Foyle, Honourably Wounded: A Book Review

 

I got onto this book from a review by Paul Windsor, its primary target is missionaries, i.e. those involved in cross cultural work as expatriates, and those in home churches involved in sending missionaries.  As a (very) secondary target group many of its insights into stress and other issues can be related without too much effort to ministry in churches and other organisations.  Foyle is a psychiatrist with decades of experience in India, Nepal and Pakistan and since retirment has continued to research and interview missionaries about stress and its symptoms and solutions. 

Monday Morning Quotes: Jesus, Israel and Election,

In terms of the open questions of the Old Testament and the apocalyptic promises, and the existential experience of Israel in exile and alienation, Jesus is revealed as the one who fulfills these promises. This of course can be described superficially as a proof from prophecy. But what is meant is that the person and history of Jesus have been manifested and understood as open to the future of God in a way which was characteristic of the distinctive existence of Israel among all the nations.  

Moltmann, The Crucified God, Fortress 1993, p99

Election needs to be seen as a doctrine of mission, not a calculus for the arithmetic of salvation. If we are to speak of being chosen, of being among God's elect, it is to say that, like Abraham, we are chosen for the sake of God's plan that the nations of the world come to enjoy the blessing of Abraham.

Chris Wright, The Mission of God's People, 2010, p72

Two Helpful Paul Resources

A brief and helpful summary and comparison of tradition protestant readings of Paul against three different "new perspective" scholars.

Some interesting discussion of the "missional" Paul and his approach to church evangelism.

In both instances hat tip to Michael Gorman

drifting in on the tide

Happy birthday to Jim West, whose 50th birthday apparently means the end is drawing nigh, at least by all the end times speculation that it has sparked, so get your rapture pak ready.  But Jim needs to know that 50 is probably the new 40, at least according to Don Miller.  KVB offers some funding advice ostensibly for PhDs but it should work for just about anything and some great Petersen quotes. 

Richard Beck has some thoughts about Bible translations and would probably like IVP's biblical theology blog, which is back on track and well worth a look, not least linking to Peter Leithart on mission and a review of this children's Bible which I bought and mostly like - although it over interprets sometimes, e.g. the snake in the garden is Satan, but has the best introduction of any children's book I've ever read, like ever.  Tall Skinny Kiwi also talks about "mission shaped mission" while Marc Cortez muses on Volf's eschatological theology of work.  Which brings us nicely back to the end times where it is worth considering your sins on this helpful chart before it is too late, or imagining a different scenario altogether.

Blogs of note

• An incredibly helpful comment on modern translations of the apocrypha.
• A Chesterton quote on things that people think are in the Bible but aren't.
• John Scott on what we are learning (or should be learning) from mission among unreached people groups.
• Dewi Hughes on ethnic identity and land in Wales and Kenya, not to mention nonviolence.
• The church is called out of its consumerism.
• Shauna Niequist kicks the princess out of church.
• And Don expounds the benifits of reading, while John just goes for learning, full stop.

Missional Church is not a New Thing

The idea that mission should not just be a ministry of the church, one of its offered services, but actually a fundamental and foundational aspect of its whole life is at the heart of the idea of missional church.  With its new title, and the coining of a new word, "missional," the missional church sounds like something cutting edge and new and trendy.  However, while such an idea and emphasis may seem new to those of us who grew up in a church environment when mission was what was done in some other country by a unique and slightly doubtful class of people known as missionaries, it actually represents the character of the earliest church: 

The single most striking thing about early Christianity is its speed of growth.  In AD 25 there is no such thing as Christianity . . . by AD 125 the Roman emporer has established an official policy in relation to the punishment of Christians; Polycarp has already been a Christian in Smyrna for half a century; Aristides is confronting the emporer Hadrian with the news that there are four races in the world, Barbarians, Greek, Jews and Christians; and a young pagan called Justin is begininng the philisophical quest which will take him through the greatest of the pagan thinkers and lead him, still unsatisfied, to Christ.

(N.T Wright, NTPG, p359)

After pointing out the blindingly obvious but often overlooked fact of the early church's incredible expansion and what this tells us about early Christian praxis, Wright goes on to confront the fallacy that the early church grew so rapidly because the pagan world was such fertile soil for it.  Having established that for both the pagan and the Jew becoming a Christian would be a difficult, dangerous, and counterintuitive thing to do, he then aks,

Why then did early Christianity spread? Because early Chistians believed that what they had found to be true was true for the whole world.  The impetus to mission sprang from the very heart of early Christian conviction.  If we know anything about early Christian praxis . . . it is that the early Chistians engaged in mission, both to Jews and Gentiles . . . This missionary activity was not an addendum to a faith that was basically 'about' something else. 

(N.T Wright, NTPG, p360)

If Wright is right about this (no pun intended), then is a missing ingredient from our churches' conviction that what is true for us is also true for everyone else?  Have we secretly, or perhaps not so secretly, bought into the lie that everyone gets to have their own private version of the truth and that that is OK?  Are the churches in the West not doing mission because they and their constituents no longer believe they know the truth or that the truth is worth knowing?

George Wieland on Messy Mission

A sermon on the relationship between church and mission, using Acts, by Dr George Wieland. Given at Manurewa Baptist church on 13/06/10.  A very engaging and accessible introduction to the idea that the church does not have a mission, but that God has a mission, which has a church.

Download from here, or listen to it here.

Glen Marshall Bans Evangelism

In a pleasant rant, Glen suggests all evangelistic activity and programs should cease, he may have a point.  Allthough he doesn't mention it by name this is very much part of the way the "missional" movement is trying to point churches, Tim Keller does a nice concise primer on the missional church here.  I'm currently auditing a course on the subject taught by the incorrigible Brian Krum.  For Brian, it was all summed up by this catchy number, although he preferred the Bananarama version, this is more my style:

Paul Windsor for Lunch

Paul Windsor, blogger, former principal of Carey College, and current associate director of Langham Preaching, of which Kiwi-Made Preaching is an initiative, came back to Carey this week and was interviewed over our community lunch. As usual he had lots of challenging stuff to share.  Some thoughts that resonated with me:

Obedience first then gifts
Paul put his finger on what often bothers me about the Christian obsession with Myers-Briggs and other "gift-finder" type methods.  They suggest that our job is to find out what we are good at and enjoy and then our obedience lies in doing those things.  Paul, on the other hand argued that for the Christian our obedience lies in seeking God's will for our lives and then trusting him to provide the gifts we need to obey.  The gifts don't define our obedience, our obedience is followed by gifting.

Gifts don't define effectiveness
Paul also spoke out against the assumption that our effectiveness in ministry is defined by how good we are at certain tasks but instead by our weaknesses.  Our awareness of our weaknesses and our willingness to deal with them and allow them to be areas in which God's grace works is what will primarily affect our effectiveness.

The need for maturity as well as mission
Paul shared how in the developing world they had no problem with mission but were mostly concerned with how to grow in maturity.  He contrasted this with the west where we talk about mission constantly but worry little about maturity.  His concern with the NZ situation is that the church's concern to be involved in community work and being "salt" to the community around them was not matched by an equal investment in growing in God's word and being "light."  I thought that was an interesting challenge, should we seek to match our investment in outreach/mission with our upreach/growing in maturity? 

Humility and the "C.V" culture
Paul also talked about humility as being a critical virtue for Christian ministry.  Interestingly he related this critically to the "C.V." culture where we believe we should apply for ministry roles by putting our best attributes on a piece of paper and sending that off to a prospective employer.  Having sent off a few CVs in my time for ministry roles I could relate to what he was saying.  I had definately felt uncomfortable with the rather one-sided portrayal of myself and also with the danger that people would be atracted to me as a candidate because of what I had done and could do instead of whether or not they discerned that God was calling me to that role!  On the other hand I could see little point in listing every human weakness (I have them all) knowing that that would result in my disqualification from any role.  He remarked that he had a set of questions which he asked when making appointments at Carey, and always found those much more enlightening.  I'm quite tempted to ask him to provide an example set of questions, and prepare my own "anti-C.V."  How should those committed to the service of Christ present their credentials in those times when they are asked to?

Thanks Paul,
Let me know what you think :-)