Friday night we held a huge gig at the Manchester Apollo. The place was packed out with teenagers from local high schools, it was a great night. One of the highlights was the 'world premier' playing of Lz7's new pop video. We're hoping to get a million downloads of this in the next few months so go on, give it a click.
For the last couple of weeks this book has had me hooked. Post-Charismatic?
"...many post-charismatics... find it too difficult, or too emotionally exhausting, to sort through all the practices and teachings and discern the good from the bad. They simply withdraw and consider that chapter of their lives closed."
By the end of the book it's apparent that the people in this category are probably Rob's primary audience. This is why he structures the book in two clear halves; the first a headlong plunge into the present mess of the Charismatic Church and the second a valiant effort to describe a way by which the bored, the confused and the hurting can enjoy again a relationship with the Triune - Father, Son and Holy Spirit. In the closing pages he admits that 'post-charismatic' is far too limited and loaded a term to do justice to this new possibility and so he borrows a phrase from a blogging friend: charismissional. I quite like it.
I had a brief conversation yesterday whilst down in London. It went along fairly classic lines. My question: 'How can we get more missionally-minded Christians to move into council estates and inner city areas?' The response was all too predictable, a wearied frown and a small but perceptible dropping of the shoulders: 'But that's a very special kind of calling...'
The guy should've known better, he grew up on a council estate and is heavily involved in urban ministry with a very significant church. And he was talking to me. But we'd not met before so I didn't chin him.
I'm totally convinced of one simple thing; as long as ministry that impinges on our middle-class comfort is considered somehow 'special' we'll never see 'Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.' As long as we keep acting as if the great commission (that pesky 'Go' thing Jesus said) is something we are expected to opt-in to things will never change. Basically the orientation is as follows: there's a lot of mess in the world and I should assume that God wants me out there in the thick of it unless I am given explicit instructions to the contrary.
The Labour party conference has been going on here in Manchester this weekend so all the Government bigwigs are in town along with a huge fringe of party members, lobbyists and general tagger-onners. Apart from causing me a fair amount of inconvenience trying to drive through the city centre on Friday evening it has given me the opportunity to catch up with an old mate who now works in Parliament.
It's been a long time since I've had chance to have such a deeply involved political conversation with someone who actually knows what's going on from the inside - my friend literally spends every day in the palace of Westminster meeting with MPs across all parties. One of the main circles of our discussion concerned the Labour party - the place where historically (in terms of culture and heritage) both our affiliations are found - but a party in which it is incredibly difficult to be 'out' about Christian commitment. For example, while David Cameron is busy courting the support of prominent Christian activists, particularly in the big cities, Labour's union base are busy villifying Joel Edwards upon hearing of his appointment to the Equality and Human Rights Commission.
Having just watched Charlie Wilson's War last night I find myself hopeful again that one man (or woman) in the right place, at the right time can change the outcome of the direst situation. I believe my friend to be such a man - God's man.
I would rarely ever turn to the book of Deuteronomy for inspiration. Yes I'm sure that there's loads of great stuff in there but I'm just being honest. Anyway, prompted by my 'New Best Friend' Eugene Peterson (OK I've been reading his books) I've been taking a fresh look. In particular my attention has been caught by the prominence of the word love within the book (29 uses)...
"Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength." Deut 6:5
I now find that wherever I seem to turn in scripture this single line, this simple but heavily laden injunction follows me around, the perfect example being when Jesus himself verbally affirmed the primacy of this command, which of course he also physically embodied. And it's this second element of loving God that I'm most profoundly challenged by. I can mentally ascent to the fact that I need to love God, after all 'He first loved me'. But how do I live that love? In the pages of scripture it appears plainly that higher than believing in God, higher than trusting God, higher than even worshipping God is the invitation to love God, which is a fusion of believing and trusting and worshipping plus a whole lot more.
I want to love God, I really do, but love just doesn't seem to be a language I'm very fluent in.
Just a couple of days ago I posted a YouTube clip here featuring the cancer-fighting testimony of Australian pastor and worship leader Mike Guglielmucci. As you can see below it was a story that really moved me - moved me enough to want to share it. Well, I now find myself wishing I hadn't. Hillsong Church have removed the clip from YouTube now because it has emerged over the last 24 hours that his condition is not cancer at all - rather he has been existing for some time now in nothing short of a self-delusion. In the words of another famous song 'it's a sad, sad situation.' The guy has conned his church, his friends, even his wife and family. Very, very sad.
I actually got a phonecall about 48 hours ago to break the news to me as I'd used the clip in a talk at church on Sunday - something I won't be doing again of course. As I write I'm at the Soul Survivor 'Momentum' festival where Mike Pilavachi this morning broke the news to a stunned audience. He confessed to the thousands of students and young adults that his first reaction had been to comment to a close friend 'It just goes to show, you can't trust anyone anymore.' That friend was wise enough to reply 'Mike, that's exactly what Satan wants you to believe.'
And it's true, we all know where lies and deception originate and it's not with God. At the end of the day whilst I feel sad about this I don't feel rocked in the slightest. It was quite some time now that I realised that every circus has its clowns. Every genuine move of God will attract the damaged and deluded as well as the solid and sincere. The challenge is spotting the difference which can be very difficult to do.
This clip connects with something deep down in me. Maybe I love it because it illustrates that intersection in life between faith and 'reality'. Maybe I love it because it's a great example of how we live in the time of 'now but not yet'. Maybe I love it because it's not an overly simplified testimony of 'zap-pow' healing. Whatever, I really love this clip.
"Your mother is a necromancer!"
It was at that point that I realised there would be absolutely no reasoning or meeting on common ground with these black-clad, finger-pointing, prophets of doom. The words were directed at one of my close friends, a colleague of the last ten years. We'd wandered over to the far corner of an outdoor youth event we put on yesterday in Manchester city centre having heard reports that some guys were handing out pamphlets dissing us as heretics and apostates. It hadn't escaped my attention that a website has been running a smear campaign against our work and I had my suspicions that the people behind this might one day show up in person. However, to finally meet these virtual personalities in the flesh was quite an experience.
Over the years I've become used to the daily grind of working in environments that are hostile to the gospel but have not really encountered any direct assault from others who also call themselves Christians. That's perhaps all the more remarkable considering the extensive networking I do within the wider church. Largely, even when I meet people with whom there is clearly a degree of disagreement about doctrinal issues there is a measure of grace evident upon which we can agree to disagree. So I must admit I was shocked to encounter at close quarters what appeared to be fully matured hatred spilling from the mouth of someone claiming to know Jesus. One of the two guys, the one who accused my friend's mum (the most faithful, saintly lady on the planet) a witch was literally shaking and trembling as he spluttered out one accusation after another. As you might imagine, after a few minutes of graciously pleading with these guys to please do something more constructive with their time we turned our backs on them and walked away.
Part of me really wants to name and shame this group but I sense the Holy Spirit restricting me from doing that so that no more fuel is added to the arson these deeply deranged people are trying to commit within God's house.
I think I should be happy about this but instead it just gives me the creeps. Can anyone offer a diagnosis as to why?
I've just finished watching the final episode of The Passion on BBC One. It's been a great little series, the recreation of ancient Jerusalem felt particularly convincing (of course how would I know what ancient Jerusalem looked like!). The emphasis on the three way power struggle was a great angle on the story, particularly the Caiaphas character. I loved the tension between the protectors of the present order, Pilate representing the political and military might of Rome and Caiaphas representing the religious and cultural establishment of the Jewish homeland, both under threat by the stranger from Galilee who speaks of a new way and a new world. It reminded me again of the contagious revolutionary DNA Jesus carried.
But today is Easter Sunday, and ever since the first episode I've been feeling that this series would ultimately stand or fall by how well the resurrection was rendered. So what do I think? Well hey, a damn sight better than Jesus Christ Superstar which doesn't even include the resurrection, and I hesitate to say, even better than Mel Gibson's version with it's short but very sweet resurrection moment from inside the tomb looking out. Even so, it was still a tad underwhelming. The producer, Nigel Stafford-Clark, references Mark's gospel as his key source which may well be the problem, it's probably the least potent of the four resurrection accounts. If only he'd taken a broader creative approach the scenes could've been so much stronger, even simple touches like the location and the lighting would've helped as the dusty old hillside he used just had zero atmosphere. However, what saved it for me was the inclusion of the Emmaus road encounter (albeit with James and Matthew). I did find it genuinely moving to see their reaction as the guy they're eating with starts to break bread and then reveals his true face before their eyes.
This afternoon I popped along to the Manchester leg of the EA sponsored tour exploring the subject of the Resurrection. Here in Manchester we got Prof Gary Habermas, an able scholar, but sadly minus his stellar counterpart Tom Wright who has appeared at many of the other dates. The first session began promisingly with an opening reference to 1 Corinthians 15, but then sadly descended into a ramble about the common ground that exists between conservatives, moderates and liberals when it comes to the teaching of the resurrection in the writings of 'the big 4' (Habermas' reference to Paul, Peter, John and James).
I cornered said Prof over coffee and pressed him for a preview of his second session, hoping to hear that he would indeed be getting into 1 Corinthians 15 or material of that ilk. Sadly not. We had a helpful chat about the impact of the bodily resurrection of Jesus on discipleship in the here and now but I could not coax him into a discussion about why the personal resurrection beliefs of the early church have been sidelined more recently for a woolly expectation of the soul drifting off at death to spend eternity in heaven. Even when I pitched a carefully worded question in the public forum later on, Prof Habermas and two other able theologians all seemed to fail to grasp what I was getting at. It really does seem that there are very few people alert to the fact that it's almost taboo for contemporary Christians to speak of their hopes about their own future bodily resurrection.
I popped round to my dad's later and asked him what he thought. After pondering for a minute he said that the last time, and only time, he had ever heard anyone preach on future bodily resurrection was 30 years ago! That seriously needs to change.
"...but this is a Christian nation!" So ends another whining diatribe against the latest secular or islamic or humanistic or homo-erotic or politically correct initiative / incident / news story.
Two things collided this week to remind me again just how misguided these passionately held sentiments are. Firstly, I've been reading the Old Testament books of Jeremiah and Daniel, alongside Brueggemann's 'The Prophetic Imagination'. Then, midweek, Channel 4 showed 'Kingdom of Heaven' and whilst the film as a whole was largely a disappointment to me it was still thought provoking on a number of levels. At one point in the film Jeremy Irons delivers a line about Jerusalem (and I wish I could remember it) that evokes the contradiction at the heart of that much used phrase "Christian nation." The blood that has been shed over that dusty bit of land is utterly heinous. Jesus himself made it absolutely clear that his intention was not to establish a Kingdom with geographic borders but a Kingdom defined by a Way of life, exemplified by people of every ethnos living in relationship with him and harmony with one another.
And where do Jeremiah and Daniel fit into that? Well they are just two of the characters we meet in the grand timeline of biblical history who are doing exactly what we (Christians in 21st Century Britain) ought to be doing - working out by our daily choices and actions exactly what it means to honour God and live for him in the midst of a society that revolves around a very different centre of gravity. The quirk of global history known as Christendom is over and we find ourselves living out the same question as our biblical forebears - those who sweated in Egypt, wept in Babylon and faced down Caesar's lions... "How can we prove the value of our convictions over-against the current socio-political backdrop?"
In the context of my recent blog entries and the various comments they have provoked, I chuckled when this little cartoon appeared in the footer of an email I received today...
It's been dawning on me of late that we live in a world that teaches us to always locate evil outside of ourselves. This is manifest in the blame culture, the demonization of certain people groups and sub-cultures and the blatant hypocrisy of mass media. And this isn't just a problem that resides in secular society, the church is equally possessing of this worldview. We have a particularly effective way of ensuring we are not troubled by the thought that something within us may be wrong. Religious imagination weaves a spell constructing a Satan with powers out of all proportion with the character described in the pages of scripture. He is omnipresent, he knows our thoughts, he afflicts us with sicknesses of body, mind and spirit. Before long we actually begin to shift our focus away from the author and perfecter of our faith and begin addressing our prayers to this imposter - beckoning him nearer by the volume of our declarations that he must flee.
It is two millenia since the Master first warned us that nothing that enters a man from the outside can make him unclean, rather 'all these evils come from inside' (see Mark 7). Why then do we still fail to allow the transformational potential of these words to affect our discipleship? Are we so blinkered by pride that we fail to see that the seeds of every human evil lie dormant below the carefully raked topsoil of our hearts. I hope not but fear so. Don't get me wrong, I don't expect every believer to walk around in a state of permanent shame and unworthiness, I just want to hear less blaming of the devil for issues that are self-generated and need dealing with honestly in the privacy of the 'secret place'.
In contrast to the traditional view that uncleanness was contagious, Jesus regarded holiness as contagious. The physician is not overcome by those who are ill, but rather overcomes their illness. Thus Jesus touches people who have leprosy, or who are unclean or sick or women, without fear of contamination. Jesus is not rendered unclean by the contact; rather, those whom society regarded as defiled are made clean. Holiness, he saw, was not something to be protected; rather, it was God's miraculous power of transformation. God's holiness cannot be soiled; rather, it is a cleansing and healing agent. It does not need to be shut up and quarantined in the temple; it is now, through Jesus' healings and fellowship with the despised and rejected, breaking out into the world to transform it.
Walter Wink, The Powers That be: Theology for a New Millennium
I'm preaching at an Anglican church tomorrow and so have discovered that we're on the brink of the Lent season (which starts on Wednesday). Lots of Christians use the Lent season to fast from various things. This got me to thinking that it’s easy to get the wrong idea about fasting. Let me explain:
There’s a dangerous idea around. It’s been around almost as long as the church. It’s an idea that would have us believe that the bodies God has given us, the bodies that he created and described as ‘very good’ - are in fact evil. It’s an idea that would have us believe that in order to please God we need to somehow reject the bodily life he has given us in favour of a purely ‘spiritual life’.
And this idea has been widely applied to the practice of fasting - going without food, or chocolate, or TV, or the many other recent additions on the theme. I’d like to suggest to everyone who is thinking of fasting this Lent, that fasting isn’t about that at all.
Fasting isn’t a way of us rejecting our bodies in search of some ‘purer’ spiritual self. Rather, fasting fosters deep within us an awareness of the fact that our spiritual self sits right at the heart of our physical self. Fasting reminds us that God has made us whole people and that there is a profound connection between the way we feed our physical desires and the formation of our spiritual identity.
I'm reading Walter Wink's The Powers That be: Theology for a New Millennium
What is it about Ikea? The place makes me feel so uncomfortable (which must be the ultimate irony considering its a furniture store!) The minute I walk in the place I start to get a creeping sensation of rage. And every Ikea store I've been in seems to have the same effect. It's like there's a mass-hypnotism in progress, people just aren't themselves. From the car park to the checkout it seems that the blue and yellow beast has its wicked way with otherwise ordinary citizens. Is it just me or can anyone else relate to that???
...it just doesn't sound right does it? And that, I think is a large part of the problem. Many in the Christian networks I tend to mix in seem to really revel in the idea of being a warrior for Jesus, fighting off Satan and his demonic hordes with the Sword of the Spirit and War Cry prayers. Revealing, creatively and consistently, the beauty of the Kingdom of Heaven in our little sphere of influence just doesn't appear enough to capture anyone's imagination.
This whole issue has really been on my mind this week. During a break in a tub-thumping prayer meeting on Wednesday I confided in a friend my worries about the whole militaristic dimension of charismatic Christianity (worries that have become even more acute in these days of religiously-sanctioned terrorism and war). I asked him whether he thought the primary reality for the resurrection community is one of ongoing conflict with spiritual forces - punctuated with some times of rest, or, whether the primary reality is one of increasing shalom - punctuated with an occasional battle here and there. We got interrupted before he could answer!
Anyway, that very afternoon, we had the opportunity to spend an hour listening to a guy describing his decade of ministry in Burundi (central Africa, bordering Rwanda and Congo). In that hour any illusions I had of forming the 'Onward Christian Gardeners Society' utterly evaporated. I was left with the stark reality that in a large proportion of the world the only response to the prevailing evil (and I can't even repeat the evils he shared with us) is a potent faith lived out through the travail of blood, sweat and tears.
As an interesting adjunct to all this I happened to be checking out an MA course this morning. The subject notes were handed to me as I arrived, the headline: The Powers. What followed was three hours of in-depth critical engagement around the theme of Spiritual Warfare particularly centred around the trilogy of books by Walter Wink. Superb stuff. It seems that God's making a concerted effort at the moment to get through my thick head.
I was surprised by the affirming stance taken in this article which was printed in Sunday's Observer... what do you think?
"In our hyper-sexualised, ultra-liberal society, virgins are perhaps the only sexual sub-culture left with the power to shock us. You can be as gay or as fetishy or as promiscuous or as transsexual as you like; you can be a regular at Cake parties and on the dogging scene; you can be part of an open relationship, and we won't bat an eyelid. But a virgin? Are you serious? We simply don't expect to encounter them any more. We certainly don't expect to meet attractive, assertive, well-dressed, professional, celibate Christians in their late twenties. But it seems that they do exist. And furthermore, they reckon there are hidden benefits to their choice."
CLICK HERE for full article
