The Holy Spirit

He would have us not rest in outward masks, but depend solely on the internal power of the Holy Spirit - John Calvin, Comm. 1 Cor. 4.20

church, again . . .

'Congregation is composed of people, who, upon entering a church, leave behind what people on the street name or call them. A church can never be reduced to a place where goods and services are exchanged. It must never be a place where a person is labeled. It can never be a place where gossip is perpetuated. Before anything else, it is a place where a person is named and greeted, whether implicitly or explicitly, in Jesus' name. A place where dignity is conferred' - Eugene Peterson, The Pastor, 40.

Petersen on large churches

Eugene Peterson shares in his book, "The Pastor: A Memoir" (p.133), a letter he wrote to someone who abandoned a study group he was in for a pastorate in a large congregation (the quote is only a portion of the letter):

"I certainly understand the appeal and feel it frequently myself. But I am also suspicious of the appeal and believe that gratifying it is destructive both to the gospel and the pastoral vocation. It is the kind of thing America specializes in, and one of the consequences is that American religion and the pastoral vocation are in a shabby state.

It is also the kind of thing for which we have abundant documentation through twenty centuries now, of debilitating both congregation ad pastor. In general terms, it is the devil’s temptation to Jesus to throw himself from the pinnacle of the temple. Every time the church’s leaders depersonalize even a little, the worshipping/loving community, the gospel is weakened. And size is the great depersonalizer. Kierkegaard’s criticism is still cogent: “the more people, the less truth.”

The only way the Christian life is brought to maturity is through intimacy, renunciation, and personal deepening. And the pastor is in a key position to nurture such maturity. It is true that these things can take place in the context of large congregations, but only by strenuously going against the grain. Largeness is an impediment, not a help."
I took this from Graham Hill's Facebook - thanks, Graham.

Comfort zone

What if my comfort zone is simply the sphere of my gifting? Does God still want me out of it?

Costly grace

'Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our church. We are fighting today for costly grace.' Bonhoeffer wrote this in 1937, yet we seem to have learned very little.

'Cheap grace means grace as a doctrine, a principle, a system. It means forgiveness of sins proclaimed as a general truth . . . Cheap grace means justification of sin without the justification of the sinner. . . . Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a [person] must knock. Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner. Above all, it is costly because it cost God the life of his Son' from Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship

Church-community

The church-community is thus able to bear the sins that none of its members can bear alone: it is able to bear more than all of its members combined. As such, it is a spiritual reality that is more than the sum of all the individuals. Not all the individuals, but the church-community as a whole in Christ is the 'body of Christ'; it is Christ existing as church-community. It bears the sins by receiving forgiveness through the word and seeing its sins wiped out on the cross. It is by the word alone, but in doing so it has the Spirit. It is the bearer of the word, its steward and its instrument. It has authority, provided it has faith in the authority of the word; it can take the sins of individuals upon itself, if it builds itself upon the word of the cross, and knows itself reconciled and justified in the cross of Jesus. It has itself died and risen with Christ, and is now the nova creatura (new creation) in Christ. It is not merely a means to an end but also an end in itself. Bonhoeffer, Sanctorum Communio, 190. This is community!

Repentance

Repentance means being open to the strangeness of resurrection and to the free and boundless initiative of faith - Karl Barth. That's a very positive definition, and a helpful one, I think.