Spontaneously Professional

The End is Nigh

As I come to the end of 5 years in my current role It is only right that I get all philosophical, sit outside somewhere, put on a white toga (A greek mans excuse to where a dress, lets not pretend its anything else) and question everything I have done up until now.

“Very Socratic of you” I hear you say….

…To be honest I didn’t get very far, it was a little cold and unlike Eddy Izzard, I just can’t pull off a dress. In my short time of reflection however I did think about something a friend brought up and that is ‘Professionalism’ and ‘Spontaneity’ in the Church. I personally have had a tendency for the spontaneous and definitely started my ministry with the view that the church is not a business and there is no room for 5 year plans in the kingdom; especially as the main plan for me has always been about seeing Revelation 21 in the here and now. However as time has passed I have become much more methodical and have landed in what I would see as the middle ground. Its sad really, when I think back, so many of my disagreements with people in church have been about organisation and whether or not I am being professional or spontaneous enough. Some would say that: ‘Without organisation the Church will fail’ and others would say: ‘Organisation stifles the Spirit and is the work of the people, not God’. What is really going here, I think, is a subconscious ‘Professionalism’ VS ‘Spontaneity’ battle, the two are not being seen as partners but rivals and become polar opposites. People then tend to choose which side of the fence they feel more comfortable sitting on. But when we do this, I think we are doing the Church a disservice. The Church needs both Spontaneity and professionalism.

Partners
The Church is getting it, I think, when the Spirit of God is breathing through the people who, are the Church. The spirit inspires, develops and shapes us whilst developing our gifts, such as, for some, is the gift of organisation (praise God for these people in my life!); and the spirit must be free to flow through us and through our traditional and funky church models. If we set out rigorous guidelines and detailed 5 year plans, we can easily squeeze the spirit out of the Church, after all we do have the free will to reject God  and do things our own way (thats a scary thought…). Likewise if we stick up our V’s to the structures and organisers in our church, we can just as easily make things ‘spontaneous’ and actually end up making a structure of spiritual blagging which looks good to those who feel comfortable in it, but ultimately is just as bad for the church as its counterpart.

Final thoughts
I think we need to pick up our bibles and read Gods story, there is plenty of spirit and organisation and they come under the same banner and work together to see the Kingdom of Heaven come, If anyone says otherwise, I would probably hazard a guess their not reading it the good book the right way up. We also need to make sure that our view on how we do church does not become more important than the reason we are called to be church. If we stand on one side of the fence and critique the other we will only cause division, but if we learn to work with the spirit whilst aiming to be professional in what we do, surely the only result is an impressive kindgom focused body that people are drawn to…what a thought…

Blogging, how I fail at it and those that do not…

I’m not going to lie, I ain’t to0 good at the blogging thing…

Going by the blogs I dip into, it would seem, that to be a good blogger you must commit to at least one blogging session a week. It is fundamental to have a blogtastic timeout in the week to share with the world all the important things you are currently thinking about. Using this as a template…I am a pretty crap blogger.

I am joking of course, blogging shouldn’t be become a job – unless it is a job. Blogging is about expressing yourself, your thoughts when you want to, not because you have to! But as I haven’t written a blog in ages, I thought I would drop you some links of people I have been following (not literally) so that you too can enjoy their musings like I have. So here’s a few:

A ‘not to bad a read’ Book – The Case for the REAL JESUS

So who is this Jesus then?
Is he a softy, a nice guy, a buddy, a bully, a racist, White, Black, Asian, Hispanic… Is he on my side, or holding a knife to my back?Is he the guy from the bible or whatever I want him to be??

The Journey
A couple of the young people and I decided to venture into this challenging question and to do it with some confidence we read through a book together that actually turned out to be really helpful for them…and even me. Now we have finished it and although, no scrap that, BECAUSE I don’t agree with everything in the book I thought I’d offer it out to you all to have a read yourselves and chew on!

Here are some good quotes

On the Gnostics (like Gospel of Thomas) – ‘The new portrait of Gnosticism is profoundly attractive for modern seekers, that large constituency interested in spirituality without the trappings of organized religion or dogma.’ p.30

On the Gospels – ”They’re early enough, they’re rooted into the right streams that go back to Jesus and the original people, there’s continuity, there’s proximity, there’s verification of certain distinct documents with archaeology and other documents, and then there’s the inner logic. That’s what pulls it all together.” p.39

”For us to come along and say, ‘Unless we can explain it scientifically, metaphysically, and philosophically, we should just reject it,’ is high-handed arrogance.” p.39

On true definition of Inerrancy and Infallibility of the Bible - ‘Inerrancy: The Bible is true in what it touches. Infallibility: The Bible is true in what it teaches.’ p.51

On the reliability of the Disciples - ‘They didn’t willfully lie about this. Liars make poor martyrs.’ p.87

On the resurrection – “even the atheist Gerd Ludemann conceded: ‘it may be taken as historically certain that Peter and the disciples had experiences after Jesus’ death in which Jesus appeared to them as the risen Christ’…” p.87

On reliability of a genuine resurrection - ‘…the idea that the disciples stole the body is a lame explanation. Are we supposed to believe they conspired to steal the body, pulled it off, and then were willing to suffer continuously and even die for what they knew was a lie? That’s such an absurd idea that scholars universally reject it today.’ p.92

On historical views of Jesus - ‘…If for no other reason than the books late dating. Scholars quibble over a difference of just a few years in the dating of the New Testament, whereas the Qur’an didn’t come until six centuries after the life of Christ.’ p.98

On Jewish perspectives of Jesus – ‘So Jesus was like a walking Shekinah?’ p.145

On Evangelical Christianity – ‘Many Christians today, especially evangelicals, don’t have a sense of history. They’ll quote Martin Luther left and right, but they won’t talk about the horrific things he wrote that Adolph Hitler adopted, like when Luther recommended, among other things, that synagogues be burned, Jewish homes destroyed, and rabbis forbidden to teach under the threat of death.’ p.163

on Postmodern thinking – ‘Relativism falls apart logically when you examine it. As a worldview, it simply doesn’t work.’…”For instance, relativists believe that relativism is true not just for them but for every person. They believe that relativism applies to nonrelativists (‘true for you’), not just to themselves (‘true for me’). The relativists find themselves in a bind if we ask them, ‘Is relativism absolutely true for everyone?’ To be consistant, the relativist must say, ‘There is no reason to take seriously the claim that every belief is as good as every other belief, since this belief itself would be no better than any other.”‘ p.170

OK. Getting carried away now… Just check it out for yourself!