December 21, 2011
December 08, 2011
November 07, 2011
Life Version 2.0
(My article reproduced from Community News)
I have a love-hate relationship with technology. I love it when it makes my life easier, but absolutely hate it when it interferes with my routine and it becomes the master, not the servant.
Quite unabashed, I have been an Apple Mac user ever since my second year at ‘vicar factory’ back in the early 90s. Before then I kindly borrowed someone’s Toshiba Portable MS DOS computer, which in truth wasn’t that portable. Not only was it heavy and left dents in my knees, but the battery life was shorter than a queue to the Crazy Paving Appreciation Society’s Annual Lecture.
Nowadays, alongside my lighter laptop, I also have my mobile or should I say ‘smart phone’, but as I discovered recently this has not been without its problems.
I attempted to upgrade my phone software to the latest whizzy-whiz, faster, better-than-ever-before version. Also known as iOS 5. In truth, I was not unhappy with how things were before, but the thought of something better and free, well…it was simply an offer I couldn’t refuse.
So on a quiet weeknight I hit the download button to let technology do its best. Unfortunately it decided to do its worst. With a big gasp I watched my entire set of emails, calendars and contacts disappear before my eyes. (And, no, my emails weren’t backed up!) If ever there was a time to find a grown man crying in a corner it was then. The promise of a better-connected life had let me down.
It has made me think how we can often put a lot of blind faith in things that are not necessarily proven, but given enough hype can accept anything as truth. We want to believe that something will make our lives better.
It is natural to want to upgrade the standard of our lives. We can look at the current version and think, “This just sucks! Maybe something has to stopped functioning in our life or we see something in someone else’s and want what they have.
The late Steve Jobs, founder of Apple said famously in a university plenary speech:
"No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.”
The immensely successful and talented Steve Jobs recognised his products were not ultimately enough in them self. That is quite something, isn’t it?
Life has a spiritual profundity that modern science still struggles with any integrity to make redundant. There remains this longing in us all to be known, loved and accepted for who we are, not for what we have achieved. Many Christian commentators have called this a God-shaped hole wanting to be filled by himself through his Son Jesus Christ.
If the promises of God are true and Jesus is who he says he is, it requires a full upgrade to a new way of seeing and experiencing life. The old version will never do.
St Augustine, the early church father said rather wryly:
“I have read in Plato and Cicero sayings that are wise and very beautiful; but I have never read in either of them: ‘Come to me all you that labour and are heavy burdened.’” [quoting Jesus]
Is God’s Life Version any better than the modern alternatives around?
I give the last word to Paul the low-tec Apostle who said this about the great iPriest, “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!"
ASD
October 27, 2011
'Red Rev' Giles Fraser?
Just reflecting about the resigination of the Canon Chancellor of St Paul's Cathedral, Rev Dr Giles Fraser. While left-leaning The Guardian fetes the man, I hear, maybe not surprisingly, the Daily Telegraph takes another view.
Whatever side you take, he typifies the need for the Christian to speak up and get involved in politics and injustice, even when it doesn't always make you universally popular with your own peers.
US Christian activist Shane Clairborne says:
"Theologian Karl Barth said, 'We have to read the Bible in one hand, and the newspaper in the other.' For too long we Christians have used our faith as a ticket out of this world rather than fuel to engage it.
"In his parables, Jesus wasn’t offering pie-in-the-sky theology… he was talking about the real stuff of earth. He talks about wages, debt, widows and orphans, unjust business owners and bad politicians. In fact Woody Guthrie breaks it all down in his song “Jesus Christ.” The song ends with Woody singing, “This song was written in New York City. If Jesus were to preach what he preached in Galilee, they would lay him in his grave again.”
"The more I read the Gospels, the more they seem to confront the very patterns of the world we live in. At one point Mary, pregnant with Jesus cries out: “God casts the mighty from their thrones and raises the lowly… God fills the hungry with good things and sends the rich away empty…”. You can’t help but think if she were alive in contemporary America some folks would try to accuse the Virgin Mother of being Marxist or promoting class warfare. But all through Scripture we see this–over 2000 verses about how God cares for the poor and most vulnerable.
"What would Jesus say about Wall Street?"
What would Jesus say about the Square MIle?
Would he be for locking up St Paul's Catherdral or for an open air church service?
The thing I am taking away is that if we want our message to be heard we have to first hear what culture is saying. This is not so much about wanting to sound populist like a politician, but to help us avoid sounding pompous like an old fogey.
May God grant us wisdom and courage in these times!
ASD
October 26, 2011
10 Commandments for Church Planters and Pastors
A cracking top ten by Rich Nathan, Senior pastor of Vineyard Columbus, Ohio:
Pastors and church planters face enormous demands as we try to juggle family responsibilities, ministry, and often, school and part-time jobs. How can we live sustainable lives? We read of tragic pastoral failures on a weekly basis. Most pastors don’t last in the ministry for five years (perhaps the only way we pastors are like pro football players!). I’ve been a pastor for 25 years. Here are ten practices that have enabled me to pastor for the long-haul.
#1 Build a rock-solid daily personal devotional life with God. This simply means that you spend time every day soaking in God’s presence. You can handle an enormous amount of pressure, if your foundation is solid. Pressure is not the problem. Weak foundations are the problem. If your foundation is shaky, you won’t be able to handle very much at all. Maybe you’ve heard the expression: “You can’t fire a cannon out of a canoe.” If you are really going to accomplish something; if you are going to be able to achieve and do the great things that God has in store for you to achieve and do, you need a strong foundation. The cannon of your life needs to be bolted into granite. And the granite of your life is your rock-solid personal time with God every day.
#2 Choose a prayer partner, who is a peer and with whom you can be utterly transparent. What I have personally done in my own life for the past 20 years and what we require of every pastor on the staff of Vineyard Columbus is to have a prayer partner. At Vineyard Columbus we take one day every month outside of the office talking and praying with our prayer partner. We have a set of accountability questions that we ask each other such as:
a. Are you struggling with sexual purity in any way?
b. Have you seen any pornography, or anything on TV or in a movie that you shouldn’t have watched?
c. Have you done anything sexually you shouldn’t have done?
d. Are there any emotional attachments forming with someone who is not your spouse?
e. Have you handled your money and financial dealings with absolute integrity?
f. Have you experienced any breach in any relationship? Are you at peace with everyone?
g. Have you forgiven everyone for everything?
h. Are you experiencing intimacy with God on a regular basis?
#3 If you are married, schedule a weekly date night with your spouse. It is really important to stay current and to fuel romance and intimacy with your spouse. My wife and I have a regular date every Monday. It doesn’t need to be expensive. It could be coffee and a long walk through a park or a leisurely breakfast. But schedule a weekly date with your spouse outside your home.
#4 Get financial counseling from a professional financial counselor. Strongly consider (if you are married, with your spouse) going to a course like Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University. Life is sustainable when your financial house is in order.
#5 Ruthlessly avoid all compromising situations with the opposite sex. There are few things that derail people from the plan of God more than sexual impurity. Jim Downing, who is one of the patriarchs of the Navigator organization, was asked some years ago: Why is it that so few people finish well? His response was profound. He said: “They learn the possibility of being fruitful without being pure. They begin to believe that purity doesn’t matter. Eventually, they become like trees rotting inside that are eventually toppled by a storm.” Live a sexually pure life.
#6 Take care of yourself physically. Join a gym. Get into the habit of walking with a friend. Watch your diet. It is not enough that you’re involved in ministry. It is not even enough that you grow in internal purity and intimacy with God. You are a whole person. Your life is integrated - body, soul and spirit. You cannot neglect your body or your emotional life and continue to do well. So, take care of yourself physically.
#7 Do not confuse knowledge or skills or giftedness for spiritual maturity. You are gifted. You may know a lot. You may help many people. None of those things are the same as spiritual maturity. Spiritual maturity is a matter of your internal character, your honesty, your willingness to forgive everyone for everything, your joy during trials, your trust in the sovereignty of God, your endurance in hard times, and your unwillingness to compromise integrity. Don’t confuse knowledge or skills or giftedness for spiritual maturity.
#8 If you are married, take a great marriage inventory with your spouse and have a professional marriage counselor discuss the results with you. Here at Vineyard Columbus we offer a marriage inventory called LIMRI. We have regular marriage retreats. Do a marriage inventory especially at the front-end of pastoring, and every few years after that.
#9 Join a small group (and if married, join with your spouse). Christianity is a team sport. We cannot grow successfully apart from biblical community. Join a men’s group, a women’s group, a coed group, or a recovery group where you can know and be known.
#10 Cultivate the fear of the Lord and a fear of sin. We sinners always dreadfully under-estimate the cost of sin and dreadfully over-estimate our ability to manage the consequences after we choose to sin. Sin costs and once you choose to sin, the consequences are out of your hands. We read in Proverbs 14.26-27, He who fears the Lord has a secure fortress, and for his children I will be a refuge. The fear of the Lord is a fountain of life, turning a man from the snares of death.
Deuteronomy 10.12-13 says, And now, O Israel, what does the Lord your God ask of you but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to observe the lord’s commands and decrees that I am giving you today for your own good?
Psalm 34.9 tells us this: Fear the Lord, you his saints, for those who fear him lack nothing.
Psalm 128:1 says: Blessed are all who fear the Lord, who walk in his ways.
ASD
August 12, 2011
Sweeping change
Well, what an interesting time we are having as a nation. If you are from the US looking in you may well be wondering what on earth had gone on or for that matter gone wrong.
This week I spent time with two financial guys. One whose business it is to advise the football world on buying and selling clubs and the other to advise normal people, like me, how best to invest their hard earned money to aim for a half decent retirement, among other things. The latter tells me that he has seen 20% of value has been wiped off the Footsie 100 in less than two months. Not a good time if you are looking to cash in your pension. It is something, as we have seen Stateside, that politicans seem unable to influence or affect the outcome.
And if that is not enough we have had the erruptions on the streets of our beloved country. After the peaceful demonstration over the death of Mark Duggan last weekend the term rioters has been quickly replaced with Looters. Yet, some politicians such as the Mayor of London tell us that Britian is not broken. At this point that remark feels very English and stiff-upper lipped. Others might say it is just sheer denial.
Social network platforms such as Twitter and Blackberry Messenger Service have been criticised for fanning the flames of angst-ridden teenagers. But actually, surprisingly, I have come out in support of Twitter and other social platforms. As much as they have been used for bad they have also been redeemed for good.
The community has struck back - with a broom in its hand. It has drawn communities together, black, white, young and old, not seen for a long time. Now no communtiy leader or church leaders seems to know exactly what the Conservatives mean by 'The Big Society', but something has happened without too much involvement from the politicians themselves. This, perhaps, could be described as a great example of their philosophy. Dunno.
A friend of mine who runs a young peoples' charity in South East London is plain exhausted with the constant round of meetings with police, politicians and local organisations, but as a Christian leader in the community he has been encouraging supporters to do acts of kindness.
For instance, I heard how one police station in SouthEast London had had delivered to them a load of cookies to their exhausted and emotionally tired officers. With all the recent bashing the police got from politicans the public alternatively has shown their solidarity with their local bobbies. I cannot stress that these expressions of love are equally important as any rushed through law or government initiative.
if you are near a police station that has been on the frontline, maybe this is something that your church could organise to do.
The church, at its best, shows compassion through practical outward signs of invisible grace. For as James said, "faith without works is dead." We stand with all, we cry with all, we shout justice for all. This is God's love in action.
This is the outward-focused church at is best. It is not idle, a talking shop, inward-looking or obsessed with evangelism programmes or simply going deeper with God with discipleship courses. It is loving, generous, kind and sacrifical. It loves without terms and conditions.
Meanwhile, on a more mundane note, our church is about to own a football team, but not sure we will be using the services of my city banker friend. Apparently there is no money in it for him. Ah well, that's the fickle world of football.
ASD
August 05, 2011
Time out for summer
Much to the amusement of my church I recently went camping for a few days with the family. Though I admit it is probably more accurate to say glamping. This is the luxury form of camping, a growing trend among people like me. We are the self-confessed wimps who when it comes to staying outside for prolonged lengths of time choose to have a little bit of luxury to make the ordeal just that little bit more manageable. Well, what do expect from a West Londoner living in East Anglia?
So after searching the internet from the comfort of our solid bricks and mortar home we found ourselves a yurt, a Mongolian-style tent on a camp site near Southwold. This had a double bed in it, along with decking and chairs to allow you to watch the big Suffolk sky sunsets on those hot barmy Summer evenings. Although, in our case it was more of a case of snatching the sun while we could before dashing for cover as the next rain shower suddenly appeared.
Still the kids loved it and, in truth, I did too.
After having the coldest winter for 30 odd years I guess many of us are ready for some kind of break. We can feel the tension building, can’t we? For those of us with children we find ourselves running around all over the place. The end of the school term means numerous discos, concerts, class days out, transfer days etc. It is fast and furious and certainly not for the faint-hearted.
Now it has to be said that stress is a funny thing. Often we can fail to recognise it until our body eventually starts to kick up a fuss by becoming sick and tired, and we feel generally low in spirits.
Paul the apostle knew a thing or two about camping. In fact, we read in the Bible that he actually made tents. In biblical times there were people who lived in tents all year round. (Something I personally find hard to comprehend but, hey!) These tents were far from holiday camps, they were places where families were brought up and work was done.
For Paul he saw the similarities between a precarious life living in a tent and the human body. Like canvas he described our bodies as temporary things. In other words they have a limited shelf life and are not designed to last forever. However, as he goes on to say, the soul is. We can look forward to an eternity with Christ
Meanwhile, we have to look after our bodies. Paul wrote to one young 1st century church that while we are in our tents, our bodies, we will groan and be burdened with the strain of life and all its daily challenges.
Therefore, it is important that we all listen to our bodies and take care of the fabric – including the mind and spirit. We must learn to take time out and properly rest.
After all, we are created to rest. In the Bible’s very first book, Genesis we read that God rested after creating the world. Was it that God was exhausted? I doubt it. It is more likely it was to reflect on his work at creation and take pleasure from it.
We might feel we desperately need a break, we might not, but one thing is for sure it is good to take a break from the routine and reflect on our work too. It’s a good discipline to lean back and enjoy the fruits of our labour.
This summer I hope and pray your tent will feel better for a bit of time out. If you’re not going away, maybe plan for some local days out somewhere.
Meanwhile, just to let you know that our church does not meet formally in August as are resting our leaders and Sunday Support teams. However, you are welcome to join us for one of our summer socials. See our website for details. We start Sunday services again on 4 September at the Delphi Centre. All welcome.
ASD
July 28, 2011
John Stott - a small tribute to a great pastor, theologian and author
Former vicar of All Souls Langham Place in London, and a key leader among evangelicals worldwide, John Stott died at 3.15pm yesterday (27 July) in his retirement home at St Barnabas College.
He was surround by family and close friends. They were reading the Bible together and listening to Handel's Messiah before slipping away in his sleep.
John leaves behind a massive legacy. Much has already been writen in the last 12 hours about the man, so I feel my own small contribution here will be extremely poor by any standards.
However, I can still fondly remember him coming to our college in the early Nineties and speaking at Chapel. Being theological students he expected much from us and only spoke from his New Testament Greek. Incredible! It was one of the few times I can even remember that happening. I just sat there colouring in the pages of my Good News BIble. But he was not a dry academic scholar, he was a man who was in love with the Lord, more than the words he studied.
For over seventy years he has remained an influential and redoubtable figure on the landscape of post-war Christianity, often arguing for the place of Bible-based faith among his Christian Liberal colleagues when at times he was a lone voice.
He had the most amazing skill to reason and articulate at a level most could people could understand, he did not just write for fellow scholars. The simplicity of his well-crafted arguments showed the depth of his studies. They came with such confidence. He depature has surely left a gaping hole in our lives. However, we do have the most amazing library of books left behind penned by him over the years.
Doug Birdsall, executive chairman of the Lausanne Movement, put his global influence in context: "John Stott impacted the church around the world in many ways. Perhaps his greatest contribution was to articulate clearly and to defend robustly the evangelical faith which he always understood to be biblical faith, grounded in the New Testament. Evangelicalism was to Stott an expression of historic, orthodox Christianity...
"Everywhere John Stott travelled to teach, he encouraged 'double listening'. This was a listening to the voice of the Spirit of God through his Word, and listening to the voice and the needs of our broken world."
A memorial website has already been set up at http://www.johnstottmemorial.org/
Well done, good and faithful servant. Enjoy eternity with the one that saves.
ASD
July 25, 2011
May 24, 2011
Rapture - that was awkward!
So last Saturday came and went. The rapture due for the 21 May 2011 failed to materialise.
Just as well I prepared a talk for Sunday morning. Otherwise, that could have been really awkward!
Apparently a revised date by 89 year-old American pastor Harold Camping is in the diary for October. Watch this space, Christmas could be cancelled.
ASD
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