@ 30/09/2005 – 12:43:55
To put it bluntly, your flesh is a weasel, a poser, and a selfish pig. And your Flesh is not you. Did you know that? Your flesh is not the real you.
The big lie in the Church today is that you are nothing more than "a sinner saved by grace". You are alot more than that. You are a new creation in Christ. The New Testement calls you a saint, a holy one, a son of God. In the core of your being you are a good man.
Wild at Heart by John Eldredge
@ 29/09/2005 – 13:37:53
Set aside stale formulas so that we might enter into a informal friendship with God.
The control we despretly crave is an illusion.
Above all else, a warrier has a vision; he has a transendence to his life, a cause greater than self-preservation.
The enemy always tempts us back towards control, to recover and rebuild the false self!
God will do something to thwart your false self
He begins to die, that quits his desires.
@ 28/09/2005 – 12:20:34
Have you ever joined the gym? Have you ever tried to follow a certain diet? Like you, my answer is a resounding yes many times over! The media is constantly reminding us that we are in the midst of an obesity epidemic and that the solution is to basically lose weight. For those like myself who fit into the 'big' category, the most obvious way to go about shedding those excess kilograms is to join a gym and follow a diet formula like the Atkins diet or weight watchers etc. The media constantly presents us with success stories of people who are transforming their lives by following a certain diet or going to a certain gym.
Of course there are some home truths that the health industry does not present. The first is that it is very easy for people to lose weight. The second is that over 90% of people rapidly put the weight back on. The third and most under reported fact is that fluctuating weight puts enormous stress on the human body and is one of the most effective methods of reducing one's life span, right up there with obesity in fact! Several weeks ago, there was an article in the Sydney Morning Herald about the results of a long term study on that very rare group of people who successfully lost and then kept off their weight permanently. The researchers made a surprising discovery in their observation of those who had 'succeeded in maintaining their weight loss.The researchers found that only 14% of those who had succeeded had followed a diet / exercise programme or method such as Atkins, weight watchers etc etc. On the other hand 86% joined no gym or followed no weight loss programme. The key to permanent weight loss was not the right plan, or knowledge of nutrition and exercise, but being self motivated. Self motivation overcame all obstacles and ignorance. Self motivation often came from an event that shook the person out of the status quo they were living in and motivated them forward.
Like the health business, we Christians are obsessed with finding successful programmes and systems to see more people come to be followers of Jesus Christ. We can be blinded by the shininess and apparent success of the Mega churches we see on the television and the evangelism programmes that are currently popular along with the stories of their success in bringing thousands 'to Christ' that we try and adapt them ourselves. How often are we disappointed when the programme or the plan does not live up to our expectations?
The reality is that it is easy to get people to say yes to Jesus, just like it is easy to get people to the gym or to start a new diet (just look at the millions of diet books sold!) The reality though is that no matter how easy we make it for people to respond to Christ, over 70% have fallen away in two weeks and a significantly higher figure than that after a year (can you see the connection to weight loss?). I personally have some concerns about this. One is that the large number of New Zealanders who are walking around having said the sinners prayer may be under the illusion that they have it all covered when they die. Or they may think that they have experienced all that God / Church has to offer and will be so much harder to connect with later (I have experienced this). My biggest concern is that these programmes sometimes make us as Christians feel happy and satisfied that we are seeing people responding to Christ (especially if it is connected with our organisation). When at university I was very involved with a large church that saw significant numbers of people responding 'to Christ'. It gave me a sense of real achievement and fruitfulness being part of that. It was only when I left the church that I had to confront the fact that during that whole period I had done next to nothing in regards to being personally fruitful, I was just going along for the ride.
Like those that succeeded in long term weight loss, the best way to see people become fully devoted followers of Jesus Christ is if they are truly self motivated. Self motivation overcomes all obstacles and ignorance. We call these self motivated people SELF FEEDING.
STORY
Paul Scanlon, a well known Pastor in the United Kingdom, remarked that no one needed to chase him up or disciple him when he became a Christian, though he was only 16 and from a non Christian family. The church he was attending used to move from hall to hall. Often Paul would turn up at Church to discover that it was not there and he would have to hop on his bike and cycle around the city looking for his church (he often wondered if they were avoiding him!). He was so hungry for God that he consumed his Bible and turned up unannounced at every service, prayer meeting and small group. He once turned up at a meeting to be quietly taken aside to be told that it was actually an elders meeting! That's self feeding!
We cannot manufacture or mass produce self feeding Christians (except by the Holy Spirit moving sovereignly). The two most vital ingredients are not influenced by us. The first is that somehow the person needs to have an encounter with the living Christ. The second is that they need to be self motivated (not motivated by there friend, group etc). It also helps if we are doing three things. Living our lives consistently with our beliefs. Listening to Gods quiet voice. Not being too busy and having time for people.
Besides self motivation there is perhaps one other key which I believe has a significant impact on turning a 'convert' into a self feeding Follower. That key is being prepared to open your home to let those who are new to the faith to live with you for a certain period of time. Sharing life together has an incredibly transforming effect on those starting out on the journey. This also holds true for teaching and training also. People sometimes ask me what Organic believers do in regards to training and discipleship. An open home to me is the best Bible College and training centre in the world, and seemed to work in the New Testament funnily enough. The only negative is that we have to be sacrificial to do it!
@ 22/09/2005 – 09:55:42
The Alternative Church Movement www.kingdomline.com
*111,000,000 Christians are already without a traditional local church, with the emphasis on traditional.
*This number is expected to grow to 581,000,000 very quickly.
*This number is significantly larger than all the Protestant denominations put together
In a very small way, there is a growing movement in N.Z. There are thousands of believers whose faith is strong, but do not attend traditional churches. Is this normal or abnormal? Could it be that the movement is actually being encouraged by the Holy Spirit?
@ 21/09/2005 – 18:54:16
The Spiritual Life cannot be made suburban. It is always frontier, and we who live in it must accept and even rejoice that it remains untamed
Howard Macey
@ 21/09/2005 – 09:22:53
"Kingdom Companies are basically a long-term impossibility and a pious dream," said management consultant and author Dr. Thomas Giudici, previously Head of Finances in Basel, Switzerland. "Effective management and Christian thinking are not easily combined," he said, destroying any illusions the congress participants may still have had: "Being a Christian and acting according to accepted business rules are mutually exclusive," according to a comment in the newspaper "Nuremberg News". "Do not be conformed to this world," writes Paul in Romans 12, and despite this clear instruction, millions of Christians are hopelessly trying to combine Mammon's market values and the Bible.
"Trying to combine both long-term is a recipe for disaster," says Giudici. It's like playing Handball on a football pitch - two different games with different rules. In recent years, many authors have propagated the un-biblical concept of uniting job and calling, with the result that many Christians are in a dead end, deprived of their true calling as apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, teachers, deacons or elders. This attitude was the reaction to the era in which trained clergy looked at laypeople as second-class Christians. "But anyone who says 'my job is my calling' has a fair-weather theology which works only as long as their employer has work for them," says Giudici.
The Price of Money
God's stewards (managers) are not led by greed. But that's mostly theory; most Christian businesspeople limit their religious activities to Sunday or their free time. Many are hobby Christians, trying to serve both God and Mammon at the same time. Anyone serving Mammon pays a high price, "The Price of Money" (the title of a new book published in German by Giudici and Friday Fax editor Wolfgang Simson): he loses his life, his freedom and ultimately his eternal life. Giudici calls for a radical change of mind, similar to a brainwash: a "Cleansing from Mammon-Mindedness".
Christians should not take non-Christians jobs
"God has enough paid work," says Giudici. Christians can do (almost) everything which non-Christians do: bake bread, make cars and so on. But non-Christians can't do that which only Christians can: take the position to which they are called in the Kingdom of God. He called on the conference attendees to not take non-Christians' jobs. That is doubly unfair, because non-Christians also can't enter heaven...
Leadership: the claim and the task
Only someone with healthy values can lead well. "I am the light of the world" is the greatest claim to leadership ever made, according to Dr. Siegfried Buchholz. Jesus, who said it, told his followers "You are the light of the world." That is the greatest leadership task ever given.
Source: Wolfgang Simson and Thomas Giudici
@ 19/09/2005 – 20:49:46
I have been away for three weeks, but have finally arrived back. Will update my blog daily for the next couple of weeks with all the latest
@ 09/09/2005 – 11:58:09
Barna leads a church research institute, and is currently the
most-quoted person in the Christian church in the USA because of his
statistical work. To summarize the book's most important conclusions:
* The number of Christians attending local church in the USA is declining
rapidly. Today, 70% of Christians attend traditional churches, but this
will sink to 30-35% in 20 years;
* The number of followers of Jesus who do not attend a local church will
grow from 30% to 70% in the next 20 years;
* Alternative fellowship forms (house church/simple church, post-modern
churches etc.), currently home for 5% of USA Christians, will grow to
make up 30-35%; another 30-35% will live out their faith in the fields
of media, arts and culture; the remaining 5% of Christians attending
non-traditional forms of church will have a family-based spiritual life;
* Conclusion: a minority group presently not even noticed by many will
become the mainstream of North American Christianity in only two
decades.
"This is a revolution, and will change not only the recruiting strategies of
seminaries and Bible schools, but also radically question church building
projects," says Barna. If only half as many people will be visiting traditional
congregational services in 20 years, a smaller building will suffice.
Source: George Barna "Revolution"
@ 04/09/2005 – 10:38:52
REFORMATION
“Reformation is a free act or a repeated series of actions which are intended by the reformer to recover, reestablish, augment, and perfect certain essential values which at one time existed in human society but which subsequently were lost or impaired by willful neglect or due to a general decline” (Ladner, 1959).
“Luther, the magisterial reformer, caught the paradox implied in the religious idea of reformation. He emphasized strongly that God “works within us” but not “without us.” Reformation is God's work, but at the same time it is man's work.”
Martin Luther did not start out to cause a reformation, but the simple questions he first asked grew into bigger and bigger questions and answers that inevitably, radical change had to happen. “On October 31, 1517, according to traditional accounts, Luther nailed the 95 Theses to the door of the castle's Church of All Saints (the University's customary notice board) as an open invitation to debate them. The Theses condemned the Church's greed and worldliness (especially the selling of indulgences, which are called "pardons" in the English 95 Theses on Wikipedia) as an abuse and asked for a theological disputation. Luther did not challenge the right of the pope to grant indulgences, just the sale that he preceived as an abuse (Thesis 71” Of course as we say, the rest is history. From some non fundermental questions about indulgences being sold locally in his parish, the answers provided more questions which provided more answers so that Luther arrived at a place radically different from when he first wrote his theses. At first he was committed to the Pope as his head and the Catholic church and all it stood for. The Catholic church (and Luther) were happy to work through the issues raised in the theses. But by then Luther had arrived at such challanging questions such as the position of the pope, Faith not works and the Bible as our supreme guide for instance (and more challanging answers) that threatened Catholisism so much that something had to give. In reality Luther time and time again was given the chance to modify his position somewhat by the Pope so that there would be harmony. Luther was incrediably torn and tempted to disavow some of his writing (note not all) and remain part of the Catholic Church. Imagine if he had agreed and reached a ‘Christian’compromise to keep peace and unity, what would Church History look like today? Without doubt Luther instead of having a Chapter in a Church History book would be a brief sentence. Reformation and change does not happen peacefully. Seismic changes do not happen without shaking.
Luther shook Catholisism and pointed to a glimmer of a different order. Out of those seismic changes significant change happaned, but it was not nice because in the end two different world views (paradigms) could not live comforterbly together, they clashed and seperated. I will talk next more in detail about why this generally happens.
The clash of ideas and paradigms and the culture and systems that develop them is what revolution and reformation is about.
@ 03/09/2005 – 00:44:17
Below is our dynamic friend Campbell who has been an incrediable friend and supporter of Kim and I over the last few years. It was his encouragment and support that was strategic in getting us to Singapore and the start of this crazy journey towards Simple Church and Simple Faith. The photo is Campbell keeping up with the boppers at the parachute music festival.
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