An insightful and thought-provoking essay by William Cavanaugh from DePaul University in Chicago, recently published on the ABC’s Religion & Ethics webpage.

Only Christianity Can Save Economics

The modern church, it seems, is obsessed with the topic of leadership. There is no end to the books, websites, blogs, conferences and training programs dedicated to the task of developing impacting, visionary, advancing, history-making, world-changing, planet-shaking (etc) church leaders. Now I acknowledge that the church needs leadership, and that there are certain people called to provide this to God’s people. But I think we sometimes overemphasise the need for human leadership in the church and ignore the fact that, actually, God himself is really in charge. Specifically, I think we often lose sight of the actual personal presence of the Holy Spirit in the church and his role as the one who leads us (e.g. Romans 8:14).

Basically, it seems to me there are two fundamental paradigms at play – one where the Spirit is in control and one where humans are in control. Human control is often not seen as such because it is cased in a theology (a wrong-headed theology in my opinion) that ascribes an inordinately high level of delegated authority to church leaders (a bit like the Roman Catholic concept of Vicarius Christi). This leads to hierarchical leadership structures which, as they become increasingly institutionalised, also become increasingly politicised.

The Holy Spirit, while still present in churches that sit in this paradigm, becomes to some extent, I think, constrained by these human power and authority structures. (This is not to suggest that the Spirit is in any way subject to human will, but the Spirit does not forcefully override human will.)

The alternative paradigm, where the Holy Spirit is truly in control, involves an understanding of leadership as being genuinely Spirit-led. The leader is the servant of the Spirit and of the people he/she is leading. This is what Jesus was at pains to demonstrate to the soon-to-be Apostles when he washed their feet the night before his death.

As I read through the book of Acts (we are currently making our way through this book on Sundays), I see in the leadership of the Apostles an acute and constant awareness of and submission to the powerful, personal presence of the Spirit (who is the true Vicarius Christi) in the church.

I don’t think church leaders are meant to act and make decisions on behalf of the Holy Spirit, I think we are meant to act and make decisions under the leading/guidance of the Holy Spirit. That’s why leadership (in the church context at least) is seen as a spiritual gift. It is to be exercised, as with other gifts, in submission to and the in the power of the Spirit.

A profoundly insightful talk by Dr Brené Brown on what it takes to engage in our lives from a place of authenticity and worthiness.

Here is a wonderful Christmas reflection by Matt Wills. He shared this before communion at our gathering last Sunday.

Many years ago a man dreamed of a child.
“To us a child is born”, he dreamed.
Hundreds of years before the child was born.
“To us a son is given” – he saw the child.
From so far away, he saw the long-awaited answer to the ache in his heart.

How could he have known? All those hundreds of years before, how could he have foreseen what we all now know as the Christmas story?

His name was Isaiah and he lived through the reigns of four kings. In fact, he was an advisor – a counsellor – to the last two kings.
And though kings and rulers of the ancients seem so irrelevant to us in our modern world, Isaiah’s times were very similar to ours.

His was a world where the great things of humanity were only beginning to flower:
Greece was in the midst of its journey to give birth to the democracy that we take for granted. The might of the all-powerful Roman Empire had not even been dreamt of…the tiny village of Rome had only just been founded in the coastal hills of central Italy and civilisation was just coming to terms with the remarkable advances made possible by the discovery of the new metal, iron.

So what does our technologically advanced world have in common with a world so primitive, so naive?

Isaiah’s world was one where the strong rose up against the weak – nation against nation, a world of “survival of the fittest.”

Surely not like our civilised world.

Just in the last thirty years of our time, our world has suffered with more than eighty wars.

Isaiah’s world was one where equality for all had not even been considered; where the poor and homeless at times grew to epidemic proportions – all but ignored by the rest of society.

How wonderful that we have come so far in the last two and a half thousand years.

A recent edition of the Sydney Morning Herald told the story of the ever-widening gap between those who have and the hundreds of thousands who have not, in our own city.

Isaiah’s world was one where men and women strived for a better life; for those things, which would surely satisfy and make their lives mean something…only to discover at night, on their beds, that those things didn’t quiet the yearning in their hearts.

Isaiah’s world was crumbling…
Coming apart
And…he dreamt of a child.

“To us a child is born,
to us a son is given,
And the government will be on his shoulders.”

Isaiah saw the workings of government at close hand. Sometimes it was excellent, leading the people with care and integrity. At other times it would be full of self-seekers after nothing other than personal wealth and power.

Isaiah dreamed:

“And the child will be called
Wonderful Counsellor” – a rock to the lost and confused; a beacon to those who
don’t know which way to turn.
“And he will be called
Mighty God” – a defender of the weak and powerless and a judge of the wicked and unjust.
“And he will be called
Everlasting Father” – a refuge of warmth and pure love to the homeless, the orphaned and abused.

And in this world of constant turmoil, “he will be called,
The Prince of Peace”

In the nearly three thousand years since Isaiah dreamed of the child, we haven’t changed. Oh, we can fly, talk across the planet instantly, download more than we could ever hope to know – in a few seconds – even reach into the heavens…but our world hasn’t changed:

There is still fighting,
there is still injustice,
there is still emptiness.

And our world cannot change until our hearts change,
And our hearts cannot change until we too dream of the child…

There is so much our world has in common with Isaiah’s world,
but there is one difference.
In our world,
the child Isaiah dreamt of has come.

Wonderful Counsellor,
Mighty God,
Everlasting Father,
Prince of Peace.
Jesus.

“Two pills a day s what it takes to stay alive if you’re HIV positive. Those pills cost about 40 cents a day.” – Bono

This week someone sent me this link to an article in Precipice Magazine. For anyone who has ever been hurt or disenfranchised by institutionalised church, or if you’re just disillusioned with the whole thing, this is worth reading.

The great challenge of discipleship is learning how to die to self. This is not something that we are enabled automatically to do simply by virtue of making a decision to ‘follow Jesus’. It’s one thing to decide something and another to follow through on that decision, as anyone who has ever failed to keep a new year’s resolution will know.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer once famously wrote, “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die”. For Bonhoeffer, that dying was both metaphorical and literal. The apostle Paul expressed the great mystery of discipleship when he wrote: “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me” (Galatians 2:20). His life certainly bore testimony to the meaning of these words.

Let’s not kid ourselves that this ‘dying to self’ is a straightforward thing. My guess is that for most of us who would identify ourselves as ‘Christ-followers’ (especially in affluent, western cultures where Christianity is more or less part of the socio-cultural fabric), trying to live up to the call to be true disciples of Christ is a constant struggle.

Or do we really struggle at all? ‘Contemporary’ western Christianity offers many versions of ‘discipleship’ that allow us to avoid the rather uncomfortable business of self-denial and opt instead for a ‘discipleship’ that is defined in terms of success, prosperity and self-fulfilment. Sure, there might be a few challenges thrown in along the lines of living a moral and ethical life or occasionally giving generously to the poor out of our abundance or giving up some of our precious time to ‘serve’ in our local churches. But for the most part, prevailing models of ‘discipleship’ allow us to maintain lives that are pretty much driven by self-interest and personal agenda while still feeling free to call ourselves ‘Christ-followers’. Bonhoeffer called this ‘cheap grace’.

As Christians, we tend to have no hesitation in declaring, “Christ lives in me”, but to what extent can we also truly say, “I no longer live”? And if these two statements are ultimately corollaries of one another (as I suspect they are), then in what sense can I make the former claim if I’m unable to declare authentically the latter?

Personally, I’m becoming increasingly convicted about the inconsistencies between what I say I believe and how I actually live. But how do I fix this? To quote Paul again, “Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?” (Romans 7:24).

The truth is, of course, that I can’t fix it, but God can. To complete the above quotation, “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” The only way I can begin to live up to the call to true discipleship is through faith in Christ and the enabling power of the Holy Spirit. But nothing is going to change unless I first stop kidding myself and admit to myself, and to God, that I am fundamentally self-absorbed.

As long as we maintain the idea that the requirements of discipleship are met simply by ticking a few ‘good citizen’ and ‘committed church member’ boxes, then real transformation by the power of the Spirit is not going to happen in our lives. The question is, am I prepared to die?

As the Ruin Falls

By C.S. Lewis

All this is flashy rhetoric about loving you.
I never had a selfless thought since I was born.
I am mercenary and self-seeking through and through:
I want God, you, all friends, merely to serve my turn.

Peace, re-assurance, pleasure, are the goals I seek,
I cannot crawl one inch outside my proper skin:
I talk of love –a scholar’s parrot may talk Greek–
But, self-imprisoned, always end where I begin.

Only that now you have taught me (but how late) my lack.
I see the chasm. And everything you are was making
My heart into a bridge by which I might get back
From exile, and grow man. And now the bridge is breaking.

For this I bless you as the ruin falls. The pains
You give me are more precious than all other gains.

I love this clip from King of the Hill. The church has certainly come a long way in 2000 years, but I’m not sure all of it has been in the right direction…

Thanks for all the positive feedback and comments received on last Sunday’s talk by Roy Williams. (For anyone who missed it, the podcast is available on the podcast page and via iTunes and, as always, is recommended listening.)

As well as sharing about his own personal journey to faith and talking a bit about his book, God, Actually, Roy touched on a number of interesting, important and somewhat difficult topics in the course of his talk. While there was some opportunity to explore some of these a bit during the Q&A time on Sunday, I’m sure a lot of of us felt that there was much more to be said and more questions that could have been asked had time permitted.

So rather than simply move on to the next thing, we are going to use Roy’s talk as starting point for a bit more conversation on some of the topics that were raised.

As I said in my wrap up on Sunday, The Upper Room is a community where we value conversation and encourage free and open discussion about what we believe and the grounds on which we believe it. We take the view that it’s ok for theological utterances to end with a question mark rather than a full stop. Questions (“Is this how it is?”) initiate and sustain dialogue, whereas statements (“This is how it is.”) tend to close down dialogue.

And as much as we are committed to the truth of Scripture, we also recognise that Scripture needs to be interpreted and that this process is usually not a straightforward matter. (The existence of theology as an academic discipline and the proliferation of different streams of Christianity throughout history and today are evidence of this.)

So, in light of all that, this Sunday we will be taking a deep breath and launching into a discussion on the topic of hell. More specifically, we’ll be looking at what Scripture has to say on the topic of the eternal destiny of human beings and we’ll give an overview of a number of different theological positions on the topic.

The goal will not be to arrive at any definitive conclusion, but rather to provide a general understanding of the topic so that we are all somewhat better equipped to form our own informed conclusions. Perhaps more importantly, we’ll be considering how what we believe about eternal destiny impacts the way we go about following Jesus in this life.

As Roy said on Sunday, this is a difficult and complex topic, so please pray that this goes well and that the Holy Spirit will guide our thinking and speaking and lead us in the direction of truth.

Looking forward to an enlightening discussion. Hope to see you there.