'Normal' service has been resumed...

It's been tricky getting anything onto the internet for the past couple of weeks because our connection has been dodgy - I think the box got struck by lightning. But now, thanks to the heroic efforts of my colleague Rudi, it's mended. So here are two things I've added to my website:

1 Thessalonians Overview
Galatians 5v13-26

The first is an overview of 1 Thessalonians (hence the title). I love this book, and it made a big impact on me when I studied it as a student, and then as a Relay worker. It was great to revisit it, and to teach it at our Bible study meeting. One particular highlight was the use of a 'wordle' (which Ed mentioned on his blog the other day). Basically you stick a load of text (1 Thessalonians in this case) into the website, and it spits out a pretty word picture, with the size of the words corresponds to the number of times they occur. OK, I know there are issues about translations and stuff, but I thought it would be a fun way for the group to work out what 1 Thessalonians might be about - and it worked quite well. Definitely worth doing again I think.

The second is a talk from our morning service yesterday on the 'fruit of the Spirit.' In one way, it looks like I take a really long run up to talking about the fruit of the Spirit, but it's impossible to understand the fruit of the Spirit without putting it in the context of the whole letter to the Galatians. It's all about freedom. Although they were free, they were starting to add rules, which Paul hates. But the alternative, to just do what you like, is no good either. Instead, Paul wants them to see a third way - life by the Spirit. Not following rules, but following a person.

Ephesians 5v22-33

Yes, I've finally got to that part of Ephesians. The notes are online here:

Ephesians 5v22-33

I found it mildly amusing that I happened to be giving this sermon on the 100th anniversary of Women's Sunday. I think some of the feminists on Breakfast News would have my guts for garters with all my talk about submission... (Hopefully if you read the talk you'll see that I'm not an oppressive chauvinist!)

Why It Matters...

I've just spotted this great little post by John Piper on the Desiring God Blog. This is an idea which has influenced me a lot, and I'm still trying to work out some of the implications. It's one of those ideas which you know should change everything, it just takes a while to see some of the detail. Hence a previous post where I was trying to do just that.

I thought this blog entry was a great short expression of why it's important even to think about it. Go and have a look...

Why It Matters That God Does Everything for His Own Glory

Adoption

I've just added another talk to my website. It was given on Fathers' Day, so that's what it's about. It's always puzzled me why churches often celebrate Mothers' Day in a big way, but not so much Fathers' Day. As I mention in my introduction, surely Christians have a very good reason for celebrating it, as we know the best Father in the universe.

With that thought in mind, I started to pull apart what we mean when we call God 'Father.' There's a Trinitarian way of saying it (God the Father in relation to God the Son and God the Holy Spirit). But when we talk about 'Our Father,' there's a danger we can end up talking in a very general sense. So that got me onto the subject of adoption. And what a subject! I struggled to narrow it all down to a sermon, but here is the result (here are the notes at least).

Ephesians 1v3-14 - a Fathers' Day sermon on Adoption

If you're reading this and want to know more, read Knowing God by Jim Packer - there's an awesome chapter on being Sons of God in there (which I refer to in the talk).

Total Spirituality

OK, following on from a previous post, here is the first (although these aren't in any kind of order) of many things I got out of the book Total Church.

There are a couple of things which have nagged me (by which I mean, I've felt there was something wrong, but couldn't definitely put my finger on it) as I have thought about 'spirituality' over the past few years. One is that, as evangelical Christians, we don't seem to be very good at spirituality. And so I've been encouraged lots to venture outside of my own theological tradition to 'be spiritual.' Prayers, icons, candles, whatever. I don't necessarily have a problem with learning from others, but it bothers me when I don't have a gospel-centred alternative to compare things to.

The other thing which has nagged me is the individualism that seems to be a big part of being spiritual. We tend to focus a lot on personal and private prayer and Bible study. Again, not necessarily bad things, but I think it's part of the reason why we can be very personal and private about our faith in general. So that when we get together, we're just a collection of individuals who happen to all be worshipping God in the same place. I went to a CU meeting once (I won't say where) which was mostly silence. I think we were meant to listen to God. I lasted about 30 seconds and started thinking about something else.

Chapter 9 of TC is about Spirituality, and it addresses both of these things. The authors point out that God's Word should be central to our spirituality. We don't need to just sit quietly until God pops something into our heads - he's already spoken through the Bible! Our spirituality should be marked by passionate engagement in the world and in prayer. And it will happen in the context of community.

A really helpul way the TC boys look at the role of coummunity in spirituality is to look at the Bible story emphasising first the individual, then the community. Both stories are true, but the individualistic version misses out a huge part of the picture. And they explain how this should work in practice. We should prioritise prayer together over prayer on our own. We shouldn't separate our relationship to God from our relationship to those around us, as one affects the other. And we need the constant exhortation and encouragement that comes from being together as a community.

When we make spirituality about certain practices, we set up what TC calls a 'spirituality of achievement' - you're more spiritual the more/better you do. The goal is often union with Christ. But that is upside down. Union with Christ is not the goal of spirituality, but its foundation. Basically, the gospel is all we need. Paul makes a big deal about that in Colossians. It reminded me of something pretty mind-boggling that Andy Shudall said at a Relay conference. We can fall into the trap of thinking of the gospel as the door we walk through to become a Christian, which we then leave behind. But that's rubbish. The gospel is the car we drive, the petrol in the engine, the map we use to find our way... you get the idea.

Should I feel guilty that I don't find candles and chanting particularly helpful? Does that make me immature? No. And it's good and healthy to be spiritual by spending time with God's people, marvelling at the gospel together.

My boss once asked me a question which was something like, "what do you think is the key to maintaining the spiritual life?" My answer what that we maintain the spiritual life by holding tight to the gospel. We don't need to move on to other things - in fact, that will lead to disaster. What we need is to have our heart and mind opened more and more to the transforming, reconciling, humbling power of the gospel.

More on Total Church

Thanks to Wendy who left a comment on my last post pointing me to a couple of articles in The Briefing on Total Church. I'm too tight to buy things like that, but I found it on the wonderful internet. The link below will take you to a series of emails exchanged between Steve Timmis (co-author of TC), Tony Payne (Editor of The Briefing) and Simon Flinders (an Assistant Minister in Sydney).

Talking about Total Church, part 1
Talking about Total Church, part 2
Talking about Total Church, part 3

The australians spend a lot of time on some quite specific definitions, which I have a feeling might say more about the bees in their bonnets rather than failures of Total Church. But Steve Timmis's responses are great. It's worth a read.

Total Church

Have you ever read one of those books where it's as if someone has taken lots of things you were thinking about and written the book you wanted someone to write about them? For me, Total Church is one of those books. And Steve Timmis and Tim Chester have definitely stretched my brain.

I know it's been out for a while, but I had a book token (thanks Cumbria CU!) so I invested in it. It was worth every penny (in fact, I woul dhappily have spent the full £10 on it - I should've saved the book token for something else...). I can't actually express how much I love this book! And so there will probably be a few posts on this as I try to. The book is based on a simple idea - the church should be a community centred on the gospel, with a focus on mission. Having set that out (very clearly and persuasively), the boys head off into all sorts of different aspects of church life to find out what it means. The results are seriously mind-boggling. Once we've taken it on board, it will affect how we think about church and about it's place in the world.

As I said, it came along at just the right time, when I was thinking about some of this already. But Total Church made it really clear that I have a lot more thinking to do. In a lot of ways I was quite reassured by the book, because I'm possibly not as random as I thought I was. At a certain job interview recently, I said a couple of things off-the-cuff which I later thought sounded really stupid, and were probably wrong. But, to my surprise, Tim and Steve said them too! (I won't say what they were here, but I might mention them in future posts...)

If you're a Christian you should read this book, either to encourage you or (more likely) to challenge and unsettle you. Pastors should read it, but so should the people they're pastoring - it's all about community, which will only work if the 'leaders' and the 'led' are on board. I love this book. And if you bear with me, I'll tell you some of the reasons why...