Virtually Paul

What I am…

For a bit of pre-study procrastination, I think I’ll shamelessly rip off Geoff’s idea.

What I am reading

There is a bit of a backlog at the moment (as always).

Michael Frost’s book “Exiles” is still in the queue. I’ve also just added this one by Mark to my list.  At the moment the bulk of my reading is related to the world of accounting.  Surprisingly enough, I actually don’t mind some of it… but I can’t wait for two weeks time when the exams are over!

What I am listening to

Not a lot.  I haven’t bought a good CD for a while.  I’m leading the service at church this Sunday night, so most of my musical efforts over the last week and a half have been directed towards thinking about that.

What I am watching

I went to the footy last Saturday night and watched the mighty Bombers return home triumphant against a valiant effort by poor old Richmond who were out-kicked, although not necessarily out-classed, by a last minute dash for points.  I’m not really watching TV or anything at the moment.  But Spiderman sounds like a good way to kill Friday night.

What I am loving

Lots of opportunities to spend quality time with quality people and having conversations that go beyond the surface and into the gaps in my understanding of God and the world around me.   I am loving the hope for the future that I feel at the moment.  I am loving the chance to safely let go of some burdensome ways of viewing life that have been dragging me down, potentially for years.  I am loving that I can trust God to keep making things interesting and that I don’t have to be able to see the whole picture for the way forward.

What I am praying

Holy Spirit, thank you for this hope.  Thanks for the gifts you’re offering me.  When can I have them?

Program vs Purpose

You’ll find a nice little rant from yet another frustrated youth ministry leader here:  Youth Ministry Forum

I found myself in a similar predicament last week, at least in terms of needing to rant about a youth ministry program!

I’m the “discipleship” coordinator for my church’s youth ministry.  The title, for the sake of accuracy, should perhaps be extended to “senior-high school discipleship groups” coordinator.  I have some problems with the idea that discipleship is a program that is coordinated by a single person - in reality that’s not the case at church anyway.  We have a bunch of really capable youth leaders, many of whom have disciple-maker qualities.

I don’t really need to rant about the structure stuff because the church has recognised that it’s a problem and just launched a more fluid “Youth Ministry Team” structure to be the driving force behind an entire youth ministry that is focused on growing individuals along their journey.  We’re literally just about to revamp the way everyone thinks about and approaches ministry with our youth.  But back to the discipleship stuff…
About a month ago, I started a group of guys in the 15-17 age range to meet up fortnightly as a group and chat about what I’d broadly describe as “faith stuff”.  It was a bit of a mammoth effort getting them all in the same place at the same time but they all seemed keen and ready to commit to the meeting time.

I’d even had the savvy idea (I thought so anyway) of pitching the group to the guys attending from the outset, as a tool or a help along the journey of discipleship, rather than a club within a club that was going to save them.  It’s a pity I didn’t listen to my own advice.
After the first meeting, one of the guys hadn’t show up, hadn’t contacted me to say they weren’t coming, then informed me a week later that they had just acquired a regular commitment that they wouldn’t be able to avoid - and now couldn’t come along to the group (which was a scheduling feat from my side of the fence).

It wasn’t until I stood back a bit from the whole idea a few days ago and actually thought about this young person and what I was trying to achieve, that I realised:  it actually doesn’t matter if this particular person doesn’t participate in this particular program.

Sure, I think the group will be an effective “program”.  I even think that the individual who isn’t attending would have contributed a lot to it, at the same time as getting a lot out of it.  But that’s not the point.  Yes, my program (notice the unintentional “my” I just wrote) will be effective.  At the same time, my goal here is not to enforce conformity to a particular idea - it’s to disciple.

There is more than one way to skin a cat - and it’s not always the way that you expect!

Starting the ideal church service

This afternoon, due to what must have been a glitch in the matrix, I found myself sitting in a meeting in an inner city suburb, joining a small group of people who were sitting around discussing how to start a new evening church gathering in a reasonably dilapidated old church building which houses a morning congregation of somewhere between 30-60 people.I’ve got an extremely impressively written document in front of me right now, which outlines the general idea. I don’t think I saw a single person under forty on the busy street between parking the car and walking into this church. It therefore comes as no surprise that “young professional people” are the group that the new service is intended to be serving.

The brief document then wanders through, in all its Times New Roman splendour, the creation of what first appeared to me, as an attempt to blueprint the ‘perfect’ church service. What I found most interesting was that I didn’t see the holes straight away.

• It connects with the culture by being relevant - specifically by being “contemporary” - while “unashamedly but sensitively” presenting Christianity.
• Building a “Christ-centred” community where people learn to love and support one another, can come as they are and be themselves.
• It will happen regularly and remove “unnecessary jargon and unhelpful church traditions” from the presentation of the service, which will also allow people the choice to remain as passive observers who are not “forced” to participate in worship.
• Explaining the Bible with life application and encouraging response.
• It will feature preaching, liturgical worship (written prayers), music and supper as organised by the service team.
• The service will be well-branded and then promoted “by advertising throughout the community”.
• The church building will be getting some minor cosmetic work done (ie. “the addition of colour and light”) in order to “help people to feel more comfortable”.

I watched the individuals sitting in this discussion and found it intriguing, watching as slowly but surely, at least 2 of the most vocal participants completely sidetracked the stated aims, inventing non-specific problems. At one point, almost in mid-sentence, one of them seemed to decide that it might be nice to cater for older people or young families as well. So for a cranky little auditor like me, some of it was pure pain. I could have participated in the discussion a bit, given that I’d been invited by a good friend but chose to hang back. There were also some capable individuals in the meeting who I’m sure will eventually work out where they want to go and get the rest to follow.

At this point I remain a skeptic (or was already a cynic). Some years ago, a very effective youth pastor told me that “if you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got”. I raise the following points as questions.

• Can you, in all seriousness, present the Gospel inoffensively? Sure, you can offer nice little spaces for contemplation and let people dabble in spooky little Christian rituals to see what it’s like to eat small amounts of bread and grape juice. But does that really get you anywhere if they’re just sampling from the spirituality smorgasboard?
• People rarely feel free to be themselves. If they truly felt that they could come “as they are” to a church service, then they’d quite potentially already be attending another one. The institutional church has a reputation for actually really not thinking that people are OK “as they are”. And let’s face it, that’s kind of true. So that leaves people being subversively asked to change by the culture of the Christian community, without understanding why. Meanwhile, well meaning Christians actually don’t realise that their well-intentioned stated aim is actually a bit two-faced if you look at it from the outside.
• Spiritual attracts, theological bores. If you do any reading at all on spirituality in Australian culture, particularly the 20s age group, you’ll find that people are actually considering the more mystic elements to religion - the unexplainable movements of the Spirit of God - to be much more interesting than a lecture on their inherent sinfulness. It’s the postmodern mindset. If you use a word someone doesn’t understand, you may well find that the corresponding spiritual experience intrigues them enough for them to ask another question.
• Explaining the Bible with life application? If you’re trying to get people who live in Melbourne in 2007 to interact with the translation of a compliation of texts written over a period of thousands of years, chances are, you’ll have more luck if you take the person, in their context, to the Bible, rather than the other way around.
• Activities sensitive to the culture? Cafe latte drinking young professionals really want to come and sit in a run down old church building, do some responsive reading, listen to a sermon and eat some raisin toast?
• Walking the marketing tightrope. Events attract people wanting to be entertained. Communities attract people. It is exceedingly difficult to advertise the latter in our culture, which associates advertising with an invitation to consume. Advertising, by default, attracts consumption before community. You can try to spread the word… but don’t put some clip-art on an A5 piece of paper with one of these event names and call it advertising.
• Location sensitive to the culture? A service using traditional church building as a meeting place will undoubtedly come across almost all of its newcomers from personal invitations by people already attending. So if relationships are the key, why meet in the one building that everybody you’re trying to involve never come in to of their own accord?

Win the Men, Build the Church

A really well-made YouTube video on winning men to the church…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIrIKbCz3n4

Morning traffic can really drive you nuts

Traffic smooth after peanut butter spill

Third Day Tabs

The phrase “You are beautiful my sweet sweet song” in this previous post seems to have driven a bit of search traffic my way from people looking for Third Day lyrics and tabs.

The site you want is here: www.guitar-dude.com (click “The Tabs” link on the left)

If you know of a better one, please leave a comment!

Not Ordaining Men

I’m only linking this because I like that it’s stirring the pot…

MaggiDawn

Head Space

I don’t like that term very much because of an unpleasant text message I got once… but I think I can identify with it at the moment.

Usually I very much like to have lots of things to think about, lots of ideas to play with and lots of potential for new little projects. At the moment though, big ideas about my identity and my vision for life are bubbling away under the surface.

The result is a state that I can perhaps best describe as weary. I was just reading this post by Bec which I just completely don’t have room to process right now. I long for a chance to start getting back into a place where I can consider themes like those ones without feeling like they’re going to turn the unsettled questions into impossibly chaotic and almost distressing accusations.

I’m in a bit of a tired patch. Have you ever been there and what was the catalyst to finding yourself walking on solid ground again?

Alive on a Sunday

Last Sunday, after finishing up with my house-sitting gig, I had the privilege of being able to attend the morning service at Yarra Valley Vineyard, which in my mind was just a convenient excuse to catch up with my wonderful Essendon-supporting friend Bec and her almost-as-wonderful recently acquired fiance Geoffrepops. Enough about them though… they’re already getting enough attention at the moment. Geoff has the statistics to prove it.

I expected to be participating in a run of the mill church service. Stand up, sit down, sing this, listen to that, nibble this, drink that, have a chat, go home. And I’m sure I could have been that nonchalant about it if I’d tried hard enough. Fortunately for me, God had other plans.

The time that I spent there was nothing short of exactly-what-I-needed. The music was phenomenal. Acoustic rock all the way with at least one vocalist who I could have listened to all day. There was no sign of a crass performance mentality from the musicians. They were there to lead us, indeed, to draw us in to meeting with God. I’ve missed seeing that happen so much in recent times. The song choices were rich with meaningful words that embodied the theological concepts that I’ve been learning and meditating on over the past year and before. There were no fairy floss one-liners. This was about God. Come as you are. Be engulfed in who He is. Know God, even though everything hurts.

The sermon was fantastic and again hit the nail right on the head as we were led through content on the illusive connection between suffering, faith and healing. I’ve spent a lot of time learning about the first two of those in the last two years. I wanted to go forward for prayer afterwards but didn’t have the strength to step forward. Unfortunately I allow that to happen all too regularly.

After/during the service, I got the chance to catch up with some other Vineyardians who I’ve run into over the years. I think that really added to the atmosphere because I didn’t feel like I was there on my own. My housemate’s sister and her fiance were there, along with some people I’ve led on camps with. In fact, I think I got the best welcome I’ve had to a church service in years when Laura spotted me in the carpark and escorted me into the building, preventing the need for plodding in awkwardly and trying to work out where to go.

I had lunch with Bec and Geoff after the service, at the traditional eatery of anyone who’s just been to a church service - La Porchetta. We had a great chat and I even got the chance to unpack some of the things that have been happening in my church’s youth ministry that have been weighing on me over time. It was good fun and big encouragement to me. Thanks guys!

I took a reasonably significant detour on the way home to visit a place that I spotted in the Melways - Silvan Reservoir Park. I spent a good hour or so there reading through lots of different bible passages and praying heaps before driving back home.

And so for reasons I have shared… and also for reasons that I haven’t… I am seeing the Holy Spirit moving in and around me more and more. Through these experiences and many others, He is showing me that soon He’s going to bring me up out of this valley. He is teaching me how to walk in His strength and not my own. He has even given me a slightly amusing sense of hope that runs deeper than I usually allow anything to go.
Hope is a wonderful thing. And I’m glad that, after all that’s happened, I started to feel that extra bit alive, on a Sunday.