chrishubbs.com …somewhere in Paraguay, quelling revolution with a fork.

"...I trust that in these seven years I have laid to rest any suggestion that to be interested in social justice you have to deny the resurrection of Jesus, or that to be interested in eternal salvation you have to treat the world as irrelevant. When I spoke in the Lords a few months ago about the future use of our massive and untapped coal stocks here in the north-east, I had Radio Newcastle on the phone. What, they wanted to know, was a bishop doing talking about coal? Fortunately Psalm 24 came straight to mind. Well, I replied, in the good book it says that the earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof, and you can’t get much more fullness of the earth than all that coal down there. That’s why the Miners’ Gala which we celebrated last weekend remains so important to us here in Durham. God and creation belong together. In Isaiah’s vision, in Paul’s exposition, they belong exactly together. The root of Jesse, Paul declares – in a letter to Rome of all places! – ‘rises to rule the nations’. The resurrection serves notice on Caesar that his time is up, that he is reduced to a secondary role – still important, but strictly limited; and every act of justice and mercy puts that victory into practice. "

So I sometimes talk to my church about the "ministry of being normal". As believers, we are necessarily going to have a lot of distance between us and those who don't follow Christ. We live differently, love differently, hope differently. We're citizens of a different country.

But it might be helpful if we limit the distance between us and the world in a lot of other ways. We don't have to flaunt our lack of a TV and be weird and preachy about grinding your own grain. That only serves to put unnecessary distance between us and the people we're trying to reach. Instead, we should try to engage the world around us, know what our neighbors care about, and try to inhabit the same universe they do.

If they are going to persecute us, let us at least be for things that really have something to do with being a Christian.

A well-written response (by a college freshman!) responding to Ken Ham on the topic of evolution. The student gets to what, I'm increasingly led to believe, is the heart of the evolution/creation battle: the evangelical culture war.

The student's initial article and Mr. Ham's response are linked near the top of this article. An interesting read.

Really good stuff from Douglas Wilson. An excerpt:

"Picture a particularly "pious" little child who was impossible to give gifts to, because he would always unwrap it, abandon it immediately, and run up to his parent and say, "But what really counts is my relationship with you!" A selfish child playing with a toy ungratefully is forgetting the giver. This pious form of selfishness is refusing to let the giver even be a giver.

We should not assume that in the resurrection, when we have finally learned how to look along that beam, in pure worship, that our bodies will then be superfluous. God will not have given us eternal and everlasting bodies because we finally got to such a point of spiritual maturity that we are able to ignore them. In the resurrection, we will have learned something we currently struggle with, which is how to live integrated lives. If God is the one in whom we live and move and have our being, it should not be necessary, in order to glorify God, to drop everything. We shouldn't have to keep these things in separate compartments."

Kinnon, in a review of a Kevin DeYoung piece, provides some excellent stuff, including this conclusion:

"I am convinced that the healthy church going forward will be a church that disciples. Not discipleship in a classroom setting, but discipleship that see us living out our lives in deep relationship with others. As we are discipled and disciple, we will naturally and infectiously teach others to disciple. And I need to stress that that discipleship will need to include effective catechesis as we finally recognize how the present church is functionally illiterate when it comes to church history and a basic understanding of scripture. Discipleship will also include those "baptized" and those with no understanding of their need of baptism, yet."

Now this is very cool.

cjh_comment

Some good NTW stuff here.

A nasty vocab quiz.

Great story.

"Rather than being my church’s messiah or your manager, I see myself as its docent- a tour guide in a museum or art gallery. Clergy showcase to the world the architecture and artistry of the Christian faith. We are tour guides, leading people from one gallery to another, shifting their attention from one work of God to the next. At times, we offer language to describe the unutterable: magnificence, awe, anguish. We are wordsmiths for life’s most muted moments.

Sometimes that moment demands explanation, and like a docent we offer information. We love when someone looks at a familiar passage of scripture in a fresh way, or unpacks some mystery of God in their life that transforms. Those are galleries that buzz with energy.

But other rooms we visit demand nothing but silence. We pause, speechless, when confronted by the mysteries of our liturgy: the breaking of bread, the lifting of a cup, the pouring of water. And there are times when our silence emerges from the ache and anguish of souls: the graveside of a loved one, a doctor’s diagnosis, or a future swirling with shadows. Our job in these moments may not be to speak but to stand. To let people know they are not alone in this gallery, and that someone has been there before."

Great stuff.

"Rather than being my church’s messiah or your manager, I see myself as its docent- a tour guide in a museum or art gallery. Clergy showcase to the world the architecture and artistry of the Christian faith. We are tour guides, leading people from one gallery to another, shifting their attention from one work of God to the next. At times, we offer language to describe the unutterable: magnificence, awe, anguish. We are wordsmiths for life’s most muted moments.

Sometimes that moment demands explanation, and like a docent we offer information. We love when someone looks at a familiar passage of scripture in a fresh way, or unpacks some mystery of God in their life that transforms. Those are galleries that buzz with energy.

But other rooms we visit demand nothing but silence. We pause, speechless, when confronted by the mysteries of our liturgy: the breaking of bread, the lifting of a cup, the pouring of water. And there are times when our silence emerges from the ache and anguish of souls: the graveside of a loved one, a doctor’s diagnosis, or a future swirling with shadows. Our job in these moments may not be to speak but to stand. To let people know they are not alone in this gallery, and that someone has been there before."

Great stuff.

Well put, Dan.

Well put, Dan.

Love it!

A good resource.

Ain't it the truth, folks?

Gotta take a chance on winning the giveaway copy.

Excellent stuff.

Fascinating and thoughtful stuff.