2009-01-16
2009-01-15
Church Growth Demographics
My colleague and friend, Bayou Bill, wrote an excellent reflection piece on attempted "magic bullet" answers to church growth problems. One on worship wars, the other on targeted age groups.
To piggyback off of his latter contribution, it's also true that to grow a church needs adult Christians. That is, Christians who are mature. No matter what chronological demographic they fit into, there is a christological demographic that is even more important.
You can get some of those notoriously fickle Gen-Xers who are absolutely sold-out to Christ and will do whatever He says. They can grow the Church.
You can also get some middle-aged muddlers who may have some expendable cash, maybe some extra time, but they're mostly sold-out Christians. They can grow a church...but still have too much growing they need to do to be seriously useful to anyone else - or even themselves.
May God grant the increase, in spirit and in numbers.
To piggyback off of his latter contribution, it's also true that to grow a church needs adult Christians. That is, Christians who are mature. No matter what chronological demographic they fit into, there is a christological demographic that is even more important.
You can get some of those notoriously fickle Gen-Xers who are absolutely sold-out to Christ and will do whatever He says. They can grow the Church.
You can also get some middle-aged muddlers who may have some expendable cash, maybe some extra time, but they're mostly sold-out Christians. They can grow a church...but still have too much growing they need to do to be seriously useful to anyone else - or even themselves.
May God grant the increase, in spirit and in numbers.
2009-01-14
Are You Cut Out to Be a Worship Leader?
Think you’re meant to lead worship in church? You’d better ask yourself these call-clarifying questions.
1. Do you own more than 3 pair of Pumas?
2. Can you keep complex counts in multiples of 2s, 3s, and 4s but can’t remember how many times in a row you’ve sung a song?
3. Do you own stock in any hair product companies?
4. Do you own any pants that cost more than $100?
5. Do you like to toss “and” into random places in sentences?
6. Is your motto, “let’s sing it one more time?”
7. For guys: have you ever considered wearing women’s jeans?
8. Are you willing to fight people over dissing your style of music?
9. Are you the guy that always has a guitar?
10. During Our God is an Awesome God do you spontaneously start miming out “rolling up His sleeves?”
Shamelessly ganked from SCL
2009-01-13
Blind Man Walking
A man with brain damage that makes him clinically blind can navigate an obstacle course, seemingly by using a part of his brain other than the visual cortex to perceive the objects in his path. This remarkable ability, discovered through a chance observation, is shedding light on a curious phenomenon known as blindsight.
The man, known as patient TN, was studied by a multinational team led by Beatrice de Gelder at Tilburg University in The Netherlands and Alan Pegna of the Geneva University Hospitals in Switzerland.
The researchers tested TN extensively to confirm that he was completely blind. They used brain imaging to show that there was no activity in his visual cortex, the part of the brain that processes most of the information coming from the retina. They then persuaded TN to set his stick aside and walk down a corridor strewn with lab equipment.
"It's quite a distance to walk," says de Gelder. "He walked much faster than we had expected, without hesitation or any kind of exploration." She adds that he did it completely subconsciously, with no idea that he had been avoiding obstacles in his path.
The team think the visual signals from the retina were processed by neural pathways below the damaged cortex. "It's a major lesson that brain damage can release minor neurological pathways that had previously been suppressed, allowing them to play a more significant role," she says.
This discovery is fascinating for neurobiologists, evolutionary theorists, and medical practitioners for the ways it can advance their fields in treatment of pathology. It's fascinating to me, a practical theologian, because of the way it confirms the Scriptures and explains spiritual encounters in the world.
Humankind is blind because of the Fall. Our sin separates us from God, and that separation extends to all parts of human experience. Nowhere is it more evident than our ability to recognize God for who He is and ourselves for who we are. This affect of the mind is dubbed by theologians the noetic effects of sin. The Apostle Paul writes about it in Romans 1:18-23:
Humankind is blind because of the Fall. Our sin separates us from God, and that separation extends to all parts of human experience. Nowhere is it more evident than our ability to recognize God for who He is and ourselves for who we are. This affect of the mind is dubbed by theologians the noetic effects of sin. The Apostle Paul writes about it in Romans 1:18-23:
18For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. 19For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. 20For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. 21For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Claiming to be wise, they became fools, 23and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.
Echoing the sentiment of Job, Paul is describing the condition of non-Jewish peoples. But don't think that he excludes the Jewish people (to whom the Law was given and through whom came the promised Messiah) - just look at the next chapter (and ch. 11). For even Moses pointed out that God's redeemed people can be quite blind in their own right.
Deuteronomy 29:2 And Moses summoned all Israel and said to them: "You have seen all that the LORD did before your eyes in the land of Egypt, to Pharaoh and to all his servants and to all his land, 3the great trials that your eyes saw, the signs, and those great wonders. 4But to this day the LORD has not given you a heart to understand or eyes to see or ears to hear. (See also Ezekiel 12:1ƒƒ and Jeremiah 5:20ƒƒ)God's reconsitituted redeemed - the Church - can face the same problem of blindness (cf. 1 John 2:9ƒƒ). It troubled Jesus then, and it troubles his people now.
So where do we go from here? If the people on the outside of the covenant are hopelessly blind, and many within the covenant are blinded, too, what's to become of the world?
Hear what Paul said to the people of Athens when he noticed that they were groping about for a deity they intuited was out there, but didn't know.
Acts 17:24 The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, 25nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. 26And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, 27 that they should seek God, in the hope that they might feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us,
We stumble and grope. We get it partially right, but mostly wrong. And yet still, there is an abiding, deep, and stubborn perception of the divine. Even secular and atheistic antagonists recognize the persistence of religious belief.Calvin called this phenomenon the sensus divinitatis.* As Francis Bacon wrote in Novum Organum Scientiarum,
For man by the Fall fell at the same time from his state of innocency and from his dominion over Creation. Both of these losses however can even in this life be in some part repaired; the former by religion and faith, the latter by arts and sciences.
The search for that latter dominion goes on, and I've related a small step in that direction above. The Church is largely responsible for making this search so successful (maybe even possible) in the West. But we've failed in our first calling, which was to help people who seek after God find him in the person and work of Jesus Christ.
When we preach or explain our faith and someone rebuffs us, we get offended instead of praying for Satan to be hampered. We argue, fuss and fight. But sometimes what blind people need the most is for someone to patiently be there, walking beside them to steady them when they wobble or stumble...someone who knows the way around those obstacles.
May the King Who opens our eyes grant you grace to do just that!
When we preach or explain our faith and someone rebuffs us, we get offended instead of praying for Satan to be hampered. We argue, fuss and fight. But sometimes what blind people need the most is for someone to patiently be there, walking beside them to steady them when they wobble or stumble...someone who knows the way around those obstacles.
May the King Who opens our eyes grant you grace to do just that!
* I learned about this in Paul Helm's class taught in conjunction with the release of his book John Calvin's Ideas. Read his blog and you'll quickly see why I can't read Calvin without hearing it in a British accent. You don't have to spend $60 to get at his work on reformed epistemology. The outlines of the argument are present in an earlier article. Paul Helm, "John Calvin, the Sensus Divinitatis, and the noetic effects of sin" International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, Springer, ISSN 0020-7047 Volume 43, Number 2, pg 82, April 1998
2009-01-10
2009-01-09
AU's Audacity of Dopes
The [A] retired United Methodist minister served as lead plaintiff in Americans United’s lawsuit, Summers v. Adams, which asked the court to halt South Carolina from producing an auto tag favoring one religious group over others.
This plate, unlike those requested by private groups and organizations, originated in the South Carolina legislature and was passed by statute. The plate features a cross, a stained-glass window and the words “I Believe.” No other faith group has been offered a similar plate, let alone those who want a plate stating, “I Do Not Believe.”
Secular Humanists of the Low Country PlateCall me crazy, but for the life of me that looks just like an “I Do Not Believe” license plate.Although Secular Humanist of the Low Country is a membership based organization the “In Reason We Trust” plate is available to all SC residents. The fee for the plate is $30.00 every two years in additional to the regular registration fee. As a non-profit organization, the Secular Humanists of the Low Country do not receive any portion of the funds generated from the license plate sales.
Plates promoting Fishing, Wildlife Conservation, Golf, NASCAR, Education, Home Ownership and even [gasp] the national motto of In God We Trust - all of these are okay. Same with any number of voluntary organizations like colleges, schools, Freemasons, etc. Heck...they even have one for squardancing and the Carolina Shag, the states official dance. Just don't have anything to do with the church.
They're also up in a dander about the Choose Life plate. (Doesn't that go hand in hand with the shag plate anyway?)
If the DMV chooses to appeal the decision, AU will be ready. The state already failed in its appeal defending a law allowing a “Choose Life” plate back in 2006. It’s astonishing, and a waste of taxpayer funds, that state officials would want to continue pushing this when it is clearly a violation of church-state separation, Khan said.
Absolutely right. It's a horrendous waste of taxpayer money to present a plate that raises money from voluntary contributors. (Willikers! Obama is going to make sure you can use that money to fund more abortions...sounds like a win to you dweebs.)Let's get something straight. THE RIGHT TO LIFE IS A PROTECTION GRANTED BY NATURAL LAW AND GUARANTEED BY THE CONSTITUTION. Civilized countries know this. It's not a church-state issue.
“I wish our legislators would read the Constitution as avidly as they read public opinion polls,” Jones, a Unitarian minister, wrote in a column for The State, South Carolina’s largest newspaper (See “Illicit License.”)
Yeah, me too. Vide supra!
Summers and Knight, both Christian leaders, also saw the legislators’ decision to approve this plate as demeaning to the faith they cherish.“They are taking a Christian symbol and using it for marketing and advertising purposes,” Summers said. “This is an abuse and misuse of the Christian cross.”
Okay, Summers. What should we do with people that take the Christian ministry and use that for agitating and political purposes?
2009-01-08
Richard John Neuhaus, 1936-2009
Today, Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, editor of First Things, has gone to his reward. He now lives in that perfect unity of the saints for which he struggled his whole life (leaving the Lutheran church and continuing his ministry in communion with the Bishop of Rome). I pray that he died in that full assurance of salvation that is his birthright (restored to the church by the efforts of Dr. Luther himself).Ora pro eo.
Saints of God, come to his aid!
Come to meet him, angels of the Lord!
[Response] Receive his soul and present him to God the Most High.
May Christ, who called you, take you to himself;
may angels lead you to Abraham's side.
[Response] Receive his soul and present him/her to God the Most High.
Give him eternal rest, O Lord,
and may your light shine on him for ever.
[Response] Receive his soul and present him to God the Most High.
Let us Pray.
All-powerful and merciful God,
we commend to you, Richard, your servant.
In your mercy and love,
blot out all the sins he has committed through human weakness.
In this world he has died: let him live with you for ever.
We ask this through Christ our Lord.
AMEN.
V/. Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord.
R/. And let perpetual light shine upon him.
V/. May he rest in peace.
R/. Amen.
V/. May his soul and the souls of all the faithful departed,
through the mercy of God, rest in peace.
R/. Amen.
2009-01-07
Crash and Learn
A 6 year old took his family's sedan and drove nearly six miles to get to school after he missed the bus. His parents - who've been charged with child endangerment and have lost custody of their son until further notice - were sleeping at the time.[PS: Mom, thanks for getting me up in the mornings!]
WICOMICO CHURCH, VAWhat struck me about this story was the eagerness with which the child sought to get to school. I really wish him the best in his future endeavors. Hopefully he'll be insatiable enough to escape the fate of his parents.
The boy, whose name wasn't released, missed the bus, took the keys to his family's 2005 Ford Taurus and drove nearly six miles toward school while his mother was asleep, police said.
He made at least two 90-degree turns, passed several cars and ran off the rural two-lane road several times before hitting an embankment and utility pole about a mile and a half from school.
The boy told police he learned to drive playing Grand Theft Auto and Monster Truck Jam video games.
"He was very intent on getting to school," said Northumberland County Sheriff Chuck Wilkins. "When he got out of the car, he started walking to school. He did not want to miss breakfast and PE."
Now, will somebody get that kid a PowerWheels or bike?
John Piper on Impreccatory Psalms
During seminary, I studied the Psalms with a professor whose dissertation was on them. She was great fun to work with because you could count on her to fly off the handle if you mentioned a NT appropriation of the Psalmic material. Yeah... studying Psalm 22 with her was a riot.
(To her credit, she wanted us to appreciate them as Jewish religious artifacts...but I'm a Daily Office pray-er, so I'm forced to take them as Christian Scripture!)
The impreccatory psalms were clearly the hardest for my classmates to deal with. Most of them retreated into either the old stock German critic reply (elucidated by Dr. Piper) or talked about how it was a cry for justice from [fill in the blank oppressed group]. I didn't win any friends by reminding folks that God has no problem getting his hate on.
But a worship professor gave me a new avenue on approaching tough stuff like this in the psalms: "If you're going to bitch and moan, you're better off doing it to God. At least He can actually do something about it."
The Psalms let us know that it's okay to be fully human toward God. He can take it - He might even transform it! The Incarnation lets us know that our humanity is no barrier to true union with the Godhead. So pray a psalm (or 2 or 3) today!
2009-01-06
Free Christian Audiobooks
I hope that someone else finds this as helpful as I have. Redeem those hours spent exercising (but not exorcising) by listening to some really great Christian authors...for FREE! John Piper, Ravi Zacharias, Alistair Begg, N. T. Wright, and many more are regular contributors of free audio versions of their books.
Epiphany by T. S. Elliot
The dove descending breaks the air
With flame of incandescent terror
Of which the tongues declare
The one discharge from sin and error
The only hope, or else despair,
Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre --
To be redeemed from fire by fire.
Who then devised the torment? Love.
Love is the unfamiliar Name
Behind the hands that wove
The intolerable shirt of flame
Which human power cannot remove.
We only live, only suspire
Consumed by either fire or fire.
-- Quartet No. 4 "Little Gidding" from Four Quartets
With flame of incandescent terror
Of which the tongues declare
The one discharge from sin and error
The only hope, or else despair,
Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre --
To be redeemed from fire by fire.
Who then devised the torment? Love.
Love is the unfamiliar Name
Behind the hands that wove
The intolerable shirt of flame
Which human power cannot remove.
We only live, only suspire
Consumed by either fire or fire.
-- Quartet No. 4 "Little Gidding" from Four Quartets
2009-01-05
Christmas Dinner
(I know...I'm a little behind with this. Take it up with my editor.)This past year was my first Christmas as an Anglican vicar, so we chose a traditional English roast, Yorkshire Pudding, Brussel Sprouts, baked onions, and made our first Christmas Pudding (with Kentucky Bourbon sauce)!
2009-01-04
SONG FOR A NEW YEAR
SONG FOR A NEW YEAR
(Adapted by Fr. Chris Larimer from “Standing At the Portal” Frances R. Havergal, published in Under the Surface, 1874. Adaptation first used as a processional at St. Stephen Church on 2008-01-04)
Tune: St. Denio ("Immortal, Invisible God Only Wise") Meter: 11.11.11.11
Standing at the opening
Of the dawning year,
Bad news comes to greet us,
Commands us to fear.
Yet when we are silent
Comes our Savior’s voice,
Tender, strong and faithful,
Making us rejoice.
“I, the Lord, am with you,
So be not afraid;
I will help and strengthen
You, be not dismayed!
For I will uphold you
With My own right hand;
You’re precious and chosen
In My sight to stand.”
Jesus never fails us,
He will not forsake!
His eternal covenant
He’ll never break.
Resting on the promise,
What have we to fear?
God is all sufficient
For the coming year.
(Adapted by Fr. Chris Larimer from “Standing At the Portal” Frances R. Havergal, published in Under the Surface, 1874. Adaptation first used as a processional at St. Stephen Church on 2008-01-04)
Tune: St. Denio ("Immortal, Invisible God Only Wise") Meter: 11.11.11.11
Standing at the opening
Of the dawning year,
Bad news comes to greet us,
Commands us to fear.
Yet when we are silent
Comes our Savior’s voice,
Tender, strong and faithful,
Making us rejoice.
“I, the Lord, am with you,
So be not afraid;
I will help and strengthen
You, be not dismayed!
For I will uphold you
With My own right hand;
You’re precious and chosen
In My sight to stand.”
Jesus never fails us,
He will not forsake!
His eternal covenant
He’ll never break.
Resting on the promise,
What have we to fear?
God is all sufficient
For the coming year.
2009-01-03
2009-01-02
I went to seminary for this?
Man, I could have gotten the same education by watching YouTube?
Happy (and HOLY) New Year!
2009-01-01
Holy New Year!!!
from Pope John Paul II, 1985
Yes, “everyone is searching for you,” O Jesus Christ!
Many search for you directly,
calling you by name, with faith, hope and charity.
There are some who search for you indirectly: through others.
And there are some who search for you without knowing it…
And there are some who search for you
even though they deny that they are doing so.
Nevertheless, all men are searching for you,
and they are searching for you above all
because you search for them first;
because you became man for all men, in the womb of the Virgin Mother;
because you redeemed all men at the cost of your Cross.
In this way you opened,
among the tangled and impassable paths of the human heart
and the destiny of man, the way.
To you, who are the way, the truth, and the life, we turn in this prayer….
2008-12-31
Partying Presbyters?
I normally try to keep Wednesdays focused on worship, but this just came across my desk. I guess it can tie into the ordination vows and examination taken (pp. 531-532 of the BCP).Mr. Malia - a priest in the Bethlehem diocese - has been removed from office over his night-clubbing and flagrant party-spending. The bishop has done what countless committees fail to do - correct bad behavior. This is part of why I think that our postmodern age has realized a time for the return of episcopacy. Let's see what happened:
Driving from distant Wilkes Barre, Pa. - where bedtimes are early and life is slow - Malia would arrive in clubland and shell out thousands of dollars in tips, send bottles of Dom Perignon [ed. roughly $3,500] to fellow clubgoers and squire cocktail waitresses around town on shopping sprees.
"The facts as reported would be a remarkable departure from normal standards of modest living to which the Gospel calls us," [Bishop] Marshall said.
But for now, thank you Bishop Paul, for being a faithful overseer of the undershepherds.
2008-12-30
Hunter and the Hunted
The Daily Mail reported on a harrowing hunt in Barrow, Alaska.
Apparently, Barrow (Alaska's northernmost town) has a history of these critters getting after folks. I'll bet this guy stands behind his governor's approval of the reducing polar bear population.
But he may have a question about why she didn't gun it down, since she can apparently see a lot from her front porch.
h/t PhDiva
Apparently, Barrow (Alaska's northernmost town) has a history of these critters getting after folks. I'll bet this guy stands behind his governor's approval of the reducing polar bear population.
But he may have a question about why she didn't gun it down, since she can apparently see a lot from her front porch.
h/t PhDiva
2008-12-29
Stroking my cupidity
Thanks to PhDiva for Facebook-linking to a site with photos of the 20 Most Beautiful Libraries in the world.
It included one of my favorites: The Old Reading Room of the British Library.
This is where Karl Marx came up with some of his [ahem] curious economic and political theories. But don't hold that against it. The British Museum built around the room, and eventually the library collection was moved to a new (and, in my opinion, less aesthetically pleasing) building. (I mean, look at the bones of this thing! The new building in St. Pancras is just so...square.)The museum also houses the Enlightenment Gallery (a remnant of the old Kings Library), which is still beautiful in its own right.
More pictures here!
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