Transformation vs Transition

Funny. Two colleagues who operate in different spheres of the church and have (as far as I know) very little contact with each other have both made a point that is really helpful. Over the last month they have both spoken about something so relevant for our congregation that I had not been able to as clearly articulated as both of them did.

When organizations desire change there are two ways to go about it: transition and transformation.

Transition is when we change the systems hoping that it will produce the desired results. So organizations might implement new leadership structures or put in place new processes but that does not change the organization in any really fundamental way. You might say it's a little like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Not really helpful!

Transformation is a deeper change that is apart from the structures (although those changes may be part of it) that is tougher to do but produces genuine long term change in an organization. This would be like convincing the crew of the Titanic that the ship is not actually unsinkable and that perhaps slowing down might be a wise option. Much more helpful, but it takes a lot more effort!

So, how does this apply to the church?

Fruit vs root

I have been thinking lots about how we can lead the church into a gospel centered ethos.

Someone triggered a thought about how often we focus on the fruit our lives produce rather than the root that causes that fruit (good or bad) to be so abundant.

Often churches have sought to impose moral constraints on people and whilst moral constraints are good and necessary, they cannot produce lasting change..they are a fruit, the only thing that produces lasting change is a new root...a living relationship with the true vine, Jesus.

Something that got me thinking was how we counsel people in a gospel ethos rather than some of the other models of counseling. So someone comes to you who is trapped in debt. Moralism says : debt is bad, the Bible counsels against it, so you better stop.

Behavior modification says lets try some other ways of managing your money, lets get rid of the temptation.

Both of those arguments are looking at the fruit and not the root. A gospel answer would be along the lines of: Jesus came to set you free, why would you put yourself under bondage again? This is a gospel based thinking that gets to the heart of the problem...sin and our relationship to Jesus.

Unless the church gets back to the gospel and helps those under its influence to meet the one who is at the heart of the gospel, we will never really be able to help those who most desperately need the one who not only has the answer, but is the answer to every deep question of the human heart.

My prayer is that the church would rise up in the living hope of the gospel that have us birth!

Cruciform lives

 A mate of mine Stephen Murray, who is a church planter, pastor and clearly a good writer, wrote this piece:

Once a year the period of Easter brings the church to think about and embrace, perhaps more deeply than any other time, the significance of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is at this time of the year that we remember with sobering clarity the hands struck through with nails, the thorn pierced brow, the pain and the anguish of a king who would come into this world and die for his people. I’ve often thought that the third verse of Isaac Watt’s famous hymn ‘When I Survey the Wondrous Cross‘ best captures the emotion of the scene:

“See from his head, his hands, his feet
Sorrow and love flow mingled down!
Did e’er such love and sorrow meet,
Or thorns compose so rich a crown?” (Isaac Watts: 1707)

Charles Wesley, probably the greatest hymn writer of all time, once reportedly remarked that he’d give up all his other hymns to have been able to write this one.

At no other place in the grand story of God is our mind and heart so engaged as when we reflect on the cross of Christ. Perhaps what grips us most is that this act of enormous magnitude involves us – it involves you and me. It was our collective sin that saw Jesus die on the cross, it was our eternal forgiveness that was earned in that moment and it was our unending joy that overflowed as he exited the empty tomb three days later. The cross fundamentally affects us in every way by what it achieves.

Usually, and rightly, our focus at Easter time is on exactly that, ‘what the cross achieves’. We focus on the reality that at the cross Jesus stands in our place to take the punishment against sin thereby satisfying God’s justice and at the same time making forgiveness and reconciliation between God and man a possibility. The cross is the centerpiece of God’s grand plan to fix this world and undo the horror of the fall in the Garden of Eden. And so we rightly meditate on the achievements of the cross at Easter time.

But I want to shift gear slightly – not shift from the cross – but rather shift from how we normally think about the cross at Easter time. A large part (if not all in some sense) of the New Testament reflects upon the significant effects of the cross upon humanity and yet Jesus doesn’t only talk about what his own death will achieve but he also sets it out as pattern for the life of his followers.

Notice his words to his disciples and all the other followers gathered around him in Mark 8:34-35:

Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it”

Just a few verses earlier Jesus announced to his disciples that he was to suffer and die at the hands of the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law. The striking issue in this text is that the first thing Jesus announces to the crowds, after making a prophetic declaration about his own death, is a call to join him in death.

Whilst contemporary culture has romanticized the image of a cross, to the point of obscuring its significance, a first century crowd knew that the term ‘cross’ meant only one thing for them: a shameful, cruel, death. Jesus was inviting them to die.

Now once again for us the significance of the cross rests in how it bears out on you and I. Well here we’re not left to wonder how. Jesus is explicit, “if you want to follow me”. If you want to come into this big thing we call Christianity, if you want to be a follower of Jesus then the invitation stands for you to come and die.

Our popular culture has significantly veiled the meaning of this invitation. So you’ll often hear people say things like, ‘we’ve all got our crosses to bear,’ by which they mean ‘life is rough, bad things happen’. That really shifts the blame to circumstances and the ups and downs we face as a result of things outside of our control. But that’s not at all what Jesus is talking about here. Here Jesus wants us to adopt a pattern of life, a way of living that is shaped by and informed by his own sacrifice on the cross. He’s not talking about being tossed about by harsh circumstances he’s talking about choosing to live according to a certain pattern. And the best way Jesus can describe this pattern is by alluding to death, and his death in particular.

The cross doesn’t only achieve marvelous things for us it also sets the agenda for how we should live in light of it’s great achievements. One way that I like to talk about this is to use the word Cruciform – literally: in the form or pattern of the cross.

So what does a cruciform life look like? Well to state the painfully obvious, it looks like Jesus’ death on the cross. Now obviously we can’t all go back to the first century and be nailed to a cross to die a death that atones for the sins of the world – that’s not the call of the cruciform life. The cruciform life has more to do with the character of the cross and the events surrounding the cross.

At the cross the King of the world, the king for whom this world was created (cf. Col 1:16), comes and humbles himself to receive a criminal’s death. It’s a complete reversal of expected norms and values – a complete reversal of our values. And when we get this complete reversal it shapes absolutely everything we do.

So Paul, for example, picks up on this in Philippians 2 and he calls on believers to be humble, unified, to do nothing out of selfish ambition and to be caring about others more than they care about themselves – all things that are often the reversal of what our culture glories in. And the way Paul gets us, as believers, to move from our current (expected) values to the way of the cross is by pointing to Jesus and his very example on the cross. So in that famous line in Philippians 2:5 he says, ‘your attitude (literally: your mind) should be the same as that of Christ Jesus…’ and then he proceeds to unpack the story of the cross where the King of the world humbles himself to death, even death on a cross.

The reality is that you and I are living lives that are, more often than not, conditioned by our culture and not by the cross. Daily we look out for opportunities for self-promotion, opportunities to make ourselves look bigger and better – and that often at the expense of others. Our careers and social status continually push us to aspire after the world’s values and to shape our lives accordingly. And we will cave in to those values because the pressure around us is immense.

Only if our hearts can savour and taste the cross of Christ in all its fullness will we begin to see our lives shaped in a cruciform way. Only as the gospel sinks down deep will we be able to resist the pressures that call us to abandon cruciform living and turn to self-centered, self-glorifying living. And only as God’s Spirit burns calvary into our hearts will we begin to know what it means to take up Jesus’ invitation to die as he did.

This Easter let the cross of Christ become a deep reality for you through study, meditation, prayer and meeting with God’s people. Marvel at what it achieves but also begin to note how you might have your life conformed to the pattern of the cross as the truth of the cross sinks in deep.

An Easter time line

from a guy called Tim Kimberly...I think it is a very helpful timeline that puts the last week of Jesus life into perspective.

Sunday

What Happened?
• Jesus enters the city of Jerusalem. Fully God and Fully Man. The Creator, standing on His creation, is headed for the cross. On Sunday He enters the city where He will die. He will never really leave this city. He came to earth to save you, to save me. Our sin has brought us separation from God and He is entering Jerusalem to take care of that once and for all. He is God so He can save us. He is also fully a person so he can represent us.
• How do people greet Him as He enters the city on Sunday…thankfully they give Him the honor He is due. John 12:12-15
Remembering Sunday
• What is Jesus to you? Is He just a character in a Bible story? Or is He the living Savior of your life? As He stands overlooking Jerusalem on this day, where does He stand in your life?

Monday

What Happened?
• Matthew: 21:12-15… Jesus cleanses the temple in Jerusalem, he overturns the tables of money changers… the leaders don’t care… the Son of God steps into their world overthrowing their religiosity and then proving who He is by healing people and the religious people have lost all sensitivity to the living God. They are apathetic to a Savior seeking to change their worship.
Remembering Monday
• If your life was laid out on several tables would Jesus come and overturn any of them? If so, repent. Don’t be like the indignant religious people who may have been convicted for just a second but then went on with their day no better for meeting Jesus. Be convicted of anything Jesus needs to overturn in your life and then let Him do it.

Tuesday & Wednesday

What Happened?
• Jesus will spend these two days teaching people in Jerusalem. Matthew 21, 22, 23 will be rich reading during these two days. As you’re driving around town, periodically think to yourself…I wonder what Jesus is teaching people right now?
Remembering Tuesday
• If you knew you only had 4 days left to live what would you spend your time doing? Jesus spent two days teaching. He places a huge value on our understanding of Him. Are you sitting at the feet of your Savior? Are you seeking to continually learn from Him?

Wednesday

What Happened?
• The tempo of the Holy Week increases. This day is known historically as “Spy Wednesday”. For it is the day when Judas turns betrayer agreeing to show the chief priests where they could easily capture Jesus.
Remembering Wednesday
• We can betray Jesus. We can make it all about us instead of about Him. Why did Judas betray Jesus? There could be many reasons. At the root of it He was selfish. He chose money over Jesus. He was in it for himself, not in it for Jesus. Are we “all in” in our relationship with Him?

Thursday

What Happened?
• Jesus prepares for Friday. His whole focus for starting this week and bigger than that for coming to earth was for the cross. To rescue the souls of mankind. It would not be easy…it would be the most painful experience. He spends Thursday night praying in a garden. He asks His friends to stay with Him. They can’t stay awake.
Remembering Thursday
• As we get closer to what’s about to happen…realize Jesus was abandoned by his closest friends on Thursday. He wanted them to stay awake with Him…try to stay awake late Thursday night if you can. Not watching TV, not playing video games, just praying late into the night…see if you can stay awake. Let your sleepiness identify with the disciples Thursday night. As you go to sleep keep in mind Jesus wasn’t going to sleep tonight. He was too determined to pay the penalty of your sin so you could be with Him.

Friday

What Happened?
• Jesus is crucified Friday morning. This day is called “Good Friday.” What in the world is good about this day? In one sense it should be called “Horrendous Friday.” What is “Good” about Friday of this week is the payment for our sins is being accepted. The penalty is being paid. Jesus is our hero. Jesus is our substitute. He came and endured for you, for me.
Remembering Friday
• This coming Friday should be the saddest day of our year. The one many of us love dearly was brutally killed because of our sins. When you wake up Friday morning He’s already been severely beaten and flogged. At 9am Jesus is nailed to the cross because of you, because of me. Please let that sink in. Set your phones to remind you at 9am. When you sit down to eat lunch Jesus has been on the cross for 3 hours…let that sink in…you might not have an appetite. Many Christians throughout history have fasted on Friday…Jesus is on the cross all day Friday. He declares the salvation of mankind is finished at 3pm on Friday. His heart stops beating. The Son of God has been crucified.
• Galatians 2:15-21 – Have you been crucified with Christ so you can live? We identify with Him in His death so we can identify with Him in His life. Are you letting all areas of your life die to Christ?

Good clean Christian joke

Jesus and Satan were having an on-going argument about who was better on the computer. They had been going at it for days, and frankly God was tired of hearing all the bickering. Finally fed up, God said, 'THAT'S IT! I have had enough. I am going to set up a test that will run for two hours, and from those results, I will judge who does the better job.' So Satan and Jesus sat down at the keyboards and typed away. They moused. They faxed. They e-mailed. They e-mailed with attachments.. They downloaded. They did spread sheets! They wrote reports. They created labels and cards. They created charts and graphs. They did some genealogy reports . They did every job known to man. Jesus worked with heavenly efficiency and Satan was faster than hell. Then, ten minutes before their time was up, lightning suddenly flashed across the sky, thunder rolled, rain poured, and, of course, the power went off... Satan stared at his blank screen and screamed every curse word known in the underworld. Jesus just sighed.... Finally, the electricity came back on, and each of them restarted their computers. Satan started searching frantically, screaming: 'It's gone! It's all GONE! 'I lost everything when the power went out!' Meanwhile, Jesus quietly started printing out all of his files from the past two hours of work. Satan observed this and became irritated. 'Wait!' he screamed. That's not fair! He cheated! How come he has all his work and I don't have any?' God just shrugged and said, JESUS SAVES ...

Following Jesus commands...and living by grace

We always fight a battle between law and grace, Paul writes about it repeatedly in Romans. James reminds us that faith and action cannot be separated. We are always in this land between the call to action for Christ and the reminder that none of or activity can move Gods love.

Grace reminds us that Gods love is not relevant on our action or our love for him: it was whilst we were sinners that Jesus suited for us!

What our actions are though is like the warning lights on a car dash. They warn us when the engine is in trouble, overheating or perhaps out of oil. When we stop fellowshipping it is a warning that our love for Christ has become dull. When we stop giving generously to the church it us a warning that money is beginning to grab our souls. When we stop praying it means our intimacy with Jesus has taken a knock...usually because of our sin.

These warning lights do not cause Jesus to love us any less, but they are serious warnings that our love for him is in trouble and that we might have taken our eyes off the author and perfecter of our faith.

What warning lights are on on your life?

Is organized religion dying?

Some really interesting questions that are being asked about organized religion....when the church stops believing the gospel and becomes nothing more than a religious intuition it is going to die...and that is not necessarily a bad thing
Organized Religion is Dying - http://pulsene.ws/1mfpu

One of our elders as we've been debating God's election and other esoteric issues, writes:

Whatever I may have written on the doctrine of salvation I believe to be true and of value for those who are interested theologically, but I’m not sure that it has any value for the ordinary confused folk in the church. Predestination, election has everyone guessing and although it is of value, unless we understand God’s position in time and space we will be forever at sea.

God wants us to know that he loves us and is interested in our salvation. How he effects that salvation is of no real consequence to us. We need to know that he draws us to him because he first loved us, somehow against our will we mysteriously respond to his presence and by the working of the Holy Spirit we are drawn to him.

What God really wants from us is a relationship with Him. He wants our affection, our love and to share our joy and sadness. He doesn’t want us on a Sunday only, he wants us to experience His love on Monday at the office, doing our chores at home, making that line call at tennis, or missing that 6 foot putt to lose the game. 

How do we respond to God when he sometimes is so far away? How do we experience his love? Is it only in our imagination, or is it real? When I have my quiet time I find that I struggle with this question. I know my love for him is very real and the only thing that makes it possible to believe in a real love relationship with God is my faith that comes by grace – and that sometimes is wonky. 

“Taste and see that the Lord is good”, writes the psalmist, God does not lie, he wants us to believe him. He wants us to experience him tangibly. This is a call from God to us, to understand that he is not interested in what we can do for him; he is not interested in our money or our often shabby worship when we mouth words that we don’t even mean. 

He really wants the only thing that only we can give him – our love, and he wants it all the time and he wants it to grow stronger every day!

Reading the Bible

Reading the Bible is an art that takes years to get right (if ever). The more I read and study the more I see there is for me to learn. On every page I find nuances of God's character that amaze and inspire me. Weeks later I might hit the same text again and be moved by yet another characteristic of God that leaps from page.

The problem with reading the Bible well is that we find it so tough to take off our predisposed ideas and let the Bible be the Bible. We come with prejudices and preformed ideas and it is God's will that the Bible should mold and shape us towards godly thinking and not that we make the bible say what we want it to.

In the continuing saga of Rob Bell's latest book we see exactly this happening. Scot McKnight a highly respected New Testament scholar is writing a series of pieces on Bell's book. This latest one makes the point of how Bell has very poorly translated scripture and at other points simply ignored fundamentally important texts becuase they don't fit in with his ideas...you can read Scot McKnights articl here

Why is this so important? Why the fuss over Bell's book?

Well because if the life to come is lived either with God in glory or in hell then we'd better get this right. Bell contends that hell is a temporary place of reformative punishment...yet the bible speaks of unquenchable fire and torment that goes on forever and ever. That sounds pretty serious to me and so we'd better read the scriptures very carefully and honestly, praying for the Spirit to guide us so that we are following God's ways and not the ways of the world.

These things are life and death issues, if we get them wrong we may be sending people to hell with a smile on their face and a pat on the back, because of what Bell has said. That would be a sad day indeed. I do believe in a literal hell because Jesus speaks about it and died to make away for us to avoid it. If it's serious enough for Jesus to die for then it's serious enough for us to contend for the truth about it.

Exodus in the age of social networking

simply brilliant!!!
http://www.aish.com/h/pes/mm/Passover_Google_Exodus.html

Memorizing Scripture: Why and How

Memorizing scripture is an important part of growing in your faith. Those of us who preach God's word spend so much time in study that we land up having the text hard wired into who we are. But for the average Christian memorization does not come easy, nor is it popular. But it is a powerful tool to have scripture on hand in times of testing and temptation. Here is a link to a short article and an ebook on memorizing scripture. Check it out and see how God will use his word to transform your life for His glory! Memorizing Scripture: Why and How

The Aseity of God

Again and again I find modern Christians subtly and yet seriously mistaken about the importance of humankind. Not that humanity are unimportant in God's sight - we're of immense value to God and we're the reason that God the Son chose to come and offer him self up in our place for our sins. But the confusion arises when we put ourselves at the center of things. The creation is there for God's glory to be revealed (Rom 1) but also so that humanity might have the provision and blessing of God. The church is there to declare the manifold wisdom of God to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms (Eph 3) and yet it is also for us, that we might have fellowship and encouragement. The subtle lie that we've bought into is that we're the reason for it all - and frankly and biblically - we're not.

God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit and all his manifold wisdom, glory, power and might is the reason for all things existing - we're part of God's impressive creativity, but we're not the reason for it. This is called The Aseity of God. That he had no neccesity for us and yet he did desire us. To not have us around would not make God any less God...we're not central to his existence.

Our generation, as many before it, has in it's self absorbed narcissism come to believe that we're the center and everything is about us. And often this has slipped into the minds of Jesus church. Those who lead have a great and wonderful responsibility to remind those under our leadership that it's actually all about Jesus and not about them. When we try to win a friend to Christ we tend to tell them about how Jesus can meet there needs -all we're doing is buying into the lie and baiting them into it as well: "it's all about you". We should instead be saying "Look at this amazing God who offered himself up - he is worthy of your worship - why not give it to him" When we teach our children about being good we say things like "Be good so that others will like you and so that you will be successful" but the Bible tells us that the reason we aim to live holy lives is so that God would get glory!

We need to keep this at the front of our minds: it's not about us but it is about Jesus....because it is always, and only about him!

Romans 1 and God's revelation through the creation

Romans chapter 1 reminds us that the creation reveals God to us all the time: "For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse."


People are without excuse in beleiving God or in fact Jesus. Jesus is after all the one through whom everything has been made - his fingerprints are all over the creation with even the constant cycle of death and life in the creation pointing towards the death and resurrection of the author of all things.




The creation constantly reveals the wonder and majesty of God. Theologian Robert Dabney probably words it best: “They who have no Bible may still look up to the moon walking in brightness and the stars watching in obedient order; they may see in the joyous sunbeams the smile of God, and in the fruitful shower the manifestation of his bounty; they hear the rending thunder utter his wrath, and the jubilee of the birds sing his praise; the green hills are swelled with his goodness; the trees of the wood rejoice before him with every quiver of their foliage in the summer air"


All creation proclaims the marvelous creator of all!

From our denominations moderator...worth reading

Moderatorial Moments: My South Africa - Jonathan Jansen: "Dear Friends Today I'm sending you a letter written by Professor Jonathan Jansen of the University of the Free State. It moves me. It descr..."

Some thoughts on Biblical eldership

At our retreat two weeks back the elders did a great deal of work unpacking what it means to be an elder. We know there are passages in the bible defining eldership and we spend many hours debating and reflecting on what the Bible says. It's pretty serious stuff, the scriptural requirements of an elder are not easy to live up to. Thankfully we're under Jesus grace! There are some specific characteristics/gifts/abilties/duties that elders are required to have...