Virtually Paul

Joke Police

Hmmmm… I think I’ve been warned…

Joke Police

Summer Camp, College and the bass from U2

You’ll be pleased to know that I’m finished with college for the year.  I handed in my last essay today.  It is a good feeling, even though I am incredibly tired from the mammoth effort I put in last night to get over the line.  I’m pretty happy with myself.  Exhausted at the moment… but pretty happy.

The weekend just gone also featured a team meeting for Junior camp which I’ll be co-directing this summer.  The theme is “The Quest for Treasure Island”.  I’m really looking forward to spending some time with the kids on the camp.  They have such a fresh, unique outlook on life and I’m glad I have the opportunity to invest some time into them.

Both nights found me sitting in the loungeroom at home, becoming mildly annoyed at the thumping bass coming from what I thought was around the block somewhere.  It got to about 10.45pm and my housemate got up complaining that he couldn’t sleep, so I rang the local cop shop to ask them what the go was.  The guy I spoke to told me that the noise I was hearing was coming from the U2 concert at TelstraDome in the city.  Nathan went on Saturday night and he reckons they had the roof open.  I couldn’t believe it.  I just thought it was a bunch of people in a garage around the block.

This part of Melbourne is directly uphill from the city, so there was effectively nothing blocking the sound.  That’s still a fair distance though I reckon.  The cop I spoke to was pretty amused with my response.  I think he’d been fielding complaints all night.  He apologised for the noise.  I said there was no need for that.  What’s a guy in a suburban police station going to do about it?  I just said “Oh righto… I probably won’t buy their next CD then.”  He cracked up.  I guess he’d had a few people ranting at him about it.  So much for CoeXisT Bono.

My Attitude Problem

I’m currently working on an essay about “attitudes of young people towards the institutional church” and so far my head is awash with vague grabs at all of the ideas and issues.

So I figured I’d starting blogging on the subject and see where my thoughts take me.  Feel free to chuck me some comments for inspiration.  The essay topic seems to call for a pretty straight-forward approach.  Firstly, define young people in terms of their cultural setting and the needs that arise in them as a result of it.  Secondly, define the institutional church.  Somewhere in the gap between the two, you’d expect that I’d uncover the ‘attitudes’ that exist.  I think I’m going to need to touch on a number of issues to cover the topic properly.

Issue 1:  Societal Changes
There has been a shift in society and often it doesn’t seem like the church has caught up.  Maybe that’s just my attitude to the institutional church though.  The statistical studies I’ve been reading have talked a lot about the increasing number of ‘non-traditional family structures’.  More young people today than ever before live in home environments with single parents or step-parents.  So, how does that influence them?

Issue 2: Postmodernism
It’s a fancy word.  My understanding of what it means is this:
The ‘modern’ era was characterised by a collective belief in science and technology to solve all of the problems of humankind.  Something was valid if it could be explained.  Something could be accepted if there was cold, hard scientific evidence.  In amongst that, allegiance to an institution of some kind was a valued quality.  It all worked rather well for a generation of baby boomers in the suburban churches of the 1970s.

Enter the postmodern era.  These days, scientific rationalism isn’t irrelevant… but it isn’t the answer to everything either.  In the postmodern world, truth isn’t about proof.  Truth is about what works.  “Right” and “Wrong” are seen as relative labels.  Loyalty to an institution during bad times, makes you a sap who should have the backbone to improve their situation.  No one wants to listen to moral pronouncements of right and wrong from the church, from their parents, or from anywhere else.  Science doesn’t have all of the answers and spirituality is once again on the rise.  But in the postmodern era, what works for someone is ‘their truth’.  If you want to have your own religious beliefs, fine… but don’t push their moral framework on to those around you.

Issue 3: What’s the church?
The word ‘church’ has been misappropriated to so many different things, even just in the last 50 years, that its meaning within popular culture has been diluted into an array of stereotypes that range in their connotations, from confusing expressions of ancient religious liturgical practice, to a fundamentalist Christianist lobby group that attempts to influence Government policy for conservative ends.  Even within the ranks of those who regularly participate in the church, I’m not sure how many of them could tell you what it actually is.  If you asked ten different people what the church exists to do, you’d easily get answers that emphasised any number of different things:  community, evangelism, family values, charity, prayer.

Issue 4: Spirituality
Lots of people are interested in spirituality.  It’s just that not many of them want to ask the church about it because they think they already know what the church is going to say.

Shopping Spree

When Pastors become salesmen

Digger has some interesting comments from Eugene Peterson that are pretty full-on in asking us whether or not our pastors are actually pastoring or just performing for the crowd.

I think Peterson has written it to be deliberately provocative… and I don’t think that’s a bad thing.

I’ve been thinking a lot about pastoral ministry lately and wondering… “What does a typical pastor do with their time?”  I get the impression that it’s more than a full-time job… people ringing up, elders meetings, church admin meetings, bible study groups to visit, etc… most of which would have to fit in around the 9-5 jobs of the majority of the flock.  Then there’s preparing a sermon for Sunday morning.  So I have a bit of an idea… but I’m also quite interested in the time breakdown.

What’s the biggest part of the job, task-wise and time-wise?
How often does the list of things that need to be done, change?
How does someone take on the role while still feeling as though they’re maintaining a sense of structure and balance in their approach to their work and also their life?
How can someone safeguard themselves against the risk of getting too comfortable?
How easy would it be to lose sight of the reason you’re there and pursue other interests?
Once you’re in the job, could you pursue other interests while keeping up appearances with the church members so that the salary continues?
How do we measure success in pastoral ministry?

I guess those are big questions and largely depend upon the person and the circumstances of their ministy context.  Does anyone have any smaller questions or personal reflections?

Christian versions of the Mac vs. PC ads

I really like the points that these quite clever ad parodies raise.

Go here.

Not-that-quick-connection hint: quickly play/pause the other ads so that they load while you’re watching the first one