Dustin - Personal Development

You are a powerful person: God is in you and as a result you have importance and significance. You are God's son/daughter with God's Spirit living in you. In light of this reality you should develop yourself. Give attention to your growth.

Consider relationships with people above you, alongside you and under you. Think in terms of Paul, Barnabas and a Timothy.

We need a Paul - someone over us, older than us or more mature than us. We need to learn to 'puke up' rather 'out' or 'down'. Don't dump your anxiety, fear, insecurity, sin on those you're mentoring (down) or even always your friends (out) but rather on those above you or over you.

Mentoring others is important since as you mentor others it forces you to mentor yourself/look after yourself.

Goal setting

A good goals should be:

1. Controllable: within your reach and sphere of influence
2. Measurable
3. Attainable
4. Meaningful to you
5. Time based: set an end date. If it's a difficult goal set a shorter time span. If it's an easy goal, set a longer time span. That way you can review it. 
6. Shareable: who will you share it with?
7. Reviewed often. Daily, hourly, weekly?

Habits

We all have habits whether we are aware of them or not. 

How long does it take to form a habit? 21 days. It takes 7 days to recover a habit.

Building a habit is much harder than setting a goal. But they are much more powerful/effective. 

John Maxwell:

We over estimate what we can do in one day, but we under estimate what we can do with many days.

Pick one habit you want to set rather than five:

Spiritual development

Spiritual gifts. In the list of spiritual gifts there are some that are word based gifts that involve speaking, there are others that are action oriented: healing, miracles, discernment, generosity, helping, administrating. 

Piper makes the point that Paul's list of spiritual gifts aren't exhaustive. Instead he says 'a spiritual gift is anything that you rely on the Holy Spirit to do, and when you do it, it increases people's faith in God, and leaves them feeling encouraged.'

Emotional Intelligence

How to increase your EQ:

1) Tune in to your emotions so you can recognise them.

2) Separate yourself from your emotions. Make them your friends that you talk to. I'm not an angry person, I am experience the emotion of anger which is trying to tell me something: 'Anger thank you for this information you are trying to give me.'

3) Close your mouth until you have processed the cause of these emotions.

4) Ask why you're feeling this emotion in order to process the information your are receiving.

5) Locate the root of where the emotion is coming from.

6) Communicate what you learned to whoever is involved or can help you.

Learn to value the validity of another person's emotion even if it's an emotion that you don't think makes logical sense or is justified.

Stress and lack of sleep make you less able to manage emotions properly. 

Church History - Steve Alliston

How the gospel came to Britain

There were probably Christian Roman soldiers who were posted to the UK and yet it was probably traders who first brought the gospel to the UK, immigration and the free movement of people was the means by which people could travel and took the gospel to the UK.

It was possible to travel from Carlisle all the way down through Europe to Iraq safely on Roman roads. Roman Britain was very multi-cultural much like it is today. There is an inscription on Hadrian's wall of a Syrian trader declaring his love for his Celtic wife.

There was a Bishop of Gaul in 177AD (Irenaus) who learned the local dialect to send missionaries across the sea to Britain.

When the Romans pulled out of Britain in 407AD they left it in a state open to plunder and pickings from Saxons. The Saxons pushed back the Celtic and Christian believers in the land. Within a couple of centuries there was very little Christian reference within England, confined as they became to the North and the West.

St. Patrick is probably the most famous of missionaries to Britain. Patrick escaped from Ireland where he was living as a slave. Then, as a young man, came to a monastery where he got an education and then felt God speak to him about returning to Ireland. Patrick was then sent in 431 as a missionary to Ireland. Patrick was a Elijah figure who confronted the spiritual powers of his day. He confronted the pagan druids of the day and was recognised as being a better druid than the druids. Legend has it that the reason there are no snakes in Ireland today is because Patrick banished them. The turning point for Patrick was when he confronted the druids by establishing a pascal (easter) fire of his own agains the druids pagan fires.

Patrick founded a church in every place he settled. After 30 years he put in place 350 Bishops to lead the churches he'd put it in place (around 1000 churches). He died in around 460AD.

Pope Gregory (590-604) took young men from their countries of origin and trained them up and sent them back to their countries to plant churches. England's first missionary was Augustine who was commissioned as Bishop of England. He came to Canterbury where he met with King Ethelbert in the open air who responded to the gospel and gave Augustine an old Roman church to use. That building is today's Canterbury Cathedral. In 607 Augustine went to London and took over an old Roman church building.

Missionaries went out from England. In 732 AD the last missionary from England went out from us Boniface who went to Germany. The Vikings then come and raid the land. The Normans then came in 1066 and settled England.

Wycliff: it isn't the popes or monks or kings who should decide our faith, but the word of God.

Wycliff chose to ignore the rule that he was forbidden to translate the Bible into the vulgar tongue. Once he completed his translation he enlisted hundreds of volunteers to copy the Bible into English. The new Bibles fuelled the lollard groups enthusiasms. The lollards went all over England 'seducing the nobles, great lords and the poor'. Their number increased until they filled the land. They were called lollards derived from the German word meaning 'to mutter or murmur' due to their speaking under the breath, muttering the gospel to people murmuring it from house to house.

The Reformation in Europe

The invention of the printing press had a huge impact through the world. Suddenly ideas could be copied and recopied throughout the empire quickly. The spreading of ideas is dangerous to the establishment, it unsettles the status quo and threatens to overthrow the regime. For this reason Luther's anti-establishment ideas made waves, and the recent invention of the printing press made their waves even bigger.

Luther was a Colossus. He was a monk in a small town who went on to lead the reformation. Luther was a rural country dweller rather than a city slicker.

He was due to become a lawyer and after surviving a thunderstorm he followed through on his bargain with St. Anne and became a monk. He wasn't a believer but he was a religious man who tried his hardest to keep all the rules and impress God. He also suffered from severe constipation. Then one day when he was on the toilet reading Romans 1:17 he got converted and found emotional and spiritual release.

Visioneering: Andy Stanley

Introduction

Story of the Wright brothers. Visioneering is the engineering of a vision. In a formula:

Visioneering = inspiration + conviction + action + determination + completion

'Everyone ends up some where in life. A few people end up somewhere on purpose. Those are the ones with vision. 

 Vision weaves four things into the fabric of our daily experience.

1. Passion

Vision evoked emotion. There is no such thing as an emotionless vision. Remember being a teenager and being captured by some vision of the good life. Whether romantic or adventurous, that vision drove us to voluntarily do all kinds of 'risky' activities.

2. Motivation

Vision provides motivation. The mundane begins to matter. Dike builders are a movitavted bunch. Saving a town is enough to keep you working through the night. But just filling bags with dirt for the sake of bag-filling will leave you looking at your watch.

3. Direction

Vision will prioritise your values. A clear vision has the power to bring what's most important to the surface of your schedule and lifestyle. People without clear vision are easily distracted. They have a tendency to drift from one activity, pleasure or relationship to another. Without vision there is no relational, financial or moral compass.

4. Purpose

A vision makes you an important link between current reality and the future. Your set of visions are unique to you. No one else will share your particular passions for what could be. Others may applaud them. They may buy into the aspects of your vision that interface with their life. And they maky work with you in the areas where you share a common vision. But your vision-set is unique to you. The uniqueness gives you purpose.

The divine element

Honouring God involves discovering his picture or vision of what our lives could and shoul be. I am God's workmanship' means God has decided what you could be and should be.

More to this life

We don't have a right to take our abilitieis, experiences and opportunities and run off in any direction we please. We lost that right at Calvary.

After chasing our own visions:

We feel like we did as a kid after all the presents were opened on Christmas morning. Is that all there is?

Building Blocks

1. A vision begins as a concern.
2. A vision doe not necessarily require immediate action.
3. Pray for opportunities and plan as if you expect God to answer your prayers.
4. God is using your circumstances to position and prepare you to accomplish his vision for your life.
5. What God originates, he orchestrates.
6. Walk before you talk; investigate before you initiate.
7. Communicate your vision as a solution to a problem that must be addressed immediately .
8. Cast your vision to the appropriate people at the appropriate time.
9. Don't expect others to take greater risks or make greater sacrifices than you have.
10. Don't confuse your plans with God's vision.
11. Visions are refined - they don't change; plans are revised - they rarely stay the same. 
12. Respond to criticism with prayer, remembrance, and if necessary, a revision of the plan.
13. Visions thrive in an environment of unity; they die in an environment of division.
14. Abandon the vision before you abandon your moral authority.
15. Don't get distracted.
16. There is divine potential in all you envision to do.
17. The end of a God-ordained vision is God.
18. Maintaining a vision requires adherence to a set of core beliefs and behaviours.
19. Visions require constant attention.
20. Maintaining a vision requires bold leadership.

Chapter One: A Vision Is Born

Visions are born in the soul of a man or woman who is consumed with the tension between what is and what could be. Anyone who is emotionally involved - frustrated, brokenhearted, maybe even angry - about the way things are in light of the way they believe things could be, is a candidate for a vision. 

Think: Genesis

Overview of Genesis:

Genesis is not just a bout of beginnings it is a book of gospel. All the major themes and ideas of the gospel are there in the pages of Genesis.

Genesis is the Bible in a book.

Genesis within the Torah:
the house of the tent of God in Exodus.
Israel plays out and bears Adam's commission. They increase in number, they fall (golden calf).

The structure of Genesis:

Generations... various sections of the book are separated out by phrases along with 'these are the generations of...' and what followed from.

1. Prologue (1:1-2:4a)
2. Generations of Adam (5:1-6:8)
3. Generations of Noah (6:9-9:29)
4. Generations of Shem, Ham and Japtheth (10:1-11:9)
5. Generations of Shem (11:10-26)
6. Generations of Terah (11:27-25:11)
7. Generations of Ishmael (11:27-25:11)
8. Generations of Isaac (25:19-35:29)
9. Generations of Esau (36:1-37:1)
10. Generations of Jacob (37:2-50:26)

Genesis and the scriptures.

The underlying assumption of the rest of the scripture is that Genesis is truthful and accurate and assume it's faithfulness.

The only answer the Bible ever gives to the problem of evil is basically to rehash Genesis 1 and do it sarcastically: I created everything, so hold your peace!

The New Testament affirms:

• Creation out of nothing
• Creation of humanity from the dust of the earth
• The creation of man as male and female, divorce, dress within the church, doctrine in the church.
• The deception of Eve and the fall of Adam into sin and death
• The historicity of Abel's sacrifice, and death, Enoch's non-death, Noah's ark, the flood, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah wit fire and sulphur, Lot's wife, the miraculous conception and near-sacrifice of Isaac, Esau's sin, the Joseph story et al...

Some of them we are embarrassed by and yet Jesus made a sermon illustration out of all of them.

The position of Jesus remains however.. It is written.

Hermenuetical diversity:

• Allegorical readings (Origen, Augustine etc.)
• Source critical readings (were there four different authors, angle...)
• Grammatical-historical readings (what it means in its historical setting is what it means)
• Ancient historiography (the stories and ideas meant something distinctly different in that culture and that day than it does now)

Authorship: 

We can call the author Moses and yet recognise that it must also include insertions by other people.

re: Homer wrote the Ilyiad and yet in reality it was a community of people over time...

Genesis of Mythology:

There are lots of similarities between ancient myths from the region and the Israelite story. Lots of similarities but some very important differences.

God, rather than revealing himself to us individually and personally generation by generation instead revealed himself through human purpose. The authority is in the author. It is written for us but not to us. It transcends culture but is culture-bound.

We have to learn to see the world and the text in the way that the ancient Israelites saw the text. If we're going to read the Bible right we have to read it through ancient eyes. 

TEMPLE

The world that God is building is a temple, a three story house: a foundation, the temple building itself and, curtains. The water (the underlaying foundation), the earth (the building), the air (the curtains).

Eden is a prototypical temple. G. K. Beale.

The Levites are servants and guardians of the presence of God. That's what Adam was entrusted to do. In that sense Adam was the first priest-king.

The cherub was put at the entrance to guard the dwelling place of God, the same is true in the temple.

The temple imagery is full of plants and fruits; garden imagery.

Eden is the source of 4 rivers, it is high ground. The river of life flows from the temple. Rivers bring life. 

The garden has an eastern-facing entrance, like all subsequent temples in scripture.

Adam is told to both guard the presence of God and also subdue the earth. The challenge is a pastoral one. How do we guard and protect what God has given us and also extend the kingdom and bring people into it. Adam is told to take te presence with him, extend the borders of the garden called pleasant.

The purpose of the text isn't only to say (or even?) that 'this is what the garden looked like, and if you'd have been there this is what you would have seen with your camera'. It's to say more than that about the habitation of God on Earth. 

Myth = freight bearing worldview imagery 

Eden is a temple and temple is an extension of Eden and the call of the church, to be the outpost of God.

Ancient temples:

• The seven day/seven year is a common phrase in the ancient world for the dedication period of a temple.
• The final day of temple construction concludes with the placing of the god in the temple as the climax.
• Ancient readers would have recognised the form as a temple building story. It is a story about where God lives.

God lives in the heavens and his image is in his temple (Eden, humans).

The Growth of the temple:

Eden - Tabernacle - Temple - Jesus - Church - New Creation

Theophanies, Altars and wells.

There are no tabernacles or temples built in the rest of Genesis however...

• three aspects of the Garden-temple will reappear throughout Genesis:
• Theophanies: Melchizedek? Abraham's 3 visitors, Bethel, Peniel
• There are more theophanies in Genesis than there are in the rest of the Bible
• Altars: a major compnent of temple life and altars appear often in Genesis. Without a tabernacle or set place you have to do it elsewhere.
• Man and woman, fruitfulness, water and life: wells (wells are mini gardens/oasis) 
• The patriarchs meet their wives in mini-garden scenes

ORIGINS

All Christians are, by definition, creationists. - Denis Alexander

Scientific considerations: 

The age of the Earth:

• The Earth is thought to be 4.566 billion years old and the universe 13.7 billion years old. 
• The primary way we establish this is based on radiosotopes - atoms within rocks which have unstable nuclei that decay over set periods.
• 106m years for Samarium-147
• 18.8m years old for rubidium-87
• etc.
• Tree rings can also be counted and amalgamated, in central Germany back to 8400BC and the results compared with other dating methods.
• The same is true of layers in the Antarctic ice cap - one 3190m core has reached ice 740000 years old.
• Similarly: sedimentary rock erosion (grand canyon) can be measure and compared
• Within a relatively small margin of error (2% for radioisotopes, up to 10% for ice caps layers), all of these dating methods agree, leading to an estimated age of about 4.6b years.

Evolution may look random to us but that doesn't mean it is. 

Human origins and genetics:

• Psuedogenes (genes that don't have a function but exist nonetheless). We have 19k of them (genes that at one time had a function but don't any more; genetic fossils).
• Jumping genes: copy and paste genes that are nonprotein encoding part of the genome.
• Retroviral insertions: genes that emerge after a virus. We share these with other primates. the idea being that once upon a time our genetic ancestors had a virus that altered their genome that got passed onto us.
• Scientists regard genetics as much the most compelling evidence for evolution.

Scripture:

The writers purpose isn't always to teach things that are doctrinally binding.

Human origins:

• What does 'dust of the earth' mean?
• a literal clod of mud?
• physical stuff (cf. 2:19)
• Perishable matter (cf. 3:19; see also the 'dust' of Job, Psalms etc.)?

Death: in Paul death is usually used to mean separation from God. Dying for Paul is 'falling a sleep'

THE IMAGE OF GOD:

What does the image of God mean?

• Representing God: border marks. Human beings in that sense embody the kingly rule of God. when people see a human (not just a Christian), they see something of what God is like. Therefore - fill the earth and establish my rule everywhere. Exploring and travelling is all bound up with what it means to be human. We are also the priestly image of God. We are the icon of God. 
• Resembling God: 
• Ruling for God: God is a king and so are we.
• Relating like God: we are meant to be in community.
• Reproducing for God: Human beings were intended to have lots of sex and lots of children, so that the world would be filled with people bearing God's image and glory.
• Reasoning like God: The capacity to use language and abstract reasoning is unique to people. Primates cannot reason like we are. One expert on primates said 'you would never see to apes carrying a log together, and if we did it would completely change the way we understand them.' Such is the gap between us and primates. They cannot co-operate together in anything like the way we can. 
• Resting like God. No other creatures take one dat off in seven.

Authority and vulnerability:

Human beings are supposed to have high authority and high vulnerability. This enables us to be strong and weak. Jesus when he wraps the servants towel around him is both strong and weak. 

THE FALL:

If you were to only have Moses' account and ask the question 'what is the main consequence of the fall?' it is nakedness and shame. The idea being that we are vulnerable and insecure when we turned from looking at him and receiving warmth and affirmation and security. 

Instead of the question, 'where is God?!' We need to instead ask the question 'what went wrong to make this happen?'

Things to consider/illustrations: 

• Relational betrayal : Don Miller's friend catching his wife having an affair
• Alexander Solzhenitsyn : the line between good and evil runs through each of us (think 'Hans, are we the baddies?'
• The command 'don't eat from that tree.' : is less like 'don't walk on the grass' and more like 'don't feed the bears' or 'don't sleep with anyone else.' (it's not an arbitrary law but something that is for my good)
• It teaches us that independence is more important than happiness.  
• Cosmic consequence of sin against God : Children of Chernobyl 
• Why the tree? Keller's son : obedience vs agreement. His son (and us as human beings) must learn to obey God for obedience sake rather than because we agree with him or understand every reason behind his command. 

THEODICY:

Theodicy is an attempt to justify the ways of God to humans, usually with reference to suffering and evil. Ways of handling it:

• Soul-making - however... suffering doesn't appear to be distributed according to sinfulness.
• Free will theodicy - however... the new creation 
• Natural law theodicy, God creates natural laws that when violated have natural consequences - however... most pain an suffering isn't related always to poor choices (cancer for example)

Alvin Plantinga argues that rather than defending God he makes the case that God could have a good reason but I rather that I don't know what it is.

EVIL:

Evil is not a thing it is an absence of a thing. It is shadow, the place where light isn't, the place where goodness isn't. 

ABEL, HEBEL & BABEL:

Abel's name 'Habel' means 'vapour' / 'breathy' and is the opening line of Ecclesiastes 'hebel of hebel' Everything is hebel.

Joseph is the undoing of the Cain and Abel story. The younger brother survives an attempt on his life and redeems his brothers.

The boundaries God has drawn get undone by the sons of

REASONS FOR THE FLOOD:

'wickedness of man was great in the earth, and every intent of the thoughts was evil all the time.'

God floods the earth to get rid of evil and people are/were evil. After the flood

IS JACOB AS BAD AS ALL THAT?

Isaac is being ungodly by preferring the older.  Isaac prefers him for his appearance. Esau is Saul, Jacob is David.

When Jacob's mother favours him, she is right to do so as she is taking the word of God.

GOD:

Yahweh and Elohim are the two main names of God in Genesis.

Elohim is used of the sovereign, creator, big picture, wide-angle lens.
Yahweh is used of the personal, God of Israel, particular, narrow-angle lens, spoken of anthropomorphisms (walking, talking etc.)

Used to communicate different aspects of God and we shouldn't play them off against each other.

Genesis 18: Painting of the three angels waiting for Abraham to come out with the meal. The painting of them sat around is a picture of the painter's image of God.

MONOTHEISM:

God gives good gifts. This stands in contrast to the booby trapped gifts that the pagan gods give to men in their stories: Pandora's box, fire, woman etc.

JUSTICE & MERCY:

Abraham and Isaac. The gods of the other nations allowed and requested people to perform child sacrifices. So Abraham thinks 'ok let's see if you are like the gods of the other nations, but at the last minute God stops him and says emphatically 'I am NOT like those gods,' and swaps a child for an animal.

EXODUS: NOAH, TERAH, ABRAM..

Moses was put in an 'ark' (same word as Noah's boat!)

When Paul says 'creation is straining' new creation coming from inside the old. Like Noah.

Noah's 'fall' is strikingly similar to that of Genesis 3: fruit, nakedness, clothing, recognition, a curse on the tempter, a commendation of the other two.

Baptism is a heavily exodus shaped picture.  Not just Moses, but Noah as well. We are the people who receive the Lord's supper and baptism (Noah drinks wine in the new creation; albeit too much).

The journey of Abraham and Sarai into Egypt is one of the hardest stories to make sense of, if we assume the OT is like Aesop's fables.

Using his Exodus is really helpful rather than h doing a 'here's what we can learn from his faith...' Thus most preachers don't preach his exodus story. However it makes much more sense to use his story as an advanced foretelling of the exodus story.

Famine = should trigger exodus ideas.

Lot's Exodus:

Hard to make sense of if you don't see an exodus theme:

• Circumcision is a type of passover: Weird story of God threatening to kill Moses for not being circumcised is unusual but if we understand circumcision as, not only a covenant seal, but also a type of passover. 

Sodom was a well-watered place of great natural fruitfulness, much like Egypt.

Genesis 18: Angels 'pass by' and encounter Abraham in the doorway.

• LOT: 19:3 an evening meal of unleavened bread is eaten
• A doorway divides those who are safe from those who will be destroyed 
• The angels then practically force and lead Lot and his family out. 
• Lot is told to flee to the mountain.
• A fleeing individual looks back, pining for the destroyed nation (like the Israelites complain and want to go back) 
• ... a pillar of witness is established (salt in Lot's wife's case, stones in the Israelites case)

We, the church are described in Hebrews as being like this, caught between looking forward and looking back, pining for what we had/have. 

Joseph and Jesus:

Allow the Joseph story to enrich your understanding of Jesus.

The book switches from talking about genealogies and then with the Joseph story it introduces him very differently... 'Joseph was seventeen,'

The step from one child being given the blessing to here, in this story, allow of them are given the blessing; the twelve tribes are all blessed.  The writer's saying 'that isn't how this bit of the story is going to work.'

- The covenant isn't secured by physical succession, Jacob doesn't lay his hands on Joseph and say 'you will have the blessing,' but it is secured by rescuing them from peril. Joseph is special not because he receives the blessing but because he rescues the people from peril.

there is, ultimately, typological elemtns at work that brotthers will bow down to a brother. All the tribes will stand beneath you and worship.

37:17 Joseph is given a mission 'go out and find your brothers...'

The blood offering is offered to the Father. 

Joseph not only descends into the pit (=death) with blood (=atonement), but also goes into slavery (=ransom).

In prison:

Joseph innocent between two criminals. Jesyus on the cross between two thieves.

Joseph is hurriedly brought out of the dungeon - at the order of the Most High (41)

In prison: baker and cup bearer - bread and wine

Joseph's reconciliation to his brothers takes a long time and is drawn out. 

Emotional Intelligence: Simon Elliott (Impact training)

Leadership is always the problem, leadership is always the solution.

In the two circles, leadership/initiative is what expands the circle of influence.

After 40 years in pastoral ministry Simon, having seen lots of different iniatives come and go, different approaches to Sundays, to small groups to... and his opinion is that things live or die on their leadership. You can have a perfect structure and a poor leader and it won't work and an imperfect structure and a good leader and it will work.

Above the line and below the line leadership:

Think trees. Above the ground is the tree, they are the skills of leadership. Below the line are the roots, character.

People forgive failure in skill a lot quicker than they would forget or forgive failure in character. If I preach a bad sermon people forget it by the end of the day, if in the middle of the sermon I swear at someone for being late, everyone will remember it for the next 10 years!

Your personality is like your operating system, it's how you process information.

Under nourished children's brains are a third smaller than that of a healthy child's. They will not be able to challenge the things that are being taught them.

Our character is a mixture of

- Personality
- IQ: informed by Nurture, diet and education
- EQ: see below

Picture - the character triangle diagram 
The key to developing your character is EQ.

Definition

Emotional intelligence is the ability to recognise emotion in yourself or others, to recognise how those emotions may shape activity and relationships, it is the ability to bring those emotions into a healthy place alongside the rational mind biblical truth, and the Holy Spirit. It is the ability to do this proactively and retrospectively.

Our emotions are meant to lead us to God. They remind us of our need for God but can be used instead to lead us away from God.

How do you feel right now? Happy, content, energetic,

Stages of Emotional intelligence:

Stage 1: Awareness (after 20seconds 25% of a room couldn't tell you how they were feeling, they are not aware of their emotions)

Stage 2: My feelings shape my actions

Stage 3: Past feelings shape actions: we need to learn to process past emotions to stop them having a destructive impact on the future.

Stage 4: Balanced control. Our emotions are God given and are fantastic guides. They make us spiritually sensitive, aware of others emotions. They are brilliant guides but rubbish leaders. The Holy Spirit is our leader. That's how you build Godly character.

The issue isn't 'do my emotions go up and down?' but 'do my actions go up an down at the same rate as well?' We should be emotionally aware and sensitive people but we shouldn't allow them to lead us and make us volatile.

Parenting Research

Jamie Smith on habits and love from 'You Are What You Love':

A mother loves her newborn baby and gazes longingly at it for weeks before it loves her back in return. The baby is learning to love by being loved by its mother.

We love because he first loved us, but we learn how to love in the home.

Our discipleship practises from Monday through Saturday shouldn't simply focus on Bib le knowledge acquisition - we aren't after all, liturgical animals on Sunday and thinking things for the rest of the week. Rather our day to day practices need to extend and amplify the formative power of our weekly worship practices by weaving them into our everyday liturgies. 

Alasdair MacIntyre (Scottish Philosopher) famously said:

I cannot answer the question, 'what ought I to do?' unless I first answer the question, 'Of which story am I a part?'

Antoine de Saint-Exupery:

If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people to collect wood and don't assign tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.

Tate Britain in London features painting entitled 'The Boyhood of Raleigh'. Sir Walter Raleigh was one of QEI's intrepid explorers. He established some of the first British colonies in what is now North Carolina. But he also twice set sail in search of the elusive El Dorado. In the painting, Millais imagines just what creates such an adventurer and explorer. His hypothesis? A good storyteller. Raleigh and a young friend sit entranced by a wizened old sailor who is pointing to an immense sea, captivating them with tales of what lies on the other side.

The home.

Think through the practises of the home. What goal or end are they aiming at?

The frenetic pace of our lives means we often end up falling into routines without much reflection. We do what we think 'good parents' do. And we might think these are just 'things we do' without recognising that they may also be doing something to us. 

No home or family can be its own church; no household is a substitute for the household of God. We all need to locate our households in the household of God and to situate our families within the 'first' family of the church.

Infant baptism (or belonging to a church we might say) shows that what counts as 'family' is not just the closed, nuclear unit that is so often idolised as 'the family'. For churches to function as they should 'natural' families should resist the tendency to fold in on themselves in self-regard.

Marriage: A great quote about the idolisation of marriage and the purpose of Christian marriage.

A marriage which does not constantly crucify its own selfishness and self-sufficiency, which does not 'die to itself' that it may point beyond itself, is not a Christian marriage. The real sin of marriage today is not adultery or lack of 'adjustment' or 'mental cruelty'. It is the idolisations of the family itself, the refusal to understand marriage as directed toward the kingdom of God.
-- Alexander Schmemann 

p119 features a vivid picture of the modern wedding and the obsession with novelty that inadvertently makes the wedding more about us than about God:

The implicit mythology of Wedding Inc. also reflects how we approach marriage. Indeed, the myths we load into weddings almost doom marriages to fail. Weddings are centred on the romantic 'coupling' of two star-cross lovers, as if marriage were an extended exercise of staring deep into one another's eyes - with benefits.

See Saturday Night Live's 'MeHarmony' spoof.

Family:

The church constitutes the 'first family', which is both a challenge and a blessing. On the one hand, it challenges yet another sphere of rabid autonomy  in late modernity: the privacy of the family. On the other hand, it comes as a welcome relief: we don't have to raise these kids on our own! 

After his girlfriend unexpectedly fell pregnant at Uni Chris Kaczor in an essay entitled 'Vampire Children' recounts that although he thought children would ruin his life, he actually realised the gift they are:

They are invitations to 'put on' virtues like gratitude, humility, patience and steadfastness. All those years ago I thought that having a baby was the worst thing that could have happened to me. I could not have been more wrong. Having a child isn't the 'end' to the good things of life it is an 'and' to the good things of life.' 

Every parenting strategy assumes something about the nature of human beings.

Given that we're not brains-on-a-stick who learn by having information pumped into them:

We should be concerned about the ethos of our households - the unspoken 'vibe' carried in our daily ritual...

You could have Bible 'inputs' every day and yet still have a household whose frantic rhythms are humming along with the consumerist myth of production and consumption. You might have Bible verses on the wall in every room of the house and yet the unspoken rituals reinforce self-centeredness rather than sacrifice. 

Alexander Schmemann:

It is not the lack of respect for the family... but the idolisation of the fmaily that breaks the moder family so easily, making divorce its almost natural shadows. It is the identification of marriage with happiness and the refusal to accept the cross in it. 

Families work well when we do not expect them to give us all we need. 

If the church is our first family then our second homes should be defined by it, and our doors ought to be open to the stranger, the sick, and the poor.

First:

Our households need to be caught up in the wider household of God: the liturgies of our homes should grow out of and amplify the formative liturgy of Word and Table.

This is an important reason to make music an aspect of family worship. As Augustine is often paraphrased as having said 'he who sings prays twice.' There is something at work in the lilt of a melody and the poetry of a hymn that makes the biblical story seep into us indelibly.

This is also the reason to invite your family into the rhythms of the liturgical calendar.

There is a physicality to such a household worship that encourages us to understand the gospel anew, in ways that endure in our imagination and thus shape how we make our way in the world.

Tom Head: Cross Cultural Mission

Matthew 9: Jesus has not come to call the righteous but sinners

Tom: 'I didn't have any formal education, I couldn't even spell GCSE... I just wanted to make a difference.'

9:11 'why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?' ie why does he spend time with people who are not important?

        - story of mixing at a politicians house/party and realising 'we're just token chavs.'

In the UK, 98% of the church could be described as middle class.

How do we reach men, working class men in particular?

Jesus was a builder, he was a normal fella and he trusted people like him with the gospel message. He didn't go to the politicians or the kings, the shakers and movers.

Give men, man sized challenges to go for. Don't talk about things that they think they can go for or achieve in their own energy.

As it stands in the UK 2.4 million women cannot marry a Christian man. They have to decide if they're going to stay single and childless or marry a non-Christian man.

Generally speaking, working class people are overlooked for leadership in the church. As a working class man he said that when he hears someone speak or talks posher than him, that they know more than he does, just because he's working class. At our peril we overlook people from working class backgrounds.

In 2009 St Helen's Bishsopsgate put on a conference entitled reaching the unreached, targeted specifically at reaching working class people.

Working class people are brutally honest with the way they speak, they haven't got a middle class filter of politeness in place. The middle class will call them rude but the working class think the middle class are two-faced and rude.

God loves common people so much that when he sent his Son to the world he became an apprentice labourer.

There is more of a receptivity to the supernatural among the working class.

Becoming a Christian isn't like joining the library, where you just get a card and that's that. Don't look at where people are at now, look at the direction of travel. What's the direction of travel?