The Magic Word

Quote from Abigail (aged 4):

Abigail to her grandmother: "Could you pass me some of that fruit?"
Dad (from nearby): "What's the missing word?"
Abigail: -silence-
Dad: "It starts with 'P'"
Abigail: "Pancake?"

Salvation Study Summary

A group of us have recently finished a study on salvation and baptism. This involved reading through the New Testament to collect as many relevant passages as we could find (we ended up with nearly 300 of them) and then looking at them in a fair amount of detail to try to ensure that what we believe / teach is supported by what the Bible seems to us to be saying on the matter.

Here is the list of what we perceived to be the main points:

1. God can give salvation to anyone. He doesn't need us to do anything to "enable" Him to save us.
2. There is nothing that anyone can do to "earn" salvation.
3. God indicates that He will give salvation to those who genuinely come to Him in faith / belief.
4. If our belief (faith) and love are genuine, then they will be demonstrated in our willingness to respond to Him in any way that He asks (i.e. in our actions). A "belief" that is not accompanied by an appropriate response (change) is not the kind of belief that God is looking for.
5. A key part of the initial response that God wants from us is for us to be baptised. By being baptised we "sign" a covenant with God in which we pledge to become slaves to Him. This releases us from our former slavery to sin, transfers us to the new covenant and makes us part of Christ's body.
6. This does not mean that there is any power in the physical of baptism itself - it is God, through the perfect sacrifice of Jesus, who gives salvation.
7. Once we are under this "new covenant", our sins are continually cleansed by Jesus' blood so we are continually perfect in the sight of God even though we fail to be perfectly sinless ourselves.
8. However, we can later choose to reject God and His gift of salvation. If we do so we remove ourselves from the "body" and return to our previous slavery to sin (fall away).

Slightly more detail of these points (and some others that we also noted) as well as examples of supporting passages) are included here: summary of baptism study (PDF).

Still Hungry

Here's another quote from Lucia - she must be going through a growth spurt at the moment - anyone would think we never fed her!

Lucia: "Is it breakfast time?"
Dad: "Yes"
Lucia: "I like that! I do, I do! Are you having breakfast? Is it lunch time?"

Hungry

Lucia (aged 2) early one morning before breakfast:

Are we having supper for lunch?

The Feeding of the 5000

Following on from my earlier post about "Loaves, fish, pride and burnout", here's a poem based on the feeding of the 5000 recorded in John 6:1-13...

I looked round about and saw lots of mouths
That needed all to be fed.
"It's lucky for me," (I thought to myself)
"That I brought my own fish and bread!
I think if I too was one of those folk
(And was waiting too to be fed)
It would take such a time to bring in supplies
That I think that by then I'd be dead!"

So I pulled out my food (five loaves and two fish)
And was about to dig into my tucker,
When I heard Jesus say (to someone nearby)
"Now - What are we planning for supper?"

The someone He spoke to seemed rather surprised
And nervously looked up and down:
"I'm not really sure we'll have enough cash...
And besides - it's a long way to town"

I looked round again at the mingling crowd
And looked down again at my bread
And thought to myself, "Well, it's not very much,
But... well - let it never be said
That there in the midst of that ravenous crowd
'Twas only me that was fed!

"I must surely do something - um - I'll give them some fish.
... No - in fact, I'll give them it all
It's not very much; it is hardly a drop
But ... it's better than nothing at all."
So I gave them my bread and I gave them my fish
(And it really looked rather small)
But Jesus just smiled and gave me a look
That made me feel seven feet tall!

He said a short prayer and called His disciples
Who handed the food round about.
And my five little loaves and my two little fish
Just never seemed to run out!!
Everyone there, in that whole crowd of people,
I can confidently say without doubt
Ate as much as they needed (and some even more):
An amazing - awesome - result!

I'd have never imagined; I'd have never believed
That such a small little thing
Could make such a difference - when it looked at first sight
That the little that I had to bring
Was tiny compared to a problem so large
That no-one knew where to begin.
But what I now know, what I've learned here today
Is there really is no such thing
As a gift that's too small to be used for great things
When placed in the hands of The King.

- Mark H (DelightInLight.com)

Note: This is one of a number of poems for Christian children that I have posted on this blog. If you want to see more of them, please have a look at this post: "Fun Poems for Kids"

You can also email a link to this post by clicking the mail icon below...

No I'm Not!

While I'm online, I must tell you about what Lucia (aged 2) keeps saying these days. When ever anyone says "you're cute" or "you're a funny-bunny" or "you're ..." (just about anything else) - she always says "No I'm not I'm Lucia!"

No amount of attempted persuasion will convince her to accept that she's anything other than her name!

The Mission

I can't believe that it's over a month since I last posted to this blog! Sorry about that!

Over the past few weeks I have been reading a book called "The Purpose Driven Church" by Rick Warren, and, whilst I don't necessarily agree with everything he says or recommends, I think that his fundamental point is a good one: if you want to have a healthy church, you need to understand what the Biblical purpose of the church is, and then make sure that you are doing that.

Rick Warren's starting point is a combination of the "Great Commission" (Matt 28:18-20) and the "Greatest Commands" (Matt 22:37-40).

This seems like a great starting point to me. According to the "Great Commission" we are supposed to go into the world and make disciples, baptise them, and teach them to obey Jesus' commands. Of all the commands that Jesus gave, the greatest are to "love God" and "love your neighbour".

In other words, the church's purpose (or mission) is to help people to move from wherever they are towards being more "obedient" to the great commands of loving God and loving others.

How that is actually put into effect depends on where the person is. This ranges from someone who is a "stranger" to the church to someone who is already a mature Christian. All of these people still need to move in the direction of greater love for God and each other. However, the things that the church can (should?) do to help changes depending on where the person is in that spectrum. Also, the extent to which it is the church's input (as opposed to the individual's own input) that brings about the change also varies.

Here's a sheet with couple of diagrams that I used to illustrate some of these points when I was speaking to our congregation about all this a few Sundays ago: Church Mission PDF. It shows some thoughts on how some of the different "stages" progress, some of the key things that are likely to be needed if the person is to move forward, how the input of the church and the individual varies over the different stages, and some examples of things that can "go wrong" at various points along the way.

We have just (today) introduced an additional study for those people in the congregation who are interested in pursuing some issues at more depth. We are currently finishing off a study on salvation, and then intend to move on to study this question of the purpose of the church and how we, in our congregation, can fulfil our mission more effectively.

Please pray for God's guidance for us on this so we can serve God as effectively as possible.