Morons!
Paul Mayers posted this parable over at Deep Church. I am reposting it here with his kind permission because it is brilliant and I want it to launch me back into writing more about abundance culture.
I can almost hear Jesus saying…
‘A man and women walk into starbucks, pay £8 to sip their skinny latte and chi tea. They leave feeling less thirsty and more virtuous having discussed their spiritual journeys and resolve that in this space they can be truly free. Before parting they agree to meet back there at the same time next week where they will this time discuss how to resolve world hunger over a chocolate muffin and a piece of blueberry cheesecake. Who do you think is richer for this experience, the economy of God or the economy of the market?’
At once Peter spoke up, ‘Guru, you have made me think that if we offer free muffins and better coffee we will be able to attract more followers, for as you have said men and women need more than just Dunkin Donuts alone.’
‘No, no,’ said Judas, who managed the on-line bank account and charitable donations, ‘We should buy shares in this starbucks. It would seem its business model is most profitable.’
The disciples began to bicker amongst themselves, one saying for the coffee plan and another for the investments, still a third argued that they should set up their own coffee shop chain and a fourth that maybe it would be better and edgier to run a pub or a tattoo parlour. Each one saying that their idea was more radical and counter cultral than the last.
Finally Jesus spoke again, ‘Oh you and your consumer ways! Do you not realise that you seek to take on the forms of this world rather than embody the values of my Father? For it is not about the coffee blend or the pastries that you consume but rather what it is that consumes you and gives your identity. Broad is the market and many who find it easy to be sold their identity from amongst its counter cultural niches. Morons! You are being consumer sheep not radical rebels. But I tell you, narrow is the way of true self formation, denying your right to your rights and instead following me.’
The disciples wondered at his words as they entered into the McDonald’s drive through…
21 March 2010 Jeff Gill
tags: abundance,
kingdom of god,
stories
In case you are not out partying this Saturday night
I’ve got a list of things to write about abundance culture, but I’m finding it very hard to make myself carve out a bit of time and do it. So instead, here are three provocative questions that have been swirling through my brain for a while.
- Is patriotism idolotry?
- Does the doctrine of annihilationism have any validity?
- If they had the chance, would Jesus and Paul oppose each other’s theology?
6 March 2010 Jeff Gill
tags: eternity,
jesus,
kingdom of god,
paul
We split and split and split again.
The gospel of grace and the gospel of the kingdom must be joined together. In the Gospels, these two are never separated. Only in later years does it seem that those who have heard the gospel of grace know little or nothing of the gospel of the kingdom. Thus the two have been separated. But the time is ripe for them to be united, so that people are thoroughly saved, forsaking everything and wholly consecrating themselves to the Lord.
—Watchman Nee, Release of the Spirit
23 January 2010 Jeff Gill
tags: kingdom of god,
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
St Paul the socialist?
‘Our desire is not that others might be relieved while you are hard pressed, but that there might be equality. At the present time your plenty will supply what they need, so that in turn their plenty will supply what you need. The goal is equality, as it is written: “The one who gathered much did not have too much, and the one who gathered little did not have too little.”’ (2 Corinthians 8:13-15, TNIV)
Put that in your pipe and smoke it hard, because that does not fit well at all with typical Western Christianity.
18 November 2009 Jeff Gill
tags: giving,
kingdom of god
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
Everyone should watch this video...
…especially those of us who are American Christians.
Yes, but it’s too naïve and idealistic.
Oh, you mean kind of like that guy Jesus Christ was when he thought he could save the world by dying for it? Isn’t he the one we’re supposed to be following?
20 July 2009 Jeff Gill
tags: kingdom of god,
music,
non-violence,
video
Faith like a child
Since Easter, in my Sunday School class we have been talking about the garden of Eden.
Yes, that is a long time to talk about a garden, maybe. But… God’s plan for the world, for people, for animals – I found it quite amazing and I’m glad the kids seemed to feel the same way, but, So many questions!
Jesus said,“I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven”
I have been told that the meaning of this is that you have to have un-questioning faith. That you just accept.
Ummm… Have you ever spent any time around children? Starting at toddler-hood a favourite word is ‘why’.
The ball is round
Why?
Because in order for it to roll smoothly and in the direction that you want it to roll it needs to be.
Why?
Because, if it wasn’t round then when you kick it it would just go a way that you didn’t mean for it to.
Why?
Umm – I just told you why. Twice!
Why?
Because you asked me to
Why?
Because you are very curious.
Why?
Because you are a child, you want to know all there is to know and you want to know it right now and apparently you want me to tell you!
Why?
I don’t know, But I don’t have all the answers.
Why?
Cos… I’m not God!
My own kids, and my church kids have so many questions. Often I just don’t have the answers, and I won’t pretend to either. But I will do my best to encourage them to keep asking questions, keep looking for answers.
Whoever seeks shall find. They will know so much more than I do. Thank Goodness.
Maybe also Jesus was talking about the enthusiasm of a child. I watched their faces light up as they learned about this perfect place before sin. I showed them a drawing of the garden, one child piped up, ‘That’s silly! there’s a fox lying down beside a rabbit. That wouldn’t happen.’
‘There was no death in the Garden of Eden, the rabbit was perfectly safe to lie with the fox.’
‘Wow!’
The rest of our short lesson consisted of the kids talking about which animals they would put together if life was like it was then. Their imaginations were going nuts!
We came back to that many, many times over the next few weeks. I shared stories of the exploits of my cat Max, whose favourite thing ever is to devour small animals, and I have heard many stories of their own pets and the blood and gore they get into!
If only life could be as it was at the beginning. You can see the longing in them – for perfection, for freedom, for that ability to walk in the garden with God.
Last Sunday we talked about how the people were sent from the garden, we talked about bloodshed and shame and him blaming her and… it was very quiet in the room.
At craft time we had clay Snakes and pictures of Adam and Eve sad and shameful with their leaves and furs. One boy just looked at his paper and said, ‘I want to draw but I don’t know what to draw’
‘What part of the story sticks in your mind from today?’
‘I don’t know’
‘Okay, just take a little time and go over the story in your mind and as you are doing that, ask yourself how you feel and try to see if you can get that feeling onto the paper.’
This is his picture:
15 July 2009 Christine Gill
tags: children,
faith,
kingdom of god,
non-violence,
shame,
stories
Jesus loves everyone?
Jesus Loves Everyone from Jeff Gill on Vimeo.
I filmed this with my 10-12 year-old group on Friday. We showed it at our Sunday meeting today and I spoke on the scandalous love of Jesus. Substitute a few names, and you’ve got a sketch that is guaranteed to get people thinking. Greg Boyd would be proud.
5 July 2009 Jeff Gill
tags: drama,
kingdom of god
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
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
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
Seth Godin on Doing
I like this post by Seth Godin because it fits very well with the things I’m seeing in Luke about the doingness of following Jesus.
If it acts like a duck (all the time), it’s a duck. Doesn’t matter if the duck thinks it’s a dog, it’s still a duck as far as the rest of us are concerned.
Authenticity, for me, is doing what you promise, not ‘being who you are’.
That’s because ‘being’ is too amorphous and we are notoriously bad at judging that. Internal vision is always blurry. Doing, on the other hand, is an act that can be seen by all.
As the Internet and a connected culture places a higher premium on authenticity (because if you’re inconsistent, you’re going to get caught) it’s easy to confuse authentic behavior with an existential crisis. Are you really good enough, kind enough, generous enough and brave enough to be authentically a hero or leader?
Mother Theresa was an atheist, filled with self doubt. But she was an authentic saint, because she always acted like one.
You could spend your time wondering if what you say you are is really you. Or you could just act like that all the time. That’s good enough, thanks. Save the angst for later.
16 February 2009 Jeff Gill
tags: kingdom of god,
nt,
quotes
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
The way it actually is
The power of the gospel lies, not in the offer of a new spirituality or religious experience, not in the threat of hellfire (certainly not in the threat of being ‘left behind’) which can be removed if only the hearer ticks this box, says this prayer, raises a hand, or whatever… but in the powerful announcement that God is God, that Jesus is Lord, that the powers of evil have been defeated, that God’s new world has begun. This announcement, stated as a fact about the way the world is rather than an appeal about the way you might like your life, your emotions or your bank balance to be, is the foundation of everything else. Of course, once the gospel announcement is made, in whatever way, it instantly means that all people everywhere are gladly invited to come in, to join the party to discover God’s forgiveness for the past, an astonishing destiny for the future, and a vocation in the present.
—Tom Wright in Surprised by Hope
It is said that people generally listen to things that reinforce their own points of view. Surprised by Hope by Tom Wright is that kind of book for me. It has reinforced and invigourated the theology that I grew up with. It has reassured me that the things that are in my heart to do really are at the heart of the gospel. It has inspired me to do the work of God’s kingdom like almost nothing else. It has also challenged me to know what I really believe about God and God’s kingdom, because everything we do flows out of what we really believe. (The apostle John said something like that in one of his letters.)
READ THIS BOOK! (maybe even if you don’t think it will reinforce what you believe).
15 November 2008 Jeff Gill
tags: books,
god,
kingdom of god,
quotes
Thus saith the prophet Bono:
It`s extraordinary to me that the United States can find $700 billion to save Wall Street and the entire G8 can`t find $25 billion dollars to save 25,000 children who die every day from preventable diseases.
Okay, I don’t know if he is technically a prophet, but the issues he’s raising with the world’s leaders, seem pretty close to the heart of God.
10 November 2008 Jeff Gill
tags: communication,
kingdom of god,
quotes
John Piper's spectacular
This morning I listened to an interview (i.e. puff piece for his new book Spectacular Sins) with Dr John Piper. The interview finished and iTunes appropriately chose Pipe Dreams by Travis
I read it all, every word
And I still don’t understand a thing…
Three things stood out to me in this interview:
1. The insanity of his understanding of God If God is like the god that John Piper describes, active rebellion against him is the only righteous position to take.
2. A very interesting insight into Judas’s betrayal of Jesus Judas was a man to whom Jesus gave authority to cast out demons. He not only lived with Jesus, he ministered healing and freedom to people with the authority that Jesus gave him; yet he chose the money over the relationship and the power.
3. John Piper and I have the same heart At the close of the interview he said that the reason he wrote the book was to enable a faith that could handle the really big, life-shattering bad/evil events that people too often have to live through.
I want to enable that same robust faith in people. That is what motivates me when I tell a woman that her friend’s child didn’t die because God killed them. I want people to know the God who triumphs over evil, not a god who invented evil and who uses it at a tool to make people glorify him. When I tell people that science and Scripture are not at war it is because I want students to know the God who isn’t afraid of the fossil record and the unravelling mystery of DNA. When I embrace a partially open future it is because I believe in a God whose infinite wisdom and insight and power is actually infinite enough to give human beings a true free will.
John Piper and I believe nearly opposite things about the nature of God. I see his theology as based on a logic so convoluted that it could only be suited for designing Russian motorway junctions. He boldly characterises many of my core beliefs as weak, spineless and false. (I’m talking about the beliefs here, not my holding of them. I don’t think John Piper knows I exist.) Both of us are convinced that our opposite beliefs offer better, more helpful and truer answers about the condition of the world and the nature of God.
Yet the marvellous thing is that we are both motivated by love for God and an earnest desire to see God’s kingdom come on earth. I have been writing this post in bits throughout the afternoon and evening, and the more I think about it the more I am shocked and humbled by the generosity of God. As far as I can tell he lets both of us stay in his family. He gives both of us meaningful work to do for his kingdom. It is conceivable that He even calls both of us his friends. That would mean I probably should think about calling John Piper my friend, even though that doesn’t fill well with thing number one.
I’d rather call him a heretic and overturn his URL, but I don’t think God offers that as a valid option.
20 October 2008 Jeff Gill
tags: faith,
god,
greg boyd,
kingdom of god
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
When Jesus talks about the truth...
When Jesus talks about the truth, he talks about life. The truth is what brings life. My axiom for today is that Christianity at its core doesn’t explain life but it brings life. We must thus ask whether our beliefs and actions bring life, healing and love to the people in the world. To bring live into the world is to know God for God is love. This is not the knowledge of creeds and theology but the knowledge of a transforming relationship with the source of all love. Truth in Christianity is thus different from the way we understand truth in the world, for the truth of Christianity is life, not description.
—Peter Rollins
13 September 2008 Jeff Gill
tags: kingdom of god,
quotes
The Mustang 4
In 1992 I went on three short mission trips, two to Moscow, Russia and one to Caracas, Venezuela. My Mustang paid for two of them. It wasn’t hard for me to sell the car. What was hard was a few months earlier when I gave the car to God so that he could use it however he wanted.
The reason for a Christian to have stuff is to build the kingdom of God. Stuff can only make me actually happy when I am using it for that reason.
It was hard to give my car to God, but I had more happiness from that decision than I ever had from driving it. I had more benefit from travelling to Russia and Venezuela with the good news of Jesus than I ever had from travelling around my own city in a cool car.
Photo by Jozef Beckley
3 September 2008 Jeff Gill
tags: giving,
kingdom of god
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 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
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
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
A sort of prayer
Floyd and Sally McClung are approaching retirement age. Not too long ago Floyd gave up the pastorate of a pretty swish church in Missouri, USA to go live in a crummy South African township and teach local people how to plant and lead house churches.
I would give up everything if I could know how to do that AND I could do it with my family in a way that flowed from and was swimming in grace.
It is not about location or travel. I’m perfectly happy to be in North Wales forever. It is about love for ‘the least’. It is about throwing a banquet and inviting the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind instead of worrying about how good my seat is at the party I’ve been invited to.
I can see that I am selfish, critical, lazy and scared of people. I’m scared to talk to people about Jesus when I’m not performing on stage. I want to be rich and famous. But what I would rather want is to not care at all about those things. I would rather want to spend my life connecting the people that society doesn’t value with the life and kingdom of God.
To me the greatest gift in the world would be to be full of the love of Jesus and to spend the rest of my life with my family sharing that love with people that ‘don’t matter’.
Otherwise what is the point of my continuing to be a Christian?
4 June 2008 Jeff Gill
tags: community,
kingdom of god,
prayer
Justice
And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth? —Luke 18:7-8, TNIV
What justice can I cry out for? What injustice do I see?
The insurance company that didn’t pay out for my claim?
The guy who jumped the queue at the petrol station?
The fact that Jesus hasn’t bought me an iPhone yet?
The greatest injustice that I can see in the world is a judgement that is not being enforced – God’s judgement that every person can experience his life because of Jesus’s death and resurrection.
It is unjust that I have a relationship with God, but my neighbours do not. It is unjust if I have found freedom from a life controlling problem through Christ and my friends have not. It is unjust if I am facing life enfolded in God’s grace while the people around me are living a lonely struggle. Anywhere that I am experiencing the life of God and someone else isn’t is deeply offensive to God and should be to me.
Let us cry out to God day and night that God would bring about this justice for us. Jesus says we will get justice, and quickly.
3 June 2008 Jeff Gill
tags: kingdom of god,
prayer
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
Sunday evening reading
Tia Lynn has started a very promising series on God’s design for women at Abandon Image. She starts here with good definitions of egalitarianism and complementarianism. Her second post speaks brilliantly about NOT glorifying the consequences of the curse of Genesis 3. And I love the fourth post about Deborah. It shows the things you can find in the bible when you are willing to put aside your grid and read what the text actually says.
Greg Boyd has written a very good (and long) review of Chuck Colson’s latest book God and Government: An Insider’s View on the Boundaries Between Faith and Politics.
9 March 2008 Jeff Gill
tags: blogging,
books,
greg boyd,
kingdom of god,
women