Posted by Dyfed on Friday, December 16, 2011,
In :
Emerging church
More Wisdom from Tom Wright
today, this time on the Sabbath:
"One of the few things that
ancient pagans knew about the Jewish people was that, from the pagans’ point of
view, they had a lazy day once a week. From the Jewish point of view, it wasn’t
laziness; it was the chance to celebrate time in a different mode. The Sabbath was
the day when human time and God’s time met, when the day-to-day succession of tasks
and sorrows was set aside and one entered a different sort of time, celebrat...
Posted by Dyfed on Wednesday, December 14, 2011,
In :
Emerging church
Was he a total stranger,
visiting the synagogue for the very first time? Or had his condition just
remained hidden from the leaders and his fellow worshippers over many months,
even years? Whatever it was he took a big risk the day he manifested before
Jesus (Mark 1:21-28). For to be recognised as having an unclean spirit would
have almost certainly meant he would have been banished from the synagogue and
probably from the wider community too. Unclean spirits and religious
institutions just d...
Posted by Dyfed on Friday, December 9, 2011,
In :
Emerging church
Tom Wright on the Temple in 1st
century Jerusalem:
“It wasn’t, as sacred
buildings have been in some other traditions, a retreat from the world. It was
a bridgehead into the world. It was
the sign that the creator God was claiming the whole world, claiming it back
for himself, establishing his domain in the middle of it.”
Posted by Dyfed on Tuesday, December 6, 2011,
In :
Emerging church
Nobody likes the taxman. But
don’t let that be a sufficient analogy as you read the account of Jesus calling
Matthew as a disciple. Think instead of losing the Battle of Britain, of a Nazi
occupation of the UK, and of your hard-earned money going off to pay for the
Third Reich’s ever increasing empire. Taxmen now wear jackboots and have armed
guards accompanying them. A little different to our current situation.
Just what was Jesus thinking
when he called this most despised of men into his...
Posted by Dyfed on Wednesday, November 16, 2011,
In :
Emerging church
In asking the question ‘What
would Jesus do?’ in the context of the spat between the Occupy camp and St
Paul’s Cathedral a reference was made by some to the Gospel story about Jesus
cleansing the Temple in Jerusalem. The inference was that just as Jesus cleared
out the Temple of its commercial aspects he would also bring judgement upon St
Paul’s tacit support of Western capitalism. Not only was this a simplistic
account of the Cathedral’s position it also rests on a wrong interpreta...
Posted by Dyfed on Tuesday, November 15, 2011,
In :
Emerging church
Reforming my theology can be
both easy and difficult at the same time. One of the difficulties is trying to
find a new language that gives clear expression to my reforming stance –
especially, I find, in my own spirituality. Take the prayer ‘Come, Holy
Spirit,’ for example. It slips so easily off the tongue following years of
being involved in the charismatic stream.
Absent Father?
But why do I call for the
Holy Spirit to come and why do I call for God’s presence when I believe that
God...
Posted by Dyfed on Sunday, November 13, 2011,
In :
Emerging church
There are times when all followers of Jesus struggle with their faith -
though rarely do they own up to their struggle. At such times what we need is
some encouragement but what we sometimes get is someone poking us in
the eye and telling us to get over it.
Here's a great song by The Proclaimers about those very same people who
have an ability to make us feel guilty about where we're at.
Posted by Dyfed on Friday, October 28, 2011,
In :
Emerging church
I found
this quote over at Lesley’s Blog:
So if we
ask whether this or that form of ordained ministry models a humanity that looks
full or joyful or renewed, maybe that is the crucial question. And frequently
the answer is no, for men and for women.
When
looking at challenges such as employment practice, work patterns, couples in
ministry, and a whole range of issues, we might ask whether this human ministry
looks as though it stands for an attractive, a transforming and transformed,
new hu...
Posted by Dyfed on Tuesday, September 27, 2011,
In :
Emerging church
Holiday reading for me this
year was Rob Bell’s controversial Love
Wins. The typo in the very last line of the UK version makes it an
imperfect book and it’s not difficult to see why it has become one of the most
contentious books of the year but for me the expansive view of God’s love that
it portrays makes it a hit.
Opening a debate
Bell’s writing style isn’t
to everybody’s liking but I find it quite refreshing and find myself hearing
his spoken voice coming through the printed wo...
Posted by Dyfed on Wednesday, September 7, 2011,
In :
Emerging church
Do the genocide passages of
the Old Testament prove problematic to you? They certainly cause me some
headaches and I find it increasingly difficult to reconcile those passages from
Joshua with what I read about God in Jesus in the Gospels. If you have no
problem with God commanding the slaughter of every man, woman, child and animal
in a city then maybe you should turn to your second favourite blog today and
come back to me tomorrow.
Posted by Dyfed Roberts on Friday, August 26, 2011,
In :
Emerging church
Bishop Tom Wright’s book Surprised by Hope seems to be proving
popular among a younger generation of Christians. I read it two or three years
ago and was deeply challenged. Not that there’s anything new in it, of course,
but it was for me quite a revelation and was the starting point for the
theological reassessment that I am on.
Resurrection
For those of you who haven’t
read it, it’s a book about resurrection – for you, me, and the whole creation.
Wright builds his thesis on the foun...
Posted by Dyfed on Tuesday, August 23, 2011,
In :
Emerging church
Going to church doesn’t make
you a Christian. Or so the saying goes. Well actually, it does. In a survey
published some years ago on how people became Christians, it was found that the
involvement, contact and, most importantly, the friendship of other Christians
was vital in their journey towards God.
Church involvement
Some 86% of those who had
become followers of Jesus in adulthood had had some contact with a church in
their childhood and 90% said that the involvement of a church – inclu...
Posted by Dyfed on Monday, August 15, 2011,
In :
Emerging church
Like most people I found the London
riots last week shocking. Some of the scenes were quite
frightening and the speed with which the whole thing spread to other English cities was especially
scary. Among the many things that were hard to stomach about the rioting,
however, was the way some of our elected politicians called for a stronger
imposition of boundaries and morality on the lives of others while at the same
time flouting those very same boundaries themselves. Hypocrisy is quite
unapp...
Posted by Dyfed on Monday, August 8, 2011,
In :
Emerging church
As followers of Jesus we are
a people with hope within creation and also a people who provide hope for
creation. Paul tells the Romans that we ‘wait eagerly’ for the day when we
experience the physical redemption of our body through the resurrection and
that creation itself will also experience our freedom as God comes to put right
all that has gone wrong. ‘In hope we have been saved.’ (Romans 8:24.)
Hope within creation
Because our hope is centred on
God redeeming our whole person – ...
Posted by Dyfed on Tuesday, August 2, 2011,
In :
Emerging church
The authority of the Bible
is among the most contentious issues faced today between conservative and
reforming (or emerging) churches. ‘The Bible as God’s word is true’ is a phrase
that carries a lot of baggage and while on one level I can agree with it I
would have to have a list of caveats added-on – not least my belief that it is Jesus
who is God’s word and that it is with him that any revelation of God must
begin.
But back to the Bible. Is it
authoritative in its entirety? Or to ...
Posted by Dyfed on Thursday, July 28, 2011,
In :
Emerging church
I’ve never really thought of
archaeology as an interesting subject. Maybe it’s all that digging around in
the mud when the wind and rain suggest you’d be better off cuddled up in front
of a roaring fire or maybe it’s the thought of having to play jigsaw with
small pieces of pottery that actually don’t make one vase at all but have come
from several different examples. Whatever it is, being an archaeologist was
never an ambition of mine. So you can imagine my reaction when Helen sugg...
Posted by Dyfed on Wednesday, July 27, 2011,
In :
Emerging church
Taking offence is the best
form of attack. So says the cartoonist Martin Rowson on the New Humanist
website (strapline – ‘Ideas for godless people’ - link here). He writes about how difficult
it has become to say anything critical about anybody – but about religions in
particular. He contextualises his argument in the violence that occurred
following the publishing of certain cartoons in a Danish newspaper some years
back. That incident of taking offence was connected to followers of ...
Posted by Dyfed on Thursday, July 21, 2011,
In :
Emerging church
When Paul says in 2
Corinthians 5:17 that we are ‘new creatures’ what did he mean? The issue turns
around the meaning of the word ‘new’. The Greek word used here (and in many
other places in the New Testament) is ‘kainos’.
(There are other Greek words translated by the English ‘new’ and all have
slightly different meanings.)
Kainos has
a sense that something did in fact pre-exist. So, for example, when Matthew
talks about Jesus being buried in a ‘new tomb’ (27:60) this wasn...
Posted by Dyfed on Tuesday, July 19, 2011,
In :
Emerging church
The fire-storm raging over
hell and Rob Bell is not dying out, with new books still being published to
counter what he said. It seems we’re not going to leave this subject any day
soon. Maybe we need saving from it (geddit!?).
One interesting thing that
has been overlooked in the whole debate here in the UK is what ordinary
evangelicals - as opposed to just book-writing leaders - think about hell. In a survey published long before the Bell
controversy erupted the question was asked of some 1...
Posted by Dyfed on Monday, July 18, 2011,
In :
Emerging church
How valued are people once
they’re outside paid employment? It is generally believed that those who work
have higher self-esteem than those who don’t. Being made redundant is either pitied
or frowned upon. Claiming unemployment benefit is increasingly being seen as
unacceptable for any length of time. The disabled, sick, or otherwise
incapacitated are expected to be tested to a high degree to prove their status
beyond any doubt. And the value we place on the elderly is clearly seen in
dis...
Posted by Dyfed on Tuesday, July 12, 2011,
In :
Emerging church
Yesterday was the
'International Day Against Stoning'. As is our way of protesting in this internet
era I ‘liked’ a page on Facebook to show my support. I find any kind of
execution abhorrent – and feel that to do so by stoning must drag humanity to a
very low place. Unfortunately we still need campaigns like these because some
countries still practice this.
But I have a little problem.
We all do as Christians or Jews. Stoning is quite biblical. Indeed according to
the New International ...
Posted by Dyfed on Tuesday, July 5, 2011,
In :
Emerging church
I was looking for a quote
about sustainable development and found this. It comes from an advertising
campaign by TOMTOM, the satnav manufacturers. It was meant to persuade us to
buy a device that could help us avoid traffic, and probably worked. But it also
reminds us that often the problems we face are problems we’ve helped create.
As followers of Jesus should
we adding to the world’s problems or being solutions to them?
Posted by Dyfed on Monday, July 4, 2011,
In :
Emerging church
As we walk through creation
trusting that our being the sons and daughters of God is being revealed to it
in however a partial way, one of the things needed within us is peace. Peace is
one of the big Bible concepts. It is far, far more than the absence of war; it
is wholeness, oneness, completeness, security, wellbeing, prosperity, life,
abundance. It is God’s plan for his creation.
It is also our internal
state when we have a sense that all is well. All may not be well on the outside;
we m...
Posted by Dyfed on Tuesday, June 28, 2011,
In :
Emerging church
When we become united with God does that mean that we actually change in our essence and become God or is there something more subtle going on? A key teaching among many church fathers was the doctrine of theosis – and indeed it still forms a key teaching within the Eastern Orthodox Church today. A famous quote by Athanasius will give a flavour of this theology: ‘God became man so that men might become gods’.
So back to my question – does this mean that we change in our very nature and...
Posted by Dyfed Roberts on Monday, June 27, 2011,
In :
Emerging church
Does our presence within creation affect our surroundings? Some of the old Celtic saints used to believe so. A couple of weeks ago I referred to the PhD thesis I’ve been reading recently on being revealed to creation – here’s another snippet of what I’ve learned from it.
Some of the Celtic saints had an optimistic view of nature in that while they accepted there was some degree of alienation between humanity and creation because of the fall, they did not believe that creation itself w...
Posted by Dyfed on Wednesday, June 22, 2011,
In :
Emerging church
Let the circle be wide. So sang Tommy Sands in an evening of Celtic music at Bangor Cathedral last night. Though the evening as a whole was an expression of Celtic Christian spirituality, this particular song was probably not specifically Christian. But … there is something really powerful in the words about including others in the circle of our belonging.
Church – maybe church in general and certainly conservative church – has a tendency to exclude and pull the circle in, making very l...
Posted by Dyfed on Tuesday, June 21, 2011,
In :
Emerging church
The church appears to be among the best organisations in the UK at keeping people together in a group or community setting. That’s the good news that comes from the latest opinion survey released by Yougov and featured by the BRIN website. The bad news is that of those questioned about what organised group they belonged to only 6% said they belonged to a church or Bible study. (Non-organised community settings – like a pub – were not included in Yougov’s list – a serious weakness p...
Posted by Dyfed on Monday, June 20, 2011,
In :
Emerging church
When the conservative church was so enamoured by George W Bush, was Brian Haw, the peace campaigner who died yesterday, a modern day prophet? I have no idea whether he was even a Christian or not, but I still feel the question should stand. Indeed, maybe the question should be strengthened a little by asking, ‘Was Brian Haw a prophet raised by God to speak to our day’s conservative church about the importance of the key Kingdom values – peace and justice?’
Posted by Dyfed on Thursday, June 16, 2011,
In :
Emerging church
How cultural is our expression of the Christian faith? How much is our way of doing things – our Sunday services in particular – a sub-culture among other Christian sub-cultures? Some jumbled thoughts for you today because of the sad experience I recently had.
I attended a ‘big meeting’ or as we say in Welsh, ‘cyrddau mawr’. The cyrddau mawr is the annual preaching festival that many a nonconformist chapel would hold as part of their diary of events during the year – though they...
Posted by Dyfed on Wednesday, June 15, 2011,
In :
Emerging church
In doing some background reading for my preaching series on Romans 8:19 (sons of God being revealed to creation) I came across a note about a 2nd century writer called Basilides. Apparently he understood the phrase ‘manifestation of the sons of God’ as ‘the ascent of those who have sonship from the lower to the higher realms’ and there the ‘divine spark in them will come into contact with god’ and they will thus ‘escape bodily existence’.
Posted by Dyfed on Wednesday, June 8, 2011,
In :
Emerging church
You thought that last week's post on Gehenna was the last one? Hah! Hell is eternal and so is this series!
There is one last use of the word Gehenna in the New Testament – James 3:6 – where the author says that the human tongue is very dangerous and that its untamed effects can have far reaching consequences. The origin of this danger is ‘hell’ [Gehenna].
In wanting to underline how destructive our speech can be James uses the imagery of fire, saying that a great forest can be set ablaz...
Posted by Dyfed on Monday, June 6, 2011,
In :
Emerging church
Being revealed to creation as the children of God has been my preaching theme for the past few Sundays. The key thought comes from Romans 8:19 where Paul says that creation is waiting with eager anticipation for the sons of God to be revealed – and it must surely be right to include daughters of God in there as well. I think it’s akin to the act of celebrating communion being itself a proclamation of the good news about Jesus (1 Cor 11:26). That is, just by being the adopted children of G...
Posted by Dyfed on Thursday, June 2, 2011,
In :
Emerging church
The final reference to Jesus using the word Gehenna in the Gospels is to be found in Luke 12:5 – ‘But I will warn you whom to fear: fear the one who, after he has killed, has authority to cast into hell [Gehenna]; yes I tell you, fear him’. From the context there is little doubt that Jesus is referring here to what could happen to us after death. There is no need to fear those who can kill us, he says, for there is no more that they can do. Rather, fear the one – presumably God – wh...
Posted by Dyfed on Wednesday, May 25, 2011,
In :
Emerging church
As is now obvious to everybody, the rapture didn’t take place on Saturday – and it was never going to. While the return of Jesus to his creation is a fully biblical theology, I don’t believe the same can be said about the ‘rapture of the saints’. From the many Tweets, Facebook updates and blogs I’ve read it seems that there is some confusion between the two but they are most definitely not the same. I want to return to the whole issue of eschatology as explained by fundamentalist ...
Posted by Dyfed on Tuesday, May 24, 2011,
In :
Emerging church
In Mark’s Gospel the word Gehenna appears only three times and all of them in the one passage and this passage is very similar to the ones Matthew records about Jesus’s teaching on ethical living. In order to keep from falling into sin he suggests we should cut off our hand or foot or pluck out our eye (Mark 9:43, 45, 47). Better to limp into heaven than skip into hell. Few would disagree with the view that Jesus was using hyperbolic and figurative language here to make a point about the ...
Posted by Dyfed on Monday, May 23, 2011,
In :
Emerging church
If creation is waiting eagerly for the sons of God to be revealed (Romans 8:19) (see previous posts here and here) then that we are his adopted children is a key point (8:15). Paul says that creation has been dragged into its current state by sinful humanity and is now eagerly expecting its restoration. The sign of that restoration – the offer of hope – is brought to it by seeing a restored humanity, the first-fruits of God’s restorative work.
Posted by Dyfed Roberts on Friday, May 20, 2011,
In :
Emerging church
The Derren Brown film on
healing is still causing me to ask some questions. Here’s one for today: should
all miraculous healings be verified by doctors and then regularly checked for permanency?
Doing this would cover two aspects of concern, namely that the person either
wasn’t that ill or disabled to begin with and that the healing was the result
of hype in the meeting or street encounter.
Brown asserted that some
healings of return of sight, for example, were because the person was onl...
Posted by Dyfed on Thursday, May 19, 2011,
In :
Emerging church
Is Paul’s concern the
salvation of individuals or is it far broader than that? New Perspective people
certainly fall into the second category and see Paul’s writings as being
concerned with far more than just the individual’s relationship with God. Tom
Wright in particular has emphasised Paul’s view on the whole of creation being
restored rather than just disembodied souls flying off to heaven for eternity.
Here, the corporate is as important as the singular.
Posted by Dyfed on Tuesday, May 17, 2011,
In :
Emerging church
As we know, Jesus could be
really tough on those men of faith who were consistently hypocritical. Time and
again he used harsh words when he spoke to them and the Gospels paint a picture
of these religious men pitted against Jesus and his message of love and
forgiveness. We find one of the highlights (or is that lowlights?) of this
sub-plot in Matthew 23 where we find our next two examples of Jesus using the
word Gehenna. In verse 15 Jesus takes a pot shot at the missionary endeavours
of the ...
Posted by Dyfed on Thursday, May 12, 2011,
In :
Emerging church
As every good Christian
knows, Saul of Tarsus experienced a dramatic conversion on his way to Damascus
– or did he? The New Perspective on Paul would question this reading of the
passages in Acts. It’s partly down to your definition of the word ‘conversion’,
of course, but based on the meaning that a person changes from one religion (or
non-religion) to another, Saul experienced no such thing.
To begin with, the NPP
school would argue, in Paul’s day Christianity was not seen as a sep...
Posted by Dyfed on Tuesday, May 10, 2011,
In :
Emerging church
In Matthew 18:8-9 the theme
of what causes us to stumble and sin is touched upon once again by Jesus as he
suggests that the limbs that cause us trouble should be cut off. A very similar
passage in 5:29-30 has been discussed previously but let me re-cap here that I
believe that Jesus is not to be taken literally when he, for example, tells us
to gouge out our eye if it causes us to sin. After all, we would have very few
limbs left if we were to follow such a suggestion to its conclusion.
Posted by Dyfed on Wednesday, May 4, 2011,
In :
Emerging church
Traditionally, church has
asked us to do two things where the unbelieving world is concerned: tell them
about God’s love and show them that love in practical ways by serving them,
accepting them as they are etc. Nothing wrong with that, you say, and I agree.
But I want to add one other
thing we need to be doing that involves God’s love – showing creation what it
is to be loved. If creation is
waiting ‘eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God’ (Romans 8:19) then it
surely it is wa...
Posted by Dyfed on Thursday, April 28, 2011,
In :
Emerging church
I like Derren Brown. And if that amounts to
the most heretical statement since Rob Bell denied the existence of hell, so be
it. I’ve only recently caught up with the guy but having watched some of his
programmes online and checked-out his website, I’ve become a fan.
Now it’s only my opinion but his film on
Easter Monday wasn’t his best in terms of building suspense and he came over as
being quite cynical...
Posted by Dyfed on Thursday, April 14, 2011,
In :
Emerging church
This weekend sees the first ever Mardi Gras
on Anglesey – an occasion described by the organisers as ‘the
largest gay event ever in the history of north Wales’. Promising a
festival atmosphere the organisers have a number of live musical acts and DJs
to entertain the crowds, including the duo made famous by the XFactor – Diva
Fever.
Posted by Dyfed on Wednesday, April 13, 2011,
In :
Emerging church
As every good preacher knows, context is
everything. Taking a verse out of its context can be quite dangerous (in
relative terms, that is – no one’s going to die because you do it). Crucial to
the New Perspective on Paul, therefore, is reading Paul in his own cultural
context.
SecondTemple Judaism (formerly
known as the ‘intertestamental period’) is the period that covers the time both
Jesus and Paul walked the ea...
Posted by Dyfed on Tuesday, April 12, 2011,
In :
Emerging church
Following on from the last post about
Gehenna being a place of destruction the same meaning is to be found in the
next verse to be considered – Matthew 10:28 - 'Do not fear those who kill the body but are unable to kill the soul; but rather fear him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell'. The historical context to be taken
into account here is that Matthew wrote his gospel during a time of persecution
and it is sugges...
Posted by Dyfed on Monday, April 11, 2011,
In :
Emerging church
Could it be that the threat of hell is one
of the church’s most potent weapons in the attempt to control people? It
certainly seemed that way in Louis Theroux’s film on the Phelps family last
week. I’ve blogged previously about this church (or should that be cult?) and
the way they spew out their hatred of all but themselves but Theroux’s
insightful film took the lid off a pretty disturbing set-up.
Posted by Dyfed on Thursday, March 31, 2011,
In :
Emerging church
Adultery of the heart is a very serious
issue in Jesus’ view. But in teaching about it did he actually mean that
eternal punishment in a fiery hell would be the consequence of not getting the
issue sorted? In using the word Gehenna in Matthew 5:29-30 is this the picture
of hell he had in mind?
First things first, Jesus takes ethical
living in the here and now very seriously. There is no escaping this, not just
on the issue...
Posted by Dyfed on Tuesday, March 29, 2011,
In :
Emerging church
Biblical studies and theology can be either
as dry as dust or explosive. For explosive think Rob Bell on eternity or
Karl Barth on Romans; for dry as dust try … No – I won’t fall into that one.
But I am in the middle of one book on a subject that has the potential of being
a bomb thrown into the middle of our church life. In The New Perspective on
Paul Kent L. Yinger (great name!) gives a broad overview of a school of...
Posted by Dyfed on Thursday, March 17, 2011,
In :
Emerging church
‘Tenbatsu’ is apparently a Japanese word
for ‘divine judgement’ and earlier this week the governor of the region worst
hit by the earthquake and tsunami in northern Japan has apologised for
suggesting that the disaster was God’s judgement upon an egotistical nation.
I know nothing about Japan’s religion –
though I gather that it contains a syncretistic mix of various religions – and
cannot say whether this ...
Posted by Dyfed on Wednesday, March 16, 2011,
In :
Emerging church
In the previous post I sketched out some
detail about the word ‘Gehenna’ – and suggested that its use in referring to
hell was developing in the period between the two testaments. It is probably
fair to suggest, therefore, that in Jesus’ time the word conjured up different
pictures for different people and it may be that even Jesus himself did not
have one consistent thought in mind when using the word. After all, met...
Posted by Dyfed on Thursday, March 10, 2011,
In :
Emerging church
The ‘maverick’ Church of England lost some
600 members yesterday – leading one wit to comment that they had given up
church for Lent. They left for many reasons but it would appear that the
Anglicans’ decision to ordain women as bishops was the final straw for them.
Whether they are right or wrong is not for
me to say but under proposals drawn up by Pope Benedict, they will join a brand
new branch of the Roman Cat...
Posted by Dyfed on Wednesday, March 9, 2011,
In :
Emerging church
‘An atheist with a huge respect for
religion’ has been employed by the BBC to present a new series on the Bible.
Those of you with high blood pressure may want to stop reading this post now,
lie down for a bit, and come back to it later. The series’ title is The
Bible’s Buried Secrets and it’s obvious from the write-up in yesterday’s Telegraph
that it will contain much to stir up screaming headlines in the conserv...
Posted by Dyfed on Tuesday, March 8, 2011,
In :
Emerging church
The Gospel authors have Jesus using the word
Gehenna eleven times and it is a word that is invariably translated as ‘hell’.
So it is a word that we have to take seriously. In subsequent posts I will look
in more detail as to how Jesus used the word and in what context, though it is
worth noting that in not one of these verses is there a clear indication that
Jesus had eternal punishment in mind.
Posted by Dyfed on Thursday, March 3, 2011,
In :
Emerging church
There is no doubting that Jesus talked
about hell – a lot. The problem we have, of course, is that when we read our
English (or Welsh, French, German etc.) Bible and we see the word ‘hell’ being
used, without doing some digging we can’t see what the original Greek was that
the English is translating. I’m no Biblical language scholar but there are
enough books and computer programmes available that makes the job a li...
Posted by Dyfed on Monday, February 28, 2011,
In :
Emerging church
People have been saying Rob Bell is a
heretic for a long time. Just Google his name and ‘heretic’ to find out what
they’ve been saying. So this latest spat (here) over an upcoming book just fits
into the historical context that surrounds the guy. He has consistently said
things that aren’t quite in line with the dominant conservative Christian
culture and because of it he’s taken a few hits by his many detractors....
Posted by Dyfed on Monday, February 21, 2011,
In :
Emerging church
They’re such small details, I missed them
for years. But they reflect perfectly the shift in power in Paul’s life – from a
man of status, clout and influence to being dependent on a hitherto unknown
character, and all in the space of one chapter. (Part of the reason why I
missed these details has probably got something to do with the fact that we
generally read Acts 9 for evidence of the classic evangelical conversion
experience. It can be found there, of course, but there is so much ...
Posted by Dyfed on Friday, February 18, 2011,
In :
Emerging church
I’m going to give you more hell again in
today’s post. I have often heard it described as a place where God does not
exist, a place that is outside of God’s presence, and a place where the people
sent there are totally separated from God. Not a place, we can all agree, that
any of us would want to be there.
I’ve been meditating a lot recently on
Colossians 1:15-20 – a passage that sings the praises of Jesus. (My particular
interest in it has been about human worth – but that’...
Posted by Dyfed on Thursday, February 10, 2011,
In :
Emerging church
Let’s return to Sodom for a while and
see what more we can learn about hell and eternal punishment from that story in
Genesis 18. Abraham is very presumptive as he pleads for the city and couches
his intercession in the belief that God will do what is right: ‘Shall not the
judge of the whole earth deal justly?’ he asks, putting God on the spot
somewhat.
Now it is obvious from the story – from
Abraham’s pleading and fro...
Posted by Dyfed on Friday, February 4, 2011,
In :
Emerging church
Hell. How hot will it get? How loud will
the screams be? Was Dante correct in suggesting there will be different levels
there? Is the whole concept biblical anyway, or to put it another way is hell real? Tough questions and as yet I have
few answers. But I have been doing some thinking and reading and being the
clever sod that I am, I’ll get there. (Just in case you missed it, there was
some irony in that last sentence.)
Posted by Dyfed on Thursday, February 3, 2011,
In :
Emerging church
If fear is the reaction to Christian
persecution we should most be wary of, then committing ourselves to God’s
care is probably the most positive thing we can do. In this series I have looked
at Christian persecution from a biblical point of view in some detail because
there is so much talk about it within the conservative church in the UK. And although I
can see how the church is losing influence and privilege in the West toda...
Posted by Dyfed on Thursday, January 27, 2011,
In :
Emerging church
In my last post on Christian persecution I focussed
on the issue of ‘falling away’ which, according to Scripture, is one response we
will see in the face of Christians being persecuted for their faith. This is
obviously a negative reaction and in warning us about it Jesus was hoping that
we would be able to guard against it happening. But it is not th...
Posted by Dyfed on Thursday, January 20, 2011,
In :
Emerging church
One of the consequences of persecuting
Christians is that some, according to Scripture, will ‘fall away’. Obviously
this is not a good response! There are other responses that Jesus does not want
to see from us in the face of persecution but I feel that ‘falling away’
probably deserves a post on its own. In my first post on the subject of Christian
persecution I noted how Jesus said that those who follow him would f...
Posted by Dyfed on Wednesday, January 19, 2011,
In :
Emerging church
An anarchist group in Cardiff was turned away
from any acts of protest by being persuaded to spend more time down the pub.
What a gem of a story! But it’s true apparently. An undercover policeman (they
turn up everywhere these days) infiltrated the group and instead of acting like
some agent provocateur and getting them to break the law he dragged them to the
pub and got them drinking. He made friends with them; cared for...
Posted by Dyfed Roberts on Wednesday, January 12, 2011,
In :
Emerging church
Christians are not being persecuted in the UK today. Despite all
the stirring up of certain stories in some quarters of the church and despite
even the launch of a campaign by one group as a defiant stand against the
so-called trend to silence Christian witness, the truth is rather more mundane
– in the Western world today the church does not find itself in danger and
there is very little Christian persecution.
Posted by Dyfed on Tuesday, January 4, 2011,
In :
Emerging church
This will probably surprise you but there’s
a lot I know nothing about. Last night I was reminded about one subject area
where my understanding and knowledge is as low as it could possible be –
astronomy. The BBC is broadcasting live over three nights on the subject giving
some very basic information for those of us who ‘know nothing’.
What fascinated me as much as anything,
however, was how astronomers seem to have ...
Posted by Dyfed on Thursday, December 23, 2010,
In :
Emerging church
Can any
of us be totally objective about what we read, see, hear etc? Do we not all
have our filters – pre-determined by the life we’ve lived and experienced? When
we read the Bible, for example, can we be sure that we understand what we’re
meant to through these filters? I ask in the days when Vince Cable has lost his
power over deciding whether Murdoch should have sole ownership of BSkyB and
when there are now doubts abou...
Posted by Dyfed on Thursday, December 9, 2010,
In :
Emerging church
‘The Great
Disappointment’ was the name given to the non-showing of Jesus on 22
October 1844
– the day many thousands in the Millerite movement in the US had expected Jesus’ second coming.
On Friday last I posted a report about another, current, movement that expects
the date to be the 21 May 2011. Over the centuries many groups
have professed to know the day of Jesus’ parousia and all, so far, have got it
wrong....
Posted by Dyfed on Monday, December 6, 2010,
In :
Emerging church
Wesley once
claimed that the whole world was his parish, but in these days of counting
carbon footprints I’m not sure how PC that suggestion is. Localism seems to be
more in tune with our times and as far as mission is concerned that’s true for
church as well.
I was drawn
to preach on Matthew 11:1 yesterday where it says that after spending time
teaching them Jesus went with his disciples ‘to their cities’ in order...
Posted by Dyfed on Monday, November 22, 2010,
In :
Emerging church
It's 10.30
on Sunday morning - so what on earth am I doing in front of my computer at home
writing this and not 'in church'? Shocking!!! Well before you get too uppity
with me, it's only family circumstances that have kept me home today. It's my
turn to look after my mum-in-law who's not been well recently and it’s Helen's
turn to preach. So here I am - enjoying a lazy Sunday morning.
Posted by Dyfed on Thursday, November 18, 2010,
In :
Emerging church
Bliss,
ecstasy and joy are supposed to mark our new and renewing life in Jesus. Some call it the joy revolution but because
I’m such a miserable so-and-so most of the time, it’s an emphasis I have
struggled with it. Coming under the Lordship of Jesus, however, has to mean more than
just a ‘new obedience’ as Moltmann refers to it.
The danger
Moltmann sees in only emphasising the lordship of Jesus when thinking of the
...
Posted by Dyfed on Thursday, November 11, 2010,
In :
Emerging church
True dominion does not consist of enslaving others but in
becoming a servant of others; not in the exercise of power, but in the exercise
of love; not in being served but in freely serving; not in sacrificing the subjugated
but in self-sacrifice.
So says
Jurgen Moltmann in the context of the Lordship of Jesus. His Lordship is very
different compared to the lordships displayed in this world and it is this
character that the church ...
Posted by Dyfed on Friday, November 5, 2010,
In :
Emerging church
In
yesterday’s post I asked whether Jesus’ criticism of the Pharisees’ mission
methods could be applied to the church of today. Their religion-based mission
was as contrary to the Jesus way as their religion-based living. The question
that needs asking, of course, is this: is there another way of doing mission or
are we stuck in the old ways? In this post I want to share the links of a
couple of examples of what is ha...
Posted by Dyfed on Thursday, November 4, 2010,
In :
Emerging church
Mission: we all know its importance but
many of us also groan inwardly when we hear the word brought up in church
meetings. While there are plenty of new and innovative ideas being used out
there for church mission, we somehow still cringe at the images of tracts with
curled-up corners and intense conversations on the door-step that the term ‘church
mission’ conjures up in our mind. As with every other part of our spiri...
Posted by Dyfed on Wednesday, November 3, 2010,
In :
Emerging church
A link to
another blog for you today. Over at NewReformation Len Sweet is always
challenging in his writing on the issue of reforming the church and especially
on leadership issues. In this post he has a parody of the Good Samaritan. Hope
you like it. Come back with any comments – I’d love to hear your thoughts on
this one.
Posted by Dyfed on Wednesday, October 27, 2010,
In :
Emerging church
What is the church? It seems that
for many it is the place we go to in order to flee from the world and all the
mess that’s a part of it; a place where we can escape to because it is separate
from the world. Moltmann gives a very different answer. The church, he says, is
‘not “the not-world”; it is the world which is now already turning anew to the
future of God because it follows the call of freedom’ (page 83).
Posted by Dyfed on Thursday, October 7, 2010,
In :
Emerging church
Holding onto state privileges seems
to take up a lot of church energy these days, especially on the conservative
wing. As it is pushed further to the margins because of the ongoing
secularisation of the West, voices within church are heard protesting against
this trend.
In understanding the church’s existence
as a partner within God’s mission in the world Moltmann offers this devastating
critique of the protest:
Posted by Dyfed on Thursday, September 30, 2010,
In :
Emerging church
Context is everything, right?
Everything happens within a context and so often it is the context that shapes
what happens – rightly or wrongly. This is as true about the church as anything
else and Jürgen Moltmann (Church in the Power of the Spirit) encourages
us to understand the church within its context – namely God’s dealing with the
world. After all, says Moltmann, the church is like the moon in that it has no
light of ...
Posted by Dyfed on Tuesday, September 28, 2010,
In :
Emerging church
Galileo - wiser than your averege man
I was intending to take Physics as
one of my ‘O’ level subjects in school and then I got 25% in my end of year
three exam. They suggested I did Art instead. So you should be aware of how
little knowledge and understanding I have of science as you read this post
today. But Stephen Hawking’s latest foray into the world of religion has got me
thinking – or rather the Christian response to...
Posted by Dyfed on Thursday, September 23, 2010,
In :
Emerging church
This is the last of a short series
this week on the Lordship of Jesus.
I began this series by suggesting
how essential it is for followers of Jesus to be open to the Holy Spirit. Not
to do so is to risk being led by forces other than God and, as Jurgen Moltmann
says, seeing the church waste away. One of those forces is fear and so many of
us – maybe even all of us – have been affected by fear in our lives. Fear often
m...
Posted by Dyfed on Wednesday, September 22, 2010,
In :
Emerging church
This is the third in a short series
this week on the Lordship of Jesus.
Could Jesus have knocked this world
into better shape if he had come as the son of an emperor rather than a son of
a carpenter? After all, that’s where the power lay in those days. The Roman
emperor had almost absolute power over the land covered by his rule – which was
extensive in Jesus’ day. As a political and military leader very little was o...
Posted by Dyfed on Tuesday, September 21, 2010,
In :
Emerging church
This post is the second of a series this week on the Lordship of Jesus.
‘Jesus is Lord of all or not at
all.’ It’s a rather twee evangelical phrase, but we all know what it means:
either Jesus is Lord over all aspects of my life or he’s not my Lord in any
aspect. I think I would dispute its supposed truth since we’re all on a journey
of yielding to him – but let’s not start an argument this early! What I propos...
Posted by Dyfed on Monday, September 20, 2010,
In :
Emerging church
Being open to the leading of the
Holy Spirit is essential for us as individual and collective followers of Jesus.
When we choose not to be open, suggests Jurgen Moltmann, then the church will
waste away as we fail to hear what the Spirit is saying to us at any given
time. We will not hear words of hope; we will not receive our instructions in
mission; we will not receive the power needed to see the Kingdom grow.
Posted by Dyfed on Monday, September 13, 2010,
In :
Emerging church
Very rarely do I blog about our
church but after yesterday’s baptism I can’t help it! Overall it was an awesome
day. We’re a very small congregation of which at 44 I am the youngest and
though there are some of us who are Welsh speakers, Emmanuel is an English language
church. We usually meet in TrearddurBay village, but we changed venue for
our time together yesterday since the person being baptised, Jean...
Posted by Dyfed on Wednesday, September 8, 2010,
In :
Emerging church
Men and fires are a combination made
in heaven. So when Helen said yesterday that she had four bin bags of Post
Office rubbish to destroy I could not resist putting down Moltmann and going
with her to make a fire. I had only just begun reading The Church in the
Power of the Spirit (London, English translation 1977) when she called. But
I still have a couple of quotes for you today!
In referring to the crisis that was
(and still ...
Posted by Dyfed on Monday, September 6, 2010,
In :
Emerging church
There are only around 600,000 of us.
We’re squeezed into a small strip of land on the fringes of Western Europe. In the 1960s we faced a real
struggle for survival though there has been a modest improvement since then. We
generally lack self confidence and often feel we have to prove ourselves better
than our nearest neighbour. But the amount of talent we have seems to be
astounding. I’m talking about Welsh speakers and...
Posted by Dyfed on Tuesday, August 31, 2010,
In :
Emerging church
During the Reformation in the 16th
century an emphasis was put on the whole of the church congregation being
involved in worship. Psalms were put to music and hymns were written in order
to help with this process and so worship became associated with community hymn
singing. At the time this was a novelty as the Catholic Church had reduced
worship to be almost exclusively the action of the priests alone.
Posted by Dyfed on Thursday, August 26, 2010,
In :
Emerging church
A little more on the angry god
today.
One of my favourite biblical
passages is Romans 5:6-11. Here Paul tells us how Jesus died for us while we were
still in our sin and thereby proving his love for us. Clearly God’s love for us
was the motivation for the cross and not the other way around. The death of
Jesus did not open the way for him to love us, he already did so.
But it is verse 10 that is possibly
the most amazing...
Posted by Dyfed on Wednesday, August 25, 2010,
In :
Emerging church
On a scale of 1 to 10 (where 10 is
very angry), how angry is God with you today? In answering this question don’t
respond in the way you think you should, rather try giving it your gut
reaction. Your answer will reflect a number of things – not least your own
upbringing at home, where your understanding of God’s fatherhood will have been
heavily influenced by your parents. But the answer will also be influenced by
your ...
Posted by Dyfed on Tuesday, August 17, 2010,
In :
Emerging church
I’ve just finished Via and Gagnon’s Homosexuality
and the Bible: Two views. With only 117 pages it’s only a short book – but
the subject it discusses has become a massive issue for the church today. The
Anglican Church is pretty much split down the middle on it and the level of
anger that it stirs up within the conservative churches is significant. It
seems to be the issue that defines where you stand in your theolo...
Posted by Dyfed on Monday, August 16, 2010,
In :
Emerging church
In the last post I explained how
believers have no need for a special priesthood to stand between them and God
and how all believers are priests through being united with Jesus. If this is
our belief then it must have practical implications in the worshipping and
teaching life of the church (you may want to add ‘and sacramental life’).
All believers are, therefore, able
to share in the functions of a worshi...
Posted by Dyfed on Tuesday, August 10, 2010,
In :
Emerging church
Wales – the land of male voice choirs, coal mines,
and of course the land of revivals. This is the picture that comes to mind for
most people who live outside the nation when Wales is mentioned – that’s if they’ve
ever heard of the place at all. Well hold on right there – they shut down the
mines in the 1980s, the choirs prefer to sing pop songs to traditional hymns,
and we haven’t had a revival for over a hundr...
Posted by Dyfed Roberts on Monday, August 9, 2010,
In :
Emerging church
In this post I want to look at the
biblical mandate for believing that all followers of Jesus are priests. The
idea of a priesthood is, of course, older than the NT church. Priests had an
essential role in OT times when they acted as intermediaries between God and
the people of Israel. Their key role was in offering
various sacrifices to God on behalf of the people in the Temple.
Posted by Dyfed on Thursday, August 5, 2010,
In :
Emerging church
Not being into vampires I hadn’t
heard of Anne Rice until I read about all the fuss she kicked up over her
quitting Christianity. She has apparently announced on Facebook that she can’t
be doing with all the intolerant nonsense preached in Christ’s name and that
she is un-following the religion. She isn’t turning away from Jesus, however,
since she finds nothing wrong with him. It’s just most of his followers that...
Posted by Dyfed on Tuesday, August 3, 2010,
In :
Emerging church
Priest: a person ordained to act as
a mediator between God and man in administering the sacraments, preaching etc.
(Collins Concise Dictionary.)
Is there such a thing as a ‘priest’
in the church today? The answer, of course, is yes and no. As Martin Luther
said, we are all each other’s priest – so there’s the ‘yes’; but as Jesus has
done away with the Old Testament priestly role through being our great
high-priest, ...
Posts on my Tumblr site willI now appear here. Tumblr's ability to post by text and email will help me blog even when away from my desk!
Some thoughts following my visit to Occupy London.
October 27th 2011
Ok so there’s plenty to disagree with but this is such a good song.
October 12th 2011
There are so many draining things we can focus on during the day: how we appear to others, how much others do or don’t respect us, how we can get people to do what we want. But once we become aware of the negative impact of these areas of focus, we can get clear on - even excited about - who we really want to be … We can shift our focus toward qualities like mercy, gentleness, courage, and the many others that bring true joy in our lives and in the lives of others.
