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5/31/2007 List of postings: Mar '07 to May '07During this period the blog recorded over 7000 page views ... thanks for reading, even though posts haven't been as regular as in the past! One of the most popular posts during this quarter was "Will you be my friend?" from March 29. You will also notice a series of posts on biblical theology on April 02, 10, 11, 16, 30 and May 15. I'm very passionate about biblical theology. Most people think they know BT, but don't really. So read up, and maybe even share it with your ministry team! March 2007
April 2007
May 2007
[ PS: during this period which were your favourite posts? which ones did you feel strongly about? ] 5/30/2007 GrievingBut grief can come about through other sorts of losses - such as the loss of a job, losing touch with your friends, losing the security of school, even realising that your dreams and ambitions will never be fulfilled.
These may not elicit as strong a reaction as the death of a loved one, but all of these losses may lead to us 'feeling bad' - and really, what we are experiencing is grief.
There are several stages to the grieving process, and the healthy thing to do is to move through the stages at a natural pace.
It's possible for people to get stuck in one part of the grieving process, or to try and hurry themselves through the grieving process - but this can lead to further problems.
A British study of 500 women over a twelve month period found that of those who were widowed, 36% reported being moderately ill, 32% reported being seriously ill, and only 32% reported being totally well. This is in contrast to unwidowed women, where 28% were moderately ill, only 2% were seriously ill, and 70% felt totally well. Obviously grief had a physical impact!
The study also found that the difference between those widows who felt totally well and those who felt ill was that they had been encouraged to grieve, and so had moved through the grieving process.
The following diagram, then, outlines the grieving process:
In order to grieve well, people move through these stages of grief:
What is most helpful for a grieving person is for them to be given permission to grieve - and not feel they have to bottle it all up and put on a brave face all of the time. It's helpful for them to know that "it's OK to cry" - and not as helpful for people to say, "don't cry!" And it's also helpful for them to have the opportunity to talk about their grief, and 'debrief' with someone.
[ PS: what else do you think is helpful to say/do to someone who is grieving? ] 5/26/2007 Super-selfishnessHave you noticed those advertisments on TV and billboards advertising Commonwealth Bank's retirement products? They show a 4WD heading off into the outback, with the words "Remember telling your kids to stay off the road? Retirement is payback time." Or a plane taking off, with the words "Remember when your kids threatened to run away? Retirement is payback time."
Pretty catchy stuff. Play on words, humour, and wonderfully evocative images.
And of course it's right for people to enjoy God's world and set aside time to rest. Paul says that God has created all things for our enjoyment (1 Tim 6), he is not a killjoy who wants to prevent us from enjoying his wonderful creation!
But what's really wrong about the advertising campaign is that vindictive selfishness is not only assumed, it's delighted in! And promoted!
I truly hope that Christians approaching retirement can see through this advertising with the eyes of Scripture. We are to grow in Christlikeness - and you should expect to see a Christian to become more and more loving, more and more gracious, more and more generous as they grow older as a Christian. We should expect to see that our senior ranks of Christians are models of godliness in every way. This is not always the case, and that's a real tragedy. That's because age does not always correspond to Christian maturity. But on the whole, this is what we should expect.
Yet in this ad campaign, the Commonwealth Bank is encouraging our retirees to grow more and more selfish and inward. To store away selfishly for themselves. To see retirement as "payback time"!
While people may retire from their businesses and careers, there are some things that you never retire from. We never retire from being husbands and wives to our spouses, for example. And we never retire from being active, growing Christians. And we never retire from godly stewardship of our gifts and resources.
And so not only does the ad campaign have a clever play on words. Not only has it got humour and evocative images - it also taps in to the vein of selfishness inside our fallen hearts. Very clever, Commonwealth Bank.
[ PS: this is not to say that we aren't to be prudent - we are. But the motivation is not selfishness. ] 5/24/2007 Spider-man the PelagianOne of the major themes running though the movie is the choice between good and evil. And one of Spider-man's affirmations towards the end of the movie is that we can all choose between good and evil.
This is illustrated multiple times throughout the movie (possible spoilers ahead):
While choices have consequences (both pleasant and unpleasant), Spider-man clearly affirms the ability of humans to choose. This actually makes Spider-man a Pelagian...
Pelagianism was taught by a british monk called Pelagius in the fifth century AD. Pelagius taught that original sin did not affect subsequent humans. Humans retain the ability to choose between good and evil - and only choose evil because of imitation. And so we can either choose to imitate Adam - or we can choose to imitate Christ.
Pelagianism was opposed by Augustine of Hippo, and was condemned as a heresy by two general councils. It is an overly optimistic view of human nature - one which is not supported by the Bible, which assess the hearts of humans as being "only evil all the time" (Gen 6:5).
However, the optimistic view of Pelagianism is obviously a comforting fiction for Hollywood, who continue to teach the essential goodness of humanity in this, and many other films.
While Pelagianism was rejected as a heresy at the Councils of Carthage and Ephesus, semi-pelagianism continued to be believed by some Christians. Semi-pelagianism teaches that Christians are significantly damaged by sin - but we still retain the abaility to make the first few steps towards God in faith. God then rewards the work of faith in the believer with salvation. Thus it can be seen that God's redemption is now necessary (as opposed to Pelagianism or, for that matter Spider-man 3, where no cross is necessary). However salvation is achieved by a combination of God's work (on the cross), and our work (of faith and repentance). Semi-pelagianism is alive and well today in Roman Catholicism and Arminianism.
Reformed theology, in contrast, notices that salvation is all of God's work. He is sovereign in salvation, and even in our response to him. In Philippians 2 Paul says that it is God who works in us "to will and to act according to his good purpose." That is, he is the one who works in us to engage our wills, and to make us act in a way pleasing to him. The will, the mind and the desires of the unregenerate person are all affected by sin - there is no way that a person can take the first step towards God.
So sorry, Spidey... when it comes to good and evil, you've got it all wrong.
[ PS: we will be starting a PTC group at ND in June, and might be doing Doctrine - come join us! ] 5/22/2007 Christianity as Relationship1. Christianity as a way of life
There are particular kinds of things that Christians do - a way of life, if you like. Christians are people who are generous, who are loving, who are kind, who are forgiving. And conversely, Christians are people who don't smoke, who don't swear, and who don't get drunk... This is the way of life that Christians seem to adopt.
And there's some truth in this. We are called to Christlikeness, we are meant to take off sin and increasingly put on the Lord Jesus Christ. But here you can see that the focus is on Christianity as a particular lifestyle - just like others might adopt other kinds of alternative lifestyles such as being a goth, or a greenie...
2. Christianity as a philosophy
Then again, there is a particular system of thought to Christianity - and for some, that's what Christianity is - a philosophical system that we believe and with which we understand the world. Our system of thought has much to commend it - it is comprehensive, coherent, consistent and congruent (to use the categories of David Wolfe's Epistemology). When we talk with people who come from other philosophical systems, we urge them to adopt our worldview.
And again there is truth to this - there is a rigorous system of beliefs to Christianity. But here you can see that the focus is on Christianity as a worldview, a system of beliefs, a philosophical system - just like others might have their Marxist or postmodern philosophies. Or be a Liberal or Democrat.
3. Christianity as joining a community group
And for still others, Christianity is about joining a community group. And so it's all about attending the weekly meetings (called church), participating in the discussion groups (called Bible studies), befriending others in the group (we call them our brothers and sisters). And we invite outsiders to join our community group (we call that evangelism).
And of course when we become Christians, it's true that we aren't saved as individuals - we become part of God's new community. But here you can see that the focus is on Christianity as a community group - just like Rotary, or the Scouts, or a soccer club - it's just that the things that bind us together, the activities that we do together are different.
4. Christianity is a relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ
However the centre of Christianity is actually relationship - we first and foremost come in relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. We aren't just living by a set of rules, we are following a person. We aren't just ascribing to a set of beliefs, we are being obedient in seeing things his way. And we aren't just joining yet another community group, we are meeting with his people, and encouraging one another to follow him more carefully.
Our new relationship with Jesus as our king endows discipleship with a seriousness and a necessity. Because he is interested in how we are following him! And when friends from church are growing slack, it to their king that they are turning their backs. It's not as though it's alright for some people to be 'more committed' than others. If Christianity was merely a way of life, a philosophy, or joining a club, that might be ok. But there really is no alternative when it comes to living under our king.
[ PS: have you been inadvertantly thinking of Christianity as merely a way of life, a philosophy, or a club? ] 5/15/2007 Biblical theology and Children's ministryWhy are people wary of using biblical theology for children's ministry? I think that there are several reasons why children's ministries have been slow to pick up on biblical theology.
Firstly, biblical theology seems too intellectually challenging for children. "Sure I know it's the right way to handle the Old Testament- but it's just too complicated for the kids." They can understand the simple concrete things such as "being like Moses" - but forget about dealing with more abstract ideas!
And secondly, we end up with moralising applications simply because that's how a lot of off-the-shelf teaching packages draw out the application. We buy the material, and assume that it should be OK. Add that with teachers who are quite busy and don't have the time to prepare their own material, and you understand the problem.
The second reason is obviously not a good reason at all. Whether we are teaching children or adults, we have a responsibility to handle God's word carefully. And much more so when it comes to children! Rather than taking less care with children's ministry, we should actually be taking more (Luke 17:1-2). Children depend a lot more on the discernment and exegesis of their older teachers, than will a university-educated Bible study group.
But what about the first reason? Is biblical theology simply too challenging for children? Jean Piaget pointed out that children move through different stages of cognitive development - and in particular they do move from a concrete (concrete operational) to a more abstract stage (formal operational). Isn't biblical theology too abstract then, for children to handle?
I think not.
You see, in God's revelation throughout the Bible, he has actually built in concrete ways for people to understand the abstract redemption that he effects in the cross of Christ. In fact this is what is going on throughout the whole of the first epoch of biblical theology. The concrete people, things and events of Israel's history serve to teach God's people about the reality he would one day effect in Jesus Christ.
The sacrifices are concrete and visual depictions of substitutionary atonement. The exodus is a concrete and visual depiction of the redemption God brings. Being sent outside of the camp becuase you were ritually unclean is a concrete and visual depiction of how sin makes us unfit for God's presence. And there are heaps more!
As these types serve to point God's people to Jesus, so also these types can be used in children's ministry to teach children about the gospel. Instead of a moralising lesson that exhorts kids to "be more like Joshua", and thereby running the risk of preaching a different gospel of works (Gal 1:7), we can instead be reinforcing the gospel of grace.
Sure, there is a development in children, particularly in terms of their understanding of time, timelines, and generations. We can leave the details of the timeline to later when there is more awareness of time. However we can still be draing the links correctly for children, even at their early years, by showing them that this story is actually telling us about Jesus. That "Jesus makes us clean from our sins, just like these sacrifices".
Yes, it sounds like analogy - but the difference is that the teachers know that there is a disciplined and rigorous framework behind drawing those links. They are disciplined and careful in drawing those links. And while the child is not yet able to understand the system of biblical theology, at least they are hearing the true gospel from the Old Testament. And not a different gospel that is really "no gospel at all" (Gal 1:7).
[ PS: in selecting Sunday School curicculum, make sure you check how they handle Old Testament passages! ] 5/12/2007 Giving by Automatic TransferPerhaps you're forgetting all the time, and finding that you're giving has become based on what you discover in your wallet at 11:25am. In the past gospel ministry would just have to struggle along without your financial support for that week. But nowadays you can do something about that...
You probably have an Internet banking facility for your bank account. Well, those things will often allow you to set up automatic transfers of money at set periods - and this can really help you to be more regular and planned in your giving.
What you first have to do is find out if your church has an account into which you can transfer money. Find out (a) the BSB, (b) the Account number, (c) the Account name, and (d) ask if there's anything they want you to put in the Comment field. Sometimes a church will ask you to type in whether it should go to the general fund, the mission fund, or the building fund. Your church's treasurer will know the details.
Then log in to your Internet banking facility, and go to Transfer. Fill in the details of your church's bank account, and the amount that you've decided to give.
There should also be an option for you to set up a recurring transfer. Here, you can program how frequently the transfer will be made, from what date, and how many transfers will be made.
Don't forget to fill in the details for the comment field (eg. "General fund") - and submit the form. Done!
It's very easy to set up, and will take you less than five minutes. However it will mean that your giving will be regular, planned - and won't be interrupted by forgetfulness or overspending on your part! And it will mean that gospel ministries both locally and overseas can continue to operate.
[ PS: the pictures are from HSBC's online banking website ] 5/8/2007 How rich are you?A fellow pastor pointed out a couple of resources that deal with wealth and materialism. Here are two that might be of interest to you. They do a great job of presenting statistical data in visual terms.
1. Global rich list
First off is a website called globalrichlist.com. It's built using data from the World Bank Development Research Group. And what you do is you type in your annual salary, press a button, and it tells you where you are in the global line of wealth.
Unfortunately it doesn't have a setting for Australian dollars, but a quick visit to XE.com will tell you that $50,000 Australian dollars (this seems to be the starting salary of some Uni leavers) is roughly equivalent to $41,029 US dollars.
So we plug that figure into the website, click the button, and this is what you discover...
If you're on the salary of a fresh graduate, you might think you've still got a way to go. You're struggling, you can't be expected to give very much, we should all pity you, and so on. But globalrichlist.com shows us that you are actually in the top 2.87% of richest people in the world! And underneath you in terms of wealth is 97.13% of the world's population!
If you lined up everyone on the earth and got them to stand in order of their wealth, the person earning $50,000 AUD would in fact be 172,539,131st in that line. Not bad really, considering there are over 6.7 billion people on the earth (actual population here)!
The thing is that we tend to look upwards along the line to judge whether we are rich or not. And when we look at the 2.87% of the world's population ahead of us we think, "wow I haven't got that. Look what he can do. I only earn this much". And this makes us feel poor! But in fact there is 97.13% of the population behind us - and we are the privileged few...
2. Gapminder
Gapminder.org is a website that keeps track of stats of different countries - and shows what's happening with the gap between rich and poor. Is it shrinking? is it widening? Gapminder.org has several graphs and tools that not only show the current state of play, but show how things have changed over time.
Here is a screen grab of an interactive thingy from Human Development Trends, 2005 about world income distribution. In the real thing, you grab the slider and move it left to right - and you can see how the 'mountain' has moved over time.
Over on the left hand side you have people who exist on less than one dollar a day - they exist below the 'poverty line'. Then you have people on ten dollars a day, on a hundred dollars a day, and so on.
And as you can see there are a lot of people in the left hand side of the graph - but on the thin leading edge on the right hand side, there aren't so many people. If you convert your salary into dollars per day, where are you on that graph? Or, if you're not yet working, where is your expected starting salary on that graph? By and large, we are the privileged few on the right-hand slopes of the graph.
You may not feel rich - and that's the way with wealth. You are never content with what we have, and we always desire more. But when Paul commands those who are 'rich in this present world' not to be arrogant, not to put their hope in wealth, and to be generous and willing to share (1 Tim 6) - he is actually speaking to us.
[ PS: this Sunday is our church's anniversary service - remember to go to Pennant Hills High School instead! ] 5/6/2007 Giving patterns in AustraliaWhat the ABS have done is they've conducted a detailed study of the spending patterns of roughly seven thousand Australian households. And I mean detailed - you can even see how much is spent on women's T-shirts, or soft drink, or insurance... If you love stats, it makes fascinating reading!
The seven thousand households were broken up into five groups (or quintiles) sorted into their average weekly income. The lowest (poorest) quintile earnt an average of $263 per household per week, while the highest (wealthiest) quintile earnt $2,512 per household per week.
You can also see that the average income of all households was $1,128 per week. And here is a graph illustrating the different weekly income level of the five quintiles.
But what's more interesting from the Excel file is how much the different households spent on giving to charities and churches. The following table outlines the giving of the five quintiles per week. The lowest quintile donated an average of $2.26 per household per week, while the highest quintile donated an average of $8.00 per household per week.
The average giving across all households was $4.44 per week. The Excel file also lists spending in a whole range of different areas, and it's interesting to note how generosity compares to other spending. As a whole, Australians actually spend more of their money on gambling each week ($5.48) than on giving. They spend more on footwear each week ($5.77) than on giving. And they spend more on bedroom furniture each week ($5.34) than on giving!
Here is a graph illustrating the total donations of the five quintiles in the table above.
In this next table I've worked out the giving of each quintile as a percentage of their weekly income ((donations/income) x 100). Here is the percentage of income given to churches and charities per week per household. The lowest (poorest) quintile donated 0.86% of their income - but the highest (wealthiest) quintile only donated 0.32% of their income!
The average giving was 0.39% of the weekly household income. Here is a graph illustrating the donations as percentage for each of the five quintiles, from the table above.
As you can see, wealth is no guarantee that people will give more. In fact, as a general rule people tend to become stingier as they get richer - the wealthiest households actually donate a smaller percentage of their income than the average Australian household!
If you think that you'll become more generous next year when you get a raise, or one day after you pay off your house, or in the future when you get a better job, think again. The more you have, the more of a challenge it is to be generous!
[ PS: we're doing a short topical series on money at church at the moment... ] 5/1/2007 People we don't noticeIf you work in an office, these may be the people who do the cleaning in your office. Or the receptionist at the front desk. Or perhaps the people behind the lunch counter. Yes, we notice they are there - but sometimes we forget to treat them as people.
If you are at school or uni, these might be the people who do the cleaning and maintenance. Or who work in the library. Yet again, they are there - but at the same time, they aren't there.
We notice them in the background of our important lives - but only in the background. And the only time they come into the foreground is when you get annoyed by them. Perhaps they are a bit slower today, or the vacuum cleaner noisier, or they got in our way and we had to step around them. Then we interact with them - with annoyance!
We are polite and seek to build relationships with our colleagues and our friends. We are eager to share the gospel with our colleagues and friends if we have opportunity. But it doesn't even occur to us that we could build relationships with the maintenance guy. Or find out the name of the guy we see so regularly. Or perhaps even to pray for opportunities to share the gospel with them! Yet we could do this so easily, if we saw the invisible people.
But even if we never get an opportunity to directly minister to them, it is a witness to non Christians that we Christians really do care for people - and not just people at our social level. We genuinely care for people of all social levels. We are interested in them, we show them patience, we love them - because they matter to us, as they do to the Lord Jesus Christ.
A special class of invisible people can sometimes be found in our own homes... they are in fact our very own family members! We live with them and see them every day - but we take them for granted, treating them like furniture and sometimes behave terribly towards them. And this includes children towards parents, as well as parents towards children - and even spouses with each other!
We spur one another on to love 'people' and to do good to 'people' - yet we somehow manage to forget that these, too, are people. Let this not be true of us! [ PS: the pastoral team are away on a pastoral team retreat today and tomorrow... ] |
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