They walk in, in a trickle

"It's good for us, pastorally, to be reminded of the way the mustard seed grows."

This comment reminded on Mikey's blog me of some thing that has been on my mind (along with lots of other ideas to share on my blog).

At my old church, there was an idea of planting 100 churches, a plan for lots of people to come to christ. I as an inexperienced young person, found the growth very slow. I know reality, but I also know God's power. I wanted things to happen, with loads of people to come.

In my new church, I guess as well as in a number of circles, there is this idea that Australia will have revival ie there will be a movement where a lot of people become christians. I am told that Australia is the only continent that has not had a revival, also there is this idea that it will be lead by young people. My views on this is one of very cautious optimism (a bit of a contradicition, I know).

I also remember a evangelist say how if alot of people were going to come to christ, there would need to be a lot of leaders to help them to become disciples. In light of this idea, my previous church in putting a lot of emphasis in training up leaders at this stage would be wise.

Also to get back to the comment up above, perhaps these things happen at a slower pace than I realise.

The contrast of magazines

Here is a interesting comment about the differences of magazines and how it simply would not work

Women's mags peddle food as porn, men's mags just peddle porn. If you believe these publications, women aspire to domesticity and happiness and to live happily ever after, while men aspire to debauchery with no responsibility and a happy ending. They make women feel they'll never be good enough and men feel they're not only good enough, they're better than most.

funny anon quote

In discussion about some guys wearing girls jeans

"but it would smell like girl, girls have a smell"

as a christian I must hate the easter bunny

and Father Christmas. This is a Christian culture thing because of the detractions to the 'real' event. I think this argument holds some weight. But what about the marshill policy of not throwing stones at the culture but making it a link. Apparently hot cross buns use to be used in pagan festivals.

it only takes 10 billion dollars to solve the water issue

it seems quite doable if lots of people in the western world got together

blog spammers are annoying

My last post on the angle of health advertising got a blog spam that had nothing to do with the post.

 

Its just irritating, no one will buy your stuff.

 

I could turn off the anon function to prevent this but I have decided not to do this unless it becomes a big serial problem

Technorati Tags: spam

Health promotion ads should be positive and possibly sexy

A lot of ads that the government or government organisations put out are actually quite negative when it comes to health. This is probaly because the general picture of health outcomes unless major interventions take place is not that pretty. The government wishes to warn people of the bad effects of smoking and being over weight. I think this is a good thing

However with it came to the ad of eating 5+ vegetables although the message got across with some methods to do so it wasn't made to be very attractive idea. What they probaly should do is pull out the marketing tricks and advertise it as a really positive thing - as something that will make you 'feel good' but unlike liver cleansing diet pills actually has some scientific evidence to back it up. And sexiness - well doesn't that 'always sell' (used in approiate way!) it can be another outcome as a result of making healthier choices.

Camera's should have bluetooth and or wifi

My mate dav tells me when I pull out my phone, camera and ipod or any of the two that one day I have all of these functions in the one. I know that will adventurely that will happen I could probaly get something now however either the camera will be really crap or it will just be really expensive - I have to wait for the price to come down.

There is however one thing that I think should happen had the manufacturers are missing it. Implimenting wifi or bluetooth into cameras - so that I can transfer the photos into my computer with ease without having to take the memory card out then forgetting that I have done so - so I take it next time I need it with very little internal memory it has. Or connecting it via cord which is just more messy in todays world.

bashing the evagelicals?

sorry if I give the impression that I am doing so I am not at least planning to. I know that also most of the 30 or so people that touch on this blog a month are if christian to be evagelical because that viewpoint dominates the blogsphere I operate in.

 

What is happening is that I am processing I changed to a charismatic church last year and I'm working through the issues. I plan to do some post pointing out some of the weaknesses of the charismatic churches in the future but by chance its landed the other way. Also noted I might by slightly bias I go to a unperfect but very good charismatic church whereas the evagelical church I last went to was good in nz I have seen I number of shortfallings growing up in the reformed church.

 

Also I think there are some sterotypes and misunderstanding and while not my point of existing I wish to iron them out

calvinism for dummies?

I reading wikipedia to get an idea about the differences in calvinist view verse the either so 'heretical' aminist view point I didn't understand the difference now wikipedia is good looking up what you are and the summary different theological views it is not so good at working out what you think you should be.

 

But what I really need is a calvinism for dummies book. But then I realised this goes against calvinism in terms of calvinism being a highly cognitive belief point of view that 'dummies' prob couldn't understand it any way. (this is a joke)

 

I do however note with interest that an article about mark driscoll points to how the calvinists although full believers in the doctrine in depravity it doesn't often lead to humilty. Perhaps because there can be a tendency for them to have pride in knowing exactly how depraved they are (how depraved)

 

BTW I am a light calvinist by default because I not examined the aminist arguement to see which I agree with most. I go to aminist church thats completely fine as they are so much more predestonatists on practice. I currently refuse to find out what point calvinist I am not that it's in any way a sin but because it has little biblical backing to do so and I am going to be stubborn about this

 

 

evangelicals and their view on charismatics

This is a post that I post on mikey lynche's blog that was way too long but I think it made enough points to make a post of my own giving some of my opinions

 

This is one of the reasons I turned 'charismatic'(third wave) and changed to a charismatic church. (one trigger point was reading confessions of a remission rev)

I think that even though leaders well versed in theology like philp jensen and church leaders are not cessationists. But because there are alot of negative charismatic steriotypes in evagelically churches the average person can often end up being practical cessationist and very suspious of any idea of God working like God healing.

Basically no time is spent teaching on how holy spirit can work through people's personal gifting and in general like in acts. Like teaching in cor 12-14 focuses on building on the body in love which is all really good and says all gifts can be used this way (I agree) The teaching however misses the context of the gifts which is the spiritual gifts - tongues prohesy and healing with appropiate instruction on these.

What this means is that there is nothing to correct the sterotypes for the biblical truth in which the gifts being used properly and eargly desired (paul didn't tell the cortithians to tone down spiritual gifts he told them to do so to build up others with guidelines to use them properly) they are treated with suspiousion. This means I get a cessationist book from a youth leader to explain spiritual gifts to my youth (which leads to the continuation of ignorance).

I think there is also this idea that its about being 'gospel focused' (because charimatic churches never are - even though I go to one that is). I am all for being gospel focused. why then do gospel focused churches go to great lengths to train people in teaching the bible etc could be a deversion to proclaiming the gospel it sometimes has been. But the idea behind it is that done properly it points to christ. In the same way training up people in chariamatic gifts like phrophecy and healing should and in their proper use will point to christ. The charimatic church has been quite bad at this as far as I know.

On the charismatic church it hasn't really helped evagelicals embrace the holy spirit by the mishandling of the gifts. Although these things will undoubtabiliy be taught it may not be always be biblically sound and lacking with teaching on discerning and weighing it up. This leads to broadly 5-10% how the 'holy spirit' being used badly and its these things that get circlated amougst evagelical circles even though there is 90% goodness (building up the church) in the use coming from good charismatic churches.

The other thing is when you think charismatic please don't think hillsong. Hillsong I think is part of the AOG movement moving away from being actually charismatic to just having the charismatic culture quiks (like displaying emotion etc). I think a group that does charimatic well is national frontiers - a uk group which is not judging but discerning and calvinists (last point will make most readers happy. I don't know heaps about them but what I have read about them seems really good)