A bit of the St Thomas' Sheffield story
We have been greatly blessed through our connection with St Thomas Sheffield. Here is a blog by Mike Breen that tells some of the story.
|
David Wanstall, 2/6/2012 |
0 Comments
|
Permalink
|
Missional Communities and Discipleship Workshop - video links
We have been learning heaps from St Thomas Sheffield and 3dm about discipleship and mission. In March, we are organising a visit from Rich Robinson from Sheffield.
He will be leading a workshop for church leaders on Missional Communities and Discipleship. Information, online registration and some short videos can be found on www.missionalcommunities.com.au
He will also be doing some specific training for churches that have been following the 3dm model for some time.
For those who are interested, there are some key teaching videos from Mike Breen available here.
|
David Wanstall, 2/3/2012 |
0 Comments
|
Permalink
|
An Overview of what God is doing
As we start a new year, it is important to remember what God is doing. The bible records what God is doing and as we consider it in totalt, It helps us orient ourselves in this sometimes crazy world.
The bible is a collection of 66 books written by 20 different authors over 1500 years in 3 different languages. They combine to provide a coherent record of what God is doing in the universe.
God created a good and marvelous universe. This creation included humans who had the privilege of relating to God and helping to watch over creation. However there was a crisis when humans turned their back on God and evil entered our existence. History shows that this evil is persistent, permeating even our own souls. It is hard to explain and there are no easy solutions. However God has been acting to put things right. By grace God chose Abraham and made a covenant (binding agreement) to bless all the nations through his descendants. His descendants formed the nation of Israel and ultimately Jesus Christ was born centuries after Israelite prophets predicted his appearing. Through his life death and resurrection, Jesus Christ defeated evil and dealt with our guilt which separates us from God. Jesus Christ invites people from every nation to trust Him and come back into relationship with God. The blessings that surrounded Jesus life on earth and his resurrection from the dead point forward to the day when everything wrong will be put right in a new creation. God will live with people in unbroken relationship and there will be no more death, or mourning or crying or pain.
|
David Wanstall, 1/27/2012 |
0 Comments
|
Permalink
|
Thought provoking blogs on church, family, discipleship and volunteering
This is my last blog for the year as we lead up to Christmas and afterwards have a time to rest and abide in the first part of January (see here for what is planned).
As we go into this break here are some quotes from articles on the web (follow the links to read them in full)
Church and Family
RED CHURCH We live in a non-committal culture, where you can turn up to Church when you want, expect to be entertained and still keep all of your options open. This is not what Red (a church in Melbourne) is about. Red is a Church which is unashamedly about re-centering our lives around Jesus; the man who was God and who spoke about a life that costs and a faith that is sacrificial. ( see here) MIKE BREEN
You see, I am absolutely convinced that 100 years from now, many books will be written on the phenomenon that is the late 20th Century/early 21st Century American church. And I am fairly certain that it will be with large degree of amazement/laughter that people, in reading about it, will say to each other: “You must be joking! Seriously???! People actually thought it was a good idea to structure the Church as if it were a business? Honestly?!”
Perhaps we don’t have the perspective necessary to see how funny or strange this really is, but I promise you, if you run your church like a business, it’ll never be a family and families are what have changed the world.......
Efficiency has replaced effectiveness. Many churches are organizationally efficient, but we aren’t affecting the lives of people the way in which Jesus imagined a family would do. ( read the full article)
ERIC PFEIFFER In the hustle and bustle of trying to promote, maintain and multiply good church services and programs, we find ourselves pressed for time, energy and resources, therefore enlisting folks into our volunteer armies to fulfill our vision. Somewhere along the way we exchanged Jesus’ vision of a discipling culture for a volunteer culture. We’ve become experts in mobilizing volunteers and have lost sight of our responsibility to make disciples. ( read the full article)
|
David Wanstall, 12/16/2011 |
0 Comments
|
Permalink
|
Christmas article in 'The Age'
Last Saturday there was a lengthy article in The Age under the headline 'Divine Invention'.
In the article, the author, Fenella Souter, suggests the main elements of Christmas is highly questionable as history and the wandering star is highly questionable as science. She reports some have suggested the Christmas accounts were written to bolster the faltering early Christian movement with a more compelling backstory for Jesus. She also reads great significance into the fact that the accounts in Matthew and Luke are different. And speculates that nods to the Old Testament served to place Jesus within the grand narratives of Jewish myth and biblical interpretation. She makes reference to records of other religions claiming virgin births suggesting Christianity has pagan overtones in thought testimony and practice; and reports John Shelby Spong's claims that the creation of the stories were part of an effort to elevate Jesus to mythic hero.
She also makes reference to the development of Catholic beliefs in the perpetual virginity and immaculate (sinless) conception of Mary. She also goes on to describe the development of Christmas as a global festival through the centuries.
It is true that many traditions have grown up around Christmas, however, the records in Luke and Matthew have credible historic details that show familiarity with the times, geography, and the way people lived. There are a variety of astronomical events like comets that are credible possibilities for the star. The early Christian movement was always energized by the death and resurrection of Jesus and these adult events of Jesus life place him centrally in the grand narrative of the Jewish people - their expectation of a Messiah, the cleansing of the temple and the return of God to His people. They alone elevate Jesus Christ to more than just a man. History suggests that Christianity made steady progress in growth and while there were some ups and downs, didn't falter in a way that required buttressing with a backstory.
While there are substantial differences between the Matthew and Luke accounts there are also many points of agreement. And different emphases in reporting a single event by different peopleis common event today. In addition there are references to the incarnation at the beginning of the Gospel of John and in Paul's letters - Philippians 2:5-8 and Gal 4:4-6.
Claims of supposed pagan overtones are very hard to sustain when you really appreciate how tightly and completely the life of Jesus was tied into and a fulfillment of the entire story of the old testament. Any overtones that may exist are swamped by orders of magnitude louder sounds of the Old Testament. If you are interested in exploring this further, I can highly recommend 'Simply Jesus' by NT Wright.
In addition to the book by NT Wright, here are some references you may like to read:
A response from Paul Barnett to the article
An extract from a book by Kenneth Bailey that peals back some of the tradition that has been added on to the Christmas story (it is a pdf)
A shorter blog that draws on the Kenneth Bailey book
Final note:
Fenella Souter starts the article with her mother's dislike for the term Xmas taking the Christ out of Christmas, and then at the end of the article explains that it is based on a Greek symbol. However, she doesn't explain that the X comes from the greek letter Chi (which looks like the english x) - the first letter of Christ in Greek. Christ hasn't been removed - he is there all along.
|
David Wanstall, 12/8/2011 |
0 Comments
|
Permalink
|
Heresy and the Islamic view of Christianity
In this final post about 'Heresy, a history of defending the truth' by Alister McGrath we look at Chapter 10 which is about how the Islamic view of Christianity is influenced by Christian heresy.
- In the first post we saw that heresy is a form of belief that is ultimately found to be inadequate.
- In the second post we looked heresy's relationship to faith and belief.
- In the third post we saw that the term 'heresy' developed from the idea of a school of thought to later include the idea of a negative judgement about that thought. We also saw that these schools of thought arose from within the church in response to their cultural settings and that it was often only over time that the weaknesses to those positions became evident.
- In the fourth post we saw that Heresies could be grouped into Classic or Patristic heresies that emerged in the first five centuries of the Christian faith; and Medieval heresies.
- In the fifth post there were some short summaries of these Classic heresies.
Here are some quotes:
Muslims and Christians have been alienated partly by the fact that both have misunderstood each other's faith by tryign to fit it into their own pattersn. The most usual error is to suppose (on both sides) that the roles of jesus Christ in Christianity and of Muhammad in Islam are comparable... If one is drawing paralleles in terms of the structure of the two religions, what corresponds in the Christian scheme to the Qur'an is not the bible but the person of Christ - It is Christ who is for Christians the revelation (from) God. (page 223)
The problematic Qur'anic representation of Christianity can be argued to reflect knowledge, whether direct or indirect, of heretical versions of Christianity that are know to have been present in this region... (page 224)
The Qur'anic representation of the doctrine of the Trinity ....the Qur'an appears to represent Christians as worshipping a trinity of three distinct persons - God, Jesus and Mary... Why? ..... The Qur'anic view of the Trinity appears to show at least some degree of familiarity with a heretical school within Christianity that was known to have been influential in Arabia at that time. The heresy in question is that of the Collyridian sect..... One of its most distinctive characteristics is treating Mary as a goddess. (page 225)
The Qur'anic depiction of Jesus of Nazareth makes sense when seen in the context of the intrintrinsic Docetism fo many Gnostic Christologies, which are known to have been influential in this region of Arabia around this time..... (page 226)
A fourth century Sethian Gnostic treaty -
refuses to accept that Jesus was crucified, offering an alternative account of the events of Good Friday...'And I did not die in reality but in appearance' ..... This teaching bears remarkable similarity to Islamic teachings about Jesus of Nazareth which reflect a similar disinclination to accept that Jesus suffered and died upon the cross. (page 227)
Since Christian heresies are forms of Christianity, no matter how defective, deformed or distorted, the recognition that the Qur'an know of, and criticizes, heretical forms of Christianity allows Muslims to affirm that what is being criticized is indeed a form of Christianity, and Christians to respond by pointing out that they are not authentic or representative forms of Christianity. (page 228)
|
David Wanstall, 11/25/2011 |
0 Comments
|
Permalink
|
A Summary of various Heresies
In this fifth post about 'Heresy, a history of defending the truth' by Alister McGrath we continue to explore heresy.
- In the first post we saw that heresy is a form of belief that is ultimately found to be inadequate.
- In the second post we looked heresy's relationship to faith and belief.
- In the third post we saw that the term 'heresy' developed from the idea of a school of thought to later include the idea of a negative judgement about that thought. We also saw that these schools of thought arose from within the church in response to their cultural settings and that it was often only over time that the weaknesses to those positions became evident.
- In the fourth post we saw that Heresies could be grouped into Classic or Patristic heresies that emerged in the first five centuries of the Christian faith; and Medieval heresies.
In this post there are brief summaries of these heresies. Reading about some of these heresies can seem a bit dry, however, it is vital that we have some understanding of them as new heresies that we may come across are often either replays or variations on these historic ones. History tends to repeat, but if we are aware, we can avoid repeating some of those errors ourselves.
Classic Heresies:
Early heresies emerged in the first three centuries when Christian churches existed on the margins of Roman society/imperial culture and before trans-local leadership structures and mechanisms developed.
Ebionitism: The ebionites were a group that interpreted Jesus as a prophet in after the pattern of Old Testament prophets. They either underplayed or ignored the divinity of Jesus.
Docetism: This teaches that Jesus Christ only seemed to be human -Jesus Christ could not really be properly human as there was no way in which the divine and the human could coexist in a single being. It underplays or denies the humanity of Jesus.
Valentinism: Valentinus is considered to be the originator of a form of Gnostic Christianity. Gnosticism holds that matter was created by an inferior creator God, the Demiurge, and is thus fundamentally evil. Salvation is the process of receiving knowledge (gnosis) to enable them to be freed from the physical world (including the body) and return to the realm of light. For Valentism, Christ is the redeemer figure who awakens the divine spark within humanity, enabling it to find its way back to its true home. Against this the incarnation explicitly denies any notion of intrinsically evil matter.
Later Heresies developed in the fourth and fifth centuries when Christianity moved from the fringes to become the official faith of the empire. 'Orthodoxy and heresy were now more than matters of theological debate; they had significant consequences for social cohesion and unity.' (page 135)
Arianism: Arius emphasized the utter transcendence and inaccessibility of God meaning that God cannot be known by any other creature including the Son of God (however highly exalted he may be considered). However since it is only God who saves that means Jesus can't save.
Donatism: Prior to Christianity becoming a legal religion, there were various periods of intense persecution. During these times numbers of people including bishops surrendered sacred texts and became regarded as traitors. Once Christianity was legal, those who supported people who had become martyrs thought these people had lapsed could no longer be bishops etc. because it would taint the purity of the church and undermine the validity of sacraments administered by tainted ministers. Donatism was rejected because it made the sacraments, and thus the power of the Gospel indirectly dependent on the purity of the church rather than on the grace of Christ. True believers would never crack under persecution.
Pelagianism: Pelagianism insisted that human beings are completely free in all their actions - if we are told to stop sinning, we can stop sinning, and there is no human disposition towards sin that prevents us. It understood Grace only as God's external gifts of the commandments, forgiveness through the cross, and the example and teaching of Jesus Christ, rather than also including God's internal gifts of healing, enlightening, strengthening, and continual aid helping us to obey. Like Donatism it had an idealised view of humanity - that we can be perfect on our own.
|
David Wanstall, 11/16/2011 |
0 Comments
|
Permalink
|
Hearing God - Dallas Willard
At the beginning of the year, I encouraged people to use the daily devotional - Hearing God through the year, based on Dallas Willard's book Hearing God.
Dallas Willard and Bill Heatley spoke at a conference on Hearing God earlier this year.
The audio recordings are now online and are available here.
Great for listening to at home, on the train, out walking or even running!!
|
David Wanstall, 11/11/2011 |
0 Comments
|
Permalink
|
|
