From worthwhile article in Time magazine about the current state of Faith in Europe.
“Both at the national and individual levels, religion is going private. Churches across Europe are boarding up — or being turned into pubs, homes, even supermarkets. Citizens, like states, are rethinking their relationships with clergy and fashioning their own relationships with God.”
Read Full article here
Interesting article over at the Out of Ur blog about the whole phenomenon of celebrity Christian conversions. A topic which has come up a few times lately in my talks as people debate the effect of the culture of celebrity on the Church.
Christians have a complicated relationship with celebrities. On the one hand, we have a tendency to blame Hollywood and rock music for corrupting our youth. On the other, there are few things we like more than discovering that one of these entertainment insiders is a Believer. What could be more exciting than finding out we have a “secret agent” on the inside?
Well, it turns out this uneasy relationship with the famous is nothing new. In his Confessions (written around 397 AD), Augustine tells the story of a fellow named Victorinus, a notable Roman philosopher and rhetorician who becomes a Christian (Book 8, chapter 2). Victorinus was famous—so famous, in fact, that the Romans erected a statue of him in the Forum.
Read full article here.
The last few weeks have seemed like quite a blur, last week I was in the States speaking, then was briefly home for a few days to speak at the Crossway conference, at which it was really enjoyable to catch up with Dale Stephenson and the team there. Then was off to the airport again. I am having a great time here in New Zealand, which is made all the much better by having Trudi and Grace with me for this trip. I find Kiwi crowds to be savvy and always appreciative of what I have to teach despite my being an Aussie. So it was fantastic to see so many people turn up at Carey College for a day in which we covered a lot of ground.
I have been meaning to share with you all poet Cam Semmens who I had the privalage of hanging out with at Lifewell conference in Adelaide last month at which we were both appearing. I saw Cam scribbling away during my talk and presumed that he was taking notes. But after my talk he read to me a wonderful poem that was inspired by my talk in which I mentioned the way in which our cultures’ promises mirror the snakes questions in the book of Genesis. It was so fascinating to see him connect with the audience in such a different way, his poetry seemed to be processed in another part of the brain of the audience in contrast to my prose. He seemed to achieve in two minutes what I took forty minutes to do. Make sure you check out his site (particularly the video My house speaks to me) here. I was promoting him as much as I could while in the States recently.
Great article by the always informative and wise Peter Corney on the spiritual significance of the rebuilding of ground zero, and what it tells us about the current state of Western Culture. Peter writes,
Bin Laden correctly judged what has now become the soul of Western culture, what it’s real metaphysical core is – Mammon. This is what has replaced its Christian foundation, lost as a result of the impact of the secular humanism that grew out of the enlightenment. (1) Having lost its faith the West is now vulnerable to those who are unafraid to die for theirs.
The towers of the World Trade Centre are being replaced and once again will house the Bond Traders and the ‘money changers’. But the 2976 who died and the 6000 who were injured are not to be remembered with a memorial that reflects the West’s Christian foundation, such as a cross as in many of our past war memorials, but an International Freedom Center, although apparently this idea may now be abandoned as a result of controversy about its meaning and purpose. But what is the nature of the freedom that might be symbolized in this building? Is it the freedoms and rights expressed in the US Constitution, or the freedom of the individual from all moral restraint, the freedom that has all but destroyed the best in the West? Carroll wryly quotes the Janis Joplin song “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose..!” (2)
There are also two reflective water pools as part of the new center. Their dark stone walls will bear the names of the dead. These are to “reflect absence”, presumably the absence of those who died. It may also ironically reflect the absence of our spiritual heart, the story that gave Western culture its greatest creative and moral energy. That built the soaring towers of its cathedrals to the glory of God. What will a visitor see as they stare into those pools? Will they see a reflection of our emptiness or will they see people made in the image of God whose glory shines most clearly in the face of Jesus?
Read Full article here.
I have just finished my keynote presentation for the talk I am giving at the Crossway conference. We at Uber get a lot of positive feedback for our powerpoint presentations and a lot of people have asked for tips on how to use powerpoint well. Well firstly I have converted from Powerpoint to Keynote which I find as a much better tool. Al Hirsch has tried to get me to convert to Prezi, which I have used a couple of times but I cannot make the full jump.
One of the most innovative powerpoint presentations I have seen was by futurist Wayne Pethrick, he showed me how he did it, but I was too dumb to keep up with how he pulled it off. Mike Frost has told me that he does not like to use any presentations at all which is a fair point when you can craft word pictures like Frostie can. So I guess first of all you need to work out what suits your presentation style.
The two best tools that I have found that have influenced me were Seth Godin’s ebook, which should be mandatory reading for anyone who is going to use powerpoint. The other great resource I have found is the blog Presentation Zen, which has hundreds of tips on how to create stunning, impacting and beautiful presentations. Happy creating!
During the middle ages throughout Europe cathedrals sprang up, towering above villages, casting their shadows over the cities that had begun to emerge from the chaos of the Dark Ages. In contrast to the crumbing Roman structures that spoke of the past glory of the cult of Rome, these buildings were living manifestations of Europe’s fascination with the transcendence of God.
The building of a cathedral was a matter of great civic pride, their constructions by armies of artisans were high drama (as Keith Follet has illustrated all the way to the bank). The cathedrals were three dimensional teaching tools, they were medieval multi media presentations, evangelistic tools that attempted to woo and win over converts with their liturgical and architectural campaign of shock and awe.
To the contemporary missional thinker such an approach reeks of the dreaded concept of ‘attractionalism’. Cathedrals are seen as representing the worst of high medieval thinking in which the church was at the centre of culture and all were expected to come and pay adherence. Thus we are told that we are in a post-Christendom culture, in which the cathedral now operate as a kinds of spiritual museums. They are relics, they may be beautiful, but they are relics none the less. So the alternative to the ecclesiological arrogance of the cathedral/christendom approach we are told is to be missional, to ‘go’ rather than to expect people to ‘come’, to be sending rather than missional.
This approach makes sense, its advocates point to the way in which the non-western mission field has rightly redefined our understanding of the positioning of the Church. Yet the sending/missional posture can find itself seriously compromised if it thinks that the concept of the cathedral is dead in Western culture. In fact in comparison to the middle ages in which there were thousands of cathedrals, there are millions of cathedrals being constructed daily in our culture. They are not Gothic or Romanesque in construction, they are not made of stone and wood, rather they made of flesh. Or perhaps more correctly they are constructed in the psychic space that surrounds contemporary citizens of the 21st century developed world.
The individual now operates as a kind of personal cathedral. Social media arms and aids the growing sense of entitlement in the contemporary therapeutic self. The individual creates a facade that will shock and awe. An exterior that will garner respect and acknowledgement. If the medieval cathedral was an attempt to connect with a palpable sense of the transcendent, the contemporary self attempts also attempts to create a sense of transcendence through the correct assemblage of consumer experiences.
The difference between this and the medieval vision is that the contemporary cathedral of the self is religion free, instead it seeks to eek out transcendence in what David Brooks calls a ‘low-ceilinged world’. Instead of plainchant, stained glass windows and the drama of the liturgy, the modern self attempt to find transcendence in budgets breaks on the beach in Thailand, 3D movies, killer Ipad apps, and in the torque of a SUV.
The cathedrals of the 21st century self like their medieval counterparts demand that you come to them. They demand to be taken seriously. They insist on being the only show in town. Therein lies the danger for the missional church. The missional church which attempts to incarnate, which tries to ‘go to’; can find itself shifting from an attractional mode of church, to becoming enslaved to an attractional view of the self. Incarnation can quickly degenerate into syncretism for the missional operator who is unaware of the cathedral of the self.
Many missional leaders who have critiqued the therapeutic and individualist tendencies of the contemporary church growth movement, can easily and naively find themselves serving an even more pernicious expression of the therapeutic self as Church is completely taken to and rearranged around the habits, locales, tastes and wants of the individual in the name of incarnational mission.
The church moves into the cafe, the pub, the home, and the sporting club in the name of mission and as a protest against attractional concepts of Church. Yet the individual sense of entitlement is never truly challenged, there will be much focus on the immanent Jesus who is our friend, yet little emphasis on the transcendent ‘otherness’ of God who reminds us of our falleness and cosmic smallness. The huge danger is that whilst the incarnational, missional approach rejects the idea of the medieval cathedral, the cathedral of the self is never truly dismantled.
Thoughts on the cult of Oprah, in light of my….well my brothers’ brush with the world’s most powerful woman, and my ruminations on her impending royal visit to Australia.
Just a reminder that I am heading to New Zealand on friday
. Here are the details of the events that I will be speaking at. You can register and find details here
Auckland – Saturday 25 September
Discipling the New Humans: 9am – 3pm, Carey Baptist College, $35 waged or $25 unwaged
The Vertical Self: 7 – 9pm, Carey Baptist College, $5 donation (towards supper)
Wellington – Tuesday 28 September
Discipling the New Humans: 9am – 3pm, $35 waged or $25 unwaged, The Rock Church.
Christchurch – Thursday 30 September
Discipling the New Humans: 9am – 3pm, Laidlaw College, $35 waged or $25 unwaged
The Vertical Self: 7 – 9pm, South City Christian Centre, $5 donation (towards supper)
Hey I am at the end of my trip here in the US, some people asked me to record some of my observations about where the US is at culturaly and where the church finds itself. Here are my starbucked infused Aussie observations.
Last week Lady Gaga incensed animal rights activists by appearing in an Italian magazine wearing a Bikini made of raw meat. This was the latest effort a long line of media attention grabbing stunts in which various cultural, religious and sexual boundaries were crossed by her Gaganess. However the obsession with pushing boundaries and crossing lines in not restricted just to Lady Gaga, paradoxically it is tradition within modernity. In fact, Peter Gay subtitled his history of Modernist Art – The Lure of Heresy. Our contemporary culture mocks those who wish to maintain age old distinctions and boundaries.
However boundaries are essential to human life. Distinctions and separations are key not only to human life, but to the whole of creation. The piercing truth of this reality was brought home to me recently as I accidentally opened the unlocked door of a plane bathroom to be greeted by the shocked face of a woman – how shall I say? – not expecting to be disturbed. This moment of embarrassment reminded me that boundaries offer us dignity, they make us human.
In his brilliant study of the book of Genesis Rabbi Jonathan Sacks notes that the account of creation begins with a set of separations and distinctions. Sea and sky, light and day, animals and humans, chaos and creation. The most profound distinctions are to be found between God and humans and between heaven and earth, and between the unique personalities of humans. Rabbi Sacks observes that this distinction in unique amongst religious world views, the pagan beliefs which surrounded Israel did not delineate between gods and humans, creation and chaos, heaven and earth.
Therefore the primary sins of humanity are attempts to cross these boundaries and merge these distinctions. Adam and Eve attempt to merge humans and God by eating of the fruit ‘so that they may be like gods’. Cain breaks the distinction between individuals and kills his brother Abel. The builders of Babel attempt to breech the boundary between heaven and earth with their structural monstrosity.
Rabbi Sacks points out that in many ways the story of Babel echoes many of the horrors of the 20th century perpetrated by totalitarian regimes. Friedrich Nietzsche declared God dead and challenged humans to take his place, and thus laid the groundwork for the horrors of the Third Reich who dehumised entire races.
In attempting to transcend their humanity and become the god like uber-mensch ironically the Nazis became less human. We see our culture constantly falling into the same traps, trying to construct our own worlds in godlike fashion, however we cannot but help falling into the trap of dehumanizing ourselves or others in the process. Rabbi Sacks writes
Only when God is God can man be man. That means keeping heaven and earth distinct, organizing the latter only under the conscious sovereignty of the former. Without this there is little to prevent human beings from sacrificing the many for the sake of the few, or the few for the sake of the many. Only a respect for the integrity of creation stops human beings destroy themselves…A world of tov, good, is a world of havdalah, boundaries and limits. Those who cross those boundaries and transgress these limits make a name for themselves, but the name they make is Babel, meaning chaos, confusion and the loss of that order which is a precondition of both nature – the world God creates – and culture the world we create.
Our culture with its craving for the crossing of boundaries and the ignoring of limits reveals itself as truly neo-pagan, not in the sense of a bunch of people with dreadlocks dancing to bad german techo out in the forest, but deeper more dangerous and insidious paganism. A paganism which threatens to dehumanize the whole of humanity, and to uncreate the whole of creation. And so we are back at Genesis one, we need again the spirit of God to hover over the formless, dark chaos of the world. We need God again to breath his life giving breath into us. And we need believers who understand and artfully respect the God given distinctions and limits in the world.
I normally don’t like futurists. I guess when I was younger I used to love reading about predictions of the future, but so often I felt let down as the future arrived and it was nothing like what they predicted (where is my flying Delorean?) But this is pretty weird. It is science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke predicting how life in the 2000′s will be changed by technology.
“What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured.”
Kurt Vonnegut Jnr
