I think sometimes i am a bit wet. You know, there are those times when you should really stand up as a leader really shout it out and call people alongside, or maybe have the quiet confidence that gives the impression to those followers that you know exactly what you are doing. Sometimes I wish I was one of those great visionaries that people would move halfway aroud the world for. The realities are that I am just a guy struggling through to work out where God's leading is.
It could be, i suppose, that I am in fact taking on too much responsibility for what God wants to do with us as a church community. Maybe I am thinking that is me that has to change everyones hearts, make them better Jesus followers, turn them into a great spiritual family that reaches in love and includes. You know, maybe I am trying too hard [that fact that I have just realised that I have had 1 sabbath day in about 5 weeks may indicate that!!]. Eugene, please help:
"Sabbath: Uncluttered time and space to distance oursleves from the frenzy of our own activities so we can see what God has been and is doing. If we do not regularly quit work for one day a week, we take ourselves far too seriously. The moral sweat pouring off our brows blinds us to the primal action of God in and around us.
Sabbath-Keeping: Quieting the internal noise so we hear the still small voice of our Lord. Removing the distractions of pride so we discern the presence of Christ "... in ten thousand places, / Lovely in limbs, and lovely eyes not his / To the Father through the features of men's faces".
Sabbath: Uncluttered time and space to detach ourselves from the people around us so that they have the chance to deal with God without poking around and kibitzing. They need to be free from depending on us. They need to be free from our guidance that always tends towards manipulation.
Sabbath-keeping: Separating ourselves from the people who are clinging to us, from the routines to which we are clinging for our identity, and offering them all up to God in praise." [Working the Angles: The Shape of Pastoral Integrity by Eugene Peterson]
Sleep and Sabbath - two ways we are reminded God can run the world and His church without us?
Thanks for that piece below Graham. It reminded me thata I meant to mention"The Big Kahuna". The reason being is that I watched it a couple of weeks ago. My lovely brother got it for me as a late birthday pressie [thanks, Jonny]. Really great, interesting film - especially considering it is basically three guys sitting in a room. Various themes run through, such as mirror and reflections - how different situations of life reveal who we think we are and who we actually are: Danny DeVito and his ex-wife, the young Christian lad and he dreams of being a cocktail waiter but the reality of him spilling drinks everywhere - different situations reveal the pretense of what we live. The film setting provides a mirror for each of the three characters in different ways. The one who comes out best, if you like is the one who has faced up to the hurts and realities of life, the one who has 'regrets', 'cos he has really lived.
And there is the point for the young Christian. If I am honest, it is hard not to be impressed with his desire to tell people about Jesus - but then you have to cringe at the consequences. It seems to me that the film is trying to say we are all selling something. The three guys are supposed to be selling lubricants, the young lad is selling Jesus. And, possible that all selling is a sham, a charade, a performance in order to get a result.
The mirror of life reveals the truth of who we are inside. The challenge is to let people see it, in fact, more importantly, to accept it ourselves.
Anyone fancy a DVD night?!!?!
Not much blogging going on at the moment, I expect we're all enjoying the weather rather than sitting in front of computer screens (... apart from me obviously, but it is part of my job)
Over the past few weeks I've been listening though these talks by Gorden Fee on 'Paul, the Spirit and the People of God'. Top quality stuff, I really recommend them.
Here's a little taster: [Fee is talking about what it means to be the people of God] "...a people who live the life of the future in the present, in such a way that the world is hostile to us for the right reasons not the wrong ones; not because of some right of left wing political stance that the church is involved in, but because we are embodying a gospel in which the only God we serve is a God who sacrificed himself on a cross that he might redeem those who are against him. To live so counter culturally in that way we recapture the gospel in the way we live." (works better with Fee's enthusiastic delivery)
Something for your diaries:
A New Kind Of Church Conference: 3-5 November 2003. Speakers include: Brian McLaren and Steve Chalke. Further details over at Emergent-UK
C. S. Lewis, Footnote to All Prayers:
The one whom I bow to only knows to whom I bow
When I attempt the ineffable Name, murmuring Thou,
And dream of Pheidian fancies and embrace in heart
Symbols (I know) which cannot be the thing Thou art.
Thus always, taken at their word, all prayers blaspheme
Worshipping with frail images a folk-lore dream,
And all in their praying, self-deceived, address
The coinage of their own unquiet thoughts, unless
Thou in magnetic mercy to Thyself divert
Our arrows, aimed unskillfully, beyond desert;
And all - are idolators, crying unheard
To a deaf idol, if Thou take them at their word.
Take not, O Lord, our literal sense. Lord, in thy great
Unbroken speech our limping metaphor translate.
T-shirts and subway walls - the prophets of our time. One recent 'witty' t-shirt reads: "Jesus is coming, everybody look busy". Apparently, many a true word is said in jest (and some true words are said in cliches), so I got thinking, what's the implication of this joke? Has busyness become a virtue to modern minds? Have I spoit a perfectly good joke? (Probably.) Am I just trying to mold something to fit my point? (Yep!) Last weeks Observer had this to say on time:
"Ah the Eighties, that decade when greed was good and lunch was for wimps. What a lot it has to answer for. During the boom years of the decade, the idea emerged that the more important you are, the busier you should be. And that idea is still with us today. Having less time for ourselves implies, in a perverse way that we're big shots - that our time matters too much to waste on trivialities such as our own health and happiness."Sadly, the only reason they can the article could see to not be busy was to spend time on yourself as opposed to with others. It seems that some of this attitude of busyness has infected attitudes in church leadership, particularly the CEO model (see also Mark's articles on the role of church leader in culture). Eugene Peterson has some very interesting things to say on the issue of busyness in this interview. .Posted by: jonny_norridge | 7/07/2003 12:48:00 pm |
Random thoughts...
Listening is such a basic human skill, but in reality most of us are rubbish at it. If you are anything like me you spend half the time thiunking about what you are going to say next and half the time wondering if there is anyone more interesting to talk to!! The other aspect that jason mentioned on Saturday was the result of such a posture of listening in the churches everyday lives. He mentioned that people report now that people come to them for their opinion, even stating their admiration for the wisdom they have. Again these are people who have taken time to listen.
It reminds us that, especially in a post-christian world - but it was really always the case, that having a voice is earned, not assumed because of 'being right'/'having the truth' or because of some position in the church or whatever.
There is so much in listening that reminds us that we are merely co-workers/helpers in God's work. God is doing the 'saving', in listening it seems we can finally make room for people to hear God's still small voice to them.
We have used the word conversations about our 'evangelism': "Hey, I had such a great conversation today" - meaning I managed to talk to someone about the gospel/jesus . But i wonder if a conversation really takes place unless some listening and learning from the other has taken place. If there hasn't it is just a monologue isn't it? Talking about preaching, Henri Nouwen says: “Dialogue is not a technique but an attitude of the preacher who is willing to enter into a relationship in which partners can really influence each other” (Creative Ministry, p35). And Benjamin Disreali once said: “a bore is one who has the power of speech but not the capacity for conversation”!!!
A selection of thoughts I wrote down from Saturday:
Jesus spent around 30 years engaging with his culture, learning it, dialoging with it, listening to it, before he started his ministry.
Christians have become those you don't go to because they don't listen, they just talk at you.
First century Christians didn't out argue people, they out lived them..Posted by: jonny_norridge | 7/03/2003 10:17:00 am |
Brian McLaren has some talks on his church website called "God in the Movies" one of which is on The Big Kahuna! A film Jason refered to Saturday!
.Posted by: Central Vineyard | 7/02/2003 11:37:00 pm |
