Jung: wrong again!

Richard Noll, in his book "The Jung Cult" writes, quoting Hinkel: 

"...it is indeed a central part of Jung's repudiation of traditional Christianity that offered a God that was distant, transcendent, and absolute."

And how wrong this is.

The Bible tells of a God who is in intimate fellowship with his creatures, then after their repudiation of him, provides a means of regaining that communion.

The God who dwells with his people in their imageness, in propositional communication, in the Tabernacle and Temple, is among us in Christ, who upon leaving us provided the gift of his indwelling Spirit and the family of the faithful.

This is God who is close, who seeks man for fellowship...for man's good. Who has shown us his proximity and relatable connection by performing the creation within the basic delineation of our existence: in a series of days, cementing that relational connection first in the Sabbath then in the person of Christ Immanuel.

How to do missions.

The importance of creation in ground floor evangelism, from a missiologist at Fuller.

 

Panel | N. T. Wright, Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, and Scott Sunquist - YouTube 

 

Wright's response, while very theologically helpful, is dead from the get go because he disparages the timing of creation. And the theology is good: even for a venue like Fuller!

 

I think these guys live in a split world. Wright for instance in his NT theology is about as non-Platonist as one can get, but in his anthropology and cosmology is as 'forked tongue' as a pagan with a Platonic context.

 

TE/LA-ers seem to have platonised the creation and placed it in some form of 'upper story', mysterious, inaccessible and defying description (and so unteachable). Yet, this is the God who speaks; who reveals himself to man who he made in his image for fellowship. It is contradictory and without scriptural foundation for them to overturn this in the most important relational passage in the Bible: Genesis 1 ( to 3:8). On their terms Wright obscures God's act of initiating fellowship, and hides it from we who are to be rulers of that  very creation as his image-bearers: thus his primary act of identity and his chief credential for worship is hidden and inaccessible. How can creation reflect his glory when he's not told us its glorious basis? Sounds like a shell game!

But Wright is wrong in his disparagement. It is essential that days are days because by them God engages his creation in its terms: makes an ontological grounding for fellowship by the terms he created to delineate our experience of his creation. This underscored by using the days that he made as basic to his engagement with his creature who will go on to reflect him; not in some ineffable mystical miasma, but in this real world of the days in which our God created and robustly ground our relationship with him.

The direct coupling of event with word in the days plays an important role in showing also the God is the Lord of these days and of the creation, completely government the creation with his direct action and evaluation that underwrites his pleasure in the result. There is thus no room for pagan fantasies, unstated intermediaries (Hebrews 11:3 has a role here too). This also makes the Sabbath of the Covenant also pregnant with the glory of his creation and love of his creature.

 

Wright dashes all this into a Platonic bowl of pottage with his denial of the basic organizing tempo and connection of creation to our world.

A theological pivot

Most Christian discourse related to Genesis 1-3, particularly by those who want to read it as a piece of direct text (i.e., taking the days as they are calibrated), spend far too much time on the content...which we can all read, and too little on the theology.

Ken Ham, for instance, never seems to really get to the theological implications of the 6 days of creation.

They are the orientating basis for our understanding of God, the creation and ourselves in the creation and in relation to God. God shows that he is not distant but near to us, executing the creation in the days he made for our fellowship with him (and this flows onto the grandeur of the Sabbath in the Covenant with Israel); he also shows that his word is the immediate cause of the creation. This demonstrates direct connection with the creation and gives force to the 'good's, and the final 'very good', further reinforcing God's intimate connection with the creation which culminates in Genesis 3:8 with God actively in the garden seeking Adam and Eve in fellowship. This is utterly different from any pagan myth.

The days, being 'our terms' are clearly located in real history, our history. But they do more: they underscore that they are in the concrete reality of the world we are in, (contrary to monist dreams), they form the intellectual basis for or understanding of reality (contrary to materialist dreams), and show it's goodness for our habitation and care (contrary to pagan spiritualism, platonic mind games, and Gnostic deceit).

The immediacy of creation also side-lines any notion of secondary or intermediate causes, either of which push God away from his creation and denigrate it's spiritual (godly) significance as the place of fellowship and where man reflects God's image and of us. Psalm 8 celebrates this intimacy that results.

McLaren and Christ?

McLaren's view of God, has further ramifications.

His view of Christ must also be in peril. If he has dragged the creator into his creation, merging him with it in the manner of all monist flavours, from Evolution to Animism; he must have a similar parlous view of Christ.

In short, if he doesn't know who God is, he can't know who Christ is.

He cuts God off from the real concrete creation, so Christ can no longer be Creator! (John 1:1-3, Col 1: 16-18 as the most explicit data, but the whole  Colossians passage is relevant: 15-20.).

The Incarnation is the reprise of the creation! The Creation identified God, and thus his Christ; as 'creator' in whose image we are and so gives us our basic identity. The Incarnation is the founding of the Kingdom of God that will be consummated in the New Creation as creature dwells with Creator in eternal fellowship..

Thus, Christ as the Fullness of God embodied (Col 2:8-10) is no stranger to the Cosmos. He is the creator who created in the days of our history. His action in the days contextualizes both the theophanies recorded throughout the OT and the Incarnation as their summation. That is, this is his creation and he is not an alien within it. The Incarnation is the coda on this great biblical theme of God with his people in his image, being their creator. Now in the Incarnation, announced as redeemer as well.

'God with us' in the Incarnation follows as a familial act, a personal event in the same concrete reality as the creation event authored by the same person. This person (God in Christ) first demonstrating his presence and direct connection with the creation by action realized within the terms of the creation he has created (that is a set of defined days that are real in that creation) cohesively with his objective. He now stepping into that creation, again in its terms: in a man. The intimacy of God with us shining forth to us, his image-bearers.

And that's why a real concrete creation as set out directly in Genesis one is more than important, it is pivotal in the most profound way.

McLaren has missed every point the Scriptures make!

Also see A Theological Pivot

What McLaren misses.

Progressive futurist theologian, Brian McLaren, once a conservative evangelical, calls for a new definition of God as "a bigger, non-dualistic, non-binary God." He prefers a God who is "in the story, not outside of time and space like a prime mover or divine watch maker" McLaren's god is not different from us; he actually is us. Non-dualistic is another term for non-binary, since "dual" also means "two." These are broad simplified ways of describing reality. Things are understood either through the rubric of oneness or two-ness: non-binary or binary, non-dualistic or dualistic. This sounds ridiculously simple, but it is deeply theological.

From Jones, P. Whose Rainbow? 2020. Ezra Press, Grimsby, p. 22.

 

McLaren clearly has nothing in his previous theology that leads him to understand the relation between God and creation. His only recourse is to place God either remotely from the creation, or contained within it! I hazard the guess that he relegates the days of creation to fiction, myth, symbolism or fantasy, which removes God from 'the story' and reifies his complaint; because it is these very days, set out as real concrete days, that prevent us conceiving God as either indifferently and impersonally distant from or impotently internal to the creation. They show that God is in, and the originator and Lord of 'the story'.

The days are the days that delineate our life domain and his acting in such days, explicitly brings that activity into our history.

God is present within our world in the very existential terms of our world that denominates history. This is a God who is close, whose love is demonstrated in intimacy of action in creating the real concrete place for fellowship of man with God, man equipped for such fellowship by being like him, in his image reflecting him into the creation as his agents. The intimacy of God and creation is driven home in Genesis 3:8: God in the garden (presumably God the Son) in pursuit of fellowship with the creatures-in-his-image! Nothing like the pagan fictions about improbably flawed gods contained within the cosmos, such as Enuma Elish.

 

No other religion is remotely like this: knowing God in direct contact with the domain of human life, but also prior to and outside that domain as Creator. They all either internalize or depersonalize and remove the 'god' as a knowable thing, or diffuse it throughout everything and equally unknowable.

 

Not a sermon that one would hear in most churches!

 

Also see McLaren and Christ.

And A Theological Pivot

7 more tips for choosing a church.

You were, I hope, much helped by my tips for choosing a church. Stick to that set and you'll go far!

But that's not the end of it. There are more tips that you need to bear in mind.

1. comfortable pews
2. good wifi
3. good acoustics and excellent hi-fi PA speakers
4. no air blowers in the toilets (paper towels, please)
5. good transitional shelter at the entrance: a porch or foyer, and automatic doors
   
6. no check-ins, not even pretend ones.
   
7. humble but well designed foyer with nicely built brochure display

Stick to this list and your facilities will be comfortable, show respect for the users and visitors and suggest that you care about your premises; seeking the biblical standard for created things: "very good".

Let's get into it!

A local church announced to its members in its latest community newsletter a reorientation to 'making disciples'.

Nice.

I wonder what they were doing before.

But even if they felt they were deficient in this basic function of church, good that they are now working on it.

One of the elements of this was set out as 'proclaiming' the gospel.

Now it gets tricky.

To just encourage people who have never consciously 'proclaimed the gospel' to now do it is not enough. People need to be trained, have practice, and be clear about their general objective.

I grew up in a church where after baptism, we were urged to 'tell everyone about Christ'. For a 12 year old this was a daunting prospect. Where to start? I barely knew myself what I would say; I could barely articulate to myself my own faith.

I'm sure most people, as I was at 12, now in that church, are in a similar position.

So we need training!

What to train?

Firstly, as per most churches, almost no one knows anything about the Bible or Christian faith; a sermon does not do it; nor does a life-time of them.

There are two elements to this first piece: 

1. Bible: an overview of its content, basic structure, history of composition, and history of its passage to us today; this might also deal with common 'objections' to its veracity.
2. The 'worldview' of the Bible, or its description of reality and where the gospel fits into this. My previous blog on the 5 aspects of God with us could be the basis for this.

The next piece is The Seven Basic Questions.

A Christian should be able to fluently and flexibly answer 5 basic questions about their faith, plus 2:

1. Why do you believe in Jesus, or 'why are you a Christian/follower of Jesus/Yeshua/Christ?
2. Why do you believe God exists?
3. Why do you accept the Bible as authoritative?
4. Why do you go to Church
5. Doesn't science disprove the Bible/your religion?
6. Aren't all religions basically the same?
7. How can there be a God of love with so much evil in the world (and what about the God of love who sends people to hell?).

The final warp-up is the conversation; again, two aspects:

1. Opening conversations about faith matters, or steering a conversation appropriately to them.
2. Dealing with counter claims.
   

Number 1 can be tricky for some people, so this is where much work needs to be done. Number two is comparatively simple: its about asking questions and probing the answers. Greg Koukl's Tactics book is very helpful for this.

Above all, in communicating your faith, is respect of the other person, kindness in the conversation, and only going as far as it is going. Don't expect every conversation to get anywhere near a 'conversion' conversation.

Number 1 springs from a common ground between the person and the Christian. The prior conversation is the foundation for this common ground, but an important one to keep in mind is  Paul's words in Romans 1, and Luke's in Acts 17, reporting on Paul's address in Athens.

Then its practice, de-briefs with Christian friends, and continual reading, thinking and self-education. The church must support this in continued formal education mini courses, or short seminars.

God with us

My Advent thoughts.

This season on the traditional church calendar: the first season of the church year, importantly is about 'God with us'.

The incarnation of our Lord is the highlight of this, as we celebrate his nativity on 25 December. But it is only one, albeit, the pivotal one, of the five movements of God's dwelling with us.

They are: Creation, Tabernacle/temple, Christ, Church, New Creation.

If you are fitting this to a teaching cycle, you could either handle Creation in the week prior to Advent, or combine together either Christ and Church, or Church and New Creation; either paring could be argued as acceptable.

1. Creation

God shows his dwelling with us in two ways in the creation account: that he acts concretely in the stream of historical time and material space that we are in as his Image-bearers; and that, as his Image-bearers 'like' him are created for fellowship with him.

In Gen 3:8 is that here God is doing what love does: seeking the beloved. God is in this passage demonstrating the consequence of 'imageness' (communion with the creator) and instantly its inversion in his being turned against by his creature's rejection of him.

2. Tabernacle/temple

In drawing out Israel to be his people God has a purpose: dual, I suspect. Firstly to demonstrate who he is towards them (the loving God of grace), enacted in calling them into the fellowship for which humanity was created, and to be his people to those around; negatively as the instrument of his judgement against the Amorites, etc, positively as the vehicle of the proclamation of his grace.

The purpose is unfolded in the ceremonial tabernacle/temple where God's presence is represented amongst his people. The cosmos-as-temple is because of sin, contracted to this 'circle of grace' and fellowship.

In this it is the vehicle to bring Messiah to the cosmos, the world, and his salvation from our own perditious choices.

3. Incarnation

God takes on human nature and form to be in his Creation and to deal with our sin, dying to resurrect to show his victory over the forces of darkness.

4. Church

The church is called to make disciples: proclaim and grow disciples in community of the faithful; being, thereby 'salt and light' in the dark world.

5. New Creation

Our destiny as the church, in all its members, is to worship God forever in his New Creation; as the old is done away with and a new material/spiritual world is made. In this world we worship God in our renewed state: acting, thinking, relating in step with his gracious love as we, with him in Christ, rule the new world: that is; be responsible for it under God's perfect auspices.

7 tips to choose a church

1.  avoid Calvinist churches and those that like to pretend evolution is God's method of creation.
2. avoid churches with no active community outreach (and I mean outreach, not in-drag) or evangelistic training and action
3. avoid churches that don't educate kids and youth in the Bible's total picture, its grand narrative and the wonderful theology and picture of reality it teaches
4. avoid churches where the financial statements are not public
5. ensure both sexes, suitably qualified, are involved in church governance
6. check that it has a membership of which at least 30% are active in volunteering in the church
7. check that it has a strategy to connect with new-comers, engage them in the church life and integrate them as disciples of Christ.
   

Death, the World, and Everything

One of the most common fall-back positions for Christians who hold to either a theistic-evolutionary view of origins (that is they think the Bible has one truth and the popular materialist conception of evolution has another truth about the very same thing) or who agree that long ages preceded Adam, as per that same materialist conception of reality, relies on death being an integral component of the creation.

 

The scriptures are quite clear that Adam's rejection of God brought with it death: reject the giver of life and death would inevitably follow, as per God's prediction: they would know good and evil, and evil maximally is death. Thus it is termed 'the last enemy' in scripture.

 

To get out of the implication of Genesis 1-3 that Adam brought death in toto: that is all death everywhere, it is claimed that the Fall brought spiritual death, death that affected only mankind. In this evasion, death would have always been a part of the cosmos, but restricted to all living beings except mankind.

 

But I think this cannot stand in the light of Romans 5:12, which reads:

Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned

Before sin there was no 'death in the world, the material cosmos'.

 

Sin entered into the cosmos: the created world, in global terms; death came by sin, so the only way death entered the world was by sin.

 

For a 'long-ager' there could be no death (of any type, as Paul is making a global reference to 'cosmos') before sin and therefore no death of any life within that same material cosmos. So how could evolution work, noting Steve Jobs who called death: "death is very likely the single best invention of life; it is life's change agent" at, I think, his Stanford University 2005 commencement address.

I can only guess that his family, and indeed he, himself, are applauding his death still.

Yet another flyer from the local plumber!

Every couple of weeks I receive in my mail box an attractive advertising flyer from a local trades firm: plumber, carpenter, bricklayer, electrician, etc.

Good for them. If you don't advertise, no one knows about you.

I also could expect something from the local church at Christmas, sometimes at Easter as well. Not so anymore, and not even anything at all during the Covid circus that obsessed the Western world in recent years...oh, except for some fringe cults that kept at it, remarkably.

But why?

Why not do a letterbox drop a couple of times a year publicising the programs that might appeal to the demographic of your catchment area? These might be suitable 'community connection' programs to  introduce people to your church and perhaps open the way for involvement with its core mission.

At least they would make your church known and build what marketers are always after: 'mind-share'. So your 'brand' becomes a known thing.

What if you are 18?

My observation of church life, over many churches in several countries over many years indicates wonderful programs for children; often effective and inviting activities for young people: youth at high school. These are of varying quality but the better include social activities, simple entertainment, camp fire cook outs and systematic introduction to the documents of our faith. The Bible, obviously and its instruction about reality and our place in it.

Then you turn 18, and it all stops, like a car hitting a cliff. Why?

In one denomination we developed a program called "20 plus". It was for anyone who'd left high school, but the name seemed good. It attracted people up to about the age of 24 or so and being across the region, led to lots of new people to meet, and maybe even to find a future spouse.

One feature of the house-parties we held was a venue we used which had single rooms with en-suite shower and toilet. That set the standard for what church conferences and 're-groups' should be. No bunking down in barracks like in the army thanks.

From 18 to about 24 these days one is finding one's feet in life and dealing with some major transitions from adolescence to what amounts to yet more adolescence. We no longer grow-up quickly, but remain dependent children for far too long.

Still, a ministry even across a group of churches that provides for the spiritual formation of this age group is essential in a society that is increasingly paganised. My only caveat is that it must appeal to both women and men, without deprecating the typical characteristics of each sex within their normal wide bands, while encouraging formation of godly men and women.

Escaping Sin

What does one make of the sudden flood of Neo-paganism that has seized the Western World and particularly the Anglosphere?

Sin.

The perpetual mission of mankind is to deal with the effects of sin. Or, in other words, the 'problem of evil'. Without recourse to Christ, the creator, who is the source of the resolution of the existential disjunct between experience and real desire, the pagan route is ultimately and ironically thanophilic. A retreat into the cul-de-sac of perdition.

Christians are often told that the 'problem of evil' is particularly our problem. But it is not; it is a universal problem and is revealed as such by every visit to the doctor or dentist, every phone call to avert loneliness and every move to seek companionship, comfort and peace from the moment of birth.

Writ large, it is in every pagan maneuver to adjust to the deeply etched discontents of life.

In the case of paganism in its various forms, it has a number of strategies. These range from removal to an imaginary world and denying the problem; to disregard of it by embracing it in paganism's many forms: thus, seeking to succor the effects of sin, of evil's mark, by falling in line with it in varieties of active monism; seeing the self as absorbed in the continuity of reality without being distinct from it and pretending that this resolves the great disjunct between who we are and who we are made to be.

The two avenues out of the sin-trap are via Christ, who deals with the separation from God without erasing our 'imageness'; and paganism, which has to deny that imageness to achieve its prescription.

Is Hugh Ross for real?

A comment I made that sprang from a reference on a video to Hugh Ross.

Ross's view seems to introduce depersonalising Aristotelianism into the the Creation account. The account is centrally about who God is (to adapt the title of Goffman's book, it is The Presentation of Himself in Everyday Life) and the creation of the place in which we both reflect him in his creation-for-us, and live in fellowship with him (c.f. Genesis 3:8a). It is not a remote or abstract topic that has in its detail no connection with its purpose, but a concrete set of intentional events engaging this concrete reality.

 

Unless the creation account is read in terms of the relational objective, it becomes detached from God, or detaches the living God from his creation through either extended time periods (congruent with the pagan 'mystery' view of creation), or processes that he cannot truly communicate to us and are disjunctively interposed between his word and its effect for the objective of relationship. But we know that the only intermediary is, of course Christ: John 1:3, 10; Colossians 1:16; Hebrews 1:2, 11:3.

 

The whole account, showing a cadence of days and a cyclical sequence of word to result to evaluation in each day, place God as the real agent really in the created domain: the real person, doing the creation and directly active in that indicated by (analogically) doing by his 'hand' or 'fingers' (Psalm 8: 3, 6).

 

He is not in it exhaustively, of course, as he is before and beyond the creation, separate from it and not 'captured' by it. He is truly in the creation which, pre-fall, represents 'heaven and earth' come together, to use N. T. Wrights marvelous phrase. It is thus about the real communion of real persons. God as prime, we as his image in personhood.

 

This is underlined by the effort the Spirit goes to to drive the point of 'days' being the type of days we experience and in which we experience fellowship with God. God's work in the very temporal domain that we are constrained by shows the start of fellowship and the true 'realness' of the creation, while he being separate from it. He works in our world within the tempo and existential framing of that world to which we are subject. He underlines the creation as the stage for fellowship of creature and creator. He is 'here with us' from the start of creation.

 

Thus the days are 'calibrated' as 'evening and morning' type days. Diurnal lighting variations have nothing to do with it. The declaration of the type of days is to set out that they are not 'long periods'. They are calibrated and given ordinal arrangement to make that clear. They show an intimacy and immediacy in creation that belies pagan fantasies that purposely either capture god within the cosmos and thus degrading him, or drive him so far away as to be meaningless as does deism.

 

The 'days' show God's warm proximity to his creatures. Fussing about with the various uses of 'yom' in the Bible fails to grasp the theology of Genesis 1, and is simply lexically irrelevant. Indeed the importance of the 'day' is amplified in Exodus 20:8 and 30:12 as the covenantal acme of worship. The latter in God's direct speech...notably immediately after the passage about the skilled craftsmen.

 

In the end the creation account obstructs every pagan/materialist move to sunder God from creature, remove him from our 'life-world' and their ambition to detach us from the truth of what and who is truly real and who and what we are. It also destroys any opening for 'chance' to operate: Proverbs 3: 19, 20 and of course Hebrews 11:3.

 

BTW, 'light' before the sun is also a meaningless quibble. As Francis Schaeffer points out in Genesis in Space and Time, 'light' is a simulacrum of the whole electro-magnetic spectrum, and perhaps the entire energy field, without which there is no matter at all. For an ancient document this shows a stunning understanding of physics. [Naturally I disagree with FS on his floccinaucinihilipilification of the 'days']

At the market stall

One of our mission support groups will attend a popular market in our city this weekend. They will offer for sale the unique crafts made by the people group in one of our overseas mission areas.

We will have three or four people staffing the stall and the market, with its dozens of other stalls will attract probably thousands of people.

In my schema, this stall has a few purposes: encourage the people group that produces the craft good, cement their connection with the mission team, make Christian 'contact' with the general community, and provide a setting for conversations with un-believers about our faith and its foundation.

In the team's view, it is to make money for the producers, and perhaps represent the church's mission. I'm not sure if this is articulated into a strategy, though.

The people on the stall are 'front-line' missioners themselves. This is not a 'doddle' but a deployment at the point. These people are our crack 'special forces' people.

They need to be able to calmly conduct conversations that deal with our faith and its foundation, handle the 5 (or 7) main challenges to Christian faith that pagans make, and be able to discuss matters with people conversationally. They also need a cache of bibles, suitable booklets (not corny 'tracts') in a magazine format, to give away, and QR codes for a matching website. Maybe even trinkets they can hand out to all visitors to the stall. An explanatory leaflet given with each sale could be good too.

On LIturgy

In a YT video, the wonder of a liturgical service was discussed.

1.Scripture fills the service 

2.Heavenly service is liturgical 

3.Bond to ages before us 

4.Helps us not to base our faith on feelings, but to let feelings rest upon God’s Word and sacraments

5.Unites us with churches in all the world – and young and old Christians.

How do we disciple?

How did Yeshua disciple? How did any ancient teacher 'disciple'?

They spent time with their pupils.

How do we disciple today?

When I was young I was very involved in youth work at both parish and denominational levels. We met up occasionally, but nothing really structured. The director of youth for the denomination was a great and encouraging mentor (thanks RK), and I had great friends in the clergy who ran the wider youth ministry. But at the parish level, nada. I get the impression now that either youth work was considered taken care of because it was now being conducted by some volunteer (me), or no one had a clue as to the discipling opportunity.

More recently I convened a home study group for my peers. I was one of about a dozen such ministers (I use the word 'minister' for any formal serving role, volunteer or paid). I did this for 4 or 5 years. All of us met three times a year to discuss our groups and our own progress. Good but very loosely done. We as a group, nor I personally was never engaged by one of the several paid Christians at our church in a conscious discipling effort.

Do you run your business this way? (Perhaps the answer is 'yes', but you mustn't care about your business very much). If you were in the Army,  is this how you commanded your unit? No. If you did, it would not survive contact with the enemy.

Every day for a Christian is 'contact with the enemy'!

Here's how a church might do discipling.

Those with 'peak' ministry roles: ministry coordinators looking after functions with a group, or conducting a home study group, are the disciplining responsibility of the paid team (or person: the "Minister"). The whole cohort meets twice a year for training and review (I hate the word 'reflection'); Various skills courses are available and encouraged, whether in the parish, in the denomination regionally or outside the church.

Perhaps the whole cohort attends a 'focus'; maybe a whole day together to discuss the ministry programs being conducted, or a 'regroup' weekend, with some external input.

They are also met with pastorally perhaps bi-monthly in formal terms by the Minister. This would be for prayer, devotional reading of the scriptures together and conversation about their mission, the church and their own experience.

This group then 'disciples' those who are within each individuals service span: the volunteers they coordinate, those in the small group they convene. Perhaps with less intensity than they themselves are discipled, but with similar intentionality.

This is discipling on purpose.

Small Groups for Men?

The feller that operates YouTube has been sending me videos related to 'men's ministry' of late. Maybe because I read a book on it 18 months ago, and he's just caught up.

Here's one of the offerings: 

https://youtu.be/vBvyPVR4tZ4

So, what is a  'small group' for and why would a bloke want to join one; why would a church have a separate men's ministry?

Let's talk about the demand for yet another evening out from home.

Some men might want this: good break from routine, with another routine, maybe.

But if you need a men's small group, what is missing in the Sunday/Wednesday offering that your church provides?

I know, usually the Sunday offering is too feminine-oriented.

My preference would be for about three times a year a men's dinner, maybe a men's 'regroup' weekend away, and perhaps a monthly men's breakfast at the church centre, or maybe a cafe or the home of one of the men.

Men's dinner would be: mill around and chat with drinks and hor d'oeuvres, then a meal: first course, then a speaker, followed by desert. Desert could be at table, or in small clusters around the place for conversation.

We might end with prayer in these clusters, then off home.

This is the basis of getting to know each other and start to seed different ministry ideas.

The big issue is to get men into a service area that they are suited to, ranging from practical stuff, to mentoring younger men, discipling threesomes, or direct gospelling: 'gardening' as Greg Koukl calls it.

Manning community contact stalls at fairs, markets (selling crafts from mission areas) or in the main street, is an option as well.

Direct practical training is essential to men. The basics:

• the 'story' of the whole Bible, and how the different books fit in and are arranged.
• basic church history
• the gospel and how it works
• the 5 basic questions and their answers.

Some generic 'skills' training that is also beneficial in the workplace or socially can also be helpful.

Apart from that a monthly prayer breakfast is a good one, Bible reading groups: no hard intellectual slog, but just read and ask questions.

Most men don't want to 'study'. But converting it to topic based 'training' might be the way to do it.

Short period subjects might be also good for a small 'talking' group.

But above all, you need to have the 'why' worked out before anything else, then expect this to change as the men get engaged.

 

Creation passages

64 Bible Verses about God, The Creator

https://bible.knowing-jesus.com/topics/God,-The-Creator

Nehemiah 9:6   

“You alone are the Lord.

You have made the heavens,

The heaven of heavens with all their host,

The earth and all that is on it,

The seas and all that is in them.

You give life to all of them

And the heavenly host bows down before You.

Genesis 1:1        

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

Isaiah 45:7          

The One forming light and creating darkness,

Causing well-being and creating calamity;

I am the Lord who does all these.

Isaiah 66:2          

“For My hand made all these things,

Thus all these things came into being,” declares the Lord.

“But to this one I will look,

To him who is humble and contrite of spirit, and who trembles at My word.

Ephesians 3:9    

and to bring to light what is the administration of the mystery which for ages has been hidden in God who created all things;

Revelation 4:11

“Worthy are You, our Lord and our God, to receive glory and honor and power; for You created all things, and because of Your will they existed, and were created.”

Psalm 96:5         

For all the gods of the peoples are idols,

But the Lord made the heavens.

Isaiah 37:16       

“O Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, who is enthroned above the cherubim, You are the God, You alone, of all the kingdoms of the earth. You have made heaven and earth.

Jeremiah 10:11 

Thus you shall say to them, “The gods that did not make the heavens and the earth will perish from the earth and from under the heavens.”

1 Timothy 4:4   

For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with gratitude;

Genesis 1:4        

God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness.

Isaiah 45:18       

For thus says the Lord, who created the heavens (He is the God who formed the earth and made it, He established it and did not create it a waste place, but formed it to be inhabited),

“I am the Lord, and there is none else.

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters. Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light...

Psalm 148:2-5   

Praise Him, all His angels;

Praise Him, all His hosts!

Praise Him, sun and moon;

Praise Him, all stars of light!

Praise Him, highest heavens,

And the waters that are above the heavens!...

Romans 8:38-39               

For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Colossians 1:16

For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things have been created through Him and for Him.

Psalm 8:3-8        

When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers,

The moon and the stars, which You have ordained;

What is man that You take thought of him,

And the son of man that You care for him?

Yet You have made him a little lower than God,

And You crown him with glory and majesty!...

Genesis 1:26-28               

Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

Genesis 5:1        

This is the book of the generations of Adam. In the day when God created man, He made him in the likeness of God.

Genesis 9:6        

“Whoever sheds man’s blood,

By man his blood shall be shed,

For in the image of God

He made man.

Psalm 100:3       

Know that the Lord Himself is God;

It is He who has made us, and not we ourselves;

We are His people and the sheep of His pasture.

Psalm 139:13     

For You formed my inward parts;

You wove me in my mother’s womb.

Isaiah 42:5          

Thus says God the Lord,

Who created the heavens and stretched them out,

Who spread out the earth and its offspring,

Who gives breath to the people on it

And spirit to those who walk in it,

Acts 17:26-28    

and He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation, that they would seek God, if perhaps they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; for in Him we live and move and exist, as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we also are His children.’

1 Corinthians 8:6             

yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom are all things and we exist for Him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we exist through Him.

John 1:3              

All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being.

Hebrews 1:2      

in these last days has spoken to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the world.

Job 33:4               

“The Spirit of God has made me,

And the breath of the Almighty gives me life.

Genesis 1:2        

The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters.

Psalm 104:30     

You send forth Your Spirit, they are created;

And You renew the face of the ground.

Psalm 33:6         

By the word of the Lord the heavens were made,

And by the breath of His mouth all their host.

Job 38:8-11        

“Or who enclosed the sea with doors

When, bursting forth, it went out from the womb;

When I made a cloud its garment

And thick darkness its swaddling band,

And I placed boundaries on it

And set a bolt and doors,…

Psalm 33:9         

For He spoke, and it was done;

He commanded, and it stood fast.

Proverbs 3:19    

The Lord by wisdom founded the earth,

By understanding He established the heavens.

Proverbs 8:30    

Then I was beside Him, as a master workman;

And I was daily His delight,

Rejoicing always before Him,

Jeremiah 10:12-13          

It is He who made the earth by His power,

Who established the world by His wisdom;

And by His understanding He has stretched out the heavens.

When He utters His voice, there is a tumult of waters in the heavens,

And He causes the clouds to ascend from the end of the earth;

He makes lightning for the rain,

And brings out the wind from His storehouses.

Hebrews 11:3   

By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible.

Job 26:7               

“He stretches out the north over empty space

And hangs the earth on nothing.

Romans 4:17     

(as it is written, “A father of many nations have I made you”) in the presence of Him whom he believed, even God, who gives life to the dead and calls into being that which does not exist.

Isaiah 44:24       

Thus says the Lord, your Redeemer, and the one who formed you from the womb,

“I, the Lord, am the maker of all things,

Stretching out the heavens by Myself

And spreading out the earth all alone,

Deuteronomy 30:20       

by loving the Lord your God, by obeying His voice, and by holding fast to Him; for this is your life and the length of your days, that you may live in the land which the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give them.”

Job 9:8-9             

Who alone stretches out the heavens

And tramples down the waves of the sea;

Who makes the Bear, Orion and the Pleiades,

And the chambers of the south;

Psalm 104:2-4   

Covering Yourself with light as with a cloak,

Stretching out heaven like a tent curtain.

He lays the beams of His upper chambers in the waters;

He makes the clouds His chariot;

He walks upon the wings of the wind;

He makes the winds His messengers,

Flaming fire His ministers.

Matthew 5:45   

so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.

Job 5:10               

“He gives rain on the earth

And sends water on the fields,

Job 38:31-33      

“Can you bind the chains of the Pleiades,

Or loose the cords of Orion?

“Can you lead forth a constellation in its season,

And guide the Bear with her satellites?

“Do you know the ordinances of the heavens,

Or fix their rule over the earth?

Matthew 6:28-30            

And why are you worried about clothing? Observe how the lilies of the field grow; they do not toil nor do they spin, yet I say to you that not even Solomon in all his glory clothed himself like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the furnace, will He not much more clothe you? You of little faith!

Psalm 33:14       

From His dwelling place He looks out

On all the inhabitants of the earth,

Psalm 121:2-8   

My help comes from the Lord,

Who made heaven and earth.

He will not allow your foot to slip;

He who keeps you will not slumber.

Behold, He who keeps Israel

Will neither slumber nor sleep.

read more.

Romans 1:20     

For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.

Psalm 19:1         

For the choir director. A Psalm of David.

The heavens are telling of the glory of God;

And their expanse is declaring the work of His hands.

Isaiah 40:26       

Lift up your eyes on high

And see who has created these stars,

The One who leads forth their host by number,

He calls them all by name;

Because of the greatness of His might and the strength of His power,

Not one of them is missing.

Amos 4:13          

For behold, He who forms mountains and creates the wind

And declares to man what are His thoughts,

He who makes dawn into darkness

And treads on the high places of the earth,

The Lord God of hosts is His name.

John 3:17            

For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.

2 Corinthians 5:17           

Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.

John 1:12-13      

But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.

Romans 6:4        

Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.

Romans 8:19-23               

For the anxious longing of the creation waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God.read more.

Galatians 6:15   

For neither is circumcision anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation.

2 Corinthians 4:16           

Therefore we do not lose heart, but though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day.

Colossians 3:10

and have put on the new self who is being renewed to a true knowledge according to the image of the One who created him—

Revelation 21:1

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth passed away, and there is no longer any sea.

Revelation 21:5

And He who sits on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” And He *said, “Write, for these words are faithful and true.”

Isaiah 65:17       

“For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth;

And the former things will not be remembered or come to mind.

5 Bible Verses about Christ's Role In Creation

John 1:3              

All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being.

John 1:10            

He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him.

1 Corinthians 8:6             

yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom are all things and we exist for Him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we exist through Him.

Colossians 1:16

For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things have been created through Him and for Him.

Hebrews 1:2      

in these last days has spoken to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the world.

 

Source: https://bible.knowing-jesus.com/topics/Christ~s-Role-In-Creation  28 Aug. 22