Threads from Henry's Web

Author: henry

  • The Wrong Reason for Church Growth – Quote of the Day

    From Allan Bevere:

    And one more thing– as long as the church wants to grow only in order to pay the bills; if we see new people not as persons made in the image of God who need God’s transforming grace as much as the rest of us; if we only see them as instruments by which to meet the general budget, then we will have really lost what it means to be the church in the world.

    This comes from a post titled The Church Has an Edifice Complex. You should read the whole thing.

    I’d link this to the numerous times I’m aware of in which a church has forced some ministry off church property because the people served weren’t those who attended church. These include a Wednesday night program for community youth whose parents weren’t church members and a young adult class whose members weren’t attending the church service.

    Is church attendance desirable? Yes. But if you do ministry only to those who are already doing so, where’s the outreach?

     

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  • Two Bible Reading Plans Compared

    How’s that for a boring headline?

    I mentioned in an earlier post that I was trying a new reading plan by Robert Murray McCheyne. I don’t usually like Bible years, and I still have some problems with this one, but I still plan to use it through the year. I’ve made this my evening Bible reading.

    I didn’t use to have an evening reading plan, but the nature of my work tends to make for interrupted mornings. I’m a publisher, which usually provides for a flexible schedule, but I’m still supplementing that income with computer support work, and that often brings calls fairly early in the morning. So to steady things out, I started to divide my reading time and do part of it at bed time.

    In the morning I read a daily lectionary. Right now I’m following the daily readings from CRI Voice. Daily lectionary readings have the advantage of being relatively short, and sometimes topically related. Since I also read the weekly lectionary passages several times during the week, I find that the two reading plans combine well.

    This morning, the scriptures from the daily lectionary were Psalms 61, 62, and 68 (I combine morning and evening readings), Isaiah 52:1-12, Galatians 4:12-20, and Mark 8:1-10. Each passage is short and they are topically coherent.

    On the other hand, my McCheyne reading plan had me reading Genesis 32, Mark 3, Esther 8, and Romans 3. It’s sort of like reading the Bible through four times at once without bothering to coordinate any of it. I felt like finishing the story when I read Genesis and Esther. The actual plan is to read the Old Testament once and the New Testament and Psalms twice during the course of one year.

    Overall, I have the same problem with the daily lectionary, except for the fact that it doesn’t even pretend that I’m reading the whole of a particular topic.

    I must confess that I’ve been happier with reading the Bible through, but I think the discipline of following these plans that don’t seem to suit me as well is worthwhile in itself. The daily lectionary is growing on me. Determination is keeping me involved in the McCheyne plan.

  • More About Harder (to Read)!

    Bible Gateway blog has picked up the topic of making the Bible harder to read. Join the discussion.

  • Biblioblog Top 50 and Carnival

    The top 50 is up, and Jim West is hosting the carnival with his usual snark. I’m #25 in the former, and not present in the latter. Enjoy!

  • Michele Bachmann Wants to Cut Veterans Benefits

    Just in case you thought liberals were the only ones who wanted programs, but didn’t want to pay for them, consider this story from the Air Force Times (HT: Dispatches) regarding Michele Bachmann‘s suggested budget cuts.

    What I mean by wanting a program, in this case, is wanting the military actions in Iraq and Afghanistan, and yet not wanting to take care of the people who have to carry out those missions. I will note my own biases: I’m a veteran myself. But I didn’t come back wounded, and obviously I did not die and leave survivors requiring care and support. Those who do make those sacrifices deserve our support. Even a cynical, calculating approach would suggest the need to support those who actually do the work.

    Veterans benefits are not like welfare. Veterans earn this support. In a moral sense, they are entitled to it. Those benefits are part of the cost of paying for taking military action around the world. If we don’t want the costs, we should take action to make less demands on our military people.

    Now I support reducing the deficit, so I feel obligated to suggest other ways in which the budget might be cut. I would include cuts in some spending for military equipment. Every year there are projects started or perpetuated by politicians who see it as a safe way to get government spending for their constituents. Many of these projects are opposed by the people who actually have to use the equipment or bases in question. That’s a good start for ways to reduce spending.

    We might continue by planning a strategy to fight terrorism that doesn’t involve invading and occupying countries that sponsor terrorism. Improving intelligence gathering (spend more there) and improving our ability to carry out surgical strikes should help.

    I’d also suggest we find a different approach to drugs. Not incarcerating people simply for possession would certainly save a bit of money.

    My point is not to suggest that I have balanced the budget with these suggestions. I’ve worked with some of the numbers, and what I’ve just suggested isn’t enough. But I think it will offset the amount I’m suggesting Bachmann should not be cutting.

    I won’t go into further detail here, but I have previously suggested that Social Security will need serious changes, including raising the retirement age. Though I believe that money should not be part of the general budget, at the moment, it’s being treated that way.

    The idea of general freezes is, in my view, just another way in which politicians try to avoid the need to behave responsibly. What they need to do is identify programs that work and those that don’t, and cut the ones that don’t. Once they’ve done that, they can start making hard choices regarding things we want but can’t afford.

    I do congratulate Bachmann (whom I generally dislike) on one major point: She’s point some specifics out there. It was a plan to balance the budget that got me on the Ronald Reagan bandwagon in 1976. As I recall, the amount was $90 billion at the time. Unfortunately, I found out over time that Reagan was less concerned with balanced budgets than I was.

     

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  • Troy Britain Tours Young Earth Creationist Dinosaur Park

    He doesn’t like what he sees.

  • Grow a Scriptural Faith – For Your Kids

    The joint blog through the book Almost Christian by John Meunier and his daughter continues with Parents Matter Most. I must recommend this series again, because both participants are making excellent points and being quite open about spirituality. You can follow the links in the various posts.

    A key takeaway line this time:

    Neither grows a scriptural teen faith. Because the solution isn’t to barricade kids or to throw them to the sharks. It’s for the adults to grow a scriptural faith, too [emphasis mine].

    Who knew? 🙂

    I don’t think the problems with Christianity are hard to find. We have students who want to learn to understand their Bibles but don’t want to be bothered reading them during the week, people who want active prayer lives, provided they don’t have to pray, and parents who want their children to be in church, but who don’t want to model spirituality for them. I must confess to weakness in the latter two items as well, and on occasion in the first! This isn’t a rant in which I can point fingers.

    I point again to Psalm 78, especially verses 5-8. The scriptural pattern is there. Why not follow it?

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  • History of the Bible for 3rd Graders

    I was surprised to be invited to teach a session on the history of the Bible to the third grade class at my home church. So what does one do with about a half an hour to talk about the history of the Bible with about 20 lively 3rd graders?

    I chose to create some slides using generations to illustrate the time that has passed since various key points in the history of the Biblical text. Using 20 years as a generation I put little people icons on slides, starting with somewhere around my own age compared to theirs, and then multiplying until I got back to the time of the Exodus. I interspersed the time charts with images dealing with what happened during that time frame in the history of the Bible.

    I hadn’t tried to teach that age group in more than 30 years, so I was a bit nervous. How did it go?

    They were really engaged with the time element, counting my icons of people, multiplying and checking the math. They had intelligent questions throughout, especially about the nature of writing and how manuscripts were copied.

    While I didn’t overdo the big words, these kids didn’t need me to add a lot of fun–they regarded the topic as fun. I think our kids are ready to learn. We just need to be ready to let them.

  • The Multiple Personality Disorder of American Foreign Policy

    A number of bloggers have been expressing their solidarity with the Egyptian people today. On that subject I’m going to suggest the words of two friends of mine, Allan Bevere and Bob Cornwall. Yet while I sympathize with the Egyptian people, I am going to comment on something else.

    Why is it that our moral outrage and our moral urgings as a nation and as a church often have little impact on the world at large? This is a question I hear occasionally. But I also hear expressions of confidence that, if we’ll just give voice to our moral position, we can change the world.

    The reason the American church is often not heard, I believe, is that American Christians are too closely connected with American government and American policy. The reason America as a nation cannot speak with moral force in foreign policy is that our foreign policy is not a consistently moral one. I have a book on my shelves comparing diplomatic justifications for our invasion of the Dominican Republic in 1965 and those of the USSR for the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. The arguments sound eerily similar.

    We want our foreign policy to make other nations free and democratic, and at the same time we want those countries to support our foreign policy goals. Those are often contradictory goals, and our safety overrides our altruism and our crusade for democracy when those come into conflict. Yet often we try to pretend that our pursuit of self-interest in foreign affairs is actually an altruistic pursuit of the interest of others.

    One of the nicest things I can say about our attitude is that we really lack the intestinal fortitude to pursue and consistent policy of realism and self interest. But since we do try to pursue our self interest, even though we back off when things get difficult, we are not even viewed as a reliable ally in that pursuit.

    If we pursue democracy overseas, people will frequently choose governments we don’t like and pursue policies we oppose. We want them to be democratic, so long as they choose to do what we want them to do. We wanted a less corrupt government for Palestinians, for example, right up until they chose to elect Hamas.

    Now we have an Egyptian government we have supported for many, many years. We have known about the problems there for all those years. Now that the Egyptian people have put their lives on the line for their freedom, we urge reform. That’s better than not doing so, but don’t be surprised if people are not terribly impressed. Yes, it’s better that we urge reform and quit propping up the existing government. But …

    It would be nice, some time, to be ahead of the game, to support freedom before unarmed people are giving their lives for it, and to actually put our own interests on the line for the freedom we claim to value.

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  • How Liberal Christians Lose Credibility

    Stained glass at St John the Baptist's Anglica...
    Image via Wikipedia

    This article interested me, if for no other reason than my tag line: Thoughts on Religion in the World from a passionate, moderate, liberal charismatic Christian. Now I should point out again that “liberal charismatic” was a tag bestowed on me by someone who didn’t like me, and my preference is “passionate moderate” as a self-description. But many of my friends think “liberal charismatic” is fairly accurate.

    One of the problems with liberal Christianity, in my opinion, is that many American liberals have problems explaining why they are Christians, specifically Christian liberals. The appearance some present is of being culturally rooted in Christianity and using Christian language to some extent, but not really taking it all that seriously. In my experience, most liberal Christians really do take their theology and discipleship seriously. It’s the appearance. I think it may be that the constant explanations of why one isn’t conservative on doctrinal issues detracts from making a positive case for what one does believe.

    I found the post 10 ways “liberal” Christians lose credibility via John Meunier, and I think a number of these points are quite good. Reyes-Chow is clearly more comfortable with the liberal label than I am, but that gives him more credibility in talking about it as well. As John was, I was particularly interested in the point on Christology:

    We must be able to articulate a Christology that informs our liberalness.  Too often I have been in conversations where it seems that our positions inform our understanding of Jesus….

    In my view, however, that issue comes up for all Christians. I think modern American Christianity has a great deal of trouble with Christology, and with rooting discipleship in a robust Christology. As a self-proclaimed Christian moderate, I confess that it’s easy to let my “positions inform [my] understanding of Jesus” rather than having it the other way around.

    Wander on over to Bruce Reyes-Chow and read the whole post.

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