Tim Abbott

Jesus and the dinosaurs

Thanks to Dan Kimball for posting this.

We laughed. We nearly cried. We printed it out and stuck it on the wall.

I'm really not sure what to make of it. I think it could be subtitled, "where fundamentalism meets paleontology". But I'm not really sure.

Dan wonders whether this was truly from a Christian children's colouring book. I hope not...
I'm still confused...

You could also see Dinosaur Comics!

Todd Bentley

There's a lot of interest here in the revival meetings taking place in Lakeland, Florida, with Todd Bentley. Whilst most of the attention is on the big meetings, this video interview with Todd reveals the background to the man and this ministry.

Big meeting type stuff is always vulnerable to hype and 'crowd-think', and I'm sure there's a bit of this happening here. But my cynical side has been tempered somewhat.
Firstly by hearing Todd speak of his passion for a close relationship with God, regardless of whether it leads to any kind of ministry. Secondly, I've noticed in the meetings there is quite a focus on testimony from people who have seen God heal or work in their lives or the lives of their friends other than at the Todd Bentley meetings.

I still have an open mind about what's happening. But there are a few things I still hope to see:
- similar things breaking out elsewhere and perhaps in surprising settings/churches/streams
- people and churches touched by this move of God engaging with their communities, not just having amazing meetings
- people outside our churches being touched by the manifest presence of God as Christians offer to pray for them
- lasting fruit in people's lives

What are your thoughts about what's going on?

UPDATE 17 May: Honest questions about the Lakeland revival over at Charismamag - in a fast moving avalanche of views this seems, in my opinion a very balanced reflection which recognises gladly signs of revival whilst acknowledging sensitively the concerns of many.

Revision

The build up to GCSE exams has been creating huge demand for us to visit schools to take revision lessons. Typically these lessons have taken the form of a question and answer session, with students asking their own questions based loosely on the topics covered in their course (Belief in God, Life and death issues, Social harmony, Religion and the media etc). The idea is that our answers, and particularly the personal stories we share, will help students gain a better understanding about how the Christan faith works out in real people's lives and so give them examples they can use in the exam.

However, fun though these sessions often are, and as useful as they may be, we've always felt there must be a better way to help young people engage with the subject, explore their own understanding and still gain from our personal examples.

So this year we've been getting them to do more of the work. And it seems to be working.

After getting students to recap the different issues they have covered we ask them to work in groups to come up with the main points they'd include in answer to a question we set them. So, for example, "How and why do Christians use the Bible to make moral decisions?" In plenary discussion we then pool everyone's ideas and help them to reflect on them to ensure they can state their points well and back them up with examples from Christian teaching and, where possible, the Bible. If we have a personal story that's relevant to the question we share it as an example.
Some questions require both sides of an argument to be presented, for example, "Present the arguments for and against abortion with reference to the teachings of the Christian faith." Here we divide the class in half and get them to speak for each side of the argument. We've found it's worth emphasising that it's not a battle and that it's important to think through and listen to the other side of the argument as well as your own!

Clearly you can't cover the five or six topics that form the whole of an RE syllabus, but staff have been very appreciative of this approach as it not only revises the content of the subject, but also the method of religious enquiry and of the exams to come. Students have responded very well because they can get more involved than with a simple "they ask, we answer" format. And we get to be facilitators more than experts, though still with the fantastic opportunity to share real life stories of how God has made a difference in our lives.

Feminism and scripture

An interesting post from Scott McKnight exploring issues raised in John Stackhouse's new book Finally Feminist.
I've always said I don't have a problem with women in leadership. I know many women who are superb leaders, and quite a few men who are not. I think the issue is fundamentally about quality of leadership, not gender.
But as well as exploring the issue of gender and leadership, Scott identifies in Stackhouse some  important ideas that influence the way we approach our understanding of scripture. On the whole, I find them very helpful. As you might expect, there is a lively discussion following in his comments section.

In a similar vein, John Stackhouse on his own blog asks, Does the Trinity prove anything about gender? Not much.  He concludes:

Many theologians (I among them) strongly endorse circumspection when it comes to the attempt to use one of the great mysteries of the faith—the internal life of God in the Trinity—to shed light on some other doctrine. Some doctrines do require deployment of the doctrine of the Trinity to understand them properly—most notably Christology, soteriology, and pneumatology. But the question of gender seems to be one of those theological subjects not much improved by reference to the Trinity—as is evidenced by the fact that everyone seems to be able to selectively access this doctrine in the interest of contradictory understandings of gender.

Sharing the good stuff - links for today

I'm not sure my mind is in the best shape for blogging deep thoughts at the moment (see below), but I have been stirred and challenged by a few other bloggers recently, so here's the good stuff.

I'm not "so in love" with you
A few days ago I appreciated this from Matt Stone, citing a post by John Stackhouse picking up on the ongoing debate about expressions of love in worship songs. John's contribution is helpful for it's linguistic, cultural and theological perspectives.

Christian by nature?
Alan Hirsch has a fascinating exploration of the idea that people are, by nature, Christian, drawing on the thoughts of Leo Tolstoy and CS Lewis. I think I'd have some reservations about this being entirely valid because of the inherently Christian cultures and worldviews that Tolstoy and Lewis grew up in. But I confess to wondering similar thoughts when chatting to young people about life issues and God and finding within them a resonance with the Christian world view and often a warmness towards the idea of Christianity.

(Not) getting things done
I've been struggling lately with too many things to do and too little clarity about how to get them done. A kind of motivational paralysis which seeks to rob me of any real progress on pretty much everything (including blogging). Like some kind of outside observer of my own condition I've been aware that as a result I feel tired, when I have done little that's tiring, and that the solution lies in working out the next small step for each project or activity and getting it done.
I've been aware of David Allen's Getting Things Done method but never quite got around to looking into it - the past has left me with a dim view of most personal organisation methods.
So I was surprised to read Fernando's post about how it has helped him to change his approach to, well, getting things done. He writes, "I’m finally starting to remember what “completion” feels like and that’s something I haven’t felt in a long time," which is all the encouragement I need to give this a serious look.

You've just murdered Beethoven (or history, as it turns out)

We're doing a lesson with Year 9 groups at the moment on the Christian view of abortion which seems to be working very well with students and staff. Anyway, one illustration we're NOT using is the one that goes something like this...

If you knew a woman who was pregnant, who had 8 kids already, three who were deaf, two who were blind, one mentally retarded, and she had syphilis; would you recommend that she have an abortion?
If you answer "Yes" you've just murdered Beethoven.

There are two reasons why I've come to conclude that this is a ridiculous contribution to any discussion about abortion.

The first is that the story doesn't match the historical facts. Maria, Ludwig's mother, had seven children in total of whom only three survived infancy; tragic, but not uncommon for the time. Ludwig was the second born and the oldest of the survivors including his two younger brothers. Although his father is known to have been harsh and prone to drunkenness, there is no record of syphilis or mental illness in the family, though Ludwig later suffered from Hepatitis and probably from Systemic Lupus Erythematosus as well as the onset of deafness from around the age of 30.

The other objection I have is theological. At one level, aborting Ludwig would indeed have denied us the music of Beethoven. But it didn't. God has not given us the option of living in every possible outcome from every possible decision ever made in history. What if Hitler hadn't come to power? What if my parents hadn't divorced? What if that person had left for work 2 minutes later and not been killed because of a careless driver? What if Judas hadn't betrayed Jesus? What if...? Are God's plans so easily derailed by our stupidity, ignorance or rebellion? I somehow doubt it - I believe God is bigger than that, more capable, wiser and all this in ways that we can't fully fathom. Stuff happens and as it does, God walks with us shaping our lives for the best and guiding history towards his intended destination.
Did God have plans for any of Ludwig's brothers or sisters beyond a death in infancy? It's a huge question with profound implications - I don't know. But I suspect that the tragedy of their short lives did not limit God's plans for the rest of the van Beethoven family, for history or for us. God is not just creative, he's re-creative, or redemptive.

There are bigger questions here too, about the limits or otherwise of God's plans and the age old debate about how much is down to him and how much is down to us.

But please don't give me any nonsense about Maria van Beethoven aborting any of her children - that's just shredding good history for the sake of a shoddy illustration.

There's stuff about Beethoven here and here (as well as lots of other places!)
Also, check out truthorfiction.com for this and other possibly unreliable stories.

The God who is speaking

Just came across this quote from AW Tozer in Turnings by Guy Chevreau.

I believe that much of our religious unbelief is due to a wrong conception of and a wrong feeling for the scriptures of truth. A silent God suddenly began to speak in a book and when the book was finished lapsed into silence again forever. Now we read the book as a record of what God said when he was for a brief time in a speaking mood. With notions like that in our heads how can we believe? The facts are that God is not silent, has never been silent. He is by nature continuously articulate.

Guy goes on to say; "Because our heavenly Father loves us more than we will ever love him, he is forever caling and drawing us deeper in his love. This, more than any other call, is that which he is initiating, and to which he invites us to respond."

Living in the tension

Living in the Tension, over at Rick Meigs blog,Blind Beggar, highlights the challenge of inhabiting a world 'in between' where we can so easily polarise our thoughts and actions into one of two apparently contradictory opposites.

For example:
attractional vs. incarnational
decisions vs. disciples
models vs. movements
professional vs. passionate

to which I'd add:
retain vs. release
information vs. experience
relevant vs. radical

The theme is developed in the comments section.

Identifying these tensions can be really helpful, but the big challenge Rick highlights is how do we deal with living in the tension and how can we leverage the opportunities inherent in this tension?

Young Disciples - retain, release and incarnation

On Monday and Tuesday Tom and I went to LICC for a mini conference called "Young Disciples". It would be a mighty blog post indeed to report on all the wisdom that was shared and discussed, so I thought I'd try and share bite sized chunks of the things that made an impact on me.

First, a couple of questions that help us to discover the heart of what we're about. Do we 'convert' and then seek to 'retain', or do we 'train' so that we may 'release'? Yes, it seems so obvious. And for us as an inter-church ministry retaining is not an issue in the sense of some kind of church  membership. But we need to be sure that we're maintaining an emphasis on training and releasing and passing.
And if we're really honest, is the heart of our ministry Information or Formation? So much of what tends to happen in church is information (teaching and the like). And here we're much more culpable since one aspect of our work in schools is RE lessons and assemblies. We really want to be much more about formation, helping young people to grow to be disciple making disciples. So perhaps our occasional frustration with the more information driven aspects of our work is OK. And our joy at seeing young people grow in, and take responsibility for, their faith is understandable.

We often refer to Jesus incarnation as the primary model for good Christian youth work - the importance of entering into the lives and world of the young people we're working with. As The Message puts it, "The Word became flesh and blood and moved into the neighbourhood". But incarnation isn't an end in itself. Jesus came to usher in the Kingdom of God, to release a band of disciple making disciples, and ultimately to die on the cross before returning to the right hand of God, the first resurrection body to take a place in heaven. So I'm challenged about whether we too easily stop at being incarnational. It's a theme developed by Steve Griffiths in his new book, A Christlike ministry. I've bored people here for years by saying that schools work is a great place to start but a poor place to stop. Incarnational youth ministry needs to lead to discipleship. And that can include the work of discipling young people away from unhealthy lifestyles or attitudes. But surely our greatest goal is to help young people themselves become disciples of Jesus.

I guess the key indicator that discipleship is actually taking place is when people are confidently able to pass on what they've discovered to others. Now that is a challenge we want to rise to.

Links for today

In between a day in the office, moving the GSUS Live trailer (a day late, thanks to technical problems) and going out to a Youth Leaders gathering we're organising, here are a couple of links that caught my eye today.

Thinking Christian is Debunking the resurrection fable, in which people attempt to discredit Christianity by suggesting it's all a story made up years after the actual events too place. This is a popular suggestion from young people in school. TC's response, succinctly put and biblically supported shows that certainty in the resurrection can be reliably dated to within a handful of years from the event itself.

And in an entirely different vein... the church that featured in Four Weddings and a Funeral has started charging an entry fee. Regular parishoners can buy an annual pass! Read more here.