helpful articles on depression

You'll find a couple of helpful articles on depression here and here.

why bother exploring the deepest issues?

Larry Crabb offers 3 reasons for going deep into our hearts, to expose the pain and the thirst:

1. Freedom from compulsive sin requires an awareness of deep thirst.
2. Sin will be understood superficially - and therefore dealt with ineffectively - without an awareness of deep thirst.
3. Without an awareness of deep thirst, our pursuit of God will be disciplined at best. With it, our pursuit can be passionate.

I think those are worth every pastor having before him in every counselling instance.

how to get at 'the thirst'

...far too often hard questions get buried beneath a pile of memorised verses and stricter conformity to local standards of Christian conduct. The tough issues seem resolved when in fact they're merely shoved out of sight. They continue to take their toll on (a person's) well-being, but now subtly rather than overtly. Sometimes the pastoral encouragement to be a better Christian protects the pastor from having to grapple with threatening concerns more than it gives the bewildered (person) clear direction for living.

Larry Crabb, Inside Out

Larry Crabb: on unmet desires

We simply must get rid of the idea that the obedient Christian is supposed to feel good all the time. The springs of living water bathing our deepest longings with His presence now and His promises for later do not eliminate the pain of unmet desires at other levels. We therefore should not measure the quality of our walk with the Lord by the absence of unhappy feelings.

from Inside Out

the transformation of a ministry

Very interesting interview on Out of Ur with Francis Chan.

becoming a christian

Asked about his conversion and if he found Christians he admired, Tim Keller responds very interestingly,

I saw a small group of people. They seemed thoughtful. You have to have a group of people who embody the kind of Christian you would be if you became a Christian. You say, "These are people like me, or people I would like to be like," and, "I see how their Christianity plays a role in their life so I can start to envy that role and maybe I would like to have it too.

I find that a fascinating insight - and an important one for the church. Of course, it's not a rule. But I do think it's a helpful observation.

david powlison on god's sovereignty in suffering

Especially helpful talk on suffering. Worth sharing as widely as you can.



HT: Justin Taylor

powerpoint is dangerous

This article is an interesting read, but for more than just its comments on powerpoint. It was commented that it is dangerous "because it can create the illusion of understanding and the illusion of control...Some problems in the world are not bullet-izable." And the problem with bullet lists is that they "take no account of interconnected political, economic and ethnic forces."

I think that's also a salient warning against bulletized theology. We want to be in control but grasping after it we fail to see the problem for what it really is, we miss the connections that would make us pastorally more helpful to others. We forget that life is too complex for neat solutions, even biblical ones.

do real men knit?

You could do worse than to ask Bezalel, Oholiab and their colleagues:

Then Moses said to the Israelites, "See, the LORD has chosen Bezalel son of Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah, and he has filled him with the Spirit of God, with wisdom, with understanding, with knowledge and with all kinds of skills — to make artistic designs for work in gold, silver and bronze, to cut and set stones, to work in wood and to engage in all kinds of artistic crafts. And he has given both him and Oholiab son of Ahisamak, of the tribe of Dan, the ability to teach others. He has filled them with skill to do all kinds of work as engravers, designers, embroiderers in blue, purple and scarlet yarn and fine linen, and weavers — all of them skilled workers and designers. (Exodus 35:30-35)

lust

Lust is the craving for salt of one who is dying of thirst.

(Frederick Buechner, quoted in Wilson, God So Loved The World, p.30)

intense joy & real sadness (james 1:2)

'Pure joy' is a good rendering of the Greek phrase pasan charan (lit. 'all joy') since the word pas here probably suggests intensity (complete and unalloyed joy) rather than exclusivity (nothing but joy)...James does not, then, suggest that Christians facing trials will have no response other than joy, as if we were commanded neverto be saddened by difficulties.

D J Moo, The Letter of James, IVP, p.53

the incipient danger of self-reliance

The point is to keep him feeling that he has something, other than the Enemy and courage the Enemy supplies, to fall back on, so that what was intended to be a total commitment to duty becomes honeycombed all through with little unconscious reservations. By building up a series of imaginary expedients to prevent 'the worst coming to the worst' you may produce, at that level of his will which he is not aware of, a determination that the worst shall not come to the worst.

C S Lewis, The Screwtape Letters, p.163

the dangers of middle-age

(Screwtape urges his nephew to do his best to keep his human patient alive, because time is a great ally to their work...)

The long, dull, monotonous years of middle-age are excellent campaigning weather. You see, it is so hard for these creatures to persevere. The routine of adversity, the gradual decay of youthful loves and youthful hopes, the quiet despair (hardly felt as pain) of ever overcoming the chronic temptations with which we have again and again defeated them, the drabness which we create in their lives and the inarticulate resentment with which we teach them to respond to it - all this provides admirable opportunities of wearing out a soul by attrition.

C S Lewis, The Screwtape Letters, p.155

change & permanence

The humans live in time, and experience reality successively. To experience much of it, therefore, they must experience many different things; in other words, they must experience change. And since they need change, the Enemy (being a hedonist at heart) has made change pleasurable to them, just as He mas made eating pleasurable. But since He does not wish them to make change, any more than eating, an end it itself, He has balanced the love of change in them by a love of permanence. He has contrived to gratify both tastes together in the very world He has made, by that union of change and permanence which we call Rhythm. He gies them the seasons, each season different yet every year the same, so that spring is always felt as a novelty yet always as the recurrence of an immemorial theme.

(C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters, p.136)

Same Old Thing

What we want, if men become Christians at all, is to keep them in the state of mind I call 'Christianity And'...If they must be Christians let them at least be Christians with a difference. Substitute for the faith itself some Fashion with a Christian colouring. Work on their horror of the Same Old Thing.

The horror of the Same Old Thing is one of the most valuable passions we have produced in the human heart - an endless source of heresies in religion, folly in counsel, infidelity in marriage, and inconstancy in friendship.

(C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters, p.135)

hansen: on valuing visitation

A very helpful piece by Colin Hansen on the importance of pastors knowing those to whom they preach and amongst whom they minister.

It doesn't offer a mechanism for ensuring it happens but it's good to be reminded.

behaviour: systems & culture

What brings about effective, lasting change in behaviour? In a recent Out Of Ur videocast thingy, Andy Stanley maintains that it isn't great messages, slick events or whatever that changes people but systems (the video is short & he doesn't explain the point beyond making it).

Not long after watching that, I read this post by Matt Perman. Some time previously he made the point that systems trump intentions. I think there's some mileage in that point. But he now adds that culture trumps systems, referencing an article about Obama's response to the recent failures in the security systems of the US to make the point. I think the point is well-made.

Which leads me to pondering: if systems are helpful in creating behaviour (think: godly patterns & structures) yet are not sufficient to secure that behaviour, how can the culture (think: motivation) be impacted in order to bring about genuine transformation?

I think the answer lies in the biblical combination of Word and Spirit. We are to be transformed by the renewing of our minds (Rom 12:2) and we are to be transformed into his image with ever increasing glory which comes the Lord, who is the Spirit (2 Cor. 3:18).

planted

Some mates & me are going to read through Eugene Peterson's seminal work on pastoral vocation, Under the Unpredictable Plant, over these next few weeks. We'll be blogging some random thoughts here.

I've read the book before, some years ago, and have dipped in here & there since then. It's definitely worth another, sustained read. I'm looking forward to the conversation immensely.

raw material

...get it quite clear in your own mind that this state of falling in love is not, in itself, necessarily favourable either to us or to the other side. It is simply an occasion which we and the Enemy are both trying to exploit. Like most of the other things which humans are excited about, such as health and sickness, age and youth, or war and peace, it is, from the point of view of the spiritual life, mainly raw material.

C S Lewis, The Screwtape Letters, Ch.19

limits & grace

As a minor poet, the pastor doesn't simply tell people to be satisfied with their limited lives but instead helps them to find the joy and sacred purposes to these limits. Some of the things that are missing from the garden are good and certainly desired. When a couple discovers that they cannot have children, when a spouse is buried, or when a terminal disease is discovered, it isn't helpful for the pastor to point to all of the other blessings in a person's life. What is helpful is for the pastor to walk into the sorrow in search of the sufficient grace of God. Anyone who finds more of the steadfast love of God from which we are never separated has found something far greater than that which is missing from the garden. And it is for that grace that we are most grateful.

M Craig Barnes, The Pastor as Minor Poet, pp.96,97