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I turned 37 today, how on earth did that happen?!When I was 35 no one even mentioned how long it would be until I am 40, yet when I turned 36 friends would say unprompted ‘Oh, 40 is still a long way off!’, and this year everyone has been saying, ‘37, wow you’ll be 40 soon!’ I’ve definitely turned a significant corner :-)
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In light of the discussions on the Mark Driscoll rant, I have been reading the bible (just to let you know that I do still believe in it and do that regularly :-). Proverbs 15:1 “A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger”. Maybe time for a series of posts titled, “Tips from the bible on healthy blog discussions”.
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Well we have had a first couple of sessions of Quest in our community, and from text messages, web submissions, questions on the night, some of the topics we have been discussing are below.We have another meeting together tonight to talk about these some more, it’s been great to provide a space for people to feel safe to ask questions, and see people growing in faith as a result. 10 people in the group are considering baptism and we’ll be discussing that tonight too.
Church
- Why so many different churches, who is right, wrong?
- How would Jesus run a Church?
- Why has church put off so many people?Bible
- How does the OT & NT go together?
- Is the bible propaganda, and why do people use it as such?
- How was the bible put together?
- How do we understand the bible?
- Why was Jesus message no clear?Sex
- Why is the church so hung up about sex?
- Why does God allow natural disasters?
- Homosexuality: is it choice, genetics, nurture, right or wrong?
- Is sex outside marriage wrong?Suffering/Pain/Evil
- Why does God allow natural disasters?
- Why is life so difficult?
- Does God test our faith, and what is the difference between temptation and testing?Heaven/Hell
- Is Jesus the only way to heaven?
- What about other religions, are they all wrong?
- Do good people get to heaven?
- Why does God allow people to go to Hell?
- Do people who commit suicide go to heaven?
- Do people before Jesus, mental ill people, children go to Heaven, if they haven’t accepted Christ?
- What is heaven like?
- What is conversion?Misc
- Why did Jesus not get married if he experience life like us?
- Are demons real, or all psychological?
- What is the trinity?
- What is the role of women in the church?
- How do you know you are a real Christian?
- How do we hear God?
- How many times can you sin?
- What about ghosts, aliens and spirits, are they real and what does it mean?
- How does evolution fit with Christianity?
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After Mark Driscoll’s, rant Christianity Today have a further post from Brian McLaren.
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Ladies and Gentleman let me introduce the new blog of Brett Jordan. Brett is new friend (he lends me DVD’s which makes him a close friend). Brett has 20 years experience in digital media, hangs out with theology lecturers. When it comes to the use of, understanding and place of technology for church, you have to drop by his site. And if you want some DVD and movie recommendations ask him too.Brett also has another web site here.
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Following on from part I, and II.In my bloglines feeds, I opened up the post by Mark Driscoll, pastor of a church of 5,000 young people in Seattle, titled ‘Brian McLaren on the Homosexual Question 3: A Rant by Mark Driscoll’
Here are some issues/reflections as I read and responded to it, that I think relate to the whole area of what makes conversations healthy.
1. Christians Shouldn’t Rant: It got my attention immediately, as I am convinced that Christians have no place to rant, especially against each other. Now we are supposed to speak the truth in love to each other and go to each other in love to help each other, especially for correction. But to write publicly and to rant, flame, make accusations, surely does little more than polarize, belittle, and make genuine conversation and understanding impossible.
2. Don’t use sarcasm: Unless it’s about yourself. They say sarcasm is the lowest form of wit. It’s cheap and easy, and can be very hurtful. Another thing is that we can often say someone was using sarcasm when it wasn’t, it was just plain rude. But it’s hard to differentiate between the two, and the person on the receiving end won’t notice about the difference.
3. Ask Questions, don’t accuse: Ask for help, ask for clarification, own the struggle to understand, and it is less argumentative. In this case if someone thinks Brian McLaren is evasive, instead of saying ‘you are evasive’ say ‘I might be wrong but I find the reply unhelpful, as it seems evasive, can you help me see how it answers the question/issue?’. If we invited each other into dialogue I think things would go better for everyone.
4. Don’t be manipulative:Proof texting, claiming to know God’s thoughts and feelings to support your argument, when the other person is a christian who loves Jesus, is a slippery slope to using God’s name in vane. Better to ask together, I wonder what God makes of this?
So in the case of this posting by Mark Driscoll, I think Mark is concerned that Brian McLaren was evasive and for someone who believes the bible say clearly homosexuality is wrong Brian’s answer was less than helfpul for him. But Mark seems to use perjoratives, like ‘homo-evangelical’, calling Doug Pagitt ‘Tonto’, which I am sure was the word for ‘Stupid’ and was used for the indian in the Lone Ranger for that reason, and he seems to suggest that he knows God is upset by Brian’s article.
I have submitted a reply to Mark, I hope leadership post it. And I hope I am not making things worse. I just think that as christians we can and should do better. I think if people approached Brian, Emergent, whoever, and said this is causing us concerns, help us to understand, can we dialogue together, can we express our opinions together, so others can see we love and support each other whilst disagreeing. Maybe that would help people to find a way through issues healthily.
Now if you go over there, play nicely in the comments!
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I’ve decided to work harder to keep on top of new books, from academic theology to popular christian books, and provide links to them on my site. My first port of call was to e-mail my friend Antony Billington at London School of Theology, who has enough books to re-stock the British Library, and ask him ways to keep up to date. So below, are some several links from him (thanks Antony) for site and newsletters that update new books, and some more that I have found and use. My question then for you all then, anything else you know of that I/others could use to keep up to date?
http://www.ivpress.com/academic/
http://www.rctr.org/resourceblog.htm
http://parablemania.ektopos.com/
http://www.publishersweekly.com/index.asp?
http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/ealerts/
http://www.oup.co.uk/emailnews/
http://www.scm-canterburypress.co.uk/
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I wrote back in October last year a piece about how ‘one of the greatest gifts we can give each other in a consumer society is our time, and presence.’ I was reminded of this at a funeral I took yesterday of a premature baby, born to a couple who are friends of a couple in our church, and when I took communion to a lady in our church, who has been house bound through ill health, and when someone from a local coffee house I have made friends with rang to ask me to listen and pray with him.I was struck that my presence and time in all of these interactions was a gift from my church community. Now we all need to learn the gift of time, and presence in our hectic unbalanced consumer lifestyles. It seems that churches once outsourced time and presence to paid clergy, but now expect clergy to not do that, and attend to running the church as a business, and training, speaking, executing. Or ministers have conspired to fulfill and nurture that new role too, which I understand given the pressures on church and staff in our culture.
So we have lost the gift of time and presence in our own lives, and now eradicated it from our clerical functions. As a church community we are exploring the idea of chaplaincy, trying to set up a one with our town centre shopping areas, making someone available to listen and pray with shop staff. Also community chaplaincy, letting local residents know someone is available to listen and pray with them, near them, which we run through our small group network.
And as we grow as a church, the need to set aside people who do nothing more than listen and pray, and bring others in our community into practicing the gift of time of presence, might be something we need to consider. I am increasingly convinced that the single most powerful evangelistic act we can make is to be available as a community, to listen and pray and be alongside others.
In any event, I know it must always be part of my life, no matter how busy and pressured co-orindating a church might be.
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Once upon a time typepad was the business, the bees knees, but now I am feeling left behind and frustrated. I want to be able to let people subscribe to comments by e-mail to follow discussions, I want to use Taggerati 3.0 for tagging all my posts with the social bookmarks networks, I’m tired of typepad running slow, or going down.So here are my questions, if any of you can help?
1. Is Wordpress the platform of choice, with the ultimate plugins. I don’t want to move again for some time?
2. Do I host this in my own web space/server or are there better companies out there for it?
3. I need some help on design and can pay someone, anyone you know who specializes in blog design for non profits?
4. How do I keep my previous posts in ways people can still access, or am I doomed to start again, what is the best way to migrate and still link to stuff already written?
5. And which plugins are essential for my new blog once it’s up and running?
6. And is Ecto the tool of choice still for writing and posting my stuff?
7. Anyone who knows how to do all this and can help me?If you have any experience or thoughts on any of these, please leave me some info/comments/thoughts!
Thanks for your help, Jason.
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Any one catch this programme on BBC Radio 4?
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“Dr David Starkey argues that five major Christian figures distorted, even betrayed, the Christian faith as envisaged by Jesus. Defenders argue back. St.Paul, Martin Luther, Constantine, etc.”
