My blog is under a spam trackback attack at the moment. I have hopefully got rid of most of it now, but please do not click on any trackbacks you see – they might lead to some unpleasant sites. If it persists, I may have to disable comments altogether for a while.

Update: I’ve turned off comments temporarily, as the other methods haven’t seemed to work.

My ISP managed to lose all the data on my webserver a couple of days ago, but thankfully the contents of the blog are still intact as they were stored on a different computer. It serves as a reminder to back things up regularly though.

And here is Ben’s first picture of Steph. The pre-school staff have kindly annotated it with his comments – “Mummy’s hair is very long”

My son Ben drew his first picture of me today at pre-school. Actually he drew two, but this one was the most flattering. (Apparently the second one was a picture of me after I had scratched my eye).

Today was the final day of our church’s holiday Kidz Klub. One of my contributions was to play the Roman Emperor Nero in a short drama which ran each day (we had a theme of ancient Rome). As usual, the drama was not at all rehearsed, and in fact we only had a script for the first day, ad-libbing the rest. You can imagine then that this was not a theatrical masterpiece.

I quite enjoyed playing the part of Nero as it gave me a chance to throw in a few Roman history jokes (which were lost on the 5-10 year olds, and I suspect most of the helpers too), and I also took the opportunity to develop an N T Wright theme of Jesus as Lord being a direct challenge to Caesar as Lord. So I asked the children to worship me and declare that Caesar is Lord (“kurios caesar”). They were supposed to realise I was the bad guy, but (perhaps due to the sheer strength of my personal charisma?) they obligingly bowed and worshiped. Oops – that’s not supposed to happen in church.

Anyway, today the kids were primed not to worship me, which they did a good job of. I couldn’t shut them up to say my lines because they repeatedly chanted “Jesus”. But I resisted the pressure to have Nero convert to Christianity at the end of the drama – that was just too offensive to my sense of historical integrity, even given the wild amount of artistic license we had already taken.

My friend Dan Bowen has sent me a copy of his (unpublished) book on Ern Baxter, which he has given me permission to make available online. Dan is a nurse, currently working in Bristol, and shares my passion for studying the Bible and theology, as well as a love for Word and Spirit. We both attended the same church (see my story here), where Ern had a lot of input. Ern would come over to the UK once or twice a year and put on a series of meetings at the church or to speak at a Bible week. His teaching left a big impact on everyone, myself included, but Dan especially grew to appreciate Ern through listening to the tapes and videos of the years he was around (we were only in our early teens when Ern died).

Dan spent a lot of time and effort putting this together, and contacted a lot of people as he researched it. He has real skill and patience when it comes to transcribing audio. When he finished it last year, he gave copies to some of the pastors who had known Ern, including Stanley Jebb from Dunstable, and Terry Virgo who heads up New Frontiers. Perhaps it was not coincidence that Terry Virgo’s next editorial in the New Frontiers magazine drew from Ern’s teaching.

Update: A lot of the links in this post are now unfortunately broken. However, if you want access to lots of Ern Baxter MP3s (including Life on Wings), visit Broken Bread Teaching.

Anyway, download it and read it here in Microsoft Word format. I might get round to converting it to HTML format if there is enough interest.

As a free gift of my own to go with the book, here is the famous Life on Wings sermon in MP3 format. Its over 13Mb – the sermon is 1h 17min (that’s actually short for Ern! – many of his sermons are over 90 minutes). I have a good number of other Ern MP3 sermons which I can make available to people on request (its over 250Mb so I’m not putting it online).

ps Dan is also one of the founder members of Full Faith, and can be seen in a number of the photos.

OK, here are a few more thoughts on Christians and materialism. The subject is huge, and perhaps I will post a bit more on it over the coming weeks. I must admit I have felt a bit of a hypocrite as I spent a good amount of time this week wondering whether I should buy this and this (and to be honest, a good few other bits and pieces too).

Perhaps we would be better at not falling into materialistic ways of thinking if we were a bit more wise to some of the mentalities that cause us to part with our money. I mentioned two in my previous post, and here’s two more I have noticed – one for people who like to save money, and one for people who love to spend it.

The bargain hunter

How often have I heard my wife say “I saved £50 today”? As I take great pains to point out, she did not in fact “save” money, she spent it. But somehow we get this trick pulled on us all the time. Of course, there are occasions when we genuinely can save money while spending it. If we had planned and budgeted to buy a particular thing, and then it unexpectedly is available at a cheaper price then we have made a saving. We feel really pleased when this happens. The trouble is, we are duped into thinking it has happened more often than it has.

A classic example is when something that we would not have bought at that time, (but would have done or wanted to in the future), comes on special offer. We buy on the spot, and treat this as a “saving”. However, if we resist the temptation to impulse buy, we often find that we can make do without it for quite some time, and quite probably discover an even better offer closer to the time when we really need it.

The compulsive spender

The marketing people have always hated times when it is not possible for people to spend money. The reason we have Sunday trading after many years of it being illegal is because nowadays it is unthinkable that people should have to survive a day without shopping. But what about night-time? Or while you are at work or out in the countryside? How can you spend money then?

Well the marketing people have a solution – this is where the internet, TV shopping and mobile phones come in. If you make it possible for people to spend 24/7 then they will. I quite often go a week or more without entering a shop, but I’m on the internet every day. Only “one click” and I’ve bought another commentary! Some people take their mobile phones with them everywhere, and since they have them, the temptation to use them is unavoidable. A walk in the countryside or a drive in the car and they have spent £10 on calls.

Lead us not into temptation

Both the “saver” and the “spender” will let go of far more of their money than they wanted to because they can’t avoid the places of temptation. “This bargain is too good to be missed”. “Let me just check if Amazon have got a special offer on anything on my wishlist”. Whatever the exact meaning of the phrase “lead us not into temptation” (Matt 6:13), it is fairly clear that our best intentions to be wise stewards of our money will be thwarted if we constantly put ourselves in situations where we know we are likely to frivolously spend.

I know some friends who don’t use credit/debit cards at all. They simply withdraw their spending money for the month in cash and when its gone its gone. Solutions like that might seem a bit radical (well actually inconvenient), but how serious are we about controlling our spending? Do we really want to spend less so we can give more? Or if truth be told, is our desire to give actually much weaker than our desire to get? Perhaps we don’t really believe that “it is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35)

Following my recent review of “The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience”, I have been gathering some of my own thoughts on the issues Ronald Sider raises. The question I’m thinking about first is “how can we as Christians (and churches) identify materialistic tendencies, and what practical steps can we take to avoid being sucked into this unbiblical way of thinking?”

I have for some time now been developing a line of thought that there are at least three ways to sell things to people.
1. Its something they actually need (like food or clothing). They’ll just buy it if you make the right thing available and they can afford it.
2. Appeal to the “collector” mentality. They’ve got one in the series, so they just gotta have them all.
3. Appeal to the “upgrader” mentality. They’ve already got it, and it works just fine, but if you make a better one, they want it.

Now since we live in a society where the vast majority can afford their basic needs to be met with some “disposable income” left over, the marketing people are focussing heavily on techniques 2 and 3. And I will admit that I am highly susceptible to them both.

The collector mentality

Six years ago I bought my first commentary. Now I have almost 100. How did that happen? Well they exist in “series”, so my “collector” mentality wants to get the entirity of any series that I have one of. Not only that, but when someone I respect makes a list of their recommendations, that becomes another “collection” that I want. Of course, other people collect shoes, DVDs, guitars, cars and so on. The marketing people know that as long as they sell you one, they can also sell you more.

Jesus said that the person who has two tunics should share with him who has none (Luke 3:11). There were doubtless some very good and pragmatic reasons for having more than one tunic in those days – two is hardly extravagent. But where there are people with nothing, hoarding an abundance is selfish and greedy.

The upgrader mentality

I’m into computers. I have never bought a whole one, but most years I buy a few parts to keep the one I have reasonably up to date. I have so many spare bits now that I have a second computer made out of the old pieces (and many other bits have been given away to friends). One thing is certain – there will always be better software and hardware coming out. Some of it will save me time, and some will open up new possibilities, but most of the things I want to do on a computer, I can do perfectly adequately with what I have. Other people are tempted by better sofas, better packages of TV channels, better cars, better holidays, and better food. The marketing people know that as long as they sell you one, they can also sell you a better one.

Paul says “But if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content” (1 Tim 6:8) and the author of Hebrews says “Keep your life free from love of money, and be content with what you have” (Heb 13:5). At the heart of the “upgrader” mentality is dissatisfaction with what we have and the foolish belief that the problem is merely that what we’ve got isn’t quite good enough. The fact is, that possessions can never satisfy at the deepest level, so the cycle of upgrading will never end (perhaps unless you are a millionaire and actually own the best of everything – at which point you’ll just get depressed).

Following on from my previous post, about the way that Bible studies work in small groups, I have some equally subversive thoughts on “worship leaders”. (My wife said that my post on Bible studies sounded “grumpy”, so apologies if that was the case, and I will do my best to sound cheerful today).

The role of “worship leader” is firmly established in every church I have been to. The worship leader is responsible for choosing and introducing the songs in a meeting. In charismatic churches, the typical worship leader fits the following description:
1. Plays the guitar and can sing reasonably well
2. Has a vast mental database of praise and worship songs for all occasions
3. Is a master in the art of extemporaneous prayer

In a noncharismatic church, the worship leader is typically an elder, so requirement 1 is dropped. These days there is an abundance of books for worship leaders and conferences for worship leaders as well as lots of church meetings for worship leaders to attend to discuss worship leading. I have been to many such meetings and read many books over the years, particularly when I was myself a regular worship leader while at university.

The subjects that are covered by these books or meetings fall into two broad categories:
1. what it really means to praise or to worship.
2. the practical details – organising a band, playing your instrument well etc.

I have never heard anyone address the question of whether the early New Testament church would have any idea what a “worship leader” was or was supposed to do. Preachers looking for Biblical models of worship leading always head straight to the Old Testament. But the New Testament is frustratingly silent on how these things were organised.

In 1 Cor 14:26, Paul talks as though he expected songs to be contributed by a variety of people, not just selected by one worship leader. Of course, there was no one person holding a guitar (or a CD player remote control) in those days. They also were presumably not held back by what songs they had the word sheets for (because they had none).

Now I have been in meetings where no songs have been officially chosen, but rather people are encouraged to make requests from the hymn book (or simply start a song off themselves). This can be quite dynamic, but it can also degenerate into everyone vying to get their personal favourite in. If you’ll permit me to speculate, perhaps in the early church there weren’t “requests” as such, but in a typical meeting there would be two or three people whose particular gift was to bring a song. They would come with a few songs “in the hearts”, and lead the meeting in them if and when the time was appropriate. These might be Psalms, or some early Christian hymns or even spontaneously made up songs. I might be way off track here – I don’t know enough early church history to be sure.

So my questions for today are: Did the very early church have worship leaders (in the sense of one person responsible for choosing the songs), or is this a more recent invention? Is it a good thing to give this responsibility during a meeting over to an expert, or should we look to encourage greater diversity by letting anyone bring a song? If we were to change our meetings so that there was no designated worship leader, would this be a recipe for disaster? And how much of a loss would it be that the quality of music would undoubtedly suffer?

Increasingly, the sort of Bible studies I attend go something like this (including the ones I lead – I just follow the trend!):

1. We read a short passage of the Bible – one verse each as is the custom in every Bible study group I have ever attended. This makes a rather quirky patchwork of translations as you usually have 4 NIVs, 2x the Message, 2x the Living Bible, 1 ESV (that me), 1 KJV (that’s the person who couldn’t find their regular Bible), 1 Amplified and a couple of others.
2. The Bible study leader announces three or four questions, and people get into groups to ‘discuss’
3. The people get into groups and chat about random stuff for a few minutes before remembering they were supposed to be answering questions
4. People answer the questions with whatever comes into their heads (after all, they’ve come completely fresh to the passage – they haven’t prepared or read it in advance). This leads to the following types of contribution:
a) basically correct but bluntly stated answers to the questions (e.g. “we shouldn’t sin”)
b) one or two embarassing hermeneutical blunders which hopefully are politely corrected, but often go undetected
c) a few discussions going off on a complete tangent that misses altogether the main point of the passage
d) hopefully, the odd genuine insight
5. Now we get back together into a big group. And guess what? Each group regurgitates everything they discussed for a second time. Hopefully some of the dross is filtered out in this process, but it still usually takes a considerable time for people to report back.
6. Time is virtually up, so the Bible study leader quickly blurts out the answers he was hoping people would give. A few “oh yeah’s” go round the room as people realise what the passage was actually saying.

OK, so I am exaggerating a bit, but you get the general picture. I am a firm believer in the importance of Christians meeting together in small groups. And I also believe that devoting some time to Bible study during those meetings is essential. The early church, amongst other things, devoted themselves to “the apostles teaching”. Now I know they didn’t have an apostle in every small group meeting, so what did they do? Did they have a “discussion” like the one outlined earlier? Or perhaps someone with a gift of teaching shared something for 10-20 minutes? Maybe the latter occurred and from that a discussion broke out, about the issues raised or questions people had.

I can’t help thinking that this might be a more appropriate model for small groups. For one thing, it would allow a lot more ground to be covered in the short time that is available. It does of course require that the person doing the teaching has something worth saying and is able to communicate it well. Making the change might also be controversial – I imagine that there could be quite a bit of resistance to people having to listen to a “sermon” when they were used to having a discussion.

I would be interested to hear from people who have tried different approaches to teaching in small groups. Do you preach a sermon? How important is it that everyone contributes to this part of the meeting? Does anyone want to defend the discussion model?