Mark Tibben recently attended our International Intensive training in New York

Here are his reflections.

“‘If you can’?” said Jesus. “Everything is possible for one who believes.”

 Immediately the boy’s father exclaimed, “I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!”

In Mark 9, we meet a man whose son was horribly afflicted and oppressed by a demon. Jesus’ disciples who had been given supernatural authority to deal with this type of affliction were unable to cast the demon out this time. Strange. The disciples and the man were arguing about this situation.

I have often found myself relating to this man and his cry.

I’ve found myself here, arguing with myself, thinking about Gospel change in Wyndham, and about planting churches—what will it take? I do believe, help me overcome my unbelief!

What does it take to plant a church?

That was the question at the heart of the International Church Planting Intensive I attended in New York in September.

The great cities of the world are in City to City’s sights. A global church planting organisation and movement, City to City want to see global cities impacted with the gospel. These highly urbanised, and often secular cities are the culture generators of the world. Christians need to engage, speak into and influence cities for Jesus.

Starting out of Redeemer Presbyterian in New York, and particularly influenced by Tim Keller (who did his doctorate on ministry in global cities), City to City have been the primary resourcing and training organisation that myself, Andrew and Suburban have drawn from as we move towards a church plant.

Fourteen church planters and regional trainers from around the world came together. We represented five continents, and the group came from cities as disparate as Kigali, Rwanda; Álvaro, Portugal, Glasgow, Scotland; and Istanbul, Turkey.

Located in the City to City offices in Midtown Manhattan, we received great content and teaching from experienced trainers who have literally hundreds of years of church planting experience between them. Yes, Tim Keller led some sessions, but the real highlight was the diversity of voices teaching on a range of topics from contextualisation, core team dynamics and missional discipleship, to self-leadership, gospel spirituality and preaching.

Days were long. We left our apartment at 8:00am and often wouldn’t get home till 10:00pm. This was not only because of the formal teaching sessions, but because we received personal coaching times with City to City staff who willingly stayed in the office after hours to meet with us, and also because there was a wealth of experience and knowledge within the international contingent to mine.

The experience was not just intensive in terms of content; it was intensive in terms of relationship. Friendships were fast-tracked as we discussed, shared, argued, ate, drank, debriefed, laughed and cried with one another. It was a great blessing not just to network with planters and global trainers, but to call them friends.

A thing I love about City to City is a concept they call “Gospel Catholicity”. It’s the idea that one church can’t reach a city. In fact, not even one type of church can reach a city, nor a single denomination. We need various churches of various styles in various denominations and networks, striving together in the same direction for the cause of the gospel and the city.

It’s the vision we have for Wyndham and the Western Suburbs.

After Jesus had gone indoors, his disciples asked him privately, “Why couldn’t we drive it out?”

He replied, “This kind can come out only by prayer.”

So what does it take to plant a church?

It turns out it takes a great deal to plant a church in global cities like Melbourne. The failure rate is as high as small business and the dynamics of “startup” are not dissimilar.

But there is an aspect in which it is totally different. We can learn strategies, techniques and philosophies of church planting—and trust me, we have. We can always strive to be better, more professional, sharper operators—and trust me, we will. We can also be called, trained, released and “given authority” just like Jesus’ disciples in Mark 9—but the demon will just not come out! We want to see lives changed, the kingdom come, the church grown, but the evil will just not flee.

Why?

Because the business the local church is in is the business of changed hearts and lives.

It’s not just tough—it’s impossible. We can’t bring to an end the oppression and affliction in someone’s life.

But we can bring them to someone who can: Jesus, the great Saviour of the world.

I’ve learnt a great deal over the last months about the dynamics of church planting, and I’m extremely grateful, but most importantly I’ve been reminded about returning to the source of all power, freedom and truth.

Pray, church! That the kingdom will come, that His will is done.

There is no other way.

The Handmaid's Tale

I am really enjoying watching the second series of The Handmaid’s Tale, which if anything is even better than the first.

That might come as a surprise, since many reviewers have found it deeply critical of Christianity, whether Christian themselves or otherwise. But I would suggest that this is too thin a reading of the program.

The premise is fascinating and brilliant. For undisclosed reasons, the fertility rate of the human race declines dramatically, unable to be resolved using medical means. This represents an existential threat to the human race, which could possibly be removed from the face of the earth, unless …

And that is the point.

The ‘unless’ turns out to be ‘unless the government / state’ does something about it. And so the state intervenes, creating a system in which state coercive power - police, army, jail, death sentence - is harnessed to ensure that the maximum reproductive rate is achieved with those few - called Handmaids - who remain fertile.

What makes the premise so interesting is that it combines the most public and the most personal. The most personal in that the problem necessarily involves fundamental personal issues like parenthood, sexuality, and freedom. And at the same time, the most public, in the sense that nothing less than the survival of humanity is at stake. And the point is that there is no possible greater justification for state intervention into the personal lives of the population than the survival of humanity.

In other words, The Handmaids Tale is essentially cautionary - watch out for totalitarian state intervention when the stakes are high enough to seemingly justify it.

And it’s the totalitarianism that makes the skin crawl - the public executions, the arbitrary deprivation of freedom, the coerced surrogacy through ritualised rape, the absence of the rule of law and due process. Some of these depictions are deeply confronting, but I suspect that they are actually relatively tame in comparison with the reality which is endured under some tyrants in the world today.

This is the context in which to see the place of religion. That is, a totalitarian state will always use some form of religious ritual and language to justify - and deflect criticism of - its violent over-reach. The fascinating thing about the religious depictions in The Handmaid’s Tale is that no one believes the religion, it is just a series of tests of conformity to the state program. Or, as the Bible would put it, a form of state sponsored idolatry.

Which is why I’d suggest in the end, The Handmaid’s Tale - perhaps ironically - actually presents a deeply Christian vision, as I say, a cautionary tale, of the horrors of totalitarianism and its use of idolatrous forms of self-justification.

The question that the program should prompt for us is this: are there any current real-world existential threats to the human race, which could form the basis for justifying a totalitarian response? Because, what the Handmaid’s tale is showing us in grim detail is the nightmare of the violence of the state turned against its own people, even in the name of survival.

Launch of Southern Beaches Anglican Church, Tasmania

Sothern Beaches Anglican Church launched in February 2018 in partnership with City to City Australia, Soma Australia and the Bush Church aid Society.

Since then, SBAC Tasmania has been meeting weekly at the local school with an average of 42 adults and 8 children. During this short time, Jamie and his wife Claire have already seen lives transformed by the Gospel.

SBA’s Vision is to be a church for the southern beaches, making disciples of Jesus. Firstly: We want to listen to the community and serve the community. It is our vision to be a church that the community looks to as a place of positive cultural change. Secondly: it is our vision to make disciples who make disciples. Multiplying is the key of what we do because we want a city where everyone knows Jesus.

The vision statement tells the story of what this church plant is praying: “Love like family, live like missionaries, making disciples as servants of Jesus Christ”. Please pray this prayer with them.

You can check out their launch video here.

That ball tampering incident in South Africa.

It has been fascinating watching the ebb and flow of responses to the ball tampering incident in South Africa. (For those who have been in a media blackout or bushwalking in deepest darkest somewhere, a conspiracy involving the coach, captain, vice captain and a young, new member of the Australian cricket team were caught on camera, and through subsequent confession and investigation, cheating by attempting to alter the condition of a cricket ball.)

The response has been remarkable - outrage, letters pouring into the Australian Cricket Board demanding pretty much everyone’s heads roll, former captains and players opining, and the Prime Minister weighing in with significant finger wagging, whilst acknowledging that the members of the test cricket team are held in far higher regard than politicians!

Social and paid media commentary has been blanket level, and has see-sawed between initial contemptuous condemnation in the first day or two, to ‘chill out’ in the last couple of days.

It’s a microcosm of the moral confusion of our culture. Five observations / reflections.

First, it was wrong. Of course it was wrong, and cheating at cricket, whilst one of the smaller wrongs currently being perpetrated in our world, is a wrong.

2. The shrill self righteousness of much of the response has been ear-piercing. Journos - paid and self-appointed - were falling over themselves to raise the stakes as to the punishment - stand them down, sack them for a long time, sack them for ever! BURN THEIR BAGGY GREENS (I made that one up!) The moralising, judgmental, graceless, rigidity of the response is impossible to miss. Which leads to the third response.

3. Why? Why so over the top. My 2 cents worth. We live in a culture of crushing and confusing moral ambiguity. We aren't even sure about the rights and wrongs of having rights and wrongs in our lives. We don’t tell other people how to live, we never even think about telling other people’s kids how to live, and watch out if someone tells us how to live. In real life there are no heroes and villains. That’s one of the reasons why we watch the TV shows and movies we do - because we love it when there are. And so when a real life villain appears - a cheat, at cricket no less - then the touch paper of moral certainty is suddenly lit! At last, something to be clear about! But of course, there’s more to it than that.

4. You see, at the same time, there are plenty of moral rules we must not transgress. One of the most obvious is the necessity to ‘save the planet’. But for almost all of these rules, we find ourselves as villainous as heroic. My carbon footprint is not that much smaller than most, and at the same time, not that much bigger than my most ardently green friends. I’m half villain and half hero - well maybe less than half the latter. As a society, we are deeply uncertain about our own cultural righteousness. And so I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that part of the outrage is projection of our own half-guilty conscience, a form of atonement called scape-goating. At last I know I’m right, because I join the throng condemning the guilty.

5. Finally, for me one the the most curious things is that, on the whole, Christians have made an almost indistinguishable - and undistinguished - contribution. They have followed almost exactly these same contours (with the notable exception of Mike Baird’s post, and similarly Cricket with Miles). We have a different operating system at work - the grace of God which as appeared - and yet we seem unable to bring its resources to bear in the hurly-burly of real world issues. We know that we are ‘saved by grace’; we just don’t know how to apply that mode to this moment.

Which is a shame. This incident could have provided terrific opportunity, especially directly before Easter, to ask probing questions, both publicly and privately, that exposed some of the graceless dynamics at play here. But only if we actually knew the gospel well enough to have something different to say. Because beyond self righteous moralism on the one hand, and permissive ‘chill out’ on the other, there really is a third way to live, the way of grace in Christ.

Andrew

PS. Our conference, Saturate the City will include a focus on exactly the kind of gospel fluency that is needed in these moments.