Richard's Blog

I'm really enjoying Richard Foster's latest book, "Life with God".

In our desire for a packaged, user-friendly, "just tell me what to do" life of faith, we distort the Bible into an owners' manual for successful living. Or even moral living: then we can judge ourselves superior to others if we follow the rules more faithfully than they. [p60]

It chimes in with one of the more successful bits of "The Shack" - about which I've posted a few days' ago : proper "review" to come - where the whole question of "law vs relationship" is unpacked beautifully I think.

We would love to have a clear list of rules to follow, but it would just kill our relationship with Jesus in the same sure way a marriage based on rules and agreements is destined for the buffers.

Our lives are shaped by our friendship with Jesus, not our friendship with Jesus founded on our good lives.

Blogged at the beginning of the week that God's timing seems, to our eyes, often rather ridiculous - imagine the thought of asking for such a chunk of money in the week the financial markets went into meltdown and everything felt (financially) as insecure as they've done for a long time...

Yet we've had the most astonishing start to our two-week "Making Room" project appeal. Thank you to those who've already given and if you're still considering how much you can pass on, then thank you for considering!

Looking forward to passing on some good news on Sunday morning and a "final" total in 9 days' time.

Exciting and encouraging times in the midst unpromising times.

God never gets the date wrong...

I often wonder at God's timing... I know I shouldn't, but my perspective on things isn't his and I regularly fail to see why on earth things should work out like they do.

Two weeks' ago we came to the clear conclusion that now was precisely the right time to 'go for it' with the Making Room project and that we needed to move swiftly and decisively to launch the appeal.

Given the financial whirlwind that blew through the day, I'm not at all convinced that, "in God's shoes" (?!) , Monday 15th September 2008 would have been an ideal day to have to circulate the email with question "Will you consider giving an donation to this project, beyond what is comfortable?".

And yet, I'm glad to say that I haven't changed my sense of the 'rightness' of it one jot - and the responses, both verbally to the talk on Sunday and financially with the very first few hours of giving (which have been very encouraging indeed) have bourne this out.

God's ways, as ever, are not our ways and God's provision for what we need as a church to do what we've been called to do aren't dependent on the whirlwinds of things we can't control, but on the generosity of God and God's People.

I gave an unusual, but extremely important, talk this morning in place of the normal sermon. If you missed it, please take the 20 minutes needed to listen and consider responding.

You can listen to it or download it via this link directly, or subscribe to the podcast - the link for that is on the homepage.

More on the Making Room appeal to come tomorrow via an all-church email, the blog and website.

If you've already decided to make a gift, you can send/give a cheque ("All Souls Church") to the office (make the envelope "Making Room") or do a direct bank transfer. The church's bank details are available online.

It was wonderful to take Paul and Lyndsay's wedding here at All Souls on Saturday. Here's a few snaps from the occasion - click the photos below to go to the online gallery...

I'd vaguely heard rumblings of a U.S. publishing sensation in the form of novel The Shack. It seems to be continuing her, since it's ranked number 12 in books as of today on amazon.co.uk

What's remarkable is that part of the book reads more like a deeply theological parable than a normal novel - and there's little that's subtle about the approach: in this book, the central character, Mack, meets the Trinity...

Mark's blog has two really good posts (here and here) on his reading of it.

I'm now about half-way through it and have very mixed feelings about it. I feel just a bit manipulated by it emotionally, though given the storyline (which I won't give away) I guess it's hard not to do. It's not the greatest writing I've ever read - a bit clunky in places and I skipped some bits that felt a bit slow.

And yet, there are some lovely moments and I've certainly never read a re-imagining of the relationships in the Trinity (and how we might actually be drawn in to experience them) that gets as close to being as non-naff as this.

Some of it is very brave - having God the Father ('Papa') first appear as an African-American woman is pretty cutting edge, especially for a book that will be read in the American Christian market. It sounds wierd, but it works within the fictional context of the book - and is less odd, theologically, than you might think (read Mark on that).

I'll post again on finishing it - but in the meantime, anyone else read it or reading it?

I continued our series on "Good-News-ing", or evangelism with the second 'bite' at Acts 17 where Paul is in Athens speaking about the God who is both creator and sustainer and who, in Jesus, is going to judge all things.

We focused on the way Paul took the time to get to know the culture and questions of his listeners and to show how his message was good news for those questions.

You can download or listen directly from the link here or subscribe to the podcast stream from iTunes or equivalent.