MP3 Love

Moore Theological College recently opened up their entire catalogue of audio resources. There are around 1800 sermons and lectures now available to everyone, for FREE! There are some real gems!

Get it here!

Enjoy

comings and goings

As I mentioned last post this year is full of comings and goings for Claire and I. Last time I focused on the things that are going, the things I’m really going to miss this year. Today’s going to be a bit more optimistic -here are the things I’m most looking forward to this year:

A new church family

Claire and I started at St Aidan’s Hurstville Grove on Sunday. While we’re both pretty sad to being saying goodbye for now to our family at CCIW, we’re excited about serving in a brand new context. St Aidan’s is a great church with a long history of faithful, Jesus-centred ministry which, as much as first impressions can be trusted, is evident in the current life of the church. Stay tuned for some more reflections on changing churches.

Running a half-marathon

The plan is to officially start training in late April. The program I’m hoping to use promises to get me fit and fast enough to do the half marathon in under 100 mins. I’m really looking forward to the training and to posting my progress (or lack of) updates.

Adventures in the middle east

In April, Claire and I have the great privilege of going to the middle east for three amazing weeks. Some things I’m most looking forward to; exploring the old streets of Damscus, camping out in a Roman theatre in Bosra and walking through the old city of Jerusalem. Cant wait!

Reading some sweet sweet theology

Third year doctrine at MTC focuses on; The person and work of Christ and The Church. So, I’m looking forward to getting into dogmatics,  particularly finishing off  IV.1. and Miroslav Volf’s After Our Likeness: The Church as the image of the Trinity.

I was particularly excited to get stuck into the forthcoming monster Paul and the Faithfulness of God by N. T. Wright as it was rumored to be published this year. But alas, it looks as though its another year away.

Living in funky Newtown

We moved into Newtown last week and we’re loving it. Already eaten our fair share of great food and really looking forward to getting to some of the pubs around here that still have live music. 

The Pilgrim’s Podcast

For me, one of the highlights of last year was doing the podcast with Mark Earngey. We’re all set for another year, looking to begin recording in the next couple of weeks. There will be some new things happening this year, including the launching of a website devoted to all things Pilgrim.

comings and goings

A new year brings a whole lot of new and exciting things for Claire and I, but along with that comes a whole lot of goodbyes and farewells. So, I thought I’d do two posts on the comings and goings of 2010.

Below are the things I’m going to miss most this year (in no particular order):

Shanghai Night Chinese Restaurant

NB Food will feature heavily in this post… Forget about hygiene, forget about ambiance, go here for for the best dumplings you can find… 275 Liverpool Rd, Ashfield.

1/9 Arthur St Croydon

We had three excellent and blessed years here. The best years of my life.Sure, the house was rundown and we had our share of noisy neighbors, but, it was beautiful and it was our first home. I’m already missing the place and we only moved yesterday.

Our church family at Christ Church Inner West

We shared fellowship with the saints here for three years. In that time we saw; St John’s Ashfield amalgamate with St Alban’s Five Dock and St Oswald’s Haberfield to form CCIW, Claire join the staff team, me serve as a student minister for two years, a heap of people come to know Jesus, and a heap of deep friendships formed.  We were both richly blessed. We learnt a heck of a lot about church, life, each other and God. CCIW is a seriously grace filled community that is seriously zealous for outreach and seriously faithful to the Lord Jesus. I hope to post more on this later… But for now, we are already missing our dear family

Canada Bay

Sometimes after work, Claire and I would walk around different parts of the Bay, sometimes we would get fish and chips and sit and stare. But my favourite thing to do was to pound the pavement doing the ‘Bay Run’. I hope to get back there when I can.

Gelato and Cannoli at Haberfield

I’ll finish off this post where I began…with food! Haberfield is one of my favourite places! Sometimes we would go and get gelato, or cannoli, for dessert and then try and walk it off by checking out all the cool restaurants and suspicious shop-fronts that don’t appear to sell anything much. You know, the ones with old Italian men sipping espresso’s and smoking all night…

There are many more things I’m going to miss this year not the least of all are the people I wont be seeing as often as I did. I’m incredibly thankful for all that the last few years has brought me.

Next up, what I’m most looking forward to in 2010…

How long, O Lord?

The brokenness of the world has once again been horribly exposed through the devastating earthquake that has ripped apart Haiti. The world is counting an unimaginably high death toll, and once again the dead and missing are from one of the poorest nations on earth.

How do you make sense of such pain and horror? How does God fit into the picture?

I think Christians often feel the pull to speak quickly and sensibly about such horror. Often in blatantly offenseive and untruthful ways, as demonstrated by Pat Robertson today, but more often than not in less stupid ways. In ways that try to make sense of the pain and horror.

In the past I’ve posted some thoughts on this, but for a far better response you should read Byron Smith’s incredibly insightful series of reflections on Theodicy & the need for eschatology. Byron’s deep conviction is that we must resist to give evil a place in this world, we must resist the temptation to make sense of suffering. This is precisely because evil and suffering make no sense in this world because they are enemies of God that will be finally removed from the created order when Jesus returns.

I have found Byron’s thoughts on this immensely helpful, but there are also some other great books out there offering a similar position. Check out David Bentley Hart’s The Doors of the Sea and N. T. Wright’s Evil and the Justice of God.

Teaching New Dogs Old Tricks: lessons on leadership from a master of ministry

A new year brings a new blog post! And I desperately need to get reacquainted with my blogging so I’m thought I’d do that by sharing some insights as I get reacquainted with an old hero of mine.

John Stott

I have finally got around to reading Timothy Dudley Smith’s biography of John Stott. It is excellent, a little daunting being two volumes in length, but excellent!

First up I need to acknowledge a personal bias, I’ve always been a bit of a fan of Stott, he was the man God used in me giving my life to Jesus, but reading through Dudley Smith’s biography has reminded me of how much younger generations, interested in being strategically missional, can learn from this visionary leader.

So, over the next two or three posts I hope to put a spotlight on a handful of ‘leadership lessons’ that can be learnt through Stott’s own expertise as an effective leader, demonstrated in his ministry at All Souls and throughout the world as the leader of a new evangelical movement.

1) Effective leaders are excellent innovators

At the heart of the rapid growth All Souls experienced was a change in the culture of evangelism within the church. In 1950 lay leadership, training schools and ‘every member ministry’ were ‘radically new’ ideas ( Dudley Smith, vol 1.  281). Becoming rector in 1950, Stott identified evangelism as his number one priority and the means of faithful church growth. He developed a 6 month training school for evangelism that equiped  and commissioned lay leaders to present the gospel and counsel new converts. The effectiveness of the Training School was given expression through a campaign of monthly ‘guest services’, where over the course of a few years 1000 people took up the invitation to remain after the guest service where they would meet with the newly trained and commisioned counselors.

Innovative ministries were not only initiated by Stott, at All Souls but internationally. He created a fellowship of evangelical Anglican clergy in England that exploded into EFAC, he founded The London Institute which sought to give a public platform for thoughtful theological responses to current issues. The London Institute was no doubt the fruit of Stott’s involvement with the Lausanne Movement of the 70’s.

2) Effective leaders are often highly gifted administrators

Reading through stories about Stott’s years of ministry experience, there’s a sort-of annoying ease at which he appears to be able to make things happen. A certain efficiency and effectiveness is demonstrated that very evidently achieved great results. This, I think, is a quality that many (including myself) admire and appreciate in leaders. Just think of more recent leaders like Mark Driscoll whose giftedness as an administrator is obvious when you consider the speed at which he has been able to help create and shape mass movements and organizations.

Stott, I think, is similarly gifted, yet for him this gift did not come without hardwork. As a leader he is remarkably disciplined and efficient with his time, Dudley Smith tells of how, during his university days, Stott would have a sign on his college door saying ‘Working 8am-8pm. Please do not disturb unless urgent.’!

3) Effective leadership is often in the context of a versatile urban ministry

All Souls Langham Place under Stott was a Biblically faithful and rapidly growing church in an area of London not too dissimilar to parts of urban Sydney. An area of contrast; with young, rich, trendy cool cats mixed into an area with people far below the poverty line, and directly across the road from the church building – the BBC’s Broadcasting House. Faithful urban ministry in such a context needs to include people from every background, not neglecting the rich for the poor, the poor for the rich and making the most of a strategic location next to the city’s media centre.

During the early years of Stott’s time as Rector, All Souls developed a number of ministries that are now common among influential urban churches, be that lunch time expositions or inner city-fringy-youth groups. But surprisingly (to me) was Stott’s hands on approach in serving  the poor and marginalized. Dudley Smith records how  Stott would often dress himself in old, torn clothing, let his appearance go a little and spend 2 nights living on the streets of London. His desire was to be able to identify with the large number of homeless people All Souls ministered to. How excellent is that?! Lots of us wish to be effective leaders, but I’m not sure many of us would wish to be that radical!

More to come…

Living with Evil II

The dramas of Denis Ferguson’s housing situation show a clash of two very different ways of treating “the other”. Our governments are committed to inclusion as a means of reintroducing offenders into communities (see the last post), however, what is clear from Ferguson’s brief stint in Ryde is that many within our communities are committed to exclusion as the only means of treating “the other”, and particularly, “the evil other”.
Look at the way Volf describes this process of exclusion:

Others are dehumanised in order that they can be discriminated against, dominated, driven out, or destroyed. If they are outsiders, they are “dirty,” “lazy,” and “morally unreliable”; if women, they are “sluts” and “bitches”; if minorities, they are “parasites,” “vermin,” and “pernicious bacilli” (Hirsch 1995, 97-108). In a sense, the danger of “dysphemisms” is underplayed when one claims, as Zygmunt Bauman does, that these labels take the other outside “the class of objects of potential moral responsibility” (Bauman 1993, 167). More insidiously, they insert the other into the universe of moral obligations in such a way that not only does exclusion become justified but necessary because not to exclude appears morally culpable. The rhetoric of the other’s inhumanity obliges the self to practice inhumanity.
Exclusion and Embrace 76.

I think this is a really clear picture of what has occurred in Ryde, and other places Ferguson has found himself. The thought of including ‘one like him’ into the community is repulsive. But what drives people (us) to so quickly dehumanise others to justify our exclusion of them? To this, Volf says:

Sometimes the dehumanization and consequent mistreatment of others are a projection of our own individual or collective hatred of ourselves; we persecute others because we are uncomfortable with strangeness within ourselves (Kristeva 1990)… We assimilate or eject strangers in order to ward off the perceived threat of chaotic waters rushing in. We exclude because we want to be at the center and be there alone, single-handedly controlling “the land.” To achieve such “hegemonic centrality,” we add conquest to conquest and possession to possession; we colonize the life-space of others and drive them out; we penetrate in order to exclude, and we exclude in order to control—if possible everything, alone.
Exclusion and Embrace 78-79.

You might think these are useful criticisms of cases racial exclusion like that of colonial Europeans, or of gender exclusion. But I think Volf’s critique of exclusion also offers a profound approach to the question of ‘what do we do with child sex offenders?’
Exclusion, Volf would argue, is always an act of dehumanising, performed out of a fear of including the evil ‘other’ into our communities. And the basis of this fear is in what the inclusion of such an evil one might say about our communities—and ourselves.
This raises the issues of guilt, innocence and justice—aren’t there clear examples of such repulsive guilt that the only right thing to do is to deny their place within communities? Isn’t this a necessary act of justice? We’ll look at this next time

Living with Evil I

Over the last two weeks the NSW government has been under massive pressure to remove Denis Ferguson from his public housing unit in the Sydney suburb of Ryde. On Wednesday new legislation was passed that will allow the termination of public housing leases of registered child-sex offenders. Yesterday Dennis Ferguson was evicted. Under the new legislation the state Government must provide ‘permanent’ accommodation for the remainder of the tenants  lease. But what happens then? Where will Denis Ferguson move after that initial placement? How does a community go about living with a known child sex offender? If Denis Ferguson’s previous stints in public housing are anything to go by, then it appears impossibly difficult for any community to achieve this.
Miroslav Volf’s Exclusion and Embrace has much to say to communities faced with the possible inclusion of ‘the other’, and particularly, when ‘the other’ is seen as evil. In the coming posts I want to focus on the relation of Volf’s categories of ‘exclusion’ and ‘memory’ and try and relate them to the present situation with Denis Ferguson.

But first, have a read of Volf’s thoughts on inclusion—the path our state government has committed to—as the answer to these questions:

One could argue that the barbarity within civilization and evil among the good arises from inconsistency. We simply need to press on with the program of inclusion, argument could continue, until the last pocket of exclusion has been conquered. Exclusion would then be a sickness and inclusion undiluted medicine. Could it be, however, that the medicine itself is making the patient sick with a new form of the very illness it seeks to cure?
Exclusion and Embrace 60.

Inclusion, is not a simple, sustainable option, for Volf. It’s a relic of modernist misplaced hope in the story of progress. ‘The logic of the modern story of inclusion suggests that “keeping out” is bad and “taking in” is good… A consistent drive toward inclusion seeks to level all the boundaries that divide and to neutralize all outside powers that form and shape the self.’

The presupposition here is that difference, and particularly evil, should be removed, all of it. But there is a problem

Does not such a radical indeterminacy undermine from within the idea of inclusion, however? I believe it does. Without boundaries we will be able to know only what we are fighting against but not what we are fighting for… The absence of boundaries creates nonorder, and nonorder is not the end of exclusion but the end of life…boundaries are part of the creative process of differentiation. For without boundaries there would be no discrete identities, and without discrete identities there could be no relation to the other.
Exclusion and Embrace 63, 67

As long as our governments aim to reform and reintroduce offenders into communities there will be moments of exclusion and anger – as there has been in Ryde over the last two weeks. Inclusion, in and of itself is not sufficient. Communities need to be highly differentiated to be able to include, not just, the child sex offenders, but also, the immigrant, the poor, the homeless and anyone else thought of as ‘the other’. But how?

Barth on the constancy and omnipotence of God II

In the last post, I was reflecting on how Barth portrays God’s ‘unchangeableness’. He is the One who exists totally without deviation, and this is in no way being in conflict with his ‘movement’, with his life and freedom. This shows that while God can be unchanging he cannot be immobile. Look at the way Barth puts it:

If it is true, as Polanus says, that God is not moved either by anything else or by Himself, but that, confined as it were by His simplicity, infinity and absolute perfection, He is the pure immobile, it is quite impossible that there should be any relationship between Himself and a reality distinct from Himself.

But Barth goes on to say that there is one pure immobile;

For we must not make any mistake: the pure immobile is—death. If, then, the pure immobile is God, death is God. That is, death is posited as absolute and explained as the first and last and only real. And if death is God, then God is dead.
CD II.1 493-494

If God is immobile  there can be no life, all new things come from him and exist in dependence of him. Can you see Barth’s logic? If God is not mobile, creating and sustaining out of his eternal self-constancy, his life, then the only possible solution is death. And God would be dead.

Barth on the constancy and omnipotence of God

Is God’s life and freedom in conflict with his unchangeablness? How does the immutable One bring about genuinely new things?
Some of us at MTC recently undertook an essay (the chief cause of my lack of blogging) dealing with this tension.  I found Barth’s II.1 to be immensely helpful. Look at how he describes the constancy of God:

There neither is nor can be, nor is to be expected or even thought possible in Him, the One omnipresent being, any deviation, diminution or addition, nor any degeneration or rejuvenation, any alteration or non-identity or discontinuity. The one, omnipresent God remains the One He is. This is His constancy.

And this, says Barth, is not in conflict with God’s freedom, life or love.

But as the living God, He is not Himself subject to or capable of any alteration, and does not cease to be Himself. His life is not only the origin of all created change, but it is in itself the fullness of difference, movement, will, decision, action, degeneration and rejuvenation. But He lives it in eternal self-repetition and self-affirmation. As His inner life and His life in all that is, it will never sever itself from Him, turn against Him, or possess a form or operation alien to Him. In all its forms and operations it will be His life.

It is precisely because of God’s eternal self-constancy, self-repetition and self-affirmation that his life brings about newness and change;

His life with its very alteration and movement can, and does gloriously, consist only in His not ceasing to be Himself, to posit and will and perfect Himself in His being Himself. He does not do this of necessity but in freedom and love, or, one may say, with the necessity in virtue of which He cannot cease to be Himself, the One who loves in freedom.
CD II.1 491-492

Pilgrim’s Podcast Episode 14

Mark and I had the great privilege of sitting down in the warm Sydney sun and chatting with Dr. Ashley Null. Ashley is the world’s foremost scholar on Thomas Cranmer and a recognised expert on all things ‘Anglican’.

We had such a great time chatting with Ashley that an hour went by without us noticing, so we’re putting up in two parts.

In part 1, we ask Dr Null about a whole range of things including, his early life, how his interest in Anglicanism developed and what relevance Anglicanism has today. Fascinating stuff. He has some particularly insightful thoughts on what Anglicanism can offer post-denominatinal Christianity.

Get part 1 here.