Gareth Bezett

Since blogging about music is in fashion:

One of my favourite songs. My favourite break-up song of all time.

I don't know why, but lately the messages about sex that the Church inflict on our youth have been getting up my nose. I have a few thoughts that I offer not as a complete position on sex but as some sort of counterbalance to the prevailing climate.

Sexual Sin is Not in It's Own Category
There is no scriptural support for the notion that sexual sin is somehow different and needs to be approached in a special manner. I contend that sexual sins stem from the same root as most others: trying to run our own lives. God has never put on my heart a desire to engage in sexual activity with someone who isn't my wife (if he does, I hope it's Keira Knightley). So, if I was to go out and commit some sort of sexual sin, I would be putting my own desires ahead of God's.

Now, I can hear some of you saying "but society puts such an emphasis on sex that we have to address it directly". I disagree. Western culture puts a high value on fulfilling our desires. It tells us that if we have some sort of problem, then we can consume something to make us better. If we are feeling down, a bit of retail therapy will improve our mood. Society treats sex as just another thing to be consumed.

As the Church, we need to address society's ills, but to over emphasise sex is not justified.

Sexual Sins within Marriage
Paul and Paula have been dating for 2 years. They both have agreed to wait until they are married, however, one night they have sex.

Christopher and Christine have been married for 2 years. One night, Christopher goes to a strip club with some mates from work. When he gets home, he and Christine have sex. Christopher is visualising the strippers and not giving any thought to Christine's fulfillment.

Who's sinning worse than whom? Not every sexual act withing a marriage is without sin.

Marriage is Not Going to Fix Your Sexual Sin
If you have a problem with pornography, getting married will not fix it. If you think that you are gay, marrying a woman will not change it.

Marriage is not the answer to your sexual problems. Marriage provides God's vehicle for good, life-long sex (and some other stuff) but it is not a sin-free zone.

Use Your Brain
It may just be me, but the idea that an act can be a sin 12 hours before a ceremony and the same act not be a sin 12 hours after a ceremony seems a little silly. However if, based on the weight of scripture and historical Church teaching on sex, you think that to have sex outside of marriage is counter to God's will then don't do it.

Please Don't Let Chasity be Your Entire Witness
There was a girl at my high school who was a Christian. She didn't have sex (I didn't either, but not by choice). I don't remember a single thing about her faith other than abstinence from sex. She wasn't nicer than average, nor did she stand out in any other way. Her entire witness to me in 5 years of school together was not having sex.

Please let your Christian walk speak more about God than just that he frowns on sex.

Thank you
I feel better having got that off my chest.

I was told, just before the movie, that Happy Feet has some sort of left-wing bias/agenda and the greenie message came through loud and clear. What was less clear was the film's position on religion. On the surface, it seemed to be fairly critical.

The Emperor Penguins have a sort of religion. It involves a great mystical force that provides bounty (or not) and must be prayed to. The religious leaders are unwilling to accept any explanation for the loss of the food supply other than that the great penguin in the sky is angry. Their answer to adversity is to stick harder to their ways. This may well echo the "science vs religion debate".

It turns out that actually humans are responsible for the loss of fish (who would have guessed?). In the end, the religious leaders have to "mend their ways".

However if you look at the "wisdom" that is the basis of the religion, which mainly seems to be about sticking together to survive the long winter, none of it seems to be disproved or made reduntant in light of the events in the movie. As far as I can see, the problem is that religious leaders couldn't separate their "wisdom" from the other social constraints that seems to have been added. Let's not forget that not too long ago dancing was considered evil by some Christian groups.

So, I'm with Happy Feet. Let's dance, but we don't have to give up our wisdom to do it.

One of the side-effects of being self-employed is that down-time is expensive, so I'm trying to do a little bit of work each day. The good thing about most of my clients being closed or mostly closed is that I can catch up on the jobs that fell through the cracks during the year without new, urgent jobs coming through. The bad thing is that when I need support from third parties (eg Telecom), I can't get it.

It's nice having zero pressure so I can do nothing if I want to, but still have the sense of having achieved something most days.

I'm thinking of declaring 2007 the year of not trying to fix the church.

Watching the crisis in the Episcopal Church in the USA, I've noticed a hardening in the attitude of people involved. One blog, in particular, which I once saw as quite moderate is now clearly on the "Anglican" (as the conservatives seem to call themselves) side of the debate.

I guess this is inevitable when people disagree on important stuff. Small slights cause greater offense. We can be grateful that there is no sign of this situation arising in New Zealand in the short term.

Why do we need something new (or a revived usage of something old) to "enable" mission?

In our diocese, we have people called Ministry Enablers. These work with mutual ministry parishes (where their aren't professional ministers in the traditional sense) to do ministry. I guess this suggests that we think that mutual ministry needs enabling.

Why is missional activity not the natural state of things? Am I right in thinking it's not? The authors of Mission-shaped Church seem to think that mission needs enabling. Where ministry is mostly done in the context of a parish, it can be very hard to start something that involves crossing boundaries. Do we need to distinguish between ministry and mission? I normally think of ministry as what we do for Christians and mission as what we do for other people, whether making them Christians is the overt purpose or not. However, the church also talks abut doing stuff for poor Christians in the third World as mission too.

So, a Missionary Order is a way of enabling missionary activity. It creates a formal structure in which individuals can do things that might otherwise be too hard in the context of a parish.

Labels: Missionary Order

Some cool kids (and me and the vicar) had a BBQ in Wilton Bush. We had a paddle in the stream. The BBQ area is cool. The BBQs cost $1 per 15 minutes. Pretty good value, I thought.

Protestants are very keen on the Word of God as being the only authoritative source of doctrine. Catholics are too. The difference being that Protestants believe that the Bible is the location of the Word of God and Catholics believe the Word of God exists both in the scriptures and in the Apostolic Tradition (hence, Popes and Councils make rulings on things). This is a fairly basic and fundmental theological difference.

Being an Anglican, I'm allowed to see both sides of things.

Catholic:		Christianity existed before the New Testament. The Gospels were some of the later texts in the NT.
Protestant:		Yes, but in the early days the Apostles were still around.
Catholic:		Exactly, the teaching of the Apostles was the basis of Christianity. The Catholic Church preserves the teaching of the Apostles.
Protestant:		I'm not convinced.
Catholic:		I didn't think you would be.

Mission-shaped Church, the Church of England report on emerging missional expressions of church, commends some particular ideas for consideration by dioceses. One suggestion is the creation of "Bishops' Orders" to enable missionary activity inside the diocesean boundries. It suggests that the orders (a historical grouping of nuns/monks, knights, etc) be accountable to the bishop and be outside the parochial system.

The working title for my Missionary Order is The Order of Henry Williams, or the Williams Order for short. The title is deliberately not exciting as the structure is not the important thing and shouldn't detract from the actual work of the members. The name does continue the tradition of naming the order after something or someone (a patron saint) that reflects something of the values of the order. Williams changed the focus of missionary activity in New Zealand. Peviously, missionaries had hoped to pave the way for the gospel by engaging Maori with outreach activities such as education with little success. Williams made the gospel an upfront part of missionary work as well as continuing the outreach.

Clergy and laity could be licensed/authorised in the order itself rather than in a parish. This would permit them to engage in mission activities without reference to parishes (unless there was a clear overlap/conflict with an existing ministry). Some of this work would result in some "fresh expressions of church" which the order could help nuture and might grow into a parish in the future or that might fit well with an existing parish.

This structure doesn't solve the problem of what to actually do, but it does free mission-minded people from one perceived challenge in the Anglican church. Members of the order would not be tied to a parish and the maintenance and congregation-tending that parishes necessarily are focussed on to a greater or lesser degree. This also keeps mission-minded individials inside the church, maintaining episcopal oversight. This doesn't answer all the questions, or address every challenge.

Labels: Missionary Order

The Mrs and I went to the Faith Based Unit at Rimutaka Prison. The menu in the unit had invite volunteers to say thanks for the ministries they perform there. This was Tracey's first time in a prison, but she faced the day cheerfully.

We started with a (very Pentecostal) service in the chapel. The BBQ lunch was fantastic. We sat with two guys with lots of experience in prison mnistry. Very interesting conversations. I met two new guys that Prison Fellowship wants me to work with.

The concert had to be cut short due to time constraints( there was a rugby game against another unit), but what we saw was of a high standard. It was a fantastic day.

My Mum and step-father visited us this week. It was nice to have visitors to stay in our new house. Apprently Emirates is a great airline, which I sort of guessed.

Some good agitating going on over at Sam's Blog. Topics include the Christian Music Industry and the value of mission trips.

So, my wife now has a blog and as she is far more popular than I am, you'll want to rush right over there, ignoring anything I've written recently.

http://traceycraft.blogspot.com/

Well the seasonal panic is setting in at the parish office. Christmas hardly seems worth the effort. I suggest either amalgamating Christmas and Easter into one festival or celebrating them on alternate years, so there is only one drama per year.

Since our cell group is populated by the sort of people that would rather watch a Bible story than Borat, we went to see The Nativity Story last night. It was pretty good. It had a gritty, real feel to it, not at all a Disney treatment. I liked the foreshadowing of Jesus' ministry at various points.

In an effort to be positive and "love the church I'm in", I'm working on a list of things to be grateful for:

• It's very hard to have a narrow theology. As I spend more time around the church, I'm exposed to different points of view. This might not be quite so likely in a smaller, independent church where the senior pastor dominates the discussion on theology. As I consequence, for example, I have a broader (and growing) understaning of salvation than just not going to hell.
• Standing in a liturgical tradition means there is base level of quality in worship. The Prayer Book is wonderful resource that provides a starting point for many types of private and communal worship and prayer. We don't have to fall back on trite prayers "from the heart" that always sound the same.
• We are free to embrace a breadth of Christian experience. Catholic forms of prayer and contemplation are just as valid as a Nooma from Rob Bell.

Feel free to tell me what you like about your church. It makes a nice change from complaining constantly.

I was discussing some elecments of Chrisitan belief with an 8 year old boy recently, as I do in various children's ministry programmes from time to time. At some point, he said to me "So Jesus was God? How can he be God's son and God?" I might have been overreaching a bit when I tried to explain the Holy Trinity to him.

Let me point out that Trinitarianism is not an optional belief in The Church. The Nicene Creed states that Jesus is of the same substance of the father and the Athanasian Creed leaves no wriggle room on the matter. The Anlgican church (and most other catholic denominations) holds the Nicene Creed as fundamental and Athanasius' Creed as being a true and valid description of the Christian Faith. To be Christian is to be a Trinitarian. Other groups on the periphery of Christianity dissent from this view, Unitarians being the most obvious.

There is a great deal of history around this point in the first centuries of Christianity. The question came into open debate in when Arius, a priest in Alexandria, starting publicly arguing with his bishop. The Christians who thought that Jesus was a lesser being than God (though certainly still far greater than humans) were knows as Arians. The Council of Nicaea (325) formulated a doctrinal statement that was supposed to present an anti-Arian position. This was adopted with only 2 objections. However, Arianism still flourished and Arians were the majority in many churches. When the Emperor Constantine was baptised on his death bed, is was an Arian who performed the sacrement (good point for refuting the Da Vince Code). Eventually, the Council of Constantinople (381) adopted the Nicene Creed (somewhat modified from the 325 text) as an official statement of faith.

Arius has some flawed but persuasive arguments and I can see why so many faithful Christians would be swayed by them. For a start, the idea that Christ was a created being (albeit of an entirely different order to us) is an easier idea to grasp that the notion that God is Three and yet One.

I'm almost relunctant to engage in discussion on the point because the idea that God paid our penalty himself is essential to popular theology. Could a perfect being that wasn't God take our place on the Cross with the same effect? Someone once told me that to be a fundamentalist meant to believe that it was essential to believe in Christ Crucified and Risen, which begs the question "who was Christ?". Orthodox Trinitarian Christian belief answers empathically that Jesus was God Incarnate. This is what we celebrate at Christmas: God became human, the Word became flesh.

I'm strangley compelled to reassess my faith in light of the question "what if Arius was right?" Now, I don't think he was, but I'm a bit afraid to think too hard on the matter. Is Trinitarianism really essential? I think it might be, but what if the rest of my faith remains viable without it? Is the penalty for heresy still death?

Labels: theology

I am in the middle of cleaning up all the problem leaves (mainly in and around drains) around the property and wondering what life will be like in Autumn. Will I even have time to write for my public?

I know it's now technically summer (and I have the sunburn to prove it), but what's with all the leaves?!

I'm tired today. Had a great bunch of cool kids over last night and being kids, they stayed up later I would normally. I'm not complaining, because all the time I spend with grown ups isn't quite as much fun. The BBQing went super well (thanks for asking - Big Gay Al). And the entertainment revolved around DVDs of music videos: Weird Al Yankovich, Nature's Best. Lots of bad singing.

I'm leaning heavily on a lots of super people at the moment. Plenty of coffee and trips to the pub. I'm not sure why I'm feeling needy. It might have a bit to do with the wife's health being below average in the last week or so.

God has been getting me up in the night to pray a bit recently. This is new, but I find myself awake and I remember the words "I will arise in the night to praise you", which I think is from the rule of St Francis, so I do. I've had a few good "spiritual moments" and I think God appreciates the obedience. My sleep patterns, however are not so pleased.

My spiriutal week is still revolving around early morning prayer on Tuesdays, cell group Tuesday night and staff devotions on Thursdays. Sunday still feels like hard work.