Living clean in a polluted world...
At the weekend I was involved in a great project called "Urban Mission" (I discovered there are loads of projects called that!), subtitled as "living clean in a polluted world".
It was a joint thing with 3 youth workers from Baptist churches in SW London, Ascension Trust and the London Baptist Association.
On Saturday we gathered for food and worship (led by young people who were fab) and teaching. We then did social action - visiting an old folks home and a homeless project. I went with a group to a dementia wing, which was eye opening for the group I think. We then did a bar-b-q and de-briefed. We gathered on Sunday to think about how we carry this forward - both as a project but also in our lives. The young people then led the service at the host church on Sunday.
Not a terribly original model or concept, but great to see urban young people passionate about Jesus, willing to get involved, and break the stereotypes.
And some great grass roots youth work being done by the youth leaders who were part of it.
Fun!

Flying Ant 2008
It's most definately flying ant day here in Ealing. Tons of the blighters about!

An Honourable Tradition
Working from home, and without much amiable meeting space (without incurring room hiring costs) in the LBA offices, I have sometimes felt guilty of spending too much time in cafes and coffee shops.
So I was pleased to see that I'm part of an honourable tradition, as Roger Hayden notes:
"The joint meetings of London and provincial Baptists in the early 1690's soon ceased, as London Baptist ministers preferred to meet in London Coffee Houses...".
I'm sure it wasn't Costa or Starbucks, but I'm pleased to be following such a great heritage!

For such a time as this...
Great stuff at the Bite the Bullet Conference today.
Unprecedented media coverage for a Christian event. All the major UK TV channels sent crews and reports made both local and nation news. Wow.
Lets pray for an end to the ongoing violent youth crime

The Bible says..
I stumbled across this site a couple of days ago which suggests that "The Bible Says" has been "the mantra of Baptists throughout their history". (Amusing that a conservative site would suggest that Baptists have a mantra!).
So it was even more apt to find Sean commenting on that very phrase on his blog today. Check out his post and the post from Doug Chaplin he links to for an alternative view of that loaded phrase...

Reading Scripture as a whole
Recently my home church has been doing a series on “Listening to God” and looking at various genres of Biblical literatures. It gave me an excuse to use an old school Bible Bookcase image!
The pastor is on sabbatical so I got to do 3 of these on Old Testament themes: history, wisdom and prophecy.

With that fresh in my mind and listening to some stuff (not least some of the revivalist stuff around Lakeland) I was struck by how Christians either ignore the OT or get really into it. It’s not an original thought (I may even have been taught it at Spurgeons) but it is amazing how much “leftfield” teaching and biblical justification for stuff is based on the OT, and often without reference to (or interperting in light of) Jesus and the NT.

You can see that in everything from prosperity teaching to liberation theology. And it seems to me a lot of “anointing”, “glory”, “presence”, "impartation" stuff that is popular in the revivalist circles is very OT, without acknowledging the difference the coming of Christ and the outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost makes. Seems to me the Epistles place little emphasis on this stuff (and yes I know it is there a bit e.g. 2 Tim 1:6), and more on faithfulness to Christ and the church living out the gospel.

The mad world of news media
I was wondering today why the BBC news on both TV and radio led with a story about badger culling? I know I could be accused of being a city focused "townie", but how is that even a news story? And why is a higher priority than other stuff that is still happening in the world? War, famine, crime, even stories of people doing good stuff?
Seems bonkers to me - and I'm not naive about these things (I did media studies at uni...)

Meanwhile happy July 4th to anyone who stops by from the USA (Although as a Brit should I really be cheering for that?)