Moralistic Therapeutic Deism…
What the hell is it?
It’s a way of understanding who god is:
- Moralistic - the need to do good things and not bad ones.
- Therapeutic - the need to feel good about ourselves.
- Deism - A ‘deity’/god who is ‘far away’ and doesn’t actively intervene into reality.
Some Moralistic Therapeutic Deist beliefs might look like this:
- “A god exists who created and ordered the world and watches over human life on earth.”
- “God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions.”
- “The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.”
- “God does not need to be particularly involved in one’s life except when God is needed to resolve a problem.”
- “Good people go to heaven when they die.”
There’s a worry that this actually sums up the beliefs of a lot of people who describe themselves as Christians pretty well.
What does the god you follow look like?
Does he look like the ideas above, or does he look more like this:
- A God who saves, forgives and liberates us from the power of sin and death?
- Unsettles and challenges as much as patting us on the back?
- Is active and at work in our lives and in his world?
Sorry!
Sorry things have been quiet for the last week and a bit here. Needed a bit of a break to refresh and regroup, and ran out of space in my schedule for blogging.
I want the blog to be something liberating for me as I express ideas, and not something which enslaves as I try to bash out regular posts - so in a sense I’m not that sorry about it.
More posts will arrive at the beginning of next week, including something theological on Monday, the next part of the Emerging Leaders series on Wednesday morning, and something mission-focused on Friday.
If you have any ideas for stuff you’d like me to write about over the summer, or any videos or stories about good missional things which are happening then drop me a comment.
Emerging Leaders #1: The Call to Adventure
Just like good old Luke Skywalker (or the hero of your favourite story), the first step towards growing into leadership is hearing a ‘call’ to move forwards.
For the hero of a story, this is the call to adventure - for those of us thinking about Christian leadership, it’s a call to join God on his Mission.
What does it mean to hear a ‘call’ to leadership?
And how should we respond?
Well done is better than well said.
The Story of Everything
A great video from showing the narrative arc of God’s story, from one of the students on the CMS Pioneer Leadership Course.
HT: Jonny (again…)
The Community Coffeehouse in Cincinnati
Leadership Magazine in the US has a great article which profiles a church in Cincinnati which runs a cafe for its local community in a challenging area:
We said, “Let’s be a welcoming place, a place where people experience love and grace, whether they’re wealthy or homeless, educated or street people.” A look at the books in the café—mostly dealing with justice issues—shows it’s a Christian place, but not one with a narrow agenda. We have singer-songwriters, comedians, and other events; the independent newspaper listed us as one of the best places to listen to jazz in the city.
The Rohs Street Cafe has been running since 2003. Here’s two ways they’ve managed to develop the Cafe’s influence and prophetic presence in the local community:
- They’ve successfully managed to involve and include local community groups, encouraging them to use the Church building: eg. ‘council subcommittees, the Clifton Heights Improvement Association, the Citizens on Patrol, and an AA group.’
- For the last 3 years, they’ve been developing a co-operative with a community of Coffee growers in Guatemala who they’ve developed a relationship with.
For them, as with our little cafe at St Paul’s, their biggest challenge has been making their finances work.
And I love this story:
Recently, a stand-up comedian performed at the café, and his routines slammed evangelical Christians and slammed gays. Our manager was aghast: sitting there that night was a leader in Cincinnati’s gay community. So he went over to apologize. But the other person spoke first: “Can you believe what that comedian said about Christians? That is outrageous! You are not like that. I’m going to tell him how offensive that was to me.”
You can read the whole article here.
5 Tips for Dealing with Conflict
Dealing with conflict, either with people you are responsible for, or between people, is one of the most challenging parts of leadership.
It’s one of the elements of leadership I have always struggled with, as my tendency is always to want to ‘leave it’ or ignore things and hope they go away. Unfortunately they don’t.
However, dealing with conflict constructively can actually be a really good thing. Good conflict resolution can strengthen faltering relationships, help to clarify miscommunication or lead to setting new goals for development.
Recently, I was at a leadership conference where a speaker gave one of their top tips as ‘never ignore conflict’ - I took this up as one of my goals for the next few months to try and intentionally improve on the way I deal with conflict.
So here’s my 5 tips I’ve found useful for dealing with conflict. Feel free to disagree, pick them apart, or suggest others of your own:
- Listen first, wait and then speak yourself.
- Keep anger in check, keep your voice quiet and calm.
- Be specific, talk about specific events/situations/people/numbers and reference them rather than making general statements.
- Ask others to be specific as well. Don’t be afraid to ask others to clarify what they mean.
- After speaking, ask for feedback. Eg ‘Does what I’ve said seem fair?’
What do you think? Do you have any tips for me as I attempt to grow my skills at dealing with conflict?
About a month ago, we gave the congregation at St Paul’s an update on how The Lab is going, and - for those who didn’t know - introduced them to who we are and what we do.
This is my preach from that service (the text is Jesus’ encounter with Zacchaeus from Luke 19:1-10), which you might find interesting if you’d like to know a bit more of what we get up to. Sarah - one of our current youth work apprentices - also shares a bit from her perspective having spent a year with us in Alway.
The work that Frontline Community Church do in Liverpool has gained so much attention that the Guardian produced this film exploring their approach, and asking questions about how faith groups can fill in the gaps left by recent and forthcoming government cuts.
I especially love what the church leader says when he is interviewed, and the testimony from those who the church has helped. This is why we do what we do in Newport, and it’s great to see other Christian communities with the same approach who God is leading to do similar things.
HT: Dave
