The London Institute for Contemporary Christianity - Helping you to make a difference as a Christian in today's world.

A new year – a new start?

Mon, 05 Jan 2009 10:41:57 +0000

by Margaret Killingray (Word for the Week 05-01-09)

The Lord said in his heart, ‘I will never again curse the ground because of humankind, for the inclination of the human heart is evil from youth; nor will I ever again destroy every living creature as I have done. As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night shall not cease’. Genesis 8:21,22

I suppose yearning for a fresh start is a very common state of mind in humans. We must be the only species that experiences regret and ambition, optimism and pessimism and sometimes an urgent desire to start again. So the story of Noah and his family stepping out from the dark and smelly ark into a fresh washed-clean world has a strong appeal. The first thing they did was to build an altar in thankful worship to the Lord who had brought them through the flood. The skylark soared up into the clear blue sky filling the air with song. The cows mooed contentedly as they grazed on fresh meadow grass at last. Noah had come through to a fresh start in a new Eden, with the blessings of the covenant sealed by a rainbow. Never again, God promised Noah, never again would he curse and destroy. Instead he promised that under the warmth of the sun the seasons would roll on till the end of time.

Except… there is a problem. The writer added a warning note to this new year in a lovely world. The Lord knew Noah (as he knows us) and the inclination of the human heart. This was not Eden. The refreshed Noah was still the ‘old Adam’. It would all go wrong again. God’s gift of grapes was harvested and Noah was very drunk twenty verses later. God promised not to destroy the living creatures of the earth. But human activity is seeing to that, as species are threatened with extinction.

So we live with both – a wonderful world, renewed in the turning of the year and the seasons, finding our own renewal in the grace and forgiveness of God and our delight in his creation. But we also live with the consequences of our own evil inclinations, with the threat to the land and its creatures, as well as the more petty miseries of ordinary life and, particularly at New Year, too much wine.

Baby in the bottom drawer?

Mon, 22 Dec 2008 10:20:52 +0000

by Mark Greene (Word for the Week 22-12-08)

And there were shepherds… Luke 2:8

Imagine it’s the night shift; you’re a security guard walking the perimeter of the factory that you and your co-workers have been entrusted with. What would it take for you all to down flashlights, abandon your posts and walk three miles into town to the office block on the high street?

Shock! Horror!

Tue, 16 Dec 2008 14:28:13 +0000

by Mark Greene

A prime time programme that takes God seriously. Can it be true? Mark Greene looks at Apparitions.

I haven’t been near a horror movie in over twenty years. Not since I found myself watching Alien. Or rather not watching most of it. There I was sitting in the Cannon Cinema in Watford, wedged between the usually comforting presence of my brother to my left and my father to my right, with my hands over my eyes and my head below the seatback in front of me, mumbling ‘I don’t need this. I don’t need this.’ and Alien probably doesn’t really qualify in the horror genre but overall horror movies, horror fiction do my head in, the images fill my dreams and linger like mist over a graveyard. I normally don’t go near it. Of course, I’m not saying that no good can come out of the horror genre, merely that I don’t have the psyche to deal with it. After all, in some children’s fiction and many children’s games the horror genre is about learning to overcome irrational fear. Still, my inability to engage in this area of contemporary culture taught me one important thing: never listen to anyone who says you have to watch this programme, or read that book in whatever artistic genre… Like meat offered to idols, some people can consume it, some can’t.

Anyone hear a trumpet?

Tue, 16 Dec 2008 14:17:30 +0000

by Mark Greene

In the aftermath of the credit crunch, Mark Greene wonders whether Christians failed in their duty to the world

I did hear the trumpet actually.

Once. Clearly. Publicly. Winsomely.

It was 2005, in the City of London at the Guildhall.

But it is one thing to hear the trumpet it is another to respond to it. But we shall come to that.

Paul: a tentmaker

Fri, 12 Dec 2008 14:56:54 +0000

by Helen Parry (Word for the Week 15-12-08)

Paul went to see Aquila and Priscilla, and because he was a tentmaker as they were, he stayed and worked with them. Acts 18:2-3

Bulus is pastor of a small church in sub-Saharan Africa. His congregation support him as best they can. But they are subsistence farmers or petty traders, and none has anything to spare after providing for their families. So Bulus has a chicken farm, and regularly sells eggs in the market.

What are you waiting for?

Fri, 12 Dec 2008 14:53:52 +0000

by Margaret Killingray (Word for the Week 09-12-08)

Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth, as it is in heaven. Matthew 6:10

What are you waiting for? The rain to stop? The baby to go to sleep? The plumber to come? The relatively mundane can test our patience, but we need to remind ourselves that there are others waiting with desperate urgency for food, for medical care, for soldiers to go away, for the rain to start. Sometimes we have to wait and nothing we can do can make things happen quickly.

Christians are waiting! Today we wait to celebrate his first coming, and this should remind us that he came to inaugurate his Kingdom and to give us hope for renewal and change in our lives now – so we pray for friends to be converted, for the baby to go to sleep and the soldiers to go away.

Paul: What’s new?

Tue, 02 Dec 2008 09:17:33 +0000

by Helen Parry (Word for the Week 01-12-08)

All the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there spent their time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas. Acts 17:21

In the crowded Athenian marketplace of ideas there was still room for the gospel of Jesus Christ. Do we sometimes feel that there is no room for it in our novelty-seeking, information-packed society?

Thrift as Solution to the Credit Crisis

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 17:24:08 +0000

by Peter Heslam

The current credit crunch stems from a deeper moral and spiritual crunch. At stake is a virtue on which capitalism depends – thrift. Peter Heslam argues for the recovery of this virtue as a solution to the current credit crisis.

For most of the twentieth century, nearly everyone in advanced economies had access to grassroots saving and investment institutions, including building societies, mutual funds, saving book accounts and credit unions.

A fresh look at the 10 commandments

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 15:52:10 +0000

by Margaret Killingray (Word for the Week 17-11-08)

I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me. Exodus 20:2

The commandments must come very high in the world’s list of all-time most influential writings, but many of us, even those who are Christians, would have difficulty listing them off the top of our head. Today, however, according to 2004 NOP survey, 10% of young people have never heard of them and nearly half of those between the ages of 15 and 24 could not name a single one. for many others they lurk in the but sadly often only as evidence that Christianity is a judgemental, legalistic, joyless kind of faith.

Paul: an ever-expanding heart

Thu, 30 Oct 2008 08:09:40 +0000

In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy…It is right for me to feel this way about all of you, since I have you in my heart… Phil.1:4, 7

Astonishingly, Paul, who met so many people on his constant travels, appears to have remembered the individual Philippian believers, holding them all in his heart, and ‘longing for them with the affection of Christ Jesus’ (v.8). He wrote to the Philippians from prison; yet, far from going on about his own problems, his concern was focused on them.

Innumerable people come into and out of our lives, year after year. But how many of them do we consciously remember? Of all the people that I have known, the one with the most phenomenal memory is John Stott. Over the years, in his teaching ministry, John met thousands of Christians all over the world. When a man from India, say, whom John had met three years before in Chennai, came to London to attend a course at LICC, John would welcome him by name, and then ask by name after his wife and children. An extraordinary memory and meticulously kept records, no doubt. But also an extraordinary love. A love that cherished every individual. A love that prayed.

City Prayer Breakfast 2005

Thu, 30 Oct 2008 07:53:32 +0000

by James Featherby

How do we react to that trumpet call in this ancient hall?

The shock of it may have been a bit like the coming of Jesus as Messiah 2000 years ago.
I wonder if there are parallels between how we just reacted and how the people back then might have responded.

Redundancy

Wed, 22 Oct 2008 12:23:46 +0100

by Paul Valler

The sight of stunned employees carrying their personal possessions in cardboard boxes out of the Lehman Bank building is etched in my memory. Gathering in a state of shock in local bars, some dulled their pain with alcohol and tried to rebuild self-worth through group support.

Redundancy is often caused by factors outside the control of any single organisation, like the banking crisis, or a general economic downturn, or a takeover. Yet redundancy is also regularly triggered by management choice – through planned relocations, restructuring, centralisation with economies of scale, and through mechanisation and the increasing use of IT. It is therefore part of organisational life in the modern economy.

Changing Politics for Good?

Thu, 16 Oct 2008 14:38:59 +0100

Mark Greene wonders whether Obama can restore our faith in politics

Barack Obama could well become the next President of the United States and, as far as much of the world’s ordinary citizens are concerned, that is much better news than the alternative. Indeed, apart from Mandela, no politician over the last ten years has caught the imagination of people beyond his own country more than Barack Obama, and no politician in the top 21 economies has managed to re-invigorate an interest in politics in his own nation in the way Obama has.

Nevertheless, Obamamania has caused hundreds of thousands of previously disengaged Americans to register to vote in the Democrat leadership race. Similarly, though McCain’s Republican fundraising machine has raised more than the Democrat Party machine, some 500,000 individuals gave money to Obama’s campaign in August alone. In fact, he goes into the closing weeks of the Presidential race with considerably more in his campaign treasury than McCain.

In sum, Obama has not only rebuffed Hilary Clinton’s considerable challenge but has overcome the cynicism or the apathy of many US citizens. And he has done it with a combination of breathtaking rhetorical skill, adept campaign management and a consistent, focused message that centres on two linked concepts – change and hope. And it is in their linkage that their power resides.

After all, it is one thing to call for change – every opposition party does the same – it is quite another to actually make people believe that it is possible and that it will be the right kind of change. And that is why Obama’s focus on hope is so important. In his Iowa acceptance speech, he put it this way:

“Many months we’ve been teased, even derided, for talking about hope but hope is not blind optimism. It is not ignoring the enormity of the
tasks ahead or the roadblocks that stand in our path. It’s not sitting on the sidelines or shirking from a fight. Hope is that thing inside us that insists that despite all the evidence to the contrary that something better awaits us if we have the courage to reach for it and work for it and to fight for it…”

The Invitation Christmas Card

Tue, 14 Oct 2008 09:28:15 +0100

LICC’s 2008 Christmas card features a previously unpublished and inspiring poem by Mark Greene – ‘The Invitation’.

It’s perfect for those wanting a card that captures the essence of Christmas in a way that is clear and contemporary, and that will capture people’s attention amidst the festive bustle, giving them cause to stop and reflect on the reason for the season.

Mis-Lit for Miserable Times?

Thu, 09 Oct 2008 13:28:33 +0100

You can tell a culture by the stories it tells.

So here’s a question: what can we tell about a culture that has suddenly developed a penchant for books and books and books of true stories about awful childhoods, physical, sexual and psychological abuse, serial rape, and criminal neglect?

What kind of sign of our times is it that there is now a section in Waterstones called ‘Painful Lives’. Borders, incidentally, are a mite more restrained and have dubbed their ‘Painful Lives’ section ‘Real Lives’, perhaps to distinguish it from Celebrity Biographies which they presumably consider to be about ‘Unreal Lives’. You may not be surprised to learn that there is no section called ‘Joyful Lives’ or ‘Worthwhile Lives’ or ‘Broadly Speaking, Quite Contented Lives’. No, the latest model on the bookshop catwalk, close, if not fast on the heels of Chick-lit and Lad-lit and no doubt Twit-lit, is Mis-lit, hobbling but still moving, bloody but unbowed.