Sunday, 28 November 2010
Let the words of Roland Allen give you solace when you worry that the liberal church's lies and misrepresentations of the gospel will threaten the gospel:
Now if with us today the great stumbling-block in the way of our missions is the practical denial of Christianity, the indifference of men of our own blood, who yet call themselves Christians, this violent persecution of St Paul, by the religious teachers of his own nation, must have been a far greater stumbling block.
Missionary Methods, St Paul's or Ours?
If Paul had such success in mission in spite of the people who claimed to know the Christ the best, and who had all the religious authority and power, then we shouldn't worry that our evangelism will be hindered by some liberal falsehood about Christ. Not that we should be at ease when someone lies about God; far be it, we should be zealous for God's name, but will there attack threaten God's kingdom? No.
Thursday, 18 November 2010
Go see the Voyage of The Dawn Treader for free! If you're a youth worker! On Facebook! Who is a fan of Youthwork Magazine! On Facebook!
On December 7th at 6pm we are hosting an exclusive youthworker-only 3-D preview screening of The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of The Dawn Treader in central London.
I won't be attending as Tuesday night is a super busy youth club night, so someone go and tell me if it's any good. (The Dawn Treader was my favourite one as a child, though now I realise the correct answer is The Last Battle.)
Wednesday, 17 November 2010
New from the Good Book Company Lost an evangelistic book for teenagers based on the prodigal son. I've heard him speak on the prodigal son last year at Sorted, and they were excellent talks. If the book is anything like the talks it's probably worth buying if you've got non-Christian young people who read.
Tuesday, 16 November 2010
Last month's Youth Work Magazine carried a letter I wrote in response to Nigel Pimlott and Sally Nash's article on Spirituality, well-being, and young people. As this month's magazine has just come out, I thought I'd put up the text of my letter here. A week or two after this letter was published a friend sent me a message saying that Nigel had read out the letter in a lecture he was doing, showing that sometimes criticism does get heard.
Dear Youthwork magazine,
There was a lot of good and helpful thing in Nigel Pimlott and Sally Nash's article "Well-being" in the October edition of Youthwork, but I have to take issue with one of the things they said. "Youth work seeks to help young people answer some of the big worldview questions of life such as, 'Who am I?', 'Where am I?', 'What is wrong?' and 'What is the solution? Such questions are ultimately spiritual in nature and youth workers seek to help young people explore and discover answers that work for them." (Italics mine.) I have huge problems with that last phrase, but it needs to be said that those questions young people ask are good questions. Because all young people are trying to understand life and trying to form a narrative about it that makes sense those questions do form the basis of a lot of youth work. 'Who am I?', 'What is wrong with the world?' are questions that come up with young people all the time. And young people (and all people) will through various influences and decisions come up with their own answer. This is why the world is wrong they'll say, this is how I change it, this is how I makes things better. This in a sense, becomes their gospel story. So for a lot of my young people, the reason the world is so screwed up is because of greedy men who have got rich of the back of people from disadvantaged backgrounds and so keep them down, and the solution is to get rich and save their family out of poverty and bring them into their home and give them financial security. For others the reason the world is so messed up is because of the Illuminati (seriously, conspiracy theories are big in Central London) and so salvation is to find out as much as you can about it to avoid their lies and so live out a life of safety. These are gospel stories, there is a fall, a salvation, and a heaven, and inevitably the saviour is themselves and their work.
And so we need to engage with these questions, because we know the truth. Man has sinned, but Christ has died to set people free and bring them to Him and give them a family and a heaven and a security from the world. So when the authors say we need to help young people work out the answers that work for them I despair. We have the answers to these questions and the answer is the gospel of Jesus Christ. It is very good, and it is the hope of these young people. Their own answers-my own answers-will not give anything better than an illusion of salvation. Please, youth workers and minsters of the nation, can we be confident in this one thing? This is what young people desperately need to hear and what will give them satisfaction and hope and joy, and it is what glorifies God because it shows how great and loving and merciful He is because He will rescue us and deliver us.
Sunday, 14 November 2010
From the headline you'd expect something like "how to commit bloody murder", "the joys of setting cars on fire", or "that the earth is flat". Alas, those would be much more entertaining articles than this clap-trap nonsense suggesting a public commission should be setup to teach highly questionable religious doctrines to young people. I'd normally ignore this sort of thing but as I've seen it linked around various places and it's been sent to me a few times I thought I'd point it out, and point out what is going on with it. This is how this article came to be; at some point, the author of our article, whether by intent or by accident, has watched a bucket-load of God TV. He, as a man convinced that God is non-existant and Jesus is nonsensical, has had his mind blown by this. How can people preach such things in this day and age? Do they not know how wrong they are about this magical sky fairy? Will someone not thing of this poor vulnerable children and their malleable brains? And he has thought; something must be done! And what is this that should be done?
I believe a public commission should be established that issues non-legally binding guidelines on the forms of doctrines that it is desirable that children are taught. The preaching of hellfire or of divine faith healings to children could form part of such guidelines. Non-compliers could be "named and shamed" by such a commission.
So if you teach some extreme Christian belief like "I believe in a hell for the unrepentant" or "I believe Jesus can physically heal people" you should be named and shamed by a public commission who have established which doctrines are desirable to teach to children. The funny thing is, we had a public commissioned document presented in parliament a while ago stating what was desirable to teach children. It was called the Westminster Shorter Catechism. Maybe we should base it on that?
All this commission business is of course, a very silly idea. And one that will probably never actually make any headway because it is so silly. So let's not worry about that. It's perhaps worth thinking about how much you can agree with or disagree with someone who's fundamental world view is opposite to yours without descending into "you're wrong", "no you're wrong", "no you're wrong and so is your mum", but I have nothing to say about that now and there is something more pressing that the author mentions, something that is worth turning our attention to:
Given the propensity of religious groups to inspire in young people long-term allegiance to their particular faith, questions also arise concerning the potency of the doctrine that religious institutions preach to youngsters.
What magical youth work is this that he knows of that inspires young people to a long-term allegiance to their faith? Has he youth work secrets we don't know about?
