Some formed up thought from chatting with a friend the other day about how we talk about what we do as Christians. We were chatting to his unbelieving mates and their big questions about God were stuff like ‘Does God hate it when you swear?‘ and ‘If I say f*#@ will God condemn me?‘

Now in my head I’m thinking well, actually we’re all screwed because we’ve all rejected God – that’s the heartbeat of the second half of Romans 1, right? But how do I convey that to someone who’s view of a Christian is made up of a list of things you can’t do. If my student housemates are munching hash cakes, why shouldn’t I have a slice? If I do, does it show I’m free. If I don’t, does it reinforce the rule-based definition of what a Christian is in their heads?

We reckoned that a really important way to helpfully portray the Christian life is by encouraging people to see that our ‘faith’ is not a merely spiritual-realm-thing but actually a physical thing – it affects your day-to-day actions. That seems to be what was going on in 1 Corinthians, with the Christians reckoning that it was the spiritual that mattered, therefore they could do what they like with their bodies (including major incest for one).

But Paul’s response was to remind them their bodies were the Lord’s. It was my experience that it’s very easy to explain to your mate on the football social that the reason you don’t want to get hammered at the bar is “because you’re a Christian”, but really that contains no sense of what Christianity is. You may as well say you’re not getting wasted because you’re a Muslim, or because you’re against the abuse of underpaid Chinese alcopop bottlers… or something.

But actually we’re in relationship with the living God – we know our King Jesus, and we want to live for him both in thankfulness and to please Him. Surely, that is what we want to convey, and before we convey anything, what we want to be thinking as we live each day.

“A church’s understanding of evangelism will flow from its understanding of conversion and its understanding of mission.”

Paul Clarke

It’s been a quality couple of days. Dinner with good friends yesterday evening: lemon chicken, white chocolate cheesecake, and truffles all came out of the archives to work their magic once again.

This morning a few of us took the short train journey up to Newcastle, and then the metro to Jesmond, to hear Chris Wright from Langham Partnership International, and Vijay Menon from St. Helen’s speak at Crossing Cultures, an event put on by Friends International. It was a great day, and a great chance to have my eyes opened to the massive plans God has for the whole world, and to see those plans being unravelled before my very eyes.

Chris’ work on reading the whole Bible in relation to Mission was really insightful, with the big point being actually mission is more than our ‘mission’ activity, for actually God’s committed to his mission. Interesting interlocking with my reading on Goldsworthy over the last few weeks: Wright says that the Bible points to Christ, for the Messiah is God’s ‘anointed agent’ to fulfil the mission of Israel, which was to bring God’s blessing to the nations. It helped me to see how Israel fits into God’s plan, as well as looking at Jesus’ role within that plan, and then our role as the church.

5 tips for reading the whole Bible for Mission:

Reading it in light of:
1. God’s purpose for the whole creation (guilty of rarely bringing this into focus)
2. God’s purpose for all human life (not really thought-through this before)
3. The election and role of Israel in God’s purposes for the nations (have barely considered this, apart from a glance at Romans 2-3)
4. The messianic identity of Jesus (often don’t see this so tangibly)
5. The mission of the church to the nations (very often don’t see the church like this)

Vijay spoke about Hinduism, which is something I’ve never encountered, and also reminded us of the importance of prayer (Mark 10.27) and the word of God (John 6.63) in witnessing to the nations. Why is it that golddust is so often disregarded and left in one’s pocket?