Couldn't Help Noticing

The gospel according to me

It's all about me. That seems to be the trend in our churches today. In the quest to win people to Jesus, we somehow feel the need to show how everything is relevant to the individual. How will this help me, the church-goer? How will this help them, the congregation? What is the ‘cash value’ of belief?

This was brought home to me recently when it was pointed out that 25 years ago everyone was reading J.I. Packer's book Knowing God. Today everyone is reading A Purpose Driven Life. Now the problem is not that A Purpose Driven Life is not encouraging people to do good things, but rather that the idea of reading a book which is about God rather than us seems to be anathema. And while there surely is a place in our spiritual diet for books that provide practical encouragement and advice on living as a Christian, have we become so self-absorbed that we forget it's actually all about God and his glory? Have our church gatherings, our small-groups, our fellowships been trained to feed on a diet of self-help rather than Sola Dei (for God's glory alone)?

Prayerlessness

Challies.com, one of the blogs I like to keep an eye on from the USA, has some reflections at the moment about prayerlessness. In those reflections, Tim Challies draws extensively from the Matthias Media Guidebook for Life Prayer and the Voice of God. Tim's reflections are worth a read—and so is the book!

Joel Osteen critique

I find the parallels between this review of a Joel Osteen rally/conference, and Tony Payne and Gordon Cheng's review of the Hillsong Conference in Briefing #340 interesting—in particular, the discussion about what each event reveals about the next generation of the Charismatic movement.

In The Briefing, the point was made that:

Whatever the reasons, there is little doubt that Hillsong is representative of a growing and very influential stream of modern Pentecostalism that looks less and less like traditional Pentecostalism with each passing year ... You had to look hard to see examples of older, classic Pentecostalism at Hillsong Conference ... Traditional Pentecostalism was an offshoot of Evangelicalism .... [But it] is becoming both less pentecostal and less evangelical as time goes on. The pentecostal distinctives are being watered down or dropped, and the underlying evangelical heritage seems already to have been left behind.

The review of Osteen on the Reformation21 site (the online magazine of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals) says something remarkably similar about Osteen:

Joel's own sermons are not like those of his fathers (the late John Osteen). They strike me as the next generation of the Charismatic movement. They aren't about experiencing the power of the Holy Spirit in your life; they are just about encountering your feelings. He talks over and over again about your relationships with other people and in the end he doesn?t really ask you to do anything—except try to change. His language is a mix of manifest destiny and late night infomercial. If I had to characterize the 600 words “sermonettes” I heard I would say “Charismatic emergent, non-threatening, non-spritualized therapeutic language.” Maybe American Idol with Paula as the lone judge.

Never once did I hear the words Gospel, Jesus Christ, Trinity, Sin, Cross (except in Scripture songs sung by performers and in a video testimony played before the Osteens arrived in arena).

Green euthanasia

I wrote an article on euthanasia for a local paper, the Daily Telegraph. Death and killing is always something we should be aware of. Just at the moment, it needs a bit more attention in the Matthias Media corner of the world because the ecologically sensitive Green Party wants to make it easier to kill people, and is taking action to promote the cause.

If you visit the site in The Daily Telegraph website in the next day or so, you can leave a comment.

Being a good supplier

In 1 Thessalonians 3 verse 10, Paul gives us a fascinating way to think about ministry. In the first few chapters of his letter, he speaks very warmly about the church of the Thessalonians. He has recently learnt from Timothy that they are doing well as Christians (3:6), persevering in the face of trials (2:14), and he is greatly comforted by hearing about their faith (3:7). Yet Paul desperately wants to see them face to face (3:10-11). Why? Because he wants to “supply what is lacking in their faith”.

It isn't that their faith is failing; he has commended them already for the quality of their faith. Rather, faith by its nature can always be improved—particularly when we face circumstances where our faith is put under stress and strain. So as Christians we can always use encouragement. We can always be helped by being reminded of what the word of God, in all its vast dimensions, says to be true. Through these reminders, our faith grows; it is strengthened and enriched.

Paul sets an excellent example for us, and his attitude is one well worth adopting as we head from week to week to gatherings with our brothers and sisters in Christ—in larger church meetings, small home groups, Sunday school classes and so on. Ask yourself, “Do I long to see these people face to face so that I might supply—in whatever way I can—what might be lacking in their faith?” If the answer is ‘No’, consider what needs to change.