Leipzig English Church

Yesterday afternoon I arrived at Leipzig Hauptbahnhof. After catching a couple of wrong trams and then finally walking a couple of kms I got to my hotel and hid there for 2 hours psyching myself up to go to church at 6pm.

Leipzig is a lovely little city, and I mean little. There are half a million people living here in what must be about 4kmX4km. It's both really small and really flat, which means that very few people own cars (apparently at church there were about 50 people and only about 6 of them own cars). There are cycleways everywhere and thousands of bikes parked outside of everything. The other thing you notice is that the streets are really wide. Outside my hotel, unless you run, you have to walk half way across the street on the first green man, then the other half on the second. I'm not joking. The majority of people stop halfway. It's only 3 lanes on each side, but the roads are crazy wide. Apparently the Russians did this so they could move tanks about. Don't quote me on that, my Italian friend told me that and you know what they say about.. just kidding.

Anyway, it seems like a great place. The people are very different from Stuttgart, but they seem nice. Also I've already been exposed to some Swabian bashing (Stuttgart is Swabisch - it's a region like Bavaria), apparently they're renowned for being tight-asses. So there you go.

Eventually I walked to church (another 2kms or so) with Tom-tom guiding the way. And the guy at the door was very friendly and great. I then sat down and an Aussie girl Mimy (pronounced m-eye-me) came and sat with me saying the dude at the door said she should. She's from Sydney it turns out and is best buds with one of the staff-workers at ECU, UOW. The guy who lead the service is another Aussie from Canberra who went through Moore College.

The service was very good (I do have a couple of minor complaints but they're so minor and hair-splitting I don't want to say them), with lots of Bible being read. The sermon was an attempt to expound a passage (I don't say attempt in a negative sense, I mean... the guy wanted to get what he was saying from the Bible, a refreshing change at this point in my life). We read Psalm 148 out loud, and the slide transition came at an amusing point:

Let them praise the name of the LORD!

For he commanded and they were created.

And he established them forever and ever;

he gave a decree, and it shall not pass

----- new slide ------

away.

Praise the LORD from the earth,

you great sea creatures and all deeps,

etc

I was feeling awkward reading that verse but figured I must have just not being paying enough attention, but then it all made sense.

So the service was good, that's my point.

As for Mimy, she didn't leave my side from 6pm-11pm. She was fantastic. She has already planned a few outings for her and Ally when we arrive, she has got me going to a Bible study this week plus anything else that might be going on. She introduced me to a bunch of people, she took me along to Bereans, which is a group that runs once a month after the evening service to talk about the sermon in some more depth, and finally she walked me home and got another guy to come along who lives right near my hotel, and organised for him to come and pick me up for Bible study on Wednesday - awesome!

But it wasn't just Mimy, a bunch of people introduced themselves, and I had some nice chats. I also now have 3 email addresses other than Mimy's of guys who are happy to help me find an apartment remotely, and one of them is going to keep an eye out for word-of-mouth ones which become available. One of the three was disappointed that my hotel was already booked for the week and said next time I should just stay with him and save the cash. He share-houses with a few guys from the universitat. So that was really nice too.

As for this Bereans thing, it was a really solid discussion. Several of the people obviously know a lot about the OT and church history as well. People were concerned with being theologically correct, but the discussion was gentle and well handled. And they were obviously concerned with godliness above all. It was really nice. In fact the only unhelpful person there (out of about 15) was the minister who couldn't stop himself from making what I could only call ridiculous jokes that disrupted the flow of the discussion. But they all seem fond enough of him (and far too impressed with his jokes) so I'm happy to give him the benefit of the doubt.

In case you haven't noticed, I was really really impressed. Leipzig English Church appears to be a very nice place to go with really nice genuine people. I look forward to moving to Leipzig and becoming a part of it.

Oh - and on our walk home we went past the new Town Hall (which ironically in German is called the rathaus), which is the site where Luther debated Johann(es) Eck. 

Social Justice?

Recently I have been becoming increasingly concerned with issues relating to social justice. In a rant that he had a couple of months ago, Glenn Beck had a go at any church that had a passion for social justice and told his Christian listeners to run for the hills if their church had the term social justice, or anything similar on their website, statement of faith, or wherever. This seems pretty extreme, and it is, but is this guy really that far from where we are as a church in the western world today? To hear what he said, see the article below this one.

Very soon after the earthquake hit Haiti in January this year, Mark Driscoll took a team of people over there to see what was happening and to provide some medical help where they could. They were on the ground for 32 hours. Almost as soon as he returned home he preached a sermon to his church, titled 32 hours in Haiti. It was an empassioned plea to his congregation to stop their selfish spending habits and give to the people of the world who need it the most. This is oppsed to the viewpoint presented by Glenn Beck in his radio show.
I was very disappointed to see, however, that soon after Mark Driscoll's empassioned plea to the people of his church, he was promoting an overseas trip to Turkey on which he and a group of people would make something of a pilgrimage to walk in Jesus' footsteps.

My question then is, what does God really expect of us when it comes to money? There are some pretty plain facts that are very easy to find that give us a snapshot of what kind of a state our world is in.
80% of the world's population lives on less than $10 a day.
50% live on less than $2 a day.
About 1 billion live on less than $1 a day.
Today about 25000 children will die of preventable diseases.
50c will provide enough sustenance for a person for a day.
There are about 1 billion people who are hungry all of the time. It is estimated that 80-90% of these people are women and children.

There was a woman who pointed out on Mark Driscoll's Facebook page that perhaps this trip was a little excessive in light of the facts above, and perhaps the money could be better spent on helping out the desperately poor of this world. She was called lots of names, all of which pointed to the idea that she was being judgemental and pharisaical and should keep her opinions to herself. A few hours later she removed her post, having been sufficiently abused by other Christians. I wrote a post in defence of her opinion. It was the only one.

When I look at the world around me and I marry it to the ideas that I see in the Bible, I can only come to the conclusion that our excessive lives, which are contributing to the desperation of those who are desperate in this world, are in direct conflict with the teachings of the Bible and the church of Australia, America, the UK and the rest of the Western world is, in general, living in grievous sin. In a world where James tells us that true religion is looking after orphans and widows, we are failing to practise true religion. In a world where all it would take to feed the world is 1% of the income of the Christians who are in the richest 5% of the world, we are failing miserably in our mission to love our brothers and sisters.

In my church there was a group of people who, one and a half years ago, went to Kenya to see what was happening there on a mission awareness trip. Since they came back they have started a charity and have raised over $10,000 for the people of Kenya. Yet it took the people of the group that went over less than 3 months to find the $70,000 that it took to get them there and back.

I think that there is something seriously wrong with the way that we view money and the kind of spending that we see as acceptable. Maybe we would do well to start thinking that our experience is less importand than is food on the plates of the women and children of this world. I don't want to meet people in heaven who have starved to death when I could have helped them.

Wowsers... Who is this guy?

My brother just gave me this link. I cannot believe he's been given airtime anywhere in any context. Crikeys... I'll have a read and a listen, and maybe my bro can write something at some stage. But this is one of those little clips that's just so amazing that I'm putting it up now without doing anything else... hope that's ok

Basic Comprehension II

In my first post I made a bit of a deal about basic comprehension: Just reading a sentence and understanding the necessary logic of the sentence. Well I was having a read of John 8 and came across this very strange little chunk:


Jesus replied, "I tell you the truth, everyone who sins is a slave to sin. Now a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. 


Now I'm not too sure that my strict rules of logic and cogency can apply here, or else these verses betray a deep theological principle which is... I don't think correct. So here we go:

1.  If you sin, you are a slave to sin.
2. So sin is your master
3. So sin is the head of the family to which you do not belong
4. A son, however, does belong to the family
5. But the son is, of course, sins son... McSin, or Sin-san... or whatever
6. And if Sin's Son sets you free, then you will definitely be free

You don't have to be particularly churched to read son = Jesus. It's a no-brainer. And... unless you are extremely convincing I don't think I will change my mind on this. It's Jesus right? So why is sin the head of the family? And why is Jesus sin's son?

There are a few possible explanations I guess. One is that John is intentionally playing with his words in some way. Another is that John isn't thinking about it this much. The most likely, I think, is that sin is the shackals, not the master/head of the house. This has a nice Galatians-y feel to it with the whole guardian business (ch 3? something like that). But then... if Jesus is the Son, then God is the father, and he is keeping us locked up by sin. Now this is also pretty Galatians-y actually, especially if you read sin as law. But the way that reads, most naturally, doesn't sit so well with me. Not to mention, I think that whole reading is a little... forced.

It's a weird passage. Perhaps there's a very simple explanation I'm missing. But in any case, Basic Comprehension is not always, immediately straight forward. Not always...   

Preaching II (and a clarification)

I was looking through my posts so far, and noticed one very unclear little sentence.

I said:
When I still lived in Australia I had a bit of a beef with the preaching

This implies one. But preachers are many. I wasn't having a go at preaching at my home church per se, but with the state of preaching everywhere that I had access to: Uni, my home church, churches in my town, churches I have visited, and sermons I download.

I'd say Tim Keller is my favourite preacher pastor who I don't know personally (Don Carson is my favourite speaker and writer but he's no longer a pastor). I don't agree with all his theology, but he has a lot to teach me. Nevertheless, I find his weekly sermons get pretty old pretty fast.

So what's going on? I am still happy to admit that my sinfulness is a problem here. But maybe it's not just sinfulness. Maybe there's a problem with my expectations... What is it that I should expect from a sermon? If the preacher gets something out of the passage that I couldn't get for myself then there's something worrying about my ability to read or his ability to read (know what I mean). Isn't there?

So I know that what I would love is to have my eyes opened (about something) every time I hear a sermon. But that's unrealistic, and frankly a bit unfair on the poor old preachers. So then what is the point of the weekly sermon? Here's a rough list off the top of my head:

1. It's good to spend an extended time reflecting on one chunk of the Bible. It aids rumination
2. A preacher can spend the week figuring out the wider biblical context of the passage, which is something that takes time and it's nice having someone do it for me at times and teach me to do it through his example.
3. A preacher can draw the threads through our Christology - another thing that can be hard and learnt from example.
4. We easily forget and need constant reminding (a very Islamic concept - but I suppose Islam got it from the Israelites too?)

There must be more, and significant ones I've missed. But when I think about it all these things are done in a good sermon by Tim Keller or back home. But these things can be a bit mundane. The breadth of Christian theology is in some ways vast and in some ways quite narrow. Drawing everything through our Christology is so extremely important that if it's not done it's not a good sermon, but then again, doing that same thing every single time can get a bit old. The wider biblical context is also not really that wide. The Bible is 1000 pages. There are only about 7 major epochs (or whatever you call them). Genesis 1-3 seems to explain most of the whole world and the Biblical trajectory of most things pretty well.

So I think the problems are: I'm sinful and tend to gripe, my expectations are unrealistic, biblical Christianity can be quite narrow which is both a wonderful thing and (see point 1: I'm sinful) at times a bit dull.

Full Time Ministry

Something I've been wondering about on and off for years now is the role of full time ministry.

Recently I was talking to my mate who has recently become a teacher. He is one of the most godly people I know, and someone whose opinion I trust more than almost anyone. I cannot speak his praises highly enough. Anyway, we were talking about going to college and becoming a minister or missionary vs. working full time in some sort of secular job like teaching.

All serious Christians have had to think this through. And if my experience of undergraduate conferences is anything to go by, I believe we are led to believe at those who choose to do full time secular work have copped out of full time ministry.

But the more exposure I have to what can only be described as the real world (a lengthy disclaimer could be made at this point. I hate the phrase the real world - one of my ministers once suggested I "go swing a pick in Western Australia for 6 months" to learn what the real world is like. I was married at the time and frankly I think the idea was ridiculous and I'm suprised the suggestion was ever made. Moreover my job at Max Planck amongst Physicists and Chemists is not what most people would call the real world. Today I stayed home to help my wife pack and get on a train to Paris. I didn't take a personal day, I didn't tell anyone I won't be in, Tomorrow I'll be back and nobody will care. There is no element of hard labour or ... labour at all really. My job is extremely easy on the old muscles. But then again this is my real world, and someone who does swing a pick and see his wife every few weeks lives in a world that is not mine. I don't know why the pick-guy should have a monopoly on the concept of a real world...).

Anyway the more exposure I get to the real world, the more i think that the ministry job is just another option out of many good options. I'm even tempted to say that for a thinking, convicted, solid Christian, ministry can be a bit of a cop-out.

You see, what is really hard, is what my bro is doing. He is a teacher and is trying to start a robotics club at the local public school. His wife is raising their daughter and teaching scripture each week (along with many other things). My mum regularly meets up with all sorts of people who could use her company in various contexts and has an extremely difficult workplace to deal with as she goes along (sorry that was so vague - but it's tough for her). These are people who I admire and who are doing extraordinary things for the name of Christ in 'the real world'.

And I have decided to do the same thing. The first year of my PhD was spent learning Koine Greek because I was off to Bible College. But then I got convinced that someone in my position could be well used staying in academia and working out how to bear the name of Christ in that capacity.

It's a much less well defined route than Bible College, but it's so important!

Really, Bible College is a bit of a contrived thing. We need pastors, that's for sure. But being a pastor isn't a real world thing, it's like... in ethics language, a retrieval ethic. It's like we shouldn't need pastors, but we do, so we have them. I have nothing against this, please don't get me wrong. But the job of a pastor is pretty well defined. The job of a truly godly person in the workplace, or in a mum's group, or a sports club, or whatever - now that is a job that's really hard to do, and should have the most godly, well equipped, thoughtful, and convicted Christians taking it on.

No?

Repetition

I often wonder about repetition in prayer and songs. On the one hand the bible has many many examples of repetition to God (Holy, Holy, Holy always springs to mind first). But on the other hand God only needs to hear any particular thing once (well nonce actually...). Another thing that often springs to mind for me is Paul praying for his affliction to go away three times. I tend to think his affliction was pretty bad, or pretty obstructive, and on three occasions he made a concerted effort to pray for its removal. This seems to me like the latter idea: He wasn't repetitive, but he prayed for it as it was on his heart, no more and no less. But really he doesn't tell us enough about it to make any strong statements.

How do I approach this question? I can think of a lot of relevant passages, OT, Jesus, Epistles... Maybe I should read Don Carson's excellent A Call to Spiritual Reformation again. I don't know...

Preaching in Wollongong and the World

When I still lived in Australia I had a bit of a beef with the preaching.

You see, I'm from a really conservative part of the world: Sydney Anglicans (though I actually attended a Baptist church for the last 7 years or so, but it was a Sydney Anglican Baptist Church). And I was starting to get pretty tired of the preaching (and I'm happy - especially now - to admit it is almost definitely more of a reflection of my own sinfulness than the quality of the preaching). Nevertheless, I was tired of the anecdotes, illustrations, and depth. I was, and still am, sick of stories in sermons. On the odd occasion I will admit that a story can help you understand a difficult concept. But the problem is, that sermons almost never deal with difficult concepts - no depth. So stories become cute-sy asides rather than genuinely useful tools. On top of that there's the problem that as soon as a story is being told, my ears prick up and I take interest! Again, this may be a reflection on me, but I really feel like a story is told with a lot more enthusiasm, in general, than biblical exposition and exegesis.

Enter migration:

We recently moved to Germany. We have been attending what I think is just about the best church in our area, and the preaching (I'm really sorry if anyone involved in this particular church ever reads this) sucks. It's this vague pop-psychology crap that occasionally refers to a verse here or there with any notion of context either discarded or worse, misunderstood. It's like, if the topic is "family", then I could have just googled "family help dysfunction counselling", printed off the top 5 results, and spent the next 45 minutes reading that and the sermon would have been almost identical, except that it claims the name of Christ.

Now the really scary bit: This is the state of preaching throughout the world. As far as I understand this is exactly what most of the world expects from the pulpit, and what I get back home is really really rare. This idea of working through a passage, understanding its context in both the book that it's in and the Bible as a whole, understanding really well what it says and then figuring out how that touches on our lives, and of course, that route is taken via Jesus - well this is just not done in most of the world.

On our way home from a record 1.5 hours of a record amount of drivel (admittedly not the usual preacher, but the youth worker - like that's an excuse), and while lamenting the number of encouraging "hmmms" and nods we heard and saw throughout the service, my wife raised the very interesting question (which we only cannot understand because we're not smart enough or big enough or godly enough): What is God doing with his church?

No question it'll be impressive, but geez it's not obvious.

Basic Comprehension

My first post on this blog must explain its title.

If there is one thing missing in the world I know, it's Basic Comprehension. When I try to understand my own job, it is not there. When I deal with undergrads in physics, it is not there. More importantly though, when Christians read the Bible, it is not there. Most alarmingly, when I hear pastors preach, it is not there. And most sadly, when the world speaks about Christianity, it is certainly not there.

I don't know if I expect too much, but why do we find it so hard to read a sentence and take it for what it says? Why can't we read a paragraph and grasp the flow of it? This is a basic skill. Is it because the Bible is a religious text that we feel at liberty to read into it and extrapolate, and abandon all requisites of logic and cogency? More importantly, what can we do about it?

Don't let me get started on preachers, the world, and the undergrads... I'll save them for another day.

But for now this is my first little rant: what ever happened to Basic Comprehension?