Sunday 30 September 2018
There's a recurrent theme in my blogging about God
Yeah, whatever.
But also, I've noticed this thing of 'God helps those who help themselves'. I don't mean what it could be understood to be that God's not real and it's just clever powerful people who create opportunities for themselves, yet at the same time I DO wonder if that's how things are supposed to work, at least somewhat.
So I look at churches and church leaders. So many churches make it if they have the right leader/fail if they have merely good leaders. I look at the residue left by CH Spurgeon, that of the Wesleys. Now that guys like Barney Coombes, Terry Virgo and Arthur Wallace, will the churches of Harvestime, New Frontiers and Salt & Light descend further and further into mediocrity and decreasing meaningfulness as the movements of previous generations of Christians - all of whom were on fire for God in their time - have done?
It's not just an annointing, and it's not a case of training to do the same things, so much as specific and key individuals leading willing groups of people, who built those groups of churches. Yes, there did seem to be the Holy Spirit at work, but if that was the case for the original leader, surely it should be much more so in the people he personally trained and equipped to take the work on when he stepped down. Yet this is CLEARLY not the case for the group of churches of which we're part - they just seem like any other church doing the usual things that those kind of churches do, running out of money as everyone goes somewhere else.
But not all of them are dying this slow death.
I know of at least one Baptist church that, with the right man at the helm for just a couple of years, has gone to needing 2 meetings on a Sunday morning in order to get everyone in. I'm not aware that they're doing anything strikingly different, but I am coming to suspect that just a small number of key individuals are able to draw people - with or without God being overtly present - and if you don't have one of them then you're just pushing water up hills of varying steepness depending how slick your product is. .
This is dumb.
It doesn't in the least resemble new-testament Christianity as described in Acts & the various letters, and only vaguely looks like the Christian church of the first 2 centuries as described by Eusebius. There is a superficial similarity, in that key people like Peter and Paul could draw large crowds and speak effectively, but particulrly there's never any tangible proof of God turning up. When people experience 'great worship' it seems to have resulted from their internal responses to songs with emotionally charged and often self-absorbed lyrics hung on tunes which are designed to provoke those feelings. Singing about a 'peace so deep I can hardly think'. I'm starting to loathe the song that line comes from.
I also heard on Friday night of another really quite 'successful' church going down the crapper because they bought into missional communities & 3DM ministries, with the system basically forgetting about all the ordinary people when the focus changed. That's pretty much what I'd have expected, and I'd say that Oxfordshire Community Churches had a narrow but lucky escape by not getting sucked in.
Where is the reality?
I talked with someone I respect a couple of years ago about praying for resurrection of the dead, and got the reply that if I'd been in Africa then God would have done it because they are desperate over there and don't have modern medicine. My reply, that the situation could have not been more desperate regardless of where I was, did not produce any discernable wisdom or helpful theology, though it did get an apology for thoughtlessness. Yes, we hear amazing stories coming from Africa, but that's what they tend to remain.
Frankly I'm sick to the back teeth of excuses and running a good show. If that's all there is then please let me know and I'll just step back and let the church carry on it's own way while I stop bothering and reclaim my Sunday morning. Having said that, it's still quite nice to play guitar there sometimes, so maybe I shouldn't rock the boat.
Roll into this mix frustrations with reading bits of the bible that make one question veracity.
An example. Moses actions are described in early parts of Exodus in a particular way, yet the chronology given in exodus 7 conflicts. His rash behaviour in killing the Egyptian is not the action of a 40 year old with experience. On the way back to Egypt the now almost 80 years old Moses nearly dies and yet Zipporah is able to save him by circumcising their (young? Infant?) son and touching Moses feet with the foreskin. Sure, these bits were likely added to line up with Jewish mythology or some kind of numerology at some stage, but then if they were added, what else was?
Paul would sometimes pick out bits of the old testament and mis-use them in his letters to prove whatever his point was in a way that would hopefully get most bible teachers laughed out of church today.
10 years ago 'faith' would let me ignore stuff like this - it's not important, it doesn't affect the core truth of salvation, I still 'feel' God at work so it doesn't need answering. Now my pursuit of wanting to know the truth won't let me leave it alone any more. Chris has long found more questions than answers when reading the bible, and now it seems to be both of us. I don't want to put my fingers into nail holes - I DO want that stuff about healing and God at work to be real in something more substantial than getting a convenient parking space or even a cash donation.
Friday 28 September 2018
Only in this business
When someone comes back from a tropical country feeling a bit unwell and then has a rash, we all get excited about the idea of drawing some blood and testing for disease markers using the products we're developing. It's a matter of frustration that we don't have a trained phlebotomist on site.
Tuesday 25 September 2018
Apparently I've become a country guitar player.
This may cause a certain amount of amusement in some quarters, but if you mosey on down to http://gospelbell.com/ and scroll down the page to the second set of songs listed on soundcloud, you can hear me play slide all over most of the set.
It's not great or imaginative playing (pretty chord-based actually) but I can fake a C&W slide solo now apparently. ;-)
Edit - this is all first take improvisation BTW (2 takes for a couple of songs) so nothing was 'finely crafted’ first, as is probably obvious to real slide players. 😉
Monday 24 September 2018
FREEDOM!
It seems that Amazon are trying to get voice-activated kit built simply and easily using their Alexa-on-a-chip system. The geek in me thinks "wow, cool" but the paranoid privacy advocate that sits on my other shoulder sees it as an 'end of the world' scenario when we sell our civilisation finally & irrevocably to to a corporate retailer.
What's WW got to do with this? Will they ever conquer the Scottish accent - doubtful.
Friday 21 September 2018
Ever read a headline with a question?
This article from auntie Beeb does just have such a headline "Why is IVF so popular in Denmark" and then goes on to discuss all the effects of a *need* for and changes to regulation of IVF without once mentioning the reason.
Danish men make the least viable sperm of all nation groupings in the world.
I remember going to a conference at the Rigshospitalet in Copenhagen in 1998, where this was discussed by Dr Anna-Maria Andersson and Prof Niels Skakkabaek. They had a large collection of historical samples (I forget the exact details - it's >20 years ago) where various reproductive regulatory hormone levels could be demonstrated to be at reducing levels over time within given age groups of men. There was work going on to find causality, but I don't recall conclusions being available at the time, though environmental oestrogens were one suggestion. It's a slightly scary problem, and one the Danes seem to have dealt with in their own way.
This listing of papers by Prof Skakkabaek is interesting.
But regardless, social agenda much? BBC, you are increasingly disappointing.
Saturday 15 September 2018
And when the time comes.
It's good to go home. YYV is very keen on it's gay symbology, full of shiny marble floors and loud announcements. Interesting selection of food too. One thing that IS impressive are the water stations for refilling empty bottles.
Our gate was due to open 5min ago, but hasn't. C'est la vie.
Friday 14 September 2018
It's good to be here
:-)
Tuesday 4 September 2018
Technology is a drag backwards
Multiple meanings aside, I'm transferring images from an SD card onto my (10 year old) MacBook using a USB 2 adapter. A couple of gigabytes took 8 minutes instead of around 30 seconds as it would on the Dell (4 years old).
Patience isn't just a virtue, so much as a necessity. At least I have nothing else pressing.