TheMorningFlight.com

Someone told me about it and then I saw it on the Telegraph website, ‘Richard Dawkins launches children’s summer camp for atheists’.

I love this. Talk about laugh out loud!

I head up a a team that runs a summer camp which depends upon over 100 volunteers. I could give him some advice about this camp of his.

The big challenge will be to recruit the volunteers to work with the children and young people. In my experience he will need many people willing to give their time for a cause they believe in and will give their lives for, their love for the children and young people must be clearly evident and their passionate belief must be a positive one and not a negative one. Young people are looking for hope and purpose, they find this when they come to their own convictions about life and truth. Reading the description in the Telegraph it sounds to me like this atheist camp is atheistic indoctrination.

I wonder if Dawkins will include teaching the Bible at his camps. After all he has recommended such a thing before.

For my previous posts featuring Dawkins just put ‘Dawkins’ in the search box.

This is doing the rounds on the internet and I would love to know if it is true. Many say it is but I hear it was from the National Enquirer and they are not known for the accuracy. I have copied and pasted much of what I received. You can make up your own mind.

The picture is that of a 21-week-old unborn baby named Samuel Alexander Armas, who is being operated on by surgeon named Joseph Bruner.

The baby was diagnosed with spina bifida and would not survive if removed from his mother’s womb. Samuel’s mother, Julie Armas, is an obstetrics nurse in Atlanta . She knew of Dr Bruner’s remarkable surgical procedure. Practising at Vanderbilt Univ Med Ctr in Nashville , he performs these special operations while the baby is still in the womb.

During the procedure, the doctor removes the uterus via C-section and makes a small incision to operate on the baby. As Dr Bruner completed the surgery on Samuel, the little guy reached his tiny, but fully developed hand through the incision and firmly grasped the surgeon’s finger. Dr Bruner was reported as saying that when his finger was grasped, it was the most emotional moment of his life, and that for an instant during the procedure he was just frozen, totally immobile.

The photograph captures this amazing event with perfect clarity The editors titled the picture, ‘Hand of Hope.’ The text explaining the picture begins, ‘The tiny hand of 21-week-old foetus Samuel Alexander Armas emerges from the mother’s uterus to grasp the finger of Dr Joseph Bruner as if thanking the doctor for the gift of life.’

Little Samuel’s mother said they ‘wept for days’ when they saw the picture. She said, ‘The photo reminds us pregnancy isn’t about disability or an illness, it’s about a little person.’ Samuel was born in perfect health, the operation 100 percent successful.

This morning I woke to the news that Michael Jackson is dead.

My thoughts went straight to Ecclesiastes chapter 6 where it describes a rich person who seems to have it all, yet without the God-given ability to enjoy it all.

I have seen another evil under the sun, and it weighs heavily on men: God gives a man wealth, possessions and honour, so that he lacks nothing his heart desires, but God does not enable him to enjoy them, and a stranger enjoys them instead. This is meaningless, a grievous evil.

I think all the rich and famous should read Ecclesiastes more.

What is Emerging Church? Before I deal with that one I must go back to another question, what will church be in ten years time? That was the question we asked each other in a church leaders meeting ten years ago. And I remember discussing the same question even earlier than that. I ask the same question today.

We had realised that society was changing rapidly and church was not adapting quickly enough. We were confident that church would adapt as the Lord of the church directed his church. But we were trying to imagine what church would become and how quickly such a big ’ship’ could be turned.

In our church in York we adapted to our time and circumstances in 2002 by changing our main Sunday morning meeting into a café-style church meeting. We experienced growth and had the pleasure of seeing lives changes as people connected to God in a new way. The congregation increased so much we had to remove the tables people had been sitting around each week just so we could fit the new people in.

Doing church in news ways is now a mainstream activity, and ‘emerging church’ is a familiar tag for it. The Church of England seem to have opted for the ‘Fresh Expressions’ label, I suppose it is as good a label as any other.

When it is done badly I think that much of ‘emerging church’ is a result of a loss of confidence in the power of the gospel and in the miracle of a transformed life by the power of a risen Jesus. I think it is often like a bunch of drowning people clutching the same sinking log.

I understand their problem, there is a need for church leaders to know how to do small church. Too many church leaders have been looking at a large church or conference model and have tried to copy it. A revivalist with a congregation of ten! It is not likely to succeed.

There is a way! There has been the growing conviction among many that there must be a contemporary way of helping people to meet with God that does not depend on the hyped-up atmosphere of the large crowd. Most western churches are, and for a long time have been, small congregations. In the West more and more leaders are coming to the conclusion that Mega-church is so 20th Century.

Church leaders are trying to discover a new way to do small church. More than a cell or home group but smaller than a revivalist crowd. But how can small be done authentically? That is the big question.

To begin with there has to be a clear shared conviction within the group about what church is.

What is Church?

A conversation was reported to me. It went like this, “Have you heard about this cool church where this minister goes in the park and gives out leaflets and says to people that they are in church cos he’s a Christian and where he is, the church is there as well, so they are all in church?”

Rubbish! Church is more than a man in a field! Whole congregation have been wiped out over the past few years because church has been terminally de-constructed. The culprits may have been well-meaning but their shallow thought processes and sparsity of theological resources has let them and their congregations down.

A question for you to think about or to bring to your small group for discussion, “What do you say church is?”

What is Church? Some say it is community - where the believers are and where the believers are gathered that is church. Some say it is the Eucharist with it’s officiating priest is church. Some say church is the believers gathered around the ascension ministries of Ephesians 4:11.

There will be different answers to those questions, there is no agreement across the board, but no emerging/fresh expression church will survive if it does not deal with the issue of what church is. You can only muck about with the packaging if you are clear in your mind what is substance and what is just packaging. Two Christians drinking in a pub are just two Christians drinking in a pub. It is a delusion to think that that is a church.

Theological assumptions informed our experiment when we started in 2002. For me, doing church café-style was the result of having come to conclusions about the difference between the packaging and the substance inside. This question may be widely debated. It matters little if there is lack of consensus with the church at large so long as the experimenting congregation and their leadership have come to some shared conclusions.

What is your emerging/fresh expression church for?

It could be a seeker-friendly addition to the main church programme, or an outreach event from the main church. Or is it a different way of doing main church? Doing main church a different way is the much needed experiment of our time.

Now though it is ten years later and we still need to be asking the question I started this post with, “What will church be in ten years time?”

The news now is that Gordon Brown could happily walk away from his job and become a teacher.

I am not surprised he feels this way, such is the relentless criticism he gets. I am suprised that he admits it though, while admiring his courage to admit it.

I have sympathy for Gordon. I think Tony Blair sank the ship of the labour government. His clever trick was to leap off before the final wave closed over while slapping the captains cap on Brown.

I think Blair sank the government with the invasion of Iraq. I don’t think God will hold them guiltless. Is this the judgement of God that they are seeing? I find it interesting that a government typified by arrogance is being so humbled.

Trouble is, where is there a party of moral fibre and godliness?

Only four days left to hear the wonderful programme on the word Hallelujah.

It was broadcast on BBC Radio4 last Sunday and was listening to it as I drove home after church.

Have a listen if you can fit it in before it is removed (perhaps they will repeat it - I think they should). Composer Jocelyn Pook celebrates the music and meaning of this marvellous word through history. At the end I got hear the new composition she created, inspired by the word.

Check it out here.

I got an interesting YouTube link sent to me yesterday. It was sent by an Anglican vicar friend of mine. He said it reminded him of York Elim using the Barbican Centre before Christmas.

It seems Chris Moyles and his mates were chatting about church on his radio programme. It would be too much to say I was shocked but I was taken aback by his comments. He was impressed about a televised service he had seen but said he had not known churches like that existed in this country. I thought, “Where has he been?” Then I was thinking how have we (the UK church) failed, that he should not have known.

Watch the clip, it is worth seeing.