Today’s guest blogger is The Rev’d Dr. Paul F.M. Zahl. Paul is the former dean of Trinity School for Ministry and the author of Who Will Deliver Us? The Present Power of the Death of Christ, The Protestant Face of Anglicanism, A Short Systematic Theology, and Grace in Practice: A Theology of Everyday Life.

AN INTERESTING VOICE

William Inge (1913-1973) was an American playwright who achieved great success during the 1950s and ’60s. He wrote popular plays, and movies, such as “Picnic”, “Bus Stop”, “The Dark at the Top of the Stairs”, and “Splendor in the Grass”.

Inge came from small-town Kansas and knew its pre-Depression prosperity, based on oil, as well as its ‘dust-bowl’ poverty after 1929. He grew up within the conventional Christianity of the period and was interested by it, tho’ not an adult participant in it. In 1958, in a preface to an edition of his plays, he wrote, concerning “The Dark at the Top of the Stairs”, “I felt that maybe I was drawing a little on Christian theology to show something of the uniting effect human suffering can bring into our lives.” (xi)

William Inge became known, through his Broadway and also his Hollywood success, as an observer of intimate family life — wives and husbands, fathers and daughters, sons and mothers. He underlined certain core themes in relationships that had previously been suggested but not stated. Almost all of his plays depicted family routines that experience a crisis which reveals the true state of things. The crisis ends up becoming positive, we might say, in its effects, for most of the characters grow to a richer and credible hope as a result of the crisis.

Inge was actually accused of being over-optimistic, even tho’, when you read his plays today, they seem extremely true to life while at the same time offering credible hope and meaningful victories. I love William Inge.

Two quotes from Inge are especially apt for Christian readers. There are others, but these two are standouts. One is from his late novel My Son is a Splendid Driver (1971). In this passage, a thoroughly conventional 62-year-old married woman and mother of adult children has contracted a ‘social disease’ from her husband. It is small-town Kansas during the Great Depression. Her humiliation, shame, and misery are beyond words.

“Mother had stopped going to church. ‘Church isn’t the place to go with your troubles. Church is just a place to go when you’re feeling good and have a new hat to wear.’ There was a little bitterness in what she said, a little self-pity, but there was also truth. Our minister would have been the last person in the world she could have talked to, to have lifted the curse she felt upon her and saved her from feeling damned. She would have embarrassed the man into speechlessness had she gone to him with her story. He would have been unable to look at her or my father without coloring. Most of our morality, I was beginning to think, was based on a refusal to recognize sin. Our entire religious heritage, it seemed to me, was one of refusal to deal with it.” (153)

That is one amazing passage.

It catches an impression that many would have even today, that church is not a place for sinners but a place for overcomers. The writer has put his finger on a defect of understanding that still affects many churches. They do not always see themselves as hospitals for sufferers and sinners — especially Christian sinners!

In another place William Inge talks about what he is doing in his work. This is from his 1960 preface to the play “A Loss of Roses”:

“I feel that A Loss of Roses is a timely play. To be sure, it deals only with individuals, not representing any class or race struggle, not living with any consciousness of the atom bomb or of rockets to outer space. But it deals with individuals who, like people today seeking an inner peace in the midst of terrifying social change, must come to deal with evil in their lives, either to be destroyed or to find themselves strengthened. And I purposely set the play in the Depression because I feel that underneath our inflated prosperity today, there is a serious depression which we are struggling not to face. I feel that in A Loss of Roses, I have been able to make clearer than in any of my other plays a … view I have come to adopt during the last ten years, that man can only hope for an individual peace in the world; and like Whitman, ‘I swear nothing is good to me now that ignores individuals.’ All attempts to deal with men in groups, or as objects of time and environment, I think, fail.”

Note that Inge does not offer a solution to the problem of ‘individuals’ which he understands to outweigh in significance the problem of ‘groups’. But he does say, with humble clarity, that peace can only be achieved one person at a time. You may not agree with this fully, but I find it refreshing in an era when powers-that-be often seem to speak as if social engineering can make the world an intrinsically better place.

I recommend William Inge’s work to Christian readers.

Finally, I would recommend a masterpiece from this writer that the whole world admits to be one. It is the 1960 movie “Splendor in the Grass”, with Natalie Wood and Warren Beatty. Elia Kazan directed it, but it was Inge’s project and screenplay through and through.

There is an extra touch to this movie which makes it especially moving for me. William Inge requested that he play the part of the Episcopal minister in “Splendor in the Grass”. It is a small part but a revealing one. In one scene, Inge, as ‘The Reverend Whitman’, is conducting Morning Prayer in his church, to which most of the characters belong. He quotes the Offertory Sentence, “Lay not up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt and where thieves break through and steal. But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through and steal.”

The minister’s meaning is clear: these pre-Depression oil-rich Kansans are ‘making hay while the sun shines’, but they are wrong, wrong, wrong. The movie spells this out later.

In a short cameo a little later on, Inge, again as Mr. Whitman, seeks to comfort the Natalie Wood character, as she is praying in the church for her high-school sweetheart, who has become extremely sick.

The minister encourages the girl to pray as her heart tells her; and looks at her compassionately and almost wistfully. The camera set-up emphasizes the compassion of this well-intentioned minister.

That’s all you need to know to start on William Inge. He was not a genius. He was the victim of depression throughout his life, and at its end. He occasionally ‘trimmed his sails’ to avoid criticism or confrontation. But his heart was good, and much of his work is very good.

I close with the quote with which Inge prefaced his late novel My Son is a Splendid Driver. He wrote on the ascription page the following sentence from The Imitation of Christ by Thomas a Kempis:

“… woe to those who do not know their own misery and woe to those who love this wretched and corruptible life.”

Ladies and Gentlemen: I give you William Inge.

Our guest blogger today is David Householder. David is Fulbright Scholar (University Bonn ’88–’89) and international conference speaker, and the author of Light Your Church On Fire Without Burning It Down: Church in the 21st Century. Currently he leads an indie-warehouse church in California, where he dreams and works for a better world. His latest book, The Blackberry Bush, was released this past June.

WOULD JESUS START A FOOD BANK?

There are a lot of things we do at churches that would be foreign to the church Jesus started:

Youth Groups
Choirs and Bell Choirs
Men’s Ministry
Receptionists and Offices
Robes and Liturgy
Ordination
Christian Counseling
Christian Schools
Cantatas
Full-time Ministry People

Now please hear me; all of these things can be good things. They’re just not essential to what church is, or Jesus would have at least mentioned that we might try them.

The problem is, glance at that list again and you’ll see that these “markers” have become the very distinctives of church life. We assume that church is about doing them and promoting them.

So here’s a question: Does Jesus want our churches to have food banks?

It seems assumed by all that charity work is the essential work of the church. But is that true?

Now, before you think that I’m some kind of anti-poor-people wingnut, let me go on record by saying that I believe that it is the responsibility of any society to feed its:

Widows and orphans
Disabled veterans
I would add children to that list, since children are poor through no fault of their own.

I would also add that there are times of famine throughout the world, and that the Christians have been and should be at the point of the spear in responding. The Apostle Paul gathered an offering for the upcoming famine in Jerusalem.

Able-bodied men (and women) should be working. And families should be the first line of defense. Solve the family problem, and you solve the hunger problem. Divorce shreds the fabric of extended families, and real people fall through the cracks.

It seems obvious to me, also, that most of the panhandlers in our midst (at least in the US) are mentally ill. We used to institutionalize them. I still think we should. For their own good, and out of love for our neighbors who can’t make their own good decisions.

I think it’d be a great idea for you to have a food bank at your church, especially if you feel led by the Lord to do so. We don’t have one. Not out of principle, but because we don’t feel led by God to do so, at least at this point. We work hard to empower single women who were considering abortions, usually because of poverty, to make a path toward sustainable life: http://hisnestingplace.org. It’s what we feel called to do and we hope it’s helping.

The truth is, however, that much charity work (giving a man a fish) actually reinforces poverty, rather than teaching a man to fish. Giving to a panhandler (which I sometimes do and can’t explain why) rewards begging. And we all know that begging and more giving to beggars is not the answer to the problem of poverty, so why reinforce it?

I am struck and saddened by the level of obesity of those waiting in food lines in the USA. Many going back home to cable TV. Many of whom smoke while in line. There is a food bank across the street from my house, behind the library, and a bus stop just feet from my door. Much food gets left behind at the bus stop (stuff they decided not to keep). More than you think, as you picture it.

Let’s discuss, as responses to this essay, ways to end poverty. I believe that it is possible. Jesus said “the poor will always be with you,” but not that the poor would always be with us, 20 centuries later. There has been much progress against poverty in my lifetime. Breathtaking progress, to speak the truth.

But it doesn’t come through:

Wealth redistribution (left wing answer). It ends up being forced, and then fails.
Rugged individualism (right wing answer). The strong just get stronger and the weak can’t keep up.
It comes through great creativity, the Spirit of God, and relational solutions.

The truth is, poverty is a curse. And people need to be taught out of it. Here are some suggestions, meant to help. Some may work. Some maybe not.

Teaching children out of poverty mentality and into abundance mentality. Not reinforcing victim mentality. In schools and in churches.

Providing better public transportation so those who can’t afford cars can get to work.

Making it harder to get divorced. Divorce compounds poverty. Encouraging people to have babies IN marriages. Not just in church, but in all of our schools.

Abolishing welfare “as a way of life” for able-bodied adults.

Strengthening extended families and teaching them to care for the “least of these” in their midst.

Trying to focus your help on those with whom you are willing to go the distance (e.g. the Good Samaritan). You can’t do this with everyone. Quality of aid over quantity.

Re-establishing public healthy living communities for the mentally ill. Homelessness is expensive! In Canada, it costs $110,000 per year per person (money spent on homeless divided by number of homeless) to care for these people (homeless) who are moving targets. Not sure what the American number is, but it can’t be too different.

Stop selling lottery tickets, 40 oz beers, etc. in underclass neighborhoods. Redline them if you have to.

Re-establishing Christian mutual aid (common in NT times). Church members would receive from the offerings when there was need. This kept the giving relational. The Mormons are the only ones still doing it well.

Incentivize entrepreneurial immigrants (e.g. South Asians) to settle in underclass neighborhoods. This may have done more to help blighted US neighborhood economic development than anything else.

There is great reason for optimism. Poverty is much less a curse than it was a couple of generations ago.

What are some of your ideas?

If you have a food bank, great. But let’s think beyond the food bank.

Waiting to hear from you…

Timothy Fountain is Rector of Church of the Good Shepherd (TEC) in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. He and his wife, Melissa, just celebrated their 21st wedding anniversary. He is in his 24th year of ordained ministry. He blogged for several years as “Northern Plains Anglicans.”

FISH STORY

In May, a dozen of our parish men, teens, seniors and in-between, crossed South Dakota to the Black Hills for a weekend of refreshment. This was our “second annual fall men’s weekend.” 2010′s “first annual” was great fun and also made a space for some of the guys who wondered if they could be a Christian and a man at the same time. Hunting, fishing, nature hikes, cooking out and just generally enjoying good company in a gorgeous place gave God a way to say, “Sure you can.” But I have to admit, the 2010 fishing was a bust. Just two catches in the whole group and neither of those were keepers. So we pumped up the 2011 “second annual” as an angler do-over.

We arrived on a Thursday afternoon, threw down our stuff and headed right out to Lakota Lake. After several hours of casting, reeling, tangling lines and trying to find “the good spot,” we were right back in 2010 form… nothing. Before dinner, I took time for Evening Prayer. Wouldn’t you know it – the lesson was Luke 5, about “the great catch of fish.” Peter and the other fishermen were out on the lake with no luck, then Jesus showed up and said “Try over there.” They did and they caught almost enough to sink their boats. I tried to keep it to myself but at Friday breakfast I just couldn’t hold it in – as guys were huddling around with plates in hand, I said, “You just have to hear last night’s Bible lesson,” and read it to them. It was a manly “Haw Haw” moment, patiently indulging the weird religious guy, and then we got on with breakfast before heading back to the lake. From Friday morning on, we could not stop catching Rainbow Trout. By Sunday morning we landed 50, of which 35 were keepers. Everybody in the group caught some – nobody went home without an impressive main course to serve his family.

OK, so what? Well, God took my thoughts back to this Black Hills adventure as I pondered Scriptures for The Ascension and Pentecost. Jesus prayed and promised that his people would have the glory he shares with the Father, by the gift of the Holy Spirit. OK, so what? Well, most days we don’t look, feel or otherwise experience anything “glorious.” I mean, just look in the mirror before you shave, comb your hair (if you have any) or whatever. Think about any given day’s errors, sins, missed opportunities and defeats, and it’s like coming back from the lake with tangled lines, lost lures, sunburn and absolutely, positively no dang fish. Yet in the midst of all of our inglorious endeavors, God is bringing forth “an eternal weight of glory (II Cor. 4:17).”

Some of this is going on in our lives and in our impact on other lives all the time, and we don’t perceive it. Some of it happens in sudden breakthroughs of glory, when we follow an inspiration to a blessed outcome, or a very sick person gets well just after our tounge-tied prayer, or a coworker who’s kept us at arm’s length for years asks our help to meet Jesus. It happens in God’s way, at God’s time, for God’s glory – and it happens through us because that’s what Jesus promised as he ascended into heaven and what he keeps delivering in the endless shockwaves of Pentecost. It really is like fishing: Our 50 catches were only a tiny percentage of the countless casts we made (or tried to make.) Most of the reeling brought nothing. There were casts into lakeside tree branches. Lines got snagged and lures were lost. We just stood in the spots that seemed best and kept casting our lines. And all of a sudden there was the tug and the short fight and the personal joy and the group celebration – each catch eclipsing dozens or maybe hundreds of fruitless or failed casts. “Follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will make you fish for people.” Which is to say, “Stagger along trying to keep up with me, and I will interrupt your constant failures with spectacular moments until we stand together glorious in my Father’s house.” Won’t we have some fish stories to share there.

Our guest blogger today is Simon Guillebaud. Simon has since 2003 worked with Great Lakes Outreach, a mission agency he founded to work in Bujumbura, Burundi (he’s been a missionary in Burundi since 1998). He is currently serving on the staff of St. Andrew’s Church in Mt. Pleasant, SC.

WHAT IS THE GOSPEL?

I recently went to a huge church and listened to what I gather is their regular weekly fare in the one-hour sermon. It sounds so crass, you can’t believe people can possibly be taken in; but they are, and by their thousands. Essentially the message goes like this: “Come to Jesus and He’ll take away your problems. He’s got a wonderful plan for your life. He wants to bless you and make you happy. He promises fullness of life, but maybe you’ve been looking for that fullness in the wrong places, be it through sex or your career or money. They won’t satisfy. Come to Jesus and receive all the blessings He wants to pour into your life. He’ll make you rich. Just claim His promises and have faith that they will come to pass.”

On and on it goes along the same theme. It makes me positively angry. It’s such a twisting of the truth. I mean, how would that message sound to believers in North Korea today, or in Saudi Arabia or Iraq? Following Christ for many of them involves imprisonment, torture, losing their jobs, death threats and expulsion from their families. “Hey, come to Jesus, He’ll take away your problems and make you happy!” Give me a break. Then, almost in the same breath, when the appeal is made for people to come forward to receive that wonderful plan for their lives, the preacher lists all those who are sick and dying, depressed and lonely, grieving and hurting, but nobody seems to see the disconnect. As I read in The Way of the Master , “He promises a bed of roses for those who come to Christ, but for those who are already in Christ, they are experiencing a painful bed of thorns. He promises a smooth flight, but for those who are already on board, they are experiencing extreme turbulence.”

These myriad preachers, who preach what itching ears want to hear, totally ignore so many key Scriptures. So what is the Gospel? How about Jesus’ words in John 16:33:

“In this world you will have trouble [ouch!]; but take heart, I have overcome the world [oof!].”

That’s the Gospel in a nutshell. We embrace both parts. The cross we bear precedes the crown we wear. People want all blessing and no cost, which is a twisted man-centered gospel and leads to people falling away at an alarming rate when things get tough, because they’d been told everything would be easy once they gave their life to Jesus. What a lie! May I be faithful in preaching an authentic message of beautiful, costly discipleship.

I don’t have a theology of grim, morbid suffering for Christ, but neither do I ignore verses like 2 Timothy 3:12:

“In fact, everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will suffer.”

I’ve just read from Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s book, The Cost of Discipleship, written from prison shortly before he was executed by the Nazis:

“Suffering is the badge of true discipleship. The disciple is not above his master … That is why Luther reckoned suffering among the marks of the true church … if we refuse to take up our cross and submit to suffering and rejection at the hands of men, we forfeit our fellowship with Christ and have ceased to follow Him. But if we lose our lives in His service and carry our cross, we shall find our lives again in the fellowship of the cross with Christ.”

Let’s not opt for a comfortable, easy Christianity (which in truth does not exist), but instead determine to “lose our lives in His service”.

You can get Simon’s book ‘Dangerously Alive – African Adventures of Faith under Fire’ from our St. Andrew’s bookshop, or by visiting More Than Conquerors.

Today’s guest blogger is Archbishop Peter Jensen, the Archbishop of Sydney. This article was written for the good people of Sydney and the Archbishop, when asked to write a guest blog, kindly gave me permission to post it here.

EXPECTING GLORY

I think we know glory when we see it. it takes our breath away and we cry out in wonder and delight and amazement. Above all, God is glorious. In the Bible the word for glory has overtones of blinding light and heavy weight. It is the glory say, of a golden gown, heavy on the shoulders and dazzling to the eyes. Even earthly glory is the sort of thing for which crowds gather in excitement and expectation. What God’s glory is like must be beyond description or imagining.

And yet that is not quite true either. John’s gospel reminds us that the glory of Jesus is seen at his cross, where the Son of God was exposed to the view of the world. But to those with eyes to see, the glory of God was never more manifest. it was a righteous glory, the glory of his saving and holy power by which he redeemed the world, overcoming evil and sin. When we hear the gospel of Christ crucified and our eyes are opened by the power of God’s Spirit, we see the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. here the glory of God can be best seen even by sinful creatures, because God has graciously revealed his glory to us in a way in which we may see it.

But more than that.

We ourselves can receive and partake of his glory. We, too, can be glorified. The Bible has a strange but true way of describing where we are in God’s timetable. Because the decisive battle in world history has already been won in the death of Jesus, we can say truly that the future has already arrived. For that reason the Bible tells us that we are already resurrected, that we are already the sons of God, that we already have eternal life, that we are already new creatures, that we are already sanctified, that we are already in the age to come. But in each of these cases, it also tells us that we are waiting — that the future has not yet fully arrived — that we will be resurrected, will have eternal life, will be new creatures, will be sanctified, will inherit the age to come. We are in a time which is ‘between the ages’, part the old age and part the new.

Thus the Bible says that we are already glorified — we have already what the future of God has planned for us. But we are being glorified — we are in process, being changed from one degree of glory to another by the Lord who is the Spirit. Like sanctification, glory is a complete gift (so certain is it) and a process. The process of glorification is the process of us becoming more and more like the Lord Jesus Christ, the lord of glory. We sometimes say of a Christian brother or sister who has died that they have ‘gone to glory’. it is an evocative phrase. We may dwell with great profit and delight on the pictures of God’s future which are spread out before us in the Book of Revelation. in particular the description of the heavenly city, the new Jerusalem, with its streets paved with gold and having the glory of God in its midst is one which has always helped sustain Christian hope and joy.

So, too, is the knowledge that the new testament regards this future as being so sure that it speaks of us as having already been glorified. But at the heart of the Christian hope is this: real glory is found in the presence and likeness of Christ. As we contemplate the future, it is his coming — his coming in glory — which must dominate our thoughts. And our hope may be summarised by saying that it is to be with him forever, it is to be in his service for ever, and finally and even more wonderfully, it is to be like him for ever. We will bear his image, be transformed into his likeness, we will share his goodness and be the sort of men and women we were always designed to be. That is glory!

How is it that we are Christians? How is it that we are saved? How is it that we may have confidence that God will share his glory with us? it is nothing in ourselves. We have nothing to boast of except God himself. it is all of God. it is not only that God saves us through the incarnation, death and resurrection of Jesus, leaving us to turn to him in our own strength, so to speak. it requires also that he should elect us from all eternity, call us through his word, regenerate us through his Spirit, convert us through faith and repentance, justify us, sanctify us and finally glorify us. For all this, may his holy name be praised.

Today’s guest blogger is Bishop Bill Atwood. +Bill is Bishop of The International Diocese in the Anglican Church in North America, Suffragan Bishop of All Saints Cathedral Diocese in Nairobi (Anglican Church of Kenya) and General Secretary of Ekklesia.

HISTORY IS UNFOLDING

Howard Ball, an evangelism trainer for Campus Crusade for Christ in the 1970′s, used to say, “Sometimes people remark that living a faithful Christian life is difficult. That’s not true at all. It’s not difficult– it’s humanly impossible.”

Happily, we are not consigned to live our Christian lives in our own strength. Certainly, there are plenty of people who try. That’s better than not even trying to conform to the principles of the Kingdom, but it is frustrating and exhausting to try to live religiously without the power of the Holy Spirit. To be sure, even when we are open to Him working in us and through us supernaturally, we are not always aware of how He is doing it. Our intellect alone is not sufficient to perceive the genuine leading of the Spirit. Surely our five senses are inadequate for that discernment. Taste, touch, smell, hearing, and sight are insufficient to discern when God is doing something and when He is not.

In many ways the big issues are a lot easier for us than they were for the church in the early years after the resurrection. They knew for certain that Jesus had rocked their world, but they didn’t know exactly how He had done it. It was obvious that He was unique. They knew He worked miracles and that He rose from the dead, but it took years to figure out how God had done it and just Who Jesus actually was.

The early years saw lots of theories and disagreements. It took centuries to sort things out. It even took a long time to figure out which literature was actually “The Word of God” and which wasn’t. Over time, there was more and more clarity. After three centuries, a confident consensus was reached about Scripture and truth. Not about every truth, but there was clarity about which things could not be rejected without losing confidence in salvation. It’s not that we want to troll around for opportunities to declare people apostates, but when people are living, teaching, believing, and proclaiming things that violate creedal faith, we no longer have the joy of assuring them of salvation.

It’s not necessary for a person to understand and accept every element of creedal faith in order to inherit eternal life (Eg. The thief on the Cross), but if any element of the Creed is rejected, it would be utterly wrong to assure people that they were inheritors of eternal life. That is one of the most utterly odious things about the false teaching that has infected so much of the western church. Not only are they navigating away from the Cross, they core message is assurance of God’s acceptance of behaviors and beliefs when it’s not the truth. That’s similar (but worse!) than an engineer signing off on a bridge saying it is safe when it isn’t. Or an impostor dressed as a pilot taking off with passengers in a plane he doesn’t know how to fly.

We can have confidence in Who God is and what He calls us to do. We can know the Truth and be set free. We can encounter the river of abundant joy that is the love of the Father, the life of Jesus Christ, and transformation of the Holy Spirit. What is amazing is that we can do that and also find resonance with saints who lived a thousand years ago or ten thousand miles away. We can actually be united in powerful fellowship with those who have been several cultures, languages, or continents removed from us. The unity we find in shared life in Jesus Christ is stunning. I find people all the time in rural Kenya, the Andes Mountains of South America, the Mountains of the Moon in Uganda or on the shores of Lake Malawi that have experienced essentially the same thing that revolutionized my life in 1972. That is wonderful, but it is also amazing!

Some of the people who are leading the charge away from the redeeming love of Jesus Christ are just relying on their intellect to figure everything out. Others are motivated by their feelings. The problem is that without the external plumb line of Holy Scripture and the illumination of the faith of the Church, people will get things wrong. How sad and how arrogant for anyone to think that they don’t need other people or any outside source to inform and moderate their own thoughts and feelings. We need the Communion of Saints. We need the Bible. We need the wisdom of centuries of applying Christian teaching informed by the way that the Church has understood the faith.

Images and Icons

Pictures, images, structures, and icons are helpful in illuminating that faith for us. They are not the faith themselves, they help us see and understand the faith. They can also help us administer faith and remain faithful. They are, however, signposts that point to the Kingdom if we have eyes to see.

Take, for example, the principle of Diocesan or Provincial “boundaries.” The boundaries are a structure that has been set up in order to preserve and promote Gospel faith. Boundaries can set up clear lines of accountability, responsibility, and protection. They are a structure that emerged to serve a purpose. Over time, however, the boundaries in some places no longer served to preserve the Gospel, they were perverted and actually began being used to subvert the Gospel and undermine Biblical fidelity. When it became obvious to some of us that there was a full blown crisis, one of the things that was done was to convene a gathering of ethicists to ask the question of how to deal with the competing issues arising out of a corrupt situation where the bishop of a diocese would not allow Biblically faithful ministry to be brought to people in “his territory.” To go in would violate the structure. To fail to go in would mean that people would be deprived of Christian care and discipleship.

What the ethicists articulated was that it is not an ethical violation to transgress a structure that was set up to preserve a principle, when the structure had been corrupted and was being used to subvert the very purpose for which it was designed. In other words, despite the fact that some measure of institutional chaos would result from ministering across boundaries, the result was less damage than leaving people languishing without care and Gospel ministry. Of course, there are people who disagree, but the tragedy of supporting the structure over the faith is a failure to see the eternal consequences of withholding Gospel ministry.

Canterbury as an Icon

Many Provinces (and individuals) in the Anglican Communion have in their documents the understanding of the definition of what it means to be Anglican as being those who are “in Communion with the Archbishop of Canterbury.” It would be irresponsible, however, to assert that the relationship with the Archbishop of Canterbury (often referred to as the ABC) is without limits. The point is that the ABC has been an icon of Anglican faith for centuries. That may have been sufficient when the extended community was thoroughly committed to historic Biblical faith. In a convinced Christian community, being “in communion” with Canterbury was a shorthand way of saying that there was shared faith, belief, practice, and discipline. Recent years have demonstrated, however, that none of those things are still shared by everyone who is institutionally connected with Canterbury. Further, the current Archbishop himself has made it clear that he does not see himself asserting discipline about the matters of faith. The only areas of clarity he has been willing to express have been about institutional structures. The problem with that position is that the institutional structures are signposts that point to spiritual realities. When the structure exists without fidelity to the faith it is designed to serve it is a “whitewashed sepulcher.” Don’t get me wrong. This is not to suggest that the Archbishop is the source of the current destructive fire that is raging out of control. Obviously, he inherited the crisis. One could certainly argue that his selective addressing of the issues has exacerbated the crisis, however. The other structures of the Communion also share the responsibility. When the Communion was being organized, no one ever imagined that discipline needed to be built in at the scale now required. Despite that, I am convinced that there was a solution to this crisis pretty early on. Perhaps it would not have worked, but the Archbishop is responsible for failing to use the fire extinguisher that was at his command. I think it could have stopped this mess.

I am quite certain that the Archbishop would say that that the contents of his “fire extinguisher” are not adequate to have extinguished the flames. The problem is that we will never know because he didn’t use it. Now the blaze is of forest fire proportions. So… what to do?

Every 400 years or so…

This is where we go back to the issue of icons. Remember that icons represent something beyond themselves. Police use their badge to challenge people to conform to the law. It stands for something greater than how imposing the policeman is personally though. The badge is a symbol of authority that also points to power. If authority is ignored, then power will follow. That is what has happened in the Communion.

Instead of simply asserting the icon, the GAFCON meeting in Jerusalem articulated the faith that was supposed to be epitomized in the structures and icons of the Communion. When the current structures proved inadequate to illuminate the faith and the consequences of departing from it, the Faith itself has been articulated. The Jerusalem Declaration delineates the faith that the “Instruments of Unity” were supposed to maintain. This is not about people who lack reverence for the Anglican Communion acting in an unruly manner. It is about those who love it and the faith that it has promulgated for a very long time reasserting the faith.

It is obvious that we cannot have both the faith that we have inherited and the current structures as they are. If one is pursued then the other will change. There is no contest about which is expendable. No one goes to Hell if a structure is changed. The same cannot be said if the faith is.

The Anglican Church in North America has not only been launched, it is prospering. It is not the faith. It is a structure in which we live out the faith. It has become necessary because the existing structure in North America was institutionally, officially, and structurally leading people away from the redeeming love of Christ. However they may try, opposing voices are insufficient to restore the structure to Biblical fidelity. It is not adequate to say, “I disagree with the actions and the direction that has been taken. I am going to stay and bear witness that this is the wrong direction.” The reason that is inadequate is that there are innocents aboard who are being led to perdition. Perhaps some of the church members are naively uncritical, but the witness must be adequate to the crisis. Putting up a safety poster in my office is not an adequate response to the spiritual destruction that is taking place. In addition, the old structure draws some measure of support, even if it is small, from the numbers who are still aligned with them.

The GAFCON Conference and Primates Council have reasserted what it means to be faithfully Anglican. Only the most superficial examination of the situation will result in the pursuit of yesterday’s institutional norms. Those who love the Lord that the structures historically served with wake in increasing numbers to the reality of the situation as the substance of faith is manifest in the ACNA more and more clearly.

In the life of the Church, every four hundred years or so, something happens that redefines not the faith, but the lay of the land. I think that the linked work of GAFCON and the Anglican Church in North America fall into that category. This is history unfolding; and I think the Father is glad.

Today’s guest blogger is Alan Hirsch. Alan is a South African-born missiologist and a leading voice in the missional movement of the Christian West. His popular book, The Shaping of Things to Come (with Michael Frost) is widely considered to be a seminal text on mission. Alan’s recent book The Forgotten Ways, has quickly become a key reference for missional thinking, particularly as it relates to movements. His book ReJesus is a radical restatement about the role that Jesus plays in defining missional movements. Untamed, his latest book (with his wife Debra) is about missional discipleship for a missional church. Additionally, Hirsch is the founding Director of Forge Mission Training Network, and co-founder of shapevine.com an international forum for engaging with world transforming ideas. He leads Future Travelers, a learning journey applying missional-incarnational approaches to established churches and is an active participant in The Tribe of LA, a Jesus community among artists and creatives in Los Angeles. He and his wife Debra have been married and in ministry for over twenty years in Australia and the United States.

EVERYDAY MISSION FOR EVERYDAY PEOPLE: MISSION JESUS STYLE
“As the father has sent me, so I send you.” (John 20:21)

How the incarnation informs our mission in the world. 6 Principles based on the life and ministry of Jesus:

1. Presence
Is about “identification” – Jesus was fully man and fully God (John 1:1–16; Col. 1:15–20; Heb. 1:1–4; 1 John 1:1–3). This means Jesus could fully identify with us. He knew us, from the “inside” so to speak. In Jesus God didn’t speak to us from a distance – he became one of us and took on all that it meant to be human. If God is one of us, he knows our situation, our struggles, our yearnings, our temptations, our bodily functions (such as aging), and so on from direct experience (Heb. 4:14–16). It’s hard to comprehend the meaning of this profound act of identification with us. But at the very least it means he knows us, loves us, and has our very best interests at heart. We can trust him.

Modeling on Jesus then means that we should at the very least understand those that we are called to reach. Get to know them. Listen to them, hear their stories, understand something of their journey, what they care about, what life for them looks and feels like.

2. Proximity
Is about being where the people are – Jesus didn’t wait for people to come to him, he went to them. This practice is largely focused around issues of what we do about geographic setting and relational closeness. Once again it draws its inspiration from God’s action in Jesus. God became a man not only in order to identify with us (presence), but also to live with and among us! Much of his time was spent just hanging out and getting to know the people around him. Jesus didn’t expect people to come to where he was, as we so often do, but he went to them. He hung out in their social spaces, markets, synagogues, and visited their homes. In other words, he came into direct proximity; he was near to them.

Likewise, we need to reflect this in our own lives. This requires that we come into direct social contact with others and become a regular part of the natural rhythms of their community. Where you stand determines what you see!

3. Powerlessness
One of the most amazing things we can say about Jesus (and therefore God) is that he is actually humble! The creator of all things is humble! We know this through what theologians call “his humiliation,” powerfully described in Philippians 2. In Jesus, God does not come as an invading tyrant, but in the humblest of forms . . . the servant. This was not very “cool” in the Roman empire, as the slave was the lowest in the pecking order. This says a lot about God. But it ought to say a lot about us as well. “Every true follower of Christ must, through his own existence, try to express the same fact, that humility and self-denial are inseparable from the Christian life.

When one applies this to our missionary calling in the world, it means that we come very humbly among a group of people – not from any arrogant place or position thinking we have all the answers. Remember Our God is humble! – Phillipians 2:1-11.

4. Prevenience
Prevenient grace is the concept that God is involved in every person, calling them to himself in and through Jesus Christ. Therefore we don’t “bring” God with us when we go to people – He is already there. – God doesn’t limit his presence to baptized Christians—he is an unrelenting evangelist. He is always at work in his world—right in the thick of things—in sinful people’s lives, including our own. Not all respond appropriately, but that doesn’t seem to put our God off very much—he’s persistent, he’s insistent, and he’s got a lot of mercy. John Wesley called this reality “prevenient grace” (preparatory grace), and he built his entire ministry squarely on it! He really believed the notion that God was always preparing the way for the preaching of the gospel, that he is at work in every person, wooing them into relationship in and through Jesus. And it is sound biblical doctrine. We don’t “bring God” with us into any situation—he’s there long before you or I arrive on the scene. We simply need to discern God’s prevenient work in people’s lives and join with him.

5. Passion
Paul in Colossians 1:24 talks about sharing in the sufferings of Christ, “Now I rejoice in what I am suffering for you, and I fill up in my flesh what is still lacking in regard to Christ’s afflictions, for the sake of his body, which is the church.” Implying that the church, the body of Christ, will in some way participate in the sufferings of Christ just as Jesus suffered and felt compassion for a lost humanity.

Humans suffer, and Christians, who take seriously the lost and broken in our world, will also suffer. This is the cost of discipleship; we are called to pick up our cross and follow Jesus. Implicit in the cross is suffering. This is what I call an incarnation of the heart – suffering on behalf of the lost.

6. Proclamation
Jesus came to proclaim the good news of the Kingdom of God (Mark 1:14), and there is no question that we are called to the same task (2 Tim. 4:2) following the logic of the incarnation itself, our message is heard best we have gone through the process of identifying with a people, hearing them, understanding the issues they face, humbly living with them, and knowing how they experience and express their search for meaning.

Jesus not only came to proclaim the message of the good news – He was the message – we should also live the message we are proclaiming!

Engagement:
1. How does the fact that God became man change your perception of Christianity and discipleship?
2. Discuss the subversive nature of this aspect of biblical revelation.
3. What is the difference between presence and proximity? Articulate why you think they are both necessary.
4. Watch the movie Slumdog Millionaire and discuss how you can see the traces of God in the slums and in the poor. How would you reach these people?
5. “God is humble.” Discuss the truth and implications of this statement.
6. How is “sharing in the sufferings of Christ” part of discipleship? How do you dodge suffering, and what does that do to your capacity to be an authentic disciple?

Today, our guest blogger is The Rev’d Chuck Collins. Chuck is currently the Rector of Holy Trinity Anglican Church, San Antonio, Texas.

ART AND REVELATION

Most of my life I thought it all ended for Christians in heaven. But the Bible doesn’t teach this. This is not a bad hope, but it’s far less that what God really has planned for us. It casts a dark shadow on the stuff – the physicality – of this world as worthless and passing away. It’s only a small step from this to the idea that the mortal human body is the container of the immortal spirit – which is heresy! – Gnosticism! Actually all the stuff of this world created by God is good – very good – and our ultimate end is the New Heaven and the New Earth, the new Jerusalem coming down from heaven to earth uniting the two in an everlasting union (Revelation 21, 22). It’s not just life after death in general terms (i.e. going to heaven), but God’s new creation on earth. Who wants to sit on clouds playing harps all day long? What kind of hope is that? Unless I’m sitting next to Esperanza Spalding playing the upright bass, it sounds more like hell than heaven to me!

We say in our creed that we believe “in the resurrection of the body.” Not just the spirit. We believe that God is going to do for the whole physical creation what he did for Jesus at Easter. Creation is good, not bad; our bodies are good, not bad. ”Rapture theology” is bogus because it suggests that Christians will be plucked from this evil and wicked world when, in fact, He will ultimately bring heaven and earth together when He comes again to renew creation. In the meantime all creation groans for release for its true and ultimate created purposes (Romans 8:19).

What this means should be obvious for those of us who wait Jesus’ return: the beauty, grace, justice and love of this world will continue forever in the new Jerusalem, and any effort on our part towards those ends is investing in eternity. Wow, what we do in this world affects eternity!! We are saved forever by grace through faith in Jesus Christ, not because of ANYTHING we do. But once we are reborn by the merits of Jesus Christ and have eternity in our hearts (John 17:3), we are called to give our money, time and talent to those things that will survive death and the transition of this world joining the world to come.

This gives art and creativity ultimate meaning. In the new heaven and new earth, doctors offices will be turned into museums and art galleries and those who thought they had no artistic talent will absolutely marvel at the beautiful things they create when they move a paint brush across a canvas. Grave yards will become exquisite parks and amphitheaters where families who were once separated by death will come with blankets for picnics to hear musicians that make James Galway and Esperanza Spalding sound like amateurs.

For this reason, one of our Core Values at Holy Trinity Anglican Church (San Antonio) is: We are a community of art, beauty, enjoyment and fun because we believe this reflects our Creator. This is deeply rooted in our theology and belief in the second coming of Christ.

I once heard theologian Peter Kreeft describe life beyond life after death – life after heaven – life in the new Jerusalem. He asked us to imagine a baby inside her mothers womb for 9 months who knows only that limited reality. It’s a great life!, he suggested. All her needs are met, it’s warm and she is fed and taken care of. Then, all of a sudden, she is thrust into a whole new reality that is so much bigger and more glorious and colorful and filled with new excitements. Dr. Kreeft said, “This is how it will be when we experience the ultimate reality that God has prepared for us.” Our lives know such limited reality here and now; then we will know reality as God created it to be in all its beauty and glory. Maybe that’s why St. Paul said, “Whatever is true, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things” (Philippians 4:8).

Today’s guest blogger is The Rev’d Miguel Uchoa. Miguel is the Rector of Church of the Holy Spirit in Recife, Brazil (the largest Anglican parish in South America). Miguel has spoken regularly at New Wineskins Missions Conference here in the US as well as conferences and churches throughout the world.

DYSFUNCTIONAL MARRIAGES GENERATE DYSFUNCTIONAL FAMILIES

Dysfunction: That introduces anomaly
Anomaly: Deviation of a normal pattern sharp; inequality, irregularity, abnormality

There is no doubt that the title of this article reflects a reality. However, how could we characterize a dysfunctional marriage? As the dictionary states, dysfunction in the marriage that introduces a deviation from normality. Living in the 21st century in the bubbliness of post modernity someone could say “nothing is normal or abnormal, rather, it depends only on the angle that each one observes” this is called relativism and is part of our day to day reality.

The question however must be perceived from the perspective of who enquires. In the Christian perspective there are values that are unchallengeable. For Christians, relativism is a noun without utility. God, the God of the Christians does not admit relativism, the God of Christians does not have an identity crisis, he is absolute, it is “I am.” Jesus Christ was not relativistic when said “I am the way the truth and the life, no one comes to the Father except through me. ..” (John 14.6). For the Christian God Yes is Yes and No is No.

Within the spectrum of normality Christian and the Biblical Standard, marriage has a purpose set. “Grow and multiply.” Multiply moral values, multiply character, multiply order etc. this is normality in the Christian perspective. Two people who meet, fall in love, get together and develop a feeling that leads to the conclusion that it is sung by Solomon in the Bible “I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine” (Song of Solomon 6.3).

Functional marriage happens when two people (a man and woman) who are sure of their love for each other, despite them and all their imperfections.
Functional Marriages understands the role of each part, understands the desire of each one and what is her or his demands as a indisputable proof that it involves also sacrifice.
Functional marriages understands love and bring each part to understand the other one from their perspective.
Functional marriages include husband and wife who become father and mother, and multiply in love and an example to their children.
Functional marriages show in spontaneity the love and respect as basic values and priceless throughout the understanding of a couple.
Functional marriages works within normality and this is love and dedication.
Functional marriages follow the decision made one day: promises of love and care until death separates us and this will be in wealth or poverty, in health or sickness, for better for worse… in other words, functional marriages say so: “I am with you through any circumstance”.
Functional marriages generate functional children who understand these values as part of the purpose of existence and those attitudes honors God.
Functional marriages can only be between a man and a woman. On the contrary it cannot be called marriage or even functional, because the function given by God Himself in the beginning “grow and multiply” cannot be achieved. However if this does not occur the marriage will be dysfunctional and as such, there is no possibility to generate functional families.
Functional families receive and multiply from the parents values and attitudes that generate life and respect, promote love and dedication. They accept everything, love everything and are founded on attitudes of zeal, care, respect and above all sacrificial love.

Remove from marriage those values that motivate their normality, that shifts the focus to yourself, and we will return to the beginning of this article when I said “dysfunctional marriages generate dysfunctional families.” So, work on your marriage and bring it into normality making it functional that then makes it possible to generate functional families.

Today’s guest bloger is The Rev’d Jed Roseberry. Jed is the Rector of Restoration Anglican Church in Addison, TX.

LOVE IN UNCOMFORTABLE TIMES

When you turn on the news these days, it seems that there is constant turmoil and tension between individuals, between families, denominations, and even between countries. With the death of Osama Bin Laden I really started to ask myself the question, “How do I truly feel about my enemies?”

I don’t know if I really truly have personally had an “enemy.” Sure, I’ve had people who have been critical of me and have questioned my actions and motives. I’ve had people be mean and wrongly judge me, but I don’t know if I have really had an enemy (at least not since third grade when Billy Farces wanted to beat me up on the playground for scoring the winning run in dodge ball).

Jesus told us in his Sermon on the Mount, “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.” (Mat. 5:43-45)

Based on how I’ve felt this week and the more I’ve reflected on this passage, I realize how hard this teaching of Jesus is to live out. It goes against my instincts. I don’t know if I am doing it well but the one thing I realize is that we are all guilty and deserve judgment. As Paul writes in Romans 3:10:”None is righteous, no, not one.”

Paul reminds Christians that all governments “are God’s servants, agents of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer.” (Rom. 13:4) Our national response to Osama Bin Laden’s crimes was not unjust but we cannot ignore the commands of scripture that tell individuals, “Do not rejoice when your enemy falls, and let not your heart be glad when he stumbles.” (Pro. 24:17)

We must love our enemies despite what our emotions tell us. Think of David, a man after God’s own heart, who when he heard that Saul, the king who had hunted him and sent him into hiding in the desert for years, and his son Jonathan had died, he mourned for them. “David and his men tore their clothes in sorrow when they heard the news. They mourned and wept and fasted all day for Saul and his son Jonathan, and for the Lord’s army and the nation of Israel, because they had died by the sword that day.” (2 Sam. 1:11-12)

David responded with true sorrow at the death of his enemy because he had prayed for them many times before. Read his own words in Psalm 35: 13-14,
“Yet when they were ill, I put on sackcloth
and humbled myself with fasting.
When my prayers returned to me unanswered,
I went about mourning
as though for my friend or brother.
I bowed my head in grief
as though weeping for my mother.”

David didn’t ignore everything his enemies did to attack him but he decided to submit his emotions and his actions to God in prayer and let him be the ultimate judge.

We all deserve God’s judgment but because I’ve received his grace instead, I realize that the mercy of my Heavenly Father compels me to love my enemies. Use this moment as measure of how you know God’s love. Love in uncomfortable times only comes by humbling ourselves to pray for our enemies because of the incredible grace we have been given.