Monthly Archives: July 2017

God, society, vision

Fake mission

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A friend pointed out to me recently what my old church in Hastings (East Sussex, UK) has recently been planning to do. They want to move the church into four locations now, following the latest trend of many other larger New Ground churches who are failing to grow numerically, in particular through the addition of new converts.

A few years ago, the church growth strategy was to buy million-dollar buildings and see them filled. When the large buildings did not fill, the strategy changed to falling over on the floor and laughing while the Holy Spirit gathered in an enormous harvest of souls. When this failed, the shift moved to renting buses to bus in bored, working class children into the large buildings on Saturday mornings. Since that also brought no growth, the strategy evolved into carving up the larger buildings into smaller units and offering multiple services at different times of the week. Since that also didn’t work, now the idea is to move to multiple venues across a wider neighbourhood, of course whilst remaining under the banner of one church.

Apparently, God has clearly spoken to the churches, especially their leaders, to instruct them to use each one of these strategies, which in turn helps enormously with fund-raising because good Christians obediently give generously to God’s alleged initiatives.

When you are a member of such a sect, you simply cannot see this fraud for what it is. You really do believe that God has a new missional strategy to grow the flailing church and you quickly forget that the former strategy had not worked. Once you have been  outside the sect for a number of years, however, you see this deception for what it is. The church is treating God as if He were were some kind of chocolate-bar maker who is frequently scratching his head to find new ways of marketing his products that are failing to sell anywhere other than on the margins of society.

Back to the “one church across multiple venues strategy.” As with the previous strategies, it is even easier to see with this one why it will fail to bring in the promised new harvest of souls before it has even begun. Why?

For some years I had already been observing this multi-site strategy in other UK cities. In every case, what happened was that the church leaders could indeed boast that their church was numerically growing, if you added all the different locations together. However, also in every case, when you talked to individuals at the new church meetings, you discover that hardly any of them are new converts, but rather Christians who had become bored or disillusioned in their local churches and had begun to go to the new meetings organized by the multi-site church since that was there was some fresh life, vision and excitement. Talk to the leaders of the churches that these Christians had left behind, and you discover a sorry tale of church numerical decline, frustration, broken relationships and bitterness.

Jesus Christ had only one missional strategy, explained in  – “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.” Matthew 28:19-10.

To sell moving your church to four venues across the neighborhood as mission is not only grotesquely fake but also but irreparably damaging to other local churches. It has nothing to do with taking New Ground. But it has everything to do with stealing someone else’s ground, along with their sheep.

 

 

Berlin, Brexit, European Union, politics, vision

How dumb is Davis?

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A negotiator with no notes?

This week we saw David Davis arrive in Brussels in order to make a serious start on the details of the Brexit negotiations. As we can see from the above photograph, unlike his French counterpart, Michel Barnier, he has absolutely no documents with him!

Most people would not even set up a cell phone contract or an insurance policy, let alone buy a car or a house, without the relevant documentation. This UK politician turns up to the most significant international contract negotiation in my lifetime, responsible for the fates of 65,000,000 people, with not one piece of paper.

What’s more, after just half a day, he flew back to the UK.

What does this tell us about David Davis?

  • there is no way that he can be taking these critical negotiations seriously and that he has already disqualified himself for the job
  • that he is unbelievably arrogant if he thinks that he can achieve the best for the UK after just half a day and with no briefing materials
  • that he has absolutely no notion of diplomacy since his actions are insulting to his European counterparts, also his hosts in this case, in a field where relationships are already very tense
  • that he is insulting also the British people who have, at least in their peculiar concept of democracy, delegated an enormous amount of responsibility to this man
  • that he is co-responsible for defaming the word “politician”, which not only insults those who try their best to perform this difficult role with integrity but also reduces the chances of gaining the respect of younger people whose understandable political apathy led in part to the disastrous Brexit in the first place
  • that the man is a complete idiot, bringing him closer to his ultimate goal of becoming the next prime minister, since all of the above makes him the ideal candidate both to lead the UK Conservative Party and replace Theresa May, n’est-ce pas ?

 

 

Berlin, God, new writer, society, vision, war

Faith and Doubt

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Faith, according to the Bible, is a synonym for certainty:

“Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.” Hebrews 11:1

So, when Christians say that they believe in one creator God, in the death and resurrection of Jesus, heaven and hell, the exclusivity of the Christian faith, and so on, they experience a real certainty about what they believe.

On the one hand, this is admirable and surely it is better to base the decisions you make in life on strong convictions than on some kind of half-baked, half-hearted notions. Even if, in reality, convictions do not determine our actions but describe them.

On the other hand, it is this certainty that creates deep division between the faithful and the heathen,  ultimately leading to domination, oppression and even war.

It is interesting that doubt, however, has never caused any division, wars, oppression, repression of artistic creativity and scientific research. On the contrary. And the contrast is very stark.

It seems to be that both on the micro level (individuals giving one another the benefit of the doubt) and on the macro level (entire cultures trying to comprehend one another and collaborate for the greater good) that doubt is a much more sound basis for our lives than certainty, which leads to bigotry.

Religion divides through its binding people into clans and cliques and providing them with a so-called divinely inspired narrative justification for their superiority.  We will never be able to get rid of it but we should at least see it for what it is and strive to limit the damage it causes.

So, in this context, a better definition of faith would be “the refusal to believe what is true” and a better definition of doubt would be “the basic requirement for the recognition and promotion of human dignity.”

“Si Dieu n’existait pas, il faudrait l’inventer.” Voltaire.