Youth Ministry and Me

My brother has an excellent little piece of analysis of the claims made recently in some of the Australian metropolitan newspapers concerning the idea that 'man flu' is really real and that men always overstate their sickness.

State Infrastructure Minister Graeme Sturges made an embarrassing Freudian slip when asked whether it was just a coincidence that construction was starting in the middle of an election campaign.

"No, absolutely not," Mr Sturges said.

So recently it was announced that churches could continue to 'discriminate' and only hire people who hold the same religious convictions as they do to work for them.

This is surely mostly a big debate about nothing. The reason it is heated is because churches and their associated organisations wont hire gay people and the law says this is ok. Melbourne's flagship paper, The Age, has been pretty biased against the church on this one (what's new?). Here are all of the recent articles, I could find, that they've published on the issue. I've categorised them into Anti-church and Pro-Church by which I mean Anti the right for a church organisation to discrimate on the basis of faith or pro that position:

Anti-church: A Betrayal of Faith: The Bishop of Gippsland writes one of the worst articles I've ever seen from a Bishop. Totally hopeless and he'd be doing everyone a favour if he resigned and never spoke in public again.

Hulls lack of courage leaves discrimination entrenched: Editorial piece slamming the churches position.

Government bows to religious right: news article which is totally biased

Church can reject gays, single mums: news article which is... also totally biased. It includes this lovely quote from Rodney Croome (a Tasmanian gay activist), "the right to employment and education is more important than pandering to religious prejudice."
Hang on Rodney, the church isn't saying gay people can't have jobs or get educated. Just that they won't employ them. Surely when the gay lobby hire someone they ask if they believe in the cause?? If I went for a job to work with them and said, by the way I don't agree with you I wouldn't be hired. I'm then discriminated against because of my religious views. Why is it fair for you to do it but not the church?

Balancing religion and rights, the case against discrimination: More of the same from The Age opinion pages.



Pro-church:
Why the Bishop is wrong on faith and rights: A response to that hopeless Bishop's article I mentioned earlier.

Freedom of religion is also a basic right: This article begins with, "Telling a church or a mosque it can't employ people who share its ethos is a bit like telling the Labor Party it must employ Liberals." Hurrah!

Plus there were also some Letters to the editor with 1 pro and 2 anti.

(NOTE: These were all I found when searching theage.com.au with the word discrimination so I might have missed one or two but I think it's a pretty complete list)

Anyway apart from a clearly biased paper. Here are some of my other thoughts:

First of all, churches are still allowed to preach the Gospel and so I can't see why a gay person would want to work for an organisation that says you're lifestyle is opposed to God's plan for the way humans should relate to each other. So that's why I can't really understand why they are so upset about this. It's like I said earlier about me working for the gay lobby. I don't want to and they would never employ me because of my religious beliefs. I'm happy to be discriminated against in that case where we clash ideologically.

Secondly, Jim Wallis makes an interesting point in a recent article on this subject of discrimination. He talks about the difference between providing services and receiving them. He says you should be able to select people who agree with your organisational beliefs but then not discriminate against who receives your services, that is a church based group that finds people jobs should still find gay people jobs but shouldn't be forced to hire someone who totally disagrees with their position. (The first "Pro-Church" article I list argues along similar lines to this!)

I think my view would be similar to Jim Wallis and co.

Thanks to a friend on Facebook I saw a link to this article about Society, Marriage and God.

"Marriage is part of an earlier notion that women were dependent on men. Women were saying 'if I am going to invest in you by bearing your kids, then you have to commit to me in marriage'. But with women able to earn an equal income, that contract has been weakened."

Here is an interesting article about how UK community pools are having special Muslim only sessions where people are required to dress in a certain way.

Raises an interesting question, how do you integrate a group of people who don't want to integrate but rather want to change the whole society and force people to do things their way... glad I'm not trying to figure out the social policy on that one!

Peter Adam is the principal of Ridley Melbourne Mission and Ministry College (where I go for my theological training).

Check out this article which reports some of his apparent quotes at a recent lecture.

Radical stuff!

UPDATE: The full version of his talk can be found here. (HT Mikey)

I've blogged about The Age columnist Catherine Deveny before. She seems to be a God-hating, Christian hating columnist. Anyway, according to her most recent article she recently went along to a Planetshakers church service. She makes a number of interesting observations some of which are fair some of which are not. All though of which Christians should take note of as she is the kind of person we want to come to our church services, experience Christian Community and respond to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Firstly, she makes probably a valid point, although overstated, about much of modern day Christian music.

Lyrics flashed up: "Come like a flood and saturate me now." I wondered what Freud would have made of the disproportionate use of such words as ‘‘come’’, ‘‘touch’’ and ‘‘feel’’, and the phrases "move within me" and "being filled". My favourite was "King of Glory, enter in".

A pastor banged on about sacrifice and said it wasn’t important how much we sacrificed just as long as we gave as much as we could. No matter how small it was. I didn’t know what he was on about until the giving cards came round. And a little bucket for coins. No lid with a slot. A big open bucket, so you could be shamed by your paltry donation.

Then there were the plugs for the Mighty Men’s night and Beautiful Women Seminar. Male volunteers were encouraged to get involved with the ladies’ seminar with the promise of ‘‘being able to tell 3000 women what to do’’. Beautiful women. Mighty men. Note: not mighty women and beautiful men.

As people yelled, "Yeah!", "Amen!" and ‘‘Awesome!" [To the preaching about 'sheepgate'] I wanted to yell, "I don’t get it". I love the way religion convinces people by making things deliberately incomprehensible and you feel too shy to say ‘‘I don’t understand’’ lest you reveal your stupidity.

The crowd left believing they had been moved by God and touched by Jesus. They hadn’t. They had been seduced by slick video packages and had their emotional desire for love, community and certainty met by manipulation. It wasn’t the Holy Spirit; it was just people.

Unfortunately Denevy failed to meet Jesus and see the power that lives changed by Jesus can have on her visit to Planetshakers. Some of this could be put down to awkward or unclearness of their service (there would be similar problems in all Christian services, so dont' see me as taking a cheap shot at Planetshakers here). Much of it is problem put down to Denevy being a sinner in need of God's salvation. I will continue to pray that God would open her eyes to the love of God revealed to us in Jesus Christ.

Finally, Denevy leaves us with this question at the end of her article:

Aren’t we awesome enough?

I read about this over on Mikey's blog. A guy is blogging for a British Newspaper about his attendance at an Alpha Course.

Click here to see the blogs written so far. Should make for great reading.

Hyatt is CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishing and writes and interesting blog and is worth following on Twitter. Check out his blog post on the potential twitter has for leaders to extend their influence.

Click here to read an article I wrote for Willow Creek Australia's WILLOW magazine.

All of us have heroes, people we want to grow up and be like (or if we've already grown up, just become more like). Some of them are people we know, friends, family members, pastors, school teachers; Others are people we admire from afar, 'famous' people, authors, pastors of big churches, sports people, actors, Michael Jackson. Another fact of life is that some people will want to become like us! That little 13 year old boy who you always say hello to at church might want to become just like you, you might become one of his heroes.

It is quite possible that there are youth in my ministry who want to become like me, a humbling thought, but also a pretty darn scary one! Is this a good or a bad thing? Should I be honoured or troubled by this? After all, I want my youth to become more like Jesus not more like Chris Bowditch.

John Piper recently blogged about this in a blog post titled, Hero Worship and Holy Emulation. Piper is a man who many many people look up to. So it's a good idea to seek his wisdom on the matter. He distinguishes between these two types of admiration:

Hero worship means admiring someone for unholy reasons and seeing all he does as admirable (whether it’s sin or not). Holy emulation, on the other hand, sees evidences of God’s grace, and admires them for Christ’s sake, and wants to learn from them and grow in them.

This isn't from John Piper, but it was a pretty interesting quote (from JD Greear on Revitalizing Church)

I would not suggest, generally speaking, trying to revitalize when you don't see signs of God working in ways that are independent and larger than you. Yes, there are exceptions, but this is a case where I think Henry Blackaby (Experiencing God) got it right years ago. Discover where God is working, and go join him in it. Pray with Moses, Jonathan, or any number of the Bible heroes, "God, I won't go up, unless you go with me."

If you don't sense him moving in that congregation, go plant. Find a fertile field and invest your life there. You've only got one life, and there are billions of lost people. In my opinion, you should not waste your life banging your head against the wall, trying to lead people who don't really want to be led, unless God tells you in clear terms that is what he wants from you.

A two part series over on the Resurgence blog on what is meant by 'calling'. Let's start with some quotes:

...we have so many people sitting around waiting on a warm, fuzzy, and goose-bump-inducing vision from God before they embark on some ministry. Maybe we've invented the whole language of calling to mask the fact that most Christians don't want to live missionally.

So let me say it plainly: I don't think you need to be "called" to go overseas, any more than I think you need to be "called" to live missionally wherever you are. As a disciple, you must ask, "How can my talents best be used in God's worldwide mission?" If the answer is that you can be part of an overseas community-building, Jesus-preaching project, don't wait for a special calling. Pack your bags.

Apparently, Australia's very own "Dr Death" as he is sometimes called, Nitschke (a Euthanasia advocate) has said that voluntary euthanasia should be used, or considered, for 'the troubled teen'. That is, why not allow the teen who thinks life sucks to do something about it!!?

Such a law would sure bring a whole new dimension to pastoral care in Youth Ministry!

See a link to the article here

HT to Bishop John

A report on our Vicar's resignation can be seen here

After 13 years of presiding over HTD, Reverend Barker reminisced with Christian Today Australia of the growth that had occurred at the church. He recounted how the Chinese Church started from a few attendances to a current Sunday Service packed with congregants.

There is an excellent article in the Australian about the proposed bill of rights that the Rudd Government is thinking about creating. It shows good reason why as Christians we should advocate strongly against such a bill. The part of the article that I have quoted refers particularly to the Victorian rights charter, on which the national bill is said to be based:

The most stunning insight into this entire debate, however, is Brennan's recent and separate attack on Victoria's rights charter, supposedly the model for a national bill. Brennan's conclusion is that Victoria's law has failed its first test: the need to uphold freedom of conscience.

Brennan's concern was clause 8(1)(b) of the Abortion Law Reform Bill that, in defiance of Australian Medical Association ethics, overrode a physician's freedom of conscience and compelled a doctor who had a conscience objection on abortion to find and recommend to the patient a doctor willing to perform the operation. As Brennan said, the law requires "compulsory referral by a conscientious objector" or, in shorthand, leave your morals at the surgery door.

Brennan's conclusion is that Victoria's rights charter "failed spectacularly" to defend a core human right when it conflicted with the progressive-Left political agenda on abortion law and bioethics. He nails the issue: Victoria's law is not primarily about human rights. It is "a device for the delivery of a soft-Left sectarian agenda" and it will be discarded whenever "the rights articulated do not comply with that agenda".

In short, the rights debate is an ideological instrument for causes the Left knows the public may not embrace. Brennan sees it and said it.

To read the article in full, click here

To make your views about why this bill should not proceed, click here (HT to Wayne for the link)

Click here to read an interesting article in the LA Times about Atheists

HT to Arthur for this one.

(As an aside: HT means hat tip. See this blog post)