This is why we fight

In recent times, there have been some frustrating complications with church relationships and all, leaving me a bit frustrated and concerned. That same mood was carried with me into the Rosie's street ministry today, with me almost having to half drag myself out in the cold to serve the streeties.

However, during the night, I was brought back to reality, when one of our team members recounted how someone had been suicidal. She subsequently just sat and heard his story, prayed with him, and gave him a referral to LifeLine for support. After that, he said, in his own words, "This was the first time I've felt part of something".

At that point I realised - we get caught up in the details of life, in our frustrations and annoyances. We lose sleep over things that don't go our way, and our preoccupation is so often our struggle with life.

Yet, at the end of the day, we fight the good fight, not to put up a brave front to impress, or to polish our lives to sparkling perfection. We are fighting, contending, struggling for something bigger, greater, and beyond our own narrow little lives. It is the least of these that we are to struggle for: for the lives that Gods wants to touch and heal, for the broken people that He wants to comfort. We are fighting for the gospel, and for the ones that God loves.

This is why we fight; and believe it or not, God is on our side we are fighting on God's side.

Sad news - but inevitable?

I just received this mail from FORGE Australia:

For the last twelve years, Forge has sought to serve the Australian church by inspiring and training leaders to engage the first world as a mission field. We have had the privilege of working with many individuals and churches, helping catalyze missional initiatives and challenging the ecclesial status quo. Through God’s graces, we have seen significant shifts in the mindsets of Australian Christian leaders and for this rich and colorful journey, we are eternally grateful.

More recently, over the last two years we have been involved in a process of organizational reflection and future planning, seeking to identify what our contribution could be to the Australian church in the years ahead. After some long conversations and considered analysis of our position, we believe that the best way forward is to scale back all of our organizational operations for the foreseeable future."

As someone whose faith has benefited richly from the FORGE ministry, I'm really sad to hear this. I have been inspired, challenged and humbled by the many faithful members of FORGE. Seeing their zeal for missions in the West has rekindled a new flame and passion within my own heart for my neighbours and friends.

It is ironic, that the end the of the day, their basis for existence is to some extent the cause of their closure. In particular, they write:

Our current decentralized organizational structure has made it difficult to move ahead cohesively. The challenges associated with transitioning Forge to be an effective training organisation for the new context proved too costly.

FORGE has always pushed for a return to "Acts-style" churches, without the central administration and structure seen in "traditional churches", but rather an organic approach to church life. Thus, it doesn't come as a surprise that as FORGE grew, their commitment to "organic" administration meant that they did not have the administrative structure to support that growth.

While I'm sad to see FORGE Australia go, I think there's a great lesson in this - that at the end it's not all about "returning back to the good ol' days", it's about reaching people with the Gospel for the glory of God - and faithfully using whatever is available for those ends - even if they involve elaborate hierachies ;).

Language, Culture and the Death of Me

We recently had a barbie where both English and Chinese services came together to "interact". First off, people who organised it, like Kat, Andrew and co., as well as others who pitched it are to be commended for their work - thank God and thank them that it was a great delicious event :).

*warning: Rant ahead*

My reflections however center on the irony of the event, most visibly demonstrated when the 2 services were asked to participate in certain activities together. These activities included the English service members, being asked certain "trivia" questions, in CHINESE, with no translation provided. Phew, thank God for that; I've always struggled with trivia, but not understanding the questions fixes all that!

The most ferrous-filled irony of the night occured when someone was speaking in Chinese about how great it was that the Chinese and English could come together to interact (or something to that effect), again with NO translation. When our Pastor and some other members asked that English be used or a translation provided, someone cheekily said "Sorry, my England no very good". Laughs all around, then back to a foreign language.

Ah, yes, the irony of saying "We love your participation, but we don't really care". /rantmode

And so a crossroads is once again met - having come with a real desire to support these initiatives, does one persist in faith, or shake the dust off the soles of my shoes? Is it a relationship that is in need of resuscitation, or are we beating a dead horse? (note: forgiveness and persistence are 2 very different things!)

Emerging Churches - More Wesleyan than the Methodists?

In recent times I've had the opportunity to attend a FORGE conference and get my hands on some material by Hirsch and Frost, and essentially get a bit more up to date with the whole "emerging church" movement.

Much ink has been spilled over reservations about the whole movement, particularly over their interactions with more "traditional" mainline churches. I share the sentiments of many others (Glen has written some excellent comments here), feeling that they have many good things to offer, but do often come across as being a bit arrogant in the simplistic neglect of tradition. Nonetheless, I'm inspired by their commitment to serious discipleship (something which has definitely lapsed in many churches) as well as their intense missional focus, particularly in their service to the poor.

No doubt there are some questionable characters in the movement (I'm not a fan of McLaren), but amongst the more balanced people, I've been interested to find how much they have in common with the spirit of Wesleyanism. For example, in The Shaping of Things to Come, Hirsch and Frost write:

...what the church needs to find its way out of the situation it's in at the beginning of the 21st Century, is not more faddish theories about how to grow the church without fundamentally reforming structures. What the church needs is a revolutionary new approach.

They advocate that the church need to restructure itself around the concept of mission (rather than worship, which is very prevalent today), on the basis that:

...the missional church represents God in the encounter between God and human culture....it is a visible manifestation of how the Good News of Jesus Christ is present in human life and transforms human culture to reflect more faithfully God's intentions for creation.

In other words, our construct of ministry and mission should not and must not be centered within what we call "Church". "Ministry" is not just about ushering, leading worship or playing the piano - it is also very much (and more so!) about MISSION - our engagement and interaction with the world the other 6 days of the week. For many, it is thus lamentable that church structures and organisations are so church-centered - we encourage people to attend prayer meets, cell groups, sunday schools, choirs, courses, seminars, workshops, meetings, etc, hence effectively taking people OUT of their community and keeping them IN the Church.

Hirsch and Frost see this church centered functioning as a logical outcome of "traditional" ways of church organisation and institutionalisation, and hence call for a radical restructuring of our churches, at points calling us to return to "primitive" Christianity.

What struck me was how similar this sounded to the Wesleys as they began their ministry. Chilcote, in The Wesleyan Tradition, comments on the Wesleys' beliefs:

The church of England in the Wesleys' day was an institution in need of repair...It had become distant from and irrelevant to the world it was called to serve during a time of tremendous change. Its forms and its structures had become so inflexible and devoid of life that the weight of its "institutionalism" was quenching the Spirit, suffocating the life of God's people....It needed to rediscover itself and reclaim its identity as God's agent of love in the world. The Wesleys believed that God raised them up to resuscitate the church.

Commenting on the Wesleys' understanding of the function of the church, he says:

Their ecclesiology (understanding of the church), therefore, was essentially missiological (formed around mission)... All of their energy was directed toward the empowerment of Christ's fiathful disciples in ministry to God's world. Indeed, they all viewed evangelism and mission...as the reason for their existence.

Given that the Methodist Church today has become more well known for being "Methodical" (in terms of beauracracy and red tape, rather than in the pursuit of holiness), I can't help but wonder whether the much maligned "Emerging Church" movement actually better embodies what it means to be a Methodist than many Methodists, by demonstrating a stronger passion for a more missional, discipleship oriented, and contextual approach to church life.

However, perhaps more importantly, how do we as a church rediscover what it means to be "missional" - what sacrifices and pains will it take, and will we take them?

Review for "ReJesus - A wild messiah for a missional Church' by Hirsch and Frost

Hirsch and Frost are concerned only with 1 word - J.E.S.U.S. Call them what you may, but their premise is simple: the modern western church has strayed far from the teachings and values that its founder Jesus Christ embodied - he has been domesticated to fit our agenda. Echoing characters such as Barth, they declare that Christ must remain central in the faith, as nothing can be known/felt/done apart from Christ himself. To make their point, they go through 7 chapters that discuss (in order): how Jesus impacts theology/missiology/ecclesiology, how he impacts individuals and how he impacts communities. They explore the false images we've made of Jesus, and how the Shema provides a holistic model for discipleship in the form of monotheistic ethics. They go on to discuss the importance of intersecting orthodoxy, orthopraxy and orthopathy, and finish off with a discussion on ecclessiology (which is admittedly very functional).

In general I'm quite wary of these kind of books (that proclaim that 'everyone is wrong and we just need to get back to basics'), as they often have a blaise disregard for the value of tradition and history. The authors constantly affirm the value of tradition, thankfully, but provide few insights into how this may be reinterpreted in the context of a renewed Christologic focus, so as to avoid throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

This, however, does not hurt their main, and very timely message - that we need to rescue the gospels (and Christology) from the dungeons, and place them and their central figure back at the center of our existence as the church. In doing this, they rightly argue, the church will rediscover what it means to be "missional", in every sense of the word, as they embody the values of their Lord. Rather than the tame, gentle, huggable, nice lady-like Jesus of our paintings, they present a challenging, radical, loving, confrontational, non-conformist and passionate Jesus. This they do very well, with a good mix of anecdote and story to add some personal flavor to their writings, leaving one with the challenge to read the Gospels more intently, keeping our eyes and heart open to the person they testify to.

Ironically, the book is short on the very material it seeks to promote - Christology. There's plenty of discussion around the impact that Christology would have, but not much exploration of the man himself - but perhaps that is too much of an ask for a book only 200 pages long! In addition, attempts at serious theological reflection (such as the section on ecclesiology) are pretty flimsy, but then again, this book is more about the importance of prioritising Christology than an actual discussion of the subjects themselves.

All in all, ReJesus is a good read that will no doubt stir the reader to rethink and reflect on putting the Christ back into being Christian, and learn to read the gospels more robustly, leading to a reinterpretation of the identity of the church. In a sense, what Barth did as a theologian, Hirsch and Frost are doing as missionaries. It gets pretty draggy and repetitive at points, but remains a great starting point for discussion on ministry.

Biblical Preaching by Haddon Robinson

This book is immensely practical - it takes you on a step by step journey through the preparation and delivery of sermons. It covers topics ranging from selection of a text and its exegesis, to the development of a homilectical theme, and finally to the to nuances and issues in delivery of the message (Eg: body language, voice etc).

The breadth of topics Robinson tries to cover seems intimidating, and one wonders whether the book becomes a jack of all trades, without really detailing any particular step. Robinson however makes up for this, by ensuring maximum clarity by keeping the points simple, and filling the pages with examples. He also makes it a point to direct the reader to more indepth resources at the each chapter, if one wishes to pursue it. More worked examples, however would have been useful.

One glaring deficiency in the book, however, is how a clear theology of preaching is not outlined. Although the book sets out to be more practical than theoretical, it would not have hurt to have discussed the biblical and theological basis for speaking the word of God (beyond the few paragraphs mentioned in the introduction and the final chapter).

All in all, this stands as a clear and valueable introduction to the preparation and delivery of sermons. Whilst you won't get a comprehensive exploration of preaching ministry, you will be getting a solid, and all-round guide to get started in this ministry.

So I watched Constantine...

A bit of an oldie I know, but I never got round to watching it. On the whole, I'll say it's a pretty bad movie - crappy plot, and filled with horrible theological concepts (kind of like those movies that potray Chinese as yellow skinned slanty eye people with pig tails?).

Anyway, there were actually 2 bits in the movie that I liked (spoilers ahead):

1. When Gabriel pins Constantine to the ground, he/she/it (angels are neuter) comments on how humans just need to repent to enter into the bosom of God, and how privileged and loved we are above all of God's other creations. It then caps it off by saying "It's not fair".

At this point I was groaning from the badness of the movie, but this little bit perked me up a little, simply because it reflected the awesome theological truth - that the Son of God should give His life for fallen humanity, that He should take on the form of the human and no other creature. Yes God loves His creation, but there is little doubt that humanity has a treasured place in that. And furthermore, at the end of the day, the Gospel of Jesus Christ ISN'T fair - in no way is there any "fairness" in us being reconciled to God by the suffering of God Himself!

2. As Lucifer tries to drag Constantine to hell as punishment for his sin, God stops him in his tracks and lifts Constantine to heaven, much to Lucifer's chagrin. At this point, Constantine gives Lucifer the birdie, and was really a LOL moment for me.

You see, I couldn't help but reminded of how we often get caught up into appearance and etiquette, thinking that God is looking out for the well mannered nice person, but has no interest in the ruffian who swears and is ill mannered. But at the end of the day, we come back to the parable of the Good Samaritan, where the evil, uncouth Samaritan is praised as living closer to God's command to "love thy neighbor", than any of the Jews coming before him.

It's so tempting to measure holiness (particularly in our conservative Chinese church) by, in a sense, "niceness". Yet, perhaps God is sometimes less concerned about whether you are nice and polite, than whether you are living out His command to love God with all you've got, and love your neighbor like yourself.