Category Archives: Church

Towards the Religious North

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My friend Tim Chesterton has lived further north than anyone else I know – at Holman on Victoria Island off the north coast of Canada. At 70°43′ N that is further north, and much colder, even than the home of a Norwegian friend, Tromsø, at 69°40′ N. Even Tim’s current home of Edmonton is more than cold enough with its -29°C January temperature, although at 53°30′ N it is only a little further north than my home, Chelmsford, 51°44′ N. At this time of year I would feel more at home with David Ker and a real life friend of mine in South Africa. I don’t know exactly where he is, but she is on holiday in Cape Town, 33°55′ S, +28°C and sunny. Lovely!

Before I get carried away with degrees, let me get on to the real subject of this post …

Considering where he lives, it is not surprising that the “entirely arbitrary” name Tim has chosen to describe an attitude which he shares is “Religious North”:

Under the heading of ‘Religious North’, I’m going to put anyone who puts loyalty to Christ and his Church ahead of all other loyalties, and is willing to demonstrate that by the language they use and the love they demonstrate toward their fellow-Christians with whom they disagree on other issues.

He contrasts this with the “Religious South”:

Under the heading of ‘Religious South’, I’m going to put anyone who puts loyalty to a country, an ideology, or a cause ahead of loyalty to Christ and to fellow-Christians. The evidence for this will be that they reserve their choicest abusive language for fellow-Christians with whom they disagree, and spend more time promoting their favourite ideology than the gospel of Christ and his kingdom.

I’m afraid that I have come across far too many religious southerners in the blogosphere – as well as some in real life, although any who find their way to my church soon walk out in disgust. The southerners I have come across tend also to be conservative, even fundamentalist. But as Tim points out there are also quite a few among so-called “liberals”, people who loudly proclaim their tolerance but are unable to tolerate criticism of their own position.

Tim concludes:

So – no more Religious Left or Religious Right, thank you very much! I repudiate both those labels; they have never been true for me, and they never will be. I’m now a card-carrying member (and if there are, in fact, membership cards, I’ll be the first card-carrying member!) of the Religious North! Anyone care to join me?

Indeed! I have already signed up, along with a few others in Tim’s comment thread. Anyone else care to join? But I did so on condition that it doesn’t commit me to the frozen geographical north!

However, we need to make sure that we don’t spend more time promoting the Religious North ideology than the gospel of Christ and his kingdom. Rather, we must demonstrate our love even towards religious southerners.

"The Revolutionary Christ has been disguised as a moral policeman"

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These words were written by Geoffrey Studdert Kennedy in 1919, but could have been written about the church today (thanks to Phil Groom for the quote, taken out of his context):

the Christianity which should have turned the world upside down has been turned into a method of keeping it as it is and meekly accepting its wrong-side-upness as the discipline of Almighty God. The Revolutionary Christ has been disguised as a moral policeman.

Sadly too many people, when confronted with preachers of “The Revolutionary Christ”, respond as moral police officers. Let the readers of my Todd Bentley posts understand. But this is not about him, it is about what has been wrong with the church for at least a century and still is today.

Lessons for the church from the Todd Bentley affair

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In a comment in response to my question “Why does Todd Bentley inspire such hatred?”, Tim Chesterton has asked

why Todd Bentley inspires so much interest – especially in you.

Along the same lines, in a private comment I received by e-mail a suggestion was made that I am being neither gentle nor wise in focusing so much on Todd.

The second commenter certainly has a good point: it is probably not helping Todd’s restoration to discuss the matter too much or to treat him as a celebrity. And in answer to Tim I wrote:

Tim, I don’t blame you, if you are not interested in Todd. But a lot of people are, as I can tell from my statistics. And many of them are writing a lot of nonsense about him. By contrast, most of my other posts, even on controversial subjects, attract few readers or commenters. I don’t blog to get attention, but I don’t want to bore people by writing posts which no one reads.

I stand by that, but I must also admit that this is only part of the story. Another aspect is that recently I have not been inspired to blog much about anything else.

But there is more than that to it. Some people may think of the Lakeland revival as something inconsequential, last summer’s fad which can and should be forgotten quickly in a new year with its new challenges. But to me Lakeland, and Todd Bentley’s part in it, was something of real significance for God’s purposes for the world, or at least for the western part of it.

So, with apologies to Tim and the other commenter, I will write one more post about Todd, bringing out some lessons for the church from this affair. I won’t promise to write no more about Todd after that, but I will try to keep it to a minimum.

I believe that at Lakeland God was testing his church, at least in the West, to see if it is ready for the next step in his purposes. Here are some things that he wanted to find out:

  • Is the church forgiving, of sins committed by people before they become believers?
  • Is the church accepting, of people who don’t wear the expected clothes, etc?
  • Is the church characterised by grace, or does it legalistically apply Old Testament rules out of context for example about tattoos?
  • Is the church listening to everyone, or only to those of a certain background and age?
  • Is the church teachable, or does it only accept teaching from those who confirm the doctrinal prejudices it already holds?
  • Is the church non-judgmental, or does it reject people quickly because of unsubstantiated allegations against them?
  • And perhaps most importantly, is the church open to the work of God the Holy Spirit, or is it quick to claim that certain manifestations and ministry styles cannot be from him?

Of course God knew what his church was like. But did the church? Did it know that on each of these issues, when brought to its attention in the person and ministry of Todd Bentley, it would to a large extent be found wanting? Yet it was found wanting: Todd’s childhood sins, unconventional clothing, tattoos and youth (but he is as old as Jesus ever was on earth) were presented as disqualifying him from ministry; his teaching was rejected as novel without being given a proper hearing; his recent sins have been exaggerated and considered unforgivable; and his ministry style has been lampooned and rejected as not genuinely from God.

In the story of the woman taken in adultery (John 8:1-11), although she was actually guilty, in response to Jesus’ words the scribes and the Pharisees dropped their stones of accusation against her. In the case of Todd Bentley, although there is in fact no evidence of physical adultery but only an admission of an “inappropriate relationship” and a divorce action, Todd’s accusers in the church are not prepared to listen to the one they call “Lord” and drop their accusations. I think the scribes and Pharisees get the better of this comparison.

God grieves over the state of the world, lost in sin and shame. He is looking for a church, a people, who he can use to reach it with the message of the gospel. But mostly he finds professing Christians who are self-righteous, legalistic and unwilling to accept anything or anyone not meeting their own expectations. He longs to revive his church and use it to bring in multitudes of the lost. But he cannot do so while it is led by such people, people who would not accept the lost if they did come in. This is a time for the church to repent, before God brings his judgment on it, discarding the old wineskins and creating new ones to contain his new people.

God is alive & well …

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From the latest presentation on my church‘s electronic noticeboard (a plasma screen inside the foyer but visible from the street), which we had long before digital picture frames became the latest in gadget:

God is alive & well

If you don’t understand the context here, or recognise the bus in the top right insert, see this post by David Keen, and his first and second roundups of reaction.

Personally I think the “Agnostibus” campaign is great because, just like the Alpha campaign with its questions like “Is this it?” and “What am I doing here?”, it makes people think. But I doubt if it will stop anyone worrying.

The Agnostibuses are not only in London; I saw some a few days ago in Dawkins’ home town of Oxford. But there are none in my home town of Chelmsford, only buses asking those Alpha questions.

UPDATE 2nd February: This slogan can now be seen on the side of a real bus, courtesy of this site:

bus-god-is-alive-well

Church leaders and the steward of Gondor

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John Meunier has an interesting and provocative post in which he compares church leaders with the steward of Gondor, in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. He suggests that, just as the stewards of Gondor started to see themselves as kings,

the leaders of the church start to imagine they are Christ. …

It was this impulse and arrogance that caused the Reformation. But the Reformers were just as eager to become the voice of Christ themselves.

The stewards’ pretensions didn’t last long when the true king arrived. I hope that not many church leaders have this kind of attitude. But any who do will find themselves embarrassed, to say the least, when Jesus returns in his glory and settles accounts with them. Tolkien was surely aware of what Jesus had to say about stewards (the KJV rendering at least) such as Luke 12:42-46.

Recession Epiphany

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Dave Faulkner, a Methodist minister in my home town of Chelmsford (but we have met only very briefly), writes an interesting post for the feast of Epiphany (today), about the recession and what the church can learn from it. He suggests that the companies which are failing at the moment are marked by vision which is either too broad (Woolworths) or too narrow (Waterford Wedgwood).

He characterises Woolworths as

Something of a hotch-potch in recent years, doing several things reasonably but none of them well.

And that makes them sound like many churches. They try to do this, that and everything, because X, Y and Z are all things that a church should supposedly do, but they overstretch themselves and do few of them well.

By contrast, Waterford Wedgwood are in trouble because

Who’s buying bone china tea services any more? …

All of which implies for me that a company like Wedgwood has had too narrow a vision. … And maybe that too has been a problem in many churches. … I’m not arguing for some corporate-style approach to vision and mission statements, but I am saying that a time of crisis is one that should make us remember the basics of why we exist.

If companies are to succeed in a time of recession, they need a clear vision and focus which needs to be for what their customers need. And, in a time when many parts of the Christian church are in decline, if local congregations are to succeed they also need a clear vision and focus. If they continue to do just what they have always done, or try to do everything without focus, very likely they will not survive – although churches tend to fade away whereas companies suddenly collapse. But with the right vision and focus, truly given by God, even in these times churches can and will survive and grow.

Another Kirk on the church

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Not long ago I quoted Andrew Kirk on Mission Under Scrutiny. Now I will quote another namesake; ASBO Jesus puts these words in the mouth of Captain Kirk of Star Trek on arriving in a church:

What is… this… alien place… with it’s… strange… customs… and ways?

Follow the link to see his crew’s responses, starting of course with:

It’s life, Jim, but not as we know it. …

Mission Under Scrutiny

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Eddie Arthur, posting from a remote mountain location in the Philippines, is in danger of losing his humourless readers with a picture and references to Starbucks before they get to the meat of his post – and then in danger of losing his more humour-loving readers by presenting this meat as “One last thing”. So I will rescue this strong meat from oblivion by reposting it here.

The meat in question is a quote from Mission Under Scrutiny by J. Andrew Kirk. (The author is not a close relation of mine, but there is some evidence that we have a common ancestor in or before the 15th century.) Here is what Eddie quotes, complete with typos and missing question marks, understandable from a jet-lagged visitor to the Philippines:

… how well does it (the church) communicate with its context? Is the church reviewing the efficacy of its attempts to transmit the good news of Jesus Christ within its neighbourhood? How aware is it of the distance between the Gospel message and the beliefs and values of most citizens today. Has it really taken on board the fact that the vast majority of people living in Europe now are no longer lapsed Christian believers, or even the un-churched in the sense that belonging to the church would still be culturally appropriate? Neither Christian belief or moral values nor belonging to a faith community are remotely within their horizon. There is little or no residue of a common language that could form a bridge between the Jesus story and their own stories. The church often gives the impression that it is content to minister to an ever dwindling population. Christians have to learn how to make the unchanging message of salvation in Christ meaningful to generations preoccupied with other concerns. (p.95)

Indeed! Too often our churches here in the UK, even those like mine which have a heart for evangelism, content themselves with evangelistic methods which work reasonably well with the minority of the population with some church background. An explicit example is “Back to Church Sunday”, but even initiatives like the Alpha Course tend to assume some kind of Christian upbringing. Methods originating in the USA, which so often attract cult followings over here, tend to have this problem simply because in the USA, at least in the more conservative parts of it, it is still possible to assume much more Christian background than is possible here in England.

These methods do bear fruit among people brought up in contact with the Christians, and so are pronounced successful and embraced by many churches. But they barely touch the growing majority of our nation who have no Christian background at all, and are often in fact repelled by anything they do see of church culture, whether traditional or modern style, as being completely outside their cultural expectations.

I don’t know how we can reach such people, but the first step towards doing so is to recognise that even our apparent success stories are in fact failures.

UPDATE 5th November: as Eddie tidied up his typos, I have updated this to his tidied up version.

A Complementarian's Disappointment with CBMW

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Here is something which I would have posted (perhaps without the final comments!) at Complegalitarian, except that last week moderator Wayne Leman turned it into a non-blog by disabling all comments. As I have written before, I have no interest in so-called blogs which are in fact the blog owner’s monologue.

“Blue with a hint of amber” blogger David Matthias writes of his Disappointment with CBMW, The Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, whose website he reads regularly (although he doesn’t seem to have discovered their real full name). As David is an elder in a Newfrontiers church it probably goes without saying that he is a complementarian. But it is interesting to see how critical he is of the complementarian position as promoted by CBMW.

His main issue with CBMW seems to be over their teaching on authority, an issue I am continuing to look at in relation to my review of Reimagining Church (I haven’t given up on it!). David quotes from a CBMW article which argues that women should not preach because that implies that they are exerting elder authority. But, as he notes, his church allows visiting preachers even if they are not elders of any church, because they are acting under the authority of the elders. In a particular case a visitor

did not preach as an elder, he preached as a servant to God’s word and our church vision laid down by our eldership. Did we falsely allow him to exert elder authority by letting him speak?

Isn’t this what preaching should always be like? So, to take David’s argument to a conclusion which he doesn’t quite spell out: why shouldn’t even those who believe in male eldership allow the elders to delegate authority to preach to their own church members, male and female?

David also criticises CBMW’s blanket condemnation of feminism, pointing to the clear benefits brought by some varieties of feminism. He finishes with this discussion of another passage from the CBMW site:

“Perhaps more than ever before, it is clear that this debate is unfolding as a contention about the authority of scripture itself.” is a difficult statement to read. I appreciate greatly the work of Grudem, Piper et al and find is sad that CMBW is drawing a line where it is. It excludes any that uphold male headship but define it more softly, and uphold male eldership but define church preaching differently, and it appears to label anything not four square in its position “egalitarian” and then imply that egalitarianism is the product of feminism, and feminism and christianity should not be mixed.

That is a massive wedge to drive between two churches who believe in male headship but define it slightly differently.

David, it is interesting to see how you are becoming disillusioned with complementarianism. Perhaps you will soon also see the weakness of CBMW’s basic argument for male headship. It seems that they are already labelling you as an egalitarian. How long will it be before I too can welcome you to the egalitarian camp? 😉

Where I can get married

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As of today the Church of England’s rules on weddings have been relaxed, as the Church Times blog and the BBC report. The result at least for some people is an explosion of choice. For example, if I had got married yesterday, to a woman living in the same parish as me, I would only have been allowed a wedding in just this one parish. But as of today I have the choice of something like 16 parishes where I could be married, quite apart from ones for which my (hypothetical, sadly) bride might qualify:

  • where I was baptised: one parish
  • where I was prepared for confirmation: one other parish (sadly the location of the confirmation service itself doesn’t seem to count, as that might qualify me for a wedding in Canterbury Cathedral)
  • where I have lived for six months or more: about ten more parishes in England (I don’t think overseas locations count)
  • where I have regularly attended public worship for six months or more: no more parishes as I have usually attended church in the parish where I live
  • where one of my parents has lived for six months or more in my lifetime: two more parishes
  • where one of my parents has regularly attended public worship for six months or more in my lifetime: no more parishes as they also attended their local church
  • where my parents or grandparents were married: two more parishes plus one overseas location – but this one has the most interesting implication: I think my maternal grandparents were married in Lincoln Cathedral, in March 1912, so (if I can prove it) even nearly a century later I may now have the right to be married there!

The underlying reason for this change of rules is no doubt an attempt to reverse the decline in church weddings in recent years. In connection with this the Church of England has launched a new church wedding website. One major reason for this decline has been the fairly recent change allowing state weddings almost anywhere, except in churches. This has led to a boom in weddings at country houses and other picturesque locations. I suppose that the Church of England hopes that now people whose local church is not photogenic will find a prettier church to which they have some links rather than go for a state wedding. But it may lead to a loss of weddings in less attractive churches as well as a boom in picture postcard villages.

I remember times, nearly 30 years ago, when the attractive old parish church in the parish where I still live was in use for a wedding every hour on the hour on summer Saturday afternoons. This conveyor belt was kept going with threats that if brides arrived more than ten minutes late their wedding would be cancelled. These days far fewer weddings are held there. But the clergy take their responsibility for each couple very seriously, taking them through a meaningful marriage preparation course. They would not now want to be inundated with the extra task of taking numerous weddings for couples whose only interest in the church is as a pretty background for their photos. But then couples like that, faced with the required course, might well look elsewhere. However, it may well be that these new rules will bring to our parish couples who have a genuine desire to make God part of their marriage. If so, there is a real hope that through the preparation course and the service they can be brought closer to God. And if this happens with just one couple it will make the extra hard work worthwhile.