For a while after a spate of John Eldridge books came out I felt like the church cultural landscape may change to accomodate my manliness, and address my discomfort with the more effeminate aspects of church life, worship and culture. The brief dalliance with a more muscular spirituality has not lasted, and I have slipped back into a state of limbo, halfway between my true manliness and my public face of pastel shades and joining hands with the person next to me.
However, a new movement has taken root in my city that potentially provides a place where I can gather with other manly men without joining hands and singing “Shine Jesus Shine!”. Shed Night is taking off and it has the men of my church taking notice, and buying their T-shirts. This Sunday saw a number of men raising eyebrows (and temperatures) donning their brand new ‘Shed Happens” Tees. The emails of horror have started. The question I have is if this a new movement that will recalibrate our culture to be more accommodating to men or is it another Christian fad? read more…
My blogging activities have been sidelined by pastoral needs such as funerals and academic needs such as multiple assignment deadlines. Once I’m done early next week I’ll hit the keyboards again with some overdue posts, including:
- Review of The Divine Commodity by Skye Jethani.
- Tech Update for Churches.
- A new Pearl of The Christian Blogosphere.
- Review of Everyday Greatness by Covey.
- Using online surveys for feedback from your people.
In the meantime, the clock is ticking and my last deadline is looming…
As depicted by asbojesus
Finally, not only can we wear our faith on our sleeves, we can wear it on our face – thanks to ‘Disciple Shades’.
The new new logo for Queensland Baptists has been released after the ditching of the new one. The new old one was scrapped because “having trouble with our new logo with some forms of printing and, in particular, engraving on a plaque”. (I am doing my best not to comment here…) The new one is a lot more simple, and will appeal to many because of the prominence of the cross. In keeping with the predilection for Baptists to have a de rigueur byline, the words ‘following Jesus’ are added the logo. The old new logo that has been scrapped after a few months life is below for your viewing pleasure: read more…
We don’t really have a theology of dying in evangelical and charismatic churches. We don’t accept intrusions like illness or much worse terminal illness. Our spirituality is built around the God of Comforts, a cosmic butler who makes sure us middle class affluent followers have every fine detail of life looked after, even down to car parking spaces on our way to the temples of Mammon we frequent.
The reality is that people actually die. Many of those people are our own, within our churches. We don’t seem to be able to walk with them to heavens door, because we are too busy praying against that happening. Accepting the inevitability of death is to us a breach of faith and a lack of trust. Subsequently, we potentially deny people in their most needy hours, the pastoral care and preparation for death that they need. Instead we live in denial until the final moment hoping for that last chance miracle. Do we need to embrace a theology of death? read more…
This week in Australia saw the one of the most monumental failures in marketing and failure to understand culture. A multi-national company is now licking its wounds and trying to reconnect with its customer base and restore its credibility. There are some lessons to be learned from this catastrophic failure. Maybe the church can learn a thing or two: read more…
Is it possible to follow Jesus outside the church (without being spiritual tumbleweed)? Today I had my mind blown by a missionary who works with a community of new believers who exist intentionally outside of the church, and still remain within the faith culture they were born in. This is a missiological dimension I’ve not known too much about before. read more…
I’ve been humbled to spend the week with people who live, work and minister in very needy countries with very complex problems and cultures totally foreign to the average Western context. They are committed to working contextually, taking the time to understand the culture, customs, language, sensitivities, traditions, history, etc of the people they seeking to communicate the Gospel to. They do it with actions and words, and through the totality of their lives lived in full gaze of the host community. They are the perfect people to have back home in our churches aren’t they? They have the ideal dream profile of a fully fledged missional believer, capable of living and ministering contextually to the people our churches are trying to reach. However, coming back home from a Third World context may well mean that for them they are stepping back in time into a world of yesteryear when they re-enter their sending churches. I got to see some of the pain and displacement that our missionaries carry this week. read more…
I’ve slowly come to the realisation that for many Christians, the issue of justice is seen as something external to our faith. Many churches have standards lower than the world around us, and some act in a way that is in breach of common law. I think that late into 2009 its time to get real about this and set some non negotiable standards below which we will not go. The primary reason is our responsibility before God, and then of course our responsibility towards people. read more…
