A Nashville weekend

Posted on January 9, 2012 by Phil

A little indulgence. This post is as much for me to remember what went on in Nashville as it is to give a holiday update. Plenty of links to follow later.

About

Nashville is probably one of my favorite places in the world. It’s a city, so it’s big enough to have things going on, it’s also small enough to easily walk around (at least in the centre). Add to that,really friendly people and great music and it’s no wonder I’m tempted to move here every time I visit.

We arrived on Friday evening, in time for a steak dinner and to make it into the Honky Tonks on Broadway to listen to some bands.

Live Bands

Friday

Sleepless Truckers – Legends Corner

Saturday

Irene Kelley and Bernie Nelson – writers session at the Country Music Hall of Fame
Anthony Orio and the Goodfellers – Tootsies Wild Orchid Lounge

Sunday

The Cory Batten Band – the Bluebird Cafe

The Bluebird Cafe is a legendary venue. The place where bands and writers go to get discovered. On Sunday and Monday you can just stand in line to get in.

The Sunday we turned up the band were recording a video of their performance, so they played the same set twice. It was pretty cool but maybe not what a ‘usual’ evening comprises of.

Tany and I got to sit with a couple who had moved to Nashville from Seattle. She works as a songwriter.

Monday

Jake and the Naked Truth – Tootsies Wild Orchid Lounge

Saturday also included a visit to the Country Music Hall of Fame and Studio B.

Country Music Hall of Fame

The CMHF is an amazing exhibition. It tracks the history of Country music, from Roots, through Bluegrass and the Nashville Sound to more contemporary music. Included in the exhibition are items like Elvis’s Gold Cadillac and the Gold piano he was given by Priscilla Presley. While Elvis is well-known for his connections with Memphis, he recorded most tracks in Nashville. Using the Gold Cadillac to drive himself between the two cities. Part of the CMHF is a tour of RCA Studio B, where Elvis and many… many other artists recorded. The piano he loved to play is still in the studio, and if you want you can sit at the keys and play.

Church on Sunday

Nashville isn’t just known as Music City, it’s also the Buckle of the Bible Belt. More churches than you can shake a stick at – though why you’d want to do that is beyond me.

We visited Brentwood Baptist Church. The kind of church where you need to take careful note of where you parked your vehicle (because of the size of the parking lot, not for security reasons). Two services and over a couple of thousand attendees.

I was relieved because the service was excellent. They were just starting a series on the importance of Scripture – which is good for a guy from Wycliffe to hear. What was just as good was the fact that after dropping a response card in the offering we got a personal email response from the church in 3 days!

A weekend in Nashville

So that was our weekend in Nashville. Kind of fun!

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“Turn in your Bibles… I mean phones!”

Posted on December 4, 2011 by Phil

What happens in your church when the minister tells you to reach for your Bible and turn to a passage? It seems, at mine, there’s a few of us who reach for our phones!

This is by no means the death of the printed Bible, but it’s certainly a sign of our times when the Bible has become an app on a phone.

Of course, it’s not just in the west that Bibles are appearing on mobile devices. Many African countries are seeing an explosion in mobile phone use. These aren’t smart phones necessarily, but even basic phones can handle text reasonably well. So, in these situations Scripture is being encoded in files that can be shared across mobile devices.

The only downside that I’ve experienced from this growth in electronic communication was the Sunday that I got to church to find that the battery in my Bible was flat – that never used to happen!

Zubair Dehani, David Gilchrist liked this post

The authority of the Bible

Posted on December 2, 2011 by Phil

Almost two years ago, Wycliffe Bible Translators commissioned some research that showed that Christians, when presented the choice between giving to a charity that fed the hungry or translated the Bible, they’d choose to feed the hungry. The implied message from the research was that it was better to keep someone alive than concern ourselves about their place in eternity.

I should throw a note in here that the choice isn’t really that stark. The work that Wycliffe does in language development contributes to all eight of the Millennium Development Goals. Very often the communities we work in/with are the poorest of the poor and the most marginalised – but more about that another time maybe.

A few months after that research was published, the Evangelical Alliance in the UK released some research that said that the under 25s were, “Less likely to strongly agree that the Bible has supreme authority in guiding their beliefs, views and behaviour.”

I grew up around people who would describe themselves as, ‘Bible believing Christians’, but while they were always willing to talk about the content of the Bible, they were never very good at responding to the challenges of science and culture that seemed to resign the Bible to a place on the bookshelf.

At about the time the research about declining belief in the Bible was published, I heard a message by a minister of a church in the United States, that gave reasons for why the Bible could be trusted. This spurred me on to my own research into the historical accuracy and authority of the Bible.

The result of this has been…

…For the last few months I’ve been speaking in churches about the authority of the Bible, trying to redress the results of the research and encourage Christians to have confidence in the text of the Bible. I’m not an expert in one area, just someone who has found answers to the questions I’ve had and have had the opportunity to share this with others. [Get in touch if you're in the UK and would like me to do this with your church community].

…My confidence has increased in the Bible. It is historically accurate. The events it records really happened. There is a reason for my faith.

The notes I’ve pulled together and the source of most of my research are now up on this blog. They are notes, and there’s always more digging that can be done. Feel free to follow the links to the Authority of the Bible page to see for yourself. I hope they are useful.

Your comments and questions would be welcome.

Global Connections: 2020 Vision

Posted on December 1, 2011 by Phil

What part do you think Christians in the UK will be playing in mission in 10 years? Just think, another 10 years and it’s going to be 2022! – maybe we will all be travelling in spaceships.

The Global Connections conference that I’ve just come back from was thinking about mission and the future, what it’s going to be like, how the church in the Global South is going to have way more impact on us in the West, what’s happened to our old models of mission, what part the Church in the UK is going to play.

I think I have been mostly impacted by the question of the role of the Church. Mission agencies simply don’t exist without the Church, but how do we connect and work together rather than in isolation?

So, the question I’m asking you:

How can mission agencies help your church with local and world mission?
How can your church get involved in God’s mission in the UK and overseas?

I’d be interested to hear your comments.

Brandon Dickerson interview

Posted on January 27, 2009 by Phil

You probably don’t remember, but in April 08 I managed to combine my holiday with a few interviews with church leaders working in different situations. Since then a suitable slot for the interviews hasn’t been forthcoming, until now.

Seize the Day is a new podcast from Focus. You can listen to it to get more info, but the important bit is that it uses my interview with Brandon Dickerson.

I hope you all enjoy it.

Links to stuff

Posted on December 12, 2008 by Phil

This is a completely random list of things that I’ve been reading over the past couple of weeks that I want to share with everyone. As I’m not quite going to get as far as writing an individual post about each one I’m going to dump them all in here and leave you to decide if they amuse/challenge/entertain/frustrate you as much as they do me.

Enjoy.

Mark Randall – Pragmatic Eclectic, possibly my favourite random blogger, and not just because he sometimes leaves me comments on this blog. His post ‘Catch you tomorrow!’ has been sitting in my reader for about a month, I keep going back to it. He quotes Margaret Feinberg in UnChristian and the battle with sin.

A reminder from Paul Merrill – My Part of Colorado – about Alltop, Guy Kawasaki’s aggregator of news stories. It’s wonderful on keeping you up-to-date with loads of news feeds on a range of topics.

Krish – What’s next? – discusses the U2 cover of I Believe in Father Christmas.

Well worth stopping by the blog and reading the comments to see how Bono has changed the words of the song slightly.

Eddie – Kouya Chronicle – Eddie used to be a prolific blogger, then he went and got a job that didn’t give him as much time sat in airport lounges, the result is that he doesn’t blog as much as he used to. However, when he does he provides a couple of very useful services. 1st, he’s almost always entertaining (whether it’s photographs, life or Bible translation). 2nd, he’s almost become his own news aggregator, sharing some of the best blogging about church, Bible translation or mission. His three most daunting posts of recent times have been links to lists of documents that need reading, have a look at:
So Little Time, So Much Reading To Be Done
Even More To Read and Still No More Time

Eric Bryant – his main job is as navigator for Mosaic in California. In any other church he would be an Elder, but navigator is probably a more applicable term for the style of church this is, plus it sounds cooler. Being based in LA a lot of what the church creates and contributes to the community is through art, either dance, drama, film, etc. So, here’s a few for you.

Beauty – film used as part of a series of sermons.

Don’t Have to Paint Anymore (Musical Improv)

Meet David Magidoff – A member of the Mosaic community and an actor. Just an interesting video really.

Marko – ysmarko – works for an organisation in the US called Youth Specialities. He writes a whole load of stuff on working with youth and also finds cool games to waste winter hours in the office. This one’s Typeracer, where you can race others to see who has the fastest typing speed. 70wpm is the most I’ve managed.

I’m off to practice my typing. There could be another list like this soon, but it’s better for you to get this than details of wedding planning.

Future church, Southampton

Posted on November 10, 2008 by Phil

For those of you who weren’t able to make it along to the Future Church event held in Southampton last month. The audio from Mike Frost’s three main sessions are now available for download from the Facing the Challenge website.

The event was awesome and I had lots of conversations with people who are serious about changing the face of church. I’ve already blogged about some of my concerns, but there have been positive outcomes too with smaller groups emerging to discuss and implement some practical steps to making the church more missional.

I’m really keen to see a practical outcome. I think I grew up believing that the church was a talking shop, with all the right things being said but nobody prepared to put in the graft to make a change. I hope that this doesn’t turn out to have the same result. Oh, and yes, I do realise that I am as implicit in making a change as the next person.

When life isn’t what it’s cracked up to be

Posted on October 23, 2008 by Phil

My thoughts this week have been about how we respond to life when it just doesn’t work out as we want it to. That’s not to say that my life is in a terrible mess, actually, things are really quite good, but I’m acutely aware of struggles that friends of mine are having and the fact that the way we can present Christianity doesn’t always match up to the experience of life.

At the risk of making this an overly long post, here’s a summary of how my thoughts have come about.
· James, the guy that I met last Friday, who had made mistakes in the past that are making life today really difficult for him.
· A really good, happy, wonderful time of praise at the end of last Sunday evening’s service. Which was wonderful, but does show the contrast of the future hope we hold and the reality of today.
· Conversations that I have had during the week with people who are facing repossession on their homes and others dealing with the reality of very sick family members.
· Mark’s blog post.
· Negro Spirituals on my iPod. I stumbled across some recordings of songs that used to be sung by African slaves in captivity in the US.

Actually, it was the Spirituals that struck me the most. These were sung by people who were in the most dire of situations, but they were singing about the hope of being free. A lot of the lyrics likened the situation of the slaves with those of the Israelites and repeated the image of crossing over the Jordan river to the promised land.

I’ve been trying to put together this Sunday evening’s service in a way that recognises the suffering that we experience, and I have attempted to find songs that reflect the situation of life today. That’s difficult though. Many of the new songs we sing are full of praise but have limited acknowledgement of life in the west.

OK, so we’re not slaves in the sense that we have physical bonds, but I think we are ignoring the struggles of modern life. Two verses spring to mind.

I’ll say it again—it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of God!”
Matt 19:24

When someone has been given much, much will be required in return; and when someone has been entrusted with much, even more will be required.
Luke 12:48

Future Church – Personal reflections

Posted on October 7, 2008 by Phil

About a year or so ago I was encouraged to listen to Mike Frost’s ‘Unless a Seed Falls’ talks, which were once on the Christianity Works website. The audio has since been pulled, but listening to those talks changed my whole attitude to my faith, life and church. It was a bit of a watershed moment for me, although, it took me about six months of processing and further investigation before I started to feel comfortable, or even confident, with my restructured belief system.

This weekend just gone I was able to meet Mike Frost and hear him speak in person. David Couchman and Focus had arranged for Mike to come to the UK on a bit of a speaking tour and for this weekend we had a large event at Central Hall based around the future of the church.

There was an element of paranoia building up to the event, that nobody would show up. Central Hall is a large venue that can seat over 700, so 50 people would have seemed like very few. However, a week of hard ticket sales managed to get around 250 people for the first evening session. I even had people coming along from churches that I just wouldn’t have expected to turn up.

After three sessions it would have been difficult to miss the central point of Mike’s argument, that maybe if we dared to let mission become the organising factor behind what we do the church could become a very different beast.

If you want the details I suggest you read his excellent book, Exciles, that’ll save me trying to write it all down here. However, I will give you some of my observations following various conversations from people attending the event. Or you could go through this selection of material.

1. The most popular opinion expressed was, “I really agree with what he (Mike) has to say, I think we need to go back and discuss things and try to find the balance.”

Maybe it’s just me, but the word ‘balance’ just seems to be another way of phrasing, “we need to talk about this until we can find enough reasons for not having to change anything.” I guess there’s nothing wrong with genuinely trying to make mission a central part of what we do within the current church framework we currently have, but ‘balance’ just seems to be a way of tinkering with stuff at the edges without having to make any major adjustments.

2. The church has to change or die.
Seriously, and this was from someone a generation older than me. His opinion was that there is no way that the church can survive as it is.

Our discussion was kind of interesting on the basis that we agreed that God won’t let the church die. In other words, if we can’t change to get ourselves out of the mess, a situation will develop where we will have to change – maybe like the church in China (?).

3. I have to change.
It would be amazingly easy for me to look to current leaders in the church to take steps and tell me what I had to do and how the future was going to work out. The only problem is, if I do that I don’t think anything will change.

I have this horrible realisation that at the age of 31 I probably need to take some responsibility for the state of the church today. What is it? If you’re not part of the solution you’re part of the problem. Maybe that’s true. I need to keep praying about it, keep trying to solve the issues that I see, but I also need to start taking some practical steps to living in a more missional way.

Despite me being rubbish

Posted on September 29, 2008 by Phil

Today I was welcoming a new student to the University. He’d left his life behind in Sri Lanka, managed to get a visa (which is no mean feat for the Sri Lankan’s coming here), packed his bags and moved to Southampton. We sat chatting and he mentioned, as a throw away line, that it took a lot of prayer to get him here.

I stored that thought and carried on with the process before walking him over to one of the other departments. On the way back I had the opportunity to start a conversation that went something like this…

Phil: So what faith are you?

Student looks blankly back

Phil: Earlier, you said that you pray.

Student: Oh yes, I’m a Jehovah’s Witness. You know us, we knock on doors [no lie, he said that]

Phil: Ah, OK, I’m a Christian. I’m afraid I don’t know of any Jehovah’s Witness groups on campus, or locally as a matter of fact.

Silence

Student: Maybe I could come to church with you on Sunday until I find a group to join? When do you meet?

Phil: That would be great. We have three services… [well, you don't need the rest of the conversation do you]

I’ve only really had proper contact with one Jehovah’s Witness. He was a kid in our school that got out of assembly and didn’t take part in any of the Christmas stuff, even the things Christians would say were more secular than religious. So when it got to that point in the conversation the last thing I was expecting was this chap to want to come to a Christian church service, so, to my embarrasment, I didn’t even ask.

I’d love to tell you more about this guy, but without his permission it seems a bit unfair. I just hope his course and being in England, lives up to his expectations.

Journeyman – moving on

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