Final Day
Today marks the final day in the series of talks on Matthew that I’ve been giving at FOCUS. It’s been a difficult and stretching time for me. It’s the first time I’ve done a series of talks rather than one-offs and I’ve loved the continual time spent each week studying God’s word. I feel that I’ve learned a great deal about the structure and theology of the book of Matthew, and even better, through that have come to a better appreciation and love for our Lord and Saviour – Jesus.
On the other hand, there have been very difficult times. I’ve discovered that it takes me around 10-15 hours to prepare a talk to an appropriate level (ie, where I feel that I have thought through the issues, thought through the relevant application, gone through the talk structure several times to make it as simple as possible, then worked out how to make it flow and maintain interest). I’ve still got lots to learn and I’ve found that trying to find this amount of time in a week that is already completely timetabled has been very stressful. There have been several late nights and early mornings.
An encouraging sign is that I feel I have become familiar with my own style of preparation and it’s working well. I have stopped using full text notes for my talk. I’ve found that I can naturally talk from point form, and that having points enables me to be clearer in my structure and the logic of the passage I’m teaching.
All that may seem a little strange and uninteresting, but it’s an insight into the mechanics of public teaching from the Bible.
The true benefit for me (and hopefully for the students) has been a fresh look at the intention of Jesus in his death, and what it achieved. Not new by any means, but I have sought to understand Jesus ministry as much as possible in the terms it is presented in the book of Matthew and its Old Testament heritage. This has helped me to understand Jesus much more in his Jewish and historical setting, and to combat the Docetic (not seeing Jesus as fully human) tendencies that we naturally fall into through our distance from Jesus’ time and place.
If you’d like to listen in – the talks are available here
In other news, Emma has been very busy as well. The annual Science at the Shine Dome conference ran a couple of weeks ago. Emma has a lot of responsibility for running the conference which is the major event for the Australian Academy of Science each year. Everything went well, now she’s back into working on editing Science text books for Australian primary schools.
This weekend we are going away together somewhere – still not sure where! for some rest and time together. I can express how much I’m looking forward to this time off.
I’m enjoying studying through Philippians at the moment with our Bible study groups. This week we studied together that beautiful song in Ch 2. It’s good to be reminded that behind the surface historical reality of Jesus life, death and resurrection there is a theological reality that holds out continual promises and challenges to us.
“who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant,* being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”
(Phil 2:6-11 ESV)
FOCUS Talks
I haven’t had a great deal of time to update this blog recently and again, this is only a short update to let you know what’s been going on…
We are into our second week of second term at Uni. FOCUS started again last week and it took me most of the week to get my mind back into the swing of things. Tuesday was the Anzac Day holiday and lots of students took the excuse to have most of the week off and extend their holidays. There weren’t a lot of students around the campus but it was good to see the faithful core going strong.
Our holidays were reasonably uneventful, Emma and I spent Easter in Sydney and had time with her family and my extended family. The time with my extended family was very special as my Grandma is dying of cancer, it was very special to spend some time with her.
I had the week off after Easter, Emma and I had originally planned to go away together but she was unable to get time off from her work. It’s usually pretty hard for me to have a holiday at home (it takes a surprising amount of discipline) but I did ok. I spent most days driving around the countryside and bushwalking. I found a walk to a place called Square Rock in Namadgi National Park that was spectacular. It’s now one of my favourite spots in the ACT. (If you are in town and would like to go bushwalking, let me know).
For the first 4 weeks this term I’m giving the talks in FOCUS. This is my first ever series of talks in FOCUS (as opposed to one-offs). I’ve been enjoying writing them but finding it hard to juggle the time requirements. It’s currently taking me close to 15 hours to write a talk and this has to come out of an already full timetable. Speaking of which… I’d better get back to it.
If you’d like to listen in – the talks are available here
Wright on the Road
I was in Sydney last night for an AFES board meeting. I had a great time while there, caught up with Con Campbell at Moore College and my parents, brother and sister (completely accidentally). One of the highlights of the trip however, was the drive up and back. I listened to a series of talks by Tom Wright that I downloaded from the internet. I think he gave these talks a couple of years ago in the U.S. at a conference for University Academics and Staff. The theme was ‘Jesus’. I found them brilliant and challenging. I hesitate to recommend people engage with Wright unless they’ve spent plenty of time in the Bible because much of what he says challenges traditional understandings of Christianity and needs to be seriously and critically thought through. However, I found in these talks that I was forced to rethink and reencounter Jesus and I think if you’re prepared for serious work and prayerful study then more of us need to think these thoughts together. NB, I don’t always agree with Wright.
Jesus and the Kingdom
Jesus and the Cross
Jesus and God
Jesus and the World’s True Light
Mission
Last week was the FOCUS/SMBC mission week. A team of students from the Sydney Missionary and Bible College (SMBC) spent the week with us in outreach and fellowship. It was a really good week although challenging on a number of levels.
The first challenge involved the timing of the mission. Last week was the final week of the Uni term at the University of Canberra. Students were busy with assignments and exams and a number of our student leaders were really feeling pressure to knuckle down to study. This meant that we were in constant danger of making mission into something that people came to resent.
This is a real danger in student ministry (probably all ministry) – mission can be difficult at the best of times (I think that weak theology can be held responsible for this) – when other stresses are laid on top, mission becomes a resented, unnatural thing, done out of duty rather than love.
In spite of the business and stress the UC students were cheerful and worked hard to promote the gospel around the campus. And that’s where the second challenge arises. What happens when nobody seems interested?
I heard someone say, and I identified with the feeling, that mission weeks can be their least favourite times in ministry. We work harder than ever and see so little fruit. At the worst we find that our own faith is challenged because God seems absent and uncaring. Again, weak theology is to blame. We have too little reflection on the sovereignty of God and the helpless condition of humanity. It takes acts of divine creative power – resurrection power – to bring dead rebels into living submission to the Son of God. No human programme can achieve this. It is not easy work, it is not simply a case of lining up the dominos, in terms of attractive advertising, good speakers, friendly welcomers, etc, and then watching the lost sheep come strolling home. We should never expect mission to be easy or for crowds to be saved. That flies in the face of Jesus teaching about the Kingdom. We should pray for multitudes to be saved, we should prepare for it, but we must respect God’s sovereignty in election.
If you get the sense that I’m preaching, then you should know that I am preaching to myself, because i need to keep reminding myself of these things, otherwise I lose my passion and fall into Jonah-style resentment.
The mission events kicked off on Tuesday morning with a BBQ breakfast for UC Residential students. We didn’t get any turn out from Ressies students, on reflection, we started too early in the morning, on a day when people would be hurrying to class rather than hanging around for breakfast. We had a good time with the Bible college students, and the Christian students who came to serve demonstrated again that the Spirit of Christ is abroad and at work, even when we are looking for him in all the wrong places.
Wednesday we had our regular FOCUS events – a market day stall, public lecture, prayer time. Everything went well, although we were down on numbers from previous weeks, which was disappointing for a mission week. But again, under the power of the Spirit, people were talking to people around the campus about the hope we have in Jesus. Christians were visible, loving, and shown to be living in a Christ centred community. Dan Connor (SMBC Student) spoke in the main meeting really well – the gospel was proclaimed – in the middle of the secular institutions of the world.
On Wednesday evening FOCUS hosted an Open Forum. The format was a short gospel presentation followed by free discussion and Q&A by a panel of Christians. The panel were two students and a lecturer from SMBC. They had never done anything like an Open Forum before and were very nervous. I think you need to imagine yourself in the position of being exposed in front of a group of people who can ask you any question without notice about a subject you care deeply about but know you can probably never fathom completely. They did a great job. In Open Fora the most enduring impressions will be made, not by great answers to questions, but by loving responses. The panel all answered with great respect and love and brought honor to God through their manner. There were a number of non-Christian students who came to the evening, including one who had a large number of questions written down in advance. He was very angry at Christianity and described himself as an atheist – pray that God would have mercy and show himself to this bloke.
Thursday we had a Blokes’ Brekky in the morning, and a Girl’s evening of extravagance. Both events went well.
By the end of the week Emma and I had 6 nights out in a row on our timetable. We were both exhausted so we took Friday night off and spent some time together.
The conclusion:
God was good to us and his will cannot be resisted. The gospel was proclaimed throughout the campus. But as Christians we need to think through deeply and seriously the theology that underlies mission – it is a calling of the people of God that cannot be satisfied by a week or two of heightened evangelistic activity. But likewise, we cannot allow the proclamation of the kingdom to be a thing of duty rather than love. I wonder if our community of God’s church has forgotten its eschatology – the future hope that shapes our present living. I need to think this through and would appreciate your thoughts.
love, dan
Labor that Lasts
Sorry, I’m really sorry.
It’s been over 2 weeks since I last wrote. I can accept the threatening emails, but really… killing my puppy? It’s too much.
(NB no puppies were harmed. I neither have, nor have ever, owned a puppy.
Although someone did steal our mail box, I’d like to believe that to be a completely unrelated incident…
There are really no excuses. Life has been full, I have lots to say. Take a deep breath, I’m about to download the lot.
This week is the final week of the university term at the University of Canberra. A small island of rest awaits just over the horizon. The challenge is to survive the week. We have a team of students from the Sydney Missionary Bible College (SMBC) visiting with us for the week. They are running a number of outreach activities and getting involved in a large number that we are hosting. It’s going to be a busy week but also promises to be a lot of fun, and a great mission opportunity.
This morning we had our first team meeting, there are around 25 students from the college and something like 15 staff/trainees from Crossroads/FOCUS. We all crammed into our office meeting room and talked through the week. It’s jam packed…
These are the UC events, (there are also things happening at ANU, Kid’s ministry, Work Place ministry, etc)
Tuesday:
8.00am – Ressies BBQ Breakfast
7.30pm – Da Vinci Code Seminar (Speaker Greg Clarke)
Wednesday:
9am-12.30pm – FOCUS Market Day Stall
12.30pm – FOCUS Main Meeting (Speaker Dan Connor)
7.30pm Open Forum – Ask your questions
Thursday:
8.00am Bloke’s Breaky (see Dan Anderson)
7:30pm Girls Fine Food Evening (see Kerryn Blomfield)
Friday:
7.30pm – Party to Die For (see Anita King)
If you’re around at UC come along.
The team are fantastic and very enthusiastic. It’s great to be working alongside them and being able to learn from people with a different background and experiences.
Over the weekend we also had some great friends from Sydney come to stay. Michael and Julie Morrow (and baby Alicia). It was great to spend time catching up with them and admiring their beautiful daughter. Michael is doing a Ministry Traineeship in at St Andrew’s Cathedral, focussing primarily on music/sound areas. You can get some of his music on emu albums…
Last Week
Last week I spent two days away from the student ministry to attend a conference being hosted at a Theological College here in Canberra. It was a difficult decision to spend the time away from campus ministry, particularly as I missed out on the wednesday main meeting and campus outreach time. I am very conscious that when I choose not to be at things I can communicate the an idea to the students that it mustn’t matter that much. This can be really discouraging to the students who are faithful and are organizing these things, and can give excuses to those who know should be in Bible studies or talks but keep skipping out.
I went along because the keynote speaker was Bishop N.T. Wright from Durham in England. Dr Wright is regarded as one of the world’s leading theologians. He is a profound thinker and has written some of the most thought provoking books I have ever read. His book on the resurrection (The Resurrection of the Son of God) is probably going to be the most influential work on that topic written in my life time. At the same time not everything that Tom Wright says can be taken at face value, there are areas of his theology that I am not sure I agree with and need to think through more carefully (with Bible in hand). He is part of a movement called the New Perspective on Paul that sees new ways of understanding the apostle Paul by grounding him more firmly in his immediate Jewish context. There is a lot that is commendable here but the understanding of justification by faith that has been developed through this process is quite different from the Reformation doctrine. It’s all a bit much for a blog like this but there is a lot around on the net if you want to read more.
The conference was focussing on the resurrection and christian eschatology (what christians believe about the future of the world). This was discussed in the context of modern scientific understanding of the end of the universe. (ie Big Freeze/Big Fry). It was a fascinating discussion and the conference only took about 50 delegates so there was lots of time for discussion and talking together.
Why did I go?
Because I think that in order to be an effective minister to university students (to anyone actually) I need to keep being challenged to reassess the structures of my thought that I take for granted. It is easy to lapse into habitual thinking about Christian beliefs only to discover when challenged that I either don’t understand what I believe, or that my belief is a non-sense – inherited from my culture rather than the scriptures. If we are to teach the scriptures faithfully and live them obediently, we must be continually open to learning new things. Conversely, when destructive and unhelpful teaching come our way, we need occasionally to test ourselves in the fire, to be assured of the truth of what we believe, and more able to defend it to others.
If you’d like to know more about the conference drop me a line, I have copies of some of the papers presented. Also, if you’d like some recommended readings for Tom Wright, let me know.
That was the main event for last week. The rest of the week was spent trying to cram all the work I would do in 5 days into 3.
It was a great conference but also profoundly disturbing in many ways. It has driven home for me again the very physical and concrete nature of the Christian hope. The Christian future doesn’t consist merely of death, then being taken away into heaven for eternity with God. That is a parody of true christianity that owes more to greek philosophy than the authentic gospel. The christian hope is for a resurrection, just as Jesus was raised. A real physical resurrection! Heaven may receive our souls while we wait for the final day of God. But then the Bible promises a new heaven, and a new earth. That is: something some how discontinuous with this heaven and earth – a new beautiful thing. But also with elements of continuity, people with bodies, a world like this world, only more real and richer. The two best picture of the new creation we have are the risen body of Jesus which tells us a little of what we may be like, and the society of the Church, which is meant to model the future kingdom of God. This is a momentous thing to get your head around. The resurrection is the bedrock of Christian hope and the foundation of how we live our lives. Read and think about Paul’s argument in 1 Corinthians 15.
“I tell you this, brothers: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written:
“Death is swallowed up in victory.”
“O death, where is your victory?
O death, where is your sting?”
The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.”
(1Cor 15:50-58 ESV)
I get tingles whenever I read this passage – and it has real impact in how we work in ministry (And I don’t mean by this jus
t the stuff done by a minister up the front of church). Our work of proclaiming and building Christ’s kingdom is labor that will last for eternity.
love, dan
Getaway
I’m writing this post about Getaway about 2 weeks after it happened – which is a good and bad thing. Good because by now all the details have boiled away into enduring memories. It was a great camp! It will be long remembered. Bad because I can’t remember all the interesting details and I’m slack. Sorry
Getaway is the commencement camp for FOCUS – the student ministry I am involved in. Students from the University of Canberra (UC), Australian National University (ANU) and Australian Defence Force Academy (ADFA/RMC) all get together down on the south coast of NSW for the weekend. The idea is to spend some time getting to know each other better and get in a bit of good solid Bible. The camp is very relaxed, the majority of the day is free time, and the sessions are solid but not of the intensity of Focal Point – our mid-year conference.
This year we moved the Getaway to a new location – this was a major step. It has been held for the past 15 years at a camp site near Ulladulla. The site was nice but the facilities were woeful. The camp centre had bunkhouses that could sleep about 60 people (we’ve been averaging about 130 for the past couple of years) and a kitchen that is smaller than most home kitchens. The majority of people would have to sleep in tents provided by the ADFA people. They were smelly and generally uncomfortable. People still had fun but it was getting inconvenient to the point of being ridiculous. The new site is at Tuross Heads. It’s an old motel owned now by the Christian Brothers (the Catholic School people). The site had nearly enough beds for everyone, and there is a caravan park right next door. It has an industrial kitchen. And it’s in a gorgeous spot, on a hill looking over the beach.
Tuross Heads is a beautiful little town. I’d only been there once before but I’m in love with it. If I was the holiday house buying type, I’d buy there. I’ve put up some photos from the boatshed cafe where Em and I had dinner one night. Well worth the visit!
The highlight of the weekend for me were the baptisms at the beach. This is becoming a bit of a tradition – people invite their families. It is always stirring to hear people confess Jesus as Lord, even more so in a beautiful part of God’s creation, were his power is everywhere visible.
I got to the spot on the beach where the baptisms were happening a little late. I came down the hill and the scene made me think of the baptisms in the Jordan that were a feature of the early days of Jesus earthly ministry. There was this great crowd of people standing on the shore of a lagoon area where we were doing the dunking. In the middle were a group of people who were declaring God’s greatness. And all around were families and people who just happened to be on the beach that day and came over to see what was happening. It was a very public, very visual, very wet form of evangelism. It was immensely encouraging.
The talks were from John and are available for download from the FOCUS website.
I hope you get a chance to have a holiday in Tuross. Thanks for your prayers, it was a brilliant time away, and God’s was glorified in his people.
love, dan
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