Wow, what a statement. I didn’t know what to think when I saw the title of the video clip that one of NZCN’s Secularism discussion panel members circulated, but I’m glad I watched it.
What Role Can Churches Play in Community Renewal?
On 9 August, 2013, The NY Times shared the story of Kip Jacob’s church in Portland, Oregon and the amazing partnership they’ve had with Roosevelt High School. “Help from Evangelicals (Without Evangelizing)“ The Times called it. The initial paragraph reads:
PORTLAND, Ore. — Four summers ago, on her first day as an administrator at Roosevelt High School here, Charlene Williams heard that the Christians were coming. Some members of an evangelical church were supposed to be painting hallways, repairing bleachers, that sort of thing. The prospect of such help, in the fervently liberal and secular microclimate of Portland, did not exactly fill her with joy.
Following is a 6:31 minute sizzle reel of the documentary made about the project.
Qideas.com filmed an interview with Kip Jacobs, pastor at SouthLake Church, about this project. Click here to watch the story of what happens when a mostly white, affluent suburban church shows up at the doorsteps of an urban high school with a desire to work together. Through his experience, Jacob challenges churches to get involved with their neighbourhood schools and invest in their renewal.
After watching these videos, I followed the link on Qideas.org to a follow-up story. In this clip, The presenter interviews two friends, Tom Krattenmaker, who is a regular contributor to USA Today, and Kevin Palau, president of the Luis Palau Association, as they discuss how God is moving in Portland, what dynamics are at play that movements in other cities might resemble and urge us to prepare for future cultural shifts.
Other videos about this particular project in Portland can be found on the BeUndivided YouTube channel. Their website, which is full of resources and ideas, can be accessed here.
What do you think? Is it better than prayer in schools? What can we take from this and apply to our culture, here in Aotearoa?
Please leave your thoughts and comments below and share this link with others. Challenge your Christian friends to think about what role they can take while living in a secular society. We look forward to the discussions!
Blessings,
Gayann
Gayann and her husband, Stephen, have provided web design and email communication support to NZCN since 2006. She has home schooled their two children for the past nine years, but was ‘made redundant’ at the start of 2013. Since then, she has taken a more active role with NZCN.
Last week, we posted an essay by EAUK’s Danny Webster titled One Way Christians Can Respond to Secularism. In his essay, Danny described how the churches of Southampton partnered with local government when the council asked for their help. Fantastic.
It has been 50 years since Martin Luther King gave one of the most famous speeches in American History. A lot has changed in the USA since then, but how far has his dream come to being fulfilled?
How relevant would this speech be in society today? Are all people, everywhere, free… equal in the eyes of men? Do we live in a democratic age or do we just think we do?
Click here to read the full text (courtesy of NPR).
Have you ever asked a young atheist why he or she doesn’t believe? Well, one researcher did. And the answers may surprise you.
It’s something most Christian parents worry about: You send your kids off to college and when they come back, you find they’ve lost their faith. The prospect of this happening is why many parents nudge their kids towards Christian colleges, or at least schools with a strong Christian presence on campus.
But in many ways, the damage has been done long before our children set foot on campus. That’s the message from a recent article in the Atlantic Monthly.
My friend Larry Taunton of the Fixed Point Foundation set out to find out why so many young Christians lose their faith in college. He did this by employing a method I don’t recall being used before: He asked them.
The Fixed Point Foundation asked members of the Secular Students Associations on campuses around the nation to tell them about their “journey to unbelief.” Taunton was not only surprised by the level of response but, more importantly, about the stories he and his colleagues heard.
Instead of would-be Richard Dawkins’, the typical respondent was more like Phil, a student Taunton interviewed.. Phil had grown up in church; he had even been the president of his youth group. What drove Phil away wasn’t the lure of secular materialism or even Christian moral teaching. And he was specifically upset when his church changed youth pastors.
Whereas his old youth pastor “knew the Bible” and made Phil “feel smart” about his faith even when he didn’t have all the answers, the new youth pastor taught less and played more.
Phil’s loss of faith coincided with his church’s attempt to ingratiate itself to him instead of challenging him. According to Taunton, Phil’s story “was on the whole typical of the stories we would hear from students across the country.”
These kids had attended church but “the mission and message of their churches was vague,” and manifested itself in offering “superficial answers to life’s difficult questions.” The ministers they respected were those “who took the Bible seriously,” not those who sought to entertain them or be their “buddy.”
Taunton also learned that, for many kids, their journey to unbelief was an emotional, not just an intellectual one.
Taunton’s findings are counter-intuitive. Much of what passes for youth ministry these days is driven by a morbid fear of boring our young charges. As a result, a lot of time is spent trying to devise ways to entertain them.
The rest of the time is spent worrying about whether the Christian message will turn kids off. But as Taunton found, young people, like the not-so-young, respect people with conviction—provided they know what they’re talking about.
Taunton talks about his experiences with the late Christopher Hitchens, who, in their debates, refrained from attacking him. When asked why, Hitchens replied, “Because you believe it.”
I don’t know what that says about Hitchens’ other Christian debate partners, but it is a potent reminder that playing down the truth claims of the Christian faith doesn’t work. People don’t believe those they don’t respect.
Here’s something that one of the students told Larry Taunton; he said,
“Christianity is something that if you really believed it, it would change your life and you would want to change [the lives] of others. I haven’t seen too much of that.”
Folks, that’s pretty sobering. This puts the ball in our court. Are we living lives that show our children that we actually believe what we say we believe? And here’s another question—do we actually believe it? I have to say, as a parent I’m taking this very seriously. If possible, join me in reading Taunton’s excellent article here…
Life is filled with coincidences. My children still delight in asking me to recount many of the events that have transpired in my life. Be they key or incidental; it makes no difference. They find them exciting and so do I.
“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” ~ Jeremiah 29:11 (NIV)
When I was a preschooler, I met a man from New Zealand. He had brought his family to Canada and worked at the same engineering firm as my father for a number of months. Given their similar stages in life, my dad’s boss suggested our families socialise. I have a few vague memories of their time with us.
Years later, there was a knock on the door; I opened it. “Jelly-tot Bob!” I squealed. “Little-one,” he replied, “you remember me!” Somehow the memory of this happy man was deeply etched in me. Bob stayed with us for a few days and showed us pictures of his family back in New Zealand. I was hooked by the time I saw the second photo.
I was away on a French exchange, during my final year of high school, when my parents sold our house in Calgary. They rang and said, “Bob has invited us to visit his family in New Zealand later this year. If you can get a job and save up enough money for your flights, we’ll pay your living costs while we’re there.”
Bob collected us from the Auckland International Airport mid-October ’84. After a brief tour of the city, he took us to his house in the Waitakere Ranges, where we stayed with his family for the next six months.
“Welcome to my home… My house: my rules.”
Apparently, when Dad first met Bob, he identified him as one of “those Christians” who naturally spoke about the love of his life. Being a determined atheist, Dad took Bob aside and advised, “My house: my rules.” Bob respected Dad’s wishes – and waited patiently for the day the tables would be turned.
Bob proved to be a very ‘connected’ and forward thinking man. Not only was he the founder of Inspirational Tapes, the NZ distributor for ‘Everyday with Jesus’ and exercised Christian hospitality by taking in numerous people from all walks of life, but he was part of a group of men who initiated many innovative Christian trusts – including one that operated a campground in Pauanui, Coromandel. Bob arranged for me to work at The Glade as a volunteer for the summer, alongside his daughter. There I met many wonderful people, realised the extent of my situation, the truth of the Gospel and gave my life to Christ.
One of those key people was Viv, a missionary on furlough from the slums of Manila. He too had previously been on the receiving end of Bob and Prue’s hospitality and he advised me to tell my parents about my decision and ask Bob to baptize me in one of his ponds when I returned to Auckland.
Before returning to Canada, God told me he would bring me back to NZ in two years. I felt homesick as I passed through the gates of the departure lounge…
“When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child. But when I grew up, I put away childish things.” ~ 1 Corinthians 13:11 (NLT)
Upon our return to Canada, Dad pointed out that I was 18 and that it was time I grew up. My sister and I rented a basement suite in a house mid-way between the university and technology institute, where I studied architecture. I also found a Bible believing church with a supportive congregation and fantastic youth group to help establish me in my faith.
A recession hit Western Canada as I graduated, but that didn’t concern me because a still, small voice reminded me that two years were up… “I’m preparing the way for you to return to New Zealand.”
A letter from an architectural practice arrived in the mail so, I rang and asked how they heard about me. “Someone showed me an ad in an architectural magazine. It has your name, age, address, qualifications and says you want to work in New Zealand.” I was offered a job and moved to New Zealand two weeks later… I didn’t place the ad.
Coincidences happens when our lives coincides with God’s plans. In other words, coincidence is a God-incidence
Take another look at 1 Corinthians 13:11. Even as an unbeliever my father would have agreed whole-heartedly with the text, but this is how I read it:
When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child. I believed everything my father said and did… and suffered the consequences of an abused childhood… because I existed under his domination.
But when I grew up, I put away childish things. I saw reality and took hold of life under God’s authority and protection. Most importantly, because I grew up I forgave my father of his sins against me… just as My Father (God) forgives me of mine against Him (Matthew 6:12).
Coincidence?
I’d love to hear about some of your “coincidences”. Please, post them below. Your faith will grow and you will inspire others. And share my story with others if you feel it may encourage them.
Blessings,
Gayann
Gayann and her husband, Stephen, have provided web design and email communication support to NZCN since 2006. She has home schooled their two children for the past nine years, but was ‘made redundant’ at the start of 2013. Since then, she has taken a more active role with NZCN.
Historian Jaroslav Pelikan began his insightful book, Jesus Through the Centuries: His Place in the History of Culture, with these provocative words: “Regardless of what anyone may personally think or believe about him, Jesus of Nazareth has been the dominant figure in the history of Western culture for almost twenty centuries.” The question that immediately confronts the competent historian, of course, is why: why did a penniless, itinerant rabbi from a backwater district of the Roman Empire, executed in disgrace, exert such a powerful influence on Western civilization?
Reza Aslan’s best-selling book, Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth, belongs to that genre of works devoted to unearthing the “real historical Jesus.” Like countless authors before him, Aslan claims to have discovered a radically different Jesus from the personality portrayed in the gospels and preached by the church for two millennia. Like his predecessors, he assumes, without any hard evidence, that the Christian community conspired to reinvent Jesus in order to meet pressing social needs. Like them, Aslan delivers an account that fails, with staggering ineptitude, to answer the question that haunts all honest minds about the legacy of the Nazarene.
In Aslan’s retelling, Jesus made no claims to divinity, nor did he interpret his life and death as the crowning act of God’s redemptive mission on earth. Rather, he writes, Jesus was “a zealous revolutionary, swept up, as all Jews of the era were, in the religious and political turmoil of first-century Palestine.” In short, Jesus was a freedom-fighter advocating violence to remove the boot of Roman rule from the neck of his fellow Jews.
Jaroslav Pelikan’s book is worth revisiting in the midst of this latest debate. He reminds us that in each age of history, scholars as well as laymen depict Jesus in ways that endorse their own cultural biases and agendas. In the Renaissance, Jesus was “the Universal Man,” the figure who inspired the humanistic revolt against traditional and medieval beliefs. In the Age of Enlightenment, Jesus was “the Teacher of Common Sense,” a moral reformer opposed to the superstition and spiritual tyranny of organized religion. Thomas Jefferson, for example, required just three evenings at the White House to bang out his own version of the life of Jesus, “abstracting what is really his from the rubbish in which it is buried.” The discarded trash included just about everything Jesus said about God, eternal life, and the coming judgment.
The habit of reinterpreting the life of Jesus to support professional and partisan agendas picked up steam in the turbulent twentieth century. In the throes of the First World War, American ministers and theologians invoked his name to convert the war into a holy crusade. “This conflict is indeed a crusade. The greatest in history — the holiest,” intoned Randolph McKim from his pulpit in Washingon, D.C. “Yes, it is Christ, the King of Righteousness, who calls us to grapple in deadly strife with this unholy and blasphemous power.”
Scholars and ministers took the opposite line in the 1930s, however, having repented of their faith-based militarism. In their historical revision, Jesus was “the Prince of Peace” who endorsed utopian disarmament schemes and rejected war under any circumstances. The portrait of Jesus as Divine Diplomat was trotted out even as Nazi Germany launched its blitzkrieg throughout Europe. As late as 1941, with most of Europe under Nazi control, Rev. John Haynes Holmes spoke for many when he argued for complete disarmament: “Can anyone read Jesus’ gospel, and study his life in fulfillment of that gospel, without seeing love is a weapon more potent than the sword?” Their twenty-first-century descendants, such as Duke University’s Stanley Hauerwas, promote the same pacifist messiah, confident that Jesus categorically rejects the “war on terror” as an immoral foreign policy.
By the 1960s, leftist theologians were touting Jesus as “the Marxist Messiah.” In their “liberation theology,” Jesus championed the cause of the poor against their capitalist oppressors. As such, he endorsed violent revolution against Western-backed dictatorships, the nationalization of industry, and the collectivization of private property. “I think liberation theology’s understanding of Jesus is part of a wider 20th-century appreciation of the historical Jesus and his ministry,” says Fordham University’s Michael Lee.
Zealot likewise fits the temper of our times neatly — too neatly. Aslan’s controversial Fox News interview, about whether his Islamic background allows him to write an objective historical account of Jesus, obscures the real problem: the hubris of the professional provocateur.
Aslan has advanced his career — he is a professor of creative writing, not a historian — with self-serving criticism of the “demonization” of Islam under the Bush administration. Having fled Iran in 1979 for the United States, he interprets the 9/11 attacks as a clarion call to Muslims in the Middle East to overthrow oppressive regimes. Thus, the Arab Spring is seen as the happy fruit of that horrific event: an unequivocal march toward political freedom. “Across the board,” he told Mother Jones, “what has happened is that the regimes in the region now understand that they can no longer just ignore the will of the people.” (Aslan has less to say about the pernicious influence of radical Islamist jihad in directing the “will of the people” in Egypt, Syria, Libya and beyond.)
Thus, we encounter Jesus the Zealot for Political Liberation: the embodiment of the revolutionary motif so congenial to Aslan’s frame of mind. The problem, of course, is that textual and historical evidence to the contrary — not to mention a good dose of common sense — must be thrown overboard to support the storyline.
Jesus’ counsel to his followers, for example, about whether to submit to Roman rule — “give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and give to God what belongs to God” — takes on a subversive meaning. Evading the plain rendering of the Greek text in the gospels, Aslan claims that Jesus forcefully denounced the oppressive political authority of Rome, embodied in its tax system. The telling fact that none of Jesus’ disciples interpreted his words as a rallying cry for rebellion is not permitted to intrude into this fantasy narrative.
We are informed that the early Christians, desperate to avoid the persecuting wrath of Rome, sought to soften the militant themes embedded in Jesus’ message. As Aslan writes: “Thus began the long process of transforming Jesus from a revolutionary Jewish nationalist into a peaceful spiritual leader with no interest in any earthly matter.” We are asked to believe in a vast conspiracy of distortion, sustained over centuries, supported by false documents, countenanced and hushed up by church leaders.
Sound familiar? Dan Brown, author of The Da Vinci Code, at least had the decency to tell us that his work was fiction. The preaching of the early church, the collective testimony of Christian martyrs, the Christian moral code that challenged much of Roman cultural and political life — all of this lays waste to the notion that the primitive church was more concerned about its social status than its fidelity to the life and teachings of Jesus.
Aslan insists that his aim is to “purge the scriptures of their literary and theological flourishes and forge a more accurate picture of the Jesus of history.” What has been purged in this latest treatment of the life of Jesus, however, are not the flourishes, but the existential, redemptive core of the faith he founded. Other religions, including Islam, may be able to dispense with the miraculous and retain their essential meaning. Not the religion of Jesus. “The Christian story is precisely the story of one grand miracle,” writes C.S. Lewis, “that what is beyond all space and time, what is uncreated, eternal, came into nature, into human nature, descended into His own universe, and rose again, bringing nature up with Him.”
No account of the historical Jesus better explains his extraordinary and enduring influence over the human story than this one.
Joseph Loconte, PhD, is an associate professor of history at the King’s College in New York City and the author of The Searchers: A Quest for Faith in the Valley of Doubt (Thomas Nelson).
It’s been a while since I went to a hair dresser. I still remember what it was like. It’s not actually something I miss. My stereotype of hairdressers are people who talk a lot all day with many different people. They have their ear to the ground, their finger on the pulse, and are probably happy to give their opinion about anything (I say that all positively).
Christchurch Cathedral before the 22 February, 20111 earthquakes
For my doctoral research I interviewed some people who were not what I defined as being Christianised. I wanted to gain their perception of the Christian church in New Zealand. One of these people was a 30-year-old male hairdresser working in the inner city who was born and grew up in Christchurch. He had some fascinating thoughts about the Anglican cathedral which was a central icon in the inner city. This is part of his story:
This conversation was before the 22 February 2011 earthquakes which destroyed both of the cathedrals in Christchurch.
I invited the people I interviewed to choose where we met and I offered to buy them a drink at a cafe or pub. This hairdresser, lets call him Dave (not his real name), chose a cafe on the edge of the square in the centre of the city, where we met one Tuesday at lunchtime. We sat at a table by a window and the view was similar to that in the photo above.
We were well into the interview, perhaps 40 minutes had passed, and we’d been talking about things to do with society and church. I looked out the window and the thought of asking him about the magnificent symbol of Christendom sitting only meters away from us crossed my mind:
Mike “Looking out here, does the cathedral being in the Square mean anything to you?”
Dave“Um, yeah, I actually thought about that, I think it’s a beautiful building, it’s historical… because we’re New Zealand, we are part of Europe, um, all these countries that churches were, um, originally founded, because they that’s um, English-style architecture…”
Mike “People probably go there on a Sunday”
Dave“Oh it’s a church?! I thought it was just-”
Mike “What would you think of people that went there?…”
Dave“That’s a hard one but I should have an answer for that, I should probably think about that before I answer… if it is a church, I don’t know if it is an active church?”
Mike “yeah, yeah it is”
Dave“People do go there? And it’s probably something you’d see in an old English- with choir boys and big long gowns-
Mike“Yeah, I think they do have a choir”
Dave“And their slick back haircuts and suit and ties…”
I love this conversation. I think it says so much about so many things to do with the church in New Zealand:
the way a part of the church presents itself,
the way something as historically iconic as an Anglican cathedral can appear to be so removed from the essence of Christian-faith-community,
the difference between how I as a churched person see a cathedral and how someone not familiar with church sees it.
Christianity has not been in New Zealand for long: nearly 200 years.
When New Zealand was being colonised, there were two church sponsored settlements, one by the Presbyterian (Scottish) church in Otago in 1843, and the other by the Anglican (English) church who founded Christchurch as a settlement in 1851.
I lived in several New Zealand cities before moving to Christchurch at the end of 2008. When I arrived here I found the historical Anglican influence in Christchurch very noticeable compared to the other major New Zealand cities – for example, the number of Anglican church buildings in the original city limits (the “Four Aves”) compared to the number of “dissenter” churches.
This post isn’t supposed to be a critique of the Anglican church or the city of Christchurch – I like them both! What I hope it does is provide an example of how two people in the same city, both in their 30′s, view a nice old building in the centre of town:
I think of it as the seat of the Anglican bishop for this region, and a place where people who consider themselves part of the Anglican communion in this city can gather for worship. I have also experienced the building as a space used like a town hall, where public meetings and concerts occurred.
Davevalued the building’s architecture including its historical connection back to Europe, and appeared to see the building as having no current religious significance.
When I said I love this conversation, I acknowledge that it isn’t particularly positive for the public impression of the expression of Christian spirituality – that was occurring from the Anglican cathedral before the earthquakes.
What I love is how succinctly it gives a snap-shot of one person’s reality concerning that big old building in the square.
I suspect Dave is not alone with his views and understanding.
Four (?) generations into New Zealand’s most Anglican city and even the bricks and mortar of this institution have lost their meaning [for some – for many?]
What would your hairdresser think? (Lets call this The Hairdresser Test)
