Is it really Christ-mas in Britain this year?

Last week, David Cameron made an interesting speech on the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible. The item that received most press coverage in the speech was Mr Cameron asserting that “We are a Christian country and we should not be afraid to say so.” He admitted personally to be a committed but only vaguely practising Christian with some deep doubts about some theological issues.

He continued: “I know and fully respect that many people in this country do not have a religion. And I am also incredibly proud that Britain is home to many different faith communities, who do so much to make our country stronger. But what I am saying is that the Bible has helped to give Britain a set of values and morals which make Britain what it is today.”

Some would argue that a time of national crisis and difficulty is precisely when the church can shine in society. The Economist from the previous week had made just such a point in an insightful piece (read it in full here, or an extract below).

Postscript added on 25 December: The Queen’s speech today was filled with Christian messages, and a strong almost evangelistic message. It’s probably the strongest specifically Christian message I have ever heard from a member of the Royal family in the UK. Is this a sign that the leaders of the country have made a decision to use the Christian faith as a means to developing the nation? If so, the church needs to jump at the opportunity. But it must do so realising that people are seeking God, not the church. They want faith, not a religion.

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Marching against religious intolerance; Marching against me!

Looking through my news feed this morning, my eye was drawn to a story from Brazil. This past weekend, over 100,000 people joined a march in Rio de Janeiro in protest at religious intolerance. So far, so good. Religious intolerance is a “bad thing” and it’s important to have a free society so that we can practice our beliefs without fear or intimidation.

But then I read further and realised that the protestors were protesting AGAINST Christians. Apparently, evangelical Christians in Brazil are seen as the cause of persecution of especially Afro-Brazilian religious groups.

You can read the story here.

This story disturbed me. Why did so many people feel the need to protest against my faith? You don’t have to deny your own faith, nor do you need to believe that all faiths are equal in order to realise that there is a problem when that many people say there is a problem. Is this the Christianity that Jesus would want to be associated with? A Christianity characterised by exclusion, demonisation, persecution and intolerance? I can’t believe that.

Tolerance of other people’s religions and faiths is something we need to learn how to do as Christians. Maybe the starting point for the right attitude in this regard is to ask whether God is more concerned that we are right (in what we think/believe) or that we are loving (in what we do). It’s not a choice between the two, of course. But which is the appropriate starting point for engagement with the world? What do Jesus’ actions tell us about his starting point for engagement?

Christianity as Country Club – by Scot McKinight

Author and commentator, Scot McKnight, recently wrote an article for the Huffington Post. I think he is spot on. You can read the original here, or an extract below:

Christianity as Country Club

by Scot McKnight, Huffington Post, 6 Sep 2011

Christianity sometimes presents itself as a country club. It presents itself this way even when it doesn’t want to, and sometimes it doesn’t even know it. I grew up loving to play golf but I played on the public course. I had friends who played at the local country club. When I visited the country club I felt like a visitor even though the members were wonderfully hospitable. Members felt like members and visitors felt like visitors, and knowing that you could “visit” only by invitation made the difference clear.

Many experience the church this way. Members know they belong, and visitors know they don’t. Well, after all, we might reason, the Christian faith is a religion of salvation, and Stephen Prothero’s recent book, “God is Not One,” depicted Christianity as a faith concerned with the “way of salvation.” And if you are saved, you are a member; if you are not saved, you are not. You might visit, but until you get saved you will know you are not in the club.

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And Just Us For All

On Monday night I attended the global launch event of the “Live Below the Line” campaign at a fund raising event in London, hosted by Hugh Jackman. I worked as one of the volunteers at the event, and was given the t-shirt you see in the picture alongside. I think the slogan is one of the cleverest and most powerful I have ever seen:
& Just Us For All

The campaign is aimed at raising awareness of the fact that a quarter of the world’s population – 1.4 billion people – go to bed hungry every night. They survive on the equivalent of £ 1 per day. That’s for everything: food, clothes, medicine, transport, entertainment and education of their children.

In order to raise funds to fight extreme poverty, thousands of people around the world are going to try and live on less than £ 1 of food and drink for five days next week. I am doing so starting next Saturday, for five days. This is the “Live Below the Line” challenge. Please would you consider sponsoring me, even if it’s just a few pounds (or dollars, or rands, or euros). It’s easy to do at my special campaign website. You can also leave me a message of support, and show your concern for the world’s poor.

And that’s why I think the slogan is so brilliant. If we don’t do anything, who will? And if we don’t do it now, then when? It’s about Just Us For All.

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Engaging with Islam – with an agenda of peace, reconciliation and truth seeking

I wrote yesterday about the need to engage appropriately with skeptics of the Christian faith. It’s also important for Christians to engage with people of other faiths and religions. The most important route to lasting global peace right now is for the three major monotheistic religions to find ways to peacefully engage with each other.

It is amazing to me that the Christian right wing in the United States has so easily and quickly engaged – even integrated – with Judaism (and especially Zionistic Judaism). I don’t want to comment on that issue in this blog entry, but it does indicate that major religions are able to find ways to engage with each other when they share a common goal (like the protection of the State of Israel). What better goal for all religious leaders to have than world peace?

So, it was with interest that I read about Amr Khaled in the (very conservative) Spectator magazine Christmas edition. This is a Muslim cleric who seems to be gaining the kind of reputation in the Islamic world that Billy Graham or Bill Hybels have in the Protestant Christian world. Although there would be obviously be significant theological differences between us, I nevertheless support his efforts to bring about a calmer, more rational, more engaging Islam. That can only be a good thing, and should be supported by all Christian everywhere. Maybe this is a common space for all religious people (and those of no faith, too) to play.

But read the article for yourself (at The Spectator website, or an extract below) and make up your own mind.

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Is Jesus left wing? (You better believe it!)

The conservative right wing have co-opted Jesus as their personal mascot. But their Jesus is not the Jesus I see in the Bible. The latest cover article of The New Statesman magazine looks at this issue in an excellent way. You can read a lengthy extract below, or the full original at the New Statesman website here.

What would Jesus do?

Mehdi Hasan
Published 15 December 2010

Conservatives claim Christ as one of their own. But in word and deed, the son of God was much more left-wing than the religious right likes to believe.

Was Jesus Christ a lefty? Philosophers, politicians, theologians and lay members of the various Christian churches have long been divided on the subject. The former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev once declared: “Jesus was the first socialist, the first to seek a better life for mankind.” The Venezuelan president, Hugo Chávez, went further, describing Christ as “the greatest socialist in history”. But it’s not just Russian ex-communists and Bolivarian socialists who consider Jesus to be a fellow-traveller. Even the Daily Mail sketch-writer Quentin Letts once confessed: “Jesus preached fairness – you could almost call him a lefty.”

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God’s Kingdom Meets the Real World

A few months ago, I spoke at a men’s conference in Johannesburg, at South Africa’s leading Methodist Church. They asked me to speak on being a Christian in a world gone mad. I used the opportunity to do a bit of a “preach” on what I think is an absolute essential for any Christian man (or woman) who wants to make sense of the world: we need to change our view on what we think we’re here for.

You can listen to the podcast recording of the session at the church’s conference website (if you battle to listen or download it, please let me know, as I have an MP3 copy). If you want to download a copy of the slides I used and was referring to, I have created a PDF file and you can get it here.

Kairos course – getting people passionate about missional living

I am hearing good things about a course called Kairos. Their website promises that it is an interactive course that looks at our world from God’s perspective, helping you to grasp God’s global purpose and understand how Christianity is growing around the world. It presents mission as God’s heartbeat – a thread that runs from Genesis to Revelation.

I’ve heard from a few people who have done the course, and they say it’s amazing.

From their website again:

Kairos is for anyone. It doesn’t matter how long you’ve been a Christian. You don’t have to be already committed to world mission. You might even already be a missionary! And if you’re a pastor, this is something you and your church need to know about. Whoever you are and wherever you are at in your walk with God we believe Kairos has something to offer. We’d love to see you on one of our courses. All we ask is that you come prepared to hear whatever God may want to challenge you with.

To be honest, this blog entry is more a bookmark for me. I plan to check Kairos out at some time in the near future. But I thought I’d let you know about it too. Check it out, and let me know what you think. If you’ve done the course, what was your experience of it?

The Gospel of Wealth – are Faith and the American Dream compatible?

An op-ed piece in a recent New York Times reviews a new book that suggests that the American Dream (health, wealth, happiness, freedom) are not compatible with the Gospel. The author says Americans should live as if they earned $ 50,000 a year and give the rest away. The NYT piece makes some great points. Read it at the NYT site here, or an extract below.

The Gospel of Wealth

By DAVID BROOKS, Op-ed columnist, The New York Times, September 6, 2010

Maybe the first decade of the 21st century will come to be known as the great age of headroom. During those years, new houses had great rooms with 20-foot ceilings and entire new art forms had to be invented to fill the acres of empty overhead wall space.

People bought bulbous vehicles like Hummers and Suburbans. The rule was, The Smaller the Woman, the Bigger the Car — so you would see a 90-pound lady in tennis whites driving a 4-ton truck with enough headroom to allow her to drive with her doubles partner perched atop her shoulders.

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Expanding Youth Professionals Opportunities

This paper, originally published in the peer reviewed Journal of Youth and Theology, edition 3, volume 1, 2004 (see http://www.iasym.org), aims to expose youth professionals to a number of opportunities within the corporate business world. This will enable youth professionals to self-fund their ministries/work, as well as gain credibility and experience in their area of expertise. The paper outlines the need that the corporate world has with regards to an understanding of today’s youth culture, as well as provides specific guidelines for ministry professionals who wish to pursue part-time (or full-time) consulting work in the corporate world. The paper specifically ignores theological and ethical issues such work may provoke. Since it was written in 2003, it also doesn’t take into account the many social media and digital opportunities to prove your expertise that are now available. These should obviously be utilised as part of developing one’s profile.

Expanding Youth Professionals Opportunities

The contribution that not-for-profit youth professionals can make in the corporate world
by Dr Graeme Codrington (2003)

The Professional Youth Ministry Problem

One of the abiding complaints of professional youth ministers and workers¹ around the world is that they are not taken seriously. They are often seen as glorified baby-sitters or cheerleaders. Yet, in an increasing number of countries, there is a growing number of professionally trained, well qualified, called and committed life-long career youth workers and ministers (“youth professionals”).² These people are as qualified in their specialised field as any other professionals are in theirs. Their expert knowledge and critical skills in fields such as childcare, adolescent development, youth culture and group dynamics, together with deep understanding of related disciplines, such as theology, psychology, sociology and education, set these youth professionals apart in today’s world. Yet, they are often not accorded the recognition they deserve, or the responsibilities they are equipped to handle.

In addition to these systemic challenges, youth professionals also facea financial challenge at the start of the 21^st century. Churches, denominations, missions and youth agencies are no longer receiving the funding they were some years ago.³ Budgets are tight, and full-time youth professionals are seen as a luxury in many places. Many are ridiculously underpaid, and cannot sustain a career, and therefore are either forced to go part-time, or to abandon youth work/ministry all together.

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Would Jesus burn the qu’ran?

A church in Gainsville, Florida, USA, has started an international campaign to make 9/11 (11 September) an “international burn the qu’ran day”. They even have a Facebook fan page dedicated to it (I am NOT going to supply a link to it). The small church is called ‘Dove World Outreach Center’ and pastor Terry Jones is unmoved by growing international outrage at the planned burning of 150 copies of Islam’s holy book.

The Quran, according to Jones, is “evil” because it espouses something other than biblical truth and incites radical, violent behavior among Muslims. You can do a Google search for news of this event, and how even the US military is running a bit scared as they fear reprisal attacks by militant Muslims all over the world (inspired not by the qu’ran, but by hatred for the West and for those opposed to Islam).

I am not going to comment on the ramifications of such madness, although my head is spinning at how much damage one small church could potentially do around the world.

My only simple question is a spiritual and theological one: Would Jesus burn the qu’ran?

There may be debates about whether Jesus would be inclusive towards Muslims or not. I think he would have been, but I can see how some Christians would read their Bibles in such a way that indicates that Jesus would have excluded them from his friendship circle. There may be discussion about whether Jesus would have tried to engage with Muslims. I think it’s clear he did engage with people from other religions, and always did so with respect, tolerance and love. But again, I can (only just) see how some people read their Bibles and gain a different, more strident picture of Jesus. There is certainly debate about what Jesus taught us to do in relation to other religions. I see Jesus instructing us to engage, to be loving and respectful. I can see how others would interpret the Bible to say we should proselytise and point out error in other religions, and protect ourselves from contamination.

But all of these debates aside, I still have just that simple question: Would Jesus have burnt a qu’ran?

I cannot fathom any interpretation of the Bible or understanding of the nature of Jesus that would allow one to answer ‘Yes’ to that question. Pastor Jones might be right in his interpretation of Biblical truth (I think he’s not), but I cannot believe that burning a qu’ran is a Christ-like response.

I want my Muslim friends to know that anything that happens at ‘Dove World Outreach Centre’ this 9/11 weekend is not done in my name. I am a Christ-follower and I am abhorred that something like this could be done in the name of Jesus. What would Jesus do? I think He is weeping right now…

Salaam. Shalom. Peace be among us all.

Rich Stearns’ Speech at Mobilisation to end Poverty in Washington DC

First posted on the old blogsite on 7 June 2009

This is the text of a speech given by Rich Stearns, World Vision President and author of “The Hole in Our Gospel: What Does God Expect of Us? the Answer That Changed My Life and Might Just Change the World” (buy now on Kalahari.net or Amazon.co.uk), at the Mobilisation to End Poverty held in Washington DC in April 2009. Although the speech is addressed at an American audience the principles are true for all of us.

Rich Stearn – World Vision
Mobilization to End Poverty

April 27, 2009

Good morning.

I want to thank Jim Wallis and Sojourners for organizing this historic meeting. I believe that our country and our world may stand at the brink of one of those momentous turning points that we usually see with greater clarity in retrospect than we do in the moment. 1776 was a turning point that changed the world order. 1860 was a turning point election that settled the issue of slavery three years later after the bloodiest war in our history. 1918 and 1945 were turning points that concluded two world wars and restructured international power dynamics while creating the multilateral institutions that would influence the world during the cold war and after. 1989 was a turning point that saw the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the cold war. Why is 2009 a turning point? First, just as we witnessed the bankruptcy and inadequacy of Communism in 1989, we are now witnessing the bankruptcy and inadequacy of unrestrained Capitalism in 2009. This is a tough thing for a former corporate CEO to admit. Second, we are just now beginning to accept and understand the dire consequences of the global carbon economy that was the birth mother of a global economy based on unsustainable consumption. Third, and of considerable significance and perhaps more hopeful than the first two, is that we have just had an historic election that was a radical departure both racially and generationally. It is hopeful because it may be that the ingredients for a radical shift in the direction of global politics are now in place just as they were when Washington, Lincoln, Roosevelt and Kennedy were elected.

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Welcome new readers – a quick intro to the conversation thus far

Every now and again I’ll do a quick overview of my favourite posts – and that can act as a nice introduction for new readers and a navigation tool for those who want to “catch up” with some of the thinking and conversations on this blog.

The purpose of this blog is to help Christians and those seeking faith to find new ways to think about what it means to be a Christ follower. I have been writing and blogging on this topic since 1995, and this blog includes a selection of new and old stuff I have been working on. Some of it I’d die for, but some of it is purely experimental (I try and let you know which is which). The point is not to present a fully worked through systematic theology, but rather to allow you to enter into an ongoing conversation with me. If you like, this is just my journal – and you get to look in…

So, with that said, here is a brief intro to some of the posts on this blog:

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The Challenge of An Aging Population

In 2001, I was editing a magazine on the future of church ministry. I approached respected author, academic and church consultant, Richard Kew to write about what he thought was a critical future trend the church needed to be aware of. This is what he wrote. Now, nearly a decade later, it’s still important, and his advice should still be heeded.

Last weekend I was invited to speak at, and participate in, a consultation on ministry among the aging. It was a fascinating weekend. I learned a lot, met some interesting people, and (I hope) was able to make a small contribution to the process. This weekend I sat down with the November 3, 2001, issue of The Economist, and found a major survey of the near future by Peter Drucker that has me questioning — as well as building upon — some of the things that I said last Saturday!

Drucker is venerable in every sense of that word. Now 92, his mind is still as clear as a bell, and for someone who is highly unlikely to live long enough to see some of the things he is talking about, he is obviously very engaged with what tomorrow might look like. At the heart of some of his projections is his recognition that the developed world’s population is aging to such an extent, that the social safety nets all western democracies have put in place are utterly inadequate.

Here’s a nugget to ponder: “By 2030, people over 65 in Germany, the world’s third-largest economy, will account for almost half the adult population, compared with one-fifth now. And unless the country’s birth rate recovers from its present low of 1.3 per woman, over the same period its population of under-35s will shrink about twice as fast as the older population will grow. The net result will be that the total population, now 82m, will decline to 70m-73m. The number of people of working age will fall by a full quarter, from 40m to 30m.”

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Being Incarnational in Youth Ministry – a theology

An assignment completed in 1998, as part fulfillment of the requirements of the Youth Ministry Major at Baptist Theological College, South Africa.

NOTE, July 2010: This article could probably do with updated references to popular culture. If you’re going to use it, please make the effort to replace references to TV shows, movies and music with more up to date references. For example, if Jesus were around today, I’m sure he’d have a Facebook account, and would be happy for any and everybody to be his friend.

1. Introduction

In his book, The Purpose Driven Church, Rick Warren devotes a chapter to Jesus’ model of ministry that attracted crowds. His purpose is to show that a strategy that aims at large numbers is Biblical. In doing so, however, he also makes some important general comments regarding the nature of Jesus’ ministry. Towards the end of His ministry, Jesus instructed His disciples, saying “As the Father sent me into the world, I am sending you” (John 17:18; 20:21). Jesus is our model of operating in the world. But Jesus was God – so how exactly can He be our model?

It is beyond the scope of this paper to discuss the exact nature of the incarnation (becoming man) of Christ. However, the basis of this paper is that the incarnation involved Christ, who is God, becoming fully human, yet without compromising his full divinity (John 1:14, Phil. 2:6f.). This being the case, let us examine some implications of Christ’s example for youth ministry.

2. Implications of the Incarnation

All of the implications of the incarnation are beyond enumeration or expression. The fact that God Almighty, the Creator of heaven and earth, the Sustainer of all life, should reduce Himself to a foetus in a virgin peasant girl is beyond understanding. That the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob should subject Himself to human care as a helpless baby, grow up in Roman-controlled Palestine, and walk from one end of Israel to another, followed by a rag-tag team of social outcasts, eventually submitting to the cruel nails of crucifixion, simply to identify with me, is too great a thought to grasp. Yet, it is possible to glean some principles from Jesus’ earthly life, that can be applied to youth ministry. Just as Jesus took on Himself the form of a human being, we must take on the “form” of a young person. The following sections work towards a theology of Incarnational Ministry, which will explain how this can be achieved.

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