Last night, on the BBC’s flagship news commentary programme Newsnight, experienced presenter Kirsty Wark came up against Tommy Robinson, far right activist (co-founder of the English Defence League, the European Defence League, Pegida UK and a writer for Rebel Media). The segment was concerning the Finsbury Park mosque murder whereby a far-right anti-Islamist, Darren Osborne, mowed down […]
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http://www.patheos.com/blogs/tippling/2018/02/02/tommy-robinson-islamic-extremism-bbc/
Friday, 2 February 2018
Thursday, 1 February 2018
Out, damned s**t! Out, I say!
This morning I had an experience that reminded me of an old and dear friend, who shall remain nameless for reasons that will soon become apparent. I was finishing my normal morning regimen…floss, brush and elimination, when – how to put it delicately – repeated flushes did not clear the toilet bowl. My friend wrote […]
from
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/tippling/2018/02/01/damned-st-say/
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http://www.patheos.com/blogs/tippling/2018/02/01/damned-st-say/
Six Ways to Support and Challenge Those Who Leave Church
How churchgoers can journey with their “done” brothers and sisters.
I met recently with an old friend of mine. We’d gone to church together two decades ago and formed a relationship in the trenches of nursery duty and Vacation Bible School. After running through the menu of family and mutual friend updates, I asked her where she was attending church these days. She paused for a moment, as if to steel herself for the response. “Nowhere,” she said.
She needn’t have feared my reaction. After being burned by a string of fiery, painful church experiences, I understand the common struggle. “You’re not alone,” I said. “Please tell me your story.”
Statisticians tell us that most streams within the church in the US are in numerical decline. Most of us committed to a local church are seeing this happen in real time right before our eyes. Even if you happen to attend a congregation that is growing numerically, no doubt you’ve noticed others who are slipping out the exit door.
For many believers, toxic politics, institutionalized racism, and cover-ups of sexual and spiritual abuse have, like an eclipse, blotted out a clear view of Jesus. I suspect that for every person who leaves a church, there are three more “almost dones” hovering near the exit door. (One of them might even be you.) Some have hit a period of doubt or deconstruction in their faith, others may have outgrown their congregation, particularly if they attend a church focused on seekers and/or young families. Many others carry wounds from abusive or dysfunctional leaders and are triggered or re-injured by staying in the same setting, which was the case for my friend.
When someone departs a congregation, the “left behind” response from leaders and congregants ...
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http://feeds.christianitytoday.com/~r/christianitytoday/ctmag/~3/PMlkhdqODfk/six-ways-to-support-and-challenge-those-who-leave-church.html
Evangelism, Meet Soul Care
Why we need to love ourselves to effectively love our neighbor and share the gospel.
Sitting in a bookstore, engrossed in a book on Christian leadership, I barely noticed the man sitting across from me reading. I thought very little of him until I was repeatedly interrupted by a sense of the Holy Spirit stirring within.
“Talk to this man; he’s longing for me.”
Despite repeatedly trying to ignore this prompting, I couldn’t shake the feeling. I realized I’d reread the same sentence at least four times and might as well give in or leave the bookstore.
I struck up a conversation about the book he was reading. He was surprisingly open with his ideas and questions about God, and we were in the midst of discussing the forgiveness and love of God when, as if disgusted by himself, he said, “But you don’t even know the thoughts I’ve had about you before we were talking. God doesn’t forgive those kinds of thoughts.” Wait, what? As a woman in my 20s at the time, I had many acceptable responses to this sort of statement, including just leaving immediately. But almost to my surprise, something entirely unexpected came out of my mouth:
“God knows your thoughts. He’s not shocked or disgusted by you as a man. He knows what you really long for, and none of this is about me right now.”
I could respond to this uncomfortable admission because I, too, knew what it was to feel sinful and awkward in the presence of a loving God. My preparedness for this encounter had little to do with being some sort of evangelistic expert and more to do with my experience of God’s love. His love and kindness had led me toward much-needed repentance more times than I could ever recall. In that moment in the bookstore, I recognized that man’s words as indicative ...
from
http://feeds.christianitytoday.com/~r/christianitytoday/ctmag/~3/RY41ulE0NSw/evangelism-meet-soul-care.html
The Spirit-Led Leader
Part four of a new series
Early in my ministry, I was discipling a new Christian who had come out of a fairly rough background. He had a dramatic conversion to Christ and was growing well and addressing a lot of the issues he had in his life.
One day, he came to me and said, “Bob, I need to sell my boat.” “Okay,” I responded, to which he responded with energy, “No, Bob, you don’t understand. I used to go out on that boat and get drunk and do all kinds of things that I’m now ashamed of. That boat is an idol to me.”
At his request, I prayed with him that God would sell his boat without any advertising or word-of-mouth. To my amazement, God did so within the next two weeks. I was stunned. I celebrated with him, but I was so theologically devastated that I had to cancel all the rest of my appointments that afternoon to process the experience.
I thought about it for a long time and I realized one important truth: I could have discipled that guy until Jesus comes back again and I would never have addressed the number one lordship issue in his life. I realized right then that I was not smart enough to be the Holy Spirit. The best I can do is to help people listen to what God is doing in their life and then to cooperate with the Holy Spirit to see God’s agenda become a reality.
That was a life-changing, paradigm-shifting moment for me: recognizing the role of the Spirit in our lives. It has profound implications for how we listen to God and others, how we trust God and others, and how we see our own role. The best leaders in ministry today don’t lead from a place of self, but by listening to the voice and direction of God.
The world sees as leaders those who are full of confidence in themselves, who ...
from
http://feeds.christianitytoday.com/~r/christianitytoday/ctmag/~3/FlGOae7NspE/spirit-led-leader.html
Interview: How Young African Americans are Fusing Faith and Activism
And how the church can help nurture their desire to integrate spirituality and social justice in fresh ways.
In the course of her research into adolescent spiritual development, Almeda Wright has heard numerous stories and testimonies from young African Americans experimenting with new ways of relating spirituality to their protests against racial injustice. Her book, The Spiritual Lives of Young African Americans, explores what this population can teach the wider body of believers about integrating faith and activism. Chicago-based writer Nilwona Nowlin spoke with Wright, assistant professor of religious education at Yale Divinity School, about how the church can better equip, engage, and embrace young African Americans in their faith journeys.
How would you sum up your work studying the spirituality of young African Americans?
I’m trying to give serious consideration to the voices and stories of young African Americans, who are facing all kinds of challenges. But in the midst of those challenges, they have something to teach Christians and the world at large: a way of being Christian that requires us to rethink some of the disconnects between our love of God and our love of justice, or our ability to talk about personal spirituality without also talking about social transformation.
For me, that’s the core. I use a lot of terms like “pushing them towards an integrated spirituality” or “pushing us to a vision of abundant life.” But at the core, without using that Christianese, I’m really saying that in order to walk with African American youth and young adults in more helpful ways, we need to bring these realms back together.
from
http://feeds.christianitytoday.com/~r/christianitytoday/ctmag/~3/cjblSvpscWw/how-young-african-americans-are-fusing-faith-and-activism.html
God’s Letter to Us
How evangelicals read Scripture.
It nearly goes without saying that evangelicals have a special relationship with the Bible. It’s not the same as their personal relationship with Jesus Christ, but it can sometimes come close.
For one thing, when we talk about “the Word,” it is sometimes hard to tell if we’re talking about the Bible or the person of Jesus, for we generally capitalize Word in either case. And we tend to talk about the Bible as if it is a living thing, as per 2 Timothy 3:16: “All Scripture is God-breathed.” It harkens to Genesis, when God “breathed into [Adam’s] nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being” (Gen. 2:7).
As such, we talk about a Bible passage that “speaks to us” or about how we “heard God” as we read a passage of Scripture.
To remind us of the personal nature of the Bible, we often remind one another that, as much as anything else, the Bible is to be read as a personal letter from God to us. This analogy was eloquently advocated by the philosopher Søren Kierkegaard:
My listener, how highly do you value God’s Word? … Imagine a lover who has received a letter from his beloved. I assume that God’s Word is just as precious to you as this letter is to the lover. I assume that you read and think you ought to read God’s Word in the same way the lover reads this letter.
In another essay he casts a distrustful eye to learned commentaries—in his view, they often obscure the plain meaning of the text as they explore the linguist and historical context of a passage. Instead, he says,
Each of us should read this letter solely as an individual, as a single individual who has received this letter from God. In reading ...
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http://feeds.christianitytoday.com/~r/christianitytoday/ctmag/~3/zt9anyfU5ig/gods-letter-to-us-evangelical-distinctives.html
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