WEEK-END

Well that's the week done for me.

Two days at Prayer & Fasting; 50 people who have passed through our house (and eaten meals here); two services this morning and a church members meeting this evening; much evidence of God's grace; lots of laughter; some tears; the joy and pain of learning about the plans of dear friends moving to the other side of the globe to serve the church; pastoral setbacks and pastoral advance; some wonderful sunsets and a crystal clear frosty sky with the moon and the stars shining bright; the promise of a sabbath rest tomorrow and then another week of purpose-filled work.

Soli deo gloria.

GET OUT THERE...

...it's a beautiful starry night in Poole!

LET THERE BE LESS LIGHT

Another rant I’m afraid…

I like the stars. I like being out on the Dorset hills at night, and seeing the milky way. More impressive yet are the stars seen from a mountainside in the Alps or Pyrenees. Or perhaps the best skies I have ever seen, from the inky blackness of the African bush, with the Southern Cross hanging overhead.

Trouble is, most of the time the stars can’t be seen as most of us live in urban areas where the street lights overwhelm the night light. Poole is not too bad though – on the beach and down by the harbour the stars can be discerned.

But – and here is my rant – we have become so conditioned to electric light that it seems no-one dares venture out in the dark without a torch. It has got particularly bad this winter. I think it’s the advent of very cheap, yet very powerful LED torches, and those phenomenally bright lights some cyclists use, and it drives me mad.

When I am out of an evening, walking the dog, or going for a run, I like to see the stars and I don’t want to be dazzled by some dark-phobic moron lumbering towards me in a poor impression of the angelic host. A couple of months back I very nearly came to blows with a cyclist whose ultra-bright light was directed directly at my head rather than towards the ground as he pedalled along the seafront. He might have thought it made life safer for him, but if people coming the other way are unable to see a thing in the glare of his super-strong beam all he is actually achieving is a decrease in the safety of others.

Runners with head torches. Dog walkers with torches. Dogs with flashing collars. Cyclists with light sabres. It drives me mad.

Turn off your torch, give your eyes five minutes to adjust and you’ll be amazed at what you can see. I have been walking and running in the dark for years and have yet to sustain a serious injury. But I have been tripping and stumbling as the torch brigade point their lights in my face.

The thing is, its becoming like the torch version of mutually assured destruction out there. If someone is going to dazzle you with their torch, really you need your own torch in order to compensate. Sometimes I feel the only way to survive my night hikes would be to take out a 10 million candle power halogen beam and blow the lights off all those other suckers.

And then there are those irritating people who don’t seem to realize their cars have hand brakes, and instead stand on the brakes at traffic lights, blinding those in the vehicle behind. This especially applies to you, you senseless Range Rover driver with your retina searing stop lights. Get your foot off the pedal and use the hand brake!

Rant over.

Just turn off the lights.

EVERYTHING

Why Everything?

For someone truly convinced of the gospel, there is a gospel connection to everything.

I remember as a teenager having an angry, frustrated conversation with my father about the lack of Christian influence in culture, although I wouldn’t have quite expressed it like that back then. “Why?” I wanted to know, “If Jesus changes everything for us and brings us into real truth, Why is there not more art, more science, more engineering done by Christians? Why is it not Christians who are setting the pace in those fields? If we have got the inside track on ultimate reality then shouldn’t it be us who are making the great discoveries and pushing back the boundaries of human creativity and understanding?”

In a sense, it is a question that has been bothering me for the best part of three decades.

Part of the answer, I now understand, is that it is the delight of God to choose his people primarily from the “are nots” (see 1 Corinthians 1:18-31 – a passage I am preaching on this Sunday). God doesn’t do the things we would do, the way that we would do them, with the methods we would use. His way is utterly other – his way is the way of the cross.

But at the same time my adolescent angst still requires a fuller answer, and it is found in the gospel. It is found in the biblical declarations that the earth is Yahweh’s, and everything in it. It is found in the apostolic teaching that believers are in Christ. It is found in the instructions that we are to do everything we do in Jesus and to his glory, even things as mundane as our eating and drinking.

So, the answer to my question (at least in part) is that the scientist who is a Christian should do his science to the glory of God, and make everything he does an act of worship. The same applies to the artist who is a Christian, and the engineer. And this does mean we should see more evidence of Jesus followers forging bold paths of creativity and discovery to the glory of God. There should be passionate disciples winning Nobel prizes.

But it also means that the care worker who spends her days washing the backsides of the old and disabled should do that to the glory of God, and as an act of worship. It means washing dishes to the glory of God. Cleaning up a child’s bloodied knee to the glory of God. It means filling in your tax return to the glory of God. Driving your car to the glory of God. Eating your greens to the glory of God. Painting your house to the glory of God.

It means that in everything we bring glory to God, and connect the gospel story to the thing we are doing.

Words like holistic, and authentic, and genuine carry a lot of social capital in our culture; precisely because these things are so nebulous and hard to find.

It is the gospel that makes them real.

We live such fragmented lives. I hate this.

I hate the way families are splintering into ever smaller and more disconnected units. I hate the way so many people live alone, and lonely. I hate the way we build walls between the generations so the elderly and the young never mix, and every age group has to have its own purpose-built entertainment/education/preaching (delete as applicable according to context). I hate the way we stuff pre-packaged food down our throats without ever considering that the earth is Yahweh’s and where that food comes from. I hate the way we measure and define people according to where they live, or the accent they have or the car they drive. I hate the way we get our language in knots and talk about Christian bookshops, or Christian businesses, or Christian TV, when what we are meant to be doing is being Christian whatever bookshop or business we are in, or TV show we are watching.

The answer is the gospel, because the gospel is the answer to everything.

So what to do? Well, if like me you have strong questions and strong opinions, one thing you could do is come to the Everything Conference. You might not agree with me about everything, but I hope we can agree that in everything we will pursue the claims of the gospel. The details are here.

SIGN IT

BOOK REVIEW: GOSPEL POWERED PARENTING

How the Gospel Shapes & Transforms Parenting
By William P. Farley

Well its been a while, but here is a book review.

I finished this last night. Felt inspired about parenting. Got up, charged with enthusiasm about my role as a father. Sat down for breakfast with the family. Initiated our normal time of worship. And had a huge bust-up with a couple of my kids…!

Still, as I was trying to explain to a friend over lunch the other day, God’s call on us is not only to fulfil our responsibilities as husbands and fathers when things are easy, but when they are tough. And this book will help you to do that. In fact, this is a book I would like every parent in my church to read, but the sad reality is that the ones who most need to read it are the ones least likely to do so.

Farley begins with a quote from George Barna that there have been seventy-five thousand books published on parenting in the last ten years; which is a figure genuinely staggering. What is different about this one is that it is firmly grounded in the gospel, and that sets it above most of the other 74,999.

This means that Farley works from the belief that the really key issue is that our children are born again. If what we manage to produce in our children is simply moral, happy adults, with a vague belief in God, we will have failed. Of course, because Farley believes the gospel, he stresses that it is only God and not us who can cause new birth to come to our children; but God uses parents as the means of grace whereby they can learn the gospel.

Also, because he believes the gospel, Farley uses some terminology that will sound downright nasty to many. He is not embarrassed to state that the Christian family is hierarchical; nor that Christianity is patriarchal. But don’t just go snarling there! Read the book and engage with his arguments. I think Farley is right about using these terms, its just that they need some unpacking and explanation.

I also like this book because – unlike some parenting books by Christian authors – Farley really does seek to apply the gospel and not build his whole thesis simply from a couple of verses in Proverbs. As he puts it,

The emphasis of this book differs from that of many other Christian books on parenting. Most emphasize techniques. By contrast, Gospel-Powered Parenting will emphasize the parents’ relationship with God, with each other, and with their children, in that order. The emphasis of this book is that parenting is not primarily about doing the right things. It is about having a right relationship with God – a relationship informed by the gospel.

So those looking for techniques will probably be disappointed by the chapters on fearing God, the holiness of God, and the graciousness of God. But if you do not understand these things, you don’t really understand the gospel, and your parenting will reflect the fact.

By the time we get to Chapter Six, Farley starts to apply the theology more directly to parenting – and this begins with a focus on the importance of husband and wife working on their marriage before they work on their kids. If husbands do not love their wives and wives don’t respect their husbands, and if there is no genuine passion for Jesus in the home, why should your kids follow either you or your lame-duck religion?

The chapter on being a gospel father is excellent, and makes another important point that will stick in the craw of most culturally conditioned parents – that mothers are meant to be, and for most of history have been, assistant fathers, but now most fathers think their role is to be assistant mothers. This is a great point! Read it!

The chapters on discipline are excellent, keeping the gospel as the focus, but also giving a useful bullet point list of how to smack (American ‘spank’) your child. O, and by the way, its worth pointing out that whatever some social workers might say, appropriate physical discipline is still not illegal in the UK.

And then as the book rushes towards its conclusion, Farley emphasises the importance of family devotional times. Too many parents (and dad – this is your responsibility again) wimp out of calling their family to worship because it is tough. But that is just pathetic. Often it is tough, but it is a battle you have to win. You need to teach your kids. It is why God gave them parents. You, the parent, are responsible for your child’s spiritual health – not your church, the youth group, Christian teachers at school, or anyone else. You! And you alone!

Farley then ends with chapters on the importance of love, and the wonder of grace; which is a very gospel-centred way of finishing.

If you are a parent, read this book. Please!

NOTHING NEW UNDER THE SUN

From a post on this blog, 5th November, 2008 (the day Obama was elected as President):

A good day for Pelagians - all those who think that everything is now going to be better through human effort. In his acceptance speech Obama said, "We're going to get there!" Where exactly was unclear, but the implication was, "to utopia." So, in the end this will prove a good day for Augustinians, because no matter how good he is, Obama will inevitably hit some rocks on the way and thus prove once more the limits of human ability and our need of God's grace.

CHOCS AWAY

I was sharing a brief moment of the nationalistic sorrow much in evidence about the sale of Cadbury to Kraft. But I then looked at the pictures of Cadbury's products and remembered that they are all over-sugared and fairly unpleasant - the Americans are welcome to them.

Eat Lindt instead.

SOME THOUGHTS ON BAPTISM

This Sunday I am into a new preaching series at Gateway on 1 Corinthians, and have been wrestling my way through the first 17 verses of chapter 1 this morning.

To a church that was famously divided, Paul wrote, “I appeal to you, brothers, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree, and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same judgment.” This is a sobering verse.

One of the things that still causes deep divisions across the Church is our understanding of baptism.

I have been born and raised in a church culture that is Baptist in its understanding of water baptism, and Charismatic in its understanding of Spirit baptism. Over recent years, my understanding of, and appreciation for, Covenant Theology has helped me to understand better the theological arguments in favour of infant baptism (although I would still regard them as fundamentally flawed). I also understand why people hold different views on the nature of the work of the Holy Spirit. The thing is, though, that as we read the New Testament it seems abundantly clear that people knew when they had been baptised, and they knew when they had received the Spirit. This experiential dynamic of our faith should not be underplayed.

Covenant Theology draws a parallel between the OT practice of circumcision and the NT practice of baptism as the means of being identified as a member of the covenant community of God. This parallel of course is real, but Covenant Theology underplays the fact that now we become part of the people of God not by virtue of our flesh and blood family, but by being reborn in Christ by the Spirit. We are Abrahams seed spiritually, not physically. An important element of this distinction is that we are able to remember our new birth, in a way we cannot remember our physical birth. A Jewish boy could not remember the moment of his circumcision, but he saw the evidence of it every time he visited the bathroom! In contrast, someone who has been baptised as an infant has no evidence that they were in fact baptised, other than the word of other people. This is very different from the NT description of what baptism should be, as something deliberate and conscious by the one being baptised; an appeal of faith, as Peter puts it (1 Pet 3:21).

In similar vein, arguments about the terminology and timing of receiving the Spirit are to an extent irrelevant – the key thing is an experienced reality of the empowering presence of God. A vague, “Well I think I might have felt God once at a Soul Survivor event” isn’t really good enough.

Baptism in water should be something we can ever look back to and say, “I know I was baptised. I know I am part of the people of God.” An encounter with the Spirit should, again, be something we can look back on and be able to say, “I know I received the Spirit” – as well as an ongoing, dynamic relationship, by which we are given assurance to cry out, “Abba, Father!” and enjoy the freedom of using the spiritual gifts.

O, that we might be of one mind on these things.

FEELING CHILLY?

Well, I’ve resisted so far, but time to pitch in with some comments about the weather.

Personally, I’m loving it.

I’d much rather have cold and crisp than damp and mild. I like the crunch of the frost and the way the air smells somehow cleaner when it is properly cold and the dramatic winter sunsets and the ice on the water. I am less impressed by how quickly people duck out of commitments because there is the proverbial half-inch of snow on the roads, and am struck by how soft we have got (compare the parallels with the winter of 1947).

I like having the excuse to put lots of wood on the fire, and the satisfaction of splitting logs – possibly the most pleasurable of simple pleasures that there is. Position the log, aim the axe, that sound like a sheet of paper being torn, and the ever-miraculous way in which something as hard as a piece of oak or beech divides neatly in two,

The lake in Poole Park has frozen over. I stood on it, but disappointingly no-one else was. Clearly our health and safety consciousness has won over our curiosity; that, and the fact that the police were driving circuits of the park yelling at anyone who looked like they might try and enjoy themselves. That two men drowned falling through the ice in a Leicester lake this week has, I guess, made people more jittery. But our lake is only waist deep, and the ice is thick, so anyone short enough to drown in it would presumably be too light to break the ice - only morbidly obese dwarves would have to worry.




There are ponds (large puddles really) between the park and the harbour which are genuinely safe, as they are only inches deep and frozen solid. I would have expected to see people skating on them – they are larger than our little ice-rink – but no-one is. Perhaps its just that we so rarely have properly cold winters that no-one has a pair of skates tucked away anymore. I had a slide around in my boots, but the other dog walkers looked at me oddly.

And, despite the chill, in the park the daffodils are pushing through.

Soon it will be spring.

A GOOD THING?

For many people, yesterday was the first day back at work since Christmas. Black Monday they were calling it – back to work blues, ice and snow causing travel chaos, feeling overweight, and over-indebted.

Yesterday was also the start of the unofficial General Election campaign, with the three main parties all biffing one another over who would be both most prudent and most generous should they be in power. I can understand the politicos wanting to get stuck into things, but in terms of choosing a moment most likely to win the hearts and minds of the electorate, yesterday was probably not it.

Shortly before Christmas it was announced that we are to be treated to televised debates between Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg. This was generally presented as “a good thing” but I am not so sure – and not for the normal cynical reasons that politicians are not worth listening to. My concerns are more fundamental.

In the UK we have a parliamentary, not a presidential, system of government. My concern is that over recent years Parliament has become too weak, as the executive has accumulated more power at the centre, and as more control has been ceded to Brussels. I would like to see a Parliament in which MPs actually wield some clout, where being an MP means not just being lobby fodder serving the agenda of the party leadership but where they genuinely represent the concerns of their constituents. I would like to see the Prime Minister with less power, and the cabinet with more. I would halve the number of MPs, while doubling their pay. I would like being a backbencher to count for something.

So a presidential style TV debate does not seem a good thing to me. I think it is understandable why the minority parties are crying foul about being excluded from the debates. The point of a parliamentary system is that every representative has a right to be heard, not just those most likely to become Prime Minister. And even here there is inconsistency in how the debates will be conducted, as no-one can seriously believe that Nick Clegg will form a government – so why not include the SNP, and the Ulster Unionists, and Sein Fein, and so on?

It is easy to despise duck-house buying, moat cleaning MPs when they are faceless, nameless, powerless pawns of the political system. Having Dave, Gordon and Nick filling our TV screens for several hours won’t do much to dispel this cynicism.

TWO YEARS DOWN

Inevitably, this is the time of year when we tend to look back over the past 12 months and ahead to the next year. I did this at Gateway this morning, with a review of 2009, and the lessons we can learn from it.

January 3rd also tends to get me in reflective mood as it is the anniversary of when we moved from the southernmost fringes of London suburbia to the south coast. Two years on, what is different about life?

• We spend a lot more time on the beach – which isn’t difficult as there wasn’t much of a beach in Eltham.
• We have done a lot more walking. In part, this is because within a few weeks of moving here we got a new, highly energetic dog, who needs a lot more exercise than the old dog we brought with us. It is also because walking here is such a joy – the Dorset hills and coast path are just wonderful.
• I have done less ‘exercise’ – going to the beach or for a walk tends to be more appealing than slogging my guts out with a hard training session.
• I have drunk more beer. Again, this is partly because we are doing a lot more walking, and there is inevitably some cozy Dorset pub on the way that it would be rude not to patronize. Also, it is because I started going for a drink with my builders most weeks, and have got to know a group of guys at the local watering hole. I have always liked beer, but wasn’t too keen on many SE London pubs…
• I’ve spent a lot of money – two years of paying rent, and doing a major house refurb has not been cheap.
• We’ve done more ‘culture’. This one might not be expected, as London is of course a global cultural centre. But the reality is that for suburban London (which is about 70% of London) doing culture is often a bit of a schlep. Everything comes to London, and we would often say, “We must go and see that,” but more often than not we never quite got round to it. I went to a few gigs, but my abiding memory of these is running like mad to get the last train home from Charing Cross. Here, I just walk, or have a short car journey. So, this year, our gigging has included rock (Elbow), folk (Seth Lakeman), and classical (Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra), as well as other culturally enriching experiences.
• We have made a lot more friends outside church. There are a number of reasons for this, but generally it is probably easier to get to know people here.
• We have taken up fishing.
• A lot more people want to visit us in the summer!

Overall then, life in Poole is rather more rewarding than it was in SE9. A friend was with us recently, and looking at the pictures rotating on my screen saver observed, “It looks like you have a great life.” And the thing is, we do! This will all sound puke-makingly smug to those of you not fortunate enough to live in Poole, but it is a great place to live. Gateway is also going great, and I am excited about all we will be doing in 2010.

So, a good year, a good two years, and lots of enthusiasm for 2010.