curiousdannii

What's wrong with multi-site churches

2011-05-18T22:05:00.000+10:00

At The Resurgence Gregg Allison has given a defense for multi-site churches. While his defense may address Mark Dever's concerns, it says nothing about what I think is wrong with multi-site churches: it stifles the principle of the priesthood of all believers.

The NT doesn't actually say very much about how we should do church or what our church meeting should be like. But one verse that clearly states the basics is 1 Corinthians 14:26:

When you come together, each one has a hymn, a lesson, a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation. Let all things be done for building up. (ESV)

God has given every Christian gifts, which we should use to build each other up, by encouraging, challenging, rebuking and teaching each other. A church meeting is simply the time when Christians get together to use their gifts at the same time.

Unfortunately many churches restrict how we can do that by limiting those who can be involved in the church meeting to a very small group, such as the minister and "worship leader". I am a believer both in lay preaching and flexible meeting structures because they allow more people to get involved. I suspect a house church done well would let even more people get involved, but regular churches can still make changes which let more people serve.

It gets worse though. Mars Hill Church is a multi-site church with 9 campuses. Each shares a video feed from the main campus, so that there is only one person teaching each week, and most of the time that's Mark Driscoll. Compared to regular churches that's 8 people with the gift of teaching who aren't being given the opportunity to serve their churches. Compared to an ideal church, hundreds if not thousands must be missing out. And that's wrong.

What's wrong with publishing ministries? Part 2

2010-08-15T01:52:00.000+10:00

Early this year I wrote about some of the problems I see in the Christian publishing world. This is a follow up.

My hope is for an eventual transformation and reform of the Christian publishing scene (and for secular publishing too!). No one could force such a thing, nor would that be desirable. Instead I am committed to opening accessibility for resources I produce (choosing for example to submit papers only to open access journals) and gently suggesting ideas to the other publishers I meet. Overall it's about giving up the rights our government grants us for the good of others. It's sacrificial, hard, and completely counter-cultural in this rights-obsessed society we live in. I'm convinced such changes are what we need, though the specific way in which each person will give up their rights will be different.

I want us to ask a hard theological question though: how does the thoroughly Biblical concept of supporting Christian ministry fit with copyright royalties? I believe it is a wrong model for financing ministry and could at times lead to problems. For those who are incredibly successful, it could lead to laziness or the idolising of wealth (those in Australia may have noted certain examples on TV this past week). For those who are not successful it could result in the end of their ministry. We wouldn't say that the William Careys of mission (perhaps those in Japan today) have failed if people don't come to know Christ, but we might say that a publisher has failed if its volumes don't sell.

More likely, for those whose publishing is a side ministry, is that the resources remain marginalised. An unfortunate example is Ruth Buchanan, whose music is unavailable on SongSelect, nor on her website. There is not even an option to purchase the albums online, but instead we must email her for more information. I honestly cannot see how this is good for anyone. Presumably Ruth receives a sufficient income from her other work/ministries, so if the default was that Christian resources were open then she would be no worse off, and my church would be using her work in our praises (and possibly supporting her, or some of our members might support her privately). If a publisher was in financial strife then rather than restricting access to their resources they would support raise as other ministries do.

I am not suggesting that we all completely quit using collecting agencies like CCLI, or whatever other strategies we have. But I do think more people would have access to our music if we told them they could freely download and use it from our websites. We could still keep the music on SongSelect etc. as well. I am for the opening and enabling of access to resources, so it makes no sense to close off one avenue which works now!

Recently I proposed to Garage Hymnal that they automatically grant to everyone the rights of the CCLI CCL and MRL (was PCL) licences. These licences don't effect album sales, instead they restrict what songs a church can sing on Sundays (and other days of the week!) Every person and every church should be free to sing good Biblical Christian music, without having to pay to put the words up on a projector. I proposed supporting them financially, matching what they currently get from those CCLI royalties, so that there would be no potential loss of income due to making their music available elsewhere as well. If ignoring royalties they were still at a stable financial position then reducing copyright restrictions should have no negative effect. And any bonus income from royalties could even be given to other ministries.

If you've read this and you believe Christian media resources are valuable, can I suggest that you do a number of things:

Please pray for a Christian author, musician or publisher that you know! Thank God for what he is doing through them, and that he continue to enable them to serve him.
Consider supporting them financially, not giving for the results of past work, but giving so that their future time may be free to serve God, no matter what the results might be.
Ask them to consider giving up some of the copyrights on their works, so that through their resources God's word might spread even further. A good possible licence might be the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs licence. It puts restrictions on using a work for commercial purposes and altering the work (so a work's doctrinal orthodoxy wouldn't be at risk) but otherwise gives you the freedom to share a work. Or perhaps they could just give the rights of the CCLI CCL and MRL to all, so that songs can be sung in church without restriction.
And if their business strategy so depends on royalties that their resources are only available to those who pay, challenge them to remove that dependence.
Finally, write to them, saying how their books or music teaches, encourages and challenges you, and that you're supporting them prayerfully and financially (if you are).

What's wrong with publishing ministries?

2010-01-10T22:10:00.004+10:00

So today when I was looking at the music I was playing for church I read this, and finally realised why I think CCLI is wrong: "This score is illegal unless used with a CCLI licence. Please don't undermine our ministry - support it!"

I've felt for a long time that there was something wrong with the CCLI model of music distribution, because it seemed to restrict and put up miles of red tape around what should be our free praise. But what could we do, it is what the law demands. But when I read this on the bottom of the sheet music I realised something I hadn't before, which is that these publishers are ministries, which now makes me even more convinced that the general publishing models they have are wrong.

I wondered whether Christian music composition should really be thought of as a ministry. It's not explicitly mentioned in the New Testament, but then there were musicians in the temple. More importantly, when it's done well the writing of good Biblical songs should be thought of as what the Bible calls a "word ministry".

The Bible describes and supports many forms of ministry: part time or full time, tent-making, asking for support, not asking for support. All of these are fine. What is not good is selling the gospel for personal profit (2 Corinthians 2:17.)

Now I can't say that the Bible definitely excludes the way most Christian publishers operate, but I think it does present a different way of supporting ministry. The main way is that other Christians support ministries, through prayer and financially, to enable the Christian workers to use all of their time to do God's work freely. To receive that work is entirely free - even if you do support them. But we don't support these authors, composers and publishers like that (usually). Instead of supporting them so they are free to work freely we instead buy the results of their ministry. And for the composers who wrote the music I played tonight there is basically no way at all in which I can benefit from their ministry other than paying for their music (or paying someone else to buy it.) This is wrong.

I am not sure I am seeing the whole Biblical picture here, and would love to be corrected. I want to call on all Christian publishers to change their distribution models. They are operating as secular publishers do, but instead they should operate as other ministry and mission agencies do - being supported by fellow Christians so they can afford their living essentials, while offering the products of their ministries for free. This doesn't mean they have to offer their big expensive books for free, just as if you requested a copy of your church's sermon they might ask for a dollar or two to cover the disc. But it does exclude charging much more than the cost price, because they are not getting a living from the profits of their work, but from being supported by other Christians. And there's no reason why they can't offer electronic copies of their resources for zero monetary cost.

Thank you to the few publishers which do offer all you have freely!

The worthlessness of Homo divinus

2009-09-03T13:18:00.002+10:00

But my acceptance of Adam and Eve as historical is not incompatible with my belief that several forms of pre-Adamic ‘hominid’ may have existed for thousands of years previously. These hominids began to advance culturally. They made their cave drawings and buried their dead. It is conceivable that God created Adam out of one of them. You may call them homo erectus. I think you may even call some of them homo sapiens, for these are arbitrary scientific names. But Adam was the first homo divinus, if I may coin a phrase, the first man to whom may be given the Biblical designation ‘made in the image of God’. Precisely what the divine likeness was, which was stamped upon him, we do not know, for Scripture nowhere tells us. But Scripture seems to suggest that it includes rational, moral, social, and spiritual faculties which make man unlike all other creatures and like God the creator, and on account of which he was given ‘dominion’ over the lower creation.

So says John Stott (quoted by Terry Gray.) Ideas like this seem to be more prevalent and popular now than ever before. If I can paraphrase the idea in my own words it would be that God caused modern man, Homo divinus, to evolve from the aspiritual, non-image-bearing Homo sapiens. There is much disagreement about how quick that process was, whether it happened to one man or a community, and what their moral state was (did they stop their "sinful" ways, or did they continue once they became enlightened?) But the overall idea is the same.

I do not think this idea is even worth our time considering. No one I've seen propose this idea seems interested in doing the Biblical texts justice. Yes there is a broad spectrum of interpretations for Genesis 1-3, from the strictest 24 hour creationist to the allegorical frameworkist. But I think Homo divinus makes all interpretations of Genesis meaningless. What it proposes is so totally different to the text that any interpretation is both possible but also deeply disconnected from reality. It even loses its strength as a polemic, both in ancient times and now (for how can it be one, when it agrees in every detail with the theories of the day?)

Let me give one example to show why I think Homo divinus is worthless. In Genesis 2 God created the first human, Adam. In verse 7 God forms him out of dust and then "breathed into his nostrels the breath of life; and man became a living being." The Homo divinus interpreter would say that this refers to when man first became enlightened. Whether gradually or in an instant, God gives the man/humanity his breath or spirit, and man is made aware of God. It literally says that God inspired man! After this point man is fundamentally different from all the other creations, he is made in the God's image.

But wait a sec, what does the Hebrew say? It says that he became a לנפש חיה, a nephesh chay, or a 'living soul'. חי, chay 'living', is used to refer to all life. It is used throughout the Bible, mostly to refer to living creatures, but sometimes also to 'living water'. נפש, nephesh 'soul', refers not just to humans, but also animals. It is used through Genesis 1, in Genesis 9 when God gives the command to never eat blood, and then in the foundational Leviticus 17 which expands on that commandment, calling blood the "life (nephesh) of all flesh." Genesis 2:7 could just as literally be translated to say that "man became a living animal."

How can the Homo divinus interpreter read this meaningfully? They can't interpret it literally of course, that goes against the whole idea that Homo divinus wasn't created directly from dust. But how can they interpret it allegorically either? Yes God did inspire man at that time, but the end result was that man would be a living animal, exactly what he was before. Man's enlightenment produces no changes, or at least none the author of Genesis 2 thought worth mentioning. I'd be interested in hearing other interpretations of this passage, but I can't see how a Homo divinus interpretation could do it justice, when even interpreted in the most ahistorical way possible the Hebrew words just go against their whole premise.

Don't waste your time with Homo divinus. It's a pathetic attempt at an interpretive framework.

First translation

2009-04-17T01:31:00.003+10:00

So I thought I'd practice some translation for my upcoming exam. Here's Luke 15:8-9:

8 Ἢ τίς γυνὴ δραχμὰς ἔχουσα δέκα, ἐὰν ἀπολέσῃ δραχμὴν μίαν, οὐχὶ ἅπτει λύχνον καὶ σαροῖ τὴν οἰκίαν καὶ ζητεῖ ἐπιμελῶς ἕως ὅτου εὕρῃ; 9 καὶ εὑροῦσα συνκαλεῖ τὰς φίλας καὶ γείτονας λέγουσα· συνχάρητέ μοι, ὅτι εὗρον τὴν δραχμὴν ἣν ἀπώλεσα.

Ἢ τίς γυνὴ δραχμὰς ἔχουσα δέκα,
Okay, so the first thing I noticed was ἐχ, our favourite verb stem meaning to have. So I should be looking out for two nouns, one nominative and one accusative. γυνη is a singular nominative noun, which I looked up and means woman. δραχμας is a plural accusative which means silver coins.

I looked up δεκα cause I didn't know it. It's an adjective meaning ten, which is really obvious considering our English prefix deca-...

That leaves the first two words: ἠ τις. The first is a particle meaning something like or, and τις is an interrogative pronoun.
So my translation:
Or which woman having ten silver coins

ἐὰν ἀπολέσῃ δραχμὴν μίαν,
This time our silver coin is singular, but still accusative. Following it is an adjective meaning one.
ἀπολεσῃ looks like a feminine singular dative noun, apparently it's actually a subjunctive verb meaning destroy or lose.
And ἐαν means if.
There's no explicit noun here, but the verb has a 3sg form, so the subject is (probably) the woman.

Updated translation:
Or which woman having ten silver coins, if she loses one silver coin

οὐχὶ ἅπτει λύχνον
οὐχι is a negative marker. I thought I remembered learning οὐ in a class but I couldn't find it on our workbook...
-ει looks like a 3sg-PRES verb suffix, and the verb means ignite.
-ον is the m-sg-ACC suffix, and the noun is candle.

Or which woman having ten silver coins, if she loses one silver coin, doesn't light a candle

καὶ σαροῖ τὴν οἰκίαν
σαροι is a verb meaning sweep.
την οἰκιαν is easy: the house (accusative).

Or which woman having ten silver coins, if she loses one silver coin, doesn't light a candle and sweep the house

καὶ ζητεῖ ἐπιμελῶς
ζητει: verb seeks
ἐπιμελως: adverb diligently, carefully

Or which woman having ten silver coins, if she loses one silver coin, doesn't light a candle and sweep the house and carefully search

ἕως ὅτου εὕρῃ;
ἑως: until
οτου: relative pronoun
εὑρῃ: finds

Or which woman having ten silver coins, if she loses one silver coin, doesn't light a candle and sweep the house and carefully search until she finds it?

καὶ εὑροῦσα συνκαλεῖ τὰς φίλας καὶ γείτονας λέγουσα·
εὑρουσα: same verb stem as above, but with a different suffix. It's an "aorist" and a participle. Wikipedia tells me that probably means a past event
συνκαλει: call together, assemble. present tense, indicative
φιλας: friends
γειτονας: neighbours
λεγουσα: says

And when she finds it, calling together the friends and neighbours, says

συνχάρητέ μοι, ὅτι εὗρον τὴν δραχμὴν ἣν ἀπώλεσα.
συνχαρητε: rejoice with
ὁτι: because, since
εὑρον: find, aorist 1sg
ἡν: relative pronoun
ἀπωλεσα: lost, aorist 1sg

And when she finds it, calling together the friends and neighbours, says "rejoice with me because I found the silver coin which was lost."

That's not great English though. So here's a rewrite:

Or which woman who has ten silver coins, if she loses one, doesn't light a candle, sweep the house, and carefully search until she finds it? When she finds it she calls together her friends and neighbours and says, "Rejoice with me because I found the lost coin!"

Brief wrap-up

2009-02-02T23:22:00.002+10:00

Mission in Japan was such an amazing experience. There are so very few Christians there (about 1 in 5000 where we were) that even the little we did was a huge help to the Japanese church. What did we do? We visited many preschools, ran a lot of English classes and helped the missionaries as they planted two new churches.

It taught me a few things: the huge cultural differences did not matter to the Gospel, these people are sinners and need to be told about Jesus and shown God's love. But the cultural differences also showed how mission must be made culturally appropriate, both in Japan and home in Australia. Most people in Australia are unwilling and opposed to talking about God and the gospel. Japan was very different in that so many people were willing to listen and ask questions about Jesus and the Bible, for to them it is almost entirely new. But despite how much interest they show and how much they learn, the Japanese people are sadly reluctant to confess Jesus and commit their lives to him. In Australian culture verses like Romans 10:9 are not too significant, for almost everyone who believes the gospel will confess Jesus. But in Japan they will not. We met a few who even after more than ten years contact with the church and learning and believing far more than many Australian Christians, will still not commit to and confess Jesus. Whether they feel pressured from their families or work or just don't want to, I don't know. But it is sad and something that definitely needs a lot of prayer.

Pizza!

2008-12-11T12:34:00.001+10:00

We had a pizza party last Saturday, inviting a lot of people we've met over the past few weeks. I guess the evening brought together a lot of the feelings and thoughts I've been having over mission. Sorry if those thoughts are a little disorganised!

I don't have any Japanese language skills. I can greet people at all times during the day, thank people and apologise... though even with these I'm likely to get them mistaken with each other! So I knew before coming that my opportunities to directly evangelise people would be very limited, and that's okay, those opportunities are more than enough with everything else there is to do!

And there really has been, and will still be, a lot to do. If I can guess what God is teaching me now I think a lot of it is how to serve. I know I definitely do not have the gift of service, but I'm realising that just means I need to work harder than most. I usually don't mind helping and serving others, it just doesn't occur to me that there's stuff to be done. Well I'm glad that there's been so much to do here cause there hasn't been much chance to slack off - there's so much to do and that's why we're here! Working long busy days has been good, it's a very welcome change in productivity, one I've been wanting for a long while.

However, even when God has given me potential opportunities for evangelism, it seems I rarely take them. At our pizza party I spent most of the evening operating the huge 300° ovens (Fahrenheit okay... but it still sounds impressive yes? We seriously needed six layers of towels to get anything out of it.) I'd already burnt myself once and there was no reason for others to get hurt too. I was definitely being a big help, we needed to cook a lot of food very quickly. But... there were people there who had some decent English, and I could have spoken to them more than I did (what was almost nothing). Should I have? I don't know. When we had a kind of icebreaker game I did make my answers gospel-focused, but that was very short and impersonal. It concerned me more when those who can speak Japanese said they didn't have gospel-focused conversations either. Maybe I should have been more forward too.

But I also don't believe I really have gifts of evangelism either. I don't really enjoy it nor am I good at it. I think my strengths, and interests and passions, are more with teaching and discipleship. I haven't really had much experience with it yet, but I love both teaching God's word and working with people. I had hoped there would be opportunities for this in Japan, but there hasn't been any so far. The church here does not seem to have late-teens/early-twenties guys. There are a few girls of that age, but it would be even less appropriate here in Japan than in Australia for a guy to lead a girl in discipleship like that. So I'll probably have to wait to return to Australia to do that, which again is fine, but when I wonder what God's plans are here, a little perplexing.

Mission has given me lots of opportunities for service, which has been great. But I think it's really highlighting the need for wisdom in finding a good balance between service and evangelism and fellowship and teaching and everything else (rest too.) They're all essential for a healthy church, and though God gives us gifts and strengths in certain areas of that, I believe we still all need to be working at them all. But what is that balance? I don't know if mission has given me any of that wisdom yet.

What can a bookstore teach you?

2008-12-09T16:25:00.004+10:00

For someone who knows probably less than ten Japanese words and maybe five Hiragana what can Japanese bookstores offer? Most can't offer me much of anything, though Lighthouse Books, the Christian bookstore at Itayanagi Chapel, has given me a challenging and encouraging insight to Japanese Christianity. Like everything in Japan the store is small, though packed with many well-produced resources. The kids books were especially impressive, they all looked bright and colourful (also, they were the only books I could understand! Pictures, hurrah!) These books would definitely be well received as gifts.

But when I remembered that this store has to serve two prefectures, the small size makes a big difference. We're very blessed in Australia to have so many Christian books and resources, at so many stages of Christian life, from pre-Christian to new believers to the hundreds of books for mature Christians and even Bible college students. We have so many that we can even spend a great deal of time debating the finer theological points of each. It doesn't look like the Japanese people have such a luxury. There were just not that many books in total, and though I couldn't tell what they were about I would guess that most were on the basic end of theological depth. That's not a bad thing, it fits where the Japanese church is at the moment. But as the Japanese church continues to grow many more books will need to be written, expanding on both the range of topics and depth in each.

The situation is similar for Bible translations. There is one translation in archaic Japanese (like our KJV), another like our NASB which does use modern Japanese but has many uncommon words and is generally hard to understand and finally there's a paraphase which may not always be theologically accurate. Hopefully another translation in normal simple Japanese will be written soon.

So if Lighthouse Books has given me two things to pray for, it's that we praise God for the many great resources that are already available, and ask him to bring talented authors, editors and publishers into the church to serve the future. Join me in prayer!

Orientation

2008-11-21T01:18:00.006+10:00

Well now I'm in Japan, and have just finished OMF orientation. We've spent a couple of days learning a tiny amount of the language and a bit more about Japanese culture and religions.

But first some observations about Japan. The thing that I found most surprising was how small the streets are! They are very narrow and tight, and have so little traffic. I knew a lot of people took the trains, but I guess it really must be the dominant method of transportation, aside from walking and biking. The train stations are huge and the trains are probably twice as long as in Brisbane... so they can fit a lot more people in.

The food is pretty decent and some is moderately priced, though tomatoes aren't! I went to the supermarket today, and they seemed to be close to 100 yen each, about four times what I thought, though I must have misread the sign. Which is not surprising as I can't read Japanese, but I'm sure it said 98 not 398!

The people are very lovely, quite and polite. They really do keep their country beautiful, and they put ours to shame. Which makes what we learnt in orientation all the sadder. The Japanese people value their traditions hugely, especially so in the area of religion. The two largest religions in Japan are Shinto and Buddhism, though they seem to have somewhat merged together here. What is sad though is that even though it's been estimated that only around 5% of the people actually believe these religions are true, they pretty much all still participate in their practices. To not follow these practices is to go against tradition and to be un-Japanese. This is especially the case with ancestor worship. In Japan it is believed that when you die you become a new Buddha, and so to not follow the practises is to show disrespect to your ancestors and family, even when the people know it's not true.

We visited a Buddhist temple today, and one thing I noticed were what seemed to be prayers for sale. For 100 yen you could buy a paper prayer to tie around a cable nearby. Surely these people must realise that a religion where you can buy prayers, and at such a low price, cannot be true! But as those leading the orientation told us, truth is not always valued highly here. Even if a person understands and even agrees with the Gospel, they may not personally accept it as that would mean they would have to stop following several of their traditions. Being Japanese and following the traditions is so important to these people.

Please pray that even though I am completely unprepared, I may still be able to help the Japanese church here, and the same for the rest of my team. Pray that the people might understand that truth does matter, and that the Gospel transcends culture and accepting Jesus does not mean rejecting their Japanese identity. And praise God for the wonderful work he is doing in so many of the churches here!

And we're off!

2008-11-17T04:48:00.001+10:00

And now I'm leaving! 54 days in the crazy crazy happy land of Japan!