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Same sex attraction: further resources for pastors part 2
…and following on from yesterday's post, here is a very helpful interview with Rosaria Butterfield. It's particularly useful for pastors wanting to think through how their church can be welcoming to people from the gay and lesbian community, and do evangelism to them. It's also really encouraging on the power and sufficiency of God's word.
Proclaimer Blog
Same sex attraction: further resources for pastors
Our afternoon seminar option on same sex attraction was carefully planned and very well received. We'll have the audio up soon. Meanwhile here is some follow up material from Ed :
Want a good short introduction to the whole issue?
Then hot off the press there is Sam Allberry’s excellent Is God Anti-Gay? from the Good Book Company.
Want to understand what it feels like to be a Christian man who experiences same-sex attraction?
Wesley Hill’s Washed and Waiting: Reflections on Christian Faithfulness and Homosexuality beautifully and honestly provides one man’s account. I have yet to find another book that so effectively and encouragingly encapsulates the experience of same-sex attraction.
Want to understand what if feels like to be a Christian woman who experiences same-sex-attraction?
Alex Tylee’s Walking with Gay Friends: A journey of informed compassion shares her story and provides much practical help for those seeking to encourage people like her.
Want to thoroughly investigate the Bible passages?
The place to go is Robert Gagnon’s The Bible and Homosexual Practice: Texts and Hermeneutics. It will cost you but it will be worth it for its exhaustive coverage of the relevant passages.
Want some input from a heavyweight Christian ethicist?
Richard Hay’s The Moral Vision of the New Testament: A Contemporary Introduction to New Testament Ethics. I can’t recommend the chapter on homosexuality more highly.
Want something to help a teenager begin to think through these issues?
Scott Petty’s Sex (in the Good Company’s Little black Books series) would be the first place to go.
Want to think about the whole issue of sexual identity from a refreshing perspective?
Then Jenell Williams Paris’ The End of Sexual Identity: Why Sex is Too Important to Define Who We Are will not fail to get you thinking in really helpful ways.
Want to clarify your church/ organisation’s position on the whole issue of homosexuality?
The Evangelical Alliance have given you a head start in their Biblical and pastoral responses to homosexuality (Edited by Andrew Goddard and Don Horrocks).
Want to begin to get your head around the secular Gay community and where they’re coming from?
Andrew Sullivan’s Love Undetectable: reflections on friendship, sex and survival will help you feel the power of their thinking and feelings.
Proclaimer Blog
It’s the big idea, stupid
Back from the busyness of the EMA to real work – sermon preparation. This Sunday I'm preaching on Romans 11 (gulp!). I've been wrestling with it for a few weeks, not wanting to come to it for the first time this Monday morning before it is due. There's obviously lots going on in Romans 11 and, here's the thing, there are loads of places where I could easily be distracted. What is more, I can't possibly dot every i and cross every t. We've preached through Romans before, so this time around, we're going at a fairly robust pace to see some of the big things Paul is teaching.
So, how do I take a dense, argued (often controversial) passage like Romans 11 and make it into a Christian sermon? Well, part of the answer is, at least, that I do what we tell our students. You sit down and look at the passage and work out what it is really about. What's the big idea? What's the theme? Far from being a narrow minded intellectual exercise, this is a liberating part of my preparation. For if I can work out what the passage is about as originally written, I'm well on my way to preaching it faithfully.
It's fascinating. Many experienced preachers ditch this stage because they feel it's for students and beginners. I think that sometimes shows in rambling, confused sermons. But twice in Romans I've found it an invaluable discipline. Once, when I preached Romans 7 and now in Romans 11. Paul's big point is, of course, that God has not rejected his people (Rom 11.1) and keeping that in mind keeps the sermon on track.
Horrah for the big idea.
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Charlie Fadipe on this year’s EMA
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Philip Jensen at EMA 86
Still buzzing from last week's great EMA. I've been going over my notes from Vaughan's expositions of 1 Peter. Apart from the fact that I drew parallels between Vaughan's management style and that of Mohammad al Fayed (positively, it must be said), there are a few things worth linking. We'll have the audio and video up soon, but in the meantime:
- here is the combined audio from 1986. We'll strip out Jensen's talks soon, but for the moment it's a large file with all the audio of which Jensen's three talks are a significant part. The comibined file will also give you Dick and Packer. Good stuff from the early days!
- Vaughan referred to a paper by John Frame called Machen's warrior children. And here it is.
- Our own Teaching 1 Peter volume by Angus MacLeay is very useful for preachers and teachers
- Vaughan also referenced Karen Jobes 1 Peter commentary as being the best technical commentary he had used.
Update – Jensen's talks now available separately here.
Proclaimer Blog
Facts and figures
Some more detailed analysis of EMA to follow but – to be perfectly honest – this week's posts have been written prior to the EMA as we anticipated having NO time this week to keep the blog up to date. Here are our facts and figures for the EMA for 2013, correct as of Thursday of last week.
We have 1,225 delegates from 5 continents, 24 countries and – within the UK – 645 churches.
- Here is cause for encouragement. There are at least 645 (and, of course, many, many more) churches in the UK for whom faithful Bible expository ministry lies at the heart of what they do. In this sense, the EMA crowd is self-selecting. That's a lot of churches and is one of the most thrilling statistics we have.
- Here is cause for prayer. What are 645 churches amongst a population of over 60 million (1 for every almost 100,000 people). Of course there are more churches preaching God's word faithfully than are here at the EMA, many more. Even so, this hardly represents a picture of a church mobilised to reach the country for Christ.
Join me then, in thanking God and praying. If you're interested, here is the Google map of where delegates are coming from in the UK. It hardly warrants close analysis because (a) the EMA crowd are not representative of every Bible believing church and (b) our database is not always up to date. However, especially in the SE, spot the holes!!
Interesting also that we have a number of refused visas from those who hoped to come but have not been allowed, despite attending the EMA in the past. Please do pray for a more measured response from UK Government on such permissions.
Proclaimer Blog
Biblical Archaeology
Thinking about the British Museum and DayOne's excellent book (as you do), I remembered this article by Walter Kaiser on top 15 biblical archaeological finds. Go to p22 of the online magazine. It's really good background for preachers and church members. Nothing quite beats seeing the objects themselves and four of Kaiser's top 15 are here in London.
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Already anticipating 2014….
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What the miracles don’t prove…
I’ve noticed that preachers often follow a miracle passage by saying, “…and this shows that Jesus is God”. My problem is this: I may be perverse, but it seems to me that it doesn’t do anything of the sort. Elijah, Elisha, Peter, Paul, and others did miracles, and we don’t conclude that they too are gods.
Surely it would be truer to say that “God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power” and this is why he did miracles (Acts 10:38). Each miracle is a signpost, a pointer to something not only of Jesus’ identity, but also his work. And they are different. When Jesus heals a leper, the ‘shape’ of the miracle shows us something of his work of undoing the infectious and isolating power of sin. When Jesus feeds a large crowd, we learn that he is the one who feeds and sustains the people of God through the ‘wilderness’. When he raises the dead, it is a pointer to what he does spiritually and will one day do physically, in the resurrection. And so on. Each one shows that Jesus is God’s Spirit-anointed instrument to do some part of God’s rescue work.
Oh, true, together with his claims, his purity, his teaching, and above all his resurrection, we may see that they were pointers to his deity. But let’s not overload individual miracles with a burden they cannot bear.
Proclaimer Blog
What is marriage?
That’s the title of a book I’m reading at the moment, written by three American academics (Girgis, Anderson and George, pub. by Encounter Books, subtitle: Man and Woman: A Defense). It’s my current ‘train book’ on my commute home. They defend the traditional view of marriage from an entirely secular viewpoint. Christians will therefore conclude that there is a lot more about marriage that can and should be said from Scripture. Nevertheless I’ve found it helpful. In particular it’s helped me get clearer on one particular question: exactly why is it that legislating for same-sex marriage will change marriage for everyone else? That point has been made by C4M and others, and I’ve felt myself agreeing with it without exactly being certain why. Maybe you have been ahead of me on this, but I couldn’t quite answer to my own satisfaction those who retorted: how does granting marriage to a few thousand gay couples in reality threaten what marriage is for the heterosexual majority?
The authors helped me on this by spelling out that legislation for same-sex marriage will likely lead in due course to the definition of marriage being settled by that which opposite-sex and same-sex marriages have in common. And that cannot amount to anything more than emotional union with the presumption of some (undefined) sexual activity. The key thing that this removes from both the legal and commonly assumed definitions from marriage is any remaining trace of the fundamental and organic relationship of marriage to children.
Here’s what this made me think about preaching and pastoring on marriage. I wonder if in the past I have focused my preaching and pastoring too much on marriage as ‘emotional union with sexual activity’ and too little on marriage as fundamentally and organically about children and their socialisation and (supremely) their upbringing in the faith? If that’s right then perhaps I was unwittingly influenced too much by our secular society’s undue focus, which has been growing over decades, on the ‘personal fulfilment/satisfaction’ aspects of marriage. The Lord can use even our society’s drifts into foolishness and sin to bring us new light on his good gifts and how to teach them in proper biblical proportion.