Parkdale Church of Christ - seeking God, learning to live the Gospel together

Occasional reflections on life, faith and church

If you have something you wish to add, please email ramblings (at) parkdalecofc.org.au

Something to think about

The Sunday just gone, we had a visitor in our Sunday morning service, who left after only a short time. We don't know why - nothing was said. Maybe our style of worship songs and hymns didn't suit. Maybe we had a bad hair day. I happily grant people the right to choose a church that meets their needs, but being judged so summarily hurt. We try hard to listen, and we have alternative events that might have suited our visitor better.

In the end, though, maybe it was best that the visitor just went. We would prefer to grow slowly by reaching those who do not attend church, than by competing with other churches to see who "does church" best. And we would prefer to grow offshoots than to grow big. That means we aren't always striving for perfection; rather, we are just being ourselves, warts and all. And somehow, knowing that God loves us, too. 

Steve Jackson - March 24th 2009.

The 21st Century and Faith

Some notable people have used science as a bludgeon to try to persuade others that faith has no place in the 21st century. I think this misses the point of faith. Both faith and science are necessary for a full, meaningful and rewarding life in the 21st century - a life of joy and happiness. 

Science alone lacks meaning and morality - it can be used for good or evil, and tends to support greed. 

Faith alone lacks engagement - it fails to invite the world towards healthier systems that bring change for the betterment of all.

Take evolution, for example. For me, creation and evolution do not conflict. The theory of evolution is a way to explain scientifically how animals, plants and all life around us have developed and adapted to suit the environment. The stories of creation in the Bible (note, there are more than one) record how ancient people gave meaning to the world around them and their history. I don't think it is necessary for faith to read these stories as literally true; but if we desire wisdom we can and should take the meaning embedded in the stories to heart. If we insist on believing them literally, then I fear we we are thinking of the Bible as God, and failing to perceive God in person, revealed through the Bible like light seen through a prism. Likewise, I don't think it is necessary to believe that evolution is literally true, in order to be a believer in science. After all, Newton's Laws made possible an enormous flowering of technology, even though they turned out to be not quite right; and one of the fundamental axioms of science, objectivity, has recently lost its stability: is light a waveform or made up of particles? It seems that it depends on how we look, and our looking changes the outcome. I dare say we will work that out in the future, and science will change its stance again.

Science without faith creates enough atom bombs to destroy the world several times over, and allows drug companies to make millions while the poor die for lack of cheap medicinal drugs. Science without faith is blind to the consequences of its discoveries, and permits greed to rule. In company with faith, science could make available enough food, water and medication for all; but this seems unlikely to happen, because it challenges the foundations of our social and financial systems. Who then can be saved? Only the wealthy, it appears.

I think the fuss (especially in the United States) about creation as set against evolution is a sad diversion that causes people to take their eyes off Jesus and the message of God's saving (healthy-making) love for all; it allows us all to sidestep the question of God's call for (and offer of) transformation in our lives as individuals. The fuss creates division, and fails to demonstrate the abundance of God's love on the part of the Christians. It seems to me that faith should lead to a change of heart, repentance from the oppressive ways of the world, and to joy and happiness, not anger against others, and not to attempts to force others to think the way we do. 

That joy and happiness offers an alternative way of life to the world, which sets one free from the need for possessions and status, and also from the need to criticise others. Joy and happiness can be given away, and yet still retained; they cannot be bought with money, and they survive the global credit crisis. They derive from meeting God as present in each other, and from recognising the presence of God within, in the form of the Holy Spirit. They derive from knowing that we are acceptable to God, both now and at the end of all things. They derive from living a life that is transformed as a result of faith. If our faith is worthwhile, this joy and happiness should be as desirable to others as it clearly was in the time of the early church - it was truly Good News!

Well, it IS Good News. But we are surrounded by diversions of all sorts, and we forget, and revert to our old ways; so division and anger is heard in the churches and in the world. We fall short of what we could be, like an arrow fired without enough force to reach its target: this is the origin of the ancient Greek word we translate as 'sin'. We fail to show the world that there is a worthwhile alternative way to live, and allow those who say faith has outlived its usefulness to sound right.

But they are wrong! There is a Way, there is Truth, and there is a Life, and our task in the 21st century is to take this meaning and purpose as embodied in Jesus to heart, amidst all the change science brings.

Steve Jackson - March 20th 2009

The Changing Church

Throughout the Western World, traditional churches are in decline. Their members are aging, the young people stay away, and they somehow no longer have access to the hearts of ordinary people. Those who remain struggle to maintain their buildings and other activities, or combine to form mega-churches. This process is noticeably more advanced in some countries than in others, and of course there are exceptions to this general observation, but it is a sign of our times.

Why is this so? There are several possible answers to this, and I make no claim to originality here - I'm just reflecting on what I've read in a variety of places. And this being my reflection, the fact that I'm glossing over a lot of detail doesn't really matter much.

One theory is that the modern churches have lost the plot - and if only we would preach the whole Gospel as it used to be preached, everything would be ok. This sounds good, until we look at a bit of church history, and realise how much division and conflict there has been in the past between those who claimed to be doing exactly this. In practice, I believe God calls us to help people make sense of the Gospel in our own times, and that means we have to preach it differently because the people who hear it are different, not because it has changed itself.

Part of the problem is the conservative nature of religious people. We value a world-view and a faith that is much older than almost everything else in our world; and we don't want to change the way we make these manifest in our lives. But we often fail to understand that there is a difference between the Gospel and how we make it manifest in our lives; we confuse the way church was done in our younger days with the way it has always been done, and so think that our way of doing things is divinely ordained. It isn't, of course - church history, again. That's not to say our traditions have no value - just that we should not force them on others, and we should recognise that God is at work in many ways in the world, changing people, whether they come to our church or not! 

Those we are trying to reach are different from how they were in past. In the 'modern' era, we subscribed to a world-view that encompassed progress, the rise of science that makes everything better, benign government, and measuring our status by our career, wealth and possessions. In this world-view, almost everyone accepts the way the world works, and logic can be used to explain God's position and role in society. The Gospel is something that is presented rationally, to which we assent or dissent and act accordingly. This is how I was converted while at university in the 1970s, but it doesn't work well any more.

The foundations of the 'modern' way of thinking have been cut away in more recent times, by a series of disappointments. 'Progress' has proved to be shallow, science is not just 'good' but can also be used in 'bad' ways, 'democratic' governments are clearly seen to fall short of the ideal, and the satisfaction we gain from wealth is short-lived. We now have to contend with the threats of global warming, renewed epidemics, and terrorism, and seek satisfaction in experiences rather than in possessions. Big businesses exploit consumers, promising new experinces if only they will hand over their money for something otherwise useless. Binge drinking and drugs are ways of reaching new highs, or at least of blotting out thoughts of how hopeless the rest of our lives are. Traditional churches are seen to be part of the old establishment, which got us into this mess. Yet in the midst of all this, we yearn for something deeper - some seek God in various ways, through new forms of spirituality often derived from Eastern religions, for example, and others just find meaning through belonging with a group of similar mind and musical interests. The 'post-modern' mindset does not tolerate a single world-view, but rather has several, and changes between them in different circumstances rather like changing the track on a music CD to suit the mood of the moment. The alternate views don't have to fit together - ambiguity is accepted, and mystery sparks investigation. 

When 'post-modern' people found a church, the result can be interesting. The 'emergent' churches in the USA and elsewhere seem to be very dependant on context - each is different, to suit a particular group of people in a particular place. There is nothing wrong with this in itself, of course. Such churches DO things together, they have experiences of God together, in their own way. This suits post-modern people, of course; but in doing away with ties to the traditional church, some wisdom and accountability is lost, and emergent churches can occasionally go astray as a result. Nevertheless, they do seem to offer an attractive way of life to younger people, much more so than the traditional churches.

I think there is a valuable lesson to be learned from the emerging churches; but at the same time, the traditional churches cannot abandon their 'modern' people, and so we have to find a middle way that balances both ways of living in the world, without watering down the power of the Gospel to change lives. Some traditional churches start alternative styles of meeting, oriented more around experiencing God in action together rather than around being taught about God, and will work to integrate the people who come to each sort of meeting into a larger community by doing some things together. Some of these meetings may not look like 'church' at all to those who hold to the traditional ways, but in time this will change as we find out more about how best to do it. Leadership training will need to emphasise the apostolic and prophetic more than  the pastoral and teaching aspects of ministry. Lay involvement will be essential in allowing people to be participants rather than observers of what is happening.

It seems to me, then, that a middle way may be found, by offering the chance to take part in traditional Christian spiritual practices such as contemplative prayer that allow people to explore the mystery that God is, as well as exploring the Bible with a new sense of discovery; by becoming more actively invitational and hospitable as we do useful things together with other people in the wider world; and by recognising that even though we are all different, Jesus calls each one of us to follow Him towards a relationship with God. If we try to BE the Gospel, on show in the midst of the world instead of hiding behind our church walls, then I believe people will want to join us, whether we are helping others in need, speaking out about injustice in the world, joining together to worship an awesome God, or sitting silently together listening to Him. 

This remains a work in progress!

Steve Jackson - September 4th 2008.

Last modified: March 24, 2009