Adventure at Koorong

My adventure at Koorong where I had a 30% off voucher from a post-Christmas purchase: a couple of the books I had wanted were not in stock at that time and to avoid a wasted trip, I rang ahead to check stock today.

After a long recorded message telling me all sorts of uninteresting things a person spoke to me. She assured me that there was one copy of the book I wanted in the store I wanted to visit. I also looked on the web page; agreed. One copy.

I asked if it could be put aside for me...I didn't want to waste that trip! She assured me that she would ring the shop and ask them to do so.

An hour or so later I was in the store. Suspicious of all commercial undertakings, I first went to the shelves; sure enough, the book had not been put aside as I'd been informed would happen. I picked it up and a couple of others of interest. Imagine how cross I would have been if the book, not having been put aside, had been purchased by another.

At the counter I checked if the discount had been applied, and was advised that it only applied to one item. OK, I'll only take book X and gave the others back.

Time for lunch.

I headed to the in-store cafe and ordered my burger with HOT chilli sauce. After a short wait, it arrived, with the wait person telling me that my SWEET chilli sauce had been added. No, I firmly said. I had ordered HOT chilli sauce (I don't even know why sweet chilli sauce had been invented!). So, off she toddled to re-make my burger.

I finished reading the complimentary newspaper. I waited. I finished my cup of water (I don't drink fruit juice, sweet drinks, dairy based drinks, or shop coffee and I didn't want tea). I waited some more. That was handy practice, because I then had to wait some more again.

Burger and requested sauce arrived.

Score:

Keeping promises: NIL
Prompt service: NOT

Overall customer satisfaction: only because goods eventually delivered: 5/10.

Is the church relevant today?

Two inner west Sydney churches have had this theme for recent talks. Ashfield Presbyterian for lunch time talks (attended by about 3 people), Summer Hill Anglican for the sermon on 17 January. There was one stranger at the Summer Hill evening service. For a self-billed 'we'd love to see you' church with 'welcome' on its webpage carousel, the stranger was left strangely alone, as I observed.

When organisations use provocative slogans, the slogan itself usually diagnoses the very problem it announces. Thus, only a church that is struggling with relevance or obsolescence (Summer Hill's word), would even think of those words in a slogan or advertising.

So, then, where is the radical discipleship, the rejection of the world's materialism and its pagan channels (science...post-modernism...hyper-individualism...), the disarming engagement with strangers?

I wonder?

A couple of reasons why the church is irrelevant: it is self obsessed (look at me, look at me), not people obsessed (thus the 'church' organisation over against the 'congregation' of people, to refer to Coverdale's word), it wants to fit in and be liked, it takes up only the challenges that it thinks society expects it to take up, but declines to articulate a critque of society at its sensitive points (I've aluded to them above); in its publications it speaks only to itself (with only one exception that I know of).

In books, articles, on TV (I think of John Dickson on Q&A for instance), it strives to be 'nice'; just like the Saducees did in Jesus day, I expect, but unlike them, never confronting the unspoken materialism of our time.

However, substituting kid's face painting, free ballons and glove puppets for the great existential questions: who am I, why am I here, why do we die, why is there something rather than nothing, does humanity have any dignity...Shaeffer gives the drill...amounts to the church turning its back on its mission; instead of Paul's example we have naive 'corner-store-ism'.

In short, it is doing its best to be irrelevent, obsolete, and no darn good to God or man.

What to know: university

I've dealt with what to know for high school, as sought in my original 'what to know' post. Here's 'what to know' for a young person heading to university.

From the ground work laid up to high school, we move onto study of the peg-point books, or part books: Genesis, Exodus, Joshua, 1 Samuel, a minor prophet or two, Luke-Acts, Galatians and Revelation. A good 6 years work.

More work on theology and Biblical theological understanding, and on church history and apologetics. There would be new work on philosphical theology and general philosophy/world view studies (without the intimidating titles) as well as ethical thought (theological ethics and ethical epistemology, if you want the big words).

Where this would develop a point (as in spear point) for university would be discussion on major heresies historically and their modern day manifestations, and the major contenders for 'faith-attention': the 'new age' movement, Eastern religions, materialism and the assumptions that underpin these. Materialism, its outworking in evolutionary dogma and its twin of humanist 'political correctness' would deserve special treatment.

Introduction to major Christian authors would be part of this; and I don't mean the pop authors, but the theological heroes of the church as a whole; and OK, some 'pop' authors as well (CS Lewis, Chesterton, Stott, Schaeffer, Yancey).

It would be great if there were a text book that would support this curriculum, but I know of none!

During this period children should be introduced to using computer Bible software, and to developing church skills: speaking (debates, talks, presentations), organising (clubs, committees), and being involved in outreach and charity work, organised to match the maturity level of participants.

The educational delivery would be tuned to age: discussions, talks, work books, videos, excursions, reading. It would be designed to be interesting, fun and flexible, so that the range of abilities and interests would be accommodated.

Again, the vehicles: kids' church (with some cool name and format), youth group, religious education, day or weekends away (with family in early years, optionally without in later years).

Magazines

I don't know of many magazines that are published for general reading by Christian organisations; the ones I do know of are for Christian consumption (and not always helpful in that regard, I might add: I think of Southern Cross, the Anglican tabloid), New Life, a more generally marketed paper, the self-consciously pretentious Eternity put out by the Bible Society; but that's about all. There used to be On Being, later called Alive, I think, and then a purely e-publication now seemingly disappeared, perhaps due to its drift to irrelevancy. For those who liked controversy, there was Robert Brinsmead's Verdict (I'm harking back to the early 1980s, and no, I have no SDA connection), and any number of US and UK publications.

However, these were or are all very internal, not for the general reader, and of no interest to the non-Christian, yet, here is an opportunity; print media still works, you can leave it around, put it in waiting rooms, and so on.

At a visit to the local SDA hospital with a relative recently, I picked up a copy of Signs of the Times. This fits the bill. It doesn't always hit my buttons, but for general interest and popularised Christian themes (even soft-peddling the SDA bit) it works. I read it from cover to cover and it was upbeat, practical and helpful. No offensive new age like twaddle, just straight talk for grown ups.

Buy expensive

Today's sermon, in keeping with the new tradition in our church of social engineering, urged us to avoid buying cheap clothes because they involve sweated or slave-like labour.

I'm all for not supporting such things, after all, my late father was a Union organiser, but one consequence of avoiding such purchases is that already poor people would be out of work. Australia could impose tariffs on goods from sweated labour, again that would reduce demand and create increased poverty.

There is no easy solution...opps, yes there is, but its long term. It is reverting to Christian mission and aggressively pursuing the proclamation of the gospel and locally building up people to work for justice. This rings with the Songs of Praise episode on ABC-TV today, which touched on the work of British Primitive Methodists in fighting politically for better conditions for ordinary workers. THAT is Christian action. Indeed, my father was in that tradition, I'm proud to say.

Meanwhile, I'm happy that the church has endorsed my love of hand made shoes: John Lobb and Edward Green spring to mind; craft made suits and leather goods. I'll keep shopping at Henry Bucks and in the specialty shops of Florence, Milan and London. Goody.

What to know: for high school

In my post 'What to know', which was canvassing the idea of equipping children for the major stages of their intellectual development, I suggested that we aim to have children know certain things, or have certain faith-capabilities for their start at high school, then their start at university.

What, then, should we aim for our children for their start at high school, or what by the end of  year six should the church have equipped them with?

Some suggestions below.

The biblical landscape. Familiarity with the names and types of all the books of the Bible, and those that represent the 'arc of salvation'. To my mind that is the peg-points of: creation, crisis (fall and flood), confusion (Babel and dispersion as ground for the state of our world), covenant (and knowledge of the major episodes and people of that period, extending from Genesis 12 to Malachi), Christ/crucifixion, church and consumation.

Outlines of Christian belief (systematic theology: the great creeds would be a useful starting point) and how these are understood from the Bible; church history and apologetics.

Christian spirituality practices: prayer, devotional Bible reading, giving (of self and means). This would extend to memorisation of significant verses and longer passages.

The reason we have the Bible and its origins. Canon and sources, in more technical terms.

I would see this being delivered over the 8 years from early Sunday School/kids' church, youth group, school religious education, including some full day or weekends away (with parents).

Look here for the next lot: prep for university.

Christian pacifism...

Any opportunity to disagree with John Piper is welcome: here's a great one on the pacifism that Piper extols by Ronald Cherry.