I imagine being in ministry is like training dogs to be obedient. All those pesky independent thinkers to keep in line. Which is why I’m glad this guy preached this sermon. So I can point people to this post – to remind them to RESPECT MY (future) AUTHORITY.
Category: Christianity
Jesus is ___: Fill in the blank
In an advertising campaign reminiscent of Australia’s Jesus All About Life campaign – a church in the states is running a “Jesus is ____” website asking for people to submit their ideas about who Jesus is. A nice idea. Hijacked by atheists. So if you’re not an atheist, and you don’t think Jesus is a baseballer hitting at 0.216, then head on over and try to even out the numbers. This is the problem with user generated content in the day and age of pharyngulation. Atheists are aware of these campaigns and hit them pretty quickly. For giggles.
I like the campaign.
Here’s their blurb:
“What goes in the blank?
Everyone has an opinion of who Jesus is. That’s why this website exists: as a platform for people to express who Jesus is to them.
Jesus is a lot of things, but the answer is in the Bible. It says that Jesus is the Son of God, who came to earth on a mission to restore mankind to God. By living a perfect life, dying on a cross, and coming back to life, His mission was a success. We can know God because of Jesus.
So maybe the reality of who Jesus is remains too big for the blank.”
And the promo video.
JESUS IS ___. from The City Church on Vimeo.
Outnumbered: Discussing Religion
I like it when comedians and television shows talk about Christianity – because it gives a real insight into what people actually think/are prepared to laugh at when it comes to the gospel.
The BBC show Outnumbered doesn’t see Christianity as a taboo.
This one has been around for a while…
Save Christmas: Kill an elf
Findo found this story about a minister so keen to defend the honour of Christmas that he’s executing a satanic elf to make the point.
Elves, of course, are servants of Satan. Just like Hitler.
This weekend, Knudsen’s hatred for the creature he says “comes from the devil” manifested itself in the form of a mock execution by hanging of a Christmas elf outside his church.
Around the elf’s neck was a sign reading “we reject Satan and all his works and all his empty promises”, a reference to the Christian baptism rite.
Knudsen said decorating with elves at Christmas was “comparable to decorating with Nazi flags”, and described elves of all sorts as “poltergeists that come from the devil and make children sick”.
Driscoll on engaging culture
Following on from the excellent video about politics, Driscoll just posted this on his blog regarding a Christian approach to culture. It is, in my opinion, a thoroughly Pauline approach, in the next few days I’ll be posting an essay I wrote (at Venn Theology) unpacking Paul’s approach to areas of gospel freedom.
Read Driscoll’s whole post. It’s worth it. He apparently said he liked Jay Z’s music the other day on Facebook, and the crowd went wild.
“What I’ve found over the years is that whenever I speak about something culturally related from a Christian perspective, a debate rages. This has been the case since the earliest days of my ministry. This is because I consider myself a missionary in culture.”
“As a missionary, I do not view culture passively, merely as entertainment. Rather, I engage it actively as a sermon that is preaching a worldview.”
So, as a missionary, I find it a good thing to be aware of what is going on in culture in general as well as in music in particular. Though not a musician myself, I have some five thousand songs on my iTunes account from a wide range of genres and styles. Music is among the most defining and revealing aspects of any culture, and so in addition to enjoying some music, I study lots of music.
“As a missionary, you will need to watch television shows and movies, listen to music, read books, peruse magazines, attend events, join organizations, surf websites, and befriend people that you might not like to better understand people whom Jesus loves. For example, I often read magazines intended for teenage girls, not because I need to take tests to discover if I am compatible with my boyfriend or because I need leg-waxing tips, but because I want to see young women meet Jesus, so I want to understand them and their culture better.”
“The attitude we have for our children is the same we have for our church. This is why we have a pastor leading film and theology discussions. This is why we have a large contingency of Christians who are in the music business but do not wave the flag of Christian music. Rather, their theology informs their songwriting and artistry. Like our children, our goal is not to create a safe Christian subculture as much as to train missionaries to live in culture like Jesus.”
“As we engage culture (watching films and television, listening to music, reading books, shopping at stores, and so on), we must do so as theologians and missionaries filled with wisdom and discernment, seeking to better grasp life in our culture. We do this so we can begin the transforming work of the gospel in our culture by contextualizing the good news of Jesus. Not compromising. Not changing. Contextualizing. Practically, this means doing what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 9:22–23, “I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some. I do it all for the sake of the gospel, that I may share with them in its blessings.”
The truth is that every ministry is contextualized, the only difference is to which culture and which year of that culture. Everything from pews to chairs, sound systems, projectors, suits, and a printed Bible in the English language are very recent missiogical contextualizations in light of the two thousand years of Christianity.
“
Venn Theology: Stuff you might be missing
I’m still trying to figure out exactly what goes here and what goes there.
But in the last few days you might have missed these posts at Venn Theology (my new serious blog)…
1. Reasons you might be really terrible at Powerpoint.
2. Colours and branding and marketing and what they say about you and your product.
3. My lovely wife Robyn is posting her most excellent essay on Daniel in an eight part series. And would love your comments.
4. I’m unpacking my newly developed (or developing) approach to interpreting the Bible by grasping the historical context… ok, it’s not new, but I’m hopefully going to show the benefits of adopting such an approach. Here’s a follow up video with history professor/Biblical scholar/all round good guy Edwin Judge.
Muse’s Matt Bellamy on corporate songwriting
Muse were pretty epic last night. They have a beautifully crafted stage presence that makes the songs you don’t like on their albums make a bit of sense. It’s almost as though they write their songs with the arena and not the CD player in mind… wait. That’s exactly what they do. Apparently. According to this interview anyway, which has some relevance (I think) to writing music for churches. Not that I’m an expert on the matter. But I know what songs I like singing and don’t like singing (and I have a yawn test – if I yawn while singing a song it isn’t much fun to sing).
“Q: Speaking of your live show, Muse uses a lot of layers and complicated structures. As you are writing, do you three confer about how the songs will translate live.
A: The end venue, which relates to the last question, it has an impact on the writing, whether you like it or not. You’re always thinking – how is this going to be listened to. Our time is dominated mostly by touring, not by being in the studio. If we were just a studio band, we’d make one kind of album, but because we know we are going on the road, you can’t help but make music that has a relevance being in a large venue.
Using pronouns like “we” and “us”, instead of “I” – you move away from the personal and start moving to singing about more – even the whole venue will feel like it’s about them, or about all of us together in that room. It has an impact. It’s a major difference between the first album to this one, I feel the music we’re making is making a bigger effort to reach out to the people at the back of the venue. You can’t help but wanting to engage the audience.
Q: Do you miss playing small clubs?
A: I like it for different reasons. When you go into a small club, you can totally misjudge the set-list. There’s a certain type of songs which work well in a small venue and others that work well in a big venue. You can get it wrong. There’s a song from the last album called “Take A Bow”, and I imaging on this album it’ll be the track “Eurasia”, that if you played at a really small venue it would actually be crap (laughs). It just wouldn’t work. The pretensions of it, or the over-reachingness of it would be exposed.
Whereas when you go into a stadium environment, it feels perfectly relevant. The boldness of the emotion, the instrumentation of the music fits very well.
Q: So when you are writing, you are writing to the space?
A: I wouldn’t say it’s conscious. I’ve noticed it’s happening unconsciously. It might be the impact of playing in front of large audiences for a long period of time. It makes you think differently about people, it make you think differently about yourself. It’s no longer just a subjective, lonely experience.
“
The Andrew Show
This kid is going to grow up to be a racist Third Eagle of the Apocalypse. The puppet only gets a say about 3 minutes in.
He’s a junior KKK member. No kidding.
Bad Christian Music #74
YouTube’s supply of bad Christian music seems bottomless. I can’t remember if I’ve seen this before. But it made me laugh.
Driscoll on Christianity in public
Say what you will about Mark Driscoll – but the man is sharpest (I think) when he’s talking about how the church should interact with the surrounding culture. I like this video because we are almost completely in agreement.
Christianity, society and politics from CPX on Vimeo.
He talks about how we can learn from Calvin’s approach to Christianity and Politics, avoiding anachronistically suggesting that any imposition of Christian government is wrong, and suggesting that it’s not appropriate today because you’d need everybody in a country to be Christian in order for that to be appropriate.
“Change often times comes from the bottom up. And I think one of the great myths is that politics changes culture. Politics doesn’t change culture, it represents culture. Politics represents the views of the constituency.”
“My efforts particularly in our city have not been politically active, I’m quite frankly not, I mean, we don’t talk about politicians or issues, much, I mean as I’m teaching through the Bible there might be some corollary between a social issue and a biblical teaching, but for the most part our goal is to love and serve people, to serve the city, to be people who really do love and are committed to our city and want to see the benefit to all people in the city, not just the Christians, and I believe that as more people share that ethic that will help to turn the culture of the city over and that will lead to political change.”
Watch it. It’s good.
This is the sort of post that is eventually going to migrate to Venn Theology (in fact, it’s cross posted there).
A Badd take on Christianese
Badd make funny videos.
Another brick and a wall
Why do these preachers always sound like they’re hyperventilating?
Via Christian Nightmares.
Hipster Preacher: as crazy as the other YouTube crazies
Ok. I’m glad the Wine Barrel guy from Brisbane doesn’t have a monopoly on crazy.
“We have the most revelation of any generation that has walked the planet.”
I can take this “revelation” and leave it… but thanks.
Oh. This explains it.
And so it begins… Christian in England loses job and court case for disagreeing with gay adoption
Interesting. From the BBC.
“A Christian adoption adviser dismissed for refusing to recommend same-sex couples as suitable parents has lost her claim for religious discrimination.
Dr Sheila Matthews, 50, from Kettering in Northamptonshire, lost her job with the county council when she asked to abstain from voting in same-sex cases.
She told her employers Northamptonshire County Council she felt children “did best” with heterosexual parents.”
And so it begins. In England.
So, it turns out one can not abstain from an issue one disagrees with on religious convictions in England – note, she wasn’t actually voting against gay adoption, she was asking not to be put in a situation where she would have to vote against them. Lunacy.
More people should read this article from ABC Unleashed. This is a ridiculous case of forcing someone to conform to the majority view on a conscience issue – the type of think 1984 warned us about…
Here’s the killer line from that ABC article:
…there is an alternative to the combination of ‘disapproval and hate’; and it is ‘disapproval and love’. Even in our hyper-sensitive Aussie culture ‘disapproval and love’ is a moral oxymoron, but in fact we adopt this approach to life every day and it is a morally consistent approach for relating to people whose sexual expressions differ to those with whom you agree.