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“Art is the cry of distress uttered by those who experience at first hand the fate of mankind. Who are not reconciled to it, but come to grips with it. Who do not apathetically wait upon the motor called ‘hidden forces’, but hurl themselves in among the moving wheels, to understand how it all works. Who do not turn their eyes away to shield themselves from emotions, but open them wide, so as to tackle what must be tackled. Who do, however close their eyes, in order to perceive things incommunicable by the senses, to envision within themselves the process that only seems to be in the world outside. The world revolves within: what bursts out is merely the echo - the work of art!”

Forgive me, this is not the lightest thought for a melancholic Friday afternoon. (But melancholic this Friday afternoon certainly is…) But this is something I’ve been wrestling with for a while. There’s no reason to take Mr Schoenberg as authoritive, but I have a sneaky suspicion that he is, on the whole, right. Admittedly as Christians we have a more hopeful perspective on existence, but I’m hugely drawn to this intentional attitude to engaging with culture. Not only engaging with culture in terms understanding it, (something I’m always banging on about) Christians should be engaging creatively. Not only do I want to see Christians reading their environment, I’d love to see Christians writing it, too. And painting it. And composing it.

But then the can of worms really gets well and truly opened. What should a Christian’s art look like? I’m pretty sure I know what it shouldn’t look like, and I’ve (ranted) blogged about this on numerous occasions… But I’m struggling to formulate an ideal in my own head about what we should be aiming at. For example, Christians suffer as much as the next person - as we know, the gospel is no immunity-card for suffering - so if a Christian writes about their suffering, they are likely to produce an art-work as bleak as the work of the person who is without the gospel. And where then is the salt and light? On the other hand, most of us are familiar with the emotionally detatched Christian sub-culture which seems to bear no resemblance to real life (or at the very least to any of my life-experiences…) Cheesey it may be, but the one thing it has going for it is that it is different…

So is there a happy medium? Is there a balance between distinctive and authentic to be struck? Has anyone seen anything close? If so, what does it look like? Answers on a postcard dear friends, because my head is spinning…

The biggest thing that stood out was how Warren attacked the ‘Reveal’ book by Willow Creek (see earlier blogs). He said that it didn’t have to happen, that it’s hardly brain surgery to help people grow spiritually, and that our greatest concern should not be ‘church growth’ but ‘individual spiritual growth’. In so many ways he was bang on. It was inspiring to hear that we need to grow in our faith and keep going for the long haul. But what was odd was this - there was no exposition in today’s conference. There were loads of verses quoted - but they were rarely put in context and very often quoted in a different translation to make a point - often a point that the text did not make!

I found this unbelievably frustrating. NOW LET ME BE CLEAR: What was preached was good and ‘biblical’, so why use the Bible in such a weak way? I have no idea!

Now before you reformed boys get excited and rip into Warren, it was just like being in an reformed conference… sorry to offend. Warren does the classic reformed preach - ‘here is a verse, here is a word I like, now let me talk about that for the next 45 minutes.’

Today has reminded me that I need to strive to stick to the Bible and show my workings. It is not good enough to quote the Bible - in fact, it is dangerous to do so without qulaification  - we must teach and explain the Bible.

I’ve found that boys and girls have very different tastes, every orange wednesday this becomes clearer to me. It was my choice to watch Blades of Glory, it was Jenny’s to watch Freedom Writers. Next week, we’ll go and see the U2 film (that’s my choice), this week it was Jenny’s with Juno (and secretly, I was very pleased, because it would have been mine too).
It’s a film about a teenage pregnancy. Here’s the trailer.

As far as the film goes, you sort of see it coming. Girl gets pregnant / girl tells boy / girl (thankfully) bottles out of an abortion / girl decides to give the baby up / girl wrecks a marriage / girl has baby / girl gives away baby / girl sings a song with baby’s dad. And even though what I’ve just typed looks more like a particularly dark episode of Byker Grove, it is really funny. All of it. Her telling him having warmed him up by complimenting his mum’s detergent? Funny. Her telling her best friend that she’s ‘for shiz prego’? funny. Her parents admitting that they’d rather she be on hard drugs? (Dark, but) funny. It made me laugh. So as far as a comedy goes, it’s job well done Juno.

Go and see it. It’s funny. But, maybe there’s a lesson or two to learn from it. They could have disowned her, but Juno’s parents’ reaction to her being pregnant calms and they stand by her - that’s a lesson. And as the 9 months tick by, you see Juno becoming more and more leperised by her classmates, and the reaction of those that walk with her is inspiringly counter-cultural. As I watched it, I thought of how I might react if a sixteen year old I knew got ‘caught out’. Which one of her classmates would I be most like? “For shame Juno, how could you..?”

And the thing is, it would be so easy to now make this blog about guilt. ‘Teenage pregnancy happens in churches, so be more like Juno’s good friends, and less like the bullies that give her a hard time.’ And that would look like a good thing. Externally, that’d be the right thing to do. But internally, that’s another matter. It may look like the right thing to do, but it’s not the gospel. It’s just moralising.

It has got faults, of course it does. The biggest one being that it downplays the reality of the situation it describes. It glamorises a child having a child. And at the end of the film, I was left thinking ‘that was one hairy year in the life of Juno McGuff, thank goodness it’s all over now, and she can get back to playing the guitar with her boyfriend’; that’s not a good thing. But I stilll don’t think that that’s no reason to not go and see it. Don’t get all reformed and precious about making light of sin. Take your friends, and use it. This film will be seen by millions, lets make the most of it.

Well, I’m only 31 and have been Pastor at Ammanford Evangelical Church for less than 4 years - but I’m on my first sabbatical. Bizarre. So, why do it? Because I can. The leadership at AEC are very encouraging and supportive (Particularly my eldership). They are keen that I develop spiritually and have a marathon rather than sprint mentality. This means that the idea of taking 6 weeks off every few years to read, think, and be exposed to other churches is an idea they welcome. Indeed, originally my contract stated that I could take every August off (although that never really happened due to my own bad diary keeping).

So, I’ve just arrived in America for 2 weeks of conferences. They are a slightly odd pairing. The first is in Rick Warren World (Saddleback - Purpose Driven Fame) and the second is in Mark Driscol World (Mars Hill - the reformed one, not the dodgy RB one). Both claim to be evangelical and both are highly based on a single personality. However, both are very different in approach to scripture and mission. I’m looking forward to comparing and contrasting and being able to learn a lot.

So, what do I aim to learn? During this sabbatical I am trying to understand more of what it means to be ‘Biblical community’. What should a believer experience in the local church? How can AEC develop to love people better? And more particularly - how do we support and make central an increasingly elderly and house bound population?

So far one thing has come to the top a lot. Are you ready for my first conclusion? Well, it’s hardly brain surgery, but it is making a profound impact on me… The community of God (the local church) should be a radically forgiving group. Reading through Matthew and having private chats with people who have left local churches due to ‘problems’: The massive issue is forgiveness. We are a community based on forgiveness (through the cross) and must live in the light of the that forgiveness. That means forgiving people who have hurt you, who have not changed, who have hurt those close to you, and who have done things that they simply should have known not to do … even if they are Pastors!

I am increasingly convinced that the large MAJORITY of the problems in the church are based on un-forgiveness, which leads to bitterness.

Imagine a church, not where people don’t hurt others (as that is inevitable), but where the hurt people forgive and let go. Now that would be an amazing community to be in.

The programme centres around a fundamentalist Bible-Belt street preacher called Samuel, a black charismatic healer called Terry and a girl called Ana who preaches to congregations numbering in the thousands in the shanty towns of Brazil. Samuel is going out on missions with his dad and during the show he ventures to the Capitol where, armed with sandwich boards and tracts, they preach to the American sinners telling them they’re going to hell. Terry is caught up in the publicity campaigns and the hype of his healing meetings as his father come manager/promoter plans for his future in the big bucks of mega church life within the next few years. Ana is filmed going to prisons and to drug culture and drug driven shanty towns in Rio de Janeirio, obviously heavily influenced by her father.

As someone who preached his first ’sermon’ when he was their age (it was on two occasions to my family when we were on holiday and couldn’t get to church!), I couldn’t help but feel some empathy for them, for their young passion for God and his work. Their zeal was something that was very evident and at least seemingly genuine. It’s something we could all do with more of!

But there were obviously some disturbing things about it. Some which may be down to the angle of the programme itself, others which are at least worrying regardless of what angle you put on it! The first is their obvious lack of experience, maturity and knowledge. Granted, Timothy was told not to let anyone look down on him for his youth (1 Tim. 4:12), but Timothy wasn’t nine! He was also in the same verse to set an example for the believers. During the programme you saw two of the kids being disciplined by their parents for being naughty. Besides which, the kids can’t have the knowledge and experience to preach pastorally let alone Samuel dealing with issues on the streets such as evolution and abortion, despite his futile attempts.

Another issue was that the kids were driven by their parents and their parents seemed driven by performance. It was particularly evident with Terry as his dad arranges his photo signings, his preaching tours and his next three years as he heads towards his multi-million mega church. The newspaper reviews all seem to pick up on how the kids are driven by their parents in much the same was as child actors are, in fact Ana puts herself in the same league of child actors and singers when trying to justify herself as ‘normal’. It’s particularly disturbing seeing Samuel starting to cry as his dad engages in arguments about homosexuality and he is sat in the background crying saying that he just wants his mum. Our motivation for doing gospel work should be God and his glory as well as a desire for the gospel message to go out. Is this really the motivation that drives these kids?

The final negative thing I’m going to point out is that it presents the church, Christianity and therefore Jesus Christ in such a bad light. It presents the gospel as something we manipulate our kids into. And need I say anything about using gimmicks for the presentation of the gospel. They were presented as weirdos in the film (though only because it was presented that they’ve been pushed into it by their parents) and when you’ve got a little kid obsessively shouting at people in a monotonous Texan accent that they’re going to hell, well I don’t think that does any help for the gospel. I know we’re going to look foolish to the world and that “God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise” (1 Cor. 1:27) but that’s in our message and we shouldn’t be seeking to look foolish for the sake of appearing foolish.

I think kiddie-Christians are great. I know a good few of them from my church and their faith is amazing. I love seeing them serve the work of the gospel in their own unique ways too. How could I not when children’s faith glorifies God, especially when I was a kiddie-Christian myself—converted under five, delivering leaflets to doors at the same time, doing small group evangelism at eight (one of whom is a Christian to this day, though he doesn’t actually remember my bible study group!), helping out at Sunday School at age twelve. Admittedly, a lot of this was done out of a legalistic desire to please God through my works, but as I continued, I was discipled to serve in a right way. I hope I haven’t been unfair in my reflections, and the last thing I want to do is discourage anyone in their obvious gifting at whatever age they’re at. We need to encourage the faith and servanthood of kiddie-Christians, but we also need to be careful to disciple them properly first/alongside service and not push them too much, too fast, too young and all for the glory of God.

We’ve been without t’internet for over 2 weeks now (and still not fixed) so that’s my excuse for not blogging/commenting. Since my internet activity has recently depended on the goodwill of friends and family, I didn’t think it appropriate to indulge in hours of bloggage activity. Well apart from now. (And I’m hoping it won’t be hours).

One of the advantages of having no internet/email is that you suddenly seem to have 26 hours in the day. It was the same when we decided to bin the TV a few years ago, but now I suspect the computer has become my surrogate TV as far as wasting time is concerned. But to finally get to the point, it does mean I’ve done a lot of reading. Best book of 2008 so far? Well, I wish I could say it’s been Carson, or Mahaney, of Grudem, but I have to admit it, I’ve been reading wordly books. And this one blew me away…

That’s right. Not only is it a worldly book, it is written by someone who plays music with drums and who plays ‘this off-beat music’ (as my Grampa used to call it) in one of these ‘popular-beat combos’ in fact…

Clearly Eric Clapton’s life-story is not going to be of interest to everyone, but to someone (like me) with a life-long passion for blues and a fairly long-standing penchant for classic rock, it’s an absolute belter. Why write about it on ProGnosis? Well, why not?

I have a lot of heroes. I think it’s important to have heroes, we should all have them. And it’s also important to know our heroes’ flaws. I think I learned a lot.

Firstly, this guy is extremely fortunate to be alive. Harrowing accounts of addiction to cocaine and heroine, an alcoholic for ten years, a regular user of other recreational drugs for most of the 60’s and 70’s (apparently) and a frightening list of close friends and colleagues who didn’t get through the other side to tell the tale. And that’s just a start. Destructive relationships, self-destructive tendencies, a heartbreaking childhood, and a self-confessed arrogance all make for hairy reading. And you get the feeling he’s leaving the really hairy stuff out…

Secondly, I was reminded of my desperate need to read all things through the lens of the gospel. Because the crazy thing is, as I found myself drawn in to this, I started to actually envy the guy and the rock n’roll lifestyle of his younger days. I mean, come on this guy was living the dream… It took Philippians 2 to give me a kick up the backside and realise just how far my focus on good role models had slipped:-

In fairness to EC, he wasn’t even presenting the rock n’roll life as cool at all. He’s very keen to highlight the utter emptiness of it, in fact. But of course, that doesn’t stop my sinful nature from wanting to try it out for myself, just in case…

Clapton is a guy with an interest in the spiritual in very general terms. He describes how his only way out of alcoholism was - and continues to be - prayer. Twice a day, for the last 20 years (now there’s something most of us could learn from). There’s no mention of a Saviour, or of rescuing from a problem even worse than alcohol, but at the very least he seems to have been shown a huge amount of common grace.

His life story to date concludes with him now enjoying the happiest period of his life. The womanising playboy has settled down with a wife and three kids and absolutely loves it. He claims to have few real regrets, but does appear to wonder how it took him so long to realise what he wanted. If I needed another story to remind me that living oneself doesn’t bring satisfaction, this was it.

But then again, I could have just believed the Bible in the first place.

Anyway, back to the point in hand. This year’s mission was branded, “Priceless” to see the website with all the info go here (it really was well put together). The buzz phrase they were banding around in advertising it was, “It may be free but it wasn’t cheap” (a big golden star whoever lets me know where they stole that from, it’s far too clever for the Oxbridge rejects that congregate at Warwick).

Something different happened this year, we got payed to be A.M’s. Payed? It was after all only a token amount, but why on earth should we get payed? (For the record I didn’t raise this at the time, I took the money and ran). After my very first conversation with someone about the gospel I thought to myself, “I should be paying them to allow me this opportunity to obey and serve God!”

Pile on top of this Lewis’ reasonably inspiring story of the girl on the bus, it got me thinking, could we ever put a price on sharing the gospel with someone? How about a price on getting along side and already christian whose struggling at Uni and encouraging them to fight the fight and stand up for Jesus? How about getting along side a fired up Christian and spurring them on to not just a Uni life with Jesus, but the rest of their lives serving Him, becoming increasingly satisfied in him?

The week really was priceless, for me, for the CU, for the people who heard the gospel for the first, second, hundredth time! And why? Because the gospel is priceless!!! And any work done in that framework must be priceless too!

So here’s a diary of all that I’ve got up to this week. Again, if you need clarification as to what anything is then do ask in the comments, and if you don’t know what Crowded House is nor what I’m doing here for three weeks then have a look at my first post by clicking here and my second post by clicking here.

First off, if you don’t know what Crowded House is or why I’m here for three weeks then scroll down to my post last week and you’ll understand!

Second, I’m going to explain the ’structure’ as it stands at the present (though keep in mind that the nature of Crowded House is such that it changes quite frequently). There are two main networks at the moment, the 215 network and the Sharrow network. The 215 network, of which Steve Timmis is a leader, is the one I’m predominantly involved in and is the largest. They have four churches: Sharrow Vale, HuB, Broom Springs and Loughborough. Sharrow Vale meets in a typical (though of course modernised) church building and has two teams seeking to reach out to particular people. So you have the Manor team and the South View team. The hope at the moment is that eventually these teams may become church plants in and of themselves. The other three (HuB, Broom Springs and Loughborough) all meet in homes and Loughborough is expected to plant in the coming months and perhaps will become its own network. The Sharrow network, of which Tim Chester is a leader, is a lot simpler. They have two churches: Abbey and Sharrow. Both meet in homes. I don’t know what their plans and intentions are for the near future, as I haven’t spent as much time with them!

Third, here’s what I’ve been up to this week. If anything doesn’t make sense then do ask in the comments bit and I’ll clarify. 

Fourth and finally I want to reflect on how the evangelism is done here. If like me you don’t think that street preaching is the best form of communicating the gospel and that door knocking is not the best way to get into a relationship in order to share the gospel, then you’ve got to ask the question how can I do evangelism? One answer is to hold ‘events’ as a church and tag on a token gospel talk at the end. Another answer is to rely on individuals in the church to go out, build relationships and share the gospel themselves and then when their non-Christian friends become Christians they can be brought into the church. I would have said that the best means of evangelism was the last one, that is until I read Total Church and saw how it worked out here at Crowded House.