Palm Sunday November 22, 2009

It’s been a fair while since I blogged, I think maybe just laziness on my part causing that. But maybe nothing new to talk about.

I am getting a chance to preach a lot in the next month, which I am looking forward to. I spoke tonight about Palm sunday, looking at how Jesus was not the king we had expected but just the king we needed. I get to do Jericho next week, plan to do some talking about prostitutes and lying (coz it’s in the Bible).

I didn’t tell many people tonight, but I talked without notes tonight. I had planned to print them out, but just forgot. It was at that time I was really glad that I practice my talks out loud in full. So I remembered all the main details, I was pretty happy with it. plus my talk included a round of the chocolate game and a good chunk of Shrek. If nothing else I think it was an unpainful experience for people. I hope God did more than that though.

I am really loving the SONset church community right now, seeing how people’s hearts are soft and that they want to journey with God and each other.

SONset dinner September 27, 2009

Last night at church (SONset is the name of our evening service) we had a dinner together. Food is always a good way to get together I have noticed. People chat, you get to know people better and in a new way, and it is fun.

We have done these dinners a few times before, catering for about 20 people each time. But since moving to the new building we average more like 50 people each week. Still I thought it might be a few less coz it was a dinner. Not so. We had a packed house. I felt so proud to be a part of my church community. One of our guys played some cafe style music, a few different people shared stories, a poem (these things are always cooler and more powerful than I think they will be), a song, stuff which was real and honest and powerful. All these different people brought food along so that no one had to do it all. and it worked really well.

I don’t think we were trying to be an emerging church, or a cafe church. We were just trying to shift the boundaries of what corporate worship should look like. And, for this night anyway, it worked.

Joy, God and wings to fly August 17, 2009

I was speaking last night at SONset about joy. It can be a good thing to have to think about teaching others an idea, you learn so much yourself. Like this subject. All I really thought i knew about joy was that it wasn’t happiness. So here’s what I’ve learnt about joy.

It isn’t happiness, but it can include it. Joy is a far more resilient form of happiness, because it doesn’t slip from our grasp when circumstances change or suck. It can be a flower that looks the same as the happiness flower, but underneath the soil the joy flower has a huge root system which allows it to last all sorts of weather. Or, like in the story Jesus told, it can be like 2 houses built on different foundations. The house on the sand might have looked just as pretty as the house on the rock. Maybe it even had better water views. But when bad weather struck, the rock held its house firm. Joy is built on rock not sand.

I don’t think the Christian community is known for its joy unfortunately. I think we are far more quickly known for what we stand against than what we stand for. And that brings with it a negative connotation. So we have some PR work to do. If joy is a command (and it is in Phil 4:4 and 1 Thess 5:17), and a fruit of God’s Spirit being in us (Eph 5), if we don’t have it, or don’t express it, I think we are selling Jesus short. I think we are making small of his death and resurrection, the life he has put in us. I’m not saying this to make anyone feel bad by the way. I’m just recognising that Life should bring life.

And alongside that, God is the source of joy. I came to the difficult conclusion last week that without God the best we can do is get glimpses of joy. If God is God, and if he made us to be in relationship with him, made us this way, then it also stands to reason that we fall short of that without him. I think that God created us to fly, and if we don’t come to find him we remain in the cage of our human limits rather than our God given limits (check Colossians 2:9-10). Now I realise this is pretty full on to say.I also realise that even the idea of God given limits being bigger than human limits is also a challenging idea. So be challenged rather than offended, check it out, work out what you think and let me know if it’s something different. I’m up to learning something new.

So in my life this translates kinda like this: when stuff is good it’s cool to feel joy. It’s also easy to feel joy, which is why circumstantial joy can’t be the foundation of my joy. I need a deeper, more resiliant form of hope and contentment. I find that in God. And even though I have had a simpler, more happy life than most of the world’s population, joy is still a choice I have to make. I can’t theorise whether my joy would be stronger or weaker if life circumstances were different, and neither can anyone else. I only have this life to live, it is useless to compare my life and choices to someone else because they are simply not my choices and I can’t judge clearly. I know I needed a stonger form of hope when my dad died. I know God met me in that place in such a real way. Even though the situation was totally sucky, God in that place was beautiful and real. So I haven’t lost hope when things have been disappointing, sad, maddening or hard. For me circustances are often beyond my control, and choosing to lose God when things are bad just makes a bad thing even worse. But like Paul says in Philippians, “I can do all things through Him who gives me strength.” My hope in Him has been a constant when other things have changed dramatically. My joy in Him has been real when other things are bleak. and I’m a song writer, so I love that other songwriters have felt the pain of life and written things about it which express it so clearly. Like Horatio Spafford

when peace like a river attendeth my way
When sorrows like sea billows roll
Whatever my lot
thou hast taught me to say
It is well, it is well with my soul

Or U2
What once was hurt
What once was friction
What left a mark
No longer stings
Because grace makes beauty
Out of ugly things

And this is one I wrote a while ago
” When I can see your face
When I have lost my sight
When it’s the warm embrace
When it’s the stone cold wall
There must be something that is real
Whether I do or do not feel
And if it’s just me and you…. can i just be your friend?”

Evil or Broken Part 2 May 10, 2009

I did the talk at church last night about sin and the fall. It’s got so much baggage to it that I came into the talk a little nervous. But I think it went well, talking about the unhelpful ways we deal with our guilt as well as my thoughts on how to fall forwards.

All of the unhealthy ways seemed so familiar as I talked about them
shame
blame
distraction (turn the music up)
writing God a trillion dollar cheque*
give in and jump right in

and I am indebted to Matt Chandler at The Village Church for his ideas. I really don’t know anything about this church but I liked what he had to say about guilt and the struggle with sin. Too often the church rhetoric about sin has been the “you’re going to hell” message, which I don’t think is helpful, or even truthful because we don’t know who is going to heaven or hell so shouldn’t pronounce judgement on anyone. So I got a lot out of unpacking the dynamics of brokeness, how we disengage through unhealthy habits of guilt and sin.

The podcast of the talk will be up on the Northridge resources page, or podcast page, and I will put some other notes up there too. Makes me feel like a hard workin preacher man.

* I thought of this one when I was in my car on the way to Gloucester. When I was a kid I would go into the bank with my parents, and while they were doing actual banking I would be filling out the withdrawal slip for 1 Trillion Dollars, or however big a number I could write. I woudl always take it to the counter to retrieve my money, but somehow they never believed me. I think we do the same with God sometimes, making extravagant promises which we can’t keep, and are all about our own effort rather than rleationship with Him anyway.

evil or broken April 30, 2009

So I’m preaching in a week at SONset, which is something which I love to do. Even when I was a teenager I used to look at the dudes preaching and want to be one of them. Maybe that was a God thing. Or maybe I’m just totally vain and self absorbed.

I’m talking about sin in a few weeks, and here’s the question I keep coming up against. I would love to hear some thoughts if you have them.

In terms of sin, are we broken or are we evil?

I know it’s probably both, but that is an unhelpful answer. What do you think God sees? what does the Bible say? what are you more comfortable with?

At this stage I’d have to say I lean towards broken. It just seems to me a better way to put it, that we are in a place where we can’t fix ourselves, we can’t heal ourselves but we can’t do what God asks. There are verses which i think back it up. But I suspect there are more which lean towards evil. So the jury is still out for me, coz I don’t want what I teach just to be what seems best to me.

Evil, or broken? Thoughts, verses, ideas?

Can God abandon God April 7, 2009

So I’ve been mulling backwards and forwards over this one for a while now. What does it mean when the Bible says

” 1 My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?Why are you so far from saving me,
so far from the words of my groaning? ” (Ps 22)

or
“10 Yet it was the LORD’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer,and though the LORD makes his life a guilt offering,he will see his offspring and prolong his days,and the will of the LORD will prosper in his hand. “
(isaiah 53)

alongside…

“18 No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord.” (John 10)

and

“5Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:
6Who, being in very nature[a] God,
did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
7but made himself nothing,
taking the very nature[b] of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
8And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to death—
even death on a cross! ” (Philippians 2)

On one hand it appears that the Father God sent Jesus to do his work for him. Like Jesus drew the eternal short straw, and God caused it to happen while the Holy Spirit watched on. And on another it appears Jesus was not at all the pawn in the equation, that he freely offered his own life, chose the cross, laid aside his priviledges as God and became man, servant, sacrifice.

I know which one I am more comfortable with. but I know I have sort of been taught the first view at times, if not directly then indirectly. We chewed it over in home group tonight, and I don’t think I am any closer to a neat answer. But maybe that’s just it: there is no neat answer. God became man. God became sin. God “separated” from God. God bore God’s wrath. On a 2 dimensional level you either have to embrace the “angry God victim Jesus” view or the “Freewill Jesus” view, or think the whole thing is just plain stupid and contradictory.

I have learnt though that God lives in many more than 3 dimensions. So trying to narrow Him down to 2 is unhelpful at best, deadly at worst. I suspect that Jesus did willingly submit to the Father and give his life in obedience, but that he never walked passively to the cross, and the pain was never all on Jesus and not on the Father or Spirit. The best I can understand the Trinity is one heart living in 3 persons. I have loved the idea of it presented in The Shack, how there is no power struggle in the Trinity, coz no one is opressing anyone else there. It is coexistence and mutual empowering. And I love that in this book as well the Father and the Spirit both have nail marks in their hands. I think for me this is the closest I can come to getting it at this point.

SONset is back January 4, 2009

Last night was our first night back for 2009 at SONset. it will be an interesting time for me learning how to be a pastor without the time or money to contribute to it. I am looking forward to developing more team based stuff this year.

Anyway it went really well, we began by talking about Momentum, and how having a life vision can be a real blessing. Everyone got to write out their own vision statements, and some people read theirs out which was amazingly encouraging. The main thoughts I added about it, and which I think are important if you are putting together a vision statement are that

• vision itself is not beneficial. we need a vision of God
• have a vision which is worth fighting for
• have a vision which does not start and end with your own comfort

So it was a good time, glad to be back. We are using the morning church set up during the holidays. This is kinda weird as in the morning there are 200+ people, in the night there are round 30. So we felt a little overawed. However, in a stroke of lazy genius, I moved a few rows of chairs to create a little floor space in the middle of the rows. It became the worship pit and then the prayer pit later, lovin that.

Has anyone else written a life vision statement at the start of the year, or New Years Resolutions or anything?