Rupert’s Blog

Tony, over at his blog, has posted some predictions for the Scottish Elections on Thursday, and he has challenged others to do the same. He has promised to buy the winner a pint (but that may just be a promise for his friends, but you could always try your luck!). I am not sure how he is going to work out who has the best prediction … no doubt there will be some trickery and he will wrangle out of buying anyone anything!

So here are my predictions:

• I don’t think SNP will do as well as the polls are predicting … a small last minute swing in the polls makes a pretty large difference, and I don’t think they will get the largest number of seat.
• Labour will do badly, but will benefit from the “anyone but SNP” vote.
• Lib Dems will be King makers, but I don’t think they will gain any seats.
• The Tories will be invisible and the Cameron effect will have no effect north of border (or north of Watford for that matter!).
• I think the Greens will do well, and I am predicting they pick up a number of seats.
• The only independent or small party that I think will win a seat will be Margo MacDonald (Independent), with Scottish Socialists, Solidarity, and Christian parties picking up no seats at all!

So I think the seats will go:

• Labour: 43 (-7)
• SNP: 42 (+15)
• Lib Dem: 17 (no change)
• Tories: 16 (-2)
• Green: 10 (+3)
• Independent: 1 (-3)
• SSP: 0 (-6)

[Update:  A new poll was released yesterday (Tuesday 1st May) showing support for SNP had fallen and Labour had increased.  SNP still marginally ahead, and according to this poll would win by 1 seat.  I may be a bit light for the Lib Dems, but feeling quite confident about the top two … I’m looking forward to that pint, that Tony has definately promised in his comments … maybe it wasn’t quite as random as pinning a tail on donkey! :smile: ].

So who I am going to vote for?
Read the rest of this entry »

After a break last week, I am continuing the series on Missional Church. You can read Part 1, 2, and 3here.

This is a summary of the first part of what I was preaching yesterday, as we are continuing a series on “Thinking Missionally”. Please do leave a comment - I would interested in getting your thoughts, so we can learn together. Part 2 tomorrow. Come on, heckle the preacher!

What is the Gospel?

As we thinking about participating in God’s Mission (Missio Dei), it is important to ask: what is God’s mission? Otherwise we may find that we are working at odds with God, and that doesn’t really seem a great idea!

So what is the Good News? Often we have defined it as forgiveness of Sins: we are sinners and we need to repent to have our sins forgiven so we can go to heaven. But this seems such a narrow view of the gospel, according the Bible, and especially the teaching of Jesus.

When Jesus talks about the good news, he consistently talks about the good news of Kingdom (for example Mt 4:23,24; Mt 9:35; Lk 4:43). There is clearly some great thinking and work being on done on what the good news of the Kingdom means. People like Steve Chalke, Brian McLaren, Dallas Willard, NT Wright, Walter Wink, Walter Brueggemann have been writing about this.

McLaren (I gather drawing heavily from NT Wright) paints a picture in his book, The Secret Message of Jesus, of the fervoured expectation of the Kingdom of God being established at the time. The Roman empire was the occupying force (and were probably as unpopular as the US/UK occupying forces in Iraq!). The expectations of the Messiah to come and establish the Kingdom was focused on removing the Roman occupiers.

Within in Israel, there were four different strategies on how to establish the Kingdom, from four of the different religious groups at the time:

Zealots: We must establish the Kingdom by force. There is no other way we are going get rid of the Roman: we are going to need to kill a few people.

Heriodians (& Sadducees): To survive we must make the best of the situation and work with the Romans. Don’t rock the boat, cooperate. Anything else is suicide.

Essenes: We must get away from the corrupt society, form our own community, and isolate ourselves from the Romans and everyone else.

Pharisees: The Kingdom will only be established as we purify ourselves; we must obey the Bible more rigorously; there must be more righteous people and fewer sinners. Then God will deliver us.

Into the cultural mix, comes Jesus. People would have been asking: which group does Jesus fit in? How does he propose we establish the Kingdom of God? But he didn’t fit any of their boxes. Instead he proposed a totally different view of the Kingdom, who it was for, how to bring it about, & how to enter it:

1. The Kingdom is NEAR
2. The Kingdom of Shalom
3. The Kingdom is radically inclusive
4. Entering the Kingdom: repent

I will flesh these points out over the next few days. So if you have a comment on these hold on until the next post.

But just now, lets think about the four different groups above. As I reflected on those groups, and how each viewed establishing the Kingdom, I began to see that the church had used all four techniques (at various points in history) to bring about the Kingdom. For example, I have heard it said on numerous occasions that if we would only purify ourselves, then God will send revival … sounds rather like the Pharisees to me? Or there are (and certainly have been) some real “fruitcakes” who think that by violence we will bring the Kingdom … think crusades & bombing abortion clinics…

What about you? Have you experience Christian groups trying to established the Kingdom in any of these ways?

Or perhaps you think that McLaren’s analysis is wrong?

Tags: Brian McLaren, Missional Church, NT Wright, Steve Chalke, The Secret Message of Jesus, Kingdom of God, Kingdom, Gospel, Missio Dei

Paul, over at One for the Road, has kindly posted about a couple of questions I asked in the comments on a previous post of his. We were talking about our view of church, and how positive or pessimistic we should be. Paul and I weren’t in reality that far apart in our views, but in that context I was arguing to retain a slightly more positive view. I feel passionately about this, as I do believe the church is unique in our society and has something very valuable to offer. Often though, we don’t really believe we do, and so we put ourselves down …

So go on over to Paul’s post on positive church and leave your experiences of church …

Oh, the two questions:

1. What makes us, as Christians, different to people who aren’t following Jesus?

2. What do we have to offer our society or communities?

[The picture is his too … I just flagrantly nicked it!]

Tags: Positive Church, Church, Paul Mayers

I remember watching Tony Blair on TV, talking with a some members of the “public”, trying to convince them that the war on Iraq was needed. It would be easy, and politically correct to say that I didn’t believe him, but I did. I came away thinking: he knows something that he can’t tell us; that is why he is arguing for us to go to war.

I remember doing a sermon in church about just war, and would a war in Iraq qualify as a just war. I was a little troubled that all diplomatic channels hadn’t been exhausted, but it seemed to fit many of the other criteria. And anyway Saddam was a bad man … the world would be safer place if he was no longer around.

I remember watching the iconic pictures of the statue of Saddam Hussein being felled, the Iraqi people taking their shoes off and hitting the statue with them (the equivalent of our spitting on the statue). I remember thinking that maybe it was all worth it after all … the war had been won, Saddam had gone (or at least been toppled), the country would be better.

I remember watching the news when Saddam was captured, disheveled, gray, thin, and unkempt, with US soldiers looking in his mouth. Now it would be better. Now there was no chance of him returning. Now the country could move on.

I admit it; I am one of the many people (the percentage of people now against the war has increased by over 20%) that wasn’t really against the war, but now clap every time someone says in a political debate that we should never have gone into Iraq. I was wrong. Good start … maybe a very good start if some of our politicians could do that. But what do we do about Iraq? Stay in … after all we created the mess? Pull out … we are now just making it worse? Just now I am not sure any politician is making much sense, as they generally argue for one or other, and neither options is looking that great.

But Tony Campolo is making a lot of sense. His piece is the first thing I have read that I think this could just work. He suggests a brilliantly creative way of maybe undoing some of the wrong of the past few years: it fits with my Christian morals and values, it seeks to bring restoration to Iraq and it acknowledges that many of us weren’t against the war at the beginning, but often have conveniently forgotten that.

Go on read what Tony Campolo has to say, and then leave a comment here as to what you think. Hopelessly unrealistic or a voice of reason?

Tags: Iraq War, Tony Campolo, Just War, Tony Blair

I will continue the posts on missional church later this week, but wanted to highlight a couple of posts by a new blogger from our church, Tony Pugh.

Last Sunday, in our church building, we hosted a election hustings for the forthcoming Scottish elections. Present were the usual parties (labour, conservatives, lib dems, and the SNP) but also present were the Green party, and TWO Christian Paries: the Scottish Christian Party and the Christian People’s Alliance.

Tony blogs about the hustings in his post: Christian Politics Revisted and an earlier post with some more information on what these two parties stand for. Great posts and worth reading for a Christian perspective on some of the political issues in the UK.

All this gets me thinking about the place of Christian parties. Many Christian get involved in politics, getting involved in mainstream parties, working within the political values of that party, but also seeking to influence the party with kingdom values. But can Christian really make a difference in these parties? Does there voice get submerged among all the other voices?

Others seem to want to set up a Christian party to fight for Kingdom issues. But how do you form a coalition of political thought around Kingdom issues? Can you really form comprensive policy or do you inevitably become a special interest group?

What do you think? Would you vote for a Christian party? Or a Christian from a party that you wouldn’t normally vote for? Or aren’t you that bothered?

For an inspiring story on how Christian can make an influence in a mainstream party see this post by Alan Jamieson. And you could also head over to Duncan McFadzean’s blog, to vote on his poll: he has promised to vote for the party that comes out top!

Tags: Scottish Elections, Politics, Scottish Christian Party, Christian People’s Alliance

Earlier in the week, I posted part 1 and 2 of a series on Missional Church, coming out a series we are doing in church, looking at the concept of Missio Dei - God’s Mission.

In this post, I want to look at the difference between a traditional approach to evangelism, and missional church.

A traditional approach to evangelism has prioritised the conversion of individual people: to become a Christian, be saved, be born again or other such phrases. Missional church sees the scope of God’s salvation much broader: the restoration of the whole cosmos.

Genesis 12 becomes the touchstone: God blesses Abraham, and in turn, he is to be a blessing to all nations. The whole world is to receive God’s blessing through Abraham and his offspring. We, as heirs to the promise of Abraham, are supposed to be a blessing to the world we live in: to serve, heal, restore, love, care, bless, encourage and be good news.

The story of Jesus healing ten people with leprosy (in Lk 17) is a great picture of missional church. These ten people cry out to Jesus, and they are healed as they go to present themselves to the priests (who would decide if they were healed and could rejoin society). Only one comes back to Jesus.

In the past I would have been focused only on the one person who came back to Jesus. After all, that is what really matters! But now, as I am beginning to see the redemptive work of Jesus in a much broader scope, I think Jesus was expressing the Kingdom for all 10. He was surprised that only one came back! But I don’t think he was going: “Darn it; I used all that power on 9 ungrateful sinners! What a waste! “

Of course (and please see my initial caveats in post 1), being connected to Jesus is the best thing for every human being. We rejoice when someone comes to Jesus; we rejoice too when the Kingdom is expressed in the blessing or healing of others.

I think there is massive change in mindset is missional church. We have often engaged in social action projects, but if we are being honest, mostly that has been with the aim of seeing people “get saved”. The world has accused us of ulterior motives … and most of the time, I think they were right! And in doing so, we have failed to represent the unconditional love of God.

To illustrate this point, here is a table from “The Shaping of Things to Come” by Frost and Hirsch. I have adapted slightly … they used the table in the book to describe bounded and center sets … I have used it to describe the difference between a traditional evangelical mindset, and the mindset of missional church:

This maybe overstating to make a point; it is pretty provocative. But I have found that I am now much more of the right than the left … what about you?

Tags: Evangelism, Missional Church, Emerging Church, Alan Hirsch, Bounded Sets, Centred Sets

Before I write any further posts, with more of the points I made while speaking last Sunday (which I rather elaborated on in the first post), I thought I had better clarify the diagrams from that post. I added them at the last minute (well I have to have an image, don’t I?), and didn’t really explain what they meant. Alastair, correctly picked me up on that, in the comments.

Brian McLaren, in his book Generous Orthodoxy, defines Missional Church as: “To be and make disciples of Jesus Christ in authentic community for the good of the world” … the gospel is not “all about me”.

It at this point that he introduces the two diagrams to show the difference between traditional evangelical Christianity and missional Christianity.

In this diagram, the traditional evangelical Christian, the “largest concern is me, my soul my personal destiny in heaven, my maturity and my rewards“. And so, says McLaren, people “won for Christ” with this gospel come to church asking: “what is in it for me?”. And so churches become gatherings of self-interested human beings, where it is incredibly hard to get people interested in mission. [for some great posts on being other-centred see this post from Paul Mayers].

This diagram starts with the saving love of Jesus for the world. The church is a missional community, joining Jesus in the mission of restoring the world, and He invites you and me to part of this community, “to experience His saving love and participate in it“.

This says McLaren, breaks down all false dichotomies like evangelism and social action, as both are integrated in the church expressing saving love for the world:

“Those who want to become Christians (whether through our proclamation or demonstration), we welcome. Those who don’t, we love and serve, joining God in seeking their good, their blessing, their shalom.”

I go: YES. What about you?

Other posts on missional church:

• Alastair has opened up the topic of what is the gospel, which I would like to post on soon too.
• Acts 29 has an article on What is Missional Church?
• Jamie Arpin-Ricci has a couple of posts on The Community Becoming Known as Missional.
• Alan Hirsch has some good thoughts on attractional vs missional debate, which he is partly responsible for after writing his book, The Shaping of things to Come.

What is Missional Church? - Part 3

What is Missional Church? - Part 4

Tags: Brian McLaren, Evangelism, Generous Orthodoxy, Missional Church

Yesterday, I was doing the second talk in a new series “Thinking Missionally”. It would be too long to do in one post, so I will do so it in several parts. Part 1 today …

What is Missional Church?

Is missional church just a new fad in the church? Is it another way of describing evangelism, just because we don’t like the “e-word”? Or is this a fundamental shift that God is bringing to the church in the way we see our mission?

Before I launch in let me state clearly a few things:

• I do believe that we need to look at our (God’s) mission in light of Scripture. We need to allow the grand story of God to shape our missiology. But let me also say: I think we have often so narrowed the gospel to make it something that Jesus never intended it to be.
• I do believe the greatest thing for every human is to connect with Jesus - the God who created the earth and the universe, who made us, and knows us. What a privilege! I just don’t like all the ways we have gone about achieving that (our methodology) in the evangelical world.
• I do believe the only way any human being can have access to God is because of Jesus … his birth, life, teaching, death and resurrection. This Christ event does stand at the epoch of human history.
• I do believe in sin … I personally prefer to call it selfishness, as I think that is more meaningful to most people, and is closer to real meaning of the word sin that we read in Scripture. It means we are self-centred; we know best; we want; we live for ourselves. It is part of the human condition. And it stops us moving towards God … by definition, how can we move towards God when we are ultimately focused on ME.

For me, missional church isn’t a new way of packaging evangelism. If we think we can carry on doing what we have always done, and call it missional, I think we have missed the point entirely. That doesn’t mean we ditch everything … but I do think it means we need to reassess what we do in light of an understanding of “Missio Dei” and missional church.

Understanding Missional Church starts with understanding God’s mission (Missio Dei). Right from Genesis 1 & 2, God is on a mission: a mission to create men and women to be fruitful, to rule or govern, to have a contribution, to care and tend the earth. I think you could sum this by saying that the mandate given to human beings was to be God’s ambassadors on Planet Earth. And this is before sin even came into the world! To narrow God’s mission to the rescue of human beings, guaranteeing them a place in heaven, in my opinion, ignores much of the wider scope of the Biblical narrative.

Evil and Sin are real aspects of the human condition. And they do stop us fulfilling God’s mandate. But dealing with sin is NOT the end of God’s ambition … but restoring humanity and creation to His original intent.

To further His mission, the Father sent the Son. It is whole scope of the Christ event that furthers the mission of the Father: the incarnation, the life, the teaching, and yes the cross and resurrection of Jesus. Jesus declares his mission from Isa 61 … which if we take in context of the whole chapter is about restoration. It is about setting people free, healing, binding up, release … but to rebuild, to restore, to renew (vs 6).

And so after the Christ event, the Father and the Son send the Spirit; and The Father, The Son and The Spirit sends the church, to be involved in what God is already doing. He is already working to bring restoration, and He invites us to be involved.

Here are a couple of images that show the difference between traditional church and missional church, from Brian McLaren’s book, Generous Orthodoxy:

Although these diagrams don’t completely depict the Missio Dei concept (where would you place God in these images?), the Missional Church diagram below does show the difference of our place in the grand scheme:

So what is our job?

Perhaps before I post some of my thoughts on that … how about we have a bit of discussion on this. What is God’s responsibility? What is ours?

And what do you make of my understanding of God’s mission?

Tags: Evangelism, Missional Church, Missio Dei, Brian McLaren, Generous Orthodoxy

This is the season when we remember the birth (opps), I mean rebirth (oops again), this time we’ll get it right: death and resurrection of Jesus. Well it easy to get confused by our Easters and Christmases … our chocolate and our presents. But if you are giving results of a survey, showing how few people know what Easter is about, you really should get it right! And that’s how Sommerfield supermarket got egg on its face.

So once you have read the papers, done the sudoko puzzles, if you have a spare few minutes on your hands, you might like to watch a couple of things on the TV. Firstly there is a TV premiere of “The Passion of the Christ” on Easter Day at 10pm … well after the watershed, as well it should be. No Easter bunnies here … in fact this really isn’t for the feint hearted at all.

I am told that films, when adapted for TV, often have their most gory moments removed; if you did that to this film the two and half hour extravaganza would be reduced to about 25 minutes. I have seen it once. I found it moving and incredibly hard to watch. I won’t be watching again this Easter.

If something a little more sedate appeals to you, then on Monday at 7pm on Channel 4, there is a program called The Bible Revolution, looking at 3 famous names from Church History: John Wycliffe, William Tindale and Thomas Cranmer who were all involved in translation and bringing the Bible into English. Should be interesting for all those who want to brush up on their history; but possibly not for the feint hearted either, as the program description says: … the hidden and often violent history of the English Bible …

May you have a peaceful Easter!

Tags: The Passion of the Christ, The Bible Revolution, Rod Little, Easter, Sommerfield, Channel 4

I thought I would post a quickie today, following on from a great comment by Alastair on my previous post, The Most Hated Family in America, where he was saying we need to listen to the criticism of people who aren’t Christians, and yet are the very people that church exists for …

Jim Henderson, founder of Off the Map, pays people who aren’t Christians to come to church! And it isn’t some devious attempt at conversion (somewhat surprisingly!). No in fact is a brilliant attempt at doing the very thing that Alastair is suggesting … not mystery shopping, but mystery churching! Paying someone to come to church, to get thier honest feedback on what they thought about the experience.

And now Jim (currently a Christian) and Casper (currently an athiest) have written a book about thier experience of visiting a number of different churches in the US, called Jim and Casper go to Church. You can read the introduction here, and the first chapter where they go to Rick Warren’s Church, Saddleback. It is an illumitating and fasinating read.

HT - Dave Faulkner

Tags: Jim Henderson, Off the Map, Jim and Casper