Check out the website Under the Radar for the underground Christian music scene. You can listen to their episodes from the website or sign up to their podcast in iTunes. Some awesome music interspersed with some cheesy adverts but its definitely worth a listen. As they say, it’s ‘the best music you’ve never heard’.

If people will be governed by the occurrence of a single text of Scripture (without regarding the context, or duly comparing it with the general tenor of the Word of God, and with their own circumstances), then they may commit the greatest extravagances, expect the greatest impossibilities, and contradict the plainest dictates of common sense, while they think they have the Word of God on their side.

What John Newton describes sounds scary, but how many of us live our life this way? Check out my earlier post – an interview with Kevin de Young and a review of his book Just Do Something. Combine what Newton is saying with Kevin De Young’s book and you have people taking scripture out of context, relying on the feeling of tingles and dreams and the result is many unstable Christians making terrible decisions.

What’s missing? Common sense is, that’s what!

How does one combine common sense and radical faith? Perhaps we are to hold them in a tension, and if we pendulum swing too far to one side we can end up in trouble.

The seductive illusion is that we can come up with some big “socko” message, put it on a billboard, and snag whole nets full of fish at one time. This isn’t how true conversion happens. It’s one to one, friend to friend, and our more modest goal should be loving, listening to, praying for, and bearing witness to the individuals around us. Forget the dreams of glory. Think small. Instead of a few huge churches that house thousands, let’s have thousands of small churches, where people can form close, lasting connections, can mix naturally in a family of generations and backgrounds, and where a spiritual father and mother can disciple them personally and in depth.

Brilliant.

Can the Bible be the basis for our identity and unity when there was such clear and fundamental disagreement on how the text was to be interpreted and applied on an issue of critical importance?

Alister McGrath asks this in the introduction to his epic book Christianity’s Dangerous Idea.

I’ve been getting back into the Christian Blogosphere and it’s scary. What’s dominating the blogs at the moment?

• Jennifer Knapp.
• John Piper invited Rick Warren to his conference.
• Francis Chan alluded that God spoke to him.

That’s just recently. It only takes something small to flare up a theological debate on the internet. People are so quick to carve up little boxes to jam people in.

There’s always discussion about Calvinism. People are especially passionate about that. It’s not just a question of whether your a Calvinist – it’s way more intense than that. There’s points. Are you a 4 point Calvinist or a 7 point Calvinist? Um, who’s Calvin again? Just kidding.

You’d think it wouldn’t be hard to figure out whether God speaks to us today or not. Or how old the earth is. Or whether God heals today. And why Avalon’s last album was so bad.

If everyone is so unwilling to change then what’s the point of discussing things online?

I think when people pledge allegiance to a doctrine or viewpoint so intensely and use it as a filter through everything they see, perhaps they might miss something. I pledge allegiance to Christ and Christ alone. I use the Bible as a filter in the way I view Calvin rather than use Calvin as the filter by which I read the Bible.

C.S. Lewis. I don’t know how he did it but everyone likes him. Except maybe Jon Acuff.

Here are my thoughts.

In our enthusiasm to embrace the youth generation, have we isolated the previous generations without a second thought? Sentiments like, “you should be able to worship to any music” are great when you enjoy moshing in the praise pit to techno crossed with Lady Gaga. For those who need to wear ear plugs to even grace the presence of church they are immediately isolated from the congregation.

In an effort to keep both the traditional and contemporary many churches have two services reflecting the different vibes. Yet, one of the purposes and joy of the church is to fellowship together, all generations, as the family of God. I don’t think one needs to choose between the hymnal or choruses flashing on epic screens, the church should be able to hold the past and the future in a tension.

He {C.S. Lewis} has made me wary of chronological snobbery. That is, he showed me that newness is no virtue and oldness is no vice. Truth and beauty and goodness are not determined by when they exist. Nothing is inferior for being old, and nothing is valuable for being modern. This has freed me from the tyranny of novelty and opened for me the wisdom of the ages. (John Piper)

Old people are time consuming. Many are lonely widows and need fellowship and love, some are housebound by illness or just old age. Is a young and up-coming pastor going to get out of the office and drive to a nursing home and spend time with an elderly man withering away?

And old people die. The sobering reality of death is something all pastors should be dealing with. It’s not enough to be celebrating birth, baptism and marriage. If pastors are not consoling and ministering to the dying this removes a huge part of the reality of life, which is death. Not long ago it was the norm for pastors to spend much of their week visiting the ill and the dying, predominately elderly people.

This video from Mark Sayers talks about ministry and the panoramic verses practical view. The panoramic view is like looking at the big issues with a sweeping vision. Conferences, books, study & dialogue. The practical view is the gritty reality of being a pastor. Real people, real issues.

Perhaps the latter is what’s missing here. Spending too much time in conferences talking about the future of the church. Children are the future. Youth are the future. Moses is dead. It’s time to pass the baton onto the next generation.

Yet the reality is that the elderly are missing from our evangelical congregations. We need to include them.

And Jesus asked us to care for the widows, visit the sick and dying. We need to do so.

The ordinary purification and healing, whether of the body or of the mind, takes place only little by little, by passing from one degree to another with labour and patience… The soul that rises from sin to devotion may be compared to the dawning of a day, which at its approach does not expel the darkness instantaneously but only little by little. (Francis de Sales)

After reading Carl Honoré‘s book In Praise of Slow, I’ve been pondering how we Christians have also fallen into the trap of faster is better. I’ve begun to notice the pace of the Bible – it’s slow. Obviously the very nature of a journey in biblical times was far longer than any ‘long-haul’ flight from Melbourne to London, yet it seems to me they weren’t in any hurry.

Healing and sanctification is another area of our Christian walk that we often attempt to hurry up. I love the above quote from Francis de Sales which talks about the slow nature of healing. I truly believe God can heal emotional hurts but this doesn’t always happen in an instant. For myself this is a frustrating part of the Christian walk, as I see people bound by emotional wounds and just want to see them healed.

Even in my own life, healing has been slow going. After getting prayed for during some ministry times I have just expected all the pain just to disappear altogether and I would suddenly be transformed into this all-loving all-forgiving super Christian. Although this hasn’t occurred, looking back on the past 10 years, God has taken me on a journey of healing and I am definitely not the same person I was back then.

In this post he talks about the battle within the Evangelical Christian sub-culture and how this war is waged on the internet through the comment and response format of blogs. People are so enamoured by their own opinions they show little humility in their comments or even stop to realise, not everyone reading are Christians.

To the outsiders such debates seem like wars over unintelligible esoterica, and only confirm preconceived ideas about Christians and the Christian faith. So for the sake of the gospel we must learn to debate each other with respect, humility and civility. We must see the Image of God in others who we disagree with. To do so is probably going to one of our most important witnesses in the post-Christian culture of the West.

While the printing press paved the way for the Reformation in the 16th Century and the television facilitated the Word of Faith movement, I believe the internet has been instrumental in the success of emerging movements. This is because the internet provides space for dialogue.

This has been both a blessing and a curse.

A blessing because people have an outlet to voice their opinion, question and discuss theology, and enjoy community with like-minded people. And a curse because the internet has brought together those negative Christians who cause dissent in their Churches, and gives them scope to do the same on a more global scale.

So I ask some questions.

As a blogger where does one draw the line between questioning the status quo and causing dissent in the Church?

Can Christians learn to show grace and humility online whilst dialoguing with others?

Will the internet bring more unity or disunity to the Body of Christ?

I’ve read many books on the will of God; most of them focus on hearing God’s voice and a divining of the future at every fork-in-the-road. I have always had trouble with this method, as I wasn’t very good at it. I tended to get stressed attempting to figure it all out; what is the Lord’s voice, what are my own thoughts, what is the enemy? I would equate hearing God’s voice for directional decisions to a relationship with Him.

Enter Kevin DeYoung and his book Just Do Something. Joshua Harris was spot on in the forward to say that this book, ‘smacks you upside the head’ and that you’ll be better for it.

“If there really is a perfect will of God we are meant to discover, in which we will find tremendous freedom and fulfillment, why does it seem that everyone looking for God’s will is in such bondage and confusion? Christ died to give us freedom from the law (Galatians 5:1), so why turn the will of God into another law leading into slavery?”

Kevin juxtaposes the differences between the current generation and that of his grandparents. Today we are looking for fulfillment in everything, whereas his grandparents (and the biblical) focus is on faithfulness. We are obsessed about asking God about the future rather than asking Him for wisdom, holiness or righteousness. One of Kevin’s main points is that God’s way is of wisdom and progressive sanctification – “God is not a Magic-8-Ball we shake up and peer into whenever we have a decision to make.”

He formulates a very strong biblical argument for practical wisdom and offers a balanced approach that still includes room for the supernatural but doesn’t make us slaves to it.

Through email I interviewed author Kevin DeYoung:

Rachael: I always felt that I didn’t have a real relationship with God because I didn’t hear his voice at each fork-in-the-road, never had one of those “God said” clarity moments. Do you believe there are many people like this, and how would you define a personal relationship with Jesus if it’s not hearing his directional will?

Kevin: I think there are many people who feel like they are lacking intimacy with God because they do not “hear” from him.  But maybe we are just expecting to hear from him in the wrong places at the wrong times.  God speaks to us in his word, through private reading, corporate study, and good preaching.  A personal relationship with Jesus (a phrase not in the Bible) means we sincerely trust Christ, live for Christ, love Christ, and rely on him for everything.

How does the prophetic play out in this view of God’s will?

Christians disagree on what role prophecy has in the church today.  Certainly, there can be nothing that contradicts Scripture or adds a new doctrine to the Bible.  Everything must be tested against the certain word of God.  Prophecy does not exist any longer in the sense of new revelations.  But God may give us an appropriate word to speak, or give us special insight into a person or problem.

Some of my friends have been hit with this revelation of “I’m not going to be famous and change the world and that’s okay.” It’s been a really freeing thing. How do you think the church could change the idea of success?

Biblical success is defined by faithfulness.  The only audience we are playing for is God.  Fame, money, and power are not the measures of true success.

My mum had a friend who was reupholstering her furniture and put her finger on each swab of fabric, awaiting a tingle from the Holy Spirit when she touched the one she should choose. Although this is an extreme case, many people want to have God in every part of their lives. What would you say to them?

First of all, with all due respect, this is bizarre.  Where does the Bible ever suggest we should make decisions like this?  If God gave us tingles for every decision in life we wouldn’t need wisdom or progressive sanctification.  God’s way is to change us, not to tell us what to do all the time.

What books have really impacted your life and why?

I read a lot of books.  Obviously the Bible is the most important book I’ve ever read.  After that, the three most influential authors in my life have been John Calvin, Martyn Lloyd-Jones, and John Piper.  I also love Jonathan Edwards David Wells, D.A. Carson, G.K. Chesterton, Martin Luther, and Herman Bavinck.

Hope you enjoyed reading this review & interview!

Rachael