Myth
“He then prays that it may be possible to purify the mythical by means of reason and so come to a view of what actually happened. But in cases where ‘the mythical defies what is credible and does not admit the admixture of probability’, he hopes that his readers will be indulgent and forgiving to his version of antiquity. To go back as far as this [to Romulus], he suggests, in a comparison with maps, is like filling in the details beyond the limits of the known world.
In this passage, Plutarch distinguishes in broad terms between a mythical and a historical period. [Characterised thus:]...all of them were the subject of traditons which seemed implausible to the ancients, and the tales of this period had therefore to be deciphered in the light of what was likely or probable.
It had long been accepted that historians should not traffic in ‘myth’, by which was meant an account of events that seems inconsistent with what is known or expected of ordinary human behaviour.” pp 161,2.
Comment
I've made a couple of earlier comments on history, time and myth. Its interesting to see how P. regarded myth as being outside the ken of the ordinary; and that he separates mythical 'time' and the historical period. Myth seems to be beyond investigationa and where all sorts of crazy things can happen and be given a type of story-line credibility. But their denial of the shared real world makes them to be purely stories that betray ignorance, and not providing any knowledge that will help us know the world we are in.
Contrast this to the biblical creation account which does place itself within dateable time and tells us all we need to know: that is that the world is inanimate and not populated by faries, that there is a real causal continuity across space and time and that a uniformity of experience is accessible to all comers: all we need to know to start on the path of understanding and living in the world.
30 October 2009
Lying, or evangelism?
Read this marketing article from CNN Money carefully; and think about your local church's evangelistic activity...also carefully.
25 October 2009
Plutarch and scientific explanations
From Alan Wardman's book "Plutarch's Lives".
These quotes in this and a few subsequent blogs throw some interesting lights on beliefs held in ancient times that are at leat worth hearing.
Scientific Explanations
“Plato’s influence was all-important in gradually persuading ordinary people that the scientific explanation of celestial phenomena is not unreconcilable with a religious attitude towards god... [Plutarch] is writing loosely, fired by the idea that philosophy had come to seem irreligious...[then an insight into how Plato saw the natural world] but Plato complained that they [Eudoxus and Archytas] were corrupting geometry by solving problems in the medium of perceptible objects instead of referring to invisible lines and planes.”
“But Plutarch manages to have it both ways; he admires geometry and at the same time considers that the usefulness of mechanics resides, not in adding to the amenities of life, but in holding up to the ignorant a clear and visible pattern of the invisible principles. The fact that Archimedes’ engines were of military use to his king is not felt to be so important” pp 204,5.
Comment
An example of the idealist distaste for the real world, and preference for the world of pure ideas: if idealists got thier way, I'm sure we'd still be walking in sandals instead of driving our cars!
I think that there are strong threads within Christain theology where idealism has supplanted a biblical take on reality, which is one of the aspects of biblical creation theology, IMO, that points us to the real world, rather than the make believe world of paganism.
These quotes in this and a few subsequent blogs throw some interesting lights on beliefs held in ancient times that are at leat worth hearing.
Scientific Explanations
“Plato’s influence was all-important in gradually persuading ordinary people that the scientific explanation of celestial phenomena is not unreconcilable with a religious attitude towards god... [Plutarch] is writing loosely, fired by the idea that philosophy had come to seem irreligious...[then an insight into how Plato saw the natural world] but Plato complained that they [Eudoxus and Archytas] were corrupting geometry by solving problems in the medium of perceptible objects instead of referring to invisible lines and planes.”
“But Plutarch manages to have it both ways; he admires geometry and at the same time considers that the usefulness of mechanics resides, not in adding to the amenities of life, but in holding up to the ignorant a clear and visible pattern of the invisible principles. The fact that Archimedes’ engines were of military use to his king is not felt to be so important” pp 204,5.
Comment
An example of the idealist distaste for the real world, and preference for the world of pure ideas: if idealists got thier way, I'm sure we'd still be walking in sandals instead of driving our cars!
I think that there are strong threads within Christain theology where idealism has supplanted a biblical take on reality, which is one of the aspects of biblical creation theology, IMO, that points us to the real world, rather than the make believe world of paganism.
20 October 2009
Life since the 'Origin': lecture at the WEA
At the WEA on 21 September 09 I attended a lecture by Dr Adam Marchant (I think this is the right link) on Darwin’s work.
It was an unsurprising tour of the orthodox take on Darwin, naturally reinforcing the view that ‘nothing in biology makes sense without evolution’; which, of course, if you presuppose evolution occurring, then build a framework on this basis and use it as an interpretive grid, is inevitable: you get what you pay for!
Nevertheless, Marchant made some comments that are worth discussing.
At the date of the publication of Darwin’s work on evolution the idea of species not being immutable was ‘in the air’. Darwin’s own grandfather had published on the concept, and people like Lamarck and Wallace also had similar views. In short, the ‘time was right’ not only for scientific reasons, but for broad cultural reasons. Darwin had absorbed the progressivist influences of the time and further took into his thinking the work of Lyell and, as Marchant said, Malthus. Noel Weeks has an article that explores this in some detail
Darwin great contribution, Marchant claimed, was the ‘discovery’ of the idea of natural selection. But it was not Darwin’s discovery, he was its publicist, but the idea was previously published by Edward Blyth, a biblical creationist.
An important point to make is that the idea that species were fixed was not biblical, but Aristotelian, and at Darwin’s time the influence of modern science, informed by a biblical view of the cosmos, was able to shake of the pagan shackles inherited from the classical world.
Lamarck’s idea of change was volitionism, which was a sort of supernaturalism, or an intrinsic feature of living organisms (if my notes correctly reflect the lecture), but Darwin cut through this by proposing a complete materialist explanation.
Interesting to note that many Christians have missed Darwin’s point at this explanation. They attempt to marry a type of Christian supernaturalism with Darwin’s materialism to hope that ‘evolution was God’s mechanism for creating’. But Darwin’s point, possibly influenced by a deist line of thinking was that the mechanism’s role was to displace the supernatural and eliminate the need for God as a creative explanation!
Another factor that was in Darwin’s thinking was due to the primitive understanding of cell biology, with the smallest life unit being considered ‘protoplasm’ which contained an inherent life force, as a type of ‘super-material’ factor. This made it easy for Darwin to pin his hopes on the simple early life form and it mutating by lots of small steps into an array of different ‘higher’ life forms. The notion of ‘higher’ also betrays the progressivist flavour of Victorian England that strongly influenced Darwin.
Marchant attributed the advances at Darwin’s time to a number of factors:
“People used to look up to Aristotle” but started to look at the world instead.
It required an Enlightenment change in the way of thinking to do so. Interestingly enough, the Enlightenment came on the foundation laid by Luther of a mind, being made in God’s image, able to independently draw conclusions, and not being bound to ‘authorities.’
A further factor was the investigative tools became available. This was Marchant’s distinctive for science: it used tools, whereas philosophy did not. Not a bad distinction, IMO.
Then he went on to tell us that science needed to engage the real world, and not just think, but did not refer to the role that Christianity had to play in this, in finally breaking the hold of paganism (not to say that Aristotle didn’t attempt to examine the world around him).
He quickly traced this development through the early modern period of science to conclude with an acceptance that life was available for study, and not untouchable: the world became object and ceased to be ‘transcendent’, which is exactly what we get from Genesis 1-3. The world is created, not creator (ironically, evolutionism takes us back to the pagan view that the world is its own creator and that we are its subjects!)
Marchant also commented that the idea of an ‘ultimate vital substance’ was believed until the 1930s and that it takes some effort of will to reject this notion (that life is special) and accept the reduction to chemistry and physics (which are themselves intellectual constructs of the world…very good ones, obviously, but as many scientists, he failed to understand the metaphysic that his work relies upon).
I was fascinated that Marchant used biblical ideas as touchstones at a number of points in his lecture: he talked about a tension between uniformitarianism and catastrophism, explaining the latter by the examples of the Bible’s creation and Noah’s flood ‘stories’. Predictably, one of the audience gave a knowing chuckle of superiority at this mention. I was pleased that Marchant rose above such crassness.
He also contrasted the age of the earth as given in the Bible ‘as 6000 years found by adding up the ages of the patriarchs in the Bible’. But now we know better…
The effect of accepting long ages, instead of biblical ages, is to remove God from the historical continuity that commences with his direct making of us. The long ages remove God as a credible player in our origin and relegate him to being a-historical, and therefore ‘not in our reality’. The implications of this for the incarnation are pointed.
I think the very purpose of the date markers in the Bible, and the genesian use of time references that make sense in our world-experience are to show the direct connection between God and us; that we are not the products of a universe that made itself (pagan-like). They show by each tangible connection, how we are connected to the will of God, expressing his love in creation. If we tamper with this, we undo important parts of Biblical theology, IMO and change how we think about God, Christ, salvation and ourselves!
It was an unsurprising tour of the orthodox take on Darwin, naturally reinforcing the view that ‘nothing in biology makes sense without evolution’; which, of course, if you presuppose evolution occurring, then build a framework on this basis and use it as an interpretive grid, is inevitable: you get what you pay for!
Nevertheless, Marchant made some comments that are worth discussing.
At the date of the publication of Darwin’s work on evolution the idea of species not being immutable was ‘in the air’. Darwin’s own grandfather had published on the concept, and people like Lamarck and Wallace also had similar views. In short, the ‘time was right’ not only for scientific reasons, but for broad cultural reasons. Darwin had absorbed the progressivist influences of the time and further took into his thinking the work of Lyell and, as Marchant said, Malthus. Noel Weeks has an article that explores this in some detail
Darwin great contribution, Marchant claimed, was the ‘discovery’ of the idea of natural selection. But it was not Darwin’s discovery, he was its publicist, but the idea was previously published by Edward Blyth, a biblical creationist.
An important point to make is that the idea that species were fixed was not biblical, but Aristotelian, and at Darwin’s time the influence of modern science, informed by a biblical view of the cosmos, was able to shake of the pagan shackles inherited from the classical world.
Lamarck’s idea of change was volitionism, which was a sort of supernaturalism, or an intrinsic feature of living organisms (if my notes correctly reflect the lecture), but Darwin cut through this by proposing a complete materialist explanation.
Interesting to note that many Christians have missed Darwin’s point at this explanation. They attempt to marry a type of Christian supernaturalism with Darwin’s materialism to hope that ‘evolution was God’s mechanism for creating’. But Darwin’s point, possibly influenced by a deist line of thinking was that the mechanism’s role was to displace the supernatural and eliminate the need for God as a creative explanation!
Another factor that was in Darwin’s thinking was due to the primitive understanding of cell biology, with the smallest life unit being considered ‘protoplasm’ which contained an inherent life force, as a type of ‘super-material’ factor. This made it easy for Darwin to pin his hopes on the simple early life form and it mutating by lots of small steps into an array of different ‘higher’ life forms. The notion of ‘higher’ also betrays the progressivist flavour of Victorian England that strongly influenced Darwin.
Marchant attributed the advances at Darwin’s time to a number of factors:
“People used to look up to Aristotle” but started to look at the world instead.
It required an Enlightenment change in the way of thinking to do so. Interestingly enough, the Enlightenment came on the foundation laid by Luther of a mind, being made in God’s image, able to independently draw conclusions, and not being bound to ‘authorities.’
A further factor was the investigative tools became available. This was Marchant’s distinctive for science: it used tools, whereas philosophy did not. Not a bad distinction, IMO.
Then he went on to tell us that science needed to engage the real world, and not just think, but did not refer to the role that Christianity had to play in this, in finally breaking the hold of paganism (not to say that Aristotle didn’t attempt to examine the world around him).
He quickly traced this development through the early modern period of science to conclude with an acceptance that life was available for study, and not untouchable: the world became object and ceased to be ‘transcendent’, which is exactly what we get from Genesis 1-3. The world is created, not creator (ironically, evolutionism takes us back to the pagan view that the world is its own creator and that we are its subjects!)
Marchant also commented that the idea of an ‘ultimate vital substance’ was believed until the 1930s and that it takes some effort of will to reject this notion (that life is special) and accept the reduction to chemistry and physics (which are themselves intellectual constructs of the world…very good ones, obviously, but as many scientists, he failed to understand the metaphysic that his work relies upon).
I was fascinated that Marchant used biblical ideas as touchstones at a number of points in his lecture: he talked about a tension between uniformitarianism and catastrophism, explaining the latter by the examples of the Bible’s creation and Noah’s flood ‘stories’. Predictably, one of the audience gave a knowing chuckle of superiority at this mention. I was pleased that Marchant rose above such crassness.
He also contrasted the age of the earth as given in the Bible ‘as 6000 years found by adding up the ages of the patriarchs in the Bible’. But now we know better…
The effect of accepting long ages, instead of biblical ages, is to remove God from the historical continuity that commences with his direct making of us. The long ages remove God as a credible player in our origin and relegate him to being a-historical, and therefore ‘not in our reality’. The implications of this for the incarnation are pointed.
I think the very purpose of the date markers in the Bible, and the genesian use of time references that make sense in our world-experience are to show the direct connection between God and us; that we are not the products of a universe that made itself (pagan-like). They show by each tangible connection, how we are connected to the will of God, expressing his love in creation. If we tamper with this, we undo important parts of Biblical theology, IMO and change how we think about God, Christ, salvation and ourselves!
16 October 2009
No Creator?
This letter to the editor appeared in the latest (Oct 16 2009) North Shore Times:
It seems that at least someone pays attention to church communications, even tho wrong, the conclusion drawn is in line with much current church belief!
It seems that at least someone pays attention to church communications, even tho wrong, the conclusion drawn is in line with much current church belief!
Aristotle on origins
I liked this quote from Aristotle on origins. To save a click, here 'tis:
Which is the very point, for both salvation history and our understanding of our relationship with God and the cosmos, of Genesis 1, IMO.
Here and elsewhere, we shall not obtain the best insights into things until we actually— Aristotle
see them growing from the beginning
Which is the very point, for both salvation history and our understanding of our relationship with God and the cosmos, of Genesis 1, IMO.
15 October 2009
Dateable time
In the 'Life of Jesus' video, John Dickson makes the comment that the gospels set Jesus in 'dateable time'. This gives the gospels at least face credibility, because they talk about what happened in a way that we can connect with. We can make the trace between then and now, and clearly thus share the same world as the events of the gospels.
Similarly for the creation. 'Life of Jesus' talks about our creator, but without giving him a concrete real time relationship with us. But the Bible goes to some lengths to put the creation into dateable time. In fact, it is used by some Jews to set their calendar! If the creation didn't occur in dateable time, then God can't really make a claim on being a creator in any real sense, because he can't link his actions with our world, so 'creator' as myth, not as fact, as fairy tale, rather than the event which determines, dominates and defines our existential situation!
The alternative is that in principle it did occur in dateable time, but so very long ago, in a manner we have no access to that we just have to take it on faith. But this is not biblical faith; that rests on real events and real actions.
Similarly for the creation. 'Life of Jesus' talks about our creator, but without giving him a concrete real time relationship with us. But the Bible goes to some lengths to put the creation into dateable time. In fact, it is used by some Jews to set their calendar! If the creation didn't occur in dateable time, then God can't really make a claim on being a creator in any real sense, because he can't link his actions with our world, so 'creator' as myth, not as fact, as fairy tale, rather than the event which determines, dominates and defines our existential situation!
The alternative is that in principle it did occur in dateable time, but so very long ago, in a manner we have no access to that we just have to take it on faith. But this is not biblical faith; that rests on real events and real actions.
13 October 2009
Contemplating plumbing
While on holidays recently I also read this in the Blue Mountains Gazette for the 7th of October 2009, by Ben Tankard of Blaxland:
If you want to reply the editor is at the following email.
editorial.bmgazette@ruralpress.com
My own reply is below:
The Gazette recently published a short letter from Peter Kidd, in which he extols the virtues of a life with Christ. In the interests of fairness and balance, I have written a short letter to recommend a life of science instead.
Science has a lot going for it. Modern medicine, automobiles, indoor plumbing -- all these were brought to you by men and women using their brains, not by praying but by thinking.
Science is a method of understanding the universe based on observation of real evidence, not wishful thinking. There are not imaginary friends involved.
I would recommend, that if any reader is confused about the world, they should go to their local bookstore or library and delve into the world of science.
Any book will do for starters, but I would mention those by Carl Sagan, Dr. Karl, Michio Kaku, and Oliver Sachs, as they are not just informative, but also highly entertaining. Science has the real aanswers. Happy thinking!
If you want to reply the editor is at the following email.
editorial.bmgazette@ruralpress.com
My own reply is below:
If Mr Tankard wants to spend his life contemplating indoor plumbing, I guess that is his lookout; but science only gets us so far. It is great at its job of helping us understand how the world operates, but it tells us nothing about our relationships with each other and our past. For that you need history; that tells us where we came from and how.
Mr Tankard jibes at the Christian perspective, but it is this that has given us the history that takes us back to our Creator. On this basis we come, not from meaningless matter bumping around in a pond, but the intention of someone who made us purposively: God, of course.
Interestingly it is only on the basis of this Biblical view of creation that modern science has emerged in the first place. Before it observation of the natural world was either mired in myth and superstition, or was simply contemplated as a theoretical curiosity; such as in Ancient Greece, where science was 'still born' and had few practical outcomes.
Thus Christians didn't pray and not observe, but because they prayed, they could observe and draw conclusions not based on wild speculations.
So, Ben, you settle down with your indoor plumbing; I'll sit with the words of our Creator who invites us to a realist understanding of life, the cosmos and relationships within it.
12 October 2009
Plutarch: on time
A while ago I put up some blogs on the relationship of time to the creation.
Plutarch has made a similar observation on the importance of that universal limitation on our thought and action: time is, as they say, of the essence!
The point being that mixing process and time says something about the doer: complex process, plus short time = wonder at the outcome. Any process and huge time: not remarkable at all; thus the brief time of God's creating is an important part of the Genesis record, I suggest.
Plutarch has made a similar observation on the importance of that universal limitation on our thought and action: time is, as they say, of the essence!
13: So the buildings arose, as imposing in their sheer size as they were inimitable in the grace of their outlines, since the artists strove to excel themselves in the beauty of their workmanship. And yet the most wonderful thing about them was the speed with which they were completed. Each of them, men supposed, would take many generations to build, but in fact the entire project was carried through in the high summer of one man's administration....It is this, above all, which makes Pericles' works an object of wonder to us -- the fact that they were created in so short a span, and yet for all time.
The point being that mixing process and time says something about the doer: complex process, plus short time = wonder at the outcome. Any process and huge time: not remarkable at all; thus the brief time of God's creating is an important part of the Genesis record, I suggest.
On Connect 09
I've mentioned recently the current Sydney Diocesan program called "Connect 09" which is an attempt to expand the influence of the Anglican church in Sydney, and the number of people attending Anglican services (presumably).
My church has conducted a number of Connect-related attractions, which I would assess as having varing effect. Generally I'm opposed to doing anything by sloganeering; particularly anything to do with what I might call transformative communications.
As an aside, I reflect on my experience working in marketing for a multi-national, selling specialist chemicals. We had a few slogans, which were imposed on us by our UK head office, but they were by the wayside, when it came to our real communications efforts. We pretty much knew who our customers, or potential customers were. Our efforts went into understanding our competitors and why they were attractive, what would lead a customer to use our products, and what their needs and drivers were that would lead them to see our products a benefit. To find out all this, we talked to our customers and live prospects. We did not engage in mass communications at all, but close, detailed, personal and intense communications!
Its simliar with promoting (!) the Christian life. While we would see that all people would benefit from Christian faith, we should be realistic and understand that very few people are at any time in a position to contemplate Christian commitment. We do not 'connect' with such people by mass marketing, low involvement communications efforts; we do so by making real connections over the long term and delivering on the promise of those connections...over the long term.
The stimulus for this blog came from my experience recently while on holidays in the Blue Mountains, to the immediate west of Sydney, and still within the diocese.
The village my family stayed in was having its annual festival which involved private gardens being open to the public (and well worth it) and a market which saw the main shopping street closed to traffic, and filled with high quality market stalls selling goods, art works, food and some 'New Age' promotions for health and 'spiritual' products.
The local Anglican church joined in by holding a flower festival, its auditorium decorated with quite attractive and hard worked at flower displays, with a 'praise festival' in the afternoon, featuring the hymns of Wesley.
We attended the 10am service, which we'd done some years past on a similar holiday. All I can say about the service was 'the flowers were good', if you like that sort of thing, and the (electric organ) music was enjoyable enough; although I'm not a fan of either the electric organ, unless its being played by Jimmy Smith.
The service itself wasn't up to the mark. Now anyone can have a bad day, and I enjoyed the Bible readings and prayer; but the sermon was a meandering and insensitive chat about part of Luke's gospel, without any real acknowledgement of the life-issues that it touched upon and how the word of God could be of benefit to us in our everyday struggles, thoughts and relationships. The minister had a swipe at the great flower display (with a remark about hayfever! Man, that must have encouraged his parishioners) and hashed his way through the prayer book, undoing its benefit of saving the incompetent from themselves, IMO.
We then went to the street market, and it was as if we were on another planet. The disconnect between the church and what was going on a stone's throw away was immense and palpable. Although I do hope that some people ventured in to look at the flowers and came back at 3pm to join in singing Wesley. I venture that few did.
To adopt the word from the slogan, if a church wants to connect with its community, it must, I think, work on a number of levels.
Firstly, it must be known as part of the action of the community. It must have an amount of 'mind share' that will let it contribute to community life. Then it must be actively involved in the community on a number of relevant fronts: finding where there is need and meeting that which it can. Both these aspects of 'contact' are long term and need to be done without rush or panic year in and year out, changing as the community and its needs and interests change. Slogans may work on top of this, but not instead of it. But then, if this is working, slogans are irrelevant, if not offensive (being that they deny the relationships that are built and validated year in and year out).
Then, when things like festivals come along, they get involved. The idea of flowers is OK as far as it goes, but it doesn't go far. Flowers and art? A choral festival, with a 'star' choir featuring at the morning service; a music festival that would be of interest to the community, not necessarily the church family; although some links would be beneficial? But these are only the start of the contact: then start to open the path to gain permission to tell the church's story (that's marketing talk for the message it really wants to give).
What a lot of church contacts miss is that they are only the start of the persons' experience of the church and need to make links to enable those who are interested to travel all the way to discipleship (which should have its own path, much as it did in the ancient church; today, I think, we make discipleship a glib bit if wordsmanship, not a process of learning to live the faith as a disciple of Christ).
As Justin at St Philips said in reflection on the first minister of that parish William Cowper: its about doing a steady job over the long term. There are no valid short term fixes to make up for long term deficits; long term systematic separation from the community you now seek to 'connect' with.
My church has conducted a number of Connect-related attractions, which I would assess as having varing effect. Generally I'm opposed to doing anything by sloganeering; particularly anything to do with what I might call transformative communications.
As an aside, I reflect on my experience working in marketing for a multi-national, selling specialist chemicals. We had a few slogans, which were imposed on us by our UK head office, but they were by the wayside, when it came to our real communications efforts. We pretty much knew who our customers, or potential customers were. Our efforts went into understanding our competitors and why they were attractive, what would lead a customer to use our products, and what their needs and drivers were that would lead them to see our products a benefit. To find out all this, we talked to our customers and live prospects. We did not engage in mass communications at all, but close, detailed, personal and intense communications!
Its simliar with promoting (!) the Christian life. While we would see that all people would benefit from Christian faith, we should be realistic and understand that very few people are at any time in a position to contemplate Christian commitment. We do not 'connect' with such people by mass marketing, low involvement communications efforts; we do so by making real connections over the long term and delivering on the promise of those connections...over the long term.
The stimulus for this blog came from my experience recently while on holidays in the Blue Mountains, to the immediate west of Sydney, and still within the diocese.
The village my family stayed in was having its annual festival which involved private gardens being open to the public (and well worth it) and a market which saw the main shopping street closed to traffic, and filled with high quality market stalls selling goods, art works, food and some 'New Age' promotions for health and 'spiritual' products.
The local Anglican church joined in by holding a flower festival, its auditorium decorated with quite attractive and hard worked at flower displays, with a 'praise festival' in the afternoon, featuring the hymns of Wesley.
We attended the 10am service, which we'd done some years past on a similar holiday. All I can say about the service was 'the flowers were good', if you like that sort of thing, and the (electric organ) music was enjoyable enough; although I'm not a fan of either the electric organ, unless its being played by Jimmy Smith.
The service itself wasn't up to the mark. Now anyone can have a bad day, and I enjoyed the Bible readings and prayer; but the sermon was a meandering and insensitive chat about part of Luke's gospel, without any real acknowledgement of the life-issues that it touched upon and how the word of God could be of benefit to us in our everyday struggles, thoughts and relationships. The minister had a swipe at the great flower display (with a remark about hayfever! Man, that must have encouraged his parishioners) and hashed his way through the prayer book, undoing its benefit of saving the incompetent from themselves, IMO.
We then went to the street market, and it was as if we were on another planet. The disconnect between the church and what was going on a stone's throw away was immense and palpable. Although I do hope that some people ventured in to look at the flowers and came back at 3pm to join in singing Wesley. I venture that few did.
To adopt the word from the slogan, if a church wants to connect with its community, it must, I think, work on a number of levels.
Firstly, it must be known as part of the action of the community. It must have an amount of 'mind share' that will let it contribute to community life. Then it must be actively involved in the community on a number of relevant fronts: finding where there is need and meeting that which it can. Both these aspects of 'contact' are long term and need to be done without rush or panic year in and year out, changing as the community and its needs and interests change. Slogans may work on top of this, but not instead of it. But then, if this is working, slogans are irrelevant, if not offensive (being that they deny the relationships that are built and validated year in and year out).
Then, when things like festivals come along, they get involved. The idea of flowers is OK as far as it goes, but it doesn't go far. Flowers and art? A choral festival, with a 'star' choir featuring at the morning service; a music festival that would be of interest to the community, not necessarily the church family; although some links would be beneficial? But these are only the start of the contact: then start to open the path to gain permission to tell the church's story (that's marketing talk for the message it really wants to give).
What a lot of church contacts miss is that they are only the start of the persons' experience of the church and need to make links to enable those who are interested to travel all the way to discipleship (which should have its own path, much as it did in the ancient church; today, I think, we make discipleship a glib bit if wordsmanship, not a process of learning to live the faith as a disciple of Christ).
As Justin at St Philips said in reflection on the first minister of that parish William Cowper: its about doing a steady job over the long term. There are no valid short term fixes to make up for long term deficits; long term systematic separation from the community you now seek to 'connect' with.
2 books on evolution
I just came across this review on HOPE 103.2, a radion station which features Christian programming. The review is by Kara Martin on two books on origins.
I hope to hear the podcast sometime soon and add to this post my own remarks on the review.
Also noticed this review on Anthony Flew's book on God.
And, while I'm at it, here's a link to a brief discussion on origins and Christian faith.
I hope to hear the podcast sometime soon and add to this post my own remarks on the review.
Also noticed this review on Anthony Flew's book on God.
And, while I'm at it, here's a link to a brief discussion on origins and Christian faith.
10 October 2009
Ideal church?
On Jordan Cooper's blog, he links to a list of 6 (+2) worst practices in ch meetings (services).
The first thing the list shows me is how culturally bound our views of our community and its meetings are. I disagreed not only with most of the list, but with the premises underlying them (but then, my interests are adult and young children discipling and teaching).
Maybe the list is right and I'm not, but our views of our community life are also very personal!
The item I agree with is having announcements at the commencement of the meeting. How crazy is that? As soon as you arrive, they are talking not about what they are here for, but about other things that you might like to consider. Announcements are definitely part of the denoument, not the introduction or development!
Much of the list seemed to be 'main man minister' orientated, rather than community, or truly 'church' orientated (church as in the NT, not church as derived from Rome), so that's the premise I'd resist.
What would be my list?
Based on my local ch, and therefore entirely my personal thoughts (and probably different from everyone else's, and a survey might show me to be out on a limb):
- two songs at the start: one's enough, two is just tedious, especially when they are lyrically and musically at odds.
- compares (moderators, service conductors) making unhelpful continuity remarks. No one turns up to hear the compare, but expects them to keep the meeting running smoothly and without drawing attention to themselves
- completely ignoring the wonderful Anglican prayer book tradition: the prayer book would save us from people of varying talent 'making it up as they go' and provides a steady structure for those places where innovation is welcome.
- skipping prayer because there's a baptism (infant, not adult); this would be solved at our parish if the following service would agree to commence only 15 minutes later!
- because of the time, always rushing
- conspicuous fussing by musicians at the front, as though its about musicians and not about us teaching one another with spiritual songs (I quote Paul here)
- the ever-present 'PowerPoint' for projecting song lyrics: not that the idea isn't good, but I can't easily look up due to a neck injury (I did say it was a personal list), so, church=have a headache for me.
And what should ch be like?
My ideal would be something like a small conference, with a mix of mingle time, plenary sessions and workshops. I think this model could work for a tiny church or a large one, because what it does is get people together, giving opportunity for conversation, discussion, prayer, support and reflection, with people able to leave or join at a number of points through the program.
So, I'd join two different church models I've known:
Model 1: sunday school for children and adults (discussion group), break for morning tea, 'normal' church meeting.
Model 2: 'normal' church meeting, using Anglican prayer book and old fashioned hymns and choir (v. good), creche operates for young children, morning tea, then prayer meeting, sometimes followed by light lunch (soup, bread rolls, fruit).
Together, I'd propose:
Formal opening, contemplative, prayerful, slow paced (young people might do it differently for pace)
Teaching/encouraging talk (aka sermon, but not a 'sermon')
brief break: people might leave, or join,
Proper morning prayer service, or communion.
morning tea
children's and adults sunday school
prayer meetings, one to one prayer or conversation (structured time, for encouragement, etc, over a cup of tea or not)
light lunch.
The times would be advertised for each segment so people could come or go as they pleased.
Just an indication, not a worked out program!
The first thing the list shows me is how culturally bound our views of our community and its meetings are. I disagreed not only with most of the list, but with the premises underlying them (but then, my interests are adult and young children discipling and teaching).
Maybe the list is right and I'm not, but our views of our community life are also very personal!
The item I agree with is having announcements at the commencement of the meeting. How crazy is that? As soon as you arrive, they are talking not about what they are here for, but about other things that you might like to consider. Announcements are definitely part of the denoument, not the introduction or development!
Much of the list seemed to be 'main man minister' orientated, rather than community, or truly 'church' orientated (church as in the NT, not church as derived from Rome), so that's the premise I'd resist.
What would be my list?
Based on my local ch, and therefore entirely my personal thoughts (and probably different from everyone else's, and a survey might show me to be out on a limb):
- two songs at the start: one's enough, two is just tedious, especially when they are lyrically and musically at odds.
- compares (moderators, service conductors) making unhelpful continuity remarks. No one turns up to hear the compare, but expects them to keep the meeting running smoothly and without drawing attention to themselves
- completely ignoring the wonderful Anglican prayer book tradition: the prayer book would save us from people of varying talent 'making it up as they go' and provides a steady structure for those places where innovation is welcome.
- skipping prayer because there's a baptism (infant, not adult); this would be solved at our parish if the following service would agree to commence only 15 minutes later!
- because of the time, always rushing
- conspicuous fussing by musicians at the front, as though its about musicians and not about us teaching one another with spiritual songs (I quote Paul here)
- the ever-present 'PowerPoint' for projecting song lyrics: not that the idea isn't good, but I can't easily look up due to a neck injury (I did say it was a personal list), so, church=have a headache for me.
And what should ch be like?
My ideal would be something like a small conference, with a mix of mingle time, plenary sessions and workshops. I think this model could work for a tiny church or a large one, because what it does is get people together, giving opportunity for conversation, discussion, prayer, support and reflection, with people able to leave or join at a number of points through the program.
So, I'd join two different church models I've known:
Model 1: sunday school for children and adults (discussion group), break for morning tea, 'normal' church meeting.
Model 2: 'normal' church meeting, using Anglican prayer book and old fashioned hymns and choir (v. good), creche operates for young children, morning tea, then prayer meeting, sometimes followed by light lunch (soup, bread rolls, fruit).
Together, I'd propose:
Formal opening, contemplative, prayerful, slow paced (young people might do it differently for pace)
Teaching/encouraging talk (aka sermon, but not a 'sermon')
brief break: people might leave, or join,
Proper morning prayer service, or communion.
morning tea
children's and adults sunday school
prayer meetings, one to one prayer or conversation (structured time, for encouragement, etc, over a cup of tea or not)
light lunch.
The times would be advertised for each segment so people could come or go as they pleased.
Just an indication, not a worked out program!
5 October 2009
Plutarch on intelligence in the cosmos
This is one of the first descriptions of intelligence in the cosmos outside the Bible:
Its from Plutarch, in his essay on Pericles (4)
Anaxagoras of Clazomenae, was called "intelligence personified. They gave him this name either out of admiration for the extraordinary intellectual powers he displayed in the investigation of natural phenomena, or else because he was the first to dethrone Chance and Necessity and set up pure Intelligence in their place as the first principle of law and order which informs the universe, and which distinguishes from an otherwise chaotic mass those substances which possess elements in common.
Its from Plutarch, in his essay on Pericles (4)
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