I don’t know if you’ve been reading and/or enjoying these, but I hope you’ll humour me for a while longer! I’ve been finding it helpful to get my thoughts into words and to invite conversation.

I also have a confession to make: I’m a closet megalomaniac. (though perhaps not so closet-bound now!) I have sizeable hopes for the Christian church in Adelaide. I would love for Adelaide to be called ‘the city of churches’ without people having to ask ‘why?’ I believe that this would delight God and bring him glory – so that’s what I’m going to do. Perhaps you want to get on board and join me. or just look on, or offer advice or criticism…I’ll take any or all.

So this series is an attempt to put  my thoughts out there on what it looks like to win a city and how I’d do it in Adelaide.

Here’s a roadmap (and will be the table of contents from now on):

• Winning a city – Sydney
• Losing a city – Adelaide
• Praying for the city (esp. ‘harvesters’)
• What is it with the city? (‘the City’ as the Bible sees it)
• What is it with the church? (theological, not structural problems)
• Fancy statistics
• Denominations
• Para-church
• This generation
• …?

So having compared Sydney (pt.1) and Adelaide (pt.2) noting the link between diocese/bible college and church what would you do to turn things around? what would it take to hit the brakes on losing and tap the accelerator toward winning a city like Adelaide?

Try to takeover the diocese or reform the college? I’m not so sure… Aside from the obvious difficulties in such an undertaking it’s not really the problem. It’s not an organisational/structural problem at heart but a theological problem. I’ll fill this out in other posts…

But first: I touched on prayer and recognition of the Lord’s work last time and I want to expand on that a bit more.

It seems that praying is exactly what Jesus would do (wjwd?* a new accessory range?) in this situation – specifically praying for the provision of Bible teaching under-shepherds.

Matthew 9:36ff comes to mind:

³⁶When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. ³⁷Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. ³⁸Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.”

[after which Jesus sends them to the towns to be itinerant preachers and pastors]

At least part of the problem in a place like Adelaide is that sheep are in desperate need of shepherds. But more than that – they need legitimate shepherds. shepherds who submit themselves to Jesus the Chief shepherd. Shepherds who are raised up and appointed by the Lord. Men who will seek out, love and teach Jesus’ sheep.

In many cases there are real Christians in churches being led by people who are not really Christians themselves! They, like the israelites, are ‘harassed and helpless’…but when they do come across genuine christian leadership and biblical teaching they very often thrive. They also wonder how they had lived without it for so long.

In Jesus’ logic the problem to shepherdless sheep is more harvesters. More Bible-teaching pastors.

If winning a city is in anyway like bringing in a harvest (and I think it is) then i’ll pray as Jesus recommends: for more harvesters. That way Sheep in churches get shepherds and sheep who are currentlyout on walkabout will be called home.

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*Apologies for the following Moore ‘in joke’: this still works as a John Woodhouse reference.

following on from part 1.

Sydney is an interesting example of church, diocese and bible college working together. The story is somewhat different in Adelaide! Generally there is little or no cohesion between a denomination’s Churches/Diocese/Bible Colleges. Or where there is cohesion it is around a different gospel. This has set churches in the ‘city of churches’ toward serious decline and unfaithfulness.

Losing the city

The church is best evidence of Jesus’ saving work in a city (it’s what he’s building after all), and the best way to kill it is to lose the other members of the church/diocese/bible college ‘trinity’.

Teach liberal theology in the Bible college and in a generation churches will no longer be shepherded by faithful men. People in those churches, like their leaders won’t know their right hand and from their left. The city will not hear the call to salvation since there will be no call!

Lose the Diocese to inept leaders or again liberalism and even if churches desire to advance the gospel, their efforts will be divided – always battling to be supported and resourced by a body which does not see the need for the gospel to be advanced. Each dances to the beat of a different drum…(which is not a good thing, in case you are wondering)

This inevitably leads to the loss of christian witness in a city. Jesus’ sheep are not cared for and many remain unsaved.

My experience of being in Sydney has been both exciting and frustrating when I think about church ‘back home’. On the one hand I’m pumped that there are churches in Adelaide who are praying and working with all they’ve got to turn the ‘ship around’ and win the city back. On the other i’m frustrated at the current weak state of the church knowing that it need not be as it is!

My time in Sydney has gotten me dreaming up ideas and with it enthusiasm to go about ‘fixing’ the problem. I’m an engineer at heart after all!

I just hope and pray that God will have compassion on people in Adelaide and bring fruit from the work of his laborers there.

As many of you will know, Jodie and I have moved from Adelaide to Sydney for me to do a few years of study at Moore Theological College.

While I could have studied in Adelaide we opted to go on an ‘adventure’ hoping to see how things are done elsewhere in aus. I have to say it’s been a great experience! I’ve been enjoying the glimpse i’ve had into a city where church is done well.

There is obviously much more ‘winning’ to be done here in Sydney, but ‘winning the city’ is where the church is headed.*

Winning a city

Here’s one thing I notice about the Anglican church in Sydney: There is a kind of ‘holy trinity’ at work. The diocese, the Bible college and the churches.

As I see it what makes for strong churches here are that they are supported by both the Bible college (in training clergy+lay people) and the Diocese (in administration and so on). All three serve different functions but seek a common goal. They agree upon the gospel and work to see it advanced. What results from these three working in concert is something greater than one alone could achieve – in business speak there’s a ‘synergy‘ created.

The situation is a little different in SA…more in the next post.

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*I hope you’ll forgive the many unsubstantiated sweeping statements and generalisations in these posts!

whatsthedealwithstuff has a series of posts on Hebrews – click this search link to see. I’m a big fan of the diagrams! will try something similarly graphical next time I need to preach a book.

This is the final post on this topic and I’m not going to go into much detail for a few reasons:

1. My curiosity has largely been satisied by the discoveries made in part 2;

2. I perceive that most of you, my readers, have lost interest (which I certainly can understand!); and

3. To do justice to the NT data would take a great deal of effort and to be honest is probably beyond my capabilities.

On the other hand this series has been getting hits every week from google suggesting it may be helpful to someone, and I don’t like to leave things unfinished…so here goes!

I know many of you are preachers and even more are subject to preaching. Here is a question that i’ve been thinking over lateley:

How would you know whether God has gifted someone for preaching? what criteria do you use? or maybe better, what criteria should you use, do you think?

for example: do you look to oratory ability? clear thinking and presentation? the growth in love and knowledge of God in the hearers over time? That hearers ‘vote with their feet’ and come back next week?

I’m sure you have others, love to hear your thoughts!

If you include Bible references on your blog, you might want to think about installing a plugin called RefTagger.

It automatically picks up references that you type into posts, turns them into a link and displays a popup when a reader hovers their mouse over the reference.

Like this: Jn 3:16ff

Pretty handy I reckon…!

I have been trying to come to some conclusions as to why Christians are usually unconcerned about the way animals that they eat are killed. Acts 15 seems to suggest that they should be, 1 Cor 10 perhaps goes in the other direction. A few reports suggest that early Christians would not eat blood on religious grounds. We’ll get to the NT passages next time but I want to look at the origin of the prohibition about eating blood first. Feel free to join in – thoughts/corrections and otherwise are welcome!

I’m preaching on Philippians 1:1-11 this Sunday. Enjoying the prep and thought I’d share!

The thing that stikes me is that Paul’s prayer cuts across what we come to take as ‘normal’ as Christian life progresses: Most, if not all of us quickly find that there is no use pursuing excellence because you’ll never get there, it will take too much effort and you’ll end up disappointed anyway.

Perhaps once we had a ‘fire in our belly’, but the dissapointments, weariness and the realities of life have quenched it…perhaps even put it out. Even if the fire is not out now, Paul knows that it is vital to pray against settling for mediocrity. He prays for the Philippian Christians whom he loves that their:

^v9: … love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, ¹⁰so that you may be able to discern what is best …

Too often I settle for what is merely ok, passable or what works. this is real life after all.

Instead I need to pray for love which flourishes along with knowledge and depth of insight so that I can discern what is best and do it as God enables.

Such optimism is well founded since

v6: he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.

Where are you settling for OK in life? bring the fire back! it wont come easy since ever increasing love and knowledge and insight are required. But pray for these things so that you’ll be equipped to discern what is best.