Reflections…Thinking…Wrestling

Let me give you an update of what I went through this week:

1. I spent the last three days listening to 16 hours of lectures on Church History (Part 1) and I must say that my mind was fried. But I have learned so much – many questions, many thoughts, and many inquiries. But all in all I have learn both the richness of the history of the church and also the “bloody” part of it. I have been challenged by the lives of men like St Augustine, Anselm, Thomas Aquinas, Justin Martyr, and many more who died on the stake to keep the gospel burning. Now that’s the nice part BUT the difficult one is to have to take a 3 hours examination on Introduction to Church History (Part 1). Note: I have another 20 hours of video teaching to take on Church History (Part 2). Have mercy on me, O Lord!!

2. Some thing troubled me this week: If mission is the basic of what we do as a church then everything that we do, from discipleship, to sunday sevices, to our everyday lives must have the biblical understanding or worldview about the plan and purpose of God seen through the Kingdom program. I find that the verbal stand sounds right in that we say we believe in investment in missions but our action speaks otherwise especially when money is concern!! I am musing over here – don’t know whether it makes any sense to you.

3. One thing that is my pre-occupation is the issue on discipleship. We all know that we need to be disciples of Jesus but what is involved and how to get there is the question. The knowledge of the need for nurturing and the tenacity in intentional discipleship is wide. How do we actually do to shape the personal worldview of a disciple into a biblical worldview?

4. Last Friday I was teaching a bible study at a church in Farlim and the whole issue of loving God with my heart, my soul, my strength, and my mind and loving my neighbor as myself was once again became a focal point. I have always been challenged to discover what it really is to love God with everything that is within me and to other others (brothers & sisters, and the rest of humanity)? It is a wrestling match with God’s Spirit and my heart and mind for more than a year now. My question to the folks in BS class was this: If I say that I care what do I mean to convey? Is it just rhetorical or does it mean that if someone that I say I care come up to me and said he needs my practical help (something that causes inconveniences, that causes somewhat of a sacrifice) would I do it lovingly or grudgingly or ignore it?

Well…I am just rattling along. Tell me that I am NOT being gibberish!!

Sermon on Demons – How Interesting!!

My critical brain was working overtime on the sermon by Steve Cioccolanti last Sunday. I have no problem believing in demonic activities and he has brought out quite a number of intreresting thing but I had to struggle to make sense theologically / biblically when he started to mentioned areas like:

1. Angels are in church taking down notes of how much a christian give in tithes and offerings and making report of it. (Watch some of the hollywod produced movies with angels/spiritual theme in it and I think the language sounds the same as some christians’ experiences!!)

2. Issues about people’s visits to heaven or hell. (People are too caught up in the sensational and the supernatural – God and Christ should be our focus!!)

3. Most of what was mentioned are so experience-based I am not sure whether that’s how God works. I “catch no balls.”

I guess I had to admit that I left church this morning with a lot of questions rather than answers. I believe in deliverance ministry and am involved in it too. I have seen the power of God in setting people free. But I am troubled by the theology of demons that was presented. I struggle to see how it connect with what the bible teaches.

Well…that’s my musings.

Practiced Theology – Lived Spirituality

I found something quiet interesting that have a link to what I wrote in my last post. Let me quote from Marva J. Dawn, an experienced musician and a theologian with a Ph. D. in Christian Ethics and the Scriptures from Notre Dame.

She wrote an article, “Practiced Theology – Lived Spirituality” as a contributing writer in the book, “For All the Saints.” Let me quote from the section, “Vigilance in our Spirituality”

“Do we consider how harmful some of our daily activities are to our spirituality? Remember that I am defining spirituality in union with doctrine and ethics as a holistic way of life inherent in salvation by grace. Do we recognize, for example, that how much and what we watch on television is a spiritual matter? How much we surf the Web is also significant factor in our spirituality.

“What does television form us and our children to be – greedy, sexually immoral, passive, violent? Research shows that children who watch television at length have smaller brains because that passive activity does not lead to proliferating the dendrites or bridging the hemispheres between input and output. Furthermore, it changes how they think.

“We talk quite a bit about spirituality, but do we think enough about what hinders it, blocks it, obstructs it, distorts it, makes it filthy, pollutes our minds or our habits? At a Christian conference talent show this past summer, before an audience of several hundred, a young girl sang an embarrassingly sexually overt song. What did her mother think in letting her sing it? Did they both notice the unbiblical slant of the song’s content? She sang well, she was cute – but it was vulgar.

“Do we realize how much the culture in which we live is a garbage dump morally? Do we recognize the extent of the moral pollution? Is it any wonder, then, that our kids – if they are immersed in it – don’t seem to care much about Christianity?

“How much time do we spend in families and churches on Christian formation of our children? Let’s be idealistic and tally an hour for worship, an hour for Sunday School, and fifteen minutes each day for family devotions. That’s still only about four hours a week total, while television forms them four and one-half hours each day. Or perhaps the Internet does.

“Will our church wake up to the immense task that it must be for us truly to form children in faith? We must be constantly asking how what we do affects the growth of the spiritual life in ourselves and other members, especially the children, of our churches. And let us stand vigilantly against the many destructive elements that come into our children’s spirituality.”

Is There Any Hope For The Church? (my church)

A Critical Reflection of the Malady that Paralyzed the Church and the Proposal of a Healthy Community of Believers

Part I: An Honest but Critical Reflection

Reflection #01: The inability to consistently and persistently instruct and teach theology because it is perceived as just dumping down information.

• Unwittingly falling into anti-intellectualism in exchange for emotional encounters and experiences
• The neglect of the life of the mind with the over emphasis of the healing of the soul and body
• The fallacy of theology being the deep things of God – too difficult for the general church community to grasp and understand
• The common excuses are: there is lack of commitment, people are busy, not everyone likes to study, what has that got to do with their immediate needs, and people are independently minded so they will pick and choose.
• We need the Spirit more than what we can put into our mind. Empowering Spirit more important than enlightened minds.

Reflection #02: A host of cultural bias that laced our personal worldview which eventually enmeshed into the church’s cultural norm.

• Materialism is the non-verbal part of our pursuit of happiness while we echo religiously that we love God.
• Success in our career, finest education for our children, and fixative parenting embedded in our personal worldview that manifest in our church cultural practices.
• The trappings of consumerism and need-oriented mentality.
• Superstitions, confucianistic ideas, and influences of our idolatrous upbringing does blurred our theology – of God, Christ, man, and missions.

Reflection #03: The gap between knowing the need for nurturing through discipleship and the tenacity to model radical intentional discipleship is wide and deep.

• The demand of radical discipleship and Lordship of Christ in the leader’s life that will precipitate down to the rest of the believing community.
• Theology breeds methodology. But without a worldview that gives place to the habits of the mind what theology of discipleship can develop which can then be developed into a workable methodology to nurture and disciple.
• We cannot impart to someone what we do not possess in ourselves.

Reflection #04: The overemphasis of meeting and ministering to the needs of the people with just a token given to Christian education and theological instructions give rise to over-dependent and over-grown spiritual babies.

• Over-dependent spiritual babies – how do they look like?
• We have forgotten the lessons of the parable of house-building. Built the house on the sand (experiences and feel good, needs met) or built the house on the rock (strong foundation – rock solid doctrine; truths of God – a living reality)
• We have bifurcated the head and the heart and giving pre-eminence to the heart issues. It is true that which will transform the heart must first make sense in the mind. In reversal, that which will make sense in the mind must also resonate in the heart.

Reflection #05: The challenge of postmodern thinking within the church that goes against the grain of the objective truth of God’s Word

• Multiple choices, the smorgasbord of faith among the believers, produce superficiality in commitment, shallowness in faith, and artificiality in holiness.
• The subtle idea that there are many shades of truth as perpetuated out in the marketplace of post-modernity does challenges the authority of the word of God and its orthodoxy.
• Postmodern goes for experience above reason. So with the emphasis of the encountering and empowering at altar calls above the intentional instruction of the word of God line upon line and precepts upon precepts we are actually playing to the gallery.
• Postmodern do have a spilled over from modernity about the autonomous self – basically self-centred. Much of what we do is so comsumeristic that it just fit nicely into such selfishness.
• Postmodern thinking is more susceptible to emerging ideas minus orthodoxy, higher degree of tolerance for new innovations, more open reception to current biblical hermeneutics and spiritual practices, and more multi-verse by celebrating different expressions of “doing church” rather than seeking unity in diversity.

Reflection #06: The grandiose idea of a mega church has turned out to be a garden path of superficiality of discipleship and the danger of syncretism in the name of contextualization and relevancy

• A seeker-sensitive service is like pampering kids with goodies that when it comes time to cut the crust they whimper in their faith.
• Somehow we deceive ourselves to think that number gives excitement, and excitement will translate into spiritual experience and spiritual experience will lead to transformation of the heart.
• One of the trappings of a large church is the need to manage rather than to shepherd.
• This is not to say that mega churches are not part of God’s plan but to be careful that in the course of such grandiose scheme that we become guilty of errant in our spiritual midwifery and gave birth to spiritually deformed babies.

Reflection #07: The reluctance of the church to engage the culture through intellectual discussions of issues that confront us diminishes the credibility of the church’s voice within the Christian community (specifically) and community at large (generally.)

• How well can we present intelligently and articulate reasonably (give to every man an answer of the hope in Christ) the ethical and moral issues confronting our church and society?
• Are we able to plausibly or reasonably explain our faith when our youths challenges us with some thorny theologically questions? Do we skirt the issues or do we lead them gently through the maze of such complexity of ideas and thoughts? Does the bible have the answer?
• The lame excuse that inquires of the mind is unimportant and relegated it to the sideline of the mystery of God or for the academics that have nothing better to do who love to theorize is deafening to the ears of seekers. It becomes a credibility issue.
• The accusation thrown at us is that what we cannot answer we take a leap of faith in the dark and exclaim, “I don’t need to explain I just believe it’s true!” mantra. It doesn’t augur well for the Christian community who claims to have the Truth, the only truth!

Part II: The Proposal of a Healthy Community

Proposal #01: Vision & Mission around the Dynamic of Christian Spirituality

• The Relational dynamic
• The Transformational dynamic
• The Vocational dynamic

Proposal #02: Systematic Instruction of the Word of God

• Consistent and persistent instruction
• Intentional discipleship process (WCDP) – mentoring & coaching
• Curriculum development: children – youth – adults

Proposal #03: Placing the Importance on the Preaching of God’s Word

• The shaping of a Christian worldview
• Dealing with the current issues – bold-faced about it

Proposal #04: Bringing back the awesomeness of the sacraments, liturgies and Christian Disciplines

• Water & Spirit baptism
• Holy Communion
• Prayer & Intercession
• The Healing Room
• Intimacy with God
• Personal & Corporate worship

NOTE: My reflection and proposal is something I am THINKING ALOUD. I couldn’t sleep last night and I was so awake that I decided to record all the thoughts that run through my brains. Some of the things may not make any sense to you. But if you have anything to comment I will appreciate it. I was actually referring to the church I am pastoring now and have been in the church for the las 23 years of full times service.

Seminar on Sin & Evil

September 13 (Saturday): I am scheduled to attend this special seminar and participate in the discussion. On my part I have to give a 45 minutes presentation on the pastoral perceptions of sin and evil and as experience in the local church. It’s not that easy and I have been struggling with this for two weeks. Praise God I finally was able to put something together for this saturday. Prayerfully it will be on track.

Just a gist of what i will be presenting:

I will start of with my theological stand about the total depravity of man – “the heart of man is sick and desperately wicked…”; the propensity to sin and the bent towards evil. I also will state that man desperately need a saviour and Lord Jesus Christ for his/her redemption. 

With that I will give a little introduction about the total depravity of man using the movie “Batman Begins II – the Dark Knights” as an illustration.

Next i will give some of the pressing pastoral perceptions regarding sin and evil as experienced in a local church, actually asking 4 questions and try to answer them:

1. Is it possible that viewing sin and evil through the lens of a pastor would be different than viewing it through the lens of say a bible teacher, someone with an inclination of the prophetic or evangelistic in disposition and giftings?

2. Does our culture influence our pastoral perspective on sin and evil? 

3. Does the secular/modern & postmodern worldview affects our perspective? Does the mores of a pluralistic society like Malaysia affects the Christian ethics? (A change from what ought to be to what is)

4. What is the credibility gap between a biblical based perspective on sin and evil to that of the general pastoral perspective as experienced in a local church?

After that I will try to give some common picture words and metaphors of sin and evil. Lastly, I will speak about the challenges in naming sin and evil in the church. Just to give you some examples: (1) The fear of confrontation and conflict, (2) The fear of being negative and condemning, (3) the fear of offending the congregation, (4) pastoral insecurity, and perhaps (5) self-deception (unwillingness to take the bull by its horn due to “blindness” or blinkers.)

I hope it will turn out alright for me!!

Theology of Christian Spirituality

I have been working on this written assignment “The Reflection on the Theology of Christian Spirituality” and I wanted to throw out some thoughts that I have picked up. I hope that it will probe you to engage with me.

What is spirituality?

• It’s about encountering the transcendent and being changed by it.

• Spirituality in the generic sense involves an encounter with the transcendent (the real or whatever is ultimately important), and then the positive, beneficial effects of that encounter on a person.

• Spirituality is about establishing a transforming connection to something more – a connection that will shape who we become and how we will live.

• The “transcendent reality” of generic spirituality comes into focus for the believers as the living, personal triune God and the effects will include growing in Christlikeness and participating in the larger purposes of God.

These thoughts are taken from the book “The Little Guide to Christian Spirituality” by Dr Glen Scorgie. But what I am really challenged in this study is that Christian Spirituality is all about living ALL OUR LIFE before God aka the Christian life before God and it covers three dynamics: (1) the relational dynamic – love God and love others, (2) the transformational dynamic – the spiritual formation of our inner-life through healing of our wounded hearts, soul-crafting, renewal, etc, and (3) the vocational dynamic – it is not just about being but really connecting, being and doing. We are made to be doers. We are created to be workers!

If we were to develop the three fold dynamic like the three-fold cord that cannot be broken we are actually practicing Christian spirituality or really living our Christian life (holistically) before God.

Relational Dynamic = Intimacy with Christ / Friendship with God
Transformational Dynamic = Holiness and Wholeness
Vocational Dynamic = Meaning / Purpose and personal Calling

Well…there are a lot more to reflect upon. i hope that my assignment is good enough and if it is I will post it .