Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Calvin on the Church
She is first of all the living body of Christ and the company of true believers. We are as ready to confess as they are that those who abandon the Church, the common mother of the faithful, the 'pillar and ground of the truth,' revolt from Christ also; but we mean a Church which, from incorruptible seed, begets children for immortality, and when begotten, nourishes them with spiritual food, (that seed and food being the Word of God,) and which by its ministry, preserves entire the truth which God deposited in its bossom
Calvin on the Church
My love for the church and my anxiety about her interests carry me away into a sort of ecstasy, so that I can think of nothing else.
Tim Keller on Missional Church
Tim writes of the characteristics of a missional church:
1. Discourse in the vernacular.
2. Entering and re-telling the culture's stories with the gospel.
3. Theological training of lay people for public life and vocation.
4. Creation of Christian communities which are counter-cultural and counter-intuitive.
5. Practicing Christian unity as much as possible on the local level.
1. Discourse in the vernacular.
2. Entering and re-telling the culture's stories with the gospel.
3. Theological training of lay people for public life and vocation.
4. Creation of Christian communities which are counter-cultural and counter-intuitive.
5. Practicing Christian unity as much as possible on the local level.
Tim Keller on Missional Church
Most traditional evangelical churches still can only win people to Christ who are temperamentally traditional and conservative... but this is a 'shrinking market'. Eventually evangelical churches ensconed in the declining, remaining enclaves of 'Christendom' will have to learn how to beome missional. If it does not do that it will decline or die. We don't simply need evangelistic churches, but rather missional churches.
Monday, September 28, 2009
Barney Zwartz on Tom Frame's Losing My Religion
When I began in journalism more than 30 years ago, my colleagues (and I) were generally hostile to religion, which was seen entirely through the prism of Christianity. With today?s young journalists, that?s largely been replaced by a slightly shame-faced ignorance and an open-minded apathy, doubtless because it wasn?t rammed down their throats.
The under 30s largely grew up without Sunday school, while Catholic schools are far less staffed by nuns and brothers from religious orders. Christianity has a less visible presence in all sorts of ways.
So this is an enormous social change, right? Well, perhaps not. Australia has never been a particularly religious society, from European settlement till now, with a high point just after World War II, but nor has it ever been aggressively secular like, say, France. We have no constitutional separation of church and state.
What characterises religion in Australia is a certain reticence, a ?shy hope in the heart?, as sociologist of religion Gary Bouma observed two years ago in his book Australian Soul. We have made overt, ostentatious religiosity a form of bad manners rather than an offence against the state.
For Bouma, Australian religion is characterised by a serious but light touch, a quiet and even inarticulate reverence, a readiness to laugh at itself, a commitment to life here and now, and a live-and-let-live tolerance. Australians are wary of enthusiasm, of high-temperature and demanding religion, and of imported mass-culture. They dislike intolerance.
Nevertheless, institutional religion is retreating. The number of Australians identifying as Christian as the 2006 Census was 64% (down from 96% in 1901), with another 6% identifying with other religions. However, only about 10% of Australians attend worship on any given week. Somewhere between those two statistics is the real picture of Australian religious identity.
Naturally, the picture is complex. If young Anglo-Australians are less religious than their grandparents, the second and third generations of Muslims are more inclined to be devout than their parents. For many communities ? such as the post-war Greek migrants ? church has been an important part of preserving the home culture in a new country, including language and history. But non-mainstream denominations and religions, once in Australia, tend to adopt the same restrained profile.
Anglican Bishop Tom Frame ? from whose new book Losing My Religion: Unbelief in Australia this blog title is taken ? draws a distinction between disbelief as a positive rejection of God and unbelief as a neutral position which ranges from thoughtful doubters to the merely ignorant. He quotes Australian poet James McAuley who wrote of people ?who do not think or dream, deny or doubt, But simply don?t know what it?s all about?. Most Australians, according to Frame, are unbelievers.
Australia had a fairly irreligious beginning. Even today, as Catholic commentator Ronald Conway observed, the most common objection of ordinary Australians to religion is that it spoils their fun. Other studies show that they like Jesus but not the church, and they resent those who claim to speak for God ? or rather, what they say on God?s behalf. But it?s all rather low-key.
Frame writes: ?Apart from agitated, sometimes aggressive bloggers, most Australians seem to take a very casual and carefree attitude to religion. They are neither disinterested nor indifferent. When religion curtails their lifestyle or makes demands that exceed what is deemed reasonable, or when they require religious rites of passage or borrow religious ideas to regulate civil life, Australians can become very interested in religion. But the ever-increasing majority who describe themselves as ?not religious? without every saying what they mean by the phrase are still grateful that religion is available if ever they want it and thankful to the extent that what is on offer fulfils their social needs. Anzac Day commemorations are a good example of religion?s social utility.?
Even so, he concedes that belief is declining, and says it is for the same reasons as in Britain and Europe: the ideas that there is no evidence for God, that religion is dangerous, that religion belonged to humanity?s infancy, and that it?s just one possible explanation among many.
Australians tend to see religion as a personal pursuit to be practised in private, and do not criticise another person?s religion unless they make universal claims or try to impose their beliefs. The drift to unbelief has not been the result of deep reflection so much as that belief has gradually become implausible.
Meanwhile, what Christianity offers is no longer fashionable. Frame says it offers access to transcendent truths at a time when there are doubts about God and wariness about truth-claims. It offers forgiveness of sins at a time when personal moral failure is not a priority issue. It offers a glimpse into life?s purpose and destiny at a time when most Westerners are living longer with greater material abundance. It offers an approach to ethical living at a time when most people are more interested in maximising their pleasure and minimising their pain. It offers difficult truths about individual and institutional conduct at a time when most prefer easy political answers. In the face of this, many churches have lost their nerve and their distinctive message.
So what next? That is something we should worry about. The militant disbelievers ? the atheist equivalent of religious fundamentalists ? have a negative program to decry religious belief but not much of a positive one. As Frame says, they carefully ignore their lack of an articulated vision of what a godless world will look like.
?Although they profess few common values or shared virtues, have no comprehensive answers to the world?s problems and are offering no positive program of action to deal with greed and selfishness, betrayal and violence, they assert that a world without God is always and everywhere to be preferred. They ask that others trust their interpretations, receive their pledges and have faith in humanity. I believe that to accept such an invitation carries significant risk.?
Nor does Bouma think Australians will be much swayed. He has no doubt that Australia?s future features a significant role for religion and spirituality, because the needs they address are core to humanity: hope and meaning and connections. After two generations that seemingly deserted spirituality, it is on the rise among young people, he says. Modern forms will "neither be weak, insipid nor irrelevant; nor will they dominate the landscape . . . Hope will continue to be nurtured and quietly celebrated - a shy hope in the heart."
Over to you: Have you lost your religion (or spirituality), or found it? What sort of society will Australia be if religion is successfully marginalised? And how likely is that to happen?
The under 30s largely grew up without Sunday school, while Catholic schools are far less staffed by nuns and brothers from religious orders. Christianity has a less visible presence in all sorts of ways.
So this is an enormous social change, right? Well, perhaps not. Australia has never been a particularly religious society, from European settlement till now, with a high point just after World War II, but nor has it ever been aggressively secular like, say, France. We have no constitutional separation of church and state.
What characterises religion in Australia is a certain reticence, a ?shy hope in the heart?, as sociologist of religion Gary Bouma observed two years ago in his book Australian Soul. We have made overt, ostentatious religiosity a form of bad manners rather than an offence against the state.
For Bouma, Australian religion is characterised by a serious but light touch, a quiet and even inarticulate reverence, a readiness to laugh at itself, a commitment to life here and now, and a live-and-let-live tolerance. Australians are wary of enthusiasm, of high-temperature and demanding religion, and of imported mass-culture. They dislike intolerance.
Nevertheless, institutional religion is retreating. The number of Australians identifying as Christian as the 2006 Census was 64% (down from 96% in 1901), with another 6% identifying with other religions. However, only about 10% of Australians attend worship on any given week. Somewhere between those two statistics is the real picture of Australian religious identity.
Naturally, the picture is complex. If young Anglo-Australians are less religious than their grandparents, the second and third generations of Muslims are more inclined to be devout than their parents. For many communities ? such as the post-war Greek migrants ? church has been an important part of preserving the home culture in a new country, including language and history. But non-mainstream denominations and religions, once in Australia, tend to adopt the same restrained profile.
Anglican Bishop Tom Frame ? from whose new book Losing My Religion: Unbelief in Australia this blog title is taken ? draws a distinction between disbelief as a positive rejection of God and unbelief as a neutral position which ranges from thoughtful doubters to the merely ignorant. He quotes Australian poet James McAuley who wrote of people ?who do not think or dream, deny or doubt, But simply don?t know what it?s all about?. Most Australians, according to Frame, are unbelievers.
Australia had a fairly irreligious beginning. Even today, as Catholic commentator Ronald Conway observed, the most common objection of ordinary Australians to religion is that it spoils their fun. Other studies show that they like Jesus but not the church, and they resent those who claim to speak for God ? or rather, what they say on God?s behalf. But it?s all rather low-key.
Frame writes: ?Apart from agitated, sometimes aggressive bloggers, most Australians seem to take a very casual and carefree attitude to religion. They are neither disinterested nor indifferent. When religion curtails their lifestyle or makes demands that exceed what is deemed reasonable, or when they require religious rites of passage or borrow religious ideas to regulate civil life, Australians can become very interested in religion. But the ever-increasing majority who describe themselves as ?not religious? without every saying what they mean by the phrase are still grateful that religion is available if ever they want it and thankful to the extent that what is on offer fulfils their social needs. Anzac Day commemorations are a good example of religion?s social utility.?
Even so, he concedes that belief is declining, and says it is for the same reasons as in Britain and Europe: the ideas that there is no evidence for God, that religion is dangerous, that religion belonged to humanity?s infancy, and that it?s just one possible explanation among many.
Australians tend to see religion as a personal pursuit to be practised in private, and do not criticise another person?s religion unless they make universal claims or try to impose their beliefs. The drift to unbelief has not been the result of deep reflection so much as that belief has gradually become implausible.
Meanwhile, what Christianity offers is no longer fashionable. Frame says it offers access to transcendent truths at a time when there are doubts about God and wariness about truth-claims. It offers forgiveness of sins at a time when personal moral failure is not a priority issue. It offers a glimpse into life?s purpose and destiny at a time when most Westerners are living longer with greater material abundance. It offers an approach to ethical living at a time when most people are more interested in maximising their pleasure and minimising their pain. It offers difficult truths about individual and institutional conduct at a time when most prefer easy political answers. In the face of this, many churches have lost their nerve and their distinctive message.
So what next? That is something we should worry about. The militant disbelievers ? the atheist equivalent of religious fundamentalists ? have a negative program to decry religious belief but not much of a positive one. As Frame says, they carefully ignore their lack of an articulated vision of what a godless world will look like.
?Although they profess few common values or shared virtues, have no comprehensive answers to the world?s problems and are offering no positive program of action to deal with greed and selfishness, betrayal and violence, they assert that a world without God is always and everywhere to be preferred. They ask that others trust their interpretations, receive their pledges and have faith in humanity. I believe that to accept such an invitation carries significant risk.?
Nor does Bouma think Australians will be much swayed. He has no doubt that Australia?s future features a significant role for religion and spirituality, because the needs they address are core to humanity: hope and meaning and connections. After two generations that seemingly deserted spirituality, it is on the rise among young people, he says. Modern forms will "neither be weak, insipid nor irrelevant; nor will they dominate the landscape . . . Hope will continue to be nurtured and quietly celebrated - a shy hope in the heart."
Over to you: Have you lost your religion (or spirituality), or found it? What sort of society will Australia be if religion is successfully marginalised? And how likely is that to happen?
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Payne on Training
Ministry training is about growing gospel workers.
In other words, if we want to start training disciples to be disciple-makers, we need to build a network of personal ministry, in which people train people. And this can only begin if we choose a bunch of likely candidates and begin to train them as coworkers. This group will work alongside you, and in time, will themselves become trainers of other coworkers. Some of your coworkers will fulfill their potential and become fruitful fellow labourers and disciple-makers. Others will not. But there is no avoiding this. Building a ministry based on people rather than programs is inevitably time-consuming and messy.
In other words, if we want to start training disciples to be disciple-makers, we need to build a network of personal ministry, in which people train people. And this can only begin if we choose a bunch of likely candidates and begin to train them as coworkers. This group will work alongside you, and in time, will themselves become trainers of other coworkers. Some of your coworkers will fulfill their potential and become fruitful fellow labourers and disciple-makers. Others will not. But there is no avoiding this. Building a ministry based on people rather than programs is inevitably time-consuming and messy.
Tony Payne on Discipleship
Tony has 10 points on discipleship; this is number five - that disciples are disciple makers.
Jesus gave his disciples a vision for worldwide disciple-making. No corner of creation is off limits, and no disciple is exempt from the work.
We naturally shrink from the radical nature of this challenge. It replaces our comfortable, cosy vision of the ?nice Christian life? with a call for all Christians to devote their lives to making disciples of Jesus.
Disciple-making is a really useful word to summarize this radical call, because it encompasses both reaching out to non-Christians and encouraging fellow Christians to grow like Christ. As Matthew 28 says, to ?make disciples? includes teaching them to obey all that Jesus commanded. Disciple-making, then, refers to a massive range of relationships and conversations and activities?everything from preaching a sermon to teaching a Sunday school class; from chatting over the proverbial back fence with a non-Christian neighbour to writing an encouraging note to a Christian friend; from inviting a family member to hear the gospel at a church event to meeting one-to-one to study the Bible with a fellow Christian; from reading the Bible to your children to making a Christian comment over morning tea at the office.
In other words, walking in love as a disciple of Jesus inevitably means working for the evangelization, conversion, follow-up, growth to maturity and training of other people. And this happens (see Proposition 3) through prayerfully sharing God's word with them whenever and however we can.
Jesus gave his disciples a vision for worldwide disciple-making. No corner of creation is off limits, and no disciple is exempt from the work.
We naturally shrink from the radical nature of this challenge. It replaces our comfortable, cosy vision of the ?nice Christian life? with a call for all Christians to devote their lives to making disciples of Jesus.
Disciple-making is a really useful word to summarize this radical call, because it encompasses both reaching out to non-Christians and encouraging fellow Christians to grow like Christ. As Matthew 28 says, to ?make disciples? includes teaching them to obey all that Jesus commanded. Disciple-making, then, refers to a massive range of relationships and conversations and activities?everything from preaching a sermon to teaching a Sunday school class; from chatting over the proverbial back fence with a non-Christian neighbour to writing an encouraging note to a Christian friend; from inviting a family member to hear the gospel at a church event to meeting one-to-one to study the Bible with a fellow Christian; from reading the Bible to your children to making a Christian comment over morning tea at the office.
In other words, walking in love as a disciple of Jesus inevitably means working for the evangelization, conversion, follow-up, growth to maturity and training of other people. And this happens (see Proposition 3) through prayerfully sharing God's word with them whenever and however we can.
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