to another year of his faithful love.

I'm thinking of using Gavin Bryar's minimalist orchestral piece "Jesus blood never failed me yet" to accompany and focus the time.
The original (1971) is about 25 minutes, the extended version 74mins (1993). I like the discipline of the hour (and it finishes with Tom Waits!), and may play the Jesus film silently in the background.

Anyway, here is a five minute condensed version to whet your appetite.

Reflections on Holy Communion 7

"And nothing shall be proclaimed or published in the Church during the time of Divine Service, but by the minister: nor by him any thing but what is prescribed in the Rules of this Book, or enjoined by the Queen, or by the Ordinary of this place"

Sometimes at my church, the announcements can go for 20 minutes, occasionally 30.

I guess it is important that people know what is going on through the week.
Still, announcements generally take up more time than prayer.
Is it possible we have got our priorities the wrong way around?

Principles for preaching- mix well

Every now and then I listen to one of my sermons (off the internet). Often as I listen I think, all the ingredients are there, but it just hasn't come together as well as I hoped. I need to add a little time in my preparation for kneading.

Sometimes I make bread. It is fairly easy. You just throw together some flour, some yeast, some water and a pinch of salt. Yet if I simply threw the slurry of ingredients into the oven, the bread wouldn't be very tasty. What is required for bread is kneading.
Punching and pulling the ingredients so that the gluten in the flour binds with other glutens, so that it becomes rich in connections, fibrous, dense and stretchy.

I need to knead my sermons.

What might that mean?
Well for the current one I'm listening to, I set up really good catchphrase in the introduction. (The story of the boy and the Zen master from Charlie Wilson's War, with the catchphrase 'We'll see', to lead into the great reversal that will come at Jesus return).
Anyway, listening to the sermon, I realised that I could have added this short catchphrase into every point and illustration I had, but instead I left it to the end to return to it.
Knead away to make those connections.

Other times it works the other way. I make a point three quarters of the way through the sermon, and I realise that if I had worded my introduction slightly differently, the connection between them would be clearer. Or if I change my introduction slightly it can cover all the points I want to make in the sermon. Often you think you are trying to do one thing in an element of a sermon, but there are surprising connection with other parts. Doing a little kneading allows each part of the sermon to have maximum payoff, maximum resonance with the whole.
Knead away, so that the language from all the ingredients bleed into each other to make one tasty meal.

Going through this process of kneading often means there are large chunks of text that I must, and happily can, throw out. As each 'ingredient' is used to interpret and reinforce the others, I can be far more economical with my language.

Kneading means your sermon approaches poetry.

"What the reader craves, and I've spoken here already about the reader's primacy, are beautiful accidents, surprise and astonishment in the poem, doors opening outward to true vistas for the first time. Something built up from within, not merely extracted from the exterior. The connective tissue is the evanescent need to become part of something that is larger than humans or mere language, but parts of both compressed into radioactive poetry; the right words in the right order, lending light. A poem is an animal big enough to ride, teeming with unexpected energy, charting a course into the unknown, moments of agility and delight that do not throw the rider off its back, but serve as reminders of the exquisite muscularity and nimbleness of the animal, and the reader is made more beautiful as well, by having ridden it."

The Rhythm Method, Razzmatazz and Memory:
How To Make Your Poetry Swing
Keith Flynn

Reflection on Holy Communion 6

Apparently if you eat the same thing every day, you get a condition called 'appetite fatigue'. Imagine eating just rice for 30 days. It isn't just that you get bored. Your body has a physiological reaction such that you would rather starve to death than eat another grain of rice.

There seems to be two solutions to appetite fatigue. Eat something different each day, or have a variety of foods available each day .

Many of our churches (at least in Sydney) have worried about a kind of 'appetite fatigue' that can happen from traditional liturgy. And so we have opted for variety, for something different each week, to try and keep us entertained and interested.

I think we have missed a fundamental reality of our tradition.
Our liturgies don't lay out bowls of plain rice each day. They put on a feast each day!!
This is especially true of the Apostles Creed.
Here is a feast of gospel truth. Here is a spread that reaches from eternity to eternity. Here is a feast worth eating every day! It never grows dull, because today you might savour one dish, the next day you might chew on another. Some days a plate might pass you by without you eating it, but that is ok, because tomorrow you will feast again.

Unfortunately our parishoners have become used to fast food. And so the thought of having a maccas liturgy over and over scares them. (and rightly so)
We need to introduce each other again to the feast that is worth eating each day, to words that are so full and rich that they bear daily repetition, that grow and ripen and have depth of flavour as they get older.

Most of this post is informed by eating with the Italian Family of my wife, but an even better example is the bundle of spices that make up the Vietnamese Pho ball. A while back I heard that the best Pho is made with a bundle of spices that gets reused. The bundle needs to be used regularly (to sterilize it), but each use adds a complexity of flavour to the ball of spices as the flavours blend and interconnect. The best Pho is made from spice balls that have literally been handed down through generations, gaining depth with every bowl of soup.
I miss Pho. I could it eat it every day

Reflections on Holy Communion 5

“Remembering whose servant he is”
This meal is a political meal. In it we gather as a new people. In it we are fed by God. Yet there are others who feel the burden to feed us, chiefly our leaders. In the prayer for them, we pray that they might remember whose servant they are. Not ours, but God's. I heard an interview with Paul Keating the other day, where the interviewer was questioning Keating about his inaction over the abuses in Indonesia. Keating replied that he would have loved to intervene, but his first job as leader was to protect the interests of Australians. His frustration was palpable. “You cant sit there with you healthy pay packet and ipod and nice shoes and then ask that question”.
At the communion, we ask God to remind our leaders that they are not our servants, they are his. They are not to ‘protect our interests’, but to do what is right. God himself feeds us with eternal life. Prayer (even when not for leaders) is always a political act, because it names our true benefactor.

Adam Smith versus Paul

"If we could really believe, however, of any man, that, was it not from a regard to his family and friends, he would not take that proper care of his health, his life, or his fortune, to which self-preservation alone ought to be sufficient to prompt him, it would undoubtedly be a failing, though one of those amiable failings, which render a person rather the object of pity than of contempt or hatred. It would still, however, somewhat diminish the dignity and respectableness of his character."
Adam Smith The Theory of Moral Sentiments VII:3

²¹ For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. ²² If I am to go on living in the body, this will mean fruitful labor for me. Yet what shall I choose? I do not know! ²³ I am torn between the two: I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far; ²⁴ but it is more necessary for you that I remain in the body. ²⁵ Convinced of this, I know that I will remain, and I will continue with all of you for your progress and joy in the faith, ²⁶ so that through my being with you again your boasting in Christ Jesus will abound on account of me.
Philippians 1:21-26



"so far from allowing self-love to be in any case a motive of virtuous actions, that even a regard to the pleasure of self-approbation, to the comfortable applause of our own consciences, according to him, diminished the merit of a benevolent action. This was a selfish motive, he thought, which, so far as it contributed to any action, demonstrated the weakness of that pure and disinterested benevolence which could alone stamp upon the conduct of man the character of virtue. In the common judgments of mankind, however, this regard to the approbation of our own minds is so far from being considered as what can in any respect diminish the virtue of any action, that it is rather looked upon as the sole motive which deserves the appellation of virtuous."
ibid




⁷ But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. ⁸ What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ ⁹ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith. ¹⁰ I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, ¹¹ and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead.
Phillipians 3:7-10

Stealing Eugenio Barba to speak of prayer and action

"This imperceptible daily transformation of one's own way of seeing, approaching and judging the problems of one's own existence and that of others, this sifting of one's own prejudices, one's own doubts- not through gestures and grandiloquent phrases but through the silent daily activity- is reflected in one's work which finds new justifications, new reactions: thus one's north is displaced"

Eugenio Barba ' Words or Presence'

Reflections on Holy Communion 4

"Lord have mercy on us and incline our hearts to keep this law."

Is it possible to repeat these words, and yet see God’s law as opposed to grace?
Is there anything our churches need more today than to pray for the grace of obedience?
Is there any pagan concept more pervasive than freedom as undirected autonomy?
Or do we think we can obey God without his outpoured mercy?
Are we not under the law of Christ?
Lord , have mercy on us, and incline our hearts to keep your law

Principles for preaching- get ready to be crucified

Bonhoeffer famously said "When Christ calls a man, he bids him to come and die".

If, as preachers, we are preaching Christ truly, then we are asking our congregations to die. Literally. Like actually do things that could well get them killed. Not necessarily heroically, perhaps obscurely. Not just taking a stand for the truth, but perhaps pouring themselves out in love of the weak.

People, even Christians, don't really like that call.
And so as you get up to preach, you should have some sense of dread
"This sermon could get me fired"
even,
"This sermon could get me lynched"

If you don't have that feeling, are you really asking them to walk with Jesus into the New Creation? Or are you making them comfortable for this world?

*NB By God's grace and Holy Spirit, those sermons where you think people will hate you are often the ones that Christians respond best to. Finally someone has assured them that following Jesus into suffering is in fact the path to resurrection glory!


"The [listener] must approach as they might a surgeon, knowing, of course, that he will not die, but that it is a serious thing and he will not come out of it unscathed...He must be totally convinced that we are capable of making him scream" Antonin Artaud

The wealthy are not to be envied, or even hated, they are to be pitied

Now listen you rich people, weep and wail because of the misery that is coming upon you. Your wealth has rotted, and moths have eaten your clothes. Your gold and silver are corroded. Their corrosion will testify against you and eat your flesh like fire

You have hoarded wealth in the last days!!









We need to cultivate a completely different attitude towards wealth. It is dangerous! You don't want to hold on to it or it will burn your flesh like fire.
Give it away, give it away, that is what God gave it to you for!

Reflections on Holy Communion 3

"Almighty God, unto whom all hearts be open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid: Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of thy Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love thee, and worthily magnify thy holy Name; through Christ our Lord Amen"




Ah what a host we come to! Not a strangers table, where we must pretend and impress.
But our Fathers table, a family table, where we are known as we are, our hearts are open, our desires known, there are no secrets. What a host we come to! Not a brooding Father who frustrates, who leaves us guessing how to please him, who lets us wander in careless conversation as he grows more distant. But one who cleanses our thoughts, who guides us in love of him, who helps us honour him as we eat.

Do you call upon God at the beginning of communion, that you may eat well, magnifying his name? If you don’t use the Anglican collect, how do you do it?

Calvin on disobeying authorities and deferral to the judgment of women.

Those, whom the fear of men withdraws from the right course, betray by their cowardice an inexcusable contempt of God, in preferring the favour of men to his solemn commands...for many would be preposterously wise, whilst, under the pretext of due submission, they obey the wicked will of kings in opposition to justice and right, being in some cases the ministers of avarice and rapacity, in others cruelty; yea, to gratify transitory kings of earth, they take no account of God; and thus, which is worst of all, they designedly oppose pure religion with fire and sword. It only makes their effontry more detestable, that whilst they knowingly and willingly crucify Christ in his members, they plead the frivolous excuse, that they obey their princes according to the word of God; as if he, in ordaining princes, had resigned his rights to them, and as if every earthly power, which exalts itself over heaven, ought not rather most justly be made to give way. But since they only seek to escape the reprobation of men for their criminal obedience, let them not be argued with by long discussions, but rather referred to the judgement of women; for the example of these midwives (Exodus 1) is abundantly sufficient for their condemnation; especially when the Holy Spirit himself commends them, as not having obeyed the king, because they feared God.
Calvin's Commentaries Vol 2: The four last books of Moses in the form of a harmony Baker p35


So, ministers of avarice and rapacity anyone? Good to see the good old CofE taking the side of those in power for once

Reflections on Holy Communion 2

There are rules, there is ettiquette to this meal, but most of them protect your privilege to a plate at the family meal. The minister is the servant, not the host. No one can stop you coming simply because they don’t like you. It is a grave thing to refuse a family member a seat at the table. And though sometimes this may be necessary, it is not entered into lightly. And yet like the attentive aunt, the minister must attempt to see conflict resolved, wounds healed, and fights ceased before we sit down to eat. Let us eat in peace and please the host!

Have you ever asked permission of the Bishop to refuse communion? If not, why not?

Refections on Holy Communion 1

This meal is not fast food, eaten at your leisure, eaten in the privacy of your car as your life rushes on. This meal is not even a restaurant requiring a booking. This is a family meal, you let the host (and others)know you are coming, and you better have a good excuse if you aren’t!. This is family meal, you make sure you are there. This is a family meal..... (so we can always pull up another seat for last minute guests)

Why do we no longer let the curate know we are to attend communion?

Love your widow/ers, the world keeps turning

A number of years ago I picked up a second hand copy of the PTC course "New Testament 1". The copy previously belonged to an older man from the early morning congregation.

At the beginning of unit 10, about the betrayal and death of Jesus, the course had an introductory question
"What is the worst loneliness that you can imagine?"
Below, in an older man's small cursive script, he had written
"To be married for 50 years to your best friend and to suddenly lose her"
I knew he wasn't imagining.
There is a bit of a mood in our churches to resent the elderly for their demands on our time and energy. Yet these are the people on the front line with the reality of a broken world.
Death comes early to all the elderly, and possibly worse for those who live longest.
As one man in my church said "My world died decades ago, now there is a different world I don't know and doesn't know me".

Why do they need our prayers and time help and encouragement? I think Tom Waits puts it best
"They always say he marks the sparrows fall, how can anyone believe it all.
Well the band has stopped playing but we keep dancing,
the world keeps turning, the world keeps turning"

In a world of death, love becomes a poison and our good memories betray us.
The good of the world turns sour, however good it is.
We need a resurrection.

Is God imprisoned or active in the church gathering?

At the reformation, the hordes gathered, ready to tear down the walls and traditions of the church, because men had imprisoned God inside them, and God must be free to be in the world. And rightly so. We, however, do not live in the time of the reformation. The hordes stand ready to tear down the walls and traditions, not to free God, but because they are offended by the freedom he has within those walls. Those christians who long for the turbulent days, who imagine themselves as liberators as they attack the church and her practices, are deluded. Those christians who join the hordes and clamour for the church to be like the nations (for the sake of evangelism of course), wearing reformation banners, are the trigger happy adolescent soldiers, merrily raping and pillaging whoever happens to be nearby. Dare I say that this is even behind the cry 'all of life is worship'? If by this you mean God spills over from the contemplation, communion with God's presence, praise and joyful response of the gathering, soaking your days with the sacred and swelling into an even greater wave of praise the next sunday, then I say Amen. If, however, you mean I should stop thinking the gathering is special and treat it as a drudging lecture and horizontal cattle prod devoid of mystery because thats how the 'real world' is, and we need to reach the 'real world', I think you have joined the wrong hordes.

Eating poo and christian ministry

After a long and serious conversation with our youth minister, we came up with an appropriate analogy for the kids, to try and explain to them why we are constantly on their back about being counter-cultural, about reading the bible, about turning up to church.
It is not just because these things are right. It's not just that they should do them. It is because these things are good for them, and we love them.
"It is like we are telling you to not eat your own poo".
Sure, you can if you want to. But there are better things to eat. It isn't that we get angry when you don't, we just get sad for you.
Not following Jesus is like eating your own poo.
It also can be abbreviated into disturbing hand actions.