Category: Christianity

The song that runs through my head every time the ACL says something dumb

This has been bouncing around in my brain all evening.

Partly because of the title, I’m no longer surprised when they say dumb and harmful stuff. But especially because of this line: “They don’t, they don’t speak for us”

Here’s why they don’t speak for Christians. Christians who want to speak for Christians, and for God, have some parameters for their message that come from the Bible.

2 Corinthians 5:20

20 Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.

Colossians 4:2-6

At the same time, pray also for us, that God may open to us a door for the word, to declare the mystery of Christ, on account of which I am in prison— that I may make it clear, which is how I ought to speak.

Walk in wisdom toward outsiders, making the best use of the time. Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person.

Romans 10:14

“14 How then will they call on him [Jesus] in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching?”

Romans 15:18-20

18 For I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me to bring the Gentiles to obedience—by word and deed, 19 by the power of signs and wonders, by the power of the Spirit of God—so that from Jerusalem and all the way around to Illyricum I have fulfilled the ministry of the gospel of Christ; 20 and thus I make it my ambition to preach the gospel, not where Christ has already been named, lest I build on someone else’s foundation

Luke 4:18-19 (about Jesus)

18 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
    because he has anointed me
    to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives
    and recovering of sight to the blind,
    to set at liberty those who are oppressed,
19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Oh yeah, and that has something to do with how Christians should think about themselves… (John 20:21)

21 Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.

There’s a lot of stuff there, and a lot that I didn’t copy and paste, about talking about Jesus, and sharing the gospel – which is talking about Jesus. Not a whole lot there about railing against people you don’t like and calling them bullies.

Close but no cigarette: why the ACL needs to get out of debating about homosexuality right now

UPDATE 2 (update 1 is at the bottom of the post) – I have edited the post for clarity in a couple of places. The original paragraphs are at the bottom of the post.

It’s been a while since I last felt the need to write anything about how disappointed I am in the way the Australian Christian Lobby claims to represent Christians, and Jesus, in the Australian public square. This should be understood as a sign that they were being less offensive than usual – because it’s not as if I didn’t keep checking their media releases… But today’s clanger will take some undoing.

Jim Wallace, in a public debate with Greens leader Christine Milne, in question time, compared the health burden caused by the homosexual lifestyle with the health burden caused by cigarette smoking to essentially suggest that the government should be treating homosexuality like it treats smoking. He didn’t say that specifically. But read this:

“I think we’re going to owe smokers a big apology when the homosexual community’s own statistics for its health – which it presents when it wants more money for health – are that is has higher rates of drug-taking, of suicide, it has the life of a male reduced by up to 20 years.”

“The life of smokers is reduced by something like seven to 10 years and yet we tell all our kids at school they shouldn’t smoke.”

Even if this is true – and the health stats are pretty popular with organisations like the ACL, and he attributes them to the homosexual community’s own research, so one expects they’re based on some sort of research, and at least alluding to the spectre of HIV/AIDS – even if this is absolute fact – it’s incredibly wrong headed and harmful for three reasons.

First. Smoking is a behavioural choice in a way that homosexual orientation is not – it is either environmentally (probably) or biologically (possibly) wired into the psyche. Comparisons between the two simply because they come with a health cost are a bit misleading on that front.

EDIT: This is not to say that those who experience unwanted same sex attraction as an orientation are unable to move towards heterosexuality, nor to say that homosexuality is never a choice. Sexual orientation is best understood on a sliding scale and is, to a degree, malleable – with the amount of change possible an individual issue END EDIT.

Second. The health issues associated with homosexuality are, at least in part (EDIT: neither as big a part as public perception suggests, nor so small as to be statistically meaningless END EDIT), the result of the posture and approach that members of the church, aspects of Christian doctrine, and unnuanced statements by people like Jim Wallace (in this instance), and those claiming to speak for all Christians have assumed with regards to this issue.

These health issues are not necessarily linked to homosexuality. But I would suggest that homosexuality is involved in a causal chain – both internatlly and externally driven – that can lead to situational depression, which can lead to drug use and suicide, I suspect the way the church has at times pushed guaranteed “solutions” to unwanted same sex attraction” in the form of conversion to heterosexuality can probably lead to an unhealthy amount of guilt associated with temptation – not even with homosexual practice. While these are possible for some individuals – at times an end point of a celibate struggle with natural orientation may be the more realistic, and Biblical, goal – see my Eunuchs for the Kingdom essay for more of my thinking, and research, in this area.
Want to make someone feel bad for what they are naturally inclined to do – tell the world that schools should be educating kids not to do it. I’m not interested in arguing that homosexual practice is good for one’s health, or for one’s standing before God – but the mental health issues associated with homosexuality are, so far as public perception and the accounts of members of the gay community, related to the way homosexuality is spoken about and treated, and the church has had a role in this by not carefully and pastorally dealing with the issue and by perpetuating, or not speaking out against bigotry conducted in the name of Jesus.

Third. Where is Jesus in all of this? This is my perennial criticism of the ACL. It’s possible to talk about Jesus when you’re talking about homosexuality. Look. Other people managed it on national television here. I did it here. And here. Before you get to defending marriage. If the ACL is more interested in banging on about the traditional definition of marriage at every turn, especially in the midst of a conversation about the tragedy of shortened life spans through drugs and suicide in the homosexual community, then it needs to CHANGE ITS NAME. Call yourself the Australian Traditional Marriage Lobby. Or the Traditional Relationships And Marriage Party (TRAMP). Get the word “Christian” out of articles like this.

It didn’t get any better outside the heat of debate, when Wallace had a chance to nuance his statements.

“But what I’m saying is we need to be aware that the homosexual lifestyle carries these problems and … normalising the lifestyle by the attribution of marriage, for instance, has to be considered in what it does encouraging people into it.”

He’s perpetuating the idea that people will suddenly want to be gay – that’s such a small percentage of people in studies of the etiology (origins) of homosexuality that it’s practically an outlier. Then. He gets worse…

“I am very sorry for that. My heart goes out to those people. But it is a fact.”

Those people? I can’t help but interpret this as a bit of otherising. They aren’t “those” people, as though a new category. We are people. It seems to me that it’s only possible to capitalise on tragedy like this if you’re prepared to make some sort of distinction between you and them.

Here’s how the ACL promoted the debate on its website:

“Only in cutting through claim and counter claim to truth, can the rights of not just the loudest or the most powerful be guaranteed but the disenfranchised, the most marginalised, those without a voice. In this debate on same sex marriage there is such a voice – it is the voice of the child.”

They could call themselves the Australian Children’s Lobby without even changing their web address.

You don’t re-enfranchise the disenfranchised and marginalised by marginalising others, and once again, you don’t get yardage in the public debate by capitalising on human tragedy. This is a lesson the ACL needs to learn. Suicide is not a pawn in the chess game of Australian marriage legislation. You don’t offer hope with a defence of traditional marriage – you offer hope with Jesus and the opportunity of a long term identity defining relationship with him.

UPDATE – Jim Wallace’s actual speech from the debate is here. It’s marginally better – because it doesn’t you know, suggest that we should apologise to smokers for not taking the health risk of homosexuality seriously… But it’s still bad. The only time he mentions Jesus is to establish the value of children…

And not just that, but a mother and father that as much as the law is able to encourage, will love that child and sacrifice for its best interests as willingly as it biological parents should or would have.

Now unfortunately even with the best intent we have done this imperfectly – to the great detriment of children. Those who Jesus put on His knee and said it would be better for you to be cast into the sea with a stone around your neck than to harm one of these.

But this gay activists’ agenda now means that we do it imperfectly intentionally.”

The implicit take home message – though clearly unintentional – is that Jesus, like the ACL, only cares about children – there’s nothing said about how a relationship with Jesus might help anybody else.

He mentions God once too.

“But thanks to politics, the support of parties scrambling in this unholy game we’ve turned the great idea of democracy into, politicians have decided to play God and deny a child its natural right and succumb to this selfish and increasingly vitriolic voice of gay activism.”

Perhaps the worst part is that he starts, in his opening gambit, with the fall. And its impact on human society.

“Of course though we don’t live in a perfect world – it’s what Christians instead call a fallen world.  It’s this imperfect state that the Church has wrestled with against tyranny and injustice, man’s inhumanity to man in slavery and the civil rights movement, abuse of power even within the Church and today daily on its streets and overseas against poverty and injustice.”

 AND THEN SAYS NOTHING ABOUT JESUS AS THE ANSWER TO THE PROBLEM OF THE FALLEN WORLD.

Let me say that again. He talks about the problem of sin – and offers no solution – except to make sure children live with their parents.

The only answer he provides is completely secular.

“In a secular world we have to ensure that everyone has justice and particularly that everyone’s human rights are protected.”

What’s the point of being a “Christian” Lobby if all you’re doing is claiming to protect human rights?

UPDATE 2 – the original paragraphs that have been edited above so that the comments below make sense…

First. Smoking is a behavioural choice in a way that homosexual orientation is not…

“The health issues associated with homosexuality are, at least in part, the result of the posture and approach people like Jim Wallace have assumed with regards to this issue. Want to make someone feel bad for what they are naturally inclined to do – tell the world that schools should be educating kids not to do it. I’m not interested in arguing that homosexual practice is good for one’s health, or for one’s standing before God – but the mental health issues associated with homosexuality are demonstrably related to the way homosexuality is spoken about and treated, and the church has had a role in this by not carefully and pastorally dealing with the issue and by perpetuating, or not speaking out against bigotry conducted in the name of Jesus.”

“Those people? How’s that for a bit of otherising. They’re not a special category of people. They are people. We are people. It’s only possible to capitalise on tragedy like this if you’re prepared to make some sort of distinction between you and them.”

 

A video about Creek Road, part 2

Last week I shared a “vision” video we put together at Creek Road. Here’s part 2.

11 Exciting things (studying at) Queensland Theological College has taught me

There’s something nice about looking back over your old essays and realising that you’ve developed – for me this is true both in terms of my writing, and my thinking.

In a haze of essay induced insomnia the other night I started writing a list of things that College has made me more sure of, or taught me, that I think will be useful for the rest of my life.

1. The gospel is the lordship of Jesus – This means it first functions corporately, and individual salvation, where Jesus deals with sin, is a result. This effects the way I articulate the gospel. It’s not about me. Or you. It’s about him. I was convinced of this in first year, partly from a “word study” – which is a pretty poor basis for making decisions by itself, but partly because it’s a really cohesive summary of both the Old Testament expectations of a coming king, and the New Testament presentation of Jesus. Individualism is a relatively new animal. The word study – the Greek word we translate as gospel was already used in Roman culture as the word for when a herald announced a new king.

2. The Gospel should be proclaimed with wisdom, grace, winsomeness, clarity – and this means understanding the world around you. – What I love about the wisdom literature, Paul, Augustine, and Luther, is that they provide a model for engaging with the best thinking the world has to offer – and using it, or rejecting it – to proclaim Jesus. They also provide a model for using the best methods available to communicate.

3. Biblical Theology as the key for holding the Bible together and understanding anything – spending time reading German scholars who are either deists, or functional atheists, who bring this presupposition to the Biblical text and emphasise its humanity (which is an important aspect) over its divinity (which is the most important aspect) is depressing. The Bible makes the most sense if you allow for some divinely inspired intertextuality between the 66 books that were put together in our one book. Biblical theology makes doctrine possible.

4. The fundamental hermeneutical importance of purpose – I’m increasingly convinced that each book of the Bible is written for a purpose, or two, or three – otherwise, why write them. Often the purpose is explicit, sometimes it’s clearly implicit, other times its a product of its context which is revealed by other books (like reading Psalms against the history of Israel). Any “big idea” of a passage should somehow relate to the big idea of the book – or you run the risk of communicating something the author isn’t.

5. The book as hermeneutical unit. As a corollary to the last point, this means that if each book is a coherent piece of literature, of varying genres, then you’re expected to, by the second reading, know how the book ends, and appreciate how the particular passage you’re looking at helps the author communicate his purpose. This also assumes that the Bible is meant to be dwelt on and read more than once. This means textuality is the first step before intertextuality – so, for example, the best way to understand what function Matthew is having the Pharisees play early in the gospel is by seeing how they develop by the end of the gospel, not how John treats Nicodemus, or even, necessarily, how the Pharisees were actually perceived in history – though these are important.

6. Mission (making the gospel known to people) is worship, and includes being, saying, and doing. I’m not yet ready to argue that mission=worship, but I’m sure it’s a subset. Most passages where Paul talks about evangelism involve the sacrificial use of one’s gifts to serve the body, and reach others. How we do corporate worship is to be intelligible, and should result in visiting unbelievers converting.

7. Systematic theology is a product of biblical theology – creation and new creation are profoundly important. The Bible is the best method for understanding God’s revelation because it points to how he is revealed in Christ. It teaches us about God. It teaches us about us. It does this best when you figure out how different passages relate to us through Jesus and the narrative of salvation history (how God worked out his plan over time). The new creation is the telos for most aspects of systematic theology, creation supplies us with the tools to figure out the nature of things sans sin. Sin obviously messes things up – so much that it gets its own point below. But understanding what we were meant to be, and how we will be, is important.

8. The incredible significance of the fall – bad theology, bad ethics, a weak understanding of Scripture, and too positive an anthropology (understanding of humanity) flow from playing down the effect of sin. Sin breaks everything. So much that God sent Jesus to die to atone for it to not just move us past our initial anthropology when we are united to him, but move us towards our future anthropology. Sin especially breaks our ability to think, and particularly our ability to know God and ourselves. All the problems in contemporary theology, and in public debate, stem from failing to understand how sin has affected humanity.

9. Ethics is a product of Biblical Theology, Systematic Theology, the fall, mission, and eschatology. This is the conclusion of 6, 7, and 8. How we lived is framed by the theological realities, who God is, who Jesus is, who we are, and where we’re going.

10.Integrating ideas is important. I feel like I’ve got a better, more nuanced grasp of things I knew before college, partly because I’ve put time into reading, not just people I agree with, but critically reading people I don’t, and figuring out – with help from brilliant and ministry minded lecturers – how things fit together. I complain a lot about the stress of college, and the workload, but there’s no doubt when I read stuff I wrote a few years ago my thinking has developed – and the beauty of a well thought out college curriculum is that it has developed through integrating multiple streams of thought and data into one or two big ideas. I’m convinced that if you have an anaemic view of one thing, the flow on effect to all other things is more significant than you might think (except Greek). So if your doctrine of Scripture is wonky, everything else is wonky – this is true for most doctrinal points.

11. Practice makes better – especially with writing. I’ve produced, after culling things back to their word limit, 30,000+ words a semester of essay, that’s 150,000 words so far. My essays now are much easier to read, and their arguments much more cohesive, than in first year, and I’m producing them in significantly less time. Having something that forces you to produce work, and assesses it, is great for honing a craft.

I certainly slept better after thinking about why I was spending so much time on an essay.

*Disclaimer – these thoughts are my own, and not necessarily representative of anything the QTC faculty teaches or believes if they don’t want to teach or believe said things…

The Press Release I wish churches would put out on the Same Sex Marriage issue

I was talking to a friend this week about a statement his church might put out on gay marriage and he said “have you seen any good press releases on this issue” and I said “no”… which isn’t entirely true, I could probably find one or two. So I wrote one (P.S – to that friend, I’ve tweaked this a bit since).

It’s a bit wordy, and I’d want to edit some bits out depending on context, but it does, I think, incorporate our “key messages”…


CHURCH NAME seeks way forward in Same Sex Marriage Debate

CHURCH/DENOMINATION NAME apologises to LOCATION’s Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, and Intersex community for any hurt caused to them in the name of Jesus when homosexuality has been singled out as a special sin. We recognise that this apology is particularly necessary given the heat involved in the current debate surrounding the redefinition of marriage.

As a church community we are interested in people of all sexual orientations, and from all backgrounds, meeting Jesus, and having a long term relationship with the God who created the universe, we believe all human relationships come second to this one relationship.

CHURCH NAME, Spokesperson name, said that while it will inevitably cause tension for people, CHURCH NAME must continue to define homosexuality as contrary to God’s design, as the Bible is clear on the matter, but admits the church has done a bad job whenever homosexuality has been singled out for special treatment.

“As a church community we have to recognise that whenever the Bible discusses homosexuality as contrary to God’s created order, it does so in long lists of sins too often given a free pass by Christians speaking out in the same sex marriage debate.”

“As a society we need to work hard at fostering debate which is inclusive and loving, where loving disagreement is not just tolerated but encouraged. It’s unfortunate that standing up for the current definition of marriage is inevitably framed as standing against those who seek changes to the definition. We are not seeking to question the personhood, or limit the freedoms, of the GLBTI community so much as seeking to uphold an institution that we believe was created by God.”

“Perhaps, as a society, we should be taking stock of the heavy emphasis we put on sexual expression as a fundamental human right in the first place, this seems to inherently discriminate against those who are asexual in orientation, or the unhappily single. We believe that sexuality is important, but that it cannot function as the basis of one’s identity.”

“We believe, as Christian churches have for almost 2,000 years, that Jesus Christ, who claimed to be the son of God, was crucified by the Roman Empire, and was raised three days later. We believe that this historical event verified his claims.”

“From the beginning of Christianity this event has been called the gospel, which means good news, because it has implications for every human, it makes a relationship with God possible because the fundamental truth of human nature is that we cannot avoid doing those things that the Bible calls sin, that is stuff that isn’t in line with what the God who made all things would have us do.”

“We’re not arguing that homosexual orientation is a choice, simply that what is natural to us can still be wrong. All of us are naturally wired to do these things. And the Bible says Jesus undoes that wiring. Not in a way that means we don’t do the wrong thing, but in a way that frees us from defining ourselves by those things.”

“We believe, as churches have since the canon was established by councils 1,700 years ago, that the Bible is the word of God, containing the collation of documents necessary to guide us, but ultimately to tell, and foretell, the story of Jesus as the central event in history. Our calendar years still recognise Jesus arrival as a turning point.”

“Jesus taught that marriage, from the beginning of humanity, was instituted by God as between one man and one woman. While we acknowledge that there are many cultures that have made modifications to this design, or that have no ties to the Judea-Christian tradition, we believe that this design is self evident from the anatomical sexual compatibility of men and women.”

“Because we believe that Jesus, as God’s son, and God himself, speaks as the creator of humanity, and we believe the Bible is God’s word, we must continue to oppose the redefinition of marriage, and to continue to define homosexuality as part of the brokenness of our human nature.”

“This is not a decision we take lightly because we recognise that some people in our community are hurt by disagreement, but it’s a decision we must take in order to continue to offer the hope that Jesus offers to all people.”

“While we believe strongly in the separation of church and state, and have no wish to legislate our belief system for everybody, we recognise that all people in a democracy have a right to participate in policy debate. We continue to oppose a redefinition of the marriage act on the basis that we believe that defining marriage as a lifelong commitment made between a man and a woman is the best way to enable human flourishing. We believe that this is the type of family structure that God intended, though we understand that families are complex and all families need love, support and care, which we humbly offer in our church community.”

“We are always happy to have conversations with people who disagree with us, and will continue to offer love, support, and prayer to those people, and anyone struggling with any sin, or people who want to understand who Jesus is.”

ENDS

For more information contact SPOKESPERSON on PHONE NUMBER


What do you reckon? Is it missing anything vital? What would you cut, or add?

A cool video about Creek Road

We’re really enjoying being part of Creek Road this year. I love the way we’ve got a clear vision about the role we’d like to play in our city – we want to help people in Brisbane meet Jesus (like every other church that loves Jesus)… But mostly I love that so many people in our congregation are fired up to serve God, serve our city, and be on mission together.

Its been fun to fuse my PR stuff with ministry in opportunities like this video, that the very talented Wade Iedema from Lifetone Media put together. I helped write the script, my friend Joe polished it, and came up with the idea of getting people from church to read it, and my baby girl, Robyn’s knee, and my coffee machine, make little cameos.

What do you reckon?

How Apple’s Geniuses work, and how it might help with welcoming people at church

This piece from Gizmodo is fascinating. Gizmodo got hold of one of Apple’s training manuals. It’s the kind of thing that church welcoming programs should be built on – if not a little bit artificial… I’d say add some humanity to this stuff and you go a long way towards making the people who come through your doors feel at home.

” Page 39 gives a rundown of Selling Gadget Joy, by way of the “Genius Skills, Behaviors, and Values Checklist.” Selling is a science, summed up with five cute letters: (A)pproach, (P)robe, (P)resent, (L)isten, (E)nd. In other words: Go up to someone and get them to open up to you about their computing desires, insecurities, and needs; offer them choices (of things to buy); hear them out; then seal the day in a way that makes it feel like the customer has come to this decision on their own. The manual condemns pushiness—that’s a good thing—but it also preaches a form of salesmanship that’s slightly creepy: every Apple customer should feel empowered, when it’s really the Genius pulling strings.”

Part of the problem with applying this stuff to real relationships is that real relationships don’t come with a manual… and if you think the relationship you’re entering is coming by the manual, it’s really off putting…

It’s interesting that the Genius training relies on role playing, and constant feedback from fellow team members (though such feedback probably suffers from the same authenticity issue as knowing that a conversation is happening by the book).

From Gizmodo…

On page 58, it’s described as an “open dialogue every day,” with “positive intent.” It’s most certainly not “telling someone they are wrong.” Except that it is—just prevented in a quintessentially Genius mode of masterful empathy and supercharged positivity aura.

On page 60, the following dialogue is presented as a realistic sample conversation between two Apple employees:

“Hi, fellow Genius. I overheard your conversation with your customer during the last interaction and I have some feedback if you have a moment. Is this a good time?”
“Yes, this is a good time.”
“You did a great job resolving the customer’s iPhone issue. I was concerned with how quickly you spoke to the customer. It seemed like you were rushing through the interaction, and the customer had additional questions.”

A few minutes later:

“Thanks for listening to the feedback. In the future, please make sure to signal me if you need help rather than work too quickly with a customer.
“Thanks for giving it!”

The bit that definitely doesn’t translate to the welcoming lounge, or cup of coffee after the service, is the “never apologise for a problem” rule that staff have to obey…

“The term “empathy” is repeated ad nauseum in the Genius manual. It is the salesman sine qua non at the Apple Store, encouraging Geniuses to “walk a mile in someone else’s shoes,” assuming that mile ends at a credit card swipe machine. It is not, the book insists in bold type, “Sympathy, which is the ability to feel sorry for someone.” Geniuses are directly told not to apologize in a manner anyone would call direct. If someone walks in sobbing because their hard drive is fried, you’ll receive no immediate consolation. “Do not apologize for the business [or] the technology,” the manual commands. Instead, express regret that the person is expressing emotions. A little mind roundabout: “I’m sorry you’re feeling frustrated,” or “too bad about your soda-spill accident,” the book suggests.”

The blacklist of no go words or topics is potentially worth thinking about – nothing kills the buzz of a good experience of a service like a negative conversation, or a jargony conversation, or a conversation where a person plays down the impact of the gospel or what being part of a church community means to them, straight after the service. While we love a bit of self-deprecation I’m not sure a conversation with a new person, where you roll out dirty laundry and skeletons, is a winning move (a bit like featuring your proud “brony” status on an online dating profile)

“Negativity is the mortal sin of the Genius. Disagreement is prohibited, as are a litany of normal human tendencies outlined on page 80, which contradict the virtue of empathy: consoling, commiserating, sympathizing, and taking blame are all verboten. Correcting a mistaken or confused customer should be accomplished using the phrase “turns out,” which Apple says “takes you out of the middle of an issue,” and also makes the truth seem like something that just arrived serendipitously. For example, on page 82:

Customer: The OS isn’t supported.
Genius: You’d think not, wouldn’t you. Turns out it is supported in this version.”

I’d love to read the whole thing, and I guess these are my take homes as I think about welcoming people at our church…

1. It’s important to be clear about what we’re aiming to do with welcoming. The list of “we do x” lines above essentially function like plumb lines and are a really helpful set of commitments. We want people to meet Jesus when they come to our church, and ultimately to connect with him, and us.

2. It’s important to understand people, where they’re coming from, what they’re thinking and feeling. Without thinking that you know what they need before hand. This seems kind of obvious – but Apple spends a fair bit of time talking about physical cues, and the “Approach, Probe, Present, Listen” thing is a nice proactive way of engaging with a new person.

3. We want to free people to be real people – but this means choosing the right people to be welcomers. I am repulsed by doing interpersonal relating “by the book.” It seems fake because it is. If you need a book to stop people being off-putting, or negative, or wrecking your product – then you’re putting the wrong people in the front line.

4. Constant, robust (not passive aggressive) feedback in a team is really helpful for getting better. One of the things I’ve really enjoyed being part of the Connect Team at Creek Road is a weekly get together I have with leaders of our connect teams at other services. We come up with ideas, share stories about people who have come to our Connect Lounge. And think about how we can be more helpful to new people and people who aren’t feeling connected to our church. We’re certainly better at connecting with people as a result of these sessions.

What do you reckon? Can we plunder gold from the Egypt of Apple? Or is their approach to customer service too corporate and too focused on the “end” point of the cash register?
 

Infographic: Why Asylum Seekers seek asylum

Did you catch that really uncomfortable interview with Tony Abbott and Leigh Sales last week? The really embarrassing thing, as far as I could tell, wasn’t that he flip flopped on whether or not he’d read the BHP statement about why they’re shelving a massive mining project (I think economics is complex enough that he’s probably right)… no. The embarrassing thing was when the conversation moved to “boat people”… here’s the transcript of that part in full

“LEIGH SALES: Why have you referred repeatedly to illegal asylum boats coming to Australia? Do you accept that that’s illegal and that seeking asylum by any means is legal?

TONY ABBOTT: Most of the people who are coming to Australia by boat have passed through several countries on the way and if they simply wanted asylum they could have claimed that in any of the countries through which they’d passed.

LEIGH SALES: But I don’t believe that it’s actually illegal to pass through countries on your way to somewhere where you want to have asylum.

TONY ABBOTT: You try turning up in America without documents, without a visa, without a passport; you’ll be treated as very, very much illegal, Leigh. The other point I make, from recollection at least, is that the very term that the Government has officially used to describe these vessels is “suspected illegal entry vessel”.

LEIGH SALES: Do you – I’m asking you though, not about the Government. I’m asking: do you accept that it’s legal to come to Australia to seek asylum by any means – boat, plane – that it is actually legal to seek asylum?

TONY ABBOTT: I think that people should come to Australia through the front door, not through the back door. If people want a migration outcome, they should go through the migration channels.

LEIGH SALES: That’s an answer to the question if I asked you: how do you think people should seek asylum?, it’s not an answer to the question: is it legal to seek asylum?

TONY ABBOTT: And Leigh, it’s the answer I’m giving you because these people aren’t so much seeking asylum, they’re seeking permanent residency. If they were happy with temporary protection visas, then they might be able to argue better that they were asylum seekers, but obviously the people who are coming to Australia by boat, they want permanent residency; that’s what they want and this government has given the people smugglers a business model by putting permanent residency on the table. And even though the Government has adopted just one of the Howard Government’s successful policies, it won’t adopt temporary protection visas or the willingness to turn boats around where it’s safe to do so.”

That’s just awful. But there’s no backlash, because there’s no political mileage. No votes are going to change hands here because the Labor Party is every bit as culpable on that front (though they are going to increase the refugee intake).

Season 2 of Go Back To Where You Came From kicks off tonight. The first season was pretty powerful stuff. For all their agitation surrounding gay marriage, which probably annoys a lot of Christians, GetUp is doing some good work on the asylum seeker front. They’ve produced this infographic to coincide with the show. And there’s a petition you can sign ahead of this week’s vote on the new refugee legislation, they’ve also got a form where you can email your member of parliament with a personalised message. If you’re a Christian you might also like to email Jim Wallace at the Australian Christian Lobby (their emails are typically firstname.lastname@acl.org.au), and tell him you’d like the ACL to spend more effort speaking out for those who aren’t providing their organisation with financial support – and maybe ask them to do less than just “welcoming” whatever the government does like they do in this Media Release, and this one).

This shouldn’t be an issue where a response falls along right/left lines. You can read my last two posts on boat people – the first, in response to Tony Abbott’s claim that boat people are “unChristian”, the second, a follow up to that.

UPDATE: Somebody questioned the legitimacy of this infographic in the Facebook comments below. So I did some digging and found what appears to be the source of this data. The following is from pages 17 and 18 of this DIAC report: Submission to the Joint Select Committee on Australia’s Immigration Detention Network September 2011 Department of Immigration and Citizenship (http://www.immi.gov.au/media/publications/pdf/2011/diac-jscaidn-submission-sept11.pdf).

“From 1989 to 30 June 1995 a further 41 boats carrying 1893 people arrived in Australia, most of whom came from Cambodia, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and Vietnam…No Cambodian IMAs arrived after the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) mission was established in 1991. The flow of Vietnamese IMAs effectively stopped in 1995–96, with none arriving in the next three financial years. The last major arrival of IMAs from PRC was in 2000, with 25 arrivals. ”

“The profile and origins of IMAs coming to Australia began to change in 1999. Previously, most IMAs had come from Cambodia, PRC and Vietnam. As the tide of IMAs from east Asia and south-east Asia receded, a new movement of IMAs—predominantly from Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq and Sri Lanka—emerged. In total, 12,272 people arrived in this period. ”

“Boats began arriving again in October 2008. Over the course of 2009–10 the number of asylum seekers increased significantly. As with the preceding wave, the majority of IMAs came from Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq and Sri Lanka. Notably, however, the number of Iranians to arrive since January 2011 has increased significantly.”

UPDATE 2: You can watch episode 1 of season 2 of Go Back To Where You Came From online.

Some clown talks about juggling prayer, bible reading, and evangelism

A day after I watched this video I’m still thinking about it…

I can’t decide if it’s shockingly bad, as in bad enough to post, or just bad. But it’s a ministry clown. There’s something about the second self-satisfied ball toss at the end that drags it towards shockingly bad…

This used to be a Temple…

The Kid’s Talk Team at Creek Road put together this stellar video as part of our “Shadow to Reality” series on Hebrews. I think it’s gold.

What’s wrong with this picture? A stupid “gay marriage” flow chart coming soon to a Facebook wall near you

Gay Marriage Flowchart

While I’ve argued elsewhere that perhaps in a democracy which we recognise is secular, if we think the government should be allowing individuals relative freedom to define their own identity, we could possibly curtail the debate entirely by just selecting the “no” option here, I have real problems with the way this flow chart characterises legitimate arguments that Christians bring to the debate and turns the focus “in house.”

Notice one of the questions is “shall modern-day churches live by all of Paul’s values”… and then the conclusion to answering yes to that question is that such a response is a “sexist, chauvinistic, judgmental, and xenophobic lifestyle” and then there’s some throw away line about culture moving on.

It’s fair to say that while I don’t like Christians being nasty to homosexuals, I also have problems with Christianity being misrepresented like this.

I just want to make it clear – I don’t think the “so you still think homosexuality is sinful?” To which I answer “yes,” necessarily leads to the conclusion “therefore gays shouldn’t be allowed to marry.” So I don’t think I’m the target market for this flowchart.

I also want to acknowledge, from the outset, that the church has been unhelpful on this topic in a couple of ways:
1. Homosexual attraction is not, in any meaningful sense, a “choice” in the vast majority of cases (I would suggest it’s the product of both one’s environment (nurture),and biology (nature), (I think predominantly nurture, but I don’t necessarily think there’s anything preventing a “gay gene” existing – and a person does not choose their environment when that shaping is happening).
2. The church has consistently been bad on this issue, particularly in the last thirty years, when treating it as some “special sin” – the only thing special about homosexuality is that there’s a proactive move to not define it as a sin at all. But we Christians have been hateful, bigoted, oppressive, and intolerant. And I’m sorry about that.

However, that a behaviour is natural is no argument for its inherent value. This is called the naturalistic or is/ought fallacy, and it also doesn’t work with Christianity and the doctrine of man’s natural inclination to sin.

If you’re a non-Christian reading this – please keep this in mind. I’m not discussing this to support the anti-gay marriage campaign, I’m not saying this because I think homosexuals who aren’t Christians need to be stoned, legislated against, persecuted, or even forced to give up their loving relationships – I’d much rather you, and they, meet Jesus, and reconsider what “identity” actually is, and whether sexuality should be the foundation of human identity in the first place. What I am interested in doing is correcting the misconceptions about Christianity this chart perpetuates, because I think it gets in the way of people meeting Jesus. And it does a disservice to the important discussion of sexuality, homosexuality, and marriage, that is still happening in Australia.

So lets take a look at the arguments here…

We’ll work from left to right…

Jesus and marriage

While a direct statement like “homosexuality is wrong” would have been really convenient for this debate, some 1,980 years after the fact, there were plenty of other things Jesus didn’t directly speak against. This is an incredibly odd category to bring to Christian ethics. Jesus wasn’t really on about moral proclamation in the way this box assumes. He spoke about morals, but his major moral sermons, like the Sermon on the Mount, don’t leave much scope for assuming Jesus was interested in doing away with the moral law of Israel, if anything he intensifies them (or explains how the way they were operating was a long way from the picture of holiness the law was designed to create). I can’t, off the top of my head, or with a couple of quick word searches, find any passages where Jesus forbids building idols – the second commandment – but there aren’t a lot of people out there arguing that this is a reason for idol worship. And this was a major issue for the early church (see, for example, Acts 15, and Paul’s instructions to flee from idols (1 Cor 5:11, 6:9–10, 10:7, 10:14, Gal 5:19–21, Eph 5:5, Col 3:5)).

What Jesus did do was, whenever the issue of sexuality came up in his teaching, affirm an Old Testament position on marriage, based on creation, in Matthew 19:

Some Pharisees came to him to test him. They asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?”

“Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”

So, in the Sermon on the Mount (Matt 5), on adultery, it doesn’t occur to him to use gender neutral terminology, as if anything goes…

27 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ 28 But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

This isn’t a great argument – it’s sort of a modified argument from silence. But then this “box” is an argument from silence, and I’d say the onus is on the author of the flow chart to demonstrate why their argument is most logical in the face of the facts that Jesus was a Jew, who consistently upheld the Old Testament.

There is a sense where much of the subsequent argument in this post (this box, and subsequent boxes) relies on understanding that Jesus fulfilled the law in a way (I’d say by keeping it perfectly) that meant its incredibly difficult standard of morality is not what saves God’s people, and thus certain aspects (like the food laws) don’t continue… This doesn’t actually mean the law is of no value for determining what is right and wrong behaviour. There aren’t many Christians who would argue that the Old Testament isn’t in some way useful for Christian ethics. In fact, Paul seems to suggest the law continues to play a role in making us aware of sin in Romans 7.

But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code.

What shall we say, then? Is the law sinful? Certainly not! Nevertheless, I would not have known what sin was had it not been for the law. For I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.”

This is a good post that deals with this question in a bit more detail. On to the next box…

The Old Testament

This is an interesting argument. I have some sympathy with the point it tries to make – it is hard to figure out why we’re ok with pork, but not ok with homosexuality. Most of this, for me, hangs on how Jesus fulfils the law, and a lot of the answer to that is pretty clear in the pages of the New Testament, it’s not exactly silent on the relationship between the Old Testament and Christian living, given that this was the big issue Jewish and gentile Christians were grappling with in the early church.

The Old Testament is pretty clear (Leviticus 18:22, 20:13). If this was all the Bible said anywhere then you could try to make a pretty weak case (if you buy into the tripartite moral/civic/ceremonial division of the Old Testament law) that somehow this isn’t a moral issue but a purity law that was symbolically meant to distinguish Israel from the nations. Personally I don’t think there’s a good reason to operate with that sort of distinction, it seems a bit arbitrary. It’s important to point out that Christians are not often Jews, we’re typically gentiles, so the law in the Old Testament doesn’t really have a function for us beyond pointing us to Jesus and explaining something about God. I think the best answer to why these particular passages are still valid for Christians is that when the early church sits down to figure out what expectations of the Old Testament carry through for the church (a mix of Jews and Gentiles), they come to this conclusion (in Acts 15)…

19 “It is my judgment, therefore, that we should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God. 20 Instead we should write to them, telling them to abstain from food polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from the meat of strangled animals and from blood.
It’s pretty clear that those passages in Leviticus think homosexuality is sexually immoral, and pretty clear that the NT writers treat it the same way… but that’s the next box.

The New Testament

First of all, this whole “the Bible might have said homosexuality but it meant something different” argument is kind of bizarre. A guy named Richard Hays wrote a book called The Moral Vision of the New Testament which considers this argument (ie the one in the box) by looking at the words that Paul, a Jew, might have been familiar with, to figure out what he meant. He says (page 382) that the Greek words describing homosexual acts in 1 Corinthians 6 are “almost certainly” derived from Leviticus, and that the words were common in Rabbinic texts describing homosexual activity.

The first part of this box is at best a hotly debated minority position produced by people with an agenda to undermine the most basic understanding of the text. I’d say it’s much clearer that the New Testament views homosexuality as negatively as the Old. Especially Paul. But Peter thought Paul’s writing carried the authority of Scripture (2 Peter 3:16). So dismiss one, and you’ve essentially got to dismiss them all – especially given the Jerusalem Council’s decision in Acts 15.

The second part of this box, which essentially acknowledges our conclusion here, which dismisses Paul because he said women should be silent is confusing two issues, and is what some might call a genetic fallacy that suggests this position is bad because it comes from Paul (essentially this is a poisoning the well fallacy too), an ad hominem fallacy that suggests Paul is “sexist, chauvinist, and judgmental” so shouldn’t be listened to, an appeal to emotion fallacy that says because something else Paul does is considered bad and makes people angry – everything he does must be bad, a false cause fallacy, a strawman fallacy that links the two issues as though they are one simply because they are both culturally out of fashion.

It should be clear that my answer to “shall modern day churches live by all of Paul’s values” is a resounding yes. By making the statement “values” not “commands” this would even give wiggle room if you could argue for some principle underpinning some of his commands that is the binding part (like what is the deal with head coverings in church?). Paul’s values were thoroughly loving, thoroughly interested in winning people to Christ despite their natural rejection of him, and thoroughly concerned for others. Sometimes that means telling other people that their natural desires are wrong.

In conclusion – the argument is inherently bad – but it does at least attempt to make a point (ie Paul is out of date and we shouldn’t listen to him). Assuming, for a moment, that there is merit to the argument regarding the language used in 1 Cor 6, and assuming that Paul’s views on women are archaic (for the sake of argument, I don’t think they’ve really grappled with what’s going on in Corinth that Paul is addressing here), this still doesn’t actually deal with the substance of Paul’s argument, particularly in Romans. His argument in Corinthians is that Christians shouldn’t be like the people around them, and should be changed from the types of people they used to be. This is primarily a pastoral approach to the question. His argument in Romans 1 is that homosexuality is a result of what happens to human nature when we reject God. When we overturn the created order – Paul’s problem with homosexuality (explicitly) is the same as the Jesus’ implicit problem outlined above – God made man and woman to be sexually compatible. Which is interesting, because it’s the next box…

Adam and Eve v Adam and Steve

The argument from nature/creation is an interesting one – it risks running the same is/ought fallacy as the argument that homosexual attraction is essentially “natural” in that it isn’t a choice. This comes down to a theological account, or perhaps a philosophical account, of what being human is, and what nature is.

If you believe there’s a creator (God), who made a good world (which the Bible says he did), which was then broken by sin so that what is “natural” now is not what was intended then (which many Christians believe is the case), then arguments from what “was” before the fall, are more theologically compelling for Christians than arguments from what “is” now. It’s a was/ought thing. So because God created man and woman for relationship, before the fall, we can say this is the ideal. It helps that both Jesus and Paul, two pretty influential figures in Christianity, reaffirm this truth and its relationship to sexuality.

Overpopulation seems a strange place to go next. The argument that people should be gay because we don’t need more children (implicit in that box) is kind of a weird approach to the development of homosexual attractions that bears no resemblance to how psychologists think that actually happens. People aren’t condemning (necessarily) homosexuality because it can’t fulfil the mandate to be fruitful and multiply, the condemnation rests a step earlier, homosexuality is against the created order because God created man and woman – marriage isn’t about children, though raising children should happen in marriage. If you tow that line you end up ruling out marriage for elderly or infertile couples – and that’s dumb.

The argument from creation is one of the most legitimate arguments from a Christian perspective – not only because it’s there from the beginning, but because it’s where other people go (I suspect you could make the case that Leviticus bases its prohibition on the same thing). This box also seems to be contradicted by the flowchart author’s willingness to see Jesus as an authority in box 1. If Jesus is an authority, then this argument has merit when it comes to marriage.

The Bible’s Definition of Marriage

This one is interesting. While the Bible contains descriptions of polygamous marriage, and laws regarding the other types of relationships listed, descriptions aren’t prescriptions. You can’t argue from laws regarding what Israel was to do in the process of conquering its neighbours, that the ideal behaviour is to marry a female prisoner-of-war. Laws exist, in any culture, to tell you what happens when things aren’t ideal. Law isn’t ethics.

You can’t even argue from characters like Jacob, David, and Solomon, that polygamy was the “Biblical definition” of marriage, in fact at least in Solomon’s case it was a big problem. Just because something happens in the narrative bits of the Bible doesn’t mean it is being affirmed. A plain reading of the whole storyline of Israel makes that pretty clear.

It’s also fair to say that if you follow the whole storyline of the Bible, as something that unfolds chronologically, the Bible does define marriage as between one man and one woman (see what Jesus said).

The biggest problem with this flowchart is that it has a broken model of interpreting the Bible. There aren’t many people who don’t think that the arrival of Jesus in the New Testament was a significant moment that changed the way the Old Testament should be read.

The Old Testament exists to provide a backstory for Jesus.

You can’t just rip bits out of the OT and say “the Bible says” without qualifying that statement by considering how that part applies to Jesus and applies to us, just as you can’t say the movie Titanic says “the Titanic sailed safely on its maiden journey,” because you caught the middle but not the end, and stick with that as your account of the maiden journey. That’s dumb.

I wrote a pretty big ethics essay, essentially on why these boxes are wrong, you can read that if you want another few thousand words to add to this one.

That is all.

Buy coffee, help Tanzanians meet Jesus at uni

Pairing up coffee with good causes is something I like to do from time to time. A few years ago we used Indian coffee to help Dave raise money for clean Indian drinking water, last year we used coffee to buy beehives and grain through Tear’s Really Useful Gift catalogue, and now, you can buy some delicious Tanzanian coffee – a premium kind of coffee (it’s more expensive) – to help partner with Arthur, Tamie and Elliot as they head to Tanzania.

You’ll even get a magnet!

I have about 12kg of Tanzanian coffee up my sleeve, and would love to roast it all as part of this little initiative. So keep reading – and then buy up at the end – you can use Paypal, or, if you’d prefer, contact me by email to order some and pay via bank deposit.

I will be mailing this coffee out a little differently – I’m planning to send it on Mondays or Fridays (my days off) – so order close to one of those days if you want it fresh.

Here’s some more about the project – you’ll find this content duplicated on a dedicated page – and the Tanzanian coffee order form will sit where the old fashioned order form sits in the sidebar for as long as I’ve got coffee left to sell.

Help Tanzania Meet Jesus

The Davises

Arthur, Tamie, and Elliot, are heading to Tanzania next year aiming to introduce a generation of Tanzanian leaders to Jesus. You can purchase some delicious coffee to help them out, and to get better informed about what’s going down in Tanzania, and what they plan to do there.

They’ve renamed their blog, what was Cyberpunk + Blue Twin is now meetjesusatuni.com, and they have a Facebook page that I highly encourage you to like so that you can follow along on their exodus (most people would use the word journey here. But that’s so cliched).

They’re raising support – and I’d encourage you to get on board, especially if you’ve benefited from the wisdom they’ve shared via their blog over the years.

Here’s a little video, because lets face it, at 25 frames per second, a 3 minute picture is worth 4.5 million words (that’s 180x25x1000).

So. That’s all well and good. But I’ve lured you here using coffee, and now you’re wondering what’s the go with that.

Let me tell you.

Tanzania is home to some pretty special coffees – especially from the Blackburn Estate (here’s Cup Coffee’s tasting notes for Clouds) – we’ve got 10kg of Tanzanian coffee from this estate – in two lots – “Clouds of August” and “Pick of the Harvest” that we’re going to offer as a way to support Arthur, Tamie, and Elliot. We’re not looking to raise a huge amount of money – probably just enough to cover their postage costs for a year, or something like that. But here’s the deal. This coffee is a premium variety. It costs about double what I’d normally pay for green beans. So that’s why this little project is a bit more in line with the prices you’d normally pay for small batches of roasted coffee.

When you buy these beans you’ll get a little bit more info on Tanzania, some tasting notes, and a magnet to remind you to pray for Arthur, Tamie and Elliot as they prepare for life in Africa.

Here are some tasting notes for each lot (from Ministry Grounds).

Clouds of August

A bright, sugary and lively coffee with nice peach acidity, notes of red apple and cocoa. A beautiful mandarin balance.

Pick of the Harvest

A complex and layered coffee with a buttery mouthfeel and notes of plums and red fruit.

Here’s the Order Form – which you’ll also find in the sidebar of the home page.








Amount and Delivery Method
Variety












I don’t know why the spaces are so big in this order form. Sorry about that.

Book spine poetry (and theology)

So ages and ages ago, Ali tagged me in a meme. I liked the meme. I wanted to participate. And then Andrew participated, and one thing led to another…

I made some poems, that felt a little more like prose. I’ll write out the titles below each picture so that you

Like this attempt to capture the Zombie Apocalypse.

Revelation Unravelled
An Outbreak Of Darkness
Gridlock
The Summons
Newspaper Blackout
To The Burning City
World War Z
A Furious Hunger
Serious Eats
Backyard Ballistics
One Last Kill

And these…

The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies Of The Apocalypse
Meltdown
A Furious Hunger
Help Lord The Devil Wants Me Fat

How To Be A Man
The Idiot
The Big Idea
Absinthe And Flamethrowers
Fools Die

How To Have A No. 1 Hit Single
Songs Of The Humpback Whale
An Outbreak Of Darkness
Backwards Masking Unmasked
The Whole Truth

Just Do Something
One Day At A Time
Jogging With Jesus
Run Baby Run
Slim For Him

And then I made some theology. This is pretty much the narrative arc of the whole Bible, though it’s also a summary of Genesis and then the solution to the problem of Genesis…

How To Read Genesis
What Is History?
The Origin Of The Species
Utopia
Picture Perfect
Calls To Worship
The Tipping Point
Help Lord, The Devil Wants Me Fat
Adams v God
Weasel Words
The Collaborator
Cry, The Beloved Country
Requiem
The Promise Of The Future

Deliver Us from Evil
Emperor: The Death of Kings
Divine Justice
The Great Exchange
Paradise City
This Other Eden

Introducing: Dave Bailey’s Blog

My friend, colleague, and personal Yoda, Dave Bailey, has a new blog. Well. It’s the resurrection of an old blog.

This is an artist’s rendition of Dave’s face. It’s the closest we could get, because he is very shy.

He’s kept at it for about three weeks longer than he did last time, and there’s some gold there. Including these reflections from a recent visit to Hillsong.

Why don’t we think about non-verbal communication when we’re singing in church?

In October last year, I stirred up a bit of a hornets nest when I wrote something that was admittedly deliberately provocative about “worship” and “music in church gatherings.”

I’ve probably nuanced what I would say about “worship” since then – I think, and this is a working definition, that “worship is the sacrificial use of the gifts God has given you to glorify him by loving and serving him, and one another, and pointing people to Jesus.” I think that best accounts for Romans 12, and Paul’s approach to ministry and spiritual gifts, particularly in Corinthians.

I’m pretty convinced by the argument that singing in our gatherings is part of “word ministry” – it is designed to both express something about our faith in Jesus, express something vertically in terms of vocalising our praise to God, and express something horizontally in terms of encouraging our brothers and sisters as we sing together, and highlighting something for the non-Christian in the midst of our gathering (ala 1 Cor 14:22-25).

Singing is communication. Singing is word ministry. And laying aside all debates about the charismatic movement and whether flaying your arms around, or at least moving, is biblically mandated (or rather, warranted, ala what Bob Kauflin dealt with when he spoke in Brisbane last year), I think we I’d at least argue we’re doing this communication part badly… or at least not communicating as fully as we could be… if we adopt the dour posture common in the reformed evangelical (Presbyterian) circles that I move in.

Here’s why.


Image Credit: The Speaker’s Practice

Most communications experts and consultants I’ve dealt with over the years – from uni lecturers during my undergrad degree, to consultants we hired in the workplace, to preaching lecturers at college – stress the importance of things other than words when we are speaking. Things we call “non verbal communication.”

The number in the pie chart above seems pretty arbitrary – I’ve heard it said that non-verbal communication can account for up to 85% of what we communicate, or how effectively we communicate it, when we speak. That’s what these guys claim.

They also claim that 90% of the emotional work is carried by non-verbals.

If this stat is true then it plays into another aspect of communication – particularly when it comes to the fine art of persuasion. And if communication is not “persuasive” in some sense, if you’re just preaching to the choir – literally – when you sing, and you’re not trying to reinforce or hammer home something using music as a teaching tool, then I’d argue that it’s not really a particularly useful form of Christian encouragement, and you’re not really treating music as word ministry.

Persuasion, since Aristotle (and later, my favourite, Cicero), has been divied up into categories of pathos (emotion), ethos (character), and logos (content) – here’s a run down from another public speaking site I found via google. And a little diagram – I’d argue from the stat above, even if its inaccurate, that pathos includes convincing non-verbals…


Image Credit: Visual Books Project

In my experience of my circles our approach to music heavily invests in the logos element of our music, treats music as a ministry that requires a certain character test for members of the band (ethos), and maintains a deep suspicion of pathos because it’s largely, especially in the absence of the other two elements, where manipulation goes down.

I’ve written something about manipulation and persuasion before. And personally I am deeply, and culturally, suspicious of any attempts to manipulate the way I think with bells and smells, ritual, minor falls and major lifts, or any little tools that bands might use – like clapping.

I’m not suggesting working our way through this chart until you find something that resonates with you.

Image Credit: TimHawkins.net (get the T-Shirt)

But I don’t think this suspicion is the answer – and I think its stymying our ability to communicate the gospel clearly in everything we do when we gather. I’m trying to figure out what being mindful of what I’m communicating non-verbally when I sing looks like.

Good persuasion, following Cicero, means starting with character, and then tying logos and pathos together under that rubric. I think Paul takes Cicero’s ball and runs with it in his letters to the Corinthians (my Corinthians essay) – arguing that the character test for Christian ministry is being sacrificially cross shaped in how they do life, and especially how they gather… and I think, if emotion is carried by non verbal communication, and assuming we’ve got issues of ethos and logos right in our singing, then we need to be thinking about how we do pathos well with our non-verbals when we use singing to communicate the gospel. In a way that is sacrificial and meets the definition of worship I floated above.

The call then, is for us to be genuinely authentic when we’re singing together, rather than faking authenticity, pretending to be bought in to the emotional stuff, because we want to communicate something. There are heaps of people, particularly in our culture, who are just like me – suspicious of overtly emotional stuff, wary of manipulation through an increasing sensitivity to the tricks of advertisers, spin doctors, and other charlatans – so we can’t do the pathos, or even the logos, right, without getting the ethos right first. But nor can we be so scared of this stuff that we avoid pathos all together – because a lack of emotional buy in amounts to an insincere and inauthentic approach to persuasion, and also fails at communicating as effectively as possible.

It’s traditional for posts about doing non-verbal stuff while you’re singing to say the Christian thing to do is to be sensitive to the people around you and not do stuff that will distract or offend them – which if worship is sacrificial service of others as well as of God – goes without saying.

The questions then are – if singing forms part of our word ministry – if it’s communication – how do we communicate our thankfulness to God using the means of communication that he has given us,* how do we best use these means to encourage each other about the power of the gospel in our lives as we sing, and how do we use them to communicate the gospel to outsiders?

Interestingly, as a bit of a throwaway, this book chapter on gestures in communication, suggests that gestures are particularly helpful for overcoming a communication divide (from p 21) – I’m not going to hang the whole thesis of this post off this, but I wonder if seeing some familiar gestures in response to music (like the stuff you might see at a concert), rather than a room of dour people, may overcome some of the gaps between the inevitable Christian jingo and vocabulary some of our songs contain, and make the experience of corporate singing a little less weird – rather than more weird, though you could equally run with this point to justify interpretive dance… this book chapter also suggests we’re generally reliably able to spot people who are performing “rehearsed” gestures, rather than spontaneous.

I don’t think the answer is looking something like this…

* I’m trying to be careful here not to suggest a non-Biblical requirement where we must make gestures as we sing – I think the expression of the vertical aspect of our singing has significance for its effectiveness horizontally as a means of encouragement and communicating the gospel.