Encourage Bible reading.

One of the hired help that serves our church commented to me that the church encourages Bible reading.

I asked how it does this.

He replied: by encouraging it!

I think he meant that he would say to people "best to read your Bible day by day" or some such.

That's not 'encouragement' that's mere urging.

Here's how one encourages Bible-reading: by making it easy, attractive, and purposeful.

The best way that springs to mind is to make the Bible accessible.

Perhaps two or three times a year, a short seminar might be held to introduce people to the Bible.

Let's call it 'Open Bible', or ''Bible made Simple'...name is up to you.

It need only be an hour or so long but it would cover the structure, message and history of the Bible.

To most new readers, the Bible is an intimidatingly large, incomprehensibly complex and diverse collection of books of unknown antiquity and relevance. Typically, none of it makes sense; particularly when they might be advised to start with a gospel. Usually the word 'gospel' would be unexplained and the point of starting in the middle-ish of the volume would not be self-evident.

This sounds crazy from the get-go.

A simple introductory session, appropriately illustrated with diagrams and timelines  would possibly make it far more interesting and make sense of the Bible as an anthology that traced the works of God in history to restore us to fellowship with him, and the creation to its true purpose as the place where God and mankind come together.

So, just three segments:

What the Bible is

How the Bible is

and

Why the Bible is

At the end of the course a little booklet (yes, I still believe in booklets) with a short introduction to each book would be given, with a suggested reading plan that has a low bar: "take it at your own pace".

The plan I aspire to: Each morning a psalm, or part, it it is long, and each day 4 chapters, or only two if they are long. Take your time, digest, re-read if you drifted off, look up words you don't understand.

I aim to read the gospels during Advent, Acts between Christmas and New Year, then the rest of the New Testament by Candlemas (the feast of the presentation of Our Lord). I read in a different translation each year. This has been my practice for the past 7 or 8 years. I love it.

Then I work through the Old Testament in the Tanakh order. I aim for 4 chapters a day, but can't keep to it, so, without worrying about it, I just keep going until all read, then I start again.

I keep a journal divided into the pericopes that some editions indicate with sub-titles. I make any jottings under the sub-title I'm reading. If  I've got no bright ideas, I note down the highlight event(s) of the particular section.

NEXT 

A follow-on session or sessions might deal with apparent contradictions or problems in the Bible. 

Another might deal with Biblical archaeology.

BTW, for the really keen: Until a few years ago the church I am part of had a small group that met to read the New Testament in Greek. None were theologians, but just people who had learnt the language. I was not one of them, as it happens. 

I still wonder what is 'church' for!

This morning at the churchery, the MC, a rather bright and amusing chap related the following:

He had attended with some other fathers, their sons' school camp.

It ran for a few days, and the fathers joined in as cooks and bottle-washers.

One evening, after the business had subsided, and all the gun-dogs had been fed they got to chatting.

It got to unusually grave topics of current cultural significance:

Injustice (of the old type), the erosion of 'truth' as a concept, the horrors of the constant  denigration of males and so on, through the culture-wars and the real wars. 

My pal, the MC saw many openings for the gospel, but, he admired, he didn't take them!

Would you, dear reader, have been able to?

I dropped in to see the MC, saw he was fixing his old Aston Martin..but no, just doing some repairs on his son's Bentley.

We chatted briefly as he kept working on the car. I left.

I think I know the problem.

Nothing in church life equips us for introducing a 'faith-vector' into a serious conversation. We have no words to fill the gap between 'society is in dire straits' and 'Jesus Saves'.

No talk given in our gatherings goes near to cultural criticism that might equip people to maneuver a conversation.

And we always use 'church-speak' in our gatherings. This provides no 'tools' for guiding thinking to faith.

Here's what I might have done.

"Trouble is, in a world conceived of as only material, who gets to say anything is good or bad, or right or wrong?"

"It just boils down to power, and the power sits at the moment with a nihilistic destructive media, feckless politicians whose only interest is votes...and more power, and a mad grab for cultural hegemony on the part of left-over Marxists."

Then, I'd see where we went.

I'd seek to bring in the diminishing ranks of the 'New Atheists'...ranks diminished by conversion to Christian faith  And Dawkins, Murray and other's preference for 'cultural-Christianity' over any other cultural configuration.

But I don't think they teach that in 'evangelism' class. 

What is Sunday for?

A letter I sent to a friend:

I note that the article talks about "Sundays are for worship and preaching".

Here, the author misses the point. Paul tells us that 'worship' is the transformation of our lives. He uses the word, in Romans 12:1-2, from memory, for priestly temple service and the 'sacrifice' is living: us! James also weighs in: 1:27; something the modern church seems to have 'outsourced' to government!.

Nor do we gather for preaching. Preaching in the NT is the proclamation of the gospel to those who have not heard or responded. Perhaps Paul is the model here where he discussed the gospel in terms that made sense to his hearers: the Mars Hill address a case in point.

What we do meet together for, on whichever day, is to build up one another (1 Cor 11-14), to teach one another, where each has a prayer, a hymn, a prophesy  (in the Biblical, not the foretelling sense, maybe), etc. We gather in love for each other to edify one another. The post reformation church has failed consistently with its mere remodeling of Roman priest-craft and transformed the gathering of the saints into a pulpit show.

 

How to talk about death

Last week one of my fellow saints died. He was at a 'good' age, but, of course, death is always...always more than sad (John 11:35).

The parish funeral notice told us that he had 'gone home'.

No.

Language is always a challenge, but I think we must oppose the anonymizing neoplatonistic shorthand of 'going home'.

'presence of our Lord' would be a more direct and focused expression rather than the vague ambiguity of 'going home' which is not congruent with the Biblical data. In fact I think it tends to obscure the teaching of scripture and entertains an almost Gnostic deprecation of the created cosmos.

Thus, my quick stab at a substitute expression:

"We trust that our brother/sister having departed this life is in the presence of our Lord, with whom he/she and all the saints departed will come at his return with renewed bodies to his New Creation."

 

Church...churchery?

A place where baked goods are made: bakery.

A place where food stuffs can be purchased: foodery.

A place where vendors offer 'take away' food: eatery.

A place where hard liquor is made: distillery.

A place where fun drinks are brewed: brewery. 

A place where surgeons work: surgery. 

A place where undrinkable liquids are made: refinery 

An office: chancery. 

A place where Christians assembly (the ekklesia, or 'church'): churchery!

Problem solved. We won't conflate gathering of the saints and the hall in which they gather.

How's your church doing?

If you want to find out. Here's an 'instrument' that will help you understand.

It  consists of three items in each of three major areas of church life and people mark where on each radius where they think their church is. Nearer the middle, the worse, nearer the circumference, the better.

Now, the way to use this instrument is to have three teaching seminars over the months prior (you do have monthly teaching seminars: Saturday afternoon, simple dinner, evening discussions?).

 Here are the factors we score:

Worship - as defined by Paul, and James.

Transformed thinking ( Romans 12: 1-2), care for others (James 1:27), and the payoff being the Fruit of the Spirit (Gal 5:22-23).

Congregating - our gatherings where we grow. See 1 Corinthians 11-14; and no, it's not just about speaking in 'tongues'.

The important factors are; meeting to edify one another: this implies other than a one-man pulpit show; and doing so in love ( 1 Cor 13).

Learning: this hangs of 1 Peter 3:15, being prepared to give a reason for the hope we have in Christ.

Training for this might include the monthly seminars I mentioned above covering in general how to handle the 7 basic questions of Christians, and the 7 challenges Muslims often make to Christians. A set of seminars with discussion are essential for these two areas.

The other areas must include Biblical understanding: the whole show that hangs of the major events: Creation, Fall, Babel, Abraham, David, Christ, New Creation.

Also Christian theology: we all need a good grounding in Christology, Soteriology, Creation-New Creation, particularly. We should also cover Historical theology to understand the development of the wider church through history. 

Then we would be forming those who could teach (Hebrews 5:12) and people who could confidently 'chat their faith' and engage in focused proclamation in the street or marketplace.

What's in a word?

Some churches have cottoned on to the idea of running 'courses' or seminars to introduce people to Christian faith or to develop their faith further.

Good idea.

But for the intro to Christian faith lot, name choice seems to put the brake on take-up.

Here are a couple of examples: 

LIFE - Living the best one.. 

Hope Explored

Alpha

Here are my comments:

Think about the reaction to someone who goes to the office, bar, footy and lets it drop they are doing  any of these courses.

Life: "Pal are you seeing a psychotherapist?"

Hope Explored: "Things getting you down are they?"

Alpha: "Only for Alpha-males or can anyone go?"

If your event has a name with the implication of inadequacy, you'll either attract the wrong crowd, or no one.

Alpha, while one might disagree with the Alpha Course, has a title acceptable in public conversation. It attracts at worst "is this a self help course for losers", to perhaps '"course in what, ancient Greek?' or perhaps, "what's it about?" It contains no self-deprecating signals, at least to my mind. 

Here's the lesson: think of market impact of the name of your course, and play to people's strengths with positive implications! 

LIFE: Loving Intense Fun and Excitement? Nup, still sounds like a game for losers.

Happily the follow-on course for Alpha could be 'Alpha +', then 'Alpha ++' then 'Alpha Uber'. All positive.

So, some course names: 

Uber

Plus

The Resolution of Discontent (maybe).