Soma Church Blog

Anne Rice has gone through one of the most dramatic conversions in modern literary history.  She was well know and well read as the author of the Vampire Chronicles.  This was before Bella and Edward became a phenomenon.  She was the one who gave us Interview with a Vampire, the movie version  starring Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt in his girly long hair days.

But in the last decade or so she has become a Christian, though admits her gay son and catholic background present some problems for her.  As such, she is now dedicating her life to the service of Jesus “In 2002 I made up my mind that I would not write anything that wasn’t for Christ” she says in an interview.

So her present series of novels is on the life of Jesus.  The first thing I was surprised about The Road to Cana, is written in the first person.  This is life through the eyes of God incarnate.  On one hand this is audicous, but on the other hand somewhat refreshing: what was it like to be baptized by John the Baptist?  What was the 40 days in the desert like?

The Road to Cana

This book is the second in the series.  Jesus has grown to be a man, he is preparing for something in his life, but is not sure what it is.  Rice has done a good thing in setting his life in a larger Biblical theological framework by having Jesus’ awareness of who he is not   coming from some mystical understanding that he knew and no-one else did, but through OT prophecy and the events surrounding his birth.

The second thing I was surprised about it was the amount of research that Rice has put into it.  Not just Biblical knowledge but historical and geological knowledge as well.  The effect on the Jewish people when Pilate had Roman effigies put up in the temple, how far is it to walk from Nazareth to Cana and that sort of thing.

Finally I loved how she portrayed the character of Jesus as man, who has become God, and yet has humbled himself fully into his humanity, without letting go of his divinity.  A complex character, that has been pulled off with relative simplicity, though at times makes Jesus into a simpleton.

The thing I am most worried about when it comes to this novel is that people may forget it is is a novel and treat it with the same authority as a Gospel.   But it is a novel and could be an interesting way of getting people to think about the life of Jesus who won’t read a Gospel.

What is happening in Haiti is difficult to watch and it is important for Christians not to merely watch.

We want to look after the people of Haiti the best we can, there are lots of different ways we can do that, but at Soma we want to partner Churches Helping Churches. This organisation aims to help with the humanitarian issues, as well as just churches back on their feet as soon as possible.  Here is a video to help you see what is going on: Haiti

What can you do?
Give money
You can give money directly through the website or transfer money to the St John’s account (BSB 032 088 Account: 810054) with “Haiti” in the note section and we will make sure the money gets to right people.
Stay Informed
On the website there will be videos and blogs to stay up to date with what’s going on.
Pray
Also on the website there will be prayer points as well as what you can hear through the media to pray for the people of Haiti.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKovkG8KUjU

Fellowship/ Encouragement Area

One of the things that Soma has been trying to do is look at church and see how can do it differently.  January has provided us with an opportunity to do this.

During our planning time the team talked about how the main experience we had had of church was fairly linear.  It starts at a time and ends at time and you do things in order.  We asked the question “What if we didn’t do it this way?”

Here is what we have done.  The room has been split into different areas.  There is an area for prayer, encouragement and fellowship, listening to the Bible and to sing music.  People are free to go to any of these areas at any time, but there are some set times for certain things: like the talk and singing, but people can go to those areas and talk to musos or Bible teachers at other times if they like.  People are also free to come and go as they please, but most people stuck around for most of the time.

What this has meant is that church is more organic.  If you are in the middle of a conversation with someone, you can keep talking to them.  If you want to pray with someone, you can do that.  It relies on people wanting to do things that will help them to know Jesus, but this is why people come to church!

Prayer Area just after being set up

Before we go further I need to let credit go where credit is due, this is not really my idea.  But I think it is important to take risks, even ones that you personally don’t think will work.  I want to publicly thank Carly for putting January together.

Come and check it out :2:30 – 4:30 at Mac Centre. Why not bring a friend who has been a little hostile to church, this will be a new thing for them.

So rating season is over and there are lots more digital channels on TV and this all leads to one thing – lots of bad TV.  My son and I have recently started to watch “Wipeout”.

What happens in the Big Red Balls

If you have not seen the show it works like this: there are three elimination rounds of various obstacle courses and whoever gets the shortest time of the last round wins $X.  But all of that is largely irrelevant.  The show is really about the commentary which seeks to make fun of and humiliate the contestants as much as possible (and the obstacles help at this point, especially the famous big red balls that people are supposed to leap across!).

This is an example of how the show works, and the only time I have seen anyone cross the famous big, red balls, only to run into another problem…

After watching for awhile I have observed too things:

1. I am not really going for a winner, but looking for the loser to get hammered.  This is the opposite of most sporting shows where you are usually encouraged to barrack for someone or other.
2. I have no problem watching these people get humiliated.

It’s this last point that I find interesting.  Why do I enjoy watching these people fall in awkward directions?

Now the producers of Wipeout carefully cast the contestants for the show not according to their ability to get through the courses, but to in their ability to embarrass and humility themselves.  It is like “you are an extrovert whose brain really should vet what you say before you say it but doesn’t, great you are in!”.

Who does this remind me of?  The Fool from Proverbs. Here are a few things that remind me of the contestants on Wipeout:

“The wise store up knowledge,
but the mouth of the fool hastens destruction.” (Proverbs 10:14 HCSB)

“Every sensible person acts knowledgeably,
but a fool displays his stupidity.” (Proverbs 13:16 HCSB)

“The proud speech of a fool brings a rod of discipline,
but the lips of the wise protect them.” (Proverbs 14:3 HCSB)

“A fool does not delight in understanding,
but only wants to show off his opinions.” (Proverbs 18:2 HCSB)

The producers of Wipeout are very clever in their ability to pick up on something that is clear in Scripture: Falling fools are easy to make fun of!

I am still convinced of David Wells comment: “What someone thinks about the church tells us exactly what that person is thinking about Christianity”.  So what do people think of church?

I sent some students out to do some door knocking and ask them.  Before we look at some of the results I should point out that 62% of respondents had lived in the area for 11 years or more and that 49% of respondents had been to church in the last month.  This means that this study is a little skewed and I think that we can assume that a large number of people are older, have been churched for a while and so are not typical of the population.

But this has been a good pilot study to help us work out a few things.

1. Why don’t people go to church?

The reason we asked this question is for people to express the obstacles of people going to church.  We didn’t want to ask them why they don’t go to church, because we thought they would be more honest about the answer.

The top three reasons people don’t go to church are because they don’t agree, they don’t have time and think it is boring.  The most popular comment in the ‘other’ category is that it is seen as ‘irrelevant’.  These need to be addressed in different ways.  While the church is not compromise what it says, it needs to be accessible and people need to be able to interact and be able to express doubts in a helpful way.  Irrelevant and boring could lead to a church that is pandering to the people or it could be a church that is genuinely excited about the Gospel.  That people don’t have time could be addressed a couple of solutions.  One is to have a more slimmed down service, that is to decrease the quantity, or it could be to increase the quality of the meeting.

2. What is the primary purpose of church?

We asked this question because we wanted to know what people expected church to do.

Most people thought it was a place where people could find answers to life, the Bible and everything.  But this could be because this was a skewed population.   What is more interesting is the number of people who see that church is where people should be finding and defending values.  Again this might have something to do with the people who were surveyed.

The idea that we are to help people means that, I think, people are expecting the church to interact with the world around them.

Thoughts?

Recently, I have been struck by a couple of great one liners.  These have been phrases that capture a complex idea in a single line like we see in the book of proverbs.  Thought I would share some with you that have helped me as a pastor helping people to find out about Jesus.

Speak where people are listening

I heard this during a Hillsong talk and it has been wondering around my mind for sometime.  The church background I am in tends to look for where people are, as opposed to where people are listening.  Where are people listening these days?  Not at work, not at the front door.  But on TV, on the internet (which is cheap!) and around tables at cafes and homes.  This is where we need to talk with people about Jesus.

Necessity is the mother of innovation

OK, so this is not a new one.  But what I was challenged by is creating the necessity.  If you are a church leader like me and you ask for ideas on an event (say how do we get 50 people to a night of talking about Jesus) and keep hearing the same ideas again and again, see what happens when you add an 0 to the number.  What works for 50 does not work for 500!  Create the necessity to innovate.

A Good Idea beats Good Production

I heard this from Scott Wilson who leads 2100 productions in the US.  The point he was making was that a good story or idea can make a better film than one with good production, etc.  Pixar, I think, are the kings here.  They have great production, but the ideas are what makes the films great.  A good idea can be better than just throwing money, people or other resources at it.

A Half Truth is more Dangerous than a Lie

This is a line from a talk by D. M. Lloyd-Jones.  His point is that people who are religious are harder to convince, humanly speaking, of the Gospel than people who are not.   This, he explains, is why sinners and tax collectors fall at the feet of Jesus and religious leaders want to question him on everything.  I come across a lot of people in Sydney, who are happy to take the values and ideas of Christianity and have nothing to do with God.  This means that “low lying fruit” people who are close to Christianity in ideas, may not be the easiest of people to convince of the Gospel.  Perhaps going out to the person who is so different is a better way of moving forward.

I am sure there others…any suggestions?

I recently crossed over to a completely alien culture.  I didn’t go overseas, just to a live gig.  I have been to live gigs before, but I had not realized for how long: there was no drunkenness, violence or smoking.  People were there to actually listen to the music.  So this was a real step into another culture for me.

As I looked around I tried to work out “what is it that this culture values?”.  For example if I were to walk into a nightclub (which I haven’t for a while so this may be a case of walking into a nightclub in the 90s) what is valued is ascetic appearance.   So girls are dressed up (or not as the case may be), guys are looking for the girl that looks good, etc.  At this gig, what was valued was not as apparent as a nightclub, there were all sorts of people from all sorts of ages and backgrounds.  It obviously was not physical.

After talking with a couple of friends I knew, I started talking with their friends that I didn’t know.  It did not take long before I worked out that what was valued in this culture as talent.  The band we were here to see (whom I had not seen before) were extremely talented.  I was told this several times before they came on and impressed as I watched them.  What really struck me was the reaction of the audience to the band.  Many of the songs were quite dark and you really felt that the songwriters were bearing their intimate soul to the audience with all of their pain and hurt from broken relationships and unrequited love.  While at the end of some of the songs I wanted to go up and give them a hug, the rest of the audience were clapping and cheering.  They were not clapping and cheering at the pain, but the talent it took to be able to express it.

Now, the bottom line is that I don’t have that sort of talent.  Most of the people who were there had some kind of talent like this or at least were aspiring to.  And this leaves me with the question of how well can I fit into this culture?  Here are some thoughts:

If you have the thing that the culture values use it, as long as it does not lead you or others to sin.  if you have this sort of talent then use it to in the culture.  I have been mediating on the phrase “you need to speak where people are listening”, and if people are willing to listen because you share a value then use it.  Sport is another value that was used famously by Howard Guiness, C. T. Studd and Eric Liddell at the beginning of the C20th.  More recently, I remember hearing from a man who used to work in an urban gardening collective, and he was a good gardener.  He was asked about why he was involved and he simply responded that God was a wonderful creator and he loved to help God in the garden.  The person had never heard anything like this before and my friend went on to share other things of the Gospel with them.

However there are limits.  If you are a girl who has been blessed with good looks this does not mean you should frequent nightclubs dressed in as skimpy clothes as you can.

But God has sometimes given us gifts to use outside the church to build bridges (I don’t think Paul ever made tents in church, but used his abilities to support the church and talk with others – Acts 18:3)

But what if you don’t have what the culture values?  I am not sure, what to do but here are some suggestions:

• Look for a culture that values the things that you have been gifted in.  Bill Hybels famously spends his summers sailing with non-Christians because he can sail and loves to sail, but doesn’t spend summer at rock concerts.
• Learn to appreciate the culture.  What things about this culture please God?  And learn to speak about it.  Most of the conversations I had were asking people about the band and what they liked about them and other bands that were similar.  People were very happy to talk about what they were passionate about.  I probably will not get the same opportunity to ‘speak’ as someone who is valued in the culture, but the opportunities will still be there.
• Pray that God would give you the gifts to be appreciated in the culture.  God can give people all sorts of gifts.
• But most importantly, while having something that is valued in the culture is important, learning to love the people in the culture is more so.  Looking for opportunities to love and serve those in the culture is a much better witness than simply being another one like them.

I am sure there are other suggestions….add them to the comments list

This morning the Sydney Morning Herald published an extract from a speech from Joe Hockey.  It is always interesting when an Australian politician speaks on religion.  I think it signals that he or she is positioning to make a play for a leadership move.   This essay is definitely in that vein, a thinly veiled reaching out to all people of Australia:

The God of my faith is not full of revenge, as the Old Testament would suggest with a literal interpretation. The God of my faith does not cause earthquakes or tsunamis as acts of retribution.

As the Pope identified in his recent encyclical Caritas in Veritate (Love in Truth): “Love is God’s greatest gift to humanity, it is his promise and our hope.”

It is not a loving God who wilfully inflicts pain and suffering. No God of any mainstream religion would do that if God’s love is real.

This is the kind of rhetoric that the public wants to hear.

He is able to identify with a number of religious backgrounds: Jewish, Muslim and Christian, but that is through his Dad.

My father migrated to Australia from the Middle East – the son of an Armenian father and a Palestinian mother. While Dad was a Christian growing up in Jerusalem, his closest childhood friend was a Jewish girl. Dad speaks fluent Hebrew and Arabic. He taught me tolerance. He is very ecumenical for someone who lost his home to a war that was based on faith. In Australia he found a country that tolerated diversity.

Again this is the kind of thing that the public wants in a leader.

Hockey has attempted to distance himself from any extremism whether that be “Muslims…who bomb buildings” or the new atheists who “go further than simply trying to pick holes in a literal or historical interpretation of the Bible”.  And that the central message of all religions the Golden rule:

Religion asks of us to become better people – to choose a life of giving and compassion. This “Golden Rule” is a thread that runs from Confucius to Christianity, from Buddhism to Islam.

For me this is the essential message of all faiths – that we should love our neighbour as we love ourselves. As Muhammad spoke in his final sermon, “Hurt no one so that no one may hurt you.” Or as the great Jewish Rabbi Hillel put it: “That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow.”

This is not religion in the theological sense.  This is humanism as his supporters in the comments section point out and my question to Joe would be “Do you pray?” if so to what end?

Again this is the kind of thing that the public wants in a leader.

Unless you are an evangelical like me.

After looking at the Scopes trial where some Christians lost a legal case based on a literal interpretation of Scripture, he lumps all evangelicals in the same box as the extremists he wants to distance himself from.

There are some who will with great conviction, even to this day, argue that all of these things were so. In fact a number of fast-growing evangelical Christian churches in Australia take a literalist approach to the scriptures.

I have a literalist approach to Scripture.  But this in the context of a Biblical theological context and an understanding of reading the Bible in its genre.  Hockey has missed this completely.

But what I really want in a leader is someone who has the guts to say “this is what I believe and here is why”.  Hockey has just given us a bunch of stuff he thinks we want to hear, in doing so has offended me, and I suspect a number of others as well.

I have been reading a book on Pastoral Ministry called Five smooth stones for pastoral work (Eugene Peterson, Grand Rapids, Michigan: W.B. Eerdmans, 1992).  He makes the interesting connection between sex and prayer.  For him they are two sides of the same coin.  In fact the first chapter opens with meeting a woman who he will counsel, in their first session she says “Well, I guess you want to know all about my sex life” to which he responds “What I would really be interested in finding out about is your prayer life” (She didn’t know what to say and so he heard about her sex life instead). pp23-24.

What’s the connection?  Connection.  Sex and prayer both involve intimacy.  Peterson’s point is that intimacy is what we are all really looking for.  Which is why we have a sex obsessed society.  We are looking for that opportunity to be intimate and be able to relate on a deep level, or as Robbie Williams puts it:

All we’ve ever wanted
Is to look good naked
Hope that someone can take it
God save me rejection
From my reflection,
I want perfection
(Bodies from Reality Killed the Video Star)

Sex is not the only place that this intimacy can be found.  Intimacy with your creator can also be found.  This is what prayer is, being able to share the most intimate details of your life, feelings, hopes, dreams, fears, etc. with the one who already knows it.  God.

Early in the new year we are planning to start our small group ministries.  One of the things about Soma is that we want our small groups not just to be Bible studies but communities.  And communities which are able to reach out and make relational bridges and reach out and serve the community.  While we only have one Gathering, there will be multiple Gospel Communities.  But the question is how do we split them up?

This is more complicated by the idea that we want Gospel Communities to go beyond the community of Soma.  The problem is that the things that link and unify me with other people in Soma are not the same as the the things that link and unify me with other people.  And vice versa.

Overlaping unity between different people

So the problem is there is a gap between “my friends” and “their friends”.  Which means my friends and I prefer to do somethings that others and their friends do.  So how do we all spend time together?  What do we have in common?

Here are some solutions as I see them:

1. We focus on a new set of people.  This is something that The Crowded House have done.  So each Gospel Community finds a way of serving the community in doing something like teaching English as a Second Language.  This establishes relationships with the people we are both serving with and serving.  That is we look for something else that unifies us.  It mean that we will have to find other ways of linking up with friends.
2. We set our Gospel communities around group likes and dislikes, age, etc.  This could be hard as to how this works and the Gospel communities would end up being quite small, and others possibly more popular than some, as well as it being very easy for people to feel like they don’t fit in because there is not a group for ‘them’.  But it means if the people in the Gospel community have more in common, and so likewise the people they are in contact with.
3. We set up Gospel communities around geography, i.e. where people live, and ask people to adjust as much as they can.  This has the advantage of showing the world that what we have in common is community and this is a community that anyone can join, i.e. this is what the Gospel can do.  But it can also lead to friction within the Gospel Community.

The bottom line is what is the unifying that that Gospel Communities will have, apart from the Gospel?