Curate’s Chronicles

I’m about to post an article I’ve written for our church magazine, although I don’t know when / if it will be published.  But let me break my long blogging silence with a list of good articles I’ve come across concerning the election of Barack Obama to be the 44th US President.

Obama’s Extreme Pro-Abortion stance.

Obama’s anti-Christian policies.

What people were looking for in a President, and why only Jesus can provide.

From the incredibly insightful Cerulean Sanctum, two great articles calling on Christians to repent of our hypocrisy, stop trusting politicians to be our Saviour, and start living like Jesus.

1. On Election Eve

2. Aftermath

Here are some good quotes:

Well, conservative Christians are most definitely prolife, right? Not really. What we are is antiabortion. We are by no means prolife. If we were truly prolife then orphanages would be relegated solely to Dickens’s Oliver Twist, and nursing homes would be empty, instead of filled with our elderly parents. Again, what we are against and what we are for are not the same thing. We have to stop pretending they are.

Evangelizing the world is much tougher, especially in a post-Christian West that has been inoculated against the Gospel by Christians who talk a good faith but who live it haphazardly. Heart change only comes, though, when Christians stop talking about evangelism and actually start doing it. It’s when our walk matches our talk. When our rhetoric matches the Bible and is lived out before the world, then people might sit up and take notice. We have to stop dedicating so much time to erecting our individual kingdoms and spend more time working with the Lord to build His Kingdom His way.

So let’s look to Jesus!  Two articles from Christ The Truth will help you do this:

1. Election results - latest.

2. Sending our Man to the seat of power.

From around the web:

“The Peasant Princess” is a website about the new sermon series on Song of Songs at Mars Hill, Seattle.  Even if you have no intention of viewing the sermons, check it out and enjoy the quality of the site.

“Pastor: Mentor the Young Men” is a sermon / article about mentoring men (duh!).  I’ve only flicked through it, but it could be helpful for getting ministers to put the “Two-tee-two-two” principle into practice (read 2 Timothy 2:2 to make sense of that).

A series of talks by Tim Keller and Edmund Clowney on “Preaching Christ in a Postmodern world” is available free from iTunes.  [Grrr. I had to exit Linux and go into Windows XP to install iTunes in order to download these.  It reminded me why I'm happy with LinuxMint]

Have you been reading Christ The Truth recently? No? Well abandon this site immediately and go there. Your time will be far better spent

I come across a lot of useful links as I wander the web.  But I’m never sure how to keep track of everything I like.  I’m going to start posting more of them here, which may bore you (who wants to read a blog full of “hey, this is interesting” posts) but at least it keeps me organised.  Well, a little less disorganised.  And you never know, you might like them!

On the topic of children in church here are two from Doug Wilson and his wife.

Asking “what does the Bible say about children in worship” Doug answers “something like that whilst it is not a sin for the church to gather without the children and there are times when age specific teaching / addressing male heads of households / those who can understand etc. might be appropriate, as a norm the kids should we welcomed and included.” (taken straight from Marc Lloyd)

Nancy Wilson gives a description of what goes on at Christ Church, Moscow (Idaho).

Two things come to mind:

It is hard work keeping young children in church, especially for mums on their own (for whatever reason, e.g. husband is the curate!)

Many evangelical churches want the Sunday morning service to be accessible for newcomers / guests / visitors etc.  Having groups for children is very attractive to such people, whose children are unlikely to have been trained to sit still and pay attention for the duration of the service.  Having the whole family together for the service is a noble goal, but is it too much of a hurdle for those who don’t share such convictions, and would this make church alienating?

And on the same topic of challenging the status quo, over at Google Books you can read (in entirety) a short 22 page book called “Critique of Modern Youth Ministry“.  It argues that the idea of splitting people into age groups and tailoring activities especially for each, especially in church, is a very recent phenomenon.  It has contributed to the terrible situation we now face in which many parents leave their children’s spiritual growth to the Sunday school / youth worker.  This may be an odd thing to post, given that I’m extremely excited for Adam Rushton to be arriving as our Assistant Minister for Youth, but I know he shares pretty much the same conviction.

Well, I missed the Dwell Conference in  London (as mentioned here) and as soon as I disover if any audio or video is available, I’ll mention it here.  “As soon” being a very loose term for “sometime, maybe, perhaps” in keeping with the general laxity of this blog!

Oh, here’s one: a video of a Q and A session at Adrian Warnock’s site.

Another conference I can’t go to is the Total Church conference in San Diego starting 12th August.  To see what sessions and seminars will be taking place, Drew Goodmanson has them here.  Looks brilliant, and I’m hoping this too will have media available for us who can’t attend.

Drew Goodmanson (church planter in San Diego) mentioned a course called “Sonship” and “Gospel Transformation” published by World Harvest Mission.  Go take a look at the material, or check out the comment by my friend Glen.  These courses look great because they realise that the gospel isn’t simply what we believe when we become Christians, it is what we go on believing to grow as Christians.  To anyone out there running courses, here’s one called “Gospel Centered Life” which is currently available as a free pdf download.  Actually, even if you’re not running courses go grab it.  I promise its contents wills be extremely helpful.

Contents:

Week 1 – The Gospel Grid
Leader’s Guide
Article: “The Gospel Grid”
Supplement: Six Ways of Minimizing Sin

Week 2 – Performance
Leader’s Guide
Article: “Shrinking the Cross Through Performance”
Exercise Handout: Orphans vs. Sons

Week 3 – Dishonesty
Leader’s Guide
Article: “Shrinking the Cross Through Dishonesty”
Exercise Handout: Right and Wrong

Week 4 – The Law Drives You to Christ
Leader’s Guide
Article: “The Law and the Gospel”
Exercise Handout: Tim Keller’s Gospel Grid

Week 5 - Lifestyle Repentance
Leader’s Guide
Article: “True Repentance vs. False Repentance”

Week 6 – Transformational Faith
Leader’s Guide
Article: “Heart Idolatry”

Week 7 - Mission
Leader’s Guide
Article: “The Gospel Propels Us Outward”
Exercise Handout: Getting to the Heart of Mission

Week 8 - Forgiveness
Leader’s Guide
Article: “The Gospel Empowers Us To Forgive”
Exercise Handout: Getting to the Heart of Forgiveness

Week 9 - Conflict
Leader’s Guide
Article: “The Gospel Helps Us Fight Fairly”
Exercise Handout: Gospel-Centered Conflict Resolution

Andy Mason is leading a church plant over on the World’s End Estate, Chelsea, where I used to live.  Here’s a good list of Jesus’ names from him.

From:

ADVOCATE: (1 John 2:1)
ALMIGHTY: (Revelation 1:8)

to

TRUTH: (John 1:14)
WORD: (John 1:1)

Hang on Mason… you missed out WISDOM: (Proverbs 8)!

A few days ago my Dad warned me about the latest “revival” about to hit this country.  In the tradition of the Toronto Blessing and Brownesville Revivals come: the Lakeland Revival.

There’s a good chance this could be the next “big” thing to a) get some charismatics very very excited, b) confirm conservative evangelicals in their anti-charismatic prejudice.  Oh, and make us look weird in the eyes of the media.  If you want a heads up, go see this page for a criticial look from a charismatic blogger.  And while you’re there, look here and here for more wise comment from one charismatic to others.

For something far more edifying, the same author wrote this list of 100 reflections based on 30 years of being a Christian.  Some fantastic and provoking thoughts to be read. Here’s a few good ones to do with Family and Youth Work:

• We do a great disservice to families in our churches when we split them up the second they hit the lobby.
• A youth minister’s primary responsibility isn’t to teens directly but to their parents. A good youth minister teaches parents how to teach their own teens, leaving the bulk of the responsibility to them.
• We make an idol of the nuclear family if we raise it above the needs of the household of Faith.
• We spend too much time trying to keep our youth from sleeping with each other and not enough time teaching them to be husbands and wives.

Update - here’s another report from Lakeland, the sad story of a family who went with their autistic child and the abuse of religion they experienced.

Some good resources available at the moment:

Reformed Confessions from ChristianAudio.com

This month’s free offer (add MAR2008 to the relevant box when your order) is audio files with the Augsburg, Westminister and Heidelburg Confessions. I have issues with many Reformed confessions but they could be useful. One day I’d like to write a catechism that is a) theologically in line with Christ The Truth, and b) suitable for kids. With a 3 year old daughter I don’t want to wait around too long!

Modern Parables - free (lo-res) download for personal use

Modern parables are modern cinematic re-tellings of Jesus’ parables, done to very high quality, with teaching material. Now you can download lo-res versions suitable for an ipod or anything that plays .m4v files - and they are FREE! For personal use only, and the site will remind you (quite correctly) of the 8th commandment. Have a look, and if you think they’re good let me know - I’d love to buy a set for use in church / youth group etc but I’d rather split the cost with someone and share the DVDs.

Here’s a trailer:
[HT: Challies.com]