August 2009

It’s hard to believe that half the academic year has passed but I am still not feeling academic. I thought this month I would share some of the issues that we have been throwing around at Moore College and a couple of other things on my mind that I hope you might be interested in.

Marriage and Singleness
Ethics classes this semester has seen some really great discussions on Marriage and Singleness. As someone who has been married for 23 years, I am learning a great deal about what the Bible has to say about this subject and perhaps I may be biased and still don’t quite understand singleness in relation to church.
Of particular interest to me was that many in today’s world, both Christian and non-Christian, hold marriage up as the ultimate in human relationships and look at those who are single are just not up to where they could be. I was shocked to think that there are many who have had the ‘don’t worry you’ll find a nice boy or girl soon’ comment from someone who thought they were being quite caring. Or their sexuality has been questioned because they were not yet married.
Unfortunately the church has been at fault in these areas at times. Even solid Christian marriages can fall into a big trap. We can easily make marriage and\or family into an idol. We exalt our family and exclude not just other singles but other families. We become exclusive and are an idol unto ourselves. Rather, the purpose of marriage and family is to be inclusive and the serve god together.
For those who aren’t at college and would like a good resource, I suggest a book by Christopher Ash ‘Sex in the service of God’.


What if church had to change?
There was a really interesting small piece in the July edition of ‘The Briefing’ (Mathias Media, Page 6). Tony Payne presented the following scenario: 'What would happen if due to the swine flu pandemic, all public meetings we banned for at least 12 months, what would you do?' Imagine the time that would be ‘freed up’ for the pastor. He proposed that the pastor would start to meet with key men in groups of 2 or 3 and train them intensely. Then repeat the process but also have the first group work with another 2 or 3 men. This training would involve how to read the bible with others and their children. Support would be through email and phone as best as possible. There would be a lot of one to one meetings and personal contact.
There would be no rosters to prepare, no sermon prep, no weekly news to print, no mens' breakfast or outreach events. While extremely hypothetical, he poses the great question, ‘If the ban was lifted, would you go back to the old way?’
It does beg the question whether we get our ‘bang for our buck’ through our Sunday services. Is the amount of work they we put in to a church service actually paying dividends? Often we can’t tell, sometime we can, but it is often worthwhile to sit back and think that maybe we have become so entrenched on what we think church is and how it must work, that we often miss the point. I'd be keen to hear any thoughts on what you'd do. Something to think about anyway.

Persecution
The 1st week of this sememster saw Mission week at college. Through this week, each chapel service highlighted the plight of the ‘Persecuted Church’ throughout the world. This led to some discussion in our small group the next week. Some of the things we discussed were ‘if we are Christians, why aren’t we being persecuted like these people, and is it because we have got it all wrong?
Helpfully, we found that persecution will look different in different places.
We questioned that many times persecution does not come because Christians in the west often aren’t any different to those who aren’t Christians.
What causes the persecution – is it cultural, or a minority problem not just a Christian issue, or is the persecution caused by foolishness (outdoor preaching in a country where this is forbidden).
What about this - am I worthy of persecution?
There is no doubt that in many churches there is a high focus on the work of mission over the world. Conversely, there are many who show little interest in mission outside their ‘patch’. One of the problems I see is that lots of churches have information tables with advertising featuring 20 different mission organisations. No one ever seems to take any of the newsletters. It’s the old ‘too many so I’ll choose none’ syndrome. Why don’t we make a concerted effort to just feature 1 or 2 different organisations or even look at one persecuted country a month? What have you got to lose? Let’s look out beyond to those who need our prayer. Always interested to find out what is working or not working where you are.

Next time, I'm planning to write a piece on sportsman behaving badly and what should our response be