A weekend away

Most Christian 'conferences' I've attended are terribly biblical. Usually they amount to a set of sermons: similar content, but longer; so even lower content density than from the pew.

But Christian conferences should spring from Romans 12:1-2. "Transformed by the renewing of your mind" should be the aim.

They could do a couple of things. Give a a Scriptural basis for our thinking about life and the world. Our personal philosophy and its function to critique the world and enable point target evangelism.

Some of the work of Stand to Reason heads in this direction, but not entirely, it is, in the end, Calvinistic (and to that extent not Christian, in my view), and does not take the Doctrine of Creation set out in Genesis seriously. It dilutes and de-historicises it with a materialist time scale.

Ironically, the one who really lays out the path for such a conference would be Francis Schaeffer (ironic because he's both reformed, although not entirely Calvinistic, I think, and rather unclear on his historical location of the creation).

I've just re-read his ground-breaking and re-orienting trilogy The God Who is There, Escape from Reason, and He is There and He is Not Silent. Add to that Return to Freedom and Dignity and Death in the City and you have content for a three day conference that studies, reflects on and activates his thoughts in our contemporary setting.

The conference would presume attendees having read at least the trilogy.

It would be fabulous!

Letter to a minister

Dear Agamemnon,

I think the current preaching program is the first time in more than 50 years of attending churches that I've encountered a program on 'commending Christ'. Excellent.

I think it lays the ground for a more concerted offering that might be considered.

People really learn behaviour change through engagement. Just listening to a talk rarely does it.

Could we look at a series of seminars on Communicating Christ? These would include pre-reading, a short presentation followed by facilitated discussion (such as described by Brookfield -- https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.396.577&rep=rep1&type=pdf ) then break into syndicate groups to work up presentations and engage in practice.

I think the questions that would need to be covered would be:

Why do I: believe the Bible, think Christ resurrected, Yahweh exists.
What about evil in the world?
Doesn't science (evolution) disprove the Bible/Christianity?

The big five.

To a more aware enquirer, the Trinity might be a question as well...that could be a bonus! Or, we could figure out 7 topics...the perfect number.

The important thing would be to get past personal testimonies, as useful as these can be, to the grounds of belief. Why these things are justified true beliefs based on (public) objective evidence.

Another or allied approach might be that of Greg Koukl's. His book 'Tactics' describes an enquiry-dialogue approach to 'talking the gospel' that is of broad applicability.

You might be aware of his work, but here are some links that could be of interest.

Tactics 1: https://youtu.be/aTzh6oVbsKk
Tactics 2: https://youtu.be/dPH7O6saijY
Tactics 3: https://youtu.be/C_NnFJak-B8
Tactics 4: https://youtu.be/Qszn4Gg69Tw

Commending Christ

Our sermonettes this season (pre-Lent, I guess) are about 'Commending Christ': evangelism.

This evening we were told about 'giving one's testimony' and declaring the gospel, and we had some brief words on that.

This was not training, it was....vague encouragement...to? Give a 'testimony' and/or explain the gospel.

Here's what was missing. No one is interested in your 'testimony'; unless you find out that they are, of course, but even there, the important thing in my estimation is to get to their world-view as quickly as possible. We are in an age of subjectivity, so a person who hears your 'testimony' can well say 'Good for you,I'm glad you found something that works for you; cheerio.'

Schaeffer encourages us to find the point of tension between their unavoidable experience of life, of their 'mannishness' and its need for an explanatory contextualisation which only God who is There can give: as creator and redeemer. Creation is the starting point (Acts 17) and Christ is the end point (Acts 26).

Koulk encourages us to ask questions to get information and get them to explain their world view, or belief, or spirituality to find a point of gentle confrontation.

In the end we need to be able to set out why we believe Yeshua resurrected, why we trust the Bible on objective grounds and why we have good reasons to believe that Yahweh exists and is the eternal one.

Our faith is the response to good reasons, not a private incommunicable experience (a Jasperian grasp for significance).

We also had a song, a hymn that talked about this world evaporating like snow...alas; no mention of the New Creation, which is the end Yahweh has for us. Not a neoplatonic nowhere land.

How to weld a church

A church, particularly a smaller one (I mean one that is fewer than 500 members), might sometimes consider that it is isolated and, well, small. But it still has plenty of options to build its community.

If you are not in a traditional formal setting, you don't use the church calendar to pace your year; except for Easter and Christmas, of course. No Epiphany, Candlemas, Pentecost, and even Lent and Advent don't get a real run, let alone the Christians who've paved the way for us ('saints' in traditional parlance).

So, what to do?

I can think of three major celebrations that each church could and probably should have:

1. End of January

This can be a thanksgiving and dedication gathering for all those who volunteer in various off-Sunday ministry activities and groups, a type of Candlemas: Bible Study/Home Groups, outreach ministries, community service (I mean the community of Christ) groups, etc. A couple of contributions from those involved, specific prayer for their work would be essential components. Please model the prayer on Paul's in the NT.

Combine this with a church lunch, or a dinner that evening with a guest speaker and the whole church gets involved in the wider work of their family.

2. Church anniversary of foundation

Each church has, or can estimate, its date of founding. Celebrate it with a thanksgiving 'service', a review of the recent history and growth, an up-scale lunch or dinner: even a dinner the Friday before in an external location, or catered on site, if possible.

This could be an occasion to invite some local dignitaries and politicians along both to make contact and to perhaps introduce them quietly to Christian life.

If you can't determine the foundation day, then celebrate on Trinity Sunday (or on Pentecost; the anniversary of the founding of the church universal) which floats around (it is a 'movable feast' but you could settle it in mid June). While you are at it, you could expound the doctrine of the Trinity and its connection with the Creation (Genesis 1 and John 1), or the Doctrine of the Holy Spirit, if you are thinking of Pentecost. Indeed it could be a whole week of teaching, learning and prayer on the theme.

3. End of November

At the start of Advent, and the end of the traditional church year, a bookend for the End of January, but this time, thanksgiving for the work and ministry of volunteers; perhaps not a lunch or dinner this time, but an  up-scale morning tea might be in order, where the volunteers can take the role of waiters to the congregants.

New staff

Whenever new staff, part or full-time, are engaged, a church welcome, dedication and thanksgiving needs to occur. At a church a relative attends a new administrator commenced work and it was merely mentioned in the weekly bulletin. A new minister gets all the razzle, yet Paul includes 'administrators' as ministers of the church. See 1 Corinthians 12:28.

She should also have been brought before the congregation, perhaps asked a couple of introducing questions, prayed over and her role explained.

These are all means of building community and enriching church life, of people getting to know each other, pray with each other and appreciate their brethren. To engage with the mission and vision of the church (the scriptural mission and vision, not the cooked up ones of contemporary interest).

Non-Calvinist; all welcome!

Almost a slogan for a church notice board.

But, no. Just some links:

Soteriology 101 YouTube channel and non-Calvinist references.

Dr Flowers' Soteriology 101 website.

Integration, but not like the maths you studied!

I'm re-reading for the third or fourth time Schaeffer's trilogy: The God Who is There, Escape from Reason, and He is There and He is Not Silent. Wonderful to refresh and think through the books, all quite short (and nothing like the length of the twaddle by Jaspers, Heidegger and Sartre, for example).

In the final of the trilogy 'There and Not Silent', FS makes the point that without knowledge of the infinite-personal and propositionally communicating and thinking creator, people have no point of existential integration. I use 'existential' not as the Existentialists use it, but as pertaining to existence...I probably mean 'ontological', but I prefer the force of 'existential'.

Perhaps the recently blossoming trend of one's own identity being formed almost solipsistically, and without reference to any concrete prior state is a result of the existential detachment that comes from denial of the real world. This world can only make sense in the light of the propositional revelation in history of the eternal-personal creator Trinity. The revelation is information that places it, and our being in it, in the continuous line of history from the creation.

Thus a person 'identifies' as a man or a woman, without that identification having any real meaning...indeed, I'd say that the subject has no idea what it means to so identify; it amounts to a mere narcissistic gesture in the absence of any grounding for who one is. It seems to be the loneliest thing. And this drives a narcissistic competition in the realm of sexuality; 'gender' as it has laughably transmogrified into of late. And so we have all sorts of lexical concoctions that describe nothing but perhaps serve to stabilise or give some vague status to the perversion of the moment.

This analysis maybe provides a point of contact for us with people who make or admire such claims, for steering them to the reality of their dilemma: the tension between the claim for identity, the yearning for what is, in the materialist or pan-everything-ist (to adopt FS's term) cosmos that denies access to any possibility of true identity. Where the soul is unanchored because it denies that an anchor is possible or desirable. Nihilism is the result.

The rebuttal to this might be a counter criticism that our point of reference in the eternal-personal-triune Creator is just another bunch of words. But this fails to appreciate, and the point must be driven that, no, this is about what really occurred in history, in the history that we are in and continuous with, and is propostionally derived from prior personhood in the triune Yahweh who has always and necessarily been and always will be. The world is really real and from his love; but broken by our rejection of his love for our own proud attempt to displace it. This act is discordant with reality and so fails abysmally.

We know all this is communicable to us, propositionally, and occurred in our history, because Yahweh connected his presence and action to our domain of being by matching the unavoidable tempo of our domain: he worked in defined and specific days, as we do, and created describable 'sets' of beings and substance propositionally in the terms in which we experience and know them. We can thus can trust them to be truly true and that our knowledge of them and ourselves, and of our creator gives us significance of an ineluctable eternal dimension.

Redemption is the real movement of resolution and only comes, only can come, from our repentance of the rejection of our Maker and defining ground of all that is.

We all have to walk through door-ways and not walls.

The polite minister

I now understand why the practice of (a) the minister of a church standing at the door to farewell people at the conclusion of a meeting/gathering/service and (b) his moving the parishioners along, is important.

It has become 'twee' in modern circles, it seems, as I've rarely witnessed it.

This evening, for the nth time in recent months I've taken a young relation to her church's early evening 'service' attuned to younger people. She found her friends and had a great time.

I saw a couple of people in my age group, but fundamentally experienced 'demographic dissonance'. It is observable as virtual invisibility of oneself to younger people.

The older people I saw were absorbed with the floor staff and each other. I waited for a short time, but not being happy to sit in a pew alone for an extended period, I left.

The senior minister was near the door, but absorbed in conversation with another staff member. Here's what should be a standard instruction for church staff: the service is not the time for business.

No minister was available to greet waifs such as myself, so, for the nth-1 time I left without being greeted or having anyone to greet.

So the old rite of the 'door-minister' and a polite handshake and some pleasantries took on its true relevance. It ensured no one left un-noticed, un-greeted, or un-befriended.

But, I omit, one person did notice me. I paused to glance in the foyer at the church magazine. A young girl, of about 18 months of age approached me and listened intently while I chatted with her! Maybe she was rostered on for greeting this Sunday. No one else approached me, so I waited for my charge in the car.