42

Further Training of Ministers

There have been a couple of blog posts in the Methodist world about the importance of continued academic training of our Ministers. It started with Angie in The Kneeler: Qualified to Minister? and The Kneeler: Education and Ministry - Wesley's lists! Richard then continued with it in Ministerial formation | connexions.

As someone with only a Diploma in Theology (and whose attempt to complete the degree during probationer training was thwarted by family problems particularly Mother-in-law heart attack and double bypass operation) I fully support the need for academically qualified ministers who are spirit filled and can make connections between these things and everyday life with people in and outside the Church.

I take seriously the need to continue to learn and would relish the opportunity to continue to study and that despite finding academic essay writing a horrific process (love the learning, hate the fully referenced writing, love putting it into practice in community).

So anyway with all that in mind I have enrolled on a new course of study. It may not be quite what Angie had in mind :-) Still in January my education continues with a 10 week course through Tresham College at one of their Corby centres to gain a Welding C&G Level 1 Certificate.

Well that is assuming they offer me an interview and accept me.

Suggestions about how to use this in ministry are welcome!

Datasoul: my first live use

I wrote about datasoul for the first time in 42: Datasoul - Free Open Source Church Presentation Software.

Today was the first time I have used it live. It was at 42: Launching Hope 10 in Thrapston and I was running the latest development source code within NetBeans and so had a number of improvements from version 1.3 (remote presenter, ui improvements, initial support for image displays).

As St James was setup in cafe style we used three projectors and screens so that people could sing without squirming around in their seats. I was running on Ubuntu 9.10 and besides the songs had a dvd to play.

I did not have the songs entered into datasoul before I arrived but it was extremely quick to copy and paste the words in. In fact much much quicker than it is in SongPro, Powerpoint or OpenOffice Impress. The main reason for this is that you don't have to paste each verse/chorus in separately. Instead they go into a single text block with the slides separated by === which are nice and quick to add. The simplicity of datasoul also helps, you don't have to specifically mark choruses and bridges, instead you repeat them as you actually want to sing them (you can modify this for a specific service after adding the song).

I still think it would be good to provide a syntax to identify song elements such as verses, choruses and bridges (partly for display purposes). But I would need to find a really simple way to do this that would not make things more complicated because that would lose this really time saving feature of Datasoul.

Another feature that works better than any other service presentation software I have used is the preview of songs and control over what is actually on the projector. I have not used anything which so reliably allows you to preview the slides for the next song while still moving through the current one. It is an area we have been discussing on the mailing list but this afternoon made the advantages of the current system very obvious. In the same way switching the projector display on and off is really simple and reliable.

Configuration of multiple screens is a little more fiddly (you have to type in co-ordinates and resolution) but the result is much more reliable and resilient than other methods I have used. The display and focus just work correctly all the time even when switching between datasoul and other software using the projector (such as the dvd player).

So while datasoul does have a few limitations at the moment (lack of image support probably being the most significant) there are other things besides the price that make it stand out against others. In particular

• Speed of adding and editing songs
• Control over what is on the projector and preview
• control over multiple monitors
• multi-platform (Windows xp, vista and 7/Mac/Linux etc)
• A development team that welcomes contributions

As a result I highly recommend datasoul.

Launching Hope 10 in Thrapston

This afternoon marked the launch of the 3rd year of Hope in Thrapston. What started with Hope 08 and continued with Hope 09 will carry on, indeed grow in 2010.

So Christians from all the Churches in Thrapston gathered for worship this afternoon at St James. This time we had decided on a cafe style of worship, one that was hindered at least for me by far too many nice cakes :-)

As with all our Hope events all the Churches and all the clergy in the town were involved. We were welcomed by Charles, Vicar of Thrapston (whose congregation were enthused by his service on Hope this morning). Our worship was lead by James from Thrapston Baptist Church.

Arthur, the outgoing Baptist minister had prepared a video of photos of recent projects which we watched before prayers of praise and thanks for some of the projects during the last 9 months or so. We had people from each project lead the prayers but kept this down to only 11 projects for time purposes. It is amazing that God has been so busy in Thrapston that we all find it difficult to keep track. The projects/events mentioned were:

• Senior Alpha course for Manor Court Flats
• Lent Course
• Good Friday March
  
• Prayer Week
• Charter Fair
• Praise in the Park
• Holiday Club
• Holiday at Home
• Light Party
• Punching Holes in the Dark
• Operation Christmas Child
  

After some more singing we then introduced and prayed for projects and events that are coming up in the next few months. Again these were led by a variety of people including Father Brian and Arthur. They included:

• Cross Connect Youth Club
• Carol Service 3pm 29th Nov with Thrapston Town Band at the Methodist Church, Market Road
• Turning on the Christmas Lights with nativity (5th Dec)
• Holiday at Home Christmas Party (17th Dec)
• Carol Singing 20th & 21st Dec
• Joint Service 10:30am 27th Dec at the Methodist Church, Market Road
• Shrove Tuesday/Pancake Day party with pancake races etc: Thrapston Baptist Church at 7:30pm
• Lent Course : Wednesday Nights 7:30pm on Big Issues facing humanity
• Prayer Week during Holy Week
• Good Friday March

Lots more being planned for later in the year

We then closed by singing together before Charles led a commissioning of the coming events and sent us back out into the community.

The numbers were great and so was the response, we have seen growth in the numbers of people supporting Hope over the years and again there were new faces which is great news.

Methodists at Mission21

As a Methodist it has been incredibly exciting to see how many Methodists are at Mission21. The whole team of District Evangelism Enablers are here plus many others lay and ordained.

Beyond the individuals here it is great to see how much the Methodist Church as a denomination has invested in it for example

• Graham Horsley on the organising team,
• Money from the Epworth Fund tp make it happen
• Martyn Atkins as keynote speaker
• Jenny Ellis as joint leader of the 24x7 Discipleship Stream
• Ian Bell from the Venture FX Team is here

It has also been great to meet other Methodists, some old friends and some new. Last night a few of us were sharing stories in the pub which included some amazingly encouraging stories of God at work in Methodism.

One thing I have noticed with a little sadness is that many of the District Enablers seem to be ministers who have not wanted a second Circuit appointment. Maybe we need to see penalty points assigned to circuits whose ministers do not seek another circuit appointment when they come to leave. If a circuit has a history of ministers leaving and not wanting other appointments then maybe the circuits should be put into some kind of "special measures".

Methodism the way it should be

A couple of weeks ago, so I am told, one of the Raunds Methodist Church leadership team was in a meeting with another member of staff when they were setting dates for something. A date was suggested and the Raunds member said "I can't make that night, we have a Raunds leadership team meeting". They were told  "You can't be, Dave is away at the Mission21 Church Planting conference then". The reply was clear "Of course we can, we do it all the time, how else would anything get done".

Well sure enough, on Tuesday evening this week they had the leadership meeting while I was in the last session of the 24x7 Discipleship stream for the day.

By Wednesday morning I had copies of the minutes and sure enough they got lots done (mostly focused on practical getting on with the mission of the Church - like preparing for the coming 24x7 prayer week) plus ecumenical stuff, property stuff, finance. One of the other great things was the progress they made on providing a permanent Prayer room for the town - something I have been dreaming of for a long time.

I got some other updates by facebook and tonight I got a copy of the letter they have sent to St Peter's CoE inviting them to join us for Sunday lunch after the joint covenant service in January.

This is absolutely how it should be. Methodists believe in the priesthood of all believers. Ministers have a representative role not a hierarchical one. Every leadership team should be strong enough and empowered enough to meet without a minister present and every minister and leadership team should make sure that they trust each other for this to be a normal event.

I have blogged quite a few times over the years about the Raunds Leadership Team and this is just another example of why I have the best job in the world. Well except for the bit that will see me up a ladder hanging the nativity lights on Saturday morning (all future Churches should be only one story high please).

It was of course thinking about this that freed me up to book another conference (see my post 42: Evangelicalism and Fundamentalism in Britain Project).

The gospel is alive: BBC News : Vicar forgives daughter's killers

Hear the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ BBC News : Vicar forgives daughter's killers.

Hallelujah.

I assume I don't have to make it clear that it is the response from Mr Boxall that is the cause of celebration not the terrible act that led to the need to respond - that was obvious wasn't it, I really didn't need to write this extra bit did I because everyone knows what Jesus teaches about love, enemies and forgiveness. I just wish we took the teaching and example of Jesus more seriously more of the time.

Good team here at mission21

Just seen that Bob and Mary Hopkins are here are Mission21. They were key and inspiring leaders on the Mission Shaped Ministry course that I did through Fresh Expressions for a year.

Lots of great people here.

Evangelicalism and Fundamentalism in Britain Project

I got an invite from the Evangelicalism and Fundamentalism in Britain Project to a day conference called Christian Fundamentalism and British Evangelicalism: Exploring the Relationship.

At the same time they asked me to publicise it. I was initially uncertain about doing so. I am quite determined that 42 not become in anyway commercial.

However, I have been thinking about it and after checking my diary again I have decided to go.

The Conference Information is all available as is a flyer (pdf).

The key speakers are:

• Professor Alister McGrath of King’s College, London
• • ‘Evangelicalism, Fundamentalism and Science’
• Dr Stephen Holmes of the University of St Andrews
• • ‘Evangelicalism, Fundamentalism and Theology’
• Professor David Bebbington of the University of Stirling
• • ‘Evangelicalism and Fundamentalism in Britain’

The conference will consider the ways in which Evangelicalism and Fundamentalism have expressed themselves in the social and historical conditions of Britain and
engage such questions as:
• Who have traditionally been Evangelicals and Fundamentalists?
• What doctrines have they upheld?
• What attitudes have they maintained?
• Have Evangelicals displayed the anger often considered characteristic of Fundamentalists?

The location is King’s College Chapel, London, on Tuesday, 15 December 2009. The cost is £10

It would be great if some of those who I have crossed swords with over the years (yes Adrian that would include you) were able to have a meet up at this conference.

Mission21 - Rowan Atkinson Amazing Jesus

Another YouTube clip used by Steve to challenge the 24x7 discipleship stream at Mission21:

YouTube - Rowan Atkinson Amazing Jesus.

Discipleship challenge for today from - The Apostles' Creed (Not the Nine O'Clock News)

Steve shared this in our Mission21 24x7 discipleship stream.

YouTube - The Apostles' Creed (Not the Nine O'Clock News).

Mission 21: Resources

Despite my little sisters comments on Facebook we are in fact being encouraged at Mission21 to both blog and tweet during the sessions.

They already have a cool resources page with links to video, pictures, mp3's, blogs and tweets at Mission21 Resources.

To keep most up-to-date twitter is best. Watch the #mission21 tag.

Mission 21 - Martyn Atkins

[Update] Martyn's talk is now online as an MP3. Also Martyn has joined the 24x7 Discipleship stream.

"It is more fun making babies than building coffins"

The need for variety in models of Church.

"Indigenous" to "pilgrim" continuum (I've been seeing this in Stuart Murray's book Church Planting: Amazon.co.uk). Been reflecting on that for a while for myself (and I have a bias towards the Pilgrim end). Martyn points out both are always needed in every church with different shades and hues.

Martyn looks at tensions in this continuum.

• Seems to be God designed tension
• balance creates variety and health (he notes that often we get them wrong way round we are pilgrim when we should be indigenous and vica versa.
• Both gospel based John 1:14 Indigenous = incarnational. Pilgrim = the divine tabernacled with us for while (2 translations of same text).

Both will change when society changes. One will take the lead in renewal at a particular time - but today with variety we need Both/And. Need synergy.

He connects with history. We need to learn lessons and so need synergy and movement between both.

If we have more variety of Christianity then we need more to work out what holds it together. Considers a time traveller view of Christianity as a world faith. Christendom in recent times has restricted variety.

Holds us together:

• Scripture
• The person of Christ
• Rule of life/lifestyle
• A community of faith and practice
• Models of discipleship

Two key indications of authentic Christianity

• Disciple-making (key to all renewal movements)
• • If you make disciples among new people then renewal comes. Mark of a renewal movement
  • Acid test for fresh expressions/church plants
  • • Work in progress on thinking about evangelism

• you will ...!
• Will you ...?
• Please will you ...?
• Will you pretty please ...?
• Why won't you ...?
• Why wouldn't you (want to)?
• You wouldn't want to!
• last two are key for today, they are long and hard and attractive
• Wanted: varied authentic Christian disciples
• Varied Communities
• • engage with and transform the world. Not for personal health and personal balance
  • varied communities - communities of place and communities of practice
  • dispersed as well as gathered
  • communities of holiness
  • human communities
  • importance of Christian community in building communities
  • Christian churches regarded by society as both dangerous and essential

Call for greater diversity in church plant and fresh expression and faithful risk taking.

Be more radically indigenous and prophetically pilgrim and ever more open to the Holy Spirit!!!

Mission 21 is for practitioners

It turns out the target this year at Mission 21 is practitioners. Just hearing from Rob at the River in the Medway - good stuff.

Now Kent and Katei are leading an introduction to the various streams. I'm in the stream "Planting 24/7 Disciples" seems a big group that has just been nicknamed "The Holy Team" - bit daunting that.

Mission 21 conference

I'm at Mission 21 in Bath, we are just in the welcomes at the moment starting with our host Katei Kirby. Lots of Methodists here which is great. 1st main speaker is going to be Martyn Atkins the Methodist General Secretary/Secretary of Conference.

Currently a welcome from Steve Clifford General Director of the Evangelical Alliance, 1st time I have heard him and he is coming over well, inspiring.

Quiet Sundays in rural Northamptonshire

or more accurately Quiet Sundays in rural Northamptonshire NOT! Today has been fun and far from quiet.

This morning I was at Irthlingborough Methodist Church leading worship. We were able to pray over all the Christmas shoe boxes they have collected for the Samaritans Purse project Operation Christmas Child. Part of the goal seems to be to build a wall of shoe boxes to hide the minister.

The service also included a few other firsts.

• We used our new projection screen. I am really pleased with this, we fitted it on Monday night and it looks and works great. So often screens look terrible in Churches. However, this fits very neatly in the refurbished church. It is central, nearly 2m above the platform and can be easily removed so that nothing remains when it is not being used. It is designed to be fixed to a wall with a rigid frame and the screen is tensioned between them. For us it rests on a ledge and is tied back to the old choir balcony rail. Anyway the results today were superb.
• It was also my first use of my new laptop for a service. First time I have had a Linux machine capable of playing a DVD and working well with dual screens. All went pretty well, a little fumble with the switch between OpenOffice Impress and the dvd but other than that all ok. Not very excited about the performance of OpenOffice on this machine given it has a dual core 64bit processor.

Anyway I loved the service. We were looking at Mark 13:1-8 and some of the themes of that passage connected very powerfully with our situation. See Dave Faulkner's Sermon: Christ-Centred Priorities where he makes some similar points (and that sermon was very helpful in my final preparation).

I used the human rainbow method I learned from the Mennonites to add a bit of interaction as we considered our attitudes to the return of Jesus. It led to some good sharing and the encouraging news that the congregation are looking forward to the return of Jesus - even if several said they would prefer to have the Sunday lunch they had prepared first :-) Methodists really do like sharing food, possibly nearly as much as Jesus according to the gospel accounts.

I am really enjoying getting to know the church here, it is a real joy to be with them at this stage in their life with so many things taking off following the huge refurbishment.

I was there  on Thursday morning for one of those - Little Fishes - a toddler group that is refreshingly open about the gospel message and full too. On Wednesday they start a regular lunch for the community on the day when nowhere else is open in the community.

Sadly, I had to dash off soon after the end of the service - the preacher had gone on a bit and we had lots of singing (yes it was me and I know it is all my fault, but I hate rushing worship) - as I had a Church council meeting at Thrapston.

It was an important milestone for our small congregation there. Our first Church council since Enid, our friend, organist and Church Council Secretary died from cancer in the summer (see 42: Changing lives about the funeral). On Friday several of us had been to a Requiem and Thanksgiving service at Bishop Stopford School which was packed.

So it was a big moment for us. But the congregation are lovely people who show great care and thoughtfulness and deep faith so we prayed, reflected and planned together. Next summer will be the Churches 125th Anniversary and plans are being made for that (so if anyone reading this has connections with Thrapston Methodist Church over the last 125 years please do get in touch).

After the Church Council it was back home for a while, not with Jane though as she was dropping one son in Northampton for a concert rehearsal and collecting another from the station after a weekend in London with an Aunt.

Our paths did cross a little later. Jane was driving home up Primrose Hill with our youngest son while I was driving down it on the way to our 4th Circuit Taste and See service - so we waved at each other.

This Taste and See was at Kingsway Methodist Church, Wellingborough and was a Taizé style service. Like all the others in our series (so far we have had Contemporary, Traditional and Cafe) it was ably led by a team of our Circuit Local Preachers - several of whom go to Taizé most years. The numbers attending these fortnightly services have been really encouraging as have the discussions and feedback afterwards over tea. Our last one is in two weeks (29th November) in Thrapston at 3pm - a Community Carol Service with the Thrapston Town Band.

From Wellingborough I went straight on to Northampton where I met Jane at the Dearngate Theatre for a "Youth in Concert" performance. Our oldest was in the Sax choir (in the lobby before the start), County Concert Band and County Youth Orchestra. A fantastic set of performances from those groups plus the County Big Band, Brass Band and Choir. Again we gave thanks that the Methodist Church sent us to Northamptonshire, our oldest son has had such wonderful opportunities through the county music service.

Mind you, as we have looked at schools around the country recently we are also reminded how thankful we are for the excellent education they have all had in Raunds, particularly from Manor School.

Anyway finally saw everyone at the same time for the first time this weekend at just after 11pm Sunday night. Anyone who thinks weekends are quiet here has not been part of our family.

Off to bed soon, busy week as I am away Tuesday through Thursday at a conference on Church planting called Mission 21 Planting Life - very much looking forward to it.

My favourite UK city

Today I am in my favourite UK City, I brought my son here for a visit and had an enjoyable time wandering around old haunts.

The city is of course - Manchester. Where else could it be after all?

He is back now so back into the car for the ride home.

Datasoul - Free Open Source Church Presentation Software

What a nice surprise. I have been doing some setup on a replacement laptop (after much abuse all 3 USB ports have given up on my old laptop which is a big problem for mobile internet access, presentation remotes, external hard disks and cameras).

Anyway I decided to have another look for free software for Church services (I can't yet find my SongPro CD and anyway would prefer to use open and free software, plus it helps if it runs on Linux).

Anyway, good news. I found Datasoul - Free Open Source Church Presentation Software. It is already excellent, written in Java and immediately ran on my new Dell Laptop running 64bit Linux as well as on Windows.

I have spent the last couple of days exchanging emails with Samuel and Jean-Philippe with some ideas for making it work a little better for our small Churches (Samuel is in Brazil in a Church of 4,000 so has rather more complex needs than the Churches of 40+ that I serve).

I have already been able to download the source code and start making some sense of it. Java coding has changed a huge amount in the several years since I did any (especially when it comes to designing forms in Netbeans - wow!). So the learning curve is a bit steep.

I am very hopeful that I'll be able to use it for services very soon (my needs relate to not usually having an operator and so needing to move through the whole service using a remote presenter with next and previous buttons. I think it is going to be great for several of our churches and of course the fact it is free software produced by a worshipping congregation is very attractive too.

There are some really nice features of Datasoul that are better than the commercial stuff I have found in the past.

• One is the very simple text files used for service plans which are self contained and so contain all the song words.making it much easier to move them between machines.
• Another is the way a song can be changed, either in the library for all future uses or in just this service (eg miss a verse out).
• The interface is very simple and straightforward so it is really easy to use (and from our conversations going to get better too).

This is a great find and I am really excited about it. If there are any other Java programmers in your churches who would might like to get involved that would be fantastic and your Church could then get something really good at the best price.

Good reasons for a big car

While I frequently wonder if we could manage with a smaller car today reminds me why it can be useful.

The whole family have just been helping me load the car with donated food, toiletries and clothes for the Whitechapel Mission. At 4am in the morning I am taking a very full car with 4 volunteers and all this stuff down to London so that we can cook around 150 breakfasts for people who are homeless.

Despite the enormous size of the back of a Citroen C8 we still did not manage to fit everything in. No matter, we are going again in December and January.

As usual finding volunteers for a 4am start is very hard. Hard because so many want to volunteer that I have to turn them away. Again we have a mixture of those who have been before and some who are new. I love it when people discover the huge joys in serving others.

Within the Church so many people have found this a really significant point of change or awakening that it has opened many eyes to the needs that we are so frequently told do not exist (and that most people believe should not exist).

Should be back home for around 1pm.

Note that despite the efforts of the Nene Valley Circuit the Whitechapel Mission always need more stuff and there are always opportunities for volunteers. The page of stuff they need was updated tonight so I was pleased to see that we have loaded some of the things labelled "We are desperate!!" and "We need Help!".

Exciting Churches: Wollaston Methodist

A few weeks go I wrote 42: Exciting Churches: Raunds Methodist. One reaction was from David Matthias in The Road to "Elder" ado: Exciting Churches in which he wrote

Dave Warnock is excited about his Church, which is great to see.

Of course Raunds is only one of the Churches for which I have pastoral charge (Methodist speak for being the minister). So, being a pedantic person - when it suits me :-) - I wanted to point out that a) no Church is "my" Church in a possesive way and b) "my" other 4 Churches (Irthlingborough, Old Weston, Thrapston and Wollaston) are also exciting. So I guess I get five times more excitement than David does.

In fact I could even argue that as Methodist Ministers are appointed to Circuits (in my case the Nene Valley Circuit) not specific Churches that I get either 12 or 15 times more excitement (the difference depends on whether you count Churches or distinct congregations).

Anyway, enough randon rambling.

Today I want to share some of the excitement of a small village chapel. Now I know that many people do not think that a small village chapel can be exciting. So let me tell you about Wollaston Chapel.

Wollaston is a village just south of Wellingborough, there are four Church traditions in the village (Baptist, CoE & Salvation Army as well as the Methodist). They all work closely together and have different strengths.

When I say that Wollaston Methodist Chapel is pretty traditional in Worship style and in the rest of it's life many will dismiss it as boring, irrelevant or dying. In fact it is none of things. Instead it has chosen to be unfashionable in order to serve people in the village that might otherwise be missed.

So Wollaston Methodist Church has deliberately chosen to serve the elderly of the village. It has done a lot of preparation for this over the years. For example in making the premises attractive, safe and easy to access for the elderly (and in the process made them very effective for others too such as the uniformed organisations who use them regularly). But this is not a Church that understands mission as providing a building. Instead they are incredibly active in all aspects of the Methodist calling : Worship, Evangelism, Learning & Caring, and Service.

Beyond the Sunday worship there is a large Wesley Guild meeting every Monday evening (well over 40 when I was there last). On Tuesdays there is a Bible Study group and on Thursdays the Church is open for quiet prayer followed by either a lunch or a Womens Fellowship (alternate weeks).

Then there is the long list of events, most of which are carefully tailored to the target age range.

For example tonight there was a tea at 4pm followed by a concert. There were over 90 guests at the tea plus the "staff". The numbers were made manageable by setting a minimum age of 70 (there is a repeat on Monday night for anyone younger).  So far as I could see it would have been pretty much impossible to fit any more in the hall. The team were clearly well practiced at serving and clearing away with no fuss and great speed.

One tea was over most guests went downstairs to the chapel to sing their favourite hymns while the team cleared away all the tables, set out the chairs, built the stage (it needed to be folded away to fit so many in for tea) and then got into their costumes - all done amazingly quickly, downstairs we were still in full swing with favourite hymns when all was ready. (Note that depite having an upstairs and downstairs we also have level access to front and rear depending on whether you enter from the High Street or College Street).

The concert itself was ideally suited to the audience, there were loads of songs they knew. Plus a comedy duo (certain Church Stewards were seen in a very new light) and a set of songs from Oliver performed by children (children playing the childrens roles is what I mean). Afterwards the Church organised lifts home for anyone who wanted one.

Over the next few weeks it seems that barely a week goes by without a special event for the community organised by Wollaston Methodist Church, in them all they make sure that the good news is proclaimed and lived out.

Beyond all this the Chapel is also very active in world mission with collections for many places, plus a team goes to Croatia every year (late Nov/early Dec). They also make sure to invite speakers and preachers from a wide range of mission agencies to learn and offer prayer and practical support.

So in the morning when I am leading traditional worship and preaching at Wollaston I will do so as someone who is excited to be part of this Christian community living the gospel in the village of Wollaston.

Biblical Manhood and the lost gospels

I feel it is a abiout time for a rant. I have not had a good rant for a while. So when I read CBMW » The Gospel and Biblical Manhood and Womanhood it got the blood pressure up and I prepared to write while the steam was still coming out of my ears. However, since then time has passed and I am now writing this at a little distance from the initial reaction.

I am grateful that others have already responded and encourage you to read The Gender Debate – a Gospel Debate? - a Church by Dave Woolcott.

I so often find that beyond my concern for justice and the Kingdom of God that it is the poor tactics and the poor use of scripture that really gets to me when I read articles like this one. So here are a few challenges to the article:

• John Starke writes:

A good question to ask in order to gauge the importance of an issue is, "How closely related is this issue to the Gospel?"

Well yes, I would not argue with that. But what Gospel is it that we are talking about? The entire article is based on Ephesians. Now I love Ephesians, a fantastic letter for encouraging Churches. But to imply that "Ephesisans = The Gospel" is plainly ridiculous. If we are going to decide if something is important and consider how related it is to the gospel then it is more than a little odd to not refer to any of the four gospels at all. Or to the rest of Scripture. This is a strange beast, neither a Bible Study on Ephesians nor a full Gospel based examination of an issue.

• If we are going to refer to the Gospel (the Good News of Christ) then personally I want to hear more about Jesus. I want some theology that refers to the teaching of Jesus and to who Jesus is (the article has a low Christology - Jesus as fully divine is never recognoised except very obliquely).

• If we are going to use Ephesians then let us do so by recognising that this is not a letter to individuals but to a Christian Community, a Church (or more than one). This post individualises Christian faith, it makes it about individual men and women rather than about Christian communities (Churches) and Christian households (families). This individualisation puts a very different perspective on every issue including gender. Paul is writing about a household as he knew it. That does not match a Western understanding of an individual man and woman with or without 2.3 kids. Anything that tries to apply Paul's writing without any consideration of cultural differences is trvialising Scripture, not engaging with it.
• If we are going to use Ephesians then let us be sure to pick up some of the significant themes. Dave Woolcott points out that John Starkey ignores the demand for unity that is so powerful in Ephesians. Given that unity stands against the division of people and communities then it hardly supports the case for dividing people based on gender, maybe no surprise that this theme seems to be missing fcroim John Starkey's Bible.
• If we are going to use Scripture then let us be careful to not pick and choose and ignore verses that challenge our simplisitc viewpoint. It is therefore hugely significant that Ephesians 5: 21 "Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ." (TNIV) gets missed out. Instead the whole argument is built upon verses that follow and depend on the very verse 21 that is carefully ignored - Oops!

Finally the biggest failing of the argument and one that totally destroys the whole cae being presented comes in the last paragraph which I quote in full:

Second, a central concern of Paul in all his letters, especially Ephesians, is not only Gospel clarity, but also how the Gospel applies to the Christian life. If we have confusion as to how men and women ought to act and fulfill divinely intended roles in the Church, marriage, and family, then there will be confusion as to how to apply the Gospel to the Christian life. As we see in Ephesians 5, God has particular applications of his Gospel that are gender specific. If we lose the gender specificity, then we lose a divinely intended Gospel application.

Remember this is the edited version of the section that starts in Ephesians chapter 5 no mutual submission). He writes "If we lose the gender specificity, then we lose a divinely intended Gospel application."
Hold onto that  for a second.

Now go back to Ephesians 5 & 6 and review the other forms of submission that it requires.

6⁵ Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ. ⁶ Obey them not only to win their favor when their eye is on you, but as slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from your heart. ⁷⁸Serve wholeheartedly, as if you were serving the Lord, not people, because you know that the Lord will reward each one of you for whatever good you do, whether you are slave or free.

Does anyone believe that we should tell slaves to obey their earthly masters? Does anyone believe that today the gospel is better served by telling slaves not to rebel and seek freedom but to serve wholeheartedly? Should we be telling girls trafficed for msex today that they should obey thgeir earthly masters. Should we condone and support such trade on the grounds of Ephesians 6. Of course not. Yet the need for women to submit to men is taken from the very same section as the one for slaves to obey their masters. How can we treat the two differently?

John Starkey writes: "If we lose the gender specificity, then we lose a divinely intended Gospel application." But we have already lost the master/slave specificity and would anyone dare claim we have lost a divinely intended Gospel application.

In fact far more than that. We came to realise through using the whole of the Gospel of Christ - in particular the example and teaching of Jesus, the Christ, the Son of God - that to not condemn slavery was to deny and damage the Gospel of Christ. In the light of Ephesians 5:21 to continue to demand submission for women after after rejecting it for slaves is unsupportable.

Hat tip: Role Calling: The Gospel and Biblical Manhood and Womanhood.