The Resolute

Gus is an MTS apprentice. And Gus wrote some studies about Christian dating (and some other stuff). But is there more of a link between the two than Gus? Well, I think what links them is that Christians are in danger of undertaking them wrongly in the same way.

Christians do dating differently to the world. Sometimes it’s called ‘courting’ to help make the distinction. One of the differences (there are several) is that a large part of what you are doing is explicitly assessing whether or not someone is wise to marry.

MTS is a brilliant movement committed to raising up gospel workers to go out into the harvest. During a 2 year program focussed on front line ministry and training, apprentices are given the opportunity to assess whether or not they should go into full time word ministry.

How do we do either poorly? By missing two words:

‘Or not’.

If you date you don’t have to get married. If you do MTS you don’t have to go into full time ministry. If it’s a Godly and wise course of action to take then go ahead and get married/go into full time word ministry but we need to protect the other two options from the stigma of failure.

If these undertakings are about whether or not to make a commitment to a longer, more permanent version of themselves then the option ‘or not’ should be viewed as a positive outcome. If you were trying to figure out which way to go and were able to make a decision then you’ve achieved the goal. Neither should be about getting on a metaphorical conveyor belt, but gathering information to make a decision.

In January I ran a 4 part “Summer Bible Studies” series on relationships. It was to compliment a mini sermon series on 1 Corinthians 7 that Scott preached.

We looked at  4 topics over 4 weeks:

• The Bible on Marriage
• The Bible on Singleness
• The Bible on Courtship (going from single to engaged/married)
• The Bible on Divorce and Remarriage

In case it might be of help to anyone, I’ve made them available right here.

PDF’s of each study:

The Bible on Marriage

The Bible on Singleness

The Bible on Courtship

The Bible on Divorce and Remarriage

Or a zip file of the 4 studies:

The Bible on Relationships 4 Part Series

I’d appreciate your comments and feedback.

I should add that they are based on a set of studies that Scott Tarrant originally produced², as well as a lot of input from a few friends and colleges, especially Kev Chan³.

I also have a set of leaders notes which I’d be happy to add, however they’d need to be updated a little since they were only meant for my reference as I run the discussions, and lets just say they might not be entirely… coherent for anyone else… but let me know if you’d like them and I’ll see what I can do.

1. This study refers to An Australian Prayer Book. These studies were run in an Anglican context, if you’re not Anglican, hmm… guess you won’t have access to one of these… still worth looking at how your denomination defines marriage. [↩]
2. Scott’s the Assistant minister at St Andrew’s Anglican Church Wahroonga, and he ran a 3 part series of studies on similar topics a few years ago. [↩]
3. Kev’s the other MTSer/Ministry Apprentice/Trainee Minister at St Andy’s where I’m a MTSer/Ministry Apprentice/Trainee Minister. We spent many a lunch break talking through the planning of these studies. [↩]

Mark’s recent post on ‘guide books’ got me thinking. Maybe we should publish a series of guide books.

We’ll go with the working title “The Resolute How-To Guide for Life”.

I reckon we could write at least 12 books in the series.

1. How to Choose a Church.
2. How to Choose a Husband/Wife.
3. How to Choose a Ministry.
4. How to Sing in Church Without Being Heard.
5. How to Make Sermon Jokes.
6. How to Twitter for Jesus.
7. How to be as Manly as Your Young American Preacher.
8. How to Remember All 6 Boxes of Two Ways to Live.
9. How to Remember the Bible Verses That Go With All 6 Boxes of 2WTL.
10. How to Define Big Christian Words.
11. How to Write a How To Book.
12. How to Blog Without Offending Everyone.

Look out for them in your nearest Christian bookshop.

Or maybe not.

The longer I continue as a Christian the more Christian books and literature I seem to acquire, and on the odd occasion I even read them. It seems for every conceivable topic there is a plethora of books available to enlighten me.

However there is one particular kind of book that I find quite worrying. It is what I will refer to as the Christian ‘guide book’. At this point some distinctions and definitions are important. A ‘guide book’ as I am defining it is not a theological or doctrinal book; these are books which aim to look at the bible’s teaching on a particular topic such as the Spirit, or Election, or the Cross in order from a rather academic perspective. These books I believe are very helpful.

Nor is a ‘guide book’ a commentary. Rather a ‘guide book’ is a book aimed at instructing Christians on how to live either generally or with regard to a particular issue. These books may heavily base their conclusions on the bible’s teaching or if there is little in the bible on their topic (such as the issue of dating as Gus has already mentioned) then they refer to “Christian wisdom” or some other such ‘authority’.

At the outset I will admit that some of these books can be very helpful, however, as a genre I think most of them are not. The reason: they are quite simply rubbish. Whilst commentaries and theological books look at the bible’s teaching and effectively are someone’s considered opinion on what the bible is saying argued from the bible; guide books more often than not seek to tell Christians exactly how to live in a way that does not reflect circumstances, the freedom afforded to us as Christians and more often than not the bible’s teaching.

2 Timothy 3:16 ff are very famous words, and if the bible is indeed “profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work. “ Then why would we spend our time looking at someone else’s wisdom when we have the bible’s wisdom, and the Holy Spirit to help us understand and implement it????

My other problem is that so often ‘guide books’ take us away from grace. ‘Guide books’ give us rules for living as a Christian, which is just what Jesus death shows me won’t save me. I need to rely on Jesus death and resurrection for salvation, not on John Smith’s Guide to Christian living.

My problem with these books is not so much that they exist but that we set too much store by them. How about we do Christianity by the book? The only book that matters, the Bible.

After the bombardment of blogs posts, a hand full of sermons and a steady stream of twitter messages form some high profile Christians¹ I thought I should get into watching some UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) wrestling. So I set my recorder to record the late night UFC matches on HD One, and started watching a few of them last night.

Well, you know what, I was a little disappointed. UFC was presented as the ultimate man sport. But I have some suggested improvements.

First of all, why limit it to only 2 players. Why not have 10 or 20 or, even better, 30 players.

And that toy ‘octagon’ they wrestle in? For 30 players I think it’d need to go full field.

And when it comes to the rules of UFC I was totally misinformed. I thought it was no rules wrestling. But it turns out there are lots of rules. No kicking down there (good rule), no holding shorts, no punching the back of the head, no biting… the rules go on and on.

Although the fights are all over in 30 seconds. That’s not a sport. You take a bit of your pizza and it’s all over.

Here’s a suggestion: You want a good man sport? One that is violent? One that lasts long enough to watch with your mates? One played at a venu big enough for 70,000 other men? One with lots of rules?

Rugby.

1. well Driscoll mainly, but I’m sure there were some others [↩]

I’ve been talking to a close friend recently about wisdom and where it comes from. It’s been really cool to think through some of the implications of what happens when we listen to wisdom that doesn’t come from God. Wisdom and foolishness is all through the bible, there is plenty of places we can turn to find out about it but it was the distinction between the two different types of wisdom found in 1 Corinthians 3:18-19 that we were looking at.

The passage reads “18Do not deceive yourselves. If any one of you thinks he is wise by the standards of this age, he should become a “fool” so that he may become wise. 19For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God’s sight…” It comes in the context of the Corinthian Christians arguing about who they followed. Paul tells them that it doesn’t matter. What matters is that they are built on the foundation of Christ.

This passage identifies two types of wisdom. Wisdom that comes from ‘this age’ or ‘the world’ and God’s wisdom. We need to be so careful what we listen to because so much of it sounds like wisdom but really isn’t. Quite often it has the appearance of real wisdom: it’s well thought out or persuasively argued. Perhaps it appeals to another authority (such as experience, tradition or reasoning) to guide its conclusions. It starts to get really dangerous when the conclusions reached are those that we desire in our sinfulness.

The problem is when we put anything above what the Bible says. As Christians the bible must be our ultimate authority because it reveals God’s will for our lives. God has chosen the bible as His authoritative communication medium in this period and so we need to submit to it and hold it over all other wisdom offered by the world. We should aim to fill ourselves with God’s wisdom rather than the world’s wisdom. Or to put it the way the passage does if we think we are wise by the standards of this age we should become a fool (according to the world) in order to be wise.

So, how do we do this well? Any ideas?