The Pope is dead, but is it worth pontificating about people that we don’t know? It is a common phenomena to ‘judge’ celebs (whether Christian or secular), but is it relevant?
Surely the important thing is that we are careful about who we get into deep trusting relationships with? We don’t have to judge people whom we don’t know, usually based on hearsay.
That’s my 20,000 liras worth anyway…
Seeing as the price of oil hit a record high a few hours ago (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4399537.stm), I thought it appropriate to post an article which I wrote for the new edition of Benchmark Magazine (www.benchmarkmag.com):
Is the trend of man’s entire history about to be reversed? Are we going to start getting poorer instead of inexorably richer?
It is possible that the worldwide production rate of oil may have peaked in December 2004, that our supply of oil is slowing down, whilst our demand for oil is still accelerating. The absolute inevitability of this scenario, whether or not it is actually happening now, demands our attention.
In the UK today our energy use is at about 5KW per person. If we consider our waking day and how much useful work we do, then each of us has the energy equivalent of about 250 people working for us! Now, if the amount of oil available, per person, declines (which it is doing already, due to the increase in the number of people making more use of oil) then we become poorer. This is reflected by the price of oil going up faster than our income.
O.K. – so we’re going to become a bit poorer, so what? Well, whilst becoming a bit poorer doesn’t sound too devastating, it can be to a proportion of society. The norm in times of recession is that there is a decrease in consumer, and business spending, an increase in unemployment, bankruptcies and home repossessions. Decline isn’t pleasantly ordered, it is more a case of the weak being picked off!
So what is our responsibility as Christians? Well, unfortunately our responsibility was evident some 40 years ago or more – we have a responsibility to reduce our energy consumption, leaving more non-renewable fossil fuels in the ground for future generations. Instead we steal their wealth from them, while they are still unborn. Now, it is all the more urgent that we stop and consider the price that our children will pay for our greed.
However, aside from such idealistic hopes of reform, we must continue in our regeneration, where we gain control over our motives of greed and focus more and more on those around us. In our communities today people are living death. Our youth see lives devoted to slaving for their shelter with house prices so high that they are continually giving tribute payments to the older generation of ‘haves’. Let us open our hearts and minds to the injustices that we seem so blind to and give people an understanding of Christ’s love in practical ways that really mean something to them. Perhaps this is through charity, perhaps through fairness in trade, perhaps by sharing and perhaps it is through a change in our own consumer lifestyles.
I was chatting with Richard and Lori P today and I suddenly said to him “what I like about this is that there are no taboos chatting with you guys”.
I thought back to my youth at church and recognised that you just weren’t allowed to question too much stuff (not that my parent’s were like that though).
This made me think about ‘not doubting’ as we are instructed to ‘not doubt’. But the essence of the ‘do not doubt’ instruction is ‘do not doubt what you know by faith’, which is entirely different to doubting loads of the other stuff that you hear at church, etc. Anyway, I found this deeply encouraging, as it is great to be encouraged not to doubt the stuff you are absolutely certain of, that God has shown to you – i.e. to get on and live how you believe.
It’s also great to know that we can (and should, perhaps) doubt everything that we don’t have a certain faith about. Let’s face it, I’m not about to have faith that ‘you must go to the church meeting every Sunday morning’! 🙂 But I am not going to doubt that ‘God is love’! Hurrah!
It is with deep concern for the bretheren at megachurches that I pen this analysis of eye contact during ‘the Grace’.
‘The Grace’ is that little blessing that we state to each other which reads ‘May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with us all, evermore, amen’. It takes approx 12 seconds to complete.
Let’s look at some examples:
When a meeting of just two people say ‘The Grace’ then chances are that they will make eye contact for most of the duration of ‘The Grace’. However, we must always consider that 10% of any meeting population will have their eyes closed in the mistaken thought that they are praying to God and not speaking to each other. Therefore there is a 20% chance that in a meeting of two people eye contact will not be made – and 80% likelihood that contact will be made.
A meeting of three people: Well, it is possible that as person A looks to person B, person B is looking at person C and person C is looking at person A. Then there is always the chance that they may move their gaze into another order where there is still no eye contact! Then bear in mind the shut eyes fallacy. However, there is a very good chance that, bearing in mind that participants might switch gaze every 2 seconds or less that, on average, a participant will make eye contact,during ‘The Grace’, with one person or more (90% estimated) or exactly two people (70% estimated).
Moving on to larger numbers and we begin to find more dramatic problems. A meeting of 1000 people: In the 12 seconds it takes to say ‘The Grace’ you will on average switch gaze every second. Your gaze will dwell on people who are obviously looking in the completely opposite direction for perhaps 0.1s and you will not look at people with their backs to you, but bear in mind that perhaps 50% of the people in front will turn around to look behind them (the other 50% either having neck problems, being too enamoured with the people in front of them, or just being plain lazy). So you can look at 12 people in 12 seconds, but the chance that the person you are looking at is also looking at you is 1 in 1000? Well, you have better odds if you are taller, maybe you are well groomed? Perhaps you are their close friend? So the odds improve to 1 in 500. Let’s see, so the odds of you making eye contact with someone during the grace is 12 in 500 or 2.4%?
Hmmm, perhaps it’s time for experimental results. If you are a member at a megachurch then contact me, Mark Porthouse at thegraceexperimentalanalysis@prayertriplets-r-thenewchurchmodel.com
I’ll be intently awaiting your results!
To add to Richard’s excellent post on Worship:
Book Review: True Worship, by Vaughan Roberts
(this book review by Mark Porthouse and first published in Benchmark Magazine)
The path of faith takes each one of us on a journey from (attempted) self reliance into a relationship of trust in our perfect father. During that path we seek to put away our own ideas and give ourselves wholly to God and his (infinitely better) wisdom and knowledge.
‘True Worship’ tackles one area in which much of man’s ‘wisdom’, tradition and habit have taken root in modern Christianity – worship. Vaughan quotes a friend of his, who says ‘To say, “I’m going to church to worship”, is about as silly as saying, “I’m off to bed to breathe for a while”.’ Balance surprising statements like that with his chapter ‘The Purpose of Christian Meetings’ and you have a truly rounded book. Throughout the book Vaughan Roberts confronts us with a series of questions and answers which we cannot fail to take note of.
If you are thinking ‘this book isn’t for me, we have great praise and worship at our church’ then you are definitely the person that Vaughan wrote this book for. If your church has ‘worship leaders’ then I would suggest that you need to get this book in front of your church leaders ASAP (but try and sneak a read of it first!).
I recommend this book (ever so) highly to anyone who, as an individual or a church leader, is looking to move forward in their walk with Christ (I hope that might be everyone who reads this!). The book covers the topic of worship very broadly, not just focussing on the obvious issues . Speaking personally, the key part of the book was the message about what should happen when we (the Church) meet. To implement what Vaughan is suggesting in your own life or in the life of your church won’t be easy as we have accumulated quite a number of odd traditions over the last two thousand years, but once read you will find it hard to live with anything less than ‘True Worship’.
You can get hold of the book here:
http://www.thegoodbook.co.uk/Christian-Life/Vaughan-Roberts/
and no doubt loads of other places!
It’s Fair Trade Fortnight and in amongst it I’ve noticed how many of us think that it is OK to exploit one person as long as we are doing it to help another person.
A vague example: Church A is doing good for poor people M by supplying them with useful thing T. In order to do as much good for poor people M as possible, Church A is buying useful thing T as cheaply as possible. However, this means that Church A is participating in the unfair exploitation of poor people Y.
Hmmm. This is actually incredibly entrenched in our lifestyles and is not just true of the establishment called church, but is also true of the people called church.
I can’t give a pet solution to this, as the only thing we can do is to be 100% sure that we are doing God’s will. Hopefully an awareness of this issue will help us hear…
Well (in response to the question I posed at the end of my last post) I reckon we have plenty of Jewish traditions (adapted):
1) The worship leader (High Priest).
2) We come into the House of the Lord.
3) We come into God’s presence.
4) We come into the Holy Place.
5) Worship narrowed down to singing instead of it being our whole lives.
6) Ecstasy – no, not that ecstacy!
7) Lots of singing.
So I’m ready for a remodel! 🙂
Now, what is a sensible attitude to existing tradition?
I think that if we are going to learn something from the OT it is more
likely to be in the realms of justice and community incorporating economics,
social care, empowerment, etc.
Hi, just thought that I would post a quick intro, seeing as Richard has introduced me.
Twenty years ago my Dad told me to judge whatever I heard in church as it wouldn’t always be right. So, now I’m 33 years old and I’ve tried to live with my eyes wide open and I know that all is not well. Is the problem with you and is the answer with me? Well, that’s really the wrong questions – we need to think in terms of us. We are the problem and you know Who is the answer!
So it isn’t about me or about you – it’s about us, and ‘us’ includes Him, you and me.
I’ll try to be careful, but remember, I’m only human too – we can grow together, if we watch our pride and know love.
Something to think about until next time:
I heard someone say that the ‘gentile’ churches needed to recover it’s Jewish roots and put into practice it’s Hebrew forms and holidays…