Lest I seem to be evangelical bashing

Lest I seem to be evangelical bashing, here is a great post on some of the history of women in evangelicalism

No leading the singing for women

Continuing on the American complementarian thread,
women really shouldn't be leading the service or the singing either, if we follow the lead of Bob Kauflin at Sovereign Grace.

So , where are we up to. No preaching, no reading the scriptures, no praying, no singing, no leading. Lets be really clear who we are getting involved with if we want to go down this complementarian line.

Lets be quite clear that they teach Christians that what we do is sub or even anti biblical (if we do indeed allow women participation in these things).

No praying from the front for women

Let's get this straight, you raving feminist Sydney Anglicans, who misunderstand the way God has made men and women.

Women shouldn't be praying up the front in church services either,
says John Piper and plenty of other complementarians

No Bible reading for women either

I would hate for a slippery slope argument to be invoked in the discussion about women in ministry, but.. this is where it leads to folks!

Tim Challies tries to defend only men reading scripture publicly

http://www.crosswalk.com/blogs/challies/men-women-the-public-reading-of-scripture.html

Lucky evangelical liturgies and prayers are such trite nonsense (ie lacking in teaching content), otherwise women would be excluded from those activities too.
What rubbish.

Listening to the voice of women in the church

Take a look at your christian books.
How many are by women?
What ratio women to men?

Mine is about 1:50

Please list your best theological book written by a fmale

Principles for preaching- Spend some time with yourself

When we are preaching we are speaking to humans ( I hope!).
In theory then, this should be incredibly easy. I am also a human, we should be able to relate!
Surely in ourselves we have a great resource for understanding each other.
But unfortunately, most of us don't spend time simply with 'ourselves'.
Sure, we spend time alone. With the TV. With some passtime. With a bible.
But I don't think this counts as spending time with ourselves.
Now, I'm not recommending some complicated program of 'finding ourselves', or deep meditation to find something profound.
In fact, the profoundest thing I have found by spending time with myself is that I'm not very profound. Not that I spend that much time with myself now.

When I was a child and teenager however, I had a special rock that I would go to, simply to sit.
It overlooked a vast valley. I played with the smaller rocks on top. I got bored. I got past being bored. I let my mind wander. I learn't all sorts of things at that rock. I learnt that I should thank people who have helped me. I learnt about a friends horrific story. I learnt to sit. I noticed that I am here, now. I thought about stuff. Nothing too profound*. But at least it gave me some time to have an interior reality. Not everything is conversing with others. I exist when I am not being entertained. Apparently teenagers and young uns' these days are lacking an interior life. Go and sit on a rock. You get to notice yourself a bit
Which should help you relate to other 'selfs'. Perhaps even show them their own 'selfs' more than they have ever seen them before. There is a lot of talk that preachers should go and spend time with people if we want to connect. And there is some truth in that. But perhaps there is een more benefit from spending some time with yourself
Preachers, go sit on a rock.



* though also some profound things. On a moonless night, the few lights from the farmhouses in the valley blended with the stars, so that the horizon seemed to drop 100 metres ahead, and gave the feeling you were floating through space on a small ball. Which you are really. Also, after a few years sitting on the rock, I lay down in just the right place and saw that the edge of the rock aligned almost perfectly with the contours of the mountains in the distance. Freaky.

I Ain't dead

So this last year I have taken up mat-surfing. Heading out to the beach on an inflateable pillow.
Probably the best time was in tiny surf when a few dolphins turned up and joined in the wave fun, and the worst when I went out in big surf and got the crap kicked out of me.

Last week I went surfing, there were a lot of fish in the water. Which made me a little, ahem, nervous.

I got home and turned on the news, they are going through the headlines

"Beachgoers swim unaware next to sharks in feeding frenzy"
I scream and recoil from the television.
"Surfer bitten by a shark"
arghhh
Then the story comes on
"Surfer Mike Wells was lucky to survive today after being mauled by a 6 foot bronze whaler"
I ran from the lounge room squealing.

All of which is to say,
I aint dead

FIVE sharks were seen off central coast beaches yesterday less than 12 hours after a surfer was bitten by what was thought to be a bronze whaler at North Avoca.

Mike Wells, a local semi-professional surfer and surf shop worker, received stitches and had surgery to prevent infection to about 50 puncture wounds on his right arm.

The 28-year-old was attacked at dusk on Tuesday in the water not far from the beachfront house he rents with his girlfriend, Samantha Symonds.

She said he was doing well and was expected to be discharged from Gosford Hospital last night.

On a surfing blog a friend, Grant Molony, said he was ''cracking jokes [and was] a lucky man with a story to tell for years to come''.

Mr Wells used his left hand to fight off the shark, which was about the size of his surfboard.

A neighbour, called Max, said beach walkers helped when he came ashore bleeding. His surfboard strap was used as a tourniquet and a towel covered gashes.

''He was as white as anything but still lucid. I think shock was setting in,'' he said.

Yesterday a Westpac life saver rescue helicopter spotted five sharks up to four metres long at Copacabana Beach and Avoca Beach, which was closed for an hour. Large numbers of baitfish are thought to be attracting them.

One surfer at North Avoca, Lachlan Taylor, 19, went into the water about 8am yesterday and saw masses of fish. ''Then I saw a huge shadow so I just absolutely bolted,'' he said.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/environment/animals/rescue-service-spots-five-sharks-up-to-four-metres-close-by-20120104-1pl8g.html#ixzz1ivbXyfXa

Reasons why Bible readers/teachers should read David Foster Wallace's 'Infinite Jest'

in no particular order

1. It is a fantastic book

2. It is rampant with intertextuality.

3. It contains complex thoughts on addiction and desire

4. Rumoured to have a chiastic structure

5. It moves beyond post-modernism, a response more to the technological reality of post-humanism

6. Like the Bible, on a first read, it seems to be full of irrelevant detail. But on subsequent readings you realise every detail is important, every detail a window to the whole.

7. SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER
One of the characters has an influence over the speech of others, in a strange and not quite clear way. They don't lose their agency, but someone else is in there too.

Feel free to add some more

When the day starts, pray

When you are made Ready to begin the Day, Pray:

O God and merciful Father, thou knows and hast taught us somewhat to know, that the weakness of man is much, and that without thy grace and virtue he cannot do or think any good thing; have mercy upon me, I humbly beseech thee, who am thy most unworthy and most weak child. Oh! be gracious and tender towards me, enlighten me, that I may with pleasure look only upon good things; exhort me, that I may covet them; carefully lead me, that I may follow, and at length attain them. I, distrusting myself altogether, commend and offer myself wholly, soul, body, life, &c., into thy hands. Thy loving Spirit lead me forth unto the land of righteousness

Thoughts on hospital visits

Earlier this year I had to do a hospital visit. My first one. I had no idea what to do, or how to be.

Jason offers some excellent thoughts on visiting those in hospital. Well worth a read

As soon as it is light, pray

So soon as you behold the Daylight, Pray:

O Lord, thou greatest and most true Light, whence this light of the day and of the sun does spring! O Light, which does lighten every man that comes into this world! O Light, which knows no night nor evening, but are always a midday, most clear and fair, without whom all is most dark darknessóby whom all are most resplendent! O thou Wisdom of the eternal Father of mercies! enlighten my mind, that I may only see those things that please thee and may be blinded to all other things. Grant that I may walk in thy ways, and that nothing else may be light and pleasant unto me. Lighten mine eyes, O Lord! that I sleep not in death, lest mine enemies say, "I have prevailed against him."

Occasions to meditate

Muse a little how much the light and eye of the mind and soul are better than those of the body; also that we care more for the soul's seeing well, than for the body. Think that beasts have bodily eyes, and therewith see, but men have eyes of the mind, and therewith should see.

The freedom of confession

"The 'burden' of self accusation, the suspicion of what the heart prompts, this is not about an inhuman austerity or self hatred but about the need for us all to be coaxed into honesty by the confidence that God can forgive and heal"
Rowan Williams
Silence and Honey Cakes pp49

Diversity and commitment

"The church is meant primarily to be a community of persons in the sense we have been talking about. It is a place for distinctive vocations to be discovered in such a way that they are a source of mutual enrichment and delight, not threat. It is a place where human difference is nourished. I don't just mean the obvious fact that the church has to be a place of welcome for all races and cultures, but that it must know how to work with the grain of different personal gifts and histories. A healthy church is one where there is evident diversity in this respect, with plenty of bizarre characters... An unhealthy one is a group in which the unity of the church has been reduced to a homogeneity of options and habits, so that certain styles of devotion, for example, or certain expressions of what God means to this or that person are frowned on, virtue becomes identified with uncontroversial ordinariness and there is a nervous cultural 'sameness' in the way people talk, dress and so on..... this is more than 'letting a thousand flowers bloom'. A church that is simply recognising different preferences is stuck at the level of individualism; the real work has not yet been done, the work which is the discovery of God's call beyond the simplistic 'listening to the heart' that we all too readily settle for. This is a work that takes protracted, committed time, which is why the church is so much involved in blessing lifelong commitments- marriage, ordination, monastic life- not as a way of saying that everyone has to be involved in one or more of these but to remind all baptized believers that, because of their baptism, they are bound to the patient, long term discovery of what grace will do with them"
Rowan Williams
Silence and Honey Cakes:the wisdom of the desert pp59

Pray the day with John Bradford

When you Awake out of your Sleep, Pray thus:

O most dear Father of our Saviour Jesus Christ, whom none does know but by thy gift, grant that to the manifold great benefits of thy goodness given to me, this which of all other is the greatest, may be added; that like as thou hast awakened my body from sleep, so thou would thoroughly awake, yea, deliver my soul from the sleep of sin and the darkness of this world, and that which now is awakened out of sleep, be pleased, after death, to restore to life, for that is but sleep to thee, which is death to us. O God, I most heartily beseech and humbly pray thy goodness to make my body such a companion, or rather such a minister of godliness to my soul, in this present life, that in the life to come it may partake therewith everlasting happiness by Jesus Christ our Lord. Awake, thou that sleeps, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall show light unto thee. (Eph. v.)

Occasions to meditate

Here call to mind the great joy and blessedness of the everlasting resurrection; also remember to muse upon that most clear light and bright morning, and clearness of our bodies, after the long darkness they will hare been in: all then shad be full of joy.