A Passion for Life, March 2010, UK churches

The senior pastor of our church, Richard Coekin, is the national co-chairman of “A Passion for Life”. This is a month long programme of events in hundreds of churches around the UK, leading up to Easter 2010. The goal is to share the Gospel with friends, family and neighbours, and create a multitude of opportunities for them to connect with the church and its message.

It has taken two years to work up to this point, getting different churches interested and involved. It seems that a great spin off is the collaboration between churches, and the sharing of resources that is taking place.

You can find out more at: http://www.apassionforlife.org.uk/

It’s not too late to get involved. And, if you’d like to find out more about how Christians view life, and their passion for it, connect with a church near you and ask them.

The Present Future

Originally posted on 19 April 2005

I am currently reading a very significant book, “The Present Future” by Reggie Mcneal (Buy it at Kalahari.net or Amazon.co.uk).

He argues in the book that there are six wrong questions that churches ask, and suggests six questions we should be asking in their place. In each chapter, he outlines the problem, a solution, and then gives a biblical and cultural contextual reason for his suggestion. Briefly, here are the six wrong and right questions:

Here are some extracts from the introduction…

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We’re so messed up about sex

The beauty of a blog is that you can put up half thoughts. I do my best to write fully thought out pieces on this blog, but every now and again, I have what I call “half thoughts” – an idea that isn’t fully crystallised, and for which I have not thought through all the implications. But this blog is a place where these can be captured, and ruminated on, and maybe later turned into something bigger.

Anyway, with that in mind, I was watching the news recently on the sacking of John Terry as England’s football captain. Football is in sharp relief this year, as it is a World Cup year (being hosted with passion and pride by my home country, South Africa!) and England have a pretty good chance of winning it (they are some bookies’ favourites). The captain of England, John Terry, however, was recently outed by a newspaper for having an affair with the ex-girlfriend of one his team mates. Terry is married, but the real outrage seemed to be the transgression of some unwritten code about sleeping with team mates girlfriends. The fact that they were not a couple at the time doesn’t seem to have changed the outrage.

This is supposed to be an issue of morals. But it is not. The replacement for John Terry is Rio Ferdinand, currently serving a ban for violent conduct on the field of play after he elbowed another player in the head. The vice captain is Steven Gerrard, recently arrested by police for assault (he was cleared after it was shown that he hit someone whom he thought had hit him, when in fact he was just recoiling from being hit in the head by one of Gerrard’s friends).

This is an issue of our completely nonsensical views on sex. I think the church must take some of the blame for how we think about sex as a society. It’s insane. And we completely overreact to it, especially when it is discussed in public. We need to grow up.

I’m not saying that what John Terry did is OK. I am just saying that it is no grounds for removing him as captain of a football team.

The poor you will always have with you

Originally posted on 2 October 2007, updated on 2 March 2010

Jesus said, “The poor you will always have with you” (Matt 26:11).

So, should we try and even solve the problem of poverty? Some people have used this verse to say that it is impossible to eradicate poverty. Others have argued that it is not only possible, it is possible within a decade – you can read Jeffrey Sachs in his best selling book, “The End of Poverty” (buy it at Amazon.co.uk or Kalahari.net) or connect with the Global Poverty Project and see their presentation, “1.4 billion reasons”.

Who is right? If Jesus himself said we’d always have the poor then maybe we shouldn’t even try to get rid of poverty. Is this what Jesus meant? I don’t think so.

Well, Jesus was quoting from the Old Testament. And here is the context:

Deuteronomy 15:11
“There will always be poor people in the land. Therefore I command you to be openhanded toward your brothers and toward the poor and needy in your land.” (NIV)

So, at very least, Jesus had in mind that we SHOULD give to the poor. He deliberately used a well known scriptural phrase to ensure that his audience would have this particular command brought to their attention, without him needing to make the additional points explicit. This was certainly a style of teaching used often by Biblical writers. It is one of the reasons that interpreting Scripture can be quite difficult, and why we must be open to new understandings and deeper interpretations.

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