What does car design have to do with Christian faith? Actually quite a lot! Cars are designed to keep people safe when disaster strikes—and our faith should do the same. But to do so, we need to approach it in a particular way.
There was a time when cars were build with rigid chassis which ran from one end to the other, with the bumper fitted on either end. The logic of this was that, if the car crashed into anything, surely it would make sense to build the car as strong as possible, so that it would protect the passengers from the impact. It turned out that this logic was exactly the wrong way to go about it. With a rigid chassis, all the shock from the impact is transmitted to the whole car, causing serious injuries to the occupants.
It was realised quite early on that this was not the best way to build cars—but it took decades before change came. The idea of the crumple zone was first conceived and patented by an Austro-Hungarian engineer Béla Barényi (the ‘father of modern car safety’) in 1937, but it didn’t find its way into car design until 1959, and only became widespread in the 1970s and 80s. The idea is the opposite of the chassis; instead of having a rigid frame from one end to another, you actually create soft and flexible zones of the car at the front and rear (and possibly even on the sides), and in a crash these collapse, absorbing the energy of the impact. Meanwhile the passengers are kept safe in a rigid cell in the middle of the car; not only is this strong enough to protect them, it is at some distance from the point of impact, so that the energy has been dissipated and the passengers are saved from the shock of the impact.
What has all this got to do with the Christian life and discipleship?
I thought about crumple zones a couple of years ago after reading this honest and moving article written by Laura Turner, John Ortberg’s daughter, as she reflected on why she and her contemporaries who has been raised and nurtured in the Chicago mega-church Willow Creek ended up in such different places.
In high school, my friends and I were inseparable. We grew up in the same church with the same faith. How did we all drift so far apart?
But it is not just here that Turner’s experience was slightly detached from aspects of real life. She describes Willow Creek in these terms:
At Willow Creek, a mile-long driveway wound around a manmade lake where believers got baptized in the summer months, and in the spring it was littered with Canadian geese and their goslings. The parking lots were so big that I learned to drive there, on uninterrupted swaths of flat Midwestern bog.
This is not the experience of your average church in the UK, or even in the States! When we attended one of the first Willow Creek conferences where Bill Hybels was speaking in 1994, he mentioned in passing that he had a 60-foot yacht on Lake Michigan which he sailed with friends on a Saturday. It was true that this was comparatively modest for a megachurch pastor—but it felt a little removed for most of us in Anglican ministry!
Our teaching, in every area of life, needs to be tested from the beginning with the realities of life—and that is why experience in a different cultural context is often key to the growing of mature faith. Will what I have learnt in one context stand up to scrutiny in quite a different context?
2. Focus on the ‘why’ not just on the ‘what’
In the ministry of both Jesus and Paul, there is a consistent emphasis on understanding things, and not just doing what they are told. When Jesus saw the crowds, he ‘had compassion on them—so he taught them’ (Mark 6.34). Jesus did, of course, respond to the crowds in compassion by healing them and feeding them—but his compassion stirred by their lostness also meant that he healed and fed their understanding by teaching them about the kingdom of God.
This emphasis on understanding is also found all through Paul’s writings. Although he begins his first letter to the Corinthians by rejecting certain Greek idea of clever rhetoric and philosophy, he in fact deploys some sophisticated arguments on a range of issues, and wants the Corinthians to fully understand:
Brothers and sisters, stop thinking like children. In regard to evil be infants, but in your understanding be perfect (1 Cor 14.20)
Paul is here using the language of perfection, teleios, that we find in Jesus’ teaching in the Sermon on the Mount: ‘Be perfect, as your Heavenly Father is perfect’. In the opening of his letter to the Philippians, Paul has a similar emphasis on understanding:
And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God. (Phil 1.9–11)
Paul doesn’t just rebuke the Corinthians for their divisions; he explains that it is God who gives the growth, so individual leaders are not that important. He doesn’t just urge sexual purity; he explains why the bodily resurrection might shape our thinking. He doesn’t just tell them to allow all to participate; he roots it in the practice and purpose of the Holy Spirit in giving gifts to the church—and so on. It makes us feel that Paul’s letters are complex and demanding (and I suspect his first readers/hearers felt the same!) but it models a pastoral approach to the development of mature discipleship.
3. Encourage the asking of questions, not the acceptance of formulas
When we were at the conference in 1994, Hybels was teaching about fruitful evangelism, and he shared with us his formula:
Bill Hybels says it boils down to a simple equation so for all you algebra nuts here it is:
HP + CP + CC = MI
It is that simple, so we can all go home now and the church should grow from here. Well maybe we should put this formula to work.
You know what? It isn’t actually that simple! There is plenty of wisdom in this formula, and it has an explanation that is rooted in the teaching of Jesus:
HP simply stand for HIGH POTENCY, it means being a good example. It means letting your light shine brightly throughout your everyday life. It means understanding that those who live in darkness are attracted to light, so you need to be that light, not a flickering candle. Lose your temper and curse in public, you just lost some wattage. Pass judgment on people in town with others, your light is getting dimmer. Get involved in gossip about your neighbors, you become a candle flickering in the wind. We need to be a HIGH POTENCY light for the world.
CP – stands for close proximity. This simply means, being a shining light only at your house is doing nothing for the expansion of the kingdom.
CC – stands for clear communication…
These things are good—but I remember thinking, as I came away from these teaching sessions, ‘This is a formula’. Sometimes formulas, summary sayings, and helpful alliteration are good to enable people to remember things. But formulas are not real life, and they often close down the possibility of asking questions, like ‘Does this really work?’ and ‘What if it goes wrong?’ For many people, it is asking questions of exploration that really enable them to learn.
In a plenary session, I asked Bill Hybels what he did when there was a theological difference that opened up in the church. His reply was ‘We take the question to our theologian, Gilbert Bilezikian, and he tells us the answer’. That sounded like a great way to hold together a theologically homogenous church—but it did not strike me as the most robust way to deal with questions in the long term.
4. Offer a secure ‘cell’ of central belief
Crumple zones in cars only work to protect the passengers if they also contain a strong safety cell as a complement. For some unknown reason, my parents once bought an Austin Allegro, complete with its bizarre square steering wheel. The Allegro was great in terms of its crumple zones—it would collapse quite happily at the slightest impact. Unfortunately it didn’t have an effective safety cell, and was notorious for dropping the engine into the lap of the front passengers in an accident. (I am glad to say we never learnt that from our own experience!)
This, for me, is a model of what ‘progressive’ Christianity is like. There are plenty of crumple zones around—you can ask questions about anything and everything. But where is the safety cell of core Christian belief? Very often it is not there, and that is why you often find people making the journey from traditional faith, to progressive faith, to lack of faith. Something similar happens for those shaped by Fowler’s model of ‘stages of faith’, where greater maturity seems to be associated with a greater ability to ask questions and a reduction of any kind of certainty. Apart from the practical problems with this model, it leads you to expect that the person who modelled the greatest maturity of faith, Jesus, would be someone who was certain of nothing—which hardly accords with his depiction in the gospels.
We build a ‘safety cell’ by inducting ourselves and others into the historic core of the Christian faith, for example by saying (and teaching on) the Creeds. Someone commented on Facebook last week: ‘We recited the creed this week, something we don’t normally do. It had an interesting effect; perhaps we ought to do it more often.’ Perhaps indeed. It seems to me that one of the major structural and strategic weaknesses in all forms of ’emerging church’ is the failure to attach the flexibility of form and context of ‘church’ to the solid safety cell of creedal confession.
5. Model patient enquiry in community.
If we are going to develop a strong safety cell, but develop these ‘crumple zones’ where we can question and challenge, then we are going to need to find a way of sustaining faith in community whilst questions are being resolved—and the bigger the questions, the more patience we are going to need. I have been struck by Paul’s explication of the nature of love, which begins ‘Love it patient’. What does that then mean for our love of God? In an instant world, are we prepared to be patient with God as we seek answers to difficult questions?
A large part of that patience is delivered by a faith community that creates space for questions, and maintains relational fidelity, whilst also offering the safety cell of creedal belief.
However we do it, we need to nurture ourselves and others so that we all grow a faith that can cope with the challenges that life throws at us.
(I originally wrote this some years ago—but it feels as pertinent as ever.)
Buy me a Coffee
so true: ‘We recited the creed this week’ I noticed this going fro charismatic to conservative evangelical church – also echo the need for a new sense of reinforcing the cell through the Holy Spirit – 5 things I think we need to do:
* application – in sermons – more reference to God’s work in the world. Not just what’s there
but what it’s there-for. We should be asking – Lord what are you saying to us right now? And
hearing His answer.
* prayer – for the nation – more focussed prayer for UK institutions/issues (examples). He cares
for all of us and national decisions affect the people He loves. The Government is answerable to
God so we need to advise it well. There is no left or right only up or down!
* history – draw more on our Christian history – how God has amazingly blessed us, and
through Him Britain has been a blessing to others (answering the prayers of generations of
Anglicans). We look to Him doing that again.
* practical theology – more organised, topic-based learning on key Christian themes, a similar
role to catechisms – knowing what you believe. “In understanding be mature” 1 Cor 14:20.
* information – more help on about how to handle the many vexing and divisive issues in our
community, at work, with friends, for our nation, providing thoughtful Christian responses,
initiating conversations. Young people are asking – why we are so silent?
Thanks, Ian – yes, as pertinent as ever. Talking with my contemporaries (I have just entered my 80th year) there seems to be a general feeling that as we get older the questions increase. I would suggest that another response is to be straight with God. Plenty of this in Psalms, Jeremiah and Lamentations, but I find that we are not good at it; we tend to be too nice in our prayers. In NT terms we have Jesus in Gethsemane and on the cross. I also wonder about Paul’s thorn. We cannot know exactly how he expressed himself but I suspect that behind the ‘Three times I pleaded with the Lord’ lie some pretty honest and agonised prayers.
For a more popular take, check out England footballer Michelle Agyemang on Songs of Praise last Sunday. At 24:21 she talks about an injury which will keep her out of the game for 7-12 months and says that the important question is not ‘Why?’, but ‘What is God teaching me?’ – not a complete (or a perfect) theodicy but nevertheless a helpful thought.
This is a very astute and insightful article. Modern evangelical culture has a lot to answer for.
I don’t know how typical Willow Creek is. There was a time when it (and church growth by formula) was flavour of the month. Consumer-centredness is the last thing you would imagine to be obviously Christian, although hospitality is very Christian.
When I was in the Diocese of Bristol (I left there 9 years ago), Willow Creek was very much flavour of the month. Every clergy study was peppered with homely bon mots from Bill Hybels. I presume that doesn’t happen so much since his fall from grace.
But I never understood what insights an American mega church had to offer Anglican parochial ministry. Having said that, I don’t understand what HTB has to offer Anglican parochial ministry either, but we’re all supposed to be in awe of that too.
Any number of local plants in localities that had been either gasping for life or expired? Do they count for anything?
Resource churches that suck the life out of other churches in the area and refuse to share any of their resources with anyone else are hardly a great blessing.
That I don’t understand. Residents are free to attend where they wish, and if the HTB plant has more to offer than others, then good for them?
The focus should be on shrinking churches and why they are shrinking – and also on replicating healthy churches.
Do they really “suck the life out of other churches” or was that life never there to begin with? My church invests heavily in children’s and youth work and this work is generally thriving in a dying diocese. But the work is only possible because (1) there is a clear evangelical faith that undergirds all the teaching; (2) a number of individuals give sacrificially, to the tune of thousands of pounds per . The children’s and youth work is entirely self-funded.
I imagine Dexter is really talking about the demographic death of central Anglicanism. When there are few or no children in a church, it becomes an inward-looking congregation focused on the interests and needs of older and retired people, as well as their musical and liturgical tastes.
Liberal city churches also come to define themselves as centres of leftist politics and sexual identity politics, as well as venues for classical music, if they possess a famous pipe organ or choir. The age profile of these congregations is also to the older side.
But is not the elephant in the room the fact that among all who complain about growth (sic – of all the things to complain about) – sometimes substantial growth – some but few are able to produce growth themselves.
I was told by my former pastor that running a church is something which most of us could have done. He may have been being modest. I, by contrast, rank it as a highly skilled job.
The point I was really trying to make is that the C of E is often very keen to import things from churches which have a different ecclesiology from its own. Why would a church that has always organised itself through the parish system, and which has received a clear sacramental system, seek to import the assumptions of non-denominational evangelicalism? Whether its Willow Creek or HTB, it’s alien to the established practice of the Church of England.
This is the sort of time consuming complexity that unnecessarily arises when people treat transient young contingently denominations as somehow fundamental, forgetting that the said denominations stand or fall in the first place by their conformity to Christ and the NT, a matter in which they can constantly be being renewed.
‘Contingent’ not ‘contingently’.
1Tim 1:19 talks about the possibility of shipwrecking one’s faith if it lacks truth and trust in God as well as having moral integrity.
In my pastoral experience, l have come across numerous examples of Christians to which this is as happened where they have been told what to believe without being giving any understanding as to why. To question the accepted doctrine is to invite reproof and stigmatisation.
When their faith comes up against situations it cannot cope with then they crash and burn.
Thinking of people who have made ‘a shipwreck of their faith’ (or so it seems, only God knows), it may be that people simply haven’t grown in the virtue of prudence, which is the virtue of *applying right decisions (the deliverances of conscience) to our appetites*.
Most of the time the problem isn’t that ‘life is messy and morality is unclear’, it’s that we haven’t actually applied the truth to our concrete decisions.
The safeguarding disasters, for example, which have bedevilled the Church of England are not simply an administrative failure but a failures of prudence in individual situations.
There is also the question of the inadequacy of our confession of sin. The gift of confession is intended to strengthen us to grow in receiving grace from God. Evangelicals – and Anglicans in general – can be fairly formulaic and superficial in this.
Good to read this again, especially as I think of a heartbreak that has befallen a respected Christian woman teacher I have known for years. Also, some indications on Youtube that Willow Creek has had a bit of a rethink of its whole strategy of ‘the seeker sensitive’ service. I was never part of that world – although I appreciate its evangelistic focus – so I can’t comment much on it.
1Tim 1:19 talks about the possibility of shipwrecking one’s faith if it lacks truth and trust in God as well as having moral integrity.
In my pastoral experience, l have come across numerous examples of Christians to which this is as happened where they have been told what to believe without being giving any understanding as to why. To question the accepted doctrine is to invite reproof and stigmatisation.
When their faith comes up against situations it cannot cope with then they crash and burn.
Dunno why this was posted twice?
Cos you posted it twice…!
Ah- that’s probably correct. I was distracted while posting it on phone.
“If Scripture says something twice …” 🙂
Thanks for this. I’m (almost) the same age as Laura Turner, so this is very much my generation’s experience. I grew up in (for the UK) a sizeable evangelical church (2-300 people) in the suburban East Midlands. One of the unspoken effects of that sort of church is much like Laura’s experience it’s large enough to be the bulk of your social world, and along with a simplistic approach to teaching becomes more about creating a bubble rather than equipping you for the world. Some of that bubble mentality was actively encouraged, but whilst it superficially looks great (a socially strong church really connected to each other) it can be shattering when the bubble bursts. And when the teaching is simplistic – xyz is what the Bible says, and we have to be Bible based, so that’s the answer no question – the bubble will get burst at some point. Dealing with sexuality is a high profile bursting of the bubble (e.g. if God doesn’t want me to be gay, and that isn’t part of His plan for me, and He does answer my prayers, why isn’t He answering my prayers about this?), but it’s not the only one. Simply encountering Christians from other traditions can do it, and suddenly finding that there a whole lot of different interpretations – i.e. we don’t just farm it out to the resident theologian – can also do it.
If the focus is on simplistic ethics (e.g. purity culture) with not a lot of catechism or equipping of faith, then that bubble bursting can be devastating. Once the ethics are open to question there’s no sure footing anymore. It’s worrying, but sadly not surprising, that there are churches that don’t think the creeds are a foundational part of their services.
The US churches may be more extreme in their enthusiasm for their embracing of the idea that clergy are self-help gurus and life coaches rather than spiritual directors and priests. But we weren’t/aren’t without problems.
A very interesting topic and many excellent reflective comments.
At this present moment I am totally absorbed in one of the Bible’s
Most fascinating characters ZERUBBABEL.
He was a/the Leader of the feeble Remnant that returned to
Rebuild a Temple and a City and the Restoration of godly worship:
Ably supported by several inspirational Prophets who led him
in God’s ways of thinking.
Zerubbabel – Ezra – Nehemiah came with a group who had lost even their mother tongue;
To a heap of ruins, surrounded by formidable enemies within and without the area.
What were their “crumple zones”? How did they Overcome in this unprecedented situation.? See the influences of the End time prophets associated with them.
They were ordinary Joe’s , [apart from Ezra ] common pew dwellers, not kings , prophets
or priests, one was a cup bearer –do you recall another servant cup bearer?
They were the end-time saints of the Old dispensation and are a model for the end time saints. As Paul recognised 1 COR 10 V11
Do GOOGLE “Zerubbabel” there are many excellent papers to inspire
E.G. @ https://zerubbabel.org/intercessor-article/vol-19-no-3-bible-study-zerubbabel/
or
ttps://www.ucg.org/sermons/who-was-zerubbabel
Shalom.
Zerubbabel came with the first group from Babylon to Jerusalem sometime around 530 BC. Ezra and Nehemiah were much later, sometime around 450 BC.
Zerubbabel was of the line of David, although
The position of cup bearer was actually a significant one. That Artaxerxes was willing to grant what Nehemiah asked I think shows he was highly regarded and not a mere sommelier.
On the broader question
There are many ways that a Church or individual can be torn down
either from without or within.
I have encountered many such folks who are adept at pulling down “their”
Church which in point of fact is the Body of Christ”.
I often wonder why they even remain in “their church” that supplies
their daily bread.
Being a builder is much more arduous and demanding of real sacrifice
than it is for a Demolition Man.
One cannot possibly be in a church that was as desolate and dire
pre the remnant’s return.
What does it require of a builder to prevent it’s people crashing and burning?
I suggest a good place to start might be Jeremiah 6:16, where God tells the people: “Stand by the roads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way is; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls.” We will find Rest for ourselves and for those we serve.
Shalom
I would have thought that the extra component needed is a (frequent) acknowledgment that “ALL have sinned, and come short of the glory of God”. Then we will not be surprised when everyone does.
Regarding the ‘incomplete’ list of crumple zones, I’d offer this addition:
When your Christian certainty suddenly falls apart, go for blind faith and park whatever the presenting issue might be in a mind silo with the door firmly locked. This might be scorned as ‘denial’, or even a lack of integrity when it comes to handling the truth but there is a medical equivalent known as ‘moist wound healing’. Wrapped wounds, deprived of fresh air, can heal 50% faster this way (look it up!). The thing is, we give intellectual credence to the Devil’s attacks but not the credit he deserves for his effectiveness in undermining our faith when we least expect it. It’s a 24/7 operation, of which a significant power is to feign his own non existence.
What that wound wrapping silo means in practice is determining not to think about the issue at all, and simply keeping on with your once nourishing Christian habit of prayer and Bible reading etc no matter how futile it now seems to be. Self deception? Well of course it could be, but what’s the hurry to resolve the problem? The answer to that is easy: the Devil’s follow up attack is to tell you to bin you faith right now before you sort yourself out and fall back under that gullible God stuff all over again. So you might call my crumple zone a combination of blind faith and time.
It certainly worked for me once, quite a long time ago. It was of course God’s grace that brought me through it – no words come close to expressing the wonder of that realisation. The lesson was certainly not to stop asking questions, but to understand that faith and not knowing all the answers are the essence of being a child of God this side of eternity.
In a N.T. Context, and today’s church life The saying “ drink water from your own cistern” not flowing in the street, means to me we should deepen our own private faith and not run with the crowd.
All Christians have all been through a crisis of faith, when we decided that we were sinners who needed a saviour. This is true even of persons brought up in a genuinely Christian home. Can the world really present other crises of faith as profound as that one, or do such experiences merely indicate that one is a nominal Christian?
It made me very sad to read this article. I felt like saying ‘I told you so’, but sad nevertheless. It describes a mentality/culture that I saw, always felt very uncomfortable with and wanted to run a mile from. The idyllic community described is something that I saw from the outside, could have been part of if I had wanted to, but gave me the creeps when I was that age (teenage). The sad aspect is the suicide, which didn’t fall into the framework of what I expected, but the culture described (Willow Creek, the pastor of a mega-church who creamed off a modest income which nevertheless enabled him to possess a 60 foot yacht, etc ….) showed all the signs of ‘SUBTLE POWERFUL DELUSION’ plastered all over it in big letters.
Honestly, I have no idea what a ‘good’ church should look like. I know that C.S. Lewis went to the short-and-sweet 8.00am service at his local church – and when he once went to the 11.00am service (too ill to attend the 8.00am) – same church – the sermon was so bad that it inspired him to write ‘The Screwtape Letters’, a very important and inspired piece of Christian literature from the 20th century.
While I have no idea what the answer is, I’d say that the problems described in the article won’t be answered by simple tweaks such as adding in some ‘crumple zones’ and ‘safety cells’, but a wholesale re-evaluation of church culture and the role it should play in people’s lives (and being prepared to call out obvious signs of ‘powerful delusion’).
You have been kind to Bill Hybels of Willow Creek, as his Wikipedia entry will say more. But consider instead another founder of a megachurch, Francis Chan of Cornerstone in Los Angeles. A man to whom no inappropriateness of lifestyle has been attached, he quit Cornerstone at the height of its success because he had become dissatisfied with the megachurch model, moved to San Francisco and started a network of house churches there. In his book Letters to the Church, he wrote:
Cornerstone was by most standards a pretty loving church. But next to the example of the early church in the New Testament, it just fell flat. Jesus said the world would know us by our love (John 13:35)… we gathered some of our friends into our home and started a church… It has been five years now… peace has come from knowing God more deeply than ever. While I believe I have loved Jesus for years, it feels totally different now. Lately I have become obsessed with knowing and experiencing Him. The strangest part about this season of my life is that my intimacy with God has been directly tied to my connection with the Church. This is really weird for me because for years, I felt closest to God when I was away from people and alone in my prayer room. For the first time in my life, I actually feel closer to God while praying alongside my church family! It’s as if I can sense His actual presence in the room with us. It makes me want to stay in a room with them all because I want to get as close to Jesus as possible…
You’re onto something here, Jock, but you may get little thanks for saying out loud what some of us have been pondering for decades. However it’s important to remember that the trend-setting innovations which can bring problems with them are often being followed by people who want to do their best for their Lord and Saviour and, perhaps because of their own gifts, are able to see the kind of results which far outshine what some traditional adherents are seeing.
My own understanding is that, unlike the Old Testament situation of God’s chosen people (His choice alone to choose them, as long as they continued to obey his commandments), New Covenant Christianity is about the individual person’s choice to receive and follow Jesus as his or her personal saviour. The amazing grace is God’s choice alone to offer, and the decision to receive Him and benefit from it is the individual person’s choice alone. Thereafter the walk of each Christian with God remains a personal walk – a bit like a hike through the mountains where the safe use of your OS map and compass always remains your own personal responsibility irrespective of who you meet on the way.
In church terms we should of course expect it to involve ‘not neglecting to gather’ with other Christians. But the problem with the above mentioned trends can be that they engender social engagement / shallow depth of understanding / dependency / entertainment etc to the extent that these things undermine that essential solitary walk with God rather than help it to grow in faith, purpose, and resilience. If we don’t find immense joy and strengthening from being with God absolutely on our own (Jesus in the hills?), there’s definitely something wrong.
Look at the meetings described in 1 Corinthians 14 and they would be impossible for a non-Christian to operate in, because the Holy Spirit is manifesting in people and is recognised as such. In contrast an atheist can do liturgy.
” In contrast an atheist can do liturgy”
Im not clear what you mean by “do liturgy “. Yes… its possible to recite without involvement or engagement. But are you condemning all liturgy per se devoid of the Spirit in its creation and use by believers?
In contrast have you not come across a false prophet in a fellowship of believers?
Many – though two wrongs do not make a right.
I think it is clear what I meant by “do liturgy” and I stand by the deprecatory tone of the phrase. Yes of course I have come across false prophecies in wilder charismatic churches, and have called them out. The pages “Why not services” and “The Holy Spirit and His Gifts” at
https://church14-26.org
have more to say about these things.
Don – when you write a comment, I often find that I have much in common with you in terms of perspective on Christian faith. I quite agree with you – faith is personal; I have to acknowledge that I personally am a sinner; the onus is on *me* to ask, seek and knock – and then Christ opens the door (after which I see that He was leading me all the way – to acknowledge my sinnerhood, to ask, seek and knock) – and then the onus is on *me* to walk the walk. Philippians 2:12,13 – I work out my faith in fear and trembling; when I do this, it is God working within me – and you can’t actually separate the two things into God’s part and my part (described beautifully by CS Lewis in Mere Christianity).
I’m going to ask you a personal question – which you don’t have to answer: are you, by any chance, aspergers? I suspect that I probably am – my suspicions were aroused when they diagnosed my son as such – and the reasons they gave sounded alarmingly like a description of myself. One of the issues with my son: he has great difficulties with loud noises, especially if there is a persistent beat.
This would go some way to explaining why the ‘idyllic’ set up that Laura Turner describes in her article (where they all went for a nice picnic together where somebody turned on a boombox – which seems to have met the approval of all concerned) (Steve and Laurie rollerbladed toward the planetarium, yelling after each other, and someone pulled out a boombox.) Very neighbourly towards other people passing who might not actually like loudly amplified music rammed into their ears!
I saw ‘Christian’ groups on the happy-clappy / charismatic end of the spectrum where they did go in for the hysterical wonderful time that Laura Turner is describing and it was as if they were saying ‘oh we can get just as high as the secular people do on alcohol and drugs, but we don’t need the alcohol and drugs, because we’ve got the holy spirit!’
What is probably much worse about the ‘culture’ she describes is that they seemed to be sex-obsessed, talking about it all the time – and I thought that Christians (teenage or not) didn’t actually talk about that – their minds were supposed to be on higher things. ‘Our youth group spoke often and regularly about sex, and in a very frank way’ actually sounds like pornography to me.
I find it somewhat worrying.
Jock, yes we do share a similar outlook on Christian things. In answer to your question, no I’m not aspergers. But I’m well aware of being towards the introvert end of the introversion-extroversion spectrum – always have been, and so was labelled as ‘shy’ by my more extrovert family. Unfortunately extreme extroversion, to the point of being terminally shallow and a complete wreck when you’re left on your own, seems to be seen as essential to living the good life in today’s Western societies. So none of the things you mention should be a surprise.
I think the impact firstly of television, and now the ubiquitous ‘smartphone’ has been a significant entry point for much of the societal change that we’ve seen. There’s plenty of evidence that constant living through a screen must eventually separate people from reality, change how cognition functions, and actually ‘rewire’ the brain to some degree. I did see somewhere that IQ levels in the most developed countries are actually drifting down rather than increasing as might once have been the case. It all makes people easy prey both to centrally controlled narratives and the steady loss of their individual liberty while being unaware of it happening. But that’s a rabbit hole for another time!
In such a context it’s more than disheartening that so many Christians have unthinkingly embraced social and technological trends which demand that doctrine and behaviour adjust to illusion and psychological manipulation through crowd dynamics rather than hold fast to truth and the timeless commands of the Lord God. Being a Christian is tough in its denial of any possibility that you can outsource your faith to your church or your circle of Christian friends. The measure of what those resources have given you is how you fare when you’re on you’re own – when it’s just you and God.
One way to judge these things is to assess honestly what affect God’s people are having on the nation as a whole. In my honest judgement (regarding the UK) things are dire in every sense, the proportion of Christians has markedly declined; nominal Christianity (in terms of values and assumptions about what is normal) has similarly declined; the Christian witness generally is scarcely noticeable in the public square (though not totally absent) and regularly disputing amongst itself. Politically, socially, and economically, our decline is massive. We face the kind of future none of us would have considered a decade or so ago.
However ‘despair’ should never be in the Christian’s lexicon! Take heart, Jock; we’re fortunate beyond measure, and beyond anything we could deserve, for being born again into God’s family. He is sovereign, and we belong to him. And we simply must make certain that what we do in his name, and the way we do it, is truly what he expects of us.
A crisis of faith, the “dark night of the soul” an existential crisis,[secular] are all common human phenomena.
Alas, they are all too prevalent in our Cross- less churches.
The alarming epidemic of mental ill health in society evinces this
Malady, this dis-ease.
How is the church through its teachings or lack of, able to address it?
God often allows devastating crisis to try our faith [Job] in order to reveal Himself as Sovereign. Job to his credit proclaimed
Yeh,though he slay me yet will I trust in Him
The trial of our faith [ of what sort it is] is precious [Peter]
For some an ill-judged remark from someone will cause one to
give up on the Church, faith in the Church is a very precarious faith.
In the S of Songs, the maid invites the North wind to blow on
Her garden because only it’s fragrance of herbs and spices will flow forth to Her beloved’s delight.
One could pile up so many aspects of this issue.
Pastorally there is an excellent paper on how one might minister
In these situations. Jude instructs us to “have mercy on those who doubt” (Jude 22). [or have been deluded] providing merciful shelter for a Christian in the tumultuous throes of a faith crisis @
desiringgod.org/articles/what-does-a-faith-crisis-feel-like
It might, as a preventative cordial, be wise to preach Cross – Centered sound doctrine,
“In the world you will have tribulation but fear not I have Overcome
the World.
The “tea and sympathy” approach along with a sanitized teaching program will not cut it.
Shalom
“Weep With Those Who Weep ; Bare ye one another’s burden; Obtain Mercy and Grace in time of need.
The motif of Lamentation runs through the entirety of Scripture
In all aspects of this vale of tears, anxieties, fears and doubts.
Desiring God.org has a great series on these e.g.
Faith Is Forged in Crisis; Spiritual Depression in the Psalms
You Cannot Handle Your Pain [Looking for God in Lament]
Dare to Hope in God; How to Lament Well: Etc.
Christ came to set the prisoner free
IS.42:7 To open the blind eyes, to bring out the prisoners from the prison, and them that sit in darkness out of the prison house.
Thanks Ian. Great article. Your 3 and 5 are pretty much the same. I’ve read the comments with interest too. Much food for thought here. I’m increasingly fascinated by the church models in places of severe persecution, eg Iran and China. These models are probably not too dissimilar to church as it developed in Acts…faith often formed in the crucible
Christopher….( no nest link)
“Many – though two wrongs do not make a right.”
Absolutely…. my real issue is that Anthony doesn’t seem to have a grasp on what “liturgy” is or should be, apart from notions of mere “recitation “or items on a menu.
And recitation from the heart and mind can sustain the Christian in hard times…. as even the use of psalms shows….
I know exactly what liturgy is. I repudiate it. There is not even liturgy in the Old Testament for sacrifice of animals in the Temple, for which the priests are told exectly what to *do*.
No liturgy is prescribed in the New Testament; why do you think that is?
Reading out a declaration of love or a formulaic apology from a book, or learnt by rote, would not impress your spouse, so why would it impress God?
Liturgy is evidenced in Old and New Testaments…. was that evil? The recitation of a Psalm is liturgy…. there is a creed in the Old Testament… etc What do you think Jesus did taking part in Synagogue worship… was he silent at the Last Supper/Passover, not using the traditional formulae… did he not use a Psalm on the cross? Philippians … Revelation….
“Holy, Holy, Holy , is the Lord God Almighty… ” Using Biblical truths is the heart of good liturgy … as well as its framework…. if not the whole of it. Maybe you don’t believe in recitation of scripture?
It’s got absolutely nothing to do with “impressing God ” even among those heavy users of liturgucal words I’ve never knew across one who believes that. That’s merely insulting to other Christians.
Perhaps “your spouse” (if you have one obviously!) might be moved by a well crafted love poem which you didn’t write but have made your heart’s own to share. Perhaps someone was Spirit gifted to write it!
“I know exactly what liturgy is”. I repudiate that claim using your own reply!
Ps Be careful not to say the “Lord’s Prayer”… unless you wrote it yourself…
The Lord’s prayer is actually for private use about the body rather than for corporate use: see Matthew 6:6.
You are widening the meaning of ‘liturgy’ in order to argue against my points, but I (obviously!) only meant within a service. Christ hanging on the Cross is hardly a service.
The early Christians were put out of the synagogue for confessing Jesus Christ as Messiah, which is why they had to meet in homes. Too many at such a meeting and it is impossible for all of them to partake via their own gift of the Holy Spirit.
The Lord’s Prayer is liturgical. Jesus took a well known Jewish liturgical prayer, the Hebrew Qaddish, still in use today, and gave it a make-over, which was subsequently used liturgically by the Early Christian Church, as in most Christian denominations today.
Yes, the Jews had liturgy (although significantly no sequence of words specifically commanded in the Old Testament). But that was before Pentecost. In 1 Corinthians 14, from verse 26, we learn that meetings involve all-member participation according to their gift of the Holy Spirit. That this has not happened since perhaps the end of the second century, and certainly since Christianity went institutional in the fourth century, should not be relevant to genuine prioritisers of scripture over tradition.
Liturgy will appear increasingly as initially charismatic institutions institutionalise and solidify – in some cases but not all, ossify.
Since this is an inevitable process, it should attract no praise.
What certainly should attract praise is the refinement, crystallisation and purification of wording and thought. The thing is that it reaches such an extent that its superiority to the ad lib becomes all too apparent. Not (or not necessarily) in terms of intimacy, however.
Doing certain actions to please God is to a degree questionable at the best of times – but the idea that in-house rituals that are not in the real world will be especially pleasing seems especially questionable.
A best of both worlds is to own the truth of spoken and sung words from within, and from that basis to speak/sing them out with heart and soul, even if they are prepackaged. The prepackaging can be refinement, which is a good thing.
I don’t think you do know what liturgy is, if you think the point is to impress God.
The site that Anthony mentioned is quite interesting, especially
as one explores embedded articles, much that can be commended.
Over the years I have encountered many such gatherings;
Very dear friends have decamped to them, some with regrettable consequences. Some to apostle domination, some to a kind of
Mystic type self- absorbed holiness. Some almost to a private
Monastic cell.
So I do have some caveats.
Jesus and the early churches began with and in the
Visible House of God until such times as they were prevented
Aka Wesley et al . who then resorted to the open-air preaching. Through which the Gospel spread like wildfire throughout the entire world. There was a visible presence of the Ecclesia where the dispossessed, marginalized, unheard wanderers might find a place
of rest and peace; such was the meaning of The Temple ;
“Here will I rest said God” and where the people might find Rest.
The Temple and ecclesia were a visible presence in the world.
True there have been many declensions that reduced the Temple
to burned rubble even. Even Paul experienced this declension beginning before he died, and John hearing Jesus speaking of declensions in the churches
Throughout the life time of the Jewish and Church history
there has been a holy seed, a remnant, patiently waiting and travailing aka Simeon and Anna within that Temple which had “ a zeal for God but not according to Knowledge”, as Paul opined.
Amongst the ecclesia there was a waiting people with a certain hope that Christ will come and “restore all things” “the consolation of His people “ -that the mountain of God {His resting place – This Mountain” would be eventually The visible centre of world -wide Worship of God, but not before His enemies have been made His footstool. He that has this hope within himself purifieth himself even as he is pure.
One may deplore priestly dress or delinquent priesthoods or less than “perfect” praxes but we need to remember
EPH3:9 ….to make all men see what is the fellowship of the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ:
3:10 To the intent that now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places might be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God,
3:11 According to the eternal purpose which he purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord: nothing hidden.
Frank Viola, who is the great writer on housechurches, warns of things that can go wrong in his two books, “Reimagining Church” and “Finding Organic Church”. We should not be surprised or dismayed, because the New Testament church was housechurch, and Paul and others wrote plenty of letters about their problems.
It does seem to me in reading Revelation’s Church “school reports” that Christ is well aware of the short comings in churches that they needed to deal with at pace.
It would seem that the ideal situation to aspire too would be that of an Overcomer, of which there are many representative people throughout Scripture, of whom, overcomer – in – chief is our Lord Jesus Christ, like Him, Overcomer s are to become amazing beneficiaries of Gods favour.
Does not the whole emphasis have an erroneous, starting, continuing and end point: me, myself, I, or we, us, them?
Our church has has a short season in the Psalms, and suffering, opposition.
Two books that are relevant are: How Long O Lord, by DA Carson, and Walking with God Through Pain and Suffering, by Timothy Keller.
A Christian life is far from plain sailing, hunky dory glory, far from the American Constitutional Dream.
It is also far from exhortstions to try harder, you are not measuring up; far from all pervasive performance and perfectionism.
There is also a theological depth and spread, that is sometimes missing or thin, a depth that is at once profound yet simple in the Good News of God in Trinity, that is not only intellectually stimulating and satisfying, but necessarily, experimental, experiential in knowing God. And it is this knowing God that seems to be the bedrock not only of personal devotion, but church life in worship in all its all its outflowing doings.
O/T here, but I see The Daily Telegraph has a piece on falling Anglican clergy numbers.
I haven’t read this because it’s behind a paywall.
But this is a theme Ian has flagged up in the past, so maybe a worthy subject for a column here?
Ian has long warned that the crunch was coming for the C of E ministry and now the secular press has picked this up.
I see also there are complaints that the Diocese of Sydney has ‘too much influence on the Australian Anglican Church in its General Synod.
Which is odd, because Sydney has about 42% of Australia’s Anglican churchgoers but sends only 30% of delegates to GS.
A bit like the way they complain about the Bishops in the Lords but never about the vast skewed overrepresentation of lawyers and metropolitans.
The Telegraph piece is a summary of the “Save the Parish” organisation’s new manifesto which you can download at
https://www.savetheparish.com
The Church of England still has more priests being ordained than the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales. Plus retired and self supporting priests, there is still about one stipendiary priest per benefices. The Roman Catholic Church in Britain is importing priests from Africa and the Philippines to fill the gaps
Not that surprising, since only unmarried males can be Catholic priests. Rome could greatly relieve its problem somewhat by allowing married men to be ordained, but no sign of this yet.
There is something of a war going on in British Catholicism betwen Vatican II diehards and younger traditionalists, especially those keen on the Latin mass.
This is why easily the ablest of converts, Gavin Ashenden, has been refused ordination, while others like Michael Nazir-Ali have been ordained.
(Full disclosure: I knew Nazir-Ali when he was Chair of the Council of Trinity College Bristol!)
Meanwhile, Anglican ordinands are now majority female, usually older, and as far as I can tell, Westcott House has become basically a female college.
So the developing profile of new Anglican clergy is of liberal middle aged and older women headed for non-stipendiary posts. While nationally the Church of England continues to fall in numbers. Not a recipe for revival.
Did Gavin Ashenden actually apply to be ordained in the Roman Catholic church? Or was he simply told thst he would be rejected if he did? As I recall, he felt that he wouldn’t be able to comment so critically on Catholic matters if he were ordained.
He *did* comment on why he didn’t move to Eastern Orthodoxy, which many people thought would be a natural move for him. And it was easy to see why he quite the CofE. But he has never commented on why he didn’t consider going downchurch to the Frees.
Whether he asked and was turned down, or was -pre-empted, I am pretty sure he wanted to be ordained but got blocked by the hierarchy. And understandably – he is much better known than any of them and much more articulate, but not a ‘company man’. He would show up the Catholic bishops for the sorry second rate lot they are. I don’t think any other Catholic in England has the following Ashenden has.
He has of course wandered all over the ecclesiastical landscape, having been ordained as conservative evangelical, become a liberal, then conservative again, secretly made a bishop by a splinter group in America, then swimming the Tiber.
As for the Free Church of England, I think that is barely alive now and it wasn’t helped by the interfering prelatry of the northern bishop who finally retired not so long ago.
I meant nonconformism. I am interested enough in Ashemden (whom I have cordially met) to wonder why he never contemplated that alternative. I also wonder the same about Michael Nazir-Ali (whom I met for about 10 seconds at an anti-abortion rally outside the Houses of Parliament).
Anthony,
Fascinating as Orthodoxy is, I think it would be hard to be involved in it without getting caught up in eastern European politics. As well as the nutty borderlands of Neo-Platonism.
Ashenden trained at Oak Hill College. In his latest youtube piece, a conversation with a Catholic philosopher in Liverpool, he has some ungenerous things to say about evangelicalism, but, mirabile dictu, Oak Hill did have a link with a Greek Orthodox monastery and he recalls a time he did a placement there while a student at Oak Hill.
I never understood why Nazir-Ali swam the Tiber as he had always seemed to me to be an Open Evangelical, i.e., pro-women’s ordination.
I did think he was pretty patrician and hierarchically minded, which I put down to his Pakistani caste background. He may have been a Roman Catholic convert in his youth, so perhaps he was just closing that circle.
Ashenden hasn’t (to my knowledge) commented directly, but his explanation for why he converted to Roman Catholicism plainly rules out the non-conformist option. He believes that real Christians have to be in communion with one of the Apostolic patriarchates (Rome, Alexandria, Constantinople etc.), which is the only way to be sure of sitting in apostolic and shared sacramental tradition. Anything short of that is at best sub-Christian. Hence, Anglicans (despite the form of bishops, eucharist, talking about real presence etc.) are sub-Christian in Ashenden’s book because we’re not in communion with an Apostolic patriarchate, and our sacramental understanding (and hence understanding of Chris) is deficient because of what the 39 Articles say to reject transubstantiation. And if that’s his view of Anglicans, one can only imagine how distant a free evangelical church would be regarded.
Nazir-Ali’s explanation for conversion centred on being frustrated by the lack of discipline and authority in Anglicanism (no-one’s in charge, the Abp of Canterbury can’t block things in Synod, any agreements they got between Anglicans and Catholics would be undermined by one part of the Anglican communion etc.), and the arrival of the Ordinariate meant that you could be Catholic without abandoning what he really valued in Anglicanism (liturgy, approach to moral theology, critical approach to the Bible, and community-centred ministry).
He was a member of the Anglican-Catholic Intl Commission trying to restore full communion, which perhaps why he was able to be ordained as a Catholic so quickly. On women’s ordination he has changed his mind. When you listen to him it was women bishops that was the catalyst, because Rome was so adamant it broke the agreement on ministry, and undermined any claim to apostolic succession. Now he argues that the problem with women’s ordination is that it brings women into a male pattern of ministry, and we should instead ask the more radical question: to what ministries is God calling women and men?
Rome does allow some married Anglican convert priests to become Roman Catholic priests but only with special Vatican dispensation.
Plenty of ordained Anglican female priests are now working in stipendiary posts in Parishes and helping ensure each benefice has one stipendiary priest. If anything retired priests who help out from time to time, especially in rural parishes where many have retired to, are more likely to be male (not least as some will have been ordained before Synod voted to allow women priests in 1992). Self supporting priests in the C of E are even more likely to be women
“Now he argues that the problem with women’s ordination is that it brings women into a male pattern of ministry, and we should instead ask the more radical question: to what ministries is God calling women and men?”
– which is pretty much the complementarian argument, that God intends different things for men and women, and the reverse of the egalitarian argument.
Nazir-Ali has definitely changed his views – as he would have to.
Car crash. Poor dear Laurie.
For many years I was involved with a mission support agency, offering pastoral care and support to folk in missions; facing burnout, mental, emotional, spiritual collapse. Their sending agencies should have been doing this but were not. Obsessed with preaching the gospel but unable or unwilling to care for their own staff.
I could tell personal stories of Christian workers who were so badly treated by other believers they lost their faith, even converted to Islam, or ended up in a breakdown. These things should never have happened in a caring community, but they did. I wonder where Matt 25 comes in, those who say Lord Lord but do not care for the least of my little ones.
Don’t get me started on those who are obsessed with preaching the gospel but don’t seem to know how to put it into practice. Or the nonsense that all Christians are evangelists, which very nearly cost me my faith and my sanity. Or that Jesus said we are to go into all the world and preach the gospel. Actually He didn’t. Not quite.
Rather, according to Matthew we are to make disciples, which mainly about creating loving friendships and pastoral support. John’s take on the same commission is also pastoral care, feed my lambs. Because if you get that right, building believers up into their God-given calling, then evangelism will happen anyway, as those who are called to be evangelists find their calling. And those who are not, move into the variety of mission support roles God has for them.
Friendship, support, pastoral care; that is what making disciples is about. That is my view anyway, based on over 70 years of following Christ, observation, reflection, and various roles in mission.
Frank – I think you’ve given the missing piece of this awful jigsaw. A young couple, as yet unmarried (but clearly heading in that direction) took a ‘year out’ between school and university, going on the mission field – and during this year (doing missionary work), they split up. This must have been traumatic (since Christians don’t do the secular ‘way of the world’ treating marriage like a secretary problem working through large numbers of boyfriends/girlfriends until they hit on the right one; they were Christians and therefore presumably serious when they entered their relationship). How did this happen? Well, you have described the stresses and strains of the mission field – and the total lack of pastoral support.
There does seem to have been something hopelessly naive about their ‘faith’. I remember a minister, during the course of a sermon on Romans 8 where he pointed out that there was a lot of groaning going on (in the glorious chapter all about no condemnation and about being set free in Him), he said that the line of the hymn, ‘and now I am happy all the day’, ‘is a load of codswallop!’ Actually, while he’s right about that line, it’s a very good hymn, but the chorus was added on later by some theologically illiterate clown – he was right about that.
Reading between the lines, it does seem to have been ‘Salvation by works’, the ‘works’ being to obey all the rules concerning one favourite subject (the do’s and don’ts of boy meet girl – no quarter for those who fell short). Some nasty little ‘staffer’ (I don’t know what that word means -presumably someone in the paid employment of the church, but not quite at the grade of a pastor) singing horrid revolting songs – and, instead of getting sacked, being approved of.
None of this really conducive to building up faith and trust in Christ; none of it conducive to a realistic understanding (i.e. one which includes the mighty groans of Romans 8, etc …) – that ‘obeying all the rules’ is actually ultimately a gift, but the stress of the mission field and total lack of pastoral support for those on the mission field might have played a decisive role here.
A good friend of mine, Dr Nigel Scotland, a professional historian, has just written a new book on the history of the Early Church. Now I have several books on the Early Church, but what struck me is that Nigel keeps making the point that at different stages of the church’s development in the first five centuries, it was not preaching the gospel which drew an unbelieving world to Christ, but the way believers lived their lives. The counter cultural outworking of Christ’s commandments.
A specific case was when Rome was decimated by plague and crowds were streaming out of the city to avoid it, Christians were headed the other way to care for the sick at the possible/probable cost of their own lives. That according to Nigel was what made the impact.
Of course preaching is important, the message has to be verbalised to be identified, but we see the same balance in Christ’s own ministry. When he identifies his ministry in terms of the outworking of the Isaianic Messianic task in Luke 7 (answering John’s question ‘Are You the Messiah?’), he relates various things which are happening before adding “and the poor have the gospel preached to them”. In other words even Christ’s own preaching only sat within the visible context of the outworking of the message.
Someone said to me once that your average unbeliever may not read their Bible but they do read their Christian..
I have a book by Francis MacNutt, who resigned the ordained Catholic priesthood and married, called “The nearly perfect crime” and subtitled “How the church almost killed the ministry of healing”, in which he claims that the early church made its impact mainly by miraculously healing the sick and by casting out evil spirits; but these ministries subsequently dwindled. Because many bookshops miscategorised it in crime thrillers, the 2nd edition was retitled “The healing reawakening: reclaiming our lost inheritance”.
Frank – well I’m sure that those of us who have the blessed assurance, the certainty of the Heavenly kingdom through His atoning work at Calvary, really are doing what we can to walk the walk and live our lives in a way that is commensurate.
I’d say, though, that we come to Christ despite all that contradicts it – and usually what contradicts it is what we see in the lives of others – particularly Christians. I could give many examples of this from personal experience – and very few indeed where I might have been influenced in a positive way by the way they lived their lives.
There is also a lot of backing in the Old Testament for this – for example, Esau comes across as a much more likeable and congenial person than Jacob (Scripture quite rightly describes him as a worm of a man). In fact, the patriarchs all seem to be a bunch of rotters – every single one of them. We are told that Samson is a hero of faith (his life is hardly exemplary).
There may have been something going on in the early church, the Holy Spirit may have been moving in extraordinary ways, but that doesn’t seem to me to be happening today (where the lives of church-going Christians often seem to be no different from their secular counterparts – except, perhaps, for a layer of sanctimony and ability to believe in their moral superiority).