Muhaha, who feels a little bit lashed on this one??


Classic series of posters having a good dig at the emerging church movement. Check em out here

HT Andrew Jones

Labels: emerging church, humility

Cartoon by Dave Walker.

Labels: emerging church

I want to be quite careful about how I say this, especially after reading this from Scott McKnight the living legend, and this from Scottie - a legend because his bowels are so nasty his odour can clear a room of hardened men. It burns the back of the throat and makes the eyes water.

Now, it is a bit frustrating because I would love to have a good story about how I grew up. But I have had a pretty good Christian up-bringing, and have done all the things a good Christian kid should do. The camps, leading worship at church, degree from Bible College, tours with bands etc etc etc. And yet I have had a major (underline freaken MAJOR) re-adjustment about how it looks to follow the person of Jesus, and what it looks like to be living a life for Him which cemented itself about four years ago.

Ask me when I was 17 about the poster (found in a Christian mag with a huge circulation here in NZ, in the Soul Survivor UK festival booklet etc) below and I would have said, "yep that looks right, I hope one day i can have a life of significance like that guy".
Now I think that it is absolute rubbish.... this is NOT significance, and in no way is the destination I believe Jesus had in mind for us as I see it in the Gospels.

Labels: doubt, emerging church, honesty, jesus followers, personal, rant

Saturday Night saw my mate Darryl give yet another brilliant yarn to the folks at Blueprint Church. I'm gonna give you his first point (with some sam harvey embellishments) mainly because the second point was really good but I cant remeber it that well, didnt really take any notes on it. Something about changing the way we view ourselves or something fluffy along those lines.

Anyway after thinking about it, what was so good about the talk was that it wasn't a "lets get sorted so God can maybe use us" talk, it wasn't a "You are going to change the world" talk, it was a couple of practical things that we should be doing if we profess to follow Jesus. Its so refreshing to hear stuff that we should and can easily do.

Point one: We should all be involved in helping the poor on three levels.

• Sponsor a child. All of us should be doing this even though we are distant from the person and they are often just a picture on the fridge.
  
• Connect ourselves (via a trip to a 2/3rds world country) so that these people suffering move from pictures to a reality in our life. That we would know someone who is living in poverty overseas. I know this is a strong view, but my perspective is that every single person who follows Jesus should go as least once in their life to spend time with the poor. I spent three years in South America as my parents served as missionaries and it has so profoundly changed my world-view it cannot be overstated. We spend huge amounts of money on study, cars, rent, christian confrences. We will be more transformed than all of this stuff combined, and we can all afford it if push came to shove.
  
• Connect in NZ to the poor. Darryl mentioned some of the needs here in NZ that we should all be a part of (as he ranted about here)
  

As he was talking I wrote down the words "we actually act least like a Christian in church".

Following Jesus looks like hanging out with the un-popular kid at school. Following Jesus looks like giving our time and money to those that struggle physically, emotionally etc. Following Jesus is looking at creative ways of blessing people with no strings attached (click here for a great yarn along those lines). Following Jesus looks like the struggle in the secret place not to sin. Following Jesus is hurting and being confused by circumstances and situations that are not right in the world. Following Jesus is being angry about injustice, and giving yourself to make a difference even if it feels small. Following Jesus is sharing life with those that are on the fringes and looked down upon in our culture, with those that are hurting (which is why my friend Stu's latest post blows me away).
Following Jesus is plodding along doing normal life in an abnormal way. You can continue the list yourself this definitely isnt the extensive list : )

All of a sudden it seems that our church gathering (while freaken awesome times and really important) is not just what it looks like to be a Christian.

But where does most of our energy go? If "the medium is the message" then what are communicating?
I for one have had a really huge adjustment about what it looks like to follow Jesus in the last 6 years, and yet have grown up in a healthy Christian family, with part of that time overseas living amongst the poor, being to all the camps and events one goes to, studied at Bible College for three years. And with all this Christian input I still had a really imbalanced idea about what it looked like to follow Jesus.

To be continued...

Labels: darryl, emerging church, jesus followers, justice, personal, rant

I WOULD DEARLY LOVE TO GO AND RE-WRITE THIS POST, THE POINT I WAS TRYING TO MAKE IS VERY BADLY COMMUNICATED, AND I DISAGREE WITH WHAT, BUT MAINLY HOW I HAVE WRITTEN IT. BUT TO PRESERVE THE INTEGRITY OF THE POST AND THIS BLOG IM GOING TO LEAVE IT AS IT IS... ENJOY ; )


Note: this is an not an attempt to try and raise the maturity of this blog after the comments in the last post. It came out of conversation with a guy today... who lives in Palmerston North. Please pray for him, and for anyone else you know living in Palmy. If you have being there, you know why.

Does anyone else find Communion empty and boring? Does the very word “Communion” conjure up the most religious and dull of memories? Doesn’t it all sound so… Anglican?
Now I (frustratingly sometimes) love the Anglican Church don’t get me wrong, (I am a closet Anglican) but surely this ritual wasn’t meant to be so lifeless?

While I think the words in the Anglican liturgy are incredibly beautiful words, (warning: judgement alert) hearing them said in a monotonous voice from a guy who sounds as spiritually excited as a plate of sausages and bored witless makes contemplating this incredibly act of grace difficult. And then to have the same words repeated every week, year on year until they have had every bit of life beaten out of them seems to be adding insult to injury.
I am well aware that for many the marriage of liturgy and communion really is something that works for them. This is not the case for me, and I would argue that many young people struggle to engage with this expression (and if we are really honest many not so young).
Once every now and then when I haven't being to an Anglican service for a long while (as in right now) and it is a deep experience. Thrashed out every week, and before you know it I am thinking about everything but the cross, it becomes another empty ritual. C.S. Lewis disagrees with me and writes that the familiarity of these words makes it like a well-worn shoe in which one can easily dance. The familiarity of the words for Mr Lewis helped the act of contemplation, didn’t hinder it.

And then there is the Pentecostal churches who are just as bad in my opinion. It seems that whole command to do this to remember what Jesus did is a bit of a pain in the back side, and so they seem to quickly get communion over and done with, and do it every blue moon to tick the box. Throwing the bread and a thimble of juice down the aisle in between songs is as much an act of contemplation as the drive thru, and again seems to have cheapened the whole point of it.

So what’s it to be; the token or the boring?

Now all these conversations are fine if you don’t actually help pastor at a church. Alas, my theory, my rants, my frustration can actually be used to try different things. Unlike many, I cannot enjoy the satisfaction of being pissed off about something and enjoy stewing about it with out ever trying to make a positive alternative. The exploration of different ways of "doing" communion began in my old church in Karori in 2005, and was really emphasised at the beginning of last year as I began helping to lead at a church called Blueprint.

Like many emerging churches, Blueprint has being guilty of throwing out the baby with the bathwater in its exploration of what Church looks like these days. And so communion had hit the sack heap until someone piped up from the church and challenged the leadership on the whole deal part way through last year. Brook, my good mate saw the point and re-introduced the event. I can take none of the credit, but love the way that things have turned out and have learnt a lot. Let me explain what has being happening the last 7 months.

In between every series through out the year (or about every 6 weeks) there is a night in which we focus on grace. For a church filled with new Christians, or old munted ones (like me), I struggle to really believe the scandal of grace, and so this is a welcome reminder. Obviously central to grace is the cross, and at the end of the talk, or sometime in the night we spend a decent amount of time either in silence or with background music eating some bread and drinking some juice. I cannot overstate that they are the most powerful nights where there is a very tangible sense of beauty and a very deep sense of contemplation of this incredible act of love. The whole process of listening to someone speak on grace, and then to spend time with some physical elements and to consider that this God loves us that much, to consider the implications of the cross, and the implications of grace on our lives. This has brought such renewed life, passion and gratitude in the act of communion on a personal level, and a desire to see new life breathed into this ancient ritual that is filled with mystery, freedom and beauty.

In no way has blueprint got it nailed and if anything it is a church marked by its obvious and very real imperfections. The truth is that in every church there is the danger that we can very easily slide into ritual and loose meaning of important parts of the fabric that make "Church", but on the other side there are things that we can learn and grow from. And I know that no denomination or church has ever set out to try and make something loose meaning or disengage young people. My argument is that something so special and powerful as communion is worth having some hard yarns about as there is such a depth that we can easily loose when we have not spent time thinking about how we will create an atmosphere of contemplation and reflection.

My apologies for the judgemental tone of the post, I would be very interested in your thoughts and experiences in this matter, and look forward to my Anglican friends roasting me on a spit.

In other news…

A blog well worth checking out is my mates Dave “Bare Theology” (no its not the theology of nudistst…). Dave has some very impressive titles next to his name; dean of men, lecturer at the Bible College of NZ, writer for Soul Purpose magazine... etc etc. Dave was my flatmate for the whole time I lived in Auckland, we completed our degrees at the same time. The difference was that I was content with the mantra "C's get degrees", Dave actually studied... and after I graduated Dave stayed on, has just about finished his masters, and lecturers at the college to this day.

He has shamelessly advertised his blog on my comments twice, and seeing that putting his blog on my link page is not enough, I am going to advertise his site in the hope that this monkey will stop peddling his new blog on my blog... jokes its a good read. Although to be honest my brain cells get a little fried after reading to much of blogs like his, a reflection of my simple mindedness and his intellect. In fact, I would encourage you to find the comment I left on his blog, which was all I could think of at the time. His last post had me cross eyed.

But for those bored of the paddling round the puddle, and know its time to have a “real meal” and tackle some meaty issues, then head over to Dave’s blog. On top of his intellect he is a quality guy, we had some legendary times flatting together.

Labels: emerging church, jesus followers, rant

Disclaimer; The following thoughts are not something I would die for, just some ideas that have being floating around. I would love to be corrected. Please feel free to disagree with me.

So for a long time now there has being this thought rattling round my head that the majority of young people I meet do not associate or pride themselves as belonging to a particular denomination. This has being hugely re-enforced this year as I have traveled and met a lot of youth workers, and spoken and hung out with kids from all sorts of churches. I have sat down with a lot of youth workers from most denominations out there in all sorts of towns and cities, from all types of churches. And we have talked and talked about life as we know it, sometimes for hours. And I have yet to see one of the these yoof types (as gareth calls them) get warmed up about their particular denomination. In fact the worldview of most youth leaders, from what I have seen, is remarkably similar.
They don't care about their particular church name, they do care about serving young people, and getting to know Jesus, and serving him whatever that means. But there has always being a skepticism about my particular angle or motivation for wanting to spend time with them... was I covertly representing a particular denomination so that we could steal all the young people from there church through Soul Survivor, and stealthily fill up the Presbyterian church, or Catholic, or whatever...

And I can totally relate. Even though I have grown up in an Anglican church, and worked in one, I certainly wouldn't identify myself as an Anglican. Sesh, im not passionate about the Anglican church, im passionate about the local Church, any flavor, im now part of some wierd emerging church type community made up predominately of young people who are pretty missional and very creative, and work for a Youth Movement called Soul Survivor that exists to serve anyone game enough to be in relationship with us, and then some.

And so I am wondering if our culture, as well as being post-modern and post-everything under the sun, is also post-denomination? What does that mean.

My mate dan (who I hung out with last week and blogged about here) wrote;
"it does seem like people are no longer interested in what church is called, but what it is called to, worship, serving (with heart), Holy Spirit, justice etc.



There are naturally a bunch of red flags and concerns about this shift.
I mean the last thing we need is a bunch of young people who flit from church to church with out ever being a part of community (and I want to underline part, rather than "in", stu highlights the difference in this post) and without ever giving themselves sacrificially to a group, to a community. What we don't need is this whole consumer Christianity being fed by the buffet Christian approach.

And I know there is a sense of loss, and a huge concern about young people drifting away from church full stop. My observations in most established, historical denominations has being that this drift has being met with fear, and a discussion about how we can "keep" young people, or "attract" them. I would argue that this is the wrong conversation to be having. I would argue that Church leaders need to be asking how they can be a resource, support, blessing, encouragement, source of wisdom, EVEN if this means that there denominational label wont be put on these particular communities. That these institutions with a lot of money and experience would invest in young emerging leaders, and back them, gamble on them, almost to the point of foolishness. Sadly I do not see this happening for the most part. Yes, this requires humility, this requires death to ourselves, but I think that there is some very real opportunity in the midst of this shift.

That we can be united in vision and values, through relationship, in a way that we haven't had for a very long time. And that we can have more conversation about the things that matter, than the things that don't. And we can move beyond just talking about stuff, and maybe, just maybe we could do something to build the Kingdom of God here in NZ and around the world.

There is a lot more I want to write but this would then turn into this post into something wwaaayyyy too long, and I know i haven't looked at a whole of angles, and have just scratched the surface of the problems with this, and haven't really explained myself that well, but hopefully it is enough for you to have something to chew over.



Im off to speak at LIVE camp this weekend, and then to Singapore on Monday to help and participate at the Alpha Asia Pacific conference. I am as excited as a little kid, coz I have never being to Singapore before.

Labels: denomination, emerging church, rant