I had the privilege yesterday of speaking and presiding at communion at Trinity College, the Uniting Church theological college in Brisbane. I was working with a small group of staff and students to lead worship, focusing on the John 12 passage in which Jesus is visited by a group of Greeks who say to Philip, “We want to see Jesus”. The chapel was strewn with banana and sugar cane plants, helping us connect with the people who are cleaning up after the cylone last Monday.
I spoke this morning on John 12:24: “Unless a Grain of Wheat Falls to the Ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.” The graphic comes from Heartlight Gallery. I found some inspiration from a sermon preached by Cornelius Plantinga at his installation as professor of systematic theology at Calvin College.
Pivotal to this morning’s message was the realisation that the germination of the seed - the seminal moment - is unseen by the human eye. Likewise, the seminal moment of Jesus’ life - his resurrection - was unseen by the human eye. We reflected on the acts of God that are usually experienced in humble surroundings rather than in front of large audiences. Participation in the life of a seminary has an element of being buried like grain. In fact the word ’seminary’ refers to a seed bed. We finished by reflecting on the challenge of being embedded in everyday relationships.
I had the privilege this morning of speaking and presiding at communion at Trinity College, the Uniting Church theological college in Brisbane. I was working with a small group of staff and students to lead worship, focusing on the John 12 passage in which Jesus is visited by a group of Greeks who say to Philip, “We want to see Jesus”. The chapel was strewn with banana and sugar cane plants, helping us connect with the people who are cleaning up after the cylone last Monday.
I spoke this morning on John 12:24: “Unless a Grain of Wheat Falls to the Ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.” The graphic comes from Heartlight Gallery. I found some inspiration from a sermon preached by Cornelius Plantinga at his installation as professor of systematic theology at Calvin College.
Pivotal to this morning’s message was the realisation that the germination of the seed - the seminal moment - is unseen by the human eye. Likewise, the seminal moment of Jesus’ life - his resurrection - was unseen by the human eye. We reflected on the acts of God that are usually experienced in humble surroundings rather than in front of large audiences. Participation in the life of a seminary has an element of being buried like grain. In fact the word ’seminary’ refers to a seed bed. We finished by reflecting on the challenge of being embedded in everyday relationships.
I’ll see if I can post more on this at Gospel Notes on Tuesday or Wednesday.
Changing domain names is a simple thing to do. What is more complex is recovering Google page rank. Duncan’s TV Adland at Blogspot.com has a page rank of 5. At www.duncans.tv, where I set up a week ago, the page rank is at 0.
I’ve had a few enquiries about how we’ve been affected by the tropical cyclone here in Queensland. Cyclone Larry hit Innisfail on Monday morning, about 7 am, with the force of 5, the same as Hurricane Katrina when it hit New Orleans. In the meantime the weather here on the Gold Coast and Brisbane has been mild as usual. A bit of rain today. Innisfail is 23 hours drive north of here, an hour south of Cairns.
On Monday afternoon I sat down to prepare for worship with a group of ministry students at Trinity College. I’m preaching and presiding next Monday. We were considering the passage in John 12 where Jesus talks about the grain of wheat falling to the ground. My thoughts were with the farmers whose sugar cane and banana trees have fallen to the ground. Even though no one has been killed in this catastrophe, it’s still like a death experience. A whole way of life is in suspension, perhaps for years. Rebuilding the economy will be a major task for the locals. Doug Jones, the lecturer responsible for the small group on Monday, commented that his daughter had recently moved to Innisfail. He’d heard that morning something of her perspective gained as she ventured outside in the eye of the storm.
On Monday, to prepare the chapel environment for worship, we’ll be strewing banana tree leaves, sugar cane and timber around the room to remind us of the context in which we live and worship.
I’ve just been talking to Craig Mischewski, a Uniting Church in Australia colleague in Townsville, who’s preparing a work party to head north to help out in the wake of Cyclone Larry. The tropical cyclone hit Innisfail this morning with an intensity of 5 - something similar to the impact of the hurricanes that smashed the Gulf of Mexico cities last year.
The USA Naval Pacific Meteorology and Oceanography Center run a joint typhoon warning centre with satellite imagery, a projected path and detailed information on the position and intensity of the cyclone.
Craig’s team is heading off as soon as the roads are clear. They have to be back on Thursday however, to prepare for Cyclone Wati which is expected to hit Townsville on the 23rd.
Driving from the Gold Coast to Brisbane I see a billboard placed strategically across from the Beenleigh Tavern by local Christians. The sign says “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. Read Your Bible”. This last month the sign has been supplemented by another billboard, advertising clothes. What do you think?
Please excuse the lack of recent posts. I’ve set up my own domain, duncans.tv to host Duncan’s TV Adland and Music Videos. Transferring material from Blogspot.com to Wordpress was a breeze with the right plugin. However there’s a bit of time involved in resetting the images (adding class=”alignright” to the code and putting in alternative text) and setting the categories for each post. On top of that I’ve been resetting the indexes.
I’ve put posts from the Adland and Music Video blogs into the one site, separating them with categories. There are 283 posts in total. I’ve got 102 left to adjust.
In The Shaping of Things to Come, Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch provide some useful references points for contextual incarnational approaches to mission in new people groups.
Paul Hiebert is professor of mission and anthropology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois. He writes on anthropology, mission, folk religions, urban contexts and Hinduism.
Paul Hiebert’s framework for critical contextualisation of gospel in non-Christian contexts
Examine host culture
Study & teach Word of God
People themselves corporately examine own past customs in light of new biblical understandings, make decisions re response to new found truths
Congregation seek to arrange practices they have chosen, modified, & created into new set of rituals that contextually express Christian meaning
Suggestions from Hiebert
Keep that which is not unbiblical
Reject that which is unbecoming of Christians
Modify practices to give them explicitly Christian meaning
Reject current unbiblical practices & replace them
Adopt rites drawn from Christian heritage
Create new symbols & rituals
John Travis Model of Contextualization
John Travis is the pseudonym for a missionary living among Muslims. He found Muslims who continued within the Islamic culture while living as followers of Christ. His model of contextualisation was presented in an article, “Must All Muslims Leave Islam to Follow Jesus?”, published in Evangelical Missions Quarterly, vol. 34 no. 4, 1998.
John Travis’ spectrum for reaching Muslim communities
C1 Traditional church using outsider language
C2 Traditional church using insider language
C3 Contextualised Christ-centred communities using insider language & religiously neutral insider cultural forms
C4 Contextualised Christ-centred communities using insider language & Biblically permissable cultural & Islamic forms
C5 Christ-centred communities of Messianic Muslims who have accepted Jesus as Lord and Saviour
C6 Small Christ-centred communities of secret/underground believers
In the International Journal of Frontier Mission, Vol. 17:1, Spring, 2000, the guest editor Joshua Massey asked John about criticism by people such as Phil Parshall that the C5 category was a dangerous case of syncretism. John’s reponse:
What makes a particular Muslim ‘C5′ is that he has received Isa (Jesus) as Lord and Savior, meets regularly with other such believers, and yet is still seen as ‘Muslim’ through his or her own eyes, as well as the eyes of fellow Muslims. A C5 believer will certainly have different beliefs from other Muslims (e.g., Isa did die on the cross, Muhammad is not a prophet in the biblical sense, salvation is in Isa al-Masih and not in works). However, C5 believers remain in the Muslim community (i.e., they do not officially become members of a traditional church), and they still participate in Muslim cultural and religious practices - except for those contrary to Scripture. The simple fact is, I know individuals who are truly born again and living for Jesus, yet because of their upbringing, ethnicity, or community, simply see themselves as Muslims who have found salvation in Jesus.
Craig Mitchell has invited me to take a seminar on ‘everyday faith for everyday Australians’. Here’s the article on the course from “New Times”, the South Australia Synod newspaper.
Rethinking Evangelism: From Cookie Cutters to Coaching
The Church has run many courses on evangelism, but they haven’t turned us into excellent evangelists,” says Rev Duncan Macleod. “Evangelism shouldn’t be simply motivated by duty or guilt. And people outside the church are cynical about faith that is expressed using traditional words suchas church, sin and salvation. However, many people do have a genuine everyday interest in spirituality. So the question for Christians is - how can our own healthy motivation to integrate faith with the rhythm of our lives become engaging with our friends and neighbours?”
Duncan Macleod is a mission consultant with the Synod of Queensland, and former national youth coordinator for the Presbyterian Church in New Zealand. He will elad one of eight intensive learning streams at Parkin-Wesley’s inaugural “Grow and Go!” weekend on May 5 to 7.
“The classical model of evangelism we’ve been given is to convince people that they’ve sinned and need God’s forgiveness,” Duncan says. “To close the deal we run them through the sinner’s prayer. The reality is taht most people’s first response to Jesus doesn’t fit into a cookie-cutter approach. We have believers who first said yes to Jesus’ offer of purpose and meaning. We have those who discover Jesus through an experience of life-giving community. It seems to me that relational evangelism is more like life-coaching. That’s what I’m keen to explore - how people can coach their friends and family into faith and discipleship.”
We hope that people will leave the weekend inspired and refreshed, with deeper faith and a wider vision of God’s mission in the world. It’s a great opportunity for congregations to send a whole team of leaders. Over 200 people are expected to attend.
Session leaders for the weekend include Robin Mann, Ian and Sharonne Price, Peter Trudinger, Tony Eldridge, Deidre Palmer, Wendy Perkins and others. Topics include music in worship, childrens ministry, the psalms, preaching the parables, pastoral care, evangelism, and leadership. A multimedia class will spend part of their time in a computer lab learning to prepare graphics for worship.
We believe that investment in leadership development is one of the most important priorities for congregations. Rural leaders have expressed enthusiasm for this opportunity to come to Adelaide for face-to-face training. Parkin-Wesley is actively exploring ways to make lay education more accessible to people across the state, including distance topics on DVD.
FOr more details about the “Grow and Go!” weekend, contact Rosalie at Parkin-Wesley on 08 8416 8427.
Recently I purchased Singstar Party for the birthday of one of my daughters. That was to supplement Singstar Pop that she’d bought for her brother’s birthday! It’s been a noisy weekend here as we’ve had a pre-teen girl’s get together, supplemented by late teenagers and adults trying out for the karaoke high scores. I must admit I’m not that crash hot at the Playstation game. Perhaps with a bit of practice…
Playstation News came through today with the announcement of Singstar Rocks! - coming out in April.
The thirty songs include material by Blur, Bowling for Soup, The Cardigans, The Church, Coldplay, Deep Purple, Dragon, End of Fashion, The Exponents, Franz Ferdinand, GANGgajang, Grinspoon, Gwen Stefani, Hole, INXS, Jet, The Killers, Killing Heidi, Men At Work, Nirvana, The Offspring, Powderfinger, Rolling Stones, Scorpions, The Screaming Jets, Stereophonics, The Swingers, Thin Lizzy, and The Veronicas.
Duncan Macleod posts on life, faith and culture in Australia, drawing from his involvement in the creative industry, the Uniting Church, the blogosphere, generational research, the emerging church and life on the Gold Coast.
I spoke this morning on John 12:24: “Unless a Grain of Wheat Falls to the Ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.” The graphic comes from Heartlight Gallery. I found some inspiration from a sermon preached by Cornelius Plantinga at his installation as professor of systematic theology at Calvin College.
I spoke this morning on John 12:24: “Unless a Grain of Wheat Falls to the Ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.” The graphic comes from 
I’ve just been talking to Craig Mischewski, a Uniting Church in Australia colleague in Townsville, who’s preparing a work party to head north to help out in the wake of Cyclone Larry. The tropical cyclone hit Innisfail this morning with an intensity of 5 - something similar to the impact of the hurricanes that smashed the Gulf of Mexico cities last year.
