Archive for the 'church' Category

Faithfulness, not projects

Published
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Simon
on September 6, 2008
in church, faith and kingdom
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You’d think that after 9 years of working in the domain, I would have a better grasp on the question “what is mission”? But if the Christian life is about transformation and pilgrimage, it stands to reason that lifelong learning is part of the deal, so I suppose it’s no surprise that our views change as our understanding grows. I have been increasingly uneasy with a vision that places the simple “conversion of souls” at the centre of the enterprise. Before the stones start flying let me say that I’m not suggesting that this is unimportant, but rather that it is not the centre. This is where I have found Newbigin’s writings so very helpful:

It is impossible to stress too strongly that the beginning of mission is not an action of ours, but the presence of a new reality, the presence of the Spirit of God in power [...] The great missionary proclamations in Acts are not given on the unilateral initiative of the apostles but in response to questions asked by others, questions prompted by the presence of something which calls for explanation [...] Where the Church is faithful to its Lord, there the powers of the kingdom are present and people begin to ask the question to which the gospel is the answer. And that, I suppose, is why the letters of St. Paul contain so many exhortations to faithfulness but no exhortations to be active in mission. The Gospel in a Pluralist Society

This is from a man who spent most of his career as a missionary in India. It almost sounds heretical. He also makes the point that the end of the enterprise is not the successful conclusion of our projects, but the coming of Christ to reign. Jesus’ statement, “Where I am, there shall my servant be” is central here. Where is Jesus? At the frontier of light and darkness, where the acted out good news of the kingdom is pushing back the powers of evil, whatever form they may take. If we want to be with Jesus, that’s where we need to be.

All around me I see projects. When our projects succeed, we feel good. When they fail, we sink into existential crisis. Our whole reason for being seems to be predicated on our projects. This is because we see the Church as the source and agent of God’s coming kingdom, which is not so very far from the imperialism of medieval Christendom. The Church is not the source, but the sign and witness. It is here that the reality of the kingdom begins to break through in a visible way.

Mission is an acted out doxology. That is its deepest secret. Its purpose is that God may be glorified.

So why aren’t more people in our culture looking a the Church and asking questions?

The European Church

Published
by
Simon
on April 1, 2008
in church, eu and mission
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Following our discussions on mission in Europe near Valence last week, the Lausanne World Pulse had an interesting article on The European Church Today: Reflections on Her context. It’s gives a useful overview of the details, without getting too bogged down in history. If you’re like me, you often don’t get to the end of pages that you click through to from links on people’s blogs, but if you make it through to the end of this one you’ll get to some interesting thoughts on examples of the openness of today’s Europeans to spiritual ideas - important implications for mission if we could just see the challenges as opportunities and not reasons for failure.

A week of it

Published
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Simon
on October 15, 2007
in church, family and simple church
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Sometimes people ask us what a “normal” week looks like. It’s always such a difficult question to answer, as a week rarely ends up looking like what we expected or planned.

Monday I spoke to a group of visiting Americans about French church history - I think that if I ever had to change jobs I would quite happily be a history teacher.

That evening I joined in with a series of seminars one of the churches here is running on house church/simple church. This church is in the very unique situation of preparing to merge with two other churches, and making home meetings the centre of their activity. One of the really fascinating things is that the ethnic makeup of these three churches is very diverse.

Tuesday morning Dad took school with the children while Mum helped out at La Maison - a drop-in centre for local homeless people. It is a reality check for both of us to know what some of these people go through.

Thursday evening there is a fledgling home meeting happening on the island in Nantes where we heard the great news that one of the group has just got engaged, and got into some good discussions around Genesis 1 & 2.

Friday I have 7 hours of English classes, back to back.

Saturday we had the second installment of the language café in our new venue. After much searching we found a suitable café that opens on Saturday mornings. It’s actually in the centre of town, which may have turned some people off. Nice atmosphere though, and I think we will keep it going to see what develops.

We have been to very few Sunday morning meetings since getting back from NZ, and have been enjoying the strangeness of this (after 20+ years). However, being a special day with a meal and baptisms, we spent the day with all our St. Sébastien church friends on Sunday.

And now it’s Monday again - the beginning of another week, at the end of which we will probably wonder, as usual, where the days have gone.

Is the Church a worship centre?

Published
by
Simon
on September 30, 2007
in articles, church, mission and worship
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What is worship?  I have felt uncomfortable for years about this notion that if we have great worship in our churches, people who don’t know the Lord will come in to our meetings and be transformed.  Nowadays, with few exceptions, it is only with great mental effort that I manage to get through a contemporary church worship time with a good attitude.  The question “why are we doing this?” pesters me incessantly.  As a worship leader, this is an extremely uncomfortable position for me to be in, so I am very much enjoying an extended “worship- leading” fast at the moment (6 months and counting).  I long ago gave up the expectation that what normally goes under the heading “praise and worship” would actually attract outsiders to Christ.

I found this article (courtesy of The Edge ) written by a former praise and worship “guru”, entitled Worship as Evangelism.  The context really doesn’t apply to France, as it is speaking more to the American mega-church culture.  Where we live, a mega-church has a hundred people!  And yet the church here is still influenced by the “praise and worship” movement (an example: Hillsong has now launched a church in Paris - a little taste of Australia in the city of light!  Apparently it’s doing really well - some of our Paris colleagues are involved there).

I liked this article because it poses deep questions about this view that church is fundamentally a “worship centre” that draws people (the basic function of a temple), rather than a mobile community which goes out to demonstrate Christ in the world.  The very idea that “evangelism” can effectively take place within a church building seems contradictory to me now.

Take a look if you’re interested - it’s a very well-written article.  Do you think I’m being too cynical?

Unobstructed Christianity

Published
by
Simon
on August 15, 2007
in Bible, God, articles, church, kingdom and spirituality
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I just approved a comment on some thoughts I posted a while ago under the heading Reinterpreting Traditions. It’s an article by our friend Cor the artist touching on the story of the Samaritan woman, and I thought it was too useful to hide away in the comments section of an old post. Hope you get as much out of it as I did…

Woman at the well Like many of you, I’ve heard and read it countless times! I know this story already for more than fifty years! Then one day as by a divine touch, the real meaning of this rich deep story hit home, at least it shook up my life.

This divine touch can leave you potentially confused, excited, reassured or, as in my case, with a glorious revelation experience! I am talking about the story of the Samaritan woman at the well in the Gospel of John 4.

By many preachers, she has always been painted as the lady with a questionable past, who went through five husbands, and the one she was living with was not her husband either, according to a very reliable source: Jesus! Surprisingly, Jesus does not turn away from her in horror and disgust, but He choses to do the opposite…to teach her! She becomes one of the first human beings to be taught the miracle and principle of the Kingdom. Continue reading ‘Unobstructed Christianity’

Latest church visits

Published
by
Simon
on July 23, 2007
in New Zealand, church and friends
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Heather's sistersWe are safely back in Hamilton for the final two weeks of our New Zealand trip. Too much movement and not enough Internet over the last couple of weeks for regular posts, but overall the last 3 weeks in Auckland, Whangarei & Hamilton have left us marvelling at how many amazing people we know, and what a privilege it is to spend time tripping around the country visiting them all! We’ve spoken in three different churches - each very different from the other.

The first has the intriguingly descriptive title of His International Mission, a dynamic AG church in which we were the only white faces in a big group of brown. Greg, Joanne, SamuelGreat to see the passion for God and for mission amongst our Polynesian brothers and sistas. The second was Pakuranga Christian Fellowship, a church with a long contact with OM, and had the great bonus of being the church of our friends Greg & Joanne who were helping lead churches in the north of France for many years. As a kiwi family with four children, they were our “inspiration” - when we met them, we thought well if they can do it, maybe we could too! They’re still very active in ministry, currently church-planting amongst international students in south Auckland.

The third was West Hamilton Anglican, which we wrote about in another post on reinterpreting traditions. Our friends here have done such a marvellous job of facilitating our stay in New Zealand. As a teenager I left an Anglican church in which if you wanted to learn about Jesus you had to really dig deep, and it’s like I’ve gone full circle as our Hamilton church family is also an Anglican church, but one in which the gospel is preached loud and Whangarei Fallsclear.

It was a relief to finish the message on Sunday morning, after 5 straight weeks of preaching, and now we begin to set our sights on the long trip home. Can’t believe it’s gone so quickly.

Children and house church

Published
by
Simon
on July 8, 2007
in church and family
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We’re on the road again, now in Auckland visiting friends, family and various church groups. Our planned Sunday morning meeting was moved to Sunday evening, and when we realised we had a free morning with friends, we decided to stay at home and be church rather than go to church. Had a lovely time just discussing a few passages of Scripture that have been meaningful for us recently, and praying together.

We decided to leave it open so that the children could participate or not, depending on what they were happiest with. This is one of the issues that comes up with the whole house-church idea - what do you do with the children? In this case, the younger ones just played quietly, and the older ones sat and listened, just joining in for the prayer.

Not having Sunday School might seem like heresy in some quarters, but I think it’s only a problem if we believe that Sunday mornings are the only time that children get any spiritual input. If that is happening just as a regular part of family life, when we gather together as believers we can be quite relaxed about how much the children are involved. As long as they know they are welcome, that their participation is welcomed to the level they feel comfortable with, they benefit. Simply observing the natural way that their parents share their life of faith with friends is of value. Some of the adult discussion may be over their heads, but some of it will take root and perhaps be discussed at a later stage around the family meal table. It was lovely having the children join us, rather than being “sent out” as is normally the case.

Blog Breakfast

Published
by
Simon
on June 30, 2007
in New Zealand and church
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I am just beginning to emerge from a dial-up Internet-imposed blog fast - in case you were wondering whether this blog was ever going to get up and running again. We have been staying with my parents, and time was too precious to waste waiting for the Internet to do it’s thing. But in this case, no news is good news! Our New Zealand odyssey is well over halfway though, and we are beginning to set our sights on France again.

New Zealand is a fascinating country in that, although relatively small and geographically isolated (to some of our French friends, we might as well say we’re from Mars), it is like a microcosm of what is happening in the wider world, globalisation being what it is. This is particularly true in the church - wherever we go we meet with people who are at once passionate for the church, and extremely frustrated with it, longing for a simpler, more authentic expression of a church that is a visible reflection of God’s kingdom in society. That’s very vague, but I can’t very well catch you up on all the conversations of the last month.

This weekend we are with dear friends in Lower Hutt (”Lower” in the sense of being on the Hutt river downstream from “Upper Hutt” - named after one Mr Hutt I suppose - we are not staying in some kind of inferior cabin!), and we will be sharing at Lower Hutt Baptist tomorrow - the church where my journey in God started 22 years ago. I’ll be talking on Mary and Martha - again!! Can’t get away from that story. Will do a blog post on it one of these days.

Check out Flickr for some new photos. Now that my “blog fast” is broken, there should be some more regular offering from now on…

Mission in many forms

Published
by
Simon
on May 7, 2007
in church, friends and mission
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I haven’t been writing so much lately - actually I’ve spent more time on the technical side of this blog than writing it. Shame about the lack of photos too, but the Internet here is table-thumpingly slow. I’m trying to get my head around how web sites work as I’m planning to move this thing onto another server. You will notice that the url www.bournagain.com now works - no need for the “Wordpress” bit. I’m making use of this time in New Zealand to learn a few new skills.

Otherwise this visit to New Zealand is all about people! We’ve spent a lot of time on the phone and in and out of people’s homes. It’s another reminder of how rich and diverse this thing we call Church is. In the last few days we have been with friends who are all involved with kingdom stuff, but in such different ways.

After travelling to places as diverse as Ethiopia, Lebanon and Portugal, Keith, Carolyn have teamed up with Richard to establish A Rocha in New Zealand. It’s a Christian conservation organisation. Carolyn put it very succinctly when she said that A Rocha is about “the greening of the church and the churching of the greens”. I used to raise my eyebrows at Christians involved in things environmental. Couldn’t really see the point as my eschatology centred very much around the “new heavens and the new earth” that would replace this tired old earth. But somewhere along the way I realised that the earth always has been and always will be central to God’s purposes, and when we look after it we’re doing what God does. It is actually a “missional” thing in and of itself, not to mention the fact that there are so many greenies out there who have been turned off by Christian’s lack of concern for the environment. We should be leading the charge - go for it, guys!

And then we spent an afternoon with Cor and Ria. Not sure if they’re Dutch kiwis or Kiwi dutchies, but they are very special people. Cor is an expressionist painter and if you want to be blessed you should take a look at his work. Our house would be full of his paintings if we could afford it ;-) Many of his paintings express the things he’s been learning in his walk with God, although he’s very down to earth about the artistic process. It’s 10 % inspiration and 90 % perspiration. We spent the afternoon talking about our love for the church and our frustration with it. As Queen Victoria put it so beautifully, “If all the people who fall asleep in church were laid end to end, they would be a lot more comfortable.”

Cut and paste church

Published
by
Simon
on April 18, 2007
in Bible, church and faith
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Have you ever noticed that there are occasions in the Bible where people act in a certain way and God commends it, and yet the same act at a different time by different people is an act of sinful disobedience? A good example can be found in comparing the census of Israel that Moses undertook in Numbers 26 with the census of David in II Samuel 24. When Moses finished the census in obedience to God’s command, God gave to the nation an inheritance of land which he has never revoked. In this way he blessed Moses’ obedience.

Several generations later we see King David undertaking exactly the same project which God had blessed in Moses’ day when he sent his commanders throughout the land to count the fighting men of Israel and Judah. The text does not elaborate on David’s motives for doing this, but we see Joab, his trusted advisor, warning him not to do it. David stubbornly continues with his project, and finishes with a stricken conscience, repenting before God for this foolish sin which resulted in a severe outpouring of God’s judgement in the land.

Is God capricious? Does he have double standards? Does he have favourites? Continue reading ‘Cut and paste church’