Sorry about not posting for a while.
1. Thinking about our how our job is an expression of our worship of Christ is a challenge. There a three levels we need to think on. First, we need to think how we conduct ourselves morally. Individually, we should strive to be godly, dilligent and kind in our work.. But also professionally, many of us have job which is itself a godly activity. A mother or a doctor are actually doing a godly thing for their employment.
Second, there are the spiritual activities that we can be invovled in because of our work. We have opportunities to love individuals we meet through work, we may be given opportunities to speak about Christ to our workmates, we all have the opportunity to pray for our workplace and workmate. Moreover, if we are earning money, then some of this is given to the church, some to those in need, and the rest is used to stop you being a burden on others.
Third, we should remember that every part of our lives are an offering of worship to Christ. This should drive us to constant prayers of thanks, as well as prayers that what we do may be pleasing to him. This should surely motivate us to do everything we do with excellence.
2. I have been thinking how we might improve on our 'newcomers nights'. Have we been pitching these evenings in too much of a 'program-church' way? Can it be more personalised? This might involve some of the following:
(a) Make the invitation to be an invite from me (as the pastor), even given by me and held at my house? This would provide more of a sense of getting access to the pastor... rather than just to the institution.
(b) Pitched as an occasional thing, rather than an official, organised program that they may plug into. So rather than:
"'Crossroads' (some nebulous insitutional consciousness) is organising this program that isn't specifically for you but you may like to come"
Make it:
"Mikey would like to invite Tom, Dick and Jane around to get to know you and share with you a bit about what it means to be a part of the Crossroads community"
(c) Don't have generic fliers... especially not general-info fliers as they currently are. Rather, have letters, or at least invitations with 'Dear ____' on them.
3. Reasons why we might apologise for a public statement that causes offence:
(a) Because we were factually incorrect
(b) Because we were unkind or unwise in when/how/where we said it
(c) Because we
4. Some logistics of using email in ministry organising:
(a) Realise it has a low grab-rate. It may seem more efficient, but in some ways it is less so. Many people are more likely to forget an email or not feel they have to worry about what it requests.
(b) Realise that you are sacrificing the opportunity for valuable face-time/phone-time. You can use email to organise ministry but it seems to have less relational value. Most people tend not to feel like they've caught up with you if they receive an email, whereas an organising phonecall can also give a bit of a social dimension.
(c) If organising something, never send an open-ended email to a group list like:
"How shall we do lunch? Who wants to bring what?"
Or:"When shall we meet? What's a good time?"
This tends to freeze people up... it's a diffusion of responsibility. Noone responds so then you get crabby and complain to the email list's inaction. As a result people either feel guilty or resentful.
Far better to propose a time/venue, or propose who should bring what things for lunch. Then you can always re-negotiate as you go.
5. I have heard that some hospitality staff think of the post-church crowd as one of the most nightmarish customer-groupings of the hospitality week. They take over several tables, often people don't order anything, they assume the waiting staff realise that all these separate tables are together, they always want to split the bill, they move chairs and even move tables after placing orders, they don't listen to the waiter/waitress when he/she is trying to ask who ordered the skinny capuccino...
Surely an area of godliness we need to grow in.
6. It is hard for blokes to welcome new blokes into the church. Blokes are less likely to go out for a coffee and 'chat' together. This is a reason why it's good to be on the lookout for shared activities. If you discover that a blokes is doing up his car or building a shed, this is prime getting-to-know-you material. Sheds are to guys what cups of coffee are to girls.
7. Covenant and creation: I read an article in the Reformed Theological Review (P. Williamson, "Covenant: The Beginning of a biblical idea" 65:1) arguing that it was incorrect to think about Adam and Eve being in a covenantal relationship with God. Three things:
(a) The writer said that we shouldn't define 'covenant' too broadly. We must retrict ourselves to the biblical usage. I don't think this is quite fair. I think of the covenant with David, which doesn't appear to be characterised by much formal ratification.
Theological categories, if helpful in describing biblical truths, can often be broader than the specific uses of the word in the pages of Scripture. For example, the category 'prophecy' is helpfully used, even if situations where someone is not specifically called a prophet. That's why we can call Joshua-2Kings 'the Former Prophets'.
Do we need to find proof that Scripture uses the word 'covenant' to describe the Trinity's commitment ot redeem the elect? Do wee need to find Scriptural use of the word 'covenant' to describe God's relatoinship to Adam and Eve? I don't think there is anything theologically misleading in using 'covenant' in broader cases, as long as you think through the reasons why God chose not to use that word all the time.
(b) One reason the article gave for not using the word 'covenant' for God's relationship to Adam and Eve is "Rather than establishing or framing such a divine-human relationship, a covenant seals or formalizes is. The biblical order is relationship, then covenant, rather than covenant, hence relationship."
I would want to clarify this. Even if a relationship already exists before a covenant is made, a covenant creates a new relationship: a covenantal one. It brings a new type of relationship into being. Think about marriage. More than that, when God initiates a relationship with someone, and then makes a covenant with himself, then it is right to see the whole relationship as being covenantal. The relationship was initiated with the purpose of establishing the covenant.
In fact, it is probably right to take this a step further, given the character of God as the faithful God. All God's dealings are in accordance with his good plans and intentions and God remains faithful to his plans and intentions.
In all of these ways, it is right to see the historical and concrete examples of 'covenant', often tied to cultural conventions of the ancient world, as being more concrete expressions of God's promise-making-promise-keeping character.
(c) The article sees covenant as an idea that was introduced by God after the Fall of man. It doesn't represent the way things originally were, and therefore it doesn't represent the end-goal that the whole world is moving towards:
"Rather than allowing creation to be subsumed under covenant, covenant must be understood in the context of creation. The priority of creation over covenant has important ramifications for salvation history. The latter is concerned not merely with the restoration of the divine-human relationship establsihed at creation, but ultimately with the renewal of all things, including the creation itself."
I don't think that by emphasisng the covenant-nature of God's dealings with himself and the world necessarily subsumes creation under covenant. In a sense it does, in so far as God's prior intentions in creating the world are more important than the sheer fact that he did create the world. But more generally the relationship is a bit more mutually supportive than that.
Further, I don't think that a focus on covenant limits our view of salvation to the restoration of divine-human relationships. As far as I can see, the biblical covenants always carry with them humanity's responsibility over the earth, and God's commitment to bless humans with a place of rest.
