Function or dysfunction?
Has the fellowship served to make the individual free, strong, and mature, or has it made him weak and dependent? Has it taken him by the hand for a while in order that he may learn again to walk by himself, or has it made him uneasy and unsure? This is one of the most searching and critical questions that can be put to any Christian fellowship.
—Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together
24 January 2010 Jeff Gill
tags: church,
quotes
What's a good size?
‘We believe that our particular group has grown as large as it ought to. We have stopped short of being an organisation; we are an organism instead, a living and spontaneous association of individuals who know one another intimately, care for each other deeply, and feel the kind of respect on for another that makes rules and bylaws unnecessary. A group is the right size, I would guess, when each member can pray every day for every other member, individually and by name, interceding for his personal needs as well as for the success of a particular mission. But what is to prevent 20, 50, 100 such groups from springing up wherever the call is heard – each obedient to its own particular genius, each working in its different way for the coming of the one Kingdom?’
—Brother Andrew, the man who pretty much invented smuggling bibles into communist countries in the mid 20th century, in his autobiography, God’s Smuggler, ch.21 p.251 1970 edition, emphasis mine
22 January 2010 Jeff Gill
tags: church,
kingdom of god,
quotes
A notable new blog
My beloved wife and former writer here is gracing the internets once again with her poetic and insightful writing on children’s ministry over at the the official i61 Kids blog.
21 August 2009 Jeff Gill
tags: blogging,
children,
church,
i61
Dear My American Friends,
I posted this on Facebook last night, and it seemed to touch a nerve in a good way, so here it goes out into the world.
I’ve been thinking about something for a month or two now. I think it’s thunk enough to be written down and shared with you.
In the 10 years since my son Teifion died and the nearly nine years since I moved to the UK I have changed quite a lot. I imagine you have too. The other week I was cataloging the big changes. A lot a conservative American Christians, if they had access to that catalogue, would waste no time in declaring me a first class passenger on the Satan Train…
Keep reading
14 August 2009 Jeff Gill
tags: church,
humans,
kingdom of god
The rules of my fight club
I watched Fight Club last night. I know this film has been out for a while, but as I was watching I was struck with a powerful, prophetic sense that it captured the zeitgeist of this generation of men. Now is the time for a paradigm-shifting change in the way we talk to the lost men of this generation. Now is the time to change the world. Now is the time for BREAKTHROUGH! That’s why I am starting a Men’s Missional Fight Club For Jesus. Here are the rules:
The first rule of my fight club is tell all your friends we’re starting a fight club.
The second rule of my fight club is here are some fight club leaflets you could put up in your office or village shop or whatever.
The third rule of my fight club is no hard punches. We don’t want anybody to get hurt.
The fourth rule of my fight club is you have to read and sign the health and safety statement and waiver of liability.
The fifth rule of my fight club is you have to sign up for the tea-making and mug-washing rotas which are taped up on the back wall.
The sixth rule of my fight club is the fights will last no longer than three minutes. You’ll be surprised at how tiring fighting actually is.
The seventh rule of my fight club is this isn’t about winning and losing. It’s just a bit of fun.
The eighth and final rule of my fight club is that there is no pressure to fight. You are welcome to just watch.
∗
And we wonder why our big ideas go nowhere.
2 May 2009 Jeff Gill
tags: change,
church,
failure,
silly
Look at my pretty paradigm!
John Michael Greer is at his best this week, writing about paradigm change. He writes about the difficulty of change, the way that our paradigms prevent us from eve being able to ask certain questions, much less answer them, and in describing the thinking of some dude called Thomas Kuhn he shares this bit of brilliance:
It’s standard practice for the new paradigm to include the value judgment that the questions the new paradigm answers are the ones that matter, and the ones the old paradigm does better don’t count. Nor is this judgment pure propaganda; since the questions the new paradigm answers are generally the ones that researchers have been wrestling with for decades or centuries, they look more important than details that have been comfortably settled since time out of mind. They may also be more important, in every meaningful sense, if they allow practical problems to be solved that the old paradigm left insoluble.
Yet the result of that value judgment, Kuhn argued, is the false impression that science progresses, replacing relatively false beliefs with relatively more true ones, and thus gradually advances on the truth. He argued that different paradigms are not attempts to answer the same questions, differing in their level of accuracy, but attempts to answer entirely different questions – or, to put it another way, they are models that highlight different features of a complex reality, and cannot be reduced to one another. Thus, for example, Ptolemaic astronomy isn’t wrong, just useful for different purposes than Copernican astronomy. (From the standpoint of relativity theory, please note, this is quite correct: since there are no fixed points in the cosmos, only frames of reference, it’s as meaningful to take an earth-centered frame of reference and calculate the movements of the planets from there as it is to take a sun-centered frame of reference and do the same thing.)
So basically, the paradigm you just threw away because it is old and useless still explains certain parts of life, the universe and everything better than your shiny new one does.
Go read the whole article, and while you are there dig into Mr Greer’s archives and subscribe to his feed. I know he writes about peak oil and ecology, but if you want to understand why the white western evangelical church is failing, why most of the church is stuck talking about the possibility of rearranging the deck chairs on our Titanic, and WHY the things that Alan Hirsch, Floyd McClung, Frank Viola and even Brant Hansen are saying are so important, then I can think of no better teacher than John Michael Greer.
24 April 2009 Jeff Gill
tags: change,
church,
humans,
john michael greer
We did a good thing
I say we. It was mostly Steve and Gill’s idea. I help hold them to it now and again. The idea was, when we start a church, let’s not use a bunch of terminology that only we understand. Let’s speak everyday English.
In my wandering on the web I visit quite a few church websites. Pretty much none of them get it. The big attractional churches don’t get it. The new missional churches don’t get it. (I’m using jargon here because I’m writing for Christians.) The churches in between don’t get it either.
Don’t believe me? Imagine you’ve never been to church before. Pick a church. Visit the website. Do you, the imaginary non-church you, have a clue what they are talking about?
It’s a simple idea. Missionaries to other cultures get it. Talk the same language as the people you want to reach.
Take a good, hard look at your church’s lexicon. If you are saying things in a way that only people who are already in the club can easily understand, find a new way to say it.
Probably what you will really do is go to my church’s website and look for how we are failing to be understandable. (Please do. Then comment here. We appreciate any help we can get.) After you get us sorted out, maybe have a look at you.
18 April 2009 Jeff Gill
tags: church,
communication
In which I quote Seth Godin at length and ask all preachers to consider what they do on a Sunday morning
From this post: The purpose of a presentation is to change minds. That’s the only reason I can think of to spend the time and resources. If your goal isn’t to change minds, perhaps you should consider a different approach.
- The best presentation is no presentation at all. If you can get by with a memo, send a memo. I can read it faster than you can present it and we’ll both enjoy it more.
- The second best presentation is one on one. No slides, no microphone. You look me in the eye and change my mind.
- Third best? Live and fully interactive.
- Powerpoint or Keynote, but with no bullets, just emotional pictures and stories.
- And last best… well, if you really think you can change my mind by using tons of bullets and a droning presentation, I’m skeptical.
So, according to Seth, we preachers are putting the best hours of our week into something that is usually between the fourth and last best way of changing people’s minds.
Oh dear.
I think the thing to do is blow him off, because any alternative is a bit unthinkable.
15 April 2009 Jeff Gill
tags: church,
communication,
quotes
One o' them there modern translations
But we have this treasure in saved, healed, delivered and supernaturally changed vessels, to show that God has given to us, right now, His surpassing power over every situation. We are no longer afflicted, perplexed, in conflict or defeated. No, we are alive with the power of Jesus, and the resurrection power of Jesus has changed us now…TODAY! In every way!. God wants you to see just what a Jesus-controlled person is all about, so the power of Jesus is on display in the life I am living, and those who don’t have this life, are miserable and dying. (2 Corinthians 4:7-11, MSV)
This is Michael Spencer Version of one of those bible passages that we don’t celebrate much because to do so would require us to be honest about ourselves, and who’s actually honest about themselves in church? Here’s the real version:
But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that his life may also be revealed in our mortal body. (2 Corinthians 4:7-11, TNIV)
The whole article is a bit long and in baldly exposing some of the lies we regularly live swings a bit too far to the dark side of life, but it is a Very Important Article for anyone who cares about realness.
11 April 2009 Jeff Gill
tags: church,
failure,
faith,
humans
Oops
11 chapters into Luke in my New Testament reading project and I can’t find anything that resembles church as we do it today in the western world.
That’s not hyperbole.
Okay, maybe it is a tiny bit of hyperbole, but not much.
Yes, I know that statement is unbalanced. What are 11 chapters of one book compared to the whole New Testament? And why should it church look like what Jesus did? The church wasn’t even established yet. And if we don’t do church like we do it now, what are we going to do? How will anyone be taught? Jesus taught. Jesus preached. Anyway, the world has changed…
Yep. I know. It’s hard to imagine anything different. I’ve been in church all my life – I help pastor a church! – and my head hurts when I try to imagine something different. All I know is that when I look at the practice (industry?) of western church, I see very little that looks like what Jesus did.
I can say the same thing about my life. I’m so steeped in the culture of Christianity that all my relationships are tainted with it. When I look at my husbanding and parenting I see a heck of a lot of the religion of the Pharisees and not nearly enough of the life-giving attractiveness of Jesus.
I think I am understanding the significance of the title of Rob Bell’s book Jesus Wants to Save Christians
I think Jesus is trying to save me. I think the more I read, the more the Holy Spirit will have to work with and the more hope there will be for me to imagine without my head hurting. And that gets me closer to the goal actually following Jesus, whether it looks like church or not.
I’ll finish with a quote from this remarkable post by Brant Hansen:
And I want to convey how remarkable Jesus is. How smart he is. How he understands our nature. How infuriating he can be to those in power. I want to subvert a culture that turns the church into an incredibly expensive and remarkably harmless spectator sport. I want people to understand how revolutionary the love of Jesus is.
4 March 2009 Jeff Gill
tags: church,
kingdom of god,
nt
We want to lower the bar of how church is done and raise the bar of what it means to be a disciple
— Neil Cole, quoted in The Forgotten Ways by Alan Hirsch
11 February 2009 Jeff Gill
tags: church,
kingdom of god,
quotes
Beware of bold pronouncements
Over the last few months I have enjoyed some serious world-rockage thanks to Surprised by Hope by Tom Wright, Starting a House Church by Larry Kreider and Floyd McClung, and The Forgotten Ways by Alan Hirsch, plus a bunch of podcasts from Greg Boyd and Rob Bell. Now it’s the bible’s turn.
Over the next three to five weeks I plan to read the New Testament. I will be looking specifically at what it looks like to be a follower of Jesus, both individually and as a community of Christians on a mission. The purpose of this is not to know more stuff, rather, I want to make whatever changes are necessary to orient my life around God’s mission on Earth (John 3:16) and my place in that mission through the new birth (John 3:3).
This is more of a read-and-reflect than a study, so I will be using my handy dandy TNIV Books of The Bible. I plan to write about what I read here. And I’m off…
10 February 2009 Jeff Gill
tags: blogging,
books,
change,
church,
community,
kingdom of god,
nt
...church is what you do from Sunday to Sunday out in your neighborhood, with your small group, with your tribe of people.
—From an interview with Greg Boyd on the Burside Writers Collective.
10 February 2009 Jeff Gill
tags: church,
greg boyd,
quotes
Alan Hirsch explains what church does to people
The following excerpt is from Mr Hirsch’s book The Forgotten Ways:
Jane is an average churchgoer. She loves God and wants to grow in him. But her problem is how to bring all aspects of her life together so that is makes sense of her faith. How does she experience church?
She spends most of her time in the ‘godless’ secular space called ‘the world’. On Sunday she goes to church. Church fellowship offers her a neutral kind of space filled with like-minded believers. She feels safe and reassured when she is around them, because the tension she normally feels when ‘in the world’ is temporarily alleviated. After a bit of ‘fellowship’, she goes into the chapel area in response to the call of worship. [i.e. She goes into the main room because the meeting is starting.] The music kicks in, the worship starts and she is drawn up into a form of ecstasy as she begins to engage her heart in the worship of God. And all of a sudden it is as if God ‘bungee jumps’ into the deal. The worship rocks and Jane begins to feel that the sermon really ‘fed her’. So in taking communion she recommits herself to Jesus as personal saviour. The church then sings a few more rousing songs, and the pastor pronounces the benediction, and whoooop! It is as if the bungee cord draws God up again, returning him into heaven. And Jane finds herself back in the middle circle having a coffee or soda with her Christian friends.
But then she has to go out into the world. Labouring as she is under a dualistic worldview and experience, this space in Jane’s perception is a somewhat caustic context for Christians, because God is not perceived as being ‘in the world’. And so it is a somewhat harrowing experience, and she barely makes it to mid-week cell group (home group/connect group), where she undergoes a similar experience to that of Sunday (but not on the same scale). Yes, she has her quiet times when sometimes God ‘turns up’, but other than that she feels that she is rather alone in a spiritually precarious place.
If you will forgive the slightly satirical oversimplification, I’m sure that many of us can recognise ourselves in this story. The tragedy is that everything in this medium of church sets Jane up to experience her life as fundamentally dualistic and therefore divided between the sacred and the secular. No one has necessarily intended it to be this way; it’s just as if a virus somehow got into the system, a nasty sucker that has lodged itself in the fundamental programming that underlies the Christendom software. So no matter how seeker friendly one might wish to make the service, it still communicates this sacred-secular dualism that has plagued the church. The net result of this is that God is experienced as a church-god and not the God of all of life, including church.
9 February 2009 Jeff Gill
tags: books,
church
Jeff gets a curriculum
For the past few weeks I have been using an absolutely amazing curriculum. I’m not usually a fan of curricula, but this one has transformed the way I think about and do my class for students in years 6-8 (ages 10-13).
This thing is just plain inspiring. It is built around the story of a hero and his adventures. Kids love heroes, and this one is so well-written that he grabbed my imagination from the moment I started reading. More important, he is grabbing the kids’ imagination. They are connecting with this character. They are connecting with his adventures. Watching them for the past few weeks, I am convinced that this connection with the story in the curriculum is starting to lead them to a real connection with God.
I’m using the curriculum with a pretty small group, about 15. The discussion points are great. The ideas for hands-on learning are brilliant. And it is all amazingly scalable. This curriculum would work for large groups too. And for young children. And for teens. I think even adults could get something useful out of it. I know one-size-fits-all solutions usually aren’t, but I honestly believe this is different. The content is rich, both in breadth and depth.
The only real drawback that I have come across so far it that because the curriculum is not brand new, it is only text. There is no audio or video – or even Powerpoint slides. I think that could put some people off. For me it hasn’t been a problem. I have been so inspired by the content that I have found it easy to find my own media. This is the age of Web 2.0 after all. Almost everything in the world is available in about six clicks.
There are several modules. Not all are stories, not all are heroes, but if they are anywhere near as good ad the module I’m using at the moment, this is the curriculum I’m sticking with for the foreseeable future.
You can buy new favourite curriculum in book form here. And it is available for instant download here
20 November 2008 Jeff Gill
tags: books,
children,
church,
communication
Eight reasons not to use lists
Keith Johnson is the Ah Ha Architect for Group Publishing. I don’t know what that means, but I think he’s great, especially when he lets rip with a rant on the blog he writes with Larry Shallenberger. His most recent is majestic with ALL CAPS and bold type and exclamation marks!!!. The article is great but his comment (No. 5) is my favourite:
Try this instead: “Have One Point”!!! That’s It! And state, “this was my observation, and you might have another one, that is why I left point #2 BLANK…
Go have a read. It will get you all hyped up for your pastor’s Sunday sermon.
28 September 2008 Jeff Gill
tags: blogging,
church,
failure
A man can dream
I just had a crazy idea.
What if the worldwide charismatic church took all its zeal for God and hunger for a great outpouring of the Holy Spirit and directed it into connecting with the people around them?
What if they gave up listening to prophecies about a coming revival and praying for said revival to come and talking to each other about how great it will be when revival comes and Changes Everything and put their energy into building the kingdom of God right now?
What if all the money spent on conferences and special meetings was invested in neighbourhoods at home and abroad to connect people with Jesus?
What if it didn’t matter so much which charismatic celebrity was ditching his wife and family for his secretary/favourite prostitute/bottle of whiskey/tax haven in the Caribbean and which other charismatic celebrities acted too soon or too late to sort it out because no one cared – they were all too busy making disciples of Jesus to care?
The cynical bit of me thinks any of this happening is slightly less likely than John MacArthur speaking in tongues live on GodTV.
Another part of me is surprisingly hopeful.
I’ve never been more grateful for these people and these people. Let’s follow their example, shall we.
1 September 2008 Jeff Gill
tags: church,
humans,
kingdom of god
The Mustang 1
This is me in my first car, a 1965 Ford Mustang 2+2. I had it from about age 17 to 19 (1991-1993). It was the coolest and fastest car in my circle of friends. It had a 302 cubic inch engine (sadly not the original 289), three speed manual transmission (who needs gears when you have that much power?), and an original – but non-working AM radio (which was fine because it had dual exhausts with no mufflers). My dad and I restored it together.
This car, how I got it and why I got rid of it will be the subject of my next few posts in which I will write about the Word of Faith movement, free will and miracles.
18 August 2008 Jeff Gill
tags: blogging,
church,
kingdom of god
You see strange things in the desert
(See Christine’s growing Arizona 2008 set here)
We’re back from two weeks in Sunizona and Tucson, Arizona visiting family and getting my third sister married off. (One more to go.) During the holiday I had some great talks with my dad. One of our subjects of conversation was Todd Bentley and what is happening in Lakeland.
My natural tendency is to hate it – before you form your image of what kind of guy I must be, please note: I was the poster child for weird manifestations during the ‘renewal’ in the 90s – but I have worked hard to not form too much of an opinion about Mr B.
My dad is more open to this stuff.
He told me a little bit about the beginning of the charismatic movement. He wasn’t in it. Rather he was taught about how wicked, weird and dangerous it was. He didn’t join in until the early 80s when the movement had lost most of its edginess and was starting to go pretty mainstream.
Today, when a lot of people are talking about being post-charismatic, it is impossible to deny that the movement has significantly affected most of Christendom. The way we worship, the widespread openness to the work of the Holy Spirit – these are part of the church because of the charismatic movement, which was preceded and prepared for by the pentecostal movement.
My dad pointed out that the blip in the 90s we called the renewal and now this thing could be the child of charisma, and, like a lot of babies, it is ugly to everyone but its parents.
Yesterday, I read a post by Julie Clawson about another ugly baby, the emerging thing:
But what amuses me the most is that the current changes occurring in the church (and the ones in the past for that matter) were viewed as a malevolent force more reminiscent of Yeat’s “rough beast” than the movings of the Holy Spirit. Change is feared and its harbingers vilified (if I hear one more person refer to Brian McLaren as the antichrist…). The calls of the reformers are not properly understood and often seen as a rejection of all that has come before. While it may be difficult to convince some that questioning and critique is not rejection (or arrogance), I think Yeat’s imagery could prove useful in this case. The widening gyres represent a continuous unfolding of history that expands and contracts, but never breaks away fully from its spherical path. What one experiences is a shift not a genesis. Accepting that perspective may help some more easily dwell within the unfolding of history.
With Yeats’ I agree that “things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.” But I believe that to be a good thing – the impetus that pushes us to renewal and revival.
Wouldn’t life be more fun if we could be open to the probability that God is somehow in all the ugly new babies, even if we don’t join in until they go mainstream? We could stop throwing around words like dangerous and heretical. Maybe we could even relax enough to give our brains space to remember our job is to fulfill a great commission, not to be Right about what the uglies on the edge are doing.
7 August 2008 Jeff Gill
tags: church,
humans
Epiphany is a strong word for something so obvious
After two years of helping to run a church my brain has finally started working. I just remembered what I’m good at:
- Connecting with and being liked and trusted by the people who run things
- The hustle – talking to people, selling ideas, making things happen
- Design thinking – coming up with the right idea to meet the need
- Presentation, especially on stage in front of an audience
I used these four abilities to build a design studio from nothing to way-way-way-too-busy in four years. Then I joined the i61 church plant and forgot. For two years, I have been making a lot of pretty things, physically and spiritually, for i61. I have been using those four skills to some degree in the church, but hardly at all to connect the church with the community.
When I went to work full time for i61 18 months ago, I had the idea of approaching ministry as a design job. I wanted to bring the thinking and creative skills that I had developed in five years as a designer to a new arena. But my ideas about how to do it were not well formed. It was all too nebulous, and it didn’t work. I soon slipped back into the place that was the norm for me during Ministry Career 1 in America: in front of the computer, comfortably afraid of doing the Things That A Person In Ministry Should Be Doing. I knew that i61 couldn’t operate very well without me, but What Was I There For, Really?
Was I actually contributing to the advancement of the kingdom of God? I’ve had very real doubts about that. It wasn’t a lack of ideas – I always have a million of those. It was a lack of connection. I wasn’t connecting what I am good at with the work of building God’s kingdom. I was trying to fit myself into my idea of what A Person In Ministry ought to be doing without even being fully aware that I had such an idea.
When I started my design studio. I had the advantage of not knowing how to be a graphic designer or how to run a business. I needed to feed my family and pay bills, so I just got on with it. When I went to work for i61 I had a decade of ministry experience and a lot of new ideas telling me what I should do. Somehow those things didn’t connect with what I can do best, what makes me thrive.
Last night in the bath, the place where most good thoughts are thought, I remembered the things that make me thrive. And for the first time I connected them with the works of God. Bam. I felt like I retrieved piece of myself from the shelf, the feisty bit that likes people and makes things happen.
The catalyst for this connection was a meeting with a high school assistant head teacher. I was talking to her about an event we do called Hi, School! Just having a meeting with someone outside of the church world was a buzz. During the meeting she invited me to do some school assemblies. I came alive inside. Here was a chance to start something. Starting things makes me happy.
Then I felt guilty. Shouldn’t I be focussing on what I’m already doing? This doesn’t fit perfectly with some of my New Ideas Of How To Do Ministry. If I like it, it is probably because it is an old, and therefore ineffective, way of doing things.
Fortunately, I came to my senses and realised that I get thrilled standing up in front of a crowd of teenagers and talking about the kingdom of God because Jesus in me gets thrilled to talk to a crowd of teenagers about the kingdom of God. It is one of the things I’m built to do.
That excitement has been bouncing around in me for a week, and last night it bounced off all the right things at once and gave me this really obvious realisation: The things that I love to do and do well are the things that will make me most effective in getting the good news of the kingdom of God to my community.
Damn the theories. I’m finally ready for action.
19 June 2008 Jeff Gill
tags: church,
design,
failure,
kingdom of god,
leadership
Too good
Seth Godin wrote a couple days ago about the importance of letting the evidence of human involvement be visible sometimes.
I think the promotion of the kids thing we are doing Wednesday is a good example. I made some fun and pretty invitations and laser printed them on card.
Front:
Back:
As I was distributing them about the neighbourhood, they started seeming too good. They weren’t quite right. I would have felt a lot more comfortable giving out pieces of paper with the details hand-written on them. That would have been inviting. Somehow what I was doing felt more like selling.
It’s okay. The reason we are doing this now is to start learning how.
26 May 2008 Jeff Gill
tags: children,
church,
community,
design
Can we go back to theory, please?
Our church has done a very good job of making a place that is easy for non-church people to come to – for starters, we meet in a pub – and people do come. About half of the people of i61 didn’t go to church before they came to i61 or else they had not gone for a very long time.
Easy to come to is good, but for a while Christine and I have been feeling that it is very important for us to go, to share the life of God with people where they already are. Since we are the children’s pastors, we decided to do something with kids. Since there is no time like the present, we decided to do something this half-term week. The obvious place to start is Someone Else’s Neighbourhood. Unfortunately, the Someone Elses had to work all week, so we are doing it in our neighbourhood at our house.
It’s surprisingly scary.
I printed up a little invitation, and yesterday I went out in the rain and passed a bunch of them around. People I don’t know got them through their letterboxes. People I do know or have spoken to a bit got me knocking on their door inviting them. The response was tepid at best. People seemed to think of it as a thinly disguised wheeze to get their kids into church.
The response at last house I went to completely took the wind out of my sails. Our village shopkeeper lives there. He always seemed like a nice guy. We chatted once about the woes having BT as an internet provider. His teenage daughter babysat our kids a few times. But yesterday he said, ‘No, not interested,’ before I could finish one sentence. When I stuttered something about it being just some games and crafts for the kids, he cut me off again.
Like I was selling double glazing!
Or I was a bleeding Jehovah’s Witness!
At that moment I acquired actual empathy with a friend from church who went out for a Christmas meal with a bunch of mums from her children’s school. She didn’t drink because when she’s indulging in extra calories she prefers to get them from food. The real reason doesn’t matter though. She’s a Christian. She didn’t drink, so obviously she’s judging their lifestyle. Now they don’t want to be her friends anymore.
Jerks.
Actually, they are just being people who are living in the culture we live in. That’s not an excuse for other people’s bad behaviour; it is a reminder that we kingdom of God people still have a lot of barriers to move out of the way when we go where the people are.
I’m pretty sure some of Callum’s neighbourhood friends are coming. I’ll let you know how it goes. I think it will be good.
26 May 2008 Jeff Gill
tags: children,
church,
community,
humans,
i61,
kingdom of god
Jesus is NOT my boyfriend and I will not sing to Him as if He is.
This is my favourite worship quote in a long time!
25 May 2008 Jeff Gill
tags: church,
quotes
How I succeed at barbecues
Yesterday, the Gill family was at the first i61 barbecue of 2008. i61 barbecues are famous for immense quantities of fun and food. Friends who accept the invitation to come usually find that before too long they are part of us and inviting their friends to barbecues.
People often ask me two questions at i61 barbecues. The first is: Did you make these chocolate chip cookies yourself? I reply, Yes, with an appropriate amount of honesty. The second question is: Can I have the recipe? Today, for the first time ever, the answer is, with a complete lack of modesty, Yes, you can have what is probably the best chocolate chip recipe in the world.
The ingredients are listed in a mix of American and British measurements, so you might need to use this.
Get a big bowl, and put this stuff in it:
- 300 g butter
- 1 cup sugar
- 1 cup dark brown sugar
- 2 eggs
Mix them all up. Don’t taste it yet; it’s too slimy and gloopy.
Now add this stuff:
- 1 1/2 cups plain white flour
- 1 1/2 cups wholemeal flour. This is important.
- 1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
- a bit of salt
Mix again. Tasting is good to do now.
Chop up 300 g of really good chocolate, 2/3 milk chocolate and 1/3 70% cocoa plain chocolate. If you are living in North America and you are tempted to use chocolate chips or anything that has Hershey’s written on the label, resist. Put the chocolate in the bowl and mix one last time.
Grab some dough, make a ball and put it on an ungreased baking sheet. Repeat about 35 times. Bake all those little balls for about 9 minutes at 190°C.
Eat all that you can within a couple hours. Store the leftovers in an airtight container.
Your results may vary.
You’re welcome.
5 May 2008 Jeff Gill
tags: church,
community,
food
Blogging will turn you into a self-righteous [insert naughty noun of your choice here]
It’s easy. Just make sure your feed reader is stocked with a steady supply of bloggers you agree with. Make sure you cut out most of the non-Jesus blogs so that all your culture comes filtered and packaged like a carton of Tesco Value apple juice. When you are not online, try to be in your church office. It’s comfortable there. Read enough rants conversations about Mark Driscoll/John Piper/Bill Gothard/Some Other Reformed and/or Fundamentalist White Male to be at least strongly tempted to write something about him yourself – nevermind that he’s on a different continent and spends a big chunk of his life trying to connect people with Jesus. Once you’ve got all that in place, sit back and enjoy the slide into becoming exactly the same kind of [naughty noun] that only a few years ago made you think seriously about whether or not you actually could carry on being a Christian for much longer. Don’t think twice about any of this until your 15 year-old throws out a statement like, ‘You don’t like anything that’s different.’ Immediately deny it and try to ignore its truth by reminding yourself that you aren’t narrow like all those other people. You’re just right. You’re a pastor at the hottest church in [your region], for crying out loud. Carry on with some success until you start to prepare to talk to your teenagers about an area or two where they aren’t acting like Jesus. After you have been crushed by the weight of your hypocrisy, you might find repentance is the best tool for re-inflating your lungs.
3 May 2008 Jeff Gill
tags: blogging,
church,
humans
In praise of small churches
There’s a lot of talk about the size of churches.
Some people go for massive – the more people in a mega-church, the more people that know Jesus, right?
Others think tiny house churches are best – how can you have community and reality in a giant battery farm of a church?
It seems like the cool way to be these days is multi-site with the pastor live in every location via satellite or speedy car trip across town.
There is probably nothing/a lot wrong with these ways of doing church. There’s always room for something different though
At our church we may have stumbled upon a Something Different. It’s new to me, at least.
The pub where we meet has room for about 125 people. On Sunday morning it’s full. We’ve done all the expanding we can without tearing the place down and starting over, so the only way to fit in more people was to add another meeting.
Hanging out together is a big part of what we do, so we weren’t interested in cramming another meeting into Sunday morning. Making time for family life is also a big part of what we do, so we didn’t want to add a Sunday night meeting. We decided to go with Saturday evening.
Two weeks in, it’s going very well.
One of the things we realised very quickly was that before too long i61 Saturday will develop its own personality. The meeting has different childrens’ workers and a different band. We’ve even talked about different speakers in the future.
In a year or so, there may be two i61 congregations of about 125 people meeting at the pub. Then what?
I think a strong case could be made for starting another main meeting on another day. 125 or thereabouts is a good number.
- It’s big enough to have life and energy.
- It’s big enough to feel like you are part of something.
- It’s small enough to know everyone. I read somewhere that people are able to know about 200 people. If 125 of them are at church, that leaves relationship space for a good number of people outside of your faith.
- It’s small enough to have a good ratio of leaders to people
- It’s small enough to allow a high proportion of people to be involved in ministering during the main meeting.
- It’s small enough to fit the scale of town and village life in North Wales
- It’s small enough to be easily replicable
- It’s small enough to be able to meet in almost any public venue.
Put enough Small Enoughs together and you can end up with something very big – a lot of people knowing Jesus.
I don’t think 125 is a magic number, but I think 100-200 is a good size for a human-sized (rather than institutional-sized) congregation.
I am really excited about where we are headed.
UPDATE Christine just said, ‘What about when we build our bigger building?’ (We have plans drawn up for one that will hold about 250-300 people, 500 with rows, but we don’t do rows – too formal.) I remember Doug Pagitt or one of those emerging guys saying that 300 was about the right size for their community. Get back to me in five years; I’ll probably write that 1,000 is the ideal size for a church like i61. [insert smiley]
1 April 2008 Jeff Gill
tags: church,
community,
i61
Dressing for church
(entering shop) You’ve got to help me!
Madame, that is what I am here to do. I am Walter J Wolf, king of Christian Couture. In what way may I be of assistance?
My friend invited me to church and I said yes and I’ve never been to church before and I don’t know what to wear or what to say and I’m going to make a total fool of myself.
A common fear, but one that need not overwhelm you, not once you have set foot in this shop. First of all, let’s think about your clothing –
Keep reading
24 March 2008 Jeff Gill
tags: church,
drama,
i61,
silly
Essential reading for youth ministers
Design project deadlines and Easter deadlines are keeping me from writing the ten blog posts in my head and adding a new section to the site. Nevermind. In the meantime, all people who are involved with church and teenagers must read this blog: Once a Youth Pastor
Personal experience in youth ministry shows me that the #1 indicator of a teen’s spiritual longevity and commitment is the degree to which parents are involved in their kid’s spiritual development. The #2 indicator is the degree in which a teen connects with an older spiritual mentor outside the youth group.
Got it? #1 is parents. #2 is mentors. That’s the starting point for the reasoning that follows.
Now, what do most churches with “effective” youth ministries do? They hire a youth pastor.
I’ve come to believe that this is one of the biggest barriers to #1 and #2 happening! That’s right. In most places, the presence of a youth pastor is the biggest barrier to overcome.
Also related are these two articles that Christine and I wrote about a year ago: Community and Youth ministry is broken, but should we fix it?
17 March 2008 Jeff Gill
tags: blogging,
church,
youth
What's Your Condition?
My favourite wife has despression. She’s also a happy person. She’s also a brilliant speaker. She told the story of her journey into happiness at our church on Sunday. It is a story worth hearing. I promise I’m not saying that just because I am married to her. Have a listen (23 minutes)
Also, you might enjoy checking out Christine’s related project on Flickr, Room 37
25 February 2008 Jeff Gill
tags: church,
depression,
grief,
stories
Grids
In which I neatly jump from graphic designers’ grid systems to the internet’s most famous archdruid to the historian Arnold Toynbee to a church in North Carolina to the bible to you.
Image borrowed from Mark Boulton’s grid systems design tutorial
Graphic designers use grids…
Keep reading
14 February 2008 Jeff Gill
tags: church,
design,
john michael greer,
leadership
Even more shame on you
There are many, many churches and Christians in the world who have no interest in piling shame on anyone. But we still don’t see the masses rushing to talk to them about their lust and their gluttony and their failures and their griefs. Our minds tell us that those are secret and private. Our culture is in agreement: Hide it away! And we get no arguments from our own pride and shame.
The kingdom of God – and all the healing and life that come with it – doesn’t work well with a lot of secrets. 1 John has a lot to say about living in the light and bringing things into the open – stuff that goes against natural human inclination.
So when we are trying to move people away from shame and ‘into the light’, we need to be aware that we are not just overcoming church culture, but also the broader culture and human tendencies. And that leads us back to thinking about the questions I asked in part one of this little series.
10 February 2008 Jeff Gill
tags: church,
failure,
grief,
leadership,
shame
More shame on you
The thing about shame is that it is easy to apply and often gives good immediate results. But it has no power to effect long-term change, and it stands completely in opposition to the ways of God.
Keep reading
10 February 2008 Jeff Gill
tags: church,
leadership,
shame
Shame on you! And while I'm at it, let me give you some condemnation and rejection as well
In my experience, there are a number of life issues and sins-that-so-easily-beset-us that the evangelical church really stinks at addressing. We’re good at inspirational messages about How To Succeed and How To Get Over It (and those are often useful and necessary). We are very good at shock and shame and savagery when people Don’t Succeed and Don’t Get Over It. But we are not so good at teaching people How To Fail, nor are we very good at coming alongside the failures among us and walking with them into success. We are really bad at understanding Getting Over It and what an ordeal that actually is.
Keep reading
10 February 2008 Jeff Gill
tags: church,
failure,
grief,
humans,
leadership,
shame
You are such an asset to the body
—on a greeting card to Christine from a church* member who is obviously much more pure of thought than we are.
*From our former church in Tucson, Arizona, USA, not i61.
30 January 2008 Jeff Gill
tags: church,
quotes,
silly
Eight subversions of Christianity
Greg Boyd, my favourite pastor that I don’t know, wrote in his blog earlier this week about a book he read called The Subversion of Christianity by Jacques Ellul.
In his review Greg writes that the church has been subverted by success, money, morality, religion, pragmatism, violence, politics, power.
Every one of these things is realised in the kingdom of God, just not in the way or the timing that we humans necessarily want it to be. That’s what makes us so susceptible to temptation. We are so easily like Abraham with Ishmael, Saul with the pre-battle sacrifice. But we can be like Jesus when satan offered him easy shortcuts to everything God was giving him.
Have a read of Greg’s post, then come back here for a quick look at the good things that are subverted by each of these eight things and what implications they have for a life of following Jesus in our time.
Success God’s dream for the world has always been for the whole world – from Adam (fill the earth) to Abraham (all the nations of the world will be blessed in you) to Jesus (my house shall be a house of prayer for all nations; go into all the world…) to the apostles (God desires all people to be saved). The temptation is to try and make it happen by dumbing down the good news: Say a prayer, buy a T-shirt, you’re in the club. Salvation is transformation and that rarely happens while being swept along in the emotion of a giant crowd. The good news is for the whole world, one real connection with God at a time.
Money The bible talks so much about money. It is full of promises about our needs being met, about us having an abundance. But ‘all these things’ are added as a side-effect of seeking God’s kingdom, and we freely receive so that we may freely give. The temptation is to make the side-effect the goal.
Morality Living a moral life is not the aim. Living a life abandoned to God is the aim. The Kingdom of God is a return to eating from the tree of life. Goodness is a by-product of God’s kind of life. The temptation to base life on ethics and morality looks so good. It is so safe and easy. But it has no power to enable us to live a life that is truly good. The rules are a wall that separate us from really knowing the source of goodness. That brings us neatly to…
Religion Paul writes about people holding on to a form of godliness but denying its power. That’s a good definition of religion. There is this urge in people to be like God. That makes sense; we are made in his image. Religion gives us a set of boxes to tick in order to be like God. It gives us a feeling of accomplishment. Except that it doesn’t in the long run. Religion grows and looks for more and more behaviours to control. Look at God’s original terms of covenant with Israel – three chapters in Exodus. Look at what it turned into by the time Israel got to their land – Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. Religion’s promise of making us like God or pleasing to God is a false one. Jesus said once that the one necessary thing was sitting and being with him. Fact is, it is a lot easier to try and define life with rules.
Pragmatism God has been at work to fix the world ever since sin came into it. We humans have a natural desire to join him in it. The problem is that we stink at fixing the world. The thing that fixes the world is the spread of the kingdom of God. That doesn’t make sense to our natural minds though. What makes sense is: I see a problem; I’ll try to fix it. And then it gets more broken, giving us more to fix and so on, leaving us completely distracted from the real answer. Living and spreading the Kingdom of God causes the world to be fixed without all our clever efforts
Violence See my upcoming post Hooray for violence.
Politics It’s religion, it’s fixing the world, it’s being willing to be bought (even though we’ve already been bought by God for an infinite price), it’s playing by the rules of this world’s system (which guarantees we lose*), it is ultimately a quest for…
Power Jesus says, you shall receive power. Paul writes about God’s power working mightily within us. People want power. It’s one of those built-in things that goes with our God-given mandate to take care of the earth. Once again, the temptation is to try to seize power. But the power that God promises is the power to be his witnesses, the power to lay down our lives for others. It’s funny how unpopular that kind of power is. Nevermind that it is the same power that Jesus had, the only power powerful enough to reach the world, to remove the fear of lack, to make us good like God, to connect us with God, to fix the world, and to defeat evil.
We Christians, if we are willing to let God change our minds about almost everything, could actually be the kind of humans God designed us to be.
—
*for an example of how to win by not playing by the rules, look at David fighting Goliath.
17 January 2008 Jeff Gill
tags: books,
church,
greg boyd,
humans
Halloween: the Christian's second most important holiday
Easter is, of course, the winner. Without the death and resurrection of Jesus there would be no Christianity. That is important to celebrate.
I am relegating Christmas to the number three spot because it is owned by commerce. Yes, Christmas is a wonderful family holiday. Yes, we Christians celebrate the incarnation of God (even though Jesus never said we should). Yes, I love Christmas. But frankly, we Christians just don’t own it anymore. The shops do.
We don’t own Halloween either, but we could.
I grew up hearing about the evils of Halloween – satan worship, demons, razor blades in apples – not from my parents, but from the Christian culture I lived in. I grew up going to Halloween alternative events, having lots of fun in my bible character costume, knowing that I was safe from all the devil-worshiping psychos that were certain to get me if I dared to risk knocking at the doors of the heathens in my neighbourhood.
Then one year I tried it, and I didn’t die.
As soon as my son was old enough (3) I introduced him to the joys of trick-or-treating. That was when I started realising that Halloween is the second most important holiday for Christians.
Jesus said there are two commands that matter: love God and love your neighbour. The Easter holiday is all about the first command. Halloween is all about the second.
What other day of the year can you put on funny clothes and be welcomed at your neighbour’s house? In my neighbourhood Halloween is the only day of the year that that people actually get out of their houses and chat with the neighbours that they don’t know. It is a night of celebrating community.
In the neighbourhood behind our church they throw a party at the shop and lots of people come out and have a great time. That’s where we went trick-or-treating last year.
On Halloween people let down their guard and come out of their houses. And unlike Christmas, it is not fraught with expectations and busy-ness. So here is my plan of how Christians are going to take over Halloween:
Full disclosure: I will be on holiday over Halloween this year, so for me this is more of a memo for 2008.
1. Ignore the demons and the occultists. (Almost) no one else in your neighbourhood cares in the least about that stuff. They are interested in costumes and sweets. Paul tells us to overcome evil with good, not with huddled prayer meetings in the church basement. If you want a prayer meeting, do it on the 30th. If you want to do some real spiritual warfare, put on some silly clothes and go hang out with your neighbours.
2. Cancel your anti- and alternative events. In the words of Disney’s little mermaid, ‘I want to be where the people are.’ Hint: they live around you in those house-shaped things. Stay home, put some pumpkins in the window, hand out a bunch of sweets (not tracts!) and have a nice chat with all the witches and axe-murderers that come by. Even better, go outside and meet the little ghouls’ parents lurking at the bottom of the drive.
3. Be positive and proactive. Find out in advance where the nervous old people live. Let them know that there will be adults out and about and that you will keep an eye on their house. Have some extra glowsticks to give to kids who need to be more visible. Find good places to hide so you can jump out and scare the trick-or-treaters. If you are feeling really ambitious, have an open house/garden with games and hot chocolate and snacks.
4. Check your motivation. You are doing this because God commands us to love people, not because you are trying to score crowns in heaven by getting converts. People can smell a rat a mile away.
5. Make Halloween the starting place. Probably sometime over the course of the evening you will meet somebody and there will be a bit of a connection. Go with it. Invite them to join you for bonfire night. Have their kid over to play with yours. Give the relationship opportunity to grow. And remember it is about loving people, not converting them. That is the Holy Spirit’s job.
Doesn’t that sound like a lot more fun (and useful) than anything else you could be doing Halloween night?
19 October 2007 Jeff Gill
tags: church,
holidays
Youth Ministry is broken, but should we fix it?
Youth ministry as it is practiced today (in North America and the UK, at least) is a failed experiment. I’m not the first person to say this. Mike Yaconelli, who was a major youth ministry guru in the USA, said it back in 2003. A lot of other people have been saying it too…
Keep reading
13 February 2007 Jeff Gill
tags: church,
youth
Shout it from the rooftops
Photo: Bailbrook Mission Church, Bailbrook, Bath, © Alasdair Ogilvie
This will get them flocking in on a Sunday.
8 February 2007 Jeff Gill
tags: church