Go out!

As I read the mission of evangelism in the Bible, it is all about 'go out'. Not 'come here'. Today, we are reluctant to 'go out' and much prefer having the lost 'come here'.

But others do 'go out'.

A couple of examples.

In Sydney there is a grand Anglican edifice: St Andrew's Cathedral zillions of people walk by and around it every day. Now, who's outside it talking to people about relgion? Not Anglicans, they've left it to Muslims, Mormons and Monarchialists (Jehovah's Witnesses), all of whom do a decent trade.

I understand the Cathedral owns Sydney Square which lies between it and the Town Hall. They could have a permanent stall there to meet people and chat.

Local churches could do simliarly at local occasional markets: sell their books, crafts, etc, but mainly talk to those interested.

Ministers have plenty of training...they could run courses at evening colleges or at community meeting rooms, with inviting titles, perhaps borrowed from New-Agers: "Finding Inner Peace" for example, or "What the Bible Really Teaches", or "The Bible: Centuries of Errors, Misunderstanding and Mistakes" (talking about heresies to talk about Christ). Even a course on Revelation: "The most mysterious book ever written".

Then there are courses like "Philosphy and Modern Novels". Of course, we'd read some novels together, and philosophy would slide into theology from time to time, but plenty of riches here.

That's what I mean by 'going out' and not 'come here-ism'.

It also means starting where the listener starts: Paul set the paradigm for this in Acts 17: go you and do likewise.

Frames and frameworks

Much has been written on the 'so-called' framework hypothesis that evacuates Genesis of real-world meaning (and both real-world and theological signficance).

For instance:

Russell Grigg's

Bob McCabe's

and

Joseph Pipa's

None of them really touch on the philisophical issues raised.

Those who support the FH are in a bind. They have to explain what really did happen, and how this unkown other thing underpins their theology. That is, if none of the events in the creation account are truly real, how can any of them support a theology that affects us in the real world? Either the creation is a unity from God's speaking to our experience of fellowship with God, or something else that we don't know, and therefore cannot study, creates that unity. They are left with a conncoction from silence, or some imaginary pagan 'creation'.

For many it seems that the FH requires a double reality: "God-reality" in the Bible, and 'real-reality' out here in the world. This ends up with the 'God-reality' being subservient to and deriviative of the 'real-reality', but failing to deal with the Almightyness of God, as Augustine sets out in his little talk on the Creed, and the integrated reality (or ontology) of the Genesis account.

The spiritual dimension is also disrupted.

The greatest theological flaw in the FH is that it breaks the intimacy of fellowship between Creator (God) and creature-in-his-image (man/humanity). In the Genesis account it is an intimate communion where God and man relate to each other in the real time-space in which and by which God created (e.g. creating in created time we are in over the six days, demonstrating that this is real in the commutative relationship of God and creature).

The FH pushes God off somewhere else and obscures the directness of his creation of his image-bearers. The creation account also underscores the real-ness of our relationship with God and the 'setting' of that relationship: the material creation.

The FH discounts this as a comparative triviality and brings into question, 'what is truly real'? This then goes to bring into question the reliability of our being-and-place and the significancy of anything we do.

It leads us to pagan conceptions of the creation, typified by platonic Idealism, for example, and given a modern outing in European Idealism. To the contrary, God created in a concrete reality in which he participated to relate to us: the days of creation a great example of him being and acting in our time-space, creating, demonstrating and underscoring the closeness of his fellowship.

Let's pray for revival!

A friend invited me to a group that is praying for revival in Australia. Timing is wrong, so I won't be able to attend.

But I'm not sure I want to attend.

Here's how the early church prayed:

And now, Lord, take note of their threats, and grant that Your bond-servants may speak Your word with all confidence (Acts 4:29)

And how Paul requested prayer:

With all prayer and petition pray at all times in the Spirit, and with this in view, be on the alert with all perseverance and petition for all the saints, ¹⁹ and pray on my behalf, that utterance may be given to me in the opening of my mouth, to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel, ²⁰ for which I am an ambassador in chains; that in proclaiming it I may speak boldly, as I ought to speak (Ephesians 6:18ff) 

No one prayed for 'revival' then, but for  confidence, for boldness to proclaim the gospel.

Maybe that's what we need to pray!

Words

Often when I've been into older church buildings, I've noticed plaques of quotes from the Bible.
Not so with modern buildings, and I wonder why not. As people 'of the Word' one would think that we would remind ourselves of it at every opportunity. Since the medieval illuminated manuscripts we've no tradition of artistic renditions of the word of God.

At Sunday School as a child we were given small stickers with verses of the Bible on them. Through the year we collected them in small albums for the purpose. These were a wonderful thing.

Indeed, there's such an apparent disdain for it that an I'm reminded of a fellow uni student on work experience who'd scrawled a verse on a scrap of paper and pinned it near his desk: the verse was Col 2:23: "Whatever you do, do your work heartily, as for the Lord rather than for men", but it gave no evidence of any hearty work being done in the production of this reminder.

Now, let's see a tradition of joy in the text reemerge: as posters, post-cards, and 'high' art, in our homes,  our church buildings, and on screen savers!

Deep contact

One of the challenges for churches that have great youth/children's programs is getting the involvement of their parents.

There are a few things that can be done here:

1. Visit them: the youth minister or Sunday school superintendent (aka children's minister) visits parents of the attendees, perhaps twice a year.

1a. Invite all the parents of a 'class' or age-group to an afternoon tea, perhaps once a quarter (the Christmas quarter can be a whole class Christmas party).

2.  A function is held for parents once a year. This might be a dinner with an after-dinner speaker on some aspect of children' s development.

3. Run a couple of shorter seminars each year on an aspect of children's/young people's spiritual development that parents can participate in: e.g. Bible reading, prayer habits, dealing with their questions.

4. Invite a group of parents to a quarterly meeting to brief them on the ministry and get their views.

5. Issue a quarterly newsletter to parents with some relevant articles, cartoons, etc.

All these create a deeper contact with the parents and for those on the edge of the congregation, might develop some closer fellowship.

Apostles' Creed thoughts

The Apostles' Creed is possibly the best recognised concise statement of Christian belief.

I first learnt this version while at CEBS in the mid 1960s:

I believe in God, the Father Almighty,
maker of heaven and earth;
and in Jesus Christ, his only Son our Lord,
who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,
born of the virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, dead and buried.
He descended into hell.
The third day he rose again from the dead.
He ascended into heaven,
and is seated at the right hand of God the Father
Almighty;
From there he shall come to judge the living and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit;
the holy catholic church;
the communion of saints;
the forgiveness of sins;
the resurrection of the body,
and the life everlasting. [Amen]

Although as I was writing this, I almost said to myself at line 13 "From thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead" so perhaps the Book of Common Prayer version was the first I learnt. However, the one above is my favourite, but the more modern version at line 8 is probably 'more better':
"He descended to the dead". "hell" is possibly defensible from some scripture, but that Jesus said to the penitent thief would be in paradise with him 'today' (Luke 23:43) suggests otherwise.

I also wonder if we might insert a new line after 9, being:
"and was seen by many."

This makes sure we understand that Yeshua's resurrected self was witnessed in our historical time-space and he was in fellowship with his disciples. I would also use 'universal' instead of 'catholic' to avoid modern confusion with the denomination. Nevertheless, I love the pace and cadence of the Australian Anglican Prayer Book version and so would vary it thus:

I believe in God, the Father Almighty,
maker of heaven and earth;
and in Jesus Christ, his only Son our Lord,
who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,
born of the virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, dead and buried.
He descended to the dead.
The third day he rose again from the dead
and was seen by many.
He ascended into heaven,
and is seated at the right hand of God the Father Almighty;
From there he shall come to judge the living and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit;
the holy universal church;
the communion of saints;
the forgiveness of sins;
the resurrection of the body,
and the life everlasting.