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
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
Orientationism
We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person oriented society.
—Dr Martin Luther King Jr, April 1967
I posted this quote on Facebook last week, and a friend responded with this: ‘A noble step, but aren’t those both self-oriented? Wouldn’t an ideal-oriented or God-oriented society be better?’ Those are good questions, and they deserve good answers. Unfortunately, he is stuck with mine.
Let’s start with Jesus. As Christians, he is the one we are following. He is is the person that we are called be be like. It is his life in us that is working to transform us from the inside out to be like him.
Jesus is also our best picture of what God is like. The writer of Hebrews tells us that he is the exact representation of God. Jesus told his disciples, if you have seen me, you have seen the Father. To know what God is like, we look at Jesus.
How was Jesus’ life oriented? The obvious answer is that he was God-oriented. He said that he only did what he saw the Father doing.
What did he see the Father doing?
He saw that God loved the world so much that he gave his one and only son. That one and only son gave himself, both in his life and his death, to save people. God made a way through Jesus for people to be saved from the corruption that runs through all of creation, to begin becoming what God originally intended humans to be. And through Jesus he has given us the mandate to spread that saving life throughout his creation.
From the creation story to the end of time, the story of God is the story of God working with people. God is utterly, relentlessly people-oriented. For us to be God-oriented, we cannot be anything other than people-oriented. That is the major theme of the book of 1 John. (Quick, everyone, read it! It will only take you about 15 minutes.)
But can people-orientation be self-oriented? I suggest trying it for a day and then reporting back, if you are not too exhausted from giving yourself away! Being people-oriented is death to yourself.
So, yes, like Jesus we are are to be God-oriented – that is the only way to successfully be people oriented. But if our God-orientation does not cause us to look like Jesus giving his life away to save the world, we are looking at some idol rather than God.
What about being ideal-oriented?
There was once a group of people who were so desperate to live the way God wanted them to that they determined to do whatever it took to make their lives line up with what God wanted. They looked unflinchingly at every part of their lives and anything that did not conform to God’s commands, they changed. They were zealous, radical idealists for God. They felt that if their idealolgy could spread through their culture, then God’s kingdom would come on earth.
Those people were called Pharisees.
The opposed everything that Jesus did. The tried to shut him down. They plotted to and with the help of the rest of the religious establishment did kill Jesus.
Ideology always ends with killing. The ideals take over, and they come before God, and they come before people. Pick any ideology – pharisaism, crusaderism, inquistionism (I’m making some of these words up), nazism, communism, fascism, socialism, humanism, capitalism, islamism, neo-calvinism, missionalism – and take a look at what happens to the people who don’t fit or can’t embrace the ideology. They get killed. Dead. Maybe not literally dead, maybe ‘just’ marginalised or demonised or shut out. Whatever. It’s death.
Jesus didn’t do -isms. He refused to be made king of any cause. John tells us that he knew the kind of stuff that what in human hearts, so he did not entrust himself to any group of people. But he never stopped giving life to people and calling them to the kingdom of God.
People like ideologies. It makes life simpler. Adhering to an idea is not so messy as giving life to people. What if there was an ideology that could bring life to anyone? That would be nice for us.
How about this one: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength; and love people just like you love yourself.
We could probably get away with an ideology like that.
6 March 2009 Jeff Gill
tags: humans,
kingdom of god
Finding life purpose
A friend on Facebook is wondering what her purpose is and asked for suggestions. After my awesomely silly answer involving cetaceans, I started thinking seriously. How do you discover purpose in life? It is something I’ve spent a lot of time on over the years. Back in the days of my naive idealism is taught teenagers how to Get A Vision for their lives. Since then, I have discovered I’m a lot happier not having a vision for my life and a lot of other people feel the same way. But purpose is different. I want purpose. I want to feel that what I spend my days doing what Actually Matters. Probably you do too. So for the benefit of the public I present, helpful or not:
Jeff’s Quick and Dirty Very Christian Guide to Discovering Purpose in life
God’s mission. God is on a mission to redeem his creation – short version: John 3:16 – and God invites us to join him in that mission – short version: Matthew 28:18-20. If God made you and God made you to relationship with him and God is on a mission, a big clue (the big clue!) to what best suits you in life will be found in the mission of God.
STEP ONE: Devote yourself to understanding and living for the mission of God.
God’s process in you. The Apostle Paul wrote that God began a good purpose in the Philippians and God would be faithful to complete it. Jesus said that a fully trained disciple would be like their master. A life lived in God and following Jesus is a process of transformation. It is the journey towards becoming fully human, for that is what God saved us to be.
STEP TWO: Embrace God’s process in you with all its joy and pain and glory and hard work and transformation.
Your personality, gifts and interests. God’s mission is very big, and you are very small. Who you are as an individual will have a lot to do with where you specifically fit in God’s mission. An artist won’t play the same part as an accountant. (Duh.) If you haven’t done so, you should probably take a good personality and/or spiritual gifts test. When you know who you are and what your strengths are, you are better able to use them for advancing of God’s mission.
STEP THREE: Put your personality, gifts and interests to work in service of the mission of God.
What I don’t mean in step three is that you should go on staff at a church. What I do mean is that when devotion to God’s mission is connected with embracing God’s transformation programme and a real understanding of who you are, remarkable things start to happen right where you are. Ideas appear. Possibilities emerge. Opportunities open. You find that you very naturally begin to feel that your life is lived with purpose and meaning
STEP FOUR: Enjoy the ‘slow magic’.
It’s not really magic, of course. It is cooperating with God and being led in a missional direction and embracing everything that means and one day noticing that somehow along the way you have discovered a deep and meaningful purpose for your life. It’s simple. It’s not even slightly easy on a lot of days, but it is simple. And you can start right now.
23 February 2009 Jeff Gill
tags: change,
humans,
kingdom of god
This is not the blitz. We have not been evacuated.
We just came back from a week’s holiday on a farm in the cotswolds. The cottage we booked was a converted dairy barn with a wall of big windows and three bedrooms. There was one problem. When we arrived we were shown into another end of the converted barn with almost no windows and two bedrooms. The cottage we had booked was not available. Other people were staying in it. We were not happy.
The manager was semi-aplogetic. He made a call to the owner to see what could be done. Nothing. He asked us to stay where we were for the night and speak to the owner in the morning when she was at the farm.
We went to bed thinking we would sort it out in the morning, get a fair bit of our money back and get on with enjoying our stay, even though the accomodation wasn’t as good as we wanted.
In the morning the owner did not come to see us. By the time I went looking for her she was gone. She did tell the manager that there would be no compensation for us.
Later in the afternoon, when we were somewhere with a phone signal, I called her. She explained to me that when we changed the date of our holiday – something a school schedule prompted this; she seemed very accomdating at the time – she had mentioned a cottage was available, but she didn’t say it was a different cottage because I didn’t seem interested. She corrected me when I told her that the two cottages were qualitatively different. She complained to me about how she lost a week of income because we booked from Friday to Friday instead of Saturday to Saturday – nevermind that she offered it to me. She complained more about how I took so long to confirm the date change by post – nevermind that she didn’t tell me that this was more important to her booking process than just record-keeping. She boasted to me about what a good job she was doing to make our holiday nice. She scolded me in tones of a teacher disappointed with a young student for even calling her instead of just getting on with our holiday. She finished by hoping (her voice sounded more like expecting) that when she came back to the farm later in the week that we would be enjoying ourselves instead of moping around. She pettily offered £10 back because our cottage was a bit cheaper.
Explain. Correct. Complain. Complain. Boast. Scold. Hope. Pettiness. I was glad get be off the phone!
One simple thing could have prevented this situation: One piece of information. The owner could have told me that if we changed dates we would have to change cottages.
Another simple thing could have fixed it: Mr Gill, so I’m sorry for the mix-up. What can I do to make this right?
If she had done that, she would have had fans. We would have come back. As it is she held on to a few pounds, sent our estimation of her into the cellar, and earned a letter to the local tourist board.
There are two lessons here for me and the rest of us.
1. Information is power. Power is better shared.
2. Saying, I’m sorry, and meaning it works wonders. Remember what my dad says: You don’t have to be wrong to apologise. Sometimes – a lot of the time – it is about understanding someone else’s pain.
(The rest of the holiday was lovely.)
6 December 2008 Jeff Gill
tags: communication,
failure,
humans
Not everything must change
I like change, but if EVERYTHING changed I’d end up sucking my thumb and rocking in the corner. If everything changed, I would lose my frame of reference. I would be lost.
A person with extraordinary capacity for change might be able to handle a change of nearly everything, but they wouldn’t be able to bring anyone along with them into their new world. One significant change that people can handle is better. After you make one change, you can do another.
When we started i61, (our church) we didn’t change everything. We didn’t even change most things. What we believe is unremarkably evangelical. In our meetings we sing songs at the beginning of the meeting, have notices in the middle, then a message (sermon) from a pastor or guest speaker, and a song to close. Just like lots of other churches the children go to their own time during the message. Just like lots of other churches we having smaller meetings during the week that cater to people of various ages and interests. On one level i61 is just like any other church in Britain.
We did change some things though. We decided to build a church that would be inviting to people who aren’t steeped in church culture. We rejected a traditional church meeting place in favour of a pub. We replaced Christian lingo that only a few people could understand with everyday language that most everyone can understand. We focus on talking about what the bible has to say about subjects that have to do with everyday life rather than what we have to say about our theological interests. We are relentless in our drive to make i61 a place where anyone can be supported in their own faith journey, even if they don’t yet have any faith in God.
We (and here I must give most of the credit for our foundational values to Steve and Gill and Lee and Sarah Houghton) didn’t change everything. We only changed some of the things that were keeping people away from church. The result is a church-in-a-pub that is stuffed to capacity with people who are excited about God or are open to the idea of being excited about God.
You don’t have to change everything RIGHT NOW.
You don’t even have to change the most important thing right now. The other day I was listening to a head teacher who turned around a badly failing school talk about what he did first. He sorted out school’s problem with bus, car and pedestrian traffic flow. That wasn’t the most important thing to change, but it needed to be changed. And that was what the head teacher chose.
Choose one thing. Change it effectively. Bring the people you lead along with you. Repeat.
25 October 2008 Jeff Gill
tags: change,
humans,
i61
The inevitable election post
I voted. I get to do it early because I live in the United Kingdom and we are cooler over here, so we get to do things sooner. Or something.
I voted for Barack Obama. I’m going to tell you why, but first I’ll say this…
Keep reading
3 October 2008 Jeff Gill
tags: humans,
kingdom of god,
silly
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
Thinking in difficult directions
The thing about thinking about things like God being in control (see The Mustang 3) is that you can go in directions that you don’t necessarily want to go.
Like… what if you started pondering the two trees in the Garden of Eden. If God didn’t want Adam and Eve eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and did want them eating from the Tree of Life, does that have implications for the way we live? Does that mean that God does not want us to relate to the world in terms of Good and Evil? But isn’t that the way God and the universe is ordered? But wasn’t it different in the Garden? But…
See what I mean?
For several years before I became a vegetarian I actively refused to hear or think about animal welfare in food production. I had an inkling that it would take me in a direction that I didn’t want to go – away from meat. I was right, and eventually it did. But I’m much happier now that I have followed the direction of that thought than I was when I was resisting.
Are you resisting any directions of thinking because you have an inkling those thoughts will require you to change? I challenge you to grab your bible, be brave and go think the difficult thoughts you have been avoiding.
28 August 2008 Jeff Gill
tags: food,
humans,
kingdom of god
The Mustang 2 (2 as in Part 2, not the crummy 70s version of the car)
Here is the ‘Word of Faith’ version of how I got my Mustang.
My dad used to restore and sell Ford Mustangs, so as a young teenager I loved Mustangs and wanted one for my first car. I wanted a 1966 Honey Gold Fastback (2+2). I found a photo of one that looked just like what I wanted, and I hung it up in my bedroom. I asked God for that car, and I began to thank him for it every day.
My dad was pretty sure that I couldn’t afford a fastback for my first car. He said that I should buy and restore an ordinary six cylinder ’65 or ’66, sell it, take the profit, do it again, and then get my fastback. He knew what he was talking about too; Mustangs were the way he made a lot of his money.
I wasn’t having any of that. I hated working on cars and wanted to do as little of that as possible. Also, a year before I had given my life savings (about $500) to a friend to help pay for her Teen Mania mission trip. I had a claim on God for a lot of money. I could see the car, and it was mine.
Before too long my dad came across a 1965 fastback that looked pretty rough, but had a good body and engine. Almost simultaneously, he came across a wrecked 1965 coupe with a nearly new interior. Both for a reasonable price. To top it off, when we looked at the VIN code, we found that the original colour of the fastback was Honey Gold!
I prayed. I believed. I confessed. I got my car.
This is the appropriate place to insert ‘HALLELUJAH!’
Now here is the rest of the story.
1. I was claiming a 1966 Mustang. I got a 1965.
2. I was also after the oh-so-desirable styled steel wheels and fog lamps. I didn’t get those.
3. It didn’t just happen. Even though my dad didn’t think I could afford the car I was after, he was still looking for it.
4. My dad is very generous. He gave me the $1,500 profit from another car he fixed and sold.
5. He and I both put a huge amount of hot, greasy, sweaty time turning those two cars into one really great first car.
This is the point I want to make.
It is easy to tell a story like it is a triumph of good confession. It is easy to call something a miracle. It is easy to reduce all the hard work and human ingenuity that goes into a success to a breezy little sentence that no one notices. It is easy to get the impression that all you need to do to get what you want in life is to think the right thing and say the right thing.
The truth is that most ‘miracles’ involve an awful lot of hard work and sacrifice.
Finally.
I am very grateful for my time with that car. I am very grateful to God for making a universe that somehow responds to our faith. I am very grateful that my parents taught me to be bold and go after the things that I believe God wants for me. Most of all, I am grateful for my dad’s love and sacrifice that made my confessing and claiming look so good.
26 August 2008 Jeff Gill
tags: faith,
humans,
money,
youth
We make rhetoric out of arguments with others but we make poetry out of our arguments with ourselves.
—William Butler Yeats
10 August 2008 Jeff Gill
tags: humans,
quotes
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
How to fight fair
Some only slightly tongue in cheek lessons on how to fight fair taken from the sword fight in The Princess Bride. This was for our weekend meetings on the theme of conflict resolution.
30 June 2008 Jeff Gill
tags: humans,
i61,
silly,
video
What if...
- All the millions of dollars and hours spent over the last 35 years pointlessly trying to overturn Roe v. Wade had been spent on helping women who had or were at risk of having crisis pregnancies?
- All the millions of words used to attack and defend Todd Bentley had been offered up as prayers for people who don’t know Jesus or used in conversations with friends to share God’s love?
- The evening I frittered away reading arguments about Todd Bentley and looking at a clever new phone that I have no intention of buying had been spent doing something useful or interesting like finally watching Life on Mars or starting the project that I really want to do, but find intimidating?
- I didn’t do any frittering at all tomorrow?
10 June 2008 Jeff Gill
tags: humans,
kingdom of god
If just one person was saved...
…it was worth it was the way organisers of failed evangelical Outreach Events liked to comfort each other in my hometown Tucson, Arizona, the site of many failed evangelical Outreach Events. We planted some good seeds was also popular. But to use those platitudes someone has to show up at your event.
10 minutes before our neighbourhood craft event was supposed to start my son went round to his three friends’ houses to remind them like they asked him to the day before. None of them were home. Also not home were our new neighbours who told me the previous evening that they would probably come over.
I’m pretty sure this was the conversation in all four houses:
Mum: Hurry up and get your shoes on. You need to go.
Child: Is it time to go to the Gill’s carefully planned and super-fun neighbourhood craft event already?
Mum: No! You’re not going there. Didn’t you see the invitation? It had the name of a church on it. They’ll probably try to make you speak in tongues.
Child: So where am I going?
Mum: I don’t care. Why don’t you down to the park and look for discarded syringes and porn.
It was probably nothing like that. I’ve never come across any syringes or porn in our park. I know that reality is almost always more benign than what goes on in my head, but I’m nervous that our desire to share the life of God with our neighbours could turn us into the local freaks.
‘Darn the dang nerves!’ I say. We carry on. Maybe a barbecue next.
Or maybe I’ll just huddle at my laptop and write essays on Emerging Into a Theology to Support Missional Praxis in Postmodern Semi-Rural (Non)Community. That could be even more comforting than a platitude.
Finally,
Are you, or is anyone you know trying anything like this or sort of like this? How’s it going?
This is a great article on making friends with people rather than making projects of people.
The photos are by the brilliant Marya Figueroa aka emdot.
29 May 2008 Jeff Gill
tags: community,
humans,
kingdom of god
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
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.
2 May 2008 Jeff Gill
tags: blogging,
church,
humans
It's all been leading up to this moment
have this way of beginning sentences when they speak that makes me think they are announcing the conclusion of an Important Study. Their brains must be super laboratories, collecting data, testing every hypothesis, analysing the outcomes with a mental process made immensely powerful through years of experience. And when they speak they are not giving me an answer; they are giving Results and Findings.
If only we could all be so authoritative.
Actually, their secret is simple. I am going to share it with you right now.
Scientists start their sentences with So.
So when we look at the specimen…
So the pathology of the virus…
So the quantum state…
Two letters. One little word. That’s the difference between expressing an opinion and explaining the universe. Look:
So I’d like the vegetarian lasagne and a glass of the house red.
14 April 2008 Jeff Gill
tags: humans,
silly
Once something feels real, making it real is a lot easier.
—Seth Godin
19 March 2008 Jeff Gill
tags: humans,
quotes
...stuck in a linear rut, imposing patterns of one-way flow on a universe that consistently moves in circles
This has stirred up my thinking about a bunch of different things that I hope to write about soon, but for now this will serve as a good reminder for me.
28 February 2008 Jeff Gill
tags: humans,
john michael greer,
quotes
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
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
Parting your soup is not a miracle, Bruce, it's a magic trick.
—Morgan Freeman as God in Bruce Almighty. My favourite line in the film. (We do love the magic tricks, don’t we?)
Be the miracle!
Bonus:
8 January 2008 Jeff Gill
tags: films,
humans,
quotes
Everyone is stupid and wrong
Anyone who gets any position of leadership soon learns that people are stupid and wrong and stubborn.
Anyone who keeps any position of leadership…
Keep reading
8 January 2008 Jeff Gill
tags: humans,
leadership
Ah, Spring. The sun is shining. The trees are blossoming. The druids are writing blogs.
I don’t usually start the day wondering what The Grand Archdruid of the Ancient Order of Druids in America has to say, but you never know where the life (or the internet) will take you. A blog I read linked to this article about peak oil (basically, a so far accurate theory for predicting the rise, peak and decline of production in any oil field. This theory predicts that oil production for the whole earth will peak this decade.) The entire article was interesting, but this is what really caught my eye:
…human thought is mythic by its very nature. We think with myths, as inevitably as we see with eyes and eat with mouths. Thus any attempt to bring about significant social change must start from the mythic level, with an emotionally powerful and symbolically meaningful narrative, or it will go nowhere.
In other words, what really matters to people, what really creates change is
- the stories, not the facts
- the heart, not the head
- the love, not the being right
- the feelings, not the thoughts
You cannot bring someone into the family of God through a rational argument. They must come through Jesus, a person who told stories that touched people’s hearts. He showed love in ways that were meaningful to first century people — healing, feeding, casting out demons. He made people think, oh yes, but even more he aroused great feeling in people’s hearts.
The Grand Archdruid’s article, The Failure of Reason is longish, but excellent reading. Go check it out.
4 April 2007 Jeff Gill
tags: humans,
john michael greer
Community
I was 6 during the miners’ strike of 1984. I lived in a small mining village
I guess the strike probably affected me differently than it did my friends, whose dads worked in the mines. My father had been unemployed my whole life anyway.
It was one of the happiest times of my childhood…
Keep reading
9 February 2007 Christine Gill
tags: community,
humans