Negativity

Life is a deficit.

We probably know that, given the sin and failure that besets us. But no need to grind it in. Recently we've used deficit thinking in our small group work.

Courses to fix things that are wrong. In this theme we will start a course on 'resolving conflict' next term. OK, conflict is real and resolving it well can produce growth, friendship and courage. All that's good; and I'd like that Christians are good at this important social skill.

Recent courses in the wider sphere that I've noticed are 'stress management for Christian men' and 'anger management' also presumably for Christian men.

My wife returned from a shopping expedition with a book titled 'Encouragement'.

Now THAT would be a great thing to develop! The ability to encourage people, to build them up and to both start and leave on a positive note and to be inwardly strong enough to do it!

Some in our church could do with some skills in this area instead of dealing with any challenges that a person faces by telling them that 'God is in control'. Arid fatalism in the face of real distress!

Not biblical, of course, and betrayal of a poor doctrine of creation, but, heck, its the easy way out and limits one's emotional involvement and commitment to another.

Just five?

Today two of the blogs I read promoted the idea of five points modeling the biblical narrative. I like the idea of structuring the Bible; maybe that's the way we need to teach it.

From Ponderings on a Faith Journey we have:

Boring borrowed the exercise and laid out a brief and memorable summary of the biblical story – Creation (Genesis 1-11) Covenant (Genesis 12-Malachi 4), Christ (Matthew-John), Church (Acts-Jude) and Consummation (Revelation)

 From Tim Challies review of The Story of Reality:

creation, fall, redemption, consummation, and new creation

 But the one I like I heard decades ago at a conference:

creation, crisis, confusion, covenant, Christ, church, consummation

It brings the pivotal events of early history into the story and stops the Bible being a ethereal exercise not grounded in the events and chaos of human experience. The idea of 'five' is not bad: just like the number of fingers on one hand, but I think 'seven' has a bit more of a ring to it: seven days in the week ties it recursively to Genesis.

Leader...mentor...servant...minister

It takes a while, but only the two last words have any church relevance.

Below my e-mail to Karl Vater, upon reading his article 12 ways to know if you're pastoring like a boss or like a leader (!).

Dear Karl,
I started reading your blog "12 ways to know if you are pastoring like a boss or leader" and thought I'd prefer to pastor like a minister! I wonder why this biblical word and concept has dropped out of our lexicon to be replaced by the business/military idea of 'leader'?

Adults do not have leaders except in task oriented contexts; then it works. But church is not a task oriented context, it is a ministry context; we serve each other as we are able (gifted, to use the cute theological word). There is no 'servant/leader'. There are servants. End of Story!

The sooner we remove the 'one man' obsession from churches and employ our pastors as a worker to undertake a range of jobs: teaching, mentoring (great concept), administering...the better for us, for our churches and everyone.

No one is going to grow when there is always a 'leader' there. Even in my small group work I eschew the idea of 'leader'. I do not lead a small group, I serve it.

I'm new. What next?

I was doodling around the Internet today, seeing what was around for helping new Christians to grow.

There were endless curricula. For example, and here, and a good looking one from the Nazarenes.

The one I really liked was not so much about a 'course', but about Christian life: mentoring as the cool crowd says these days, or basic ordinary everyday discipleship to we ordinary folk.

I was impressed with the suggestion to start a new believer in ministry as soon as possible. One learns and grows through exercise: faith is the same as sport in that respect. And like sport one gets better not by training alone, but by doing the sport. No good saying that you are a vigaro or croquet player and you only lift weights, but never get on the field!

However, there remains need for a structured course, maybe in layers, covering similar ground with increasing depth, as time goes by. The expectation being that a person with a profession and a degree, for instance, would seek and obtain a sophisticated understanding of their faith experience in a timely manner.

This does not usually happen and the church, to my knowledge, doesn't support this outside structured theological study. Very wrong. We should all be encouraged to know the life, practice and thought of faith in ever growing depth.

Most of us, however, are stuck at the kiddie stage and so cannot communicate faith with any credibility or confidence, not having a conceptual structure of life, faith and the world from the Bible, and so not being able to fit the gospel into life and make sense of it to others.

GBU

On Sunday it was a missionary gig. No sermon, a pity, but encouraging talks from some landed missionaries.

The French student worker talked about her organisation: GBU. Now that rang an oddly clanging bell in my memory. I knew I'd heard it somewhere else. Of course! Or was it?

No, not that GBU, but this one.

Let's all join in...

Every so often the compare of our service (or president, or reader...) gets the bright idea to convert a congregational prayer into a free-for-all.

I've experienced this many times over the past decades.

It NEVER works. Long awkward silences are the feature. OK in a Quaker meeting, but not in any other. The intimacy that a prayer free for all usually requires is not a happy fit with the non-intimate setting of a congregation in a large auditorium. The setting makes it not work.

I'm tempted next time we have one of these futile sessions to immediately pray that it will be over soon and that we will be spared the long awkward silence that the incongruity of intimate prayer in an populated auditorium usually brings.

Performance?

Some churches are wary of the Sunday congregation becoming a 'performance', or a spectacle. Often this fear is courted in 'low' churches, in misunderstanding of the conduct of the service in 'high' churches. However, it is easy to run into the baby and bathwater error. Sure, we don't want a Hillsong like performance in our congregation; but we also need to avoid sloppiness!

There's no excuse of unrehearsed ministry segments (e.g. choirs), unprepared Bible reading or short talks, disheveled projections, unorganised rambling prayers, or things just let go wrong, get ragged, or look as though no one cares.

Here we should care deeply, exercise our considered creativity, promote order and dignity, respect of those who attend and preparation.