G’day all,

Today I fly to Montreal to attend the annual conference of the Canadian Theological Students Association. I’m the rep for Queen’s College. Interestingly enough, since there was a major storm up in central Canada, I’ve already had a bit of an adventure. The flight to Halifax was cancelled (originally I was going to fly through there), so I obviously couldn’t catch my connector. I found this out in the line-up for the flight (mental note: Check flights before going to the airport).

In a strange twist, while many are bashing Air Canada, I’m quite pleased with their service. The staff member behind the desk got me onto a flight to Montreal, and was willing to do the work for me while I went out for breakfast with the friends who had brought me to the airport (who had come up after I called them to say my flight was cancelled). Interestingly enough, I had called just before they sat down to breakfast themselves. We got to talk about a lot of things I needed reaffirmation on, including my odd and growing interest in Christian environmentalism (Though from a decidedly different perspective than most, I still have serious questions about Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth”), and my personal lack of a romantic attachment. Indeed, it was important to be reassured about the fact that Christians I respect and trust are also environmentally conscious while still being very clearly believers in Jesus Christ as their personal and communal savior from sin. The conference I’m going to seems a little……… left-leaning.

Many of these things (the questions I have, the cancelled flight, and the reaffirmation) could be seen as bad luck, though strangely, I can see how God is working providentially through it. I’m excited to know what else God will do through things that may seem like bad luck. Romans 8:28 seems to be true, in all cases, and especially in the things that seem bad.

Prayers are appreciated as I do this conference thing. I’ll try to blog daily about it.

Tonight I’ve been listening to John Piper’s talk on the life of Andrew Fuller at the Pastor’s Conference in Minneapolis. It’s a good talk and can be heard here.

Oddly enough, what has struck me most clearly is how he points out, early in the talk, that sometimes the greatest triumphs in life for the Gospel are underscored by major losses. In the life of Andrew Fuller, the foundation of the Baptist missionary society was placed next to the death of his own wife of 16 years. It’s like there’s an apposition placed on the statement of God’s mighty act in the founding of a missionary society and the reminder that the triumphs are ultimately not for this world, if they are said to be triumphs.

The statement of God’s act through godly people is modified by a statement that our glory is like grass, but the word of the Lord lasts forever (cf. Isaiah 40:8)

Dr. Piper then quotes John 12:24 (surrounding verses added for context).

And Jesus answered them, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.

John 12:23-25

Is it strange for me to take hope in that?

Reading the news these days, as well as noting the apparent problems in institutions once faithful to the Gospel (such as the Anglican Church), and the way in which radical anti-Christian voices seem ascendant, whether from radical Islam, or radical secularism, and the way in which even those who call on the name of Christ move away from scriptural truth to satisfy modern pluralism, or naive realism; I wonder if believers are being offered the cross. Are we being offered figurative (and maybe more than figurative) death?

Throughout scripture we are told that God does things for His glory, and that His power is made manifest in weakness, yet if my own heart is any indication, weakness is the last thing I want. I desire to speak from power, to convince people by the strength of my arguments, and the value of my rhetoric; to impress with the breadth of my knowledge. Weakness is the furthest thing from my mind, and in so doing I remain alone, a single grain of wheat.

I say this because Jesus points out that it is God that gives growth, even as we provide the possibility for growth in planting and watering. (see 1 Cor.3:7) I take that to mean that my calling is to be faithful, to do the general work of an evangelist, and as someone strengthening the believers, but that God will give growth. That growth will come from God’s action, not centrally because of my faithfulness, but because of His. And as He promised, growth will come from death (and no, I don’t mean suicidal death-cultism, I mean simple acceptance of what faithfulness entails).

Will we Christians in the west see a decline in Godliness, an increase in persecution, and the downfall of many institutions we have trusted? Maybe. Maybe God will do His awesome will before any of that happens, but it is clear that we will be moved away from reliance in ourselves, whether that means catastrophic death of everything that vies for the place God should hold in our lives, or whether that simply refers to wholesale repentance on our part (and a death of idols in our hearts). God will be glorified, and it will be accompanied by the death of all that would take His glory.

So when we see decrease in all we have trusted that is not God, and the death of things we’ve seen as good, perhaps we should look with expectation on what God will bring to pass through it. After all, if a grain of wheat remains safe and unplanted, it also remains alone. If a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, well, then it bears much fruit.

As said by the band, Third Day:

Please take from me my life
when I don’t have the strength
to give it away to you,
Jesus

Amen.

So I was in ethics class on Tuesday, discussing the instruments of unity in the Anglican Church. Looking at it from the outside in, I began to have some questions that probably would not have occurred to me from within.

The majority of the discussion focussed around the instruments of unity themselves (the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Primate, the Anglican Consultative council, and the Lambeth conferences), and how they function (whether monarchically, meaning fully top down authority, or concilliatorily, kinda bottom up authority).

This seems exceedingly complex for my tiny fundamentalist brain. My understanding is that unity between Christians was insofar as we are in Christ. Christ claimed that this “being in” Christ was dependent upon how we remain in His love, and so as a result, I think that Christian unity is to be found insofar as we remain in Christ’s love, first to God, and secondly to one another.

Thus Christian unity is properly termed Agapatistic.

Proviso: Love is not what you’ve heard it is.

The problem is that my culture comes up with some seriously messed up ideas about what love is. When people say it, they’re often referring to an emotional feeling of goodwill, or maybe the act of not offending people, or of giving respect for people. Indeed, some of these can be part of love, but they aren’t necessary to love. Love is that thing described in 1 Corinthians 13 that God gives you.

This means that unity with believers is a gift of God, not something we produce. We should seek it, and act upon whatever modicum of it that we’re given, but it doesn’t come by mutual admiration, or being friendly. respect and friendliness are results of love, not their birthplace. Love is hard work, but it doesn’t come from hard work, it comes from God.

So when I say that my concept of unity is through love, I am not simply appealing to a “can we all get along” mentality.

I can see a few implications of this for ecclesiology.

In the first place, as unity is granted through Christ, and being in Christ’s love, Schism in the Church is not so much ill advised as impossible. Now, there are two ways schism can seem to happen, but neither are properly schism. In the first place, you can be deluded and believe that you are not part of the Church when you are. This is rare, as such a delusion often stems from the far more scary possibility. You can be separated from the Church really, because you are not in Christ. This can happen whilst doing all sorts of nice “churchy” stuff. The question is more, do you love the brother whom you have seen (because if you don’t, you can’t say you love Christ whom you have not seen). In essence, you are separate from the Church because you are lost in sin.

The second implication is that there is no hierarchy that we can call coextensive with the Church militant here on earth. Parts of many different structures are in the church, and parts of many different structures are not in the Church. An excommunication or discipline by any single institution does not make a person actually unsaved, though it does mean that discipline is being exercised. Indeed, believers will begin to back away from those who are away from the actual Church of their own volition if they remain in Christ, and will move away from Christ if they follow an unbeliever. Pastors and people with Spiritual discernment should be listened to on this, but they don’t get to exact discipline, they simply act as God calls them to.

This point needs more expansion, and I’m tired. If anybody is reading and interested, let me know, and I’ll keep going *yawn* g’night all!