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April 29, 2012
Catholic Renewal: Carol and I recently participated in the 15th International Conference of the Catholic Charismatic Movement, near Assisi, Italy. (Assisi is the birthplace of Francis of Assisi, founder of the Franciscan Order, also widely known for his prayer and love of nature.) It's theme was "United in Christ for a New Evangelization." The unity referred to is that between Catholics, Evangelicals and Orthodox committed to world evangelization. Much positive change in the Catholic Church has emerged from Vatican II in recent years
My greatest surprise was the affirmation of these Catholic brothers and sisters of their unity with evangelicals outside of the Catholic church. Prof. Matteo Calisi, president of www.catholicfraternity.net, explicitly stated the Catholic Church no longer expects Christians outside of the Catholic Church to become members of it for unity to exist. He affirmed also the contribution of the Reformation to the Catholic Church in several vital areas including the authority of scripture, justification by faith and the priesthood of all believers. Rather than seek structural re-union, he asked all Christians to work together for the evangelization of the world. Most importantly, this is not the random view of an individual Catholic, but the leader of a major renewal movement will the full support of Vatican leadership.
In addition, I appreciated the central focus on salvation through faith in Christ alone; the very evident respect for authority of scripture among these charismatic believers; their vital joy, practical love, and desire to live out biblical theology with constant reference to the biblical themes of personal and communal holiness, spiritual gifts (charisms), local mission, life as citizens of heaven with incarnational expressions through social service etc.
Evangelicals may well continue to point out areas of further renewal needed in the Catholic Church and be correct. Carol and I also met leaders in the Orthodox Church with the same desire. However the evangelical church must seek constantly its own renewal also and be willing to learn from the renewal taking place in other traditions.
One area of learning from current renewal in the Catholic Church I believe evangelicals can benefit from is living in community to focus energies on worship and mission. These communities are frequently residential but always covenantal, self-supporting and focused on a primary mission focus (e.g. reconciliation, the poor, street children, evangelism etc). They often have branches in other cities and countries and often on every continent. They are composed in largely of lay people;: couples, children and adult singles, with the blessing a church leader. The mission of many communities are supported by the tithes of its members.
Evangelicals have in recent years been challenged by Shane Clayburn to live in missional community but have been relatively slow to accept. One expression of the model resulting in slow reproduction has been its requirement, unlike Catholic lay communities, of outside funding. Other models in my lifetime have been the "Jesus People" communities of the 1960s and 1970s. I'm sure there are others but yet comparatively few.
March 20, 2012
Miraculous Movements: You may be aware that many Muslims are turning to Christ for many
different reasons.
The story is a remarkable one and part of it is well told by a friend in a partner ministry serving in Muslim nations in Africa. It includes dreams and visions, courageous obedience, persecution and details of a simple inductive bible study method focused on obeying what we learn and sharing it with others, particularly learning to discern the "person of peace" Jesus spoke of in Matthew 10 and Luke 10. Jerry Trousdale has written a clear and helpful account illustrated by many stories based on first-hand interviews. It is subtitled: "How Hundreds of Thousands of Muslims Are Falling in Love with Jesus." http://miraculousmovements.com
Please continue to pray for Muslims near you. This book will help you learn what to expect and how the Lord may well use you to bring His grace to them.
March 9, 2012
The Glory of God: is wonderfully displayed both in nature and in grace. The following is time-lapse photography which calls me to worship in the spirit of Psalm 8!
The Life of flowers (Жизнь цветов) from VOROBYOFF PRODUCTION on Vimeo.
Then to the macro!
(If no longer on YouTube, click here.)
February 27, 2012
The Gospel and "Religion": Dick Hillis, the founder of the mission of which I'm a part (OC), once commented helpfully on the question of whether Christianity is a "religion":
"The dictionary classifies Christianity as a religion, but we must remember it's far more than that. Some schools teach a course called "Comparative Religions" and include Christianity among the many religions studied. This raises the question: can one compare the Gospel with religion or do we find more truth in contrasting the two? My missionary friend, Dr. John T. Seamands, gives some powerful contrasts in his book, "The Supreme Task of the Church":
- Religion is man-made; the Gospel is God-given.
- Religion is what man does for God; the Gospel is what God has done for man.
- Religion is man's search for God; the Gospel is God's search for man.
- Religion is good views; the Gospel is Good News.
- Religion is good advice; the Gospel is a glorious announcement.
- Religion takes man and leaves him as he is; the Gospel takes a man as he is and makes him what he ought to be.
- Religion ends in an outer reformation; the Gospel ends in an inner transformation.
- Religion whitewashes; the Gospel washes white.
- Religion places the prime emphasis upon doing; the Gospel places the emphasis on a Person.
· You can take Buddha out of Buddhism and Buddhism still remains with its four noble truths and its eight-fold path.
· You can take Mohammed out of Islam and Islam is still intact with its five pillars of action and its six articles of belief.
· But if you take Christ out of the Gospel there is nothing left, for the Gospel is Christ.
February 14, 2012
Statism: One would think it a truism that the state exists for the good of it's people. Unfortunately it's not so. Dictatorships for the good of the dictator abound (the head of the Palestine Liberation Organization died with over a billion dollars of foreign aid in Swiss bank accounts). Worse, states which harm their people, not only by neglect but by direct abuse, are many in history and today (cf. January 27, 2012 post). Unfortunately even nations where people are allowed to vote routinely overrule what the majority of their citizens see as best (e.g. California courts overturning a referendum asking homosexual unions not be viewed as marriage) and Obama's recent decision to force Roman Catholic institutions to pay for contraception contrary to their ethical code or earlier Canadian authorities forcing a Salvation Army hospital to kill unborn children resulting in the Salvation Army's decision to 'give' the hospital to the state and walk away in grief.
What an immeasurably great contrast is the Kingdom of God prefigured by Solomon's prayer in Psalm 72 that his rule be characterized by righteousness (v.1-4), peace (v.5-7), power (v.8-11), compassion (v.12-15) and prosperity (v.16-17) for the people revealing the glory of God to all the earth (v.18-20). While David and Solomon sought and made progress towards these goals, Solomon's prayer anticipates the coming of Jesus, the Son of David who proclaimed the Kingdom of God and called those who acknowledge him as Lord to disciple the nations. This call includes the "kings" of the nations, whereby we seek authentic relationship with members of school and town councils, state and provincial legislators and even prime ministers and presidents - beginning with prayer - introducing them to the Kingdom of God and inviting each to faithfully pursue their stewardship under God's reign in their care of the people he loves.
Where do we begin? As with all things in God's Kingdom, with ourselves, seeking the Lord for His righteousness, peace, power, compassion and prosperity in our own lives as a reflection of His character. We then seek also to contribute to modelling these blessings in the Christian community. And as able we will encourage earthly rulers to pursue these blessings of God in their stewardship of caring for God's people.
Idealistic? Yes. But far better than the alternative of statism.
Who is the person God brings to your heart? It may be a "king" in your own city or nation or half way around the globe. Remember intercession knows no distance, only a persistent, yearning heart.
January 27, 2012
Loss of Innocence - What should be our response to the inevitable loss of innocence experienced in life? This loss in too many ways grows in magnitude as we gain life experience. Loss of innocence includes awareness of our own propensity to sin, theologically expressed in Genesis 3 in the story of the fall. But in additional, this has been for me the growing discovery of the degree to which Satan has been successful in making certain times and places of the world hellish, belying the humanistic premise that people are essentially good.
Some loss of innocence is gained from personal experience (e.g. my trauma at being beaten by an Edmonton street gang at age 13). Some comes from history (the last century alone saw the Armenian genocide, two horrendous world wars plus many undeclared wars, 110 million deaths at the hands of various Marxist regimes, Cambodia's killing fields, the Nazi holocaust the Rwandan massacre, and much more) that we would prefer to forget. Loss of innocence expands and deepens painfully in the news where we learn daily of the horror of planned cruelty, violence, state-sponsored torture, war on civilians, bombing of hospitals, genocide, abortion, human trafficking, permanent refugee camps and more.
One response is to do all we can to put our head in the sand, deny and ignore, forget or try not to learn to begin with. At one level I have great sympathy with this approach because our human psyche and mental health is capable of awareness of only so much evil before it begins to do us harm, even at arms-length.
Loss of innocence, though inevitable, certainly shouldn't come too early. We should do what we can to protect our children through as much of pre-pubescence as possible. We should take ourselves away from unnecessary assaults on our spirits through movie depictions (previous post) and undue contemplation of evil.
But we must not ignore it or those victimized by such evils. My loss of innocence has repeatedly and more deeply galvanized me to Christ and the Gospel as our only hope of salvation, deliverance from evil, and the possibility of transforming the human heart, institutions and societies.
Often we cannot easily or directly touch the victims of these evils, but we can and must pray, stimulated and guided by such calls to prayer as for the vast prison camp which is North Korea. (Please click on the previous link, or the following for a call to prayer for Syria), and act as we are able.
God by His mercy has ended the Nazi holocaust, brought down the iron curtain and many other evils in response to prayer and courageous action. May our generation pray and act with greater urgency and sacrifice, not less.
January 14, 2012
To Copyright or Not to Copyright - a Great Solution: When should a good idea be shared? One would think the answer is "always" - yet to protect the good idea - book or music - it has generally been copyrighted to prevent others from stealing, profiting unfairly or changing it in an unhelpful way. Yet copywriting an idea has often resulted in it not being disseminated and used as widely as it could, leaving humanity, and sometimes the Christian community, the poorer. The only alternative has been not to copyright one's work, which leaves one open to the possibility that someone else will do so, using their copyright of your work against you. Neither extreme seems to me to generally fit well.
For
that reason I was delighted to learn of a 'middle ground' in which one may retain control of one's creative work while yet encouraging wide sharing, provided the author's name remains attached and the content and integrity of that work is not compromised. Details here.The same applies to high quality photo images. You can contribute or download the best photos and video and the same conditions apply. Explore here.
January 7, 2012
The Limit of Artistic Licence: Stimulating the Imagination with Evil: During a recent airline flight I saw images of evil on screen I've not before seen on public media. It is not my intention to describe the images or debate the precise line where artistic licence should be limited but to suggest that media which stimulates the imagination with evil harms and degrades all humanity. The imagination is a powerful tool and when fuelled with cruelty and darkness unworthy of mention, it is empowered to imagine and do greater evil than it may have ever conceived on its own.
History is littered with examples.
Those who argue for artistic licence without limit traditionally imagine a non-existent wall between the depictions of evil and the evil it stimulates. The barrier simply doesn't exist and those who think it does need to prepared to be held responsible for the consequences of its impact on society.
Some will raise all the historic arguments against censorship, which essentially prohibits the depiction of specified behaviours. Yet virtually every law which exists is made to prohibit, shape or direct behaviour (e.g. driving laws, sexual harassment, violence in the school yard). To deny the legitimacy of restriction on human behaviour is essentially to deny the legitimacy of government and social ethics of any short.
If then we believe there is value in prohibiting specific anti-social behaviours through our legal system, why not limit the depiction and stimulation of those specific anti-social behaviour in various media? The difficulty of defining and enforcing the limits of artistic licence is in determining where one should begin – and “how much is too much?” I would encourage us rather than be hamstrung with the question to begin at the points of worst transgression. Anti-social behaviour simulated or stimulated by media may in reality be more harmful than individual anti-social acts because of the breadth of media's influence.
January 1, 2012
Stand by Me: This one is mostly for fun. The video below synchronizes buskers around the world sharing in a song close to the hearts of us all as we stand on the cusp of a new year. It speaks to me also especially of the team with which I work, spanning many cultures, singing one song for the glory of the King!
