Give me that Old Time Religion

On YouTube I came across some items by A W Tozer including an audio book of his great "The Pursuit of God" and a sermon "In Everything by Prayer".

Check them out.

Get out of here!

After being at a new church just after I was married, I was chatting to another relative newbie. We were seeking a home group to join. You know: get to know people, share our lives, pray together.

He told me that he went to a really great group, and why don't we come along?

Great, we thought. He gave us time and place, and we were set. Thrilled. Happy. Included. Welcomed.

On the evening of the meeting we were well ready in time and then sat to dinner.

A phone call.

It was the curate (it was an Anglican church).

He wanted us to not come along.

Hang on; run that by me again.

He wanted us to not be part of this group...you know...don't come. Cancel your idea of attendance. Nick off, or as they say in the pub, get fkd.

That's how we felt. Devastated.

Were we incipient lepers? Liable to mad Christian disease?

No idea. But, here's a tip, the group was dominated by the parish...no, the diocesan worthies...we surmised that we were simply  'non-U'.

This was the gospel according to the Duke of Bedford, not The Lamb of God.

The seeker-sensitive service!

There was a fashion a few decades ago, of making church services to be more 'seeker sensitive'. I think this was a reverse innovation made by Willow Creek church in the USA.

Happily I didn't experience this travesty of Christian witness, practice and mission, but I speak in past tense. I have now experienced it.

I get the feeling that my own church is going this way; minimial Bible reading and prayer and songs (not hymns) that are trite, trivial and musically irrelevant (difficult to sing pop-tunes, not designed for congregational singing). We no longer steep our congregational times with the knowledge of the faith and our delight in it, but act like it is shameful!

A church I've visited a few times over the years seems to have gone further down this path. I've watched its notice board gradually reduce the number of advertised services on Sundays. 20 years ago there were 3. Now there is only 1. So much for the sensitiveness to seekers! How about building up the faithful in prayer, knowledge and love?

Unlike in the USA, where Willow Creek is, there is a very thin and selective community familiarity with Christian churches here in Australia. The probability of someone being a 'seeker' is very low, compared to the USA. As an example of the cultural difference, The Simpsons is replete with references to church life, the characters are frequently in church services, if reluctantly, church life often plays a significant plot role. By contrast, the soap opera 'Home and Away' mentions church so rarely that Christianity, even a cultural dilution of it, is invisible.

Our mission environment in Australia is miles away from that of the USA. We do not need or want 'seeker sensitive services'. They are pointless, irrelevant and pointless again.

Instead, we need to treat our congregations like Christians and enjoy the word read, preached, sung and prayed.

Mission is to be based, as it is in Acts 4, speaking the word of God with boldness. For this we need knowledge and understanding: of ourselves, the scriptures and the society around us to be able to go into it and proclaim the gospel meaningfully.

The church centre can be well used for what I call 'contact' events where people are attracted to come from which those more interested in spiritual things may find the Way. But these must be designed as part of a delivery channel to end with close contact for the faith.

Prove it!

Sometime paid Christians (I'm talking clergy-persons here) make it hard to understand their commitment to the gospel. Those that are very and conspicuously wealthy on their church's dime are a case in point.

But I'm happy to say I know two very influential very able and caring ministers who have proved the gospel.

1. An older minister, highly esteemed by large numbers of people decided to take the assistant minister role and ask his assistant minister to become the senior minister. He swapped jobs for the less conspicuous role as he was slowing with the inevitable depredations of age, and wanted to support the next generation.

2. A mature minister in the adjoining parish found all his children had left home to start their own households here and abroad. The rectory was now too large, with a number of unoccupied rooms that the parish had provided in an enlargement some years prior (at a significant cost to the parish).

I was hugely impressed when I heard that the minister had relinquished the rectory as it was too big, allowing the parish to let it while he moved into a smaller cottage in a nearby suburb. Wonderful example.

The meaning of life the universe and everything

42.

Speaking of Revelation, let's not forget the place of 42 in Revelation.

Revelation 11:2

Leave out the court which is outside the temple and do not measure it, for it has been given to the nations; and they will tread under foot the holy city for forty-two months.

Revelation 13:5

There was given to him a mouth speaking arrogant words and blasphemies, and authority to act for forty-two months was given to him.

Yes, 42 is the meaning of LUE absent the salvation of Christ. Douglas Adams was right, but wrong.

Sashes and pews

Michael Giffin wrote in Quadrant "The Future of Christianity" (2017)

A few years ago, there was a disinformation campaign about Cardinal Pell allegedly refusing to give homosexuals communion. This wasn’t true. What actually happened was a group of homosexuals, their parents, and their friends, went up to the altar wearing rainbow sashes, to make a political statement, and Pell refused to give the sash-wearers communion (even the heterosexual ones). His point was necessary. God’s altar is for sacraments. It isn’t the place to make politically correct statements about identity politics. Leave your sashes in the pews. You can receive communion without the sashes.

I draw your attention to "God’s altar is for sacraments. It isn’t the place to make politically correct statements about identity politics".

The entire conduct of congregation assemblies, for whatever reason is not to make 'politically correct' statements, any other political statements, or couple up the worship of our Lord with any human supremacist disposition. Thus my ire against the farcical and anachronistic 'acknowledgement of/welcome to country' being introduced into our congregational meeting.

Nothing that would divide the body of Christ into special interest groups, give or imply priority to one group over another, one historical or cultural leaning over any other divides Christ. Paul was angry enough about this within the church ( 1 Corinthians 3;4), let alone bringing it into the church from alien, if not animist domains.

Rainbow

Every time I get the chance, I quip that rainbows are great (for park benches, pedestrian crossings, etc.). The person who hears braces for a diatribe of admiration for sexual absurdities;  instead I point to its reminding us that God will never again use a flood to wipe out evil. Genesis 9

But there are a few other significant rainbows in Ezekiel and Revelation.

Ezekiel 1:28

As the appearance of the rainbow in the clouds on a rainy day, so was the appearance of the surrounding radiance. Such was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord. And when I saw it, I fell on my face and heard a voice speaking.

Revelation 4:3

And He who was sitting was like a jasper stone and a sardius in appearance; and there was a rainbow around the throne, like an emerald in appearance.

Revelation 10:1

[ The Angel and the Little Book ] I saw another strong angel coming down out of heaven, clothed with a cloud; and the rainbow was upon his head, and his face was like the sun, and his feet like pillars of fire;

Thus, rainbows remind me of the power and glory of God. Nice of local councils to thus help my Christian meditations.