Eternity Newspaper - November 2018

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Number 97, November 2018 ISSN 1837-8447

Brought to you by the Bible Society

Green shoots The good news about the church Religious freedom turmoil

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Science & The Christianity coming of can be friends the peace

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NEWS

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Obadiah Slope CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR: “Set for revival” was the headline.

The picture was of disused railway tunnels, which are being leased. What the NSW Transport Department wants are bars and restaurants. But what if they got a real revival instead?

NOVEMBER 2018

Missing: schools that expel gay students

News 2-3 In Depth 5-8,13 Bible Society 14 Opinion 15-20

FACEBOOK FOLLIES: Almost unshockable Obadiah was surprised at the news that Facebook knocked back an ad for the Christian Management Australia “Q4” event. Because the word Christian was used in a heading: “Are you a Christian in or approaching retirement?” “Clearly a non-Christian would be very welcome but we wanted to do all we could to ensure people knew the nature of the event,” organiser Paul Arnott said (ironically, on FB).

HOW’S THAT: The most exciting cricket match involving Pakistan this season was actually played inside the country. While the Aussie men played Pakistan in the Emirates and the Aussie Women played Pakistan in Malaysia, Christians played Muslims in a special harmony match organised by the Pakistan Bible Society in Sheikhupara. Well played.

SOMETIMES GOD IS NOT ON YOUR SIDE: Obadiah loves his US brothers and sisters in Christ. But then there is the issue of guns.

Texas senator, and a well-known Christian, Ted Cruz said that school shootings take place because the US has removed “God from the public square.”

Texas is 93 per cent Christian and has a fatal school shooting every year. Japan is 2 per cent Christian and has never had a school shooting. God should be in the public square. But we don’t need guns there too.

Chris Mulherin

pixabay / klimkin

TOILET POSTERS: Imagine you are in an abusive marriage, and you go to church. The one place that you might be able to see info about domestic abuse safely may be the women’s toilet. That’s why the Sydney Anglican Synod (church parliament) came to be talking about hanging posters in women’s toilets. Mrs Obadiah tells me the posters are in the toilets at our church. Nationally relevant info includes the RESPECT national hotline 1800 737 732 and the Daisy app which is free to download from the iPhone app store and Android Google Play. Not that Obadiah wants you to hang Eternity on the wall of the church toilets. Maybe some of you read it in there.

Quotable

JOHN SANDEMAN Eternity has been hunting for schools that have expelled gay students and we haven’t found any.

No school lobby group has called for the explicit right to expel students on account of their sexuality. As Eternity goes to press, both major political parties have agreed to legislate to ban schools from refusing student enrolment on the grounds of sexual orientation.

Archbishop Glenn Davies making his big set-piece speech at the Sydney Anglican Synod (gathering of church reps) emphasised that his brand of conservative Christianity did not wish to keep gay students out of schools but was keen to be able to choose staff to suit the Christian ethos of its schools.

He denounced the “enemies of religion” who he said had misinterpreted the Ruddock panel’s proposals to further marginalise people of faith.

With both parties agreeing that discriminating against student enrolments on the basis of sexual orientation should be banned, legislation to this effect may have been introduced by the time this article is read. But the focus has already begun to shift to the question of schools selecting staff.

“I believe we can use this goodwill to go further and

remove the exemption that would allow a teacher or school staff member to be sacked or refused employment because of their sexual orientation,” Labor’s Bill Shorten has told The Guardian.

The Liberals’ Dave Sharma and Treasurer Josh Frydenberg have signalled their agreement with the Labor stance of widening the anti-discrimination provisions to include teachers.

A Greens’ bill was introduced to the Senate in October to remove a school’s right to discriminate in selecting staff. Speeches by Labor senators during the debate expressed a desire to remove discrimination and allow schools to insist employees express the ethos of the schools .

“We also respect that religious schools and parents of students are entitled to require employees to act in their roles in ways that uphold the ethos and values of that faith, and that this requirement may be taken into account when a person is first employed and in the course of their employment,” Labor’s Penny Wong told the Senate.

“But we also respect in 2018 that the overwhelming majority of Australians believe that exemptions from discrimination for gender identity, sexual orientation and relationship status are no longer acceptable.”

No detailed proposal of how

to balance those two aims has emerged from the debate to date.

Amendments “that remove the right of religious schools to expel students solely based on their orientation alone” are reasonable, says Neil Foster, who runs the Law and Religion Australia blog.

“I think that is a reasonable proposal, as I have stated in some blog commentary, so long as the school is still able to set and enforce a policy relating to student ‘dress, behaviour and conduct’ – so the focus in a discussion with a student at a Christian school who wants to set up an advocacy group for LGBT issues would be not on the orientation alone, but on whether such behaviour and conduct was consistent with the school’s moral framework.

“There remain issues to be determined about employment of staff. For reasons I have started to articulate on my blog, I think that we ought to preserve the right of schools to decline to employ, or to continue to employ, someone whose declared lifestyle undercuts the moral framework of the school, where parents will have chosen the school partly in reliance on that moral framework. Students often look up to and model themselves on good teachers, and that is so regardless of whether anything is said in the classroom about sexuality.”

“It is time to proclaim that the conflict with science is a beat-up; gospel proclamation is hindered if God’s people don’t get along with science.”

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Kara Martin “Our stress and ethical quandaries and conflict issues can be minimised as we practise the spiritual discipline of working for an audience of one: God.” Page 17

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Girl with an Eternity tattoo ‘Please take the kids off Nauru’

KYLIE BEACH

Elisabeth Walley is a pastor at Hillsong Church in New York City and did her ministry training at Hillsong International Leadership College in Sydney.

And she’s marked by eternity.

Literally. As in, she has a tattoo that reads “Eternity.”

Elisabeth explains that when she first came to Sydney, she felt as though she saw a copy of Eternity News everywhere she went. As a result, God began to speak to her heart about living a life that counted in eternity.

She began reading a book that again inspired her with a purpose that extended beyond this world.

After that, she discovered online the story of “Mr Eternity,” Arthur Stace.

He was an underclass battler, former drunk and criminal who was struck one day, in Burton Street Baptist Tabernacle (Church), Sydney, by the preaching of John Ridley, the Australian evangelist.

Stace said, “He was preaching on eternity. And he said these words, ‘Eternity! Eternity! Where, oh where, will you spend eternity?’

“And the Lord laid it on my heart, there and then, to go out and write ‘Eternity.’”

For 30 years, from the 1930s to the 1960s, the pavements of Sydney, as well as country New South Wales, Newcastle and Melbourne, were marked by Stace’s distinctive copperplate script, as he wrote the word “Eternity” in yellow chalk.

KYLIE BEACH

Elisabeth Walley with her Eternity tattoo

When Elisabeth read Stace’s story, she says “that sealed it” and she determined to be a person like him, who not only lived with an eternal perspective but who pointed others to the same.

Once her studies were complete and she was ready to return home, Elisabeth decided to get a tattoo to remind her of eternity and how God had spoken to her during

her time in Sydney. She came up with a design that combined Stace’s handwriting with another and (with only an hour or so of needling pain) her arm was forever marked with “Eternity,” for all the world to see.

Here at Eternity News, we’re looking forward to hearing Stace’s response to it all when they both meet up in eternity one day.

The Bible is true and can be trusted!

Scientist, Dr Gary Baxter provides clear and compelling evidence, based on scientific, archaeological and textual studies, for the reliability and integrity of the Bible.

HI! I’M:

Christian organisations and churches have told Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Opposition Leader Bill Shorten that “any leader who takes bold action to bring all the children on Nauru and their families to Australia will have our organisations and communities’ vocal support”.

The broad coalition of 62 denominations, organisations and churches includes St Vincent de Paul Society, the Uniting Church in Australia, Anglican Overseas Aid, Caritas, Micah Australia, Baptcare, Anabaptist Association of Australia and New Zealand, Assyrian Australian Association, Quakers Service Australia, and Jews for Jesus.

In an email sent to Australia’s top political leaders, the group wrote: “We urge you to follow your moral compass rather than your fear. The world refugee crisis is a complex problem – but locking up children is never the answer.”

This coalition has added its voice to the rising chorus of Australians – which includes more than 6000 doctors – who have called on the nation’s political parties to work together to end the offshore detention crisis.

“We stand with the doctors, led by the Australian Medical Association and Royal

Australasian College of Physicians, who have deemed the situation for children on Nauru a ‘humanitarian emergency’ that is making children seriously ill and [have also] called on all children and their families to be urgently brought off Nauru.”

Some Christian groups such as Love Makes a Way (LMAW) have repeatedly voiced their opposition to Australia’s offshore detention policies for a number of years. LMAW has seen almost 200 Christian leaders arrested while holding prayer meetings in politician’s offices to protest the detention of children*.

However, as the situation on Nauru has become more urgent recently, new coalitions such as this one have formed. They are bringing together activists and protesters with groups whose advocacy has previously been less confrontational, to deliver an unequivocal message.

“We would never allow our children to grow up like this,” stated the coalition of 62 churches and organisations.

“We call on you to resolve this issue by Universal Children’s Day, November 20. Now is the time to place these children first and take action on this medical emergency before it’s too late.” *Kylie Beach has participated in Love Makes a Way protests.

Joseph

I WENT From a career in physiotherapy to a lifetime of ministry.

It was worth the investment!

A Defence of the Bible is published in large-format paperback, consisting of 186 full color pages with 196 images and 584 footnotes.

Where to buy? RRP: $15 ► Koorong In store, or online at koorong.com.au ►Word Online at word.com.au

You can be kept informed on biblical apologetics by going to Gary's website: adefenceofthebible.com and subscribing to his fortnightly blog.

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Has your life’s journey led you to consider fulltime theological study? Join us, and we’ll invest in your foundations for a lifetime of ministry and mission. Apply before November 30 and have the admin fee waived.

NOVEMBER 2018

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Finding Female Models of Faith ‘You can’t be what you can’t see.’ Ridley College explains the need for female models of faith.

How many female Christians can you think of who are inspiring leaders? My guess is that you will struggle to think of five. Sadly, aspiring Christian women lack the role models who might show them what it looks like to be a female in Christian leadership. As Marie Wilson from the White House Project said, ‘You can’t be what you can’t see.’1 No matter what position Christians hold on the disputable matter of women’s roles in the church, I hope we agree that women should be encouraged and trained up for a wide range of ministries. One of the great challenges is that relatively few women aspire to vocations in Christian leadership, biblical scholarship or full-time ministry.

As Ridley considers how to raise up more women for these roles one of the key barriers that we have identified is the lack of female role models. While we might think that God’s call to ministry should be sufficient, inspiring models often provide the motivation, confidence and encouragement people need to enter full-time vocational ministry.

For decades men have enjoyed the examples of prominent and outstanding male leaders who they look up to and seek to emulate.

Whether it is a Jensen, John Stott,

Anthea McCall, Lecturer in New Testament, Ridley College or the likes of Peter Adam and Billy Graham, these leaders have inspired generations of men into leadership and helped shape their styles and approaches.

Such inspiring women do exist – in the Bible, church history, and serving in our churches. It’s just that little attention is drawn to them. One that immediately comes to mind, and who has inspired many women to missionary service, is Dr Helen Roseveare, who died in 2016. As a missionary doctor she established two hospitals in the Congo during the 1950s and a decade later was captured by a rebel group. Despite

enduring unimaginable hardship and terror during her captivity, she was released only to return to the Congo a few years later.

To encourage women into ministry, there needs to be a conscious effort to draw on examples of outstanding female leadership. We can begin to do this through the Bible stories we select in our Sunday school classes, the examples we use in sermon illustrations, and the books and authors we refer to.

Ridley College is developing more role models for women through strengthening female participation in its student body

and faculty. We are networking and developing the teaching capabilities of women through the Women’s Preaching Network which seeks to build confidence and competence in Bible proclamation. Women from many denominational backgrounds attend from all over Melbourne, regional Victoria, and even join the meetings online from Darwin!

Another initiative, the Women’s Writing Group, responds to the need for evangelical women writers. Graduates, students and ministry practitioners gather to write and discuss academic and popular writing. A popular

feature of this program is Shut Up and Write!, which helps authors overcome ‘writer’s block’ by giving them a time and place to move beyond research and to get words on the page.

Ridley has also held two annual conferences for Evangelical Women in Academia, with the next planned for 2019. Conference speakers in 2019 will be Canon Dr Paula Gooder, Director of Mission Learning and Development in Birmingham Diocese and author of books including, Phoebe: A Story and Body: Biblical Spirituality for the Whole Person, and Dr Jude Long, former Principal of Nungalinya College, Darwin.

Where Ridley is most in need of role models is in our own faculty. The difficulty is that there are so few evangelical women in academia that it is a struggle to make suitable appointments.

To begin to address this Ridley has established a scholarship to encourage women into higher degrees by research. The creation of Associate Lecturer positions also creates more accessible pathways into faculty positions.

Ridley would love to see more women inspired and equipped for gospel ministry – in all its forms.

Central to each of these initiatives is the promotion of women who will be role models for future generations, giving them the opportunity to be what they see.

1.theglasshammer.com/2010/11/01/voice-of-

experience-marie-wilson-founder-and-presidentof-the-white-house-project/

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The science v Christian conflict is over

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Gay: celibate and full of love Anne Lim page 7

CHRIS MULHERIN In an increasingly global and secular scientific culture, the cutting edge of Christian engagement is the conversation with science. In fact, the progress or decline of Christian faith in the 21st century depends largely on its dialogue with science.

For Christians, the current cultural skirmishes might seem to be about the best expressions of human sexuality, freedom of speech, or the rights of Christian schools to hire and fire.

But there is an underlying issue that those depend on and which is far more important: can Christianity even be taken seriously in a scientific age?

In every generation, cultural and intellectual debate redefines the “plausibility structure” that determines the limits of what is believable, of what is even possibly true. And the task of Christian apologetics – the defence of the faith – is to enter that cultural fray and argue the case that the Christian faith is credible.

An example: no amount of Christian comment on marriage

is relevant if people think Christianity is just hocus-pocus without any claim to truth.

And if science is the standard of truth, then the credibility of the faith depends on the way people view its relationship with science. If people are convinced that science and Christianity are in conflict, there are no prizes for guessing which side most will vote for. So, while Christians are confident that “the gates of hell will not prevail” against God’s church, that is no guarantee of a continuing place at the cultural table. Nor is it a theological excuse for retreat from the marketplace of ideas.

Yes, the faith will endure. But “love God with all your mind” and being prepared to “give an account for the hope that is in you” are the Bible’s call to Christians to engage vigorously with the powerful voices that would sideline Christianity without taking it seriously.

G. K. Chesterton famously said that Christianity “has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.” Today, the demands of the gospel mean it is found

difficult, and the pressures of political correctness mean that faith is left untried. And for those who find faith difficult and who would rather leave it untried, the most common excuse given is that science and faith can’t mix. So, in sociological and intellectual terms (and leaving out the sovereign work of God), the science–faith conversation is the cutting edge of Christianity surviving in the Western world; it’s the front of advance or retreat of credible Christianity.

Science and Christianity: both gifts of God’s grace

The gifts of science are numerous, breathtaking and worthy of deep gratitude. As a means of discovering truth about the natural world, science is outstanding, offering extraordinary insight into the mechanisms of the universe and of life itself. Scientific knowledge offers a power that has led to rapidly increasing health and wealth for all, including the poorest of the global population.

But no amount of science can provide answers to questions of meaning or morality. Science cannot tell us when its products are well spent and when not: it cannot tell us if the means of ending life painlessly should be used; it cannot tell us whether the next generation of weapons is for good or ill; it cannot tell us whether we ought to spend billions on space exploration or sustainable agriculture. It cannot tell us if life has a purpose.

It cannot tell us if there is (or is not) a God. These are all questions outside the reach of science.

And the gifts of Christianity, too, at a purely secular level, are clear. Human rights entrenched worldwide, convictions about charity, compassion, justice, the social welfare net, equality – all have roots and motivations deep within the Christian faith.

Culture and credibility

But the Christian worldview, which is foundational to a Western culture of equality and corresponding rights, is being dismantled piece by piece. While

vestiges remain, such as the equal dignity of all human beings or “do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” they are now adrift from their roots, which lie in the conviction that humans are made in the image of God. With globalisation and the spread of techno-scientific thinking and practices, a secular scientific worldview is advancing to all corners of the earth. This view, most aggressively championed by the so-called New Atheists, challenges all non-scientific thinking in its advance. So, the right to be heard depends partly on getting along with mainstream science.

In the face of this changing balance of cultural forces and views about what is credible and what should be relegated to incredibility, there are two options open to Christians.

The first option is to beat the retreat to the Christian ghetto.

This path asserts that science and religion are worlds apart and that – borrowing from Os Guinness – Christianity might be privately engaging but it is publicly (and continued page 6

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conflict from page 5 scientifically) irrelevant. This is a backward step; it involves denying that Christian faith is true in any serious sense. It involves accepting the New Atheist line that faith in Jesus Christ is akin to believing in the tooth fairy or Father Christmas.

But there is another option: a way that has been the orthodox manner of engagement since the beginning of the Christian era.

Following the example of Jesus, Paul the apostle debated with the public world of his time on the Areopagus in Athens – also known as Mars’ Hill. And for 2000 years since, thoughtful Christians have proclaimed that the God of the Bible is revealed both within that book and also through other human learning.

This second option is to follow the path trodden by the great Christian scientists and thinkers of history and to thoroughly affirm the “two books of God” – the book of his word and the book of his world. In every generation, it needs to be proclaimed again in pulpits and peer-reviewed articles: there is no conflict between science and faithful Christian belief!

The conflict thesis is bunkum The past crowd of witnesses who saw no conflict includes hundreds of the great names of Western history. To name only a few who are prominent in the history of science: William of Ockham (remember Ockham’s

Razor?), Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Descartes, Pascal (and his famous triangle), Boyle (of gas law fame), Bernoulli (his law keeps planes in the air), Lavoisier (we owe chemistry to him), Faraday (invented the electric motor), Maxwell (electromagnetic fields), William Bragg, Max Planck, Werner Heisenberg (creator of quantum mechanics) – the last three also won Nobel Prizes.

And, in case you are prone to the prejudice that devalues past thinkers as if they were ignorant in the light of present knowledge, there is no question that numerous outstanding living scientists are also Christians: John Houghton, lead editor of an early report from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on

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Climate Change; Francis Collins, who led the human genome project and is now head of the US Government National Institutes of Health. And in Australia, we have examples of eminent scientists who are also Christians (see box below).

Into the fray

The time for simplistic belief and unbelief is over. Fundamentalists, religious and atheist, must give up their ground to views that hold science in its rightful place as servant of a broader worldview – Christianity in its fullness – which offers the soil out of which grew both modern science and a global framework of equality and human rights. It is time for Christian thinkers, and especially those who are involved in science

and technology, to take up the challenge laid down by secularists and to speak up and to speak loudly about their own experience of integrating their faith with the best that science has to offer.

It is time for Christian scientists to come out of the shadows; their science is important, but the future of a culture deeply rooted in human dignity and meaningful existence depends also on knowing there is more to truth than what science can offer.

It is time for pastors to convince their flocks, so that no Christian lives with the secret suspicion that faith is actually opposed to science and serious thinking.

It is time for theological educators to ensure their students comprehend that the study of God’s

word and the study of his works in creation are not incompatible; the basics of apologetics and some understanding of science should be normal training for Christian ministry in a scientific age.

In short, it is time to proclaim in every pulpit and public space, in the universities and the Twittersphere, in every Christian classroom and lecture theatre, that the conflict with science is a beat-up, and that the proclamation of the gospel is hindered if God’s people don’t get along with science.

Chris Mulherin is an Anglican minister and Executive Director of ISCAST – Christians in Science and Technology (see below). He also teaches philosophy and climate change at two Melbourne universities.

ISCAST – Christians in Science What does the inventor of the bionic ear have in common with the president of the world’s peak genetics organisation? What does an economist on the Reserve Bank board have in common with a Mars expert from Canberra?

Answer: they are all committed to Christ and to the best of mainstream science. And they are all fellows (senior members) of ISCAST – Christians in Science and Technology.

Australia’s bionic ear pioneer Graeme Clark, who is the patron of ISCAST, is one of Australia’s best known scientists and a devoted

Christian. “My aim,” he says when talking about his world-famous invention, “was to help people and to do God’s will.”

Another fellow of ISCAST is Ian Harper, Dean of the University of Melbourne’s Business School.

When Ian was chair of the federal Fair Pay Commission, he affirmed that he would pray about the commission’s deliberations. The subsequent newspaper headlines proclaimed “God will set minimum wage.”

Other fellows of ISCAST include Melbourne University geneticist Phil Batterham, president of the

International Genetics Federation, and Jon Clarke, a geologist, astrobiologist and president of the Australian Mars Society.

International fellows include Jennifer Wiseman, a US astrophysicist and a main speaker at Brisbane’s World Science Festival in March this year.

What these people have in common is their conviction that God reveals something of himself in the truth that so-called secular investigation uncovers. So, for them, the pursuit of pure science or economics or technological invention is part of being faithful

followers of Jesus Christ.

ISCAST is a growing Australian network of people interested in exploring the interface of science, technology, and Christian faith. For more than 30 years it has promoted the harmony between faith and science. ISCAST runs conferences and public lectures, speaks in schools and churches, and provides resources to promote a healthy relationship between science and faith. You can sign up for news, invite a speaker, and find out more about science and Christianity at www.ISCAST.org

A Christian School

PLC is a Christian school that celebrates its faith and is committed to reflecting the loving nature of God in all areas of school life.

We actively promote and nurture the Christian faith within the school community and through the Christian Studies core curriculum program that runs from ELC through to Year 12.

Scholarships

Scholarships for 2019 are available for Years 7 to 11, for 2019 and beyond.

Christian families are encouraged to apply.

Visit www.plc.vic.edu.au for more details

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Gay: celibate and full of love ANNE LIM The only thing former gay activist David Bennett feels he has lost by committing to celibacy is the capacity to be lukewarm.

“If I try to be lukewarm in my faith, I’m stuffed and it’s all too hard,” the fun-loving, ebullient Australian says as he enthusiastically tucks into a pile of Bill Grainger’s famous hotcakes in a London café.

“But when I’m hot in the sense of my capacity in that relation it’s an amazing joy, it’s incredible.”

As Bennett describes in his new book, A War of Loves, the out-andproud gay atheist’s life was turned upside down when found the intense love he had been searching for his whole life in Jesus. But he continued to support gay marriage until he read a book by celibate gay Christian Wesley Hill. What changed his mind, he says, was his love for Christ.

“It was kind of a whisper from the Holy Spirit. It was like, if God is always the same as what you think and feel, he’s not really God. I came to this kind of wagering point of ‘A m I going to let God be different to what I think and feel? If I let him be different, then that means my love is real, and I’m really loving him as he really is instead of how I want him to be.’

“At a certain point, you have to say ‘Not my will but yours be done’ – it’s that Gethsemane moment … I had that whole resurrection power experience where I just felt God say, ‘I need you to give me your sexuality’ and I had the faith to say ‘Lord, you’ve given me your body so

I will give you mine.’”

Ironically, straight after making this commitment to celibacy, Bennett fell “head over heels in love with a Frenchman” in Strasbourg, but when the Frenchman came to visit him in Oxford, Bennett was able to explain why he couldn’t act on his feelings.

“I said ‘well, what’s the point of a little bit of sexuality on earth when I could have eternity with you in heaven anyway? And the love we would experience would far outweigh any love we could experience here.’

“What God has really taught me is, by being celibate, I’m serving him and I’m giving myself as a sacred gift.”

Yet Bennett is honest enough to admit that there are times when he longs for a companion, particularly when he feels under attack from gay activists or the devil.

He is blessed with many close friends, who love him as family.

But he confesses that he worries what will happen to him when his friends turn 35 and get so involved in their marriages and children that they have no time for him.

Then he chides himself for his lack of trust and reminds himself that Jesus can more than provide.

“I wonder if the question itself is not a little bit insulting to Jesus;

it really does lessen who he is – because if he really is the risen Lord of glory that’s come to save the whole creation and us with it, like, he’s Jesus! And I think about the persecuted church and people getting their heads cut off by ISIS and, you know, people being locked in jail every day and Christianity being the most persecuted faith on earth and I’m like ‘what’s a bit of sexuality compared to that?’”

Still, in a culture where everything seems set up for families, and every

Christian leader seems to be married, he wishes there was just one Christian leader in Australia who was single.

Bennett wrote A War of Loves while also writing his master’s thesis in analytical and exegetical theology at the University of St Andrews in Scotland, producing 250,000 words in a year and nine months. He is now embarking on a PhD in Oxford.

One of his aims in telling his story, he explains, is to defuse the culture war between the gay community and Christians by enabling each camp to put themselves in each other’s shoes.

“I’m so passionate about that. I absolutely believe that is what is causing the high levels of suicide among the LGBTI Christian community – it’s not the traditional, biblical stance; it’s the constant sense of being torn between two positions and never resolving – because you love Jesus, you love God, but this is such a huge part of your humanity – our whole society is based around it; every house that’s been built is for it, having kids.”

Another reason he wrote the book was to

challenge gay rights activists to support his position on celibacy.

He says certain people he really respects in Australia have not wanted to associate with him because of his controversial position on celibacy.

“I wanted to say to the gay community ‘are you just ideologues or are you really gay rights activists? Because if you were gay rights activists you would want to support my rights as much as the gay couple down the road that wants to go to a church that supports them. Are you willing to represent my rights?’” But what does he do when he experiences sexual desires?

“The more I’ve lived as celibate, the more I find they become less intense but they’re still there. I was just in a taxi and I looked at a guy on a bike and I was like ‘wow, he’s really attractive,’ and then I just say to God ‘wow, you did a good job there, you know,’” he says, breaking into laughter.

“The funny thing is that as I’ve lived this life out more, what has become more and more important to me has been the marriage between God and humanity, Jesus and the church; and what I love about the gospel is that when we turn our minds off marriage and into the gospel, marriage takes its proper place and then suddenly everyone is invited to the marriage, the ultimate marriage. And so any person, regardless of their gender or sexual orientation, is invited to that wedding feast and we simply hold that invitation out. I don’t feel like I’m missing out because of that deeper truth of the gospel.”

David Bennett: A young man comes out You, Lord, brought me up from the realm of the dead; you spared me from going down to the pit.

—Psalm 30:3 It was the first Friday evening since moving to the Sydney harbourside, and a day after my fourteenth birthday. From a high sandstone outcrop bordering the water, I watched the sun set over a small mooring of boats.

The chiming of their sails rang out from the cove and over the peninsula. A blush of ochre tinted the sky. Sydney Harbour Bridge

was hidden behind the eucalyptus trees, but the cityscape was in view on the horizon, iridescent with skyscrapers. Such beauty made me ache for someone to share it with – another young man. Standing in my untucked school uniform, I peered over the ledge, where water lapped at oyster-laden rocks down below. The ferry glided on the incoming tide with its monotone growl. Tears welled up from what I knew was true. I feel light enough to jump over the edge. The crushing ocean seemed lighter

than my unwanted desires, and my feet dared me to step over the edge of the cliff. I pulled back in sudden horror. My heart raced as I ran home and the dusk fell.

The search

Not long after, I found myself at school. The recess bell rang throughout the school grounds, and the summer sun shone over the brick buildings. More than 1000 boys, each in the traditional uniform of red-lined navy blazers, white shirt, grey woollen trousers,

black shoes and a navy blue tie, poured through the grounds to the entrances of the Anglican chapel.

It was a chaotic sight that somehow always managed to become orderly in minutes as everyone lined up to enter. We resembled an army regiment at attention, with just a few naughty soldiers out of formation.

Soon the sound of hundreds of adolescent boys singing awkwardly from hymnbooks filled the chapel.

As I took my place among the pews, my vision blurred. I had

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fond memories of singing solos in the boys’ choir before my voice broke, and of my favorite soprano solo: Howard Goodall’s The Lord Is My Shepherd.

But today I was silent, repulsed by the thought of singing to a God I knew didn’t exist, since his only response to my unspoken questions had continued page 8

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IN DEPTH

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NOVEMBER 2018

Through the valley of death to victory

“

SEBASTIAN JAMES

David Bennett from page 7 been a deafening silence. My hardworking agnostic parents had attained an upper middle class lifestyle. Life was good, but I was often unhappy and lonely, surrounded by the boredom and beauty of the suburbs. I dreamed about escaping to the city, which offered the liberty and sophistication I craved. Our extended family had a wide range of religious beliefs and convictions.

With my Christian relatives, I often heard strange terms used to describe homosexuality. Either it was a kind of spiritual oppression that needed to be prayed away, or it was a result of sexual abuse that required serious healing. None of these pseudotheories fit me.

For other Christians, homosexuality was the worst of

I can’t lean on what I don’t understand; I’ve got to lean on my trust in God.”

pixabay / 8moments

Scott “Sanga” Samways has been the Pastor at Hillsong Church in Newcastle, north of Sydney, for close to six years along with his wife, Kety. They are so unassuming yet have one of the most tragic yet beautiful journeys – a story of faith, love, despair, pain, miracles and redemption.

Scott grew up in Newcastle as a Christian, but he can pinpoint a number of moments in his younger years that helped him grow in his love for God. “It was the age of 14 when I went to church with my sister where I had my own revelation of Jesus. I always believed in God but didn’t really know too much about that personal side of just how involved Jesus can be in your life.”

Sanga reckons one of his most sincere prayers was at that service and for the first time he really experienced the love of Christ.

“It was like standing under a waterfall but not getting wet. I felt like waves of love started coming in.

I felt like every bit of hurt and hatred started to leave.”

At the age of 19 he went to Bible college at the Hillsong campus in Sydney’s Hills district. That is where he met his future wife, Kety.

Kety was at the same Bible college because her family had been persecuted for being leaders of the Assemblies of God Church in her home country of Bulgaria.

The threat was real – one of her brothers was kidnapped for ransom twice. So the parents sent her and her siblings far away.

“She [Kety] travelled the world literally and visited about 15 countries before we’d met. I had probably travelled Newcastle and visited over 15 suburbs, and so when we’d come together we were very different but, you know, opposites attract, as they say,” Sanga told Eternity in Newcastle.

It was in those years at Bible college that Sanga began to understand how faith is a real gift from God and how important it is.

“I had a revelation at a young age to stand on faith, to speak faith, to believe faith … and I would really preach that through my messages as well.”

Sanga became a “faith preacher.”

It was his forte. But it was around the year 2000 when Sanga’s faith was first really tested. His mum was diagnosed with ovarian cancer.

“I was just out of Bible college and I was strong in my faith and I was believing for a miracle, like anyone does when someone gets sick.

I would travel from the Hills back up to Newcastle regularly to visit and pray for Mum, put Scriptures all around her bed, encourage everyone in faith. We saw some real breakthroughs in her health in that season. We were believing for an incredible miracle over her life. But it was one year after she was diagnosed that she actually died. And I remember as a young Christian, man, it rocked my world.”

Sanga was in utter disbelief and shock. “When you believe in God for something and in faith for something and it doesn’t happen – it was a real challenge to my faith.”

Sanga began to learn the “journey of faith,” as he puts it.

That faith doesn’t come and go; it doesn’t quit or give up. And it was in reading Hebrews (11:13) about how a number of God-fearing people “died in faith without receiving the promise they were given” that Sanga’s own faith was rekindled.

“I got a revelation that my mum, she actually died in faith as well.

She died believing in God, trusting in God and she just went from this world into the next with him.”

Sanga later married Kety and they had their first child Jaya,

who brought them lots of joy. Life was great with their beautiful daughter, and not too long after Jaya was born Kety was pregnant with Noah. But sadly Noah died at birth.

“One of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do is go to a hospital and see a child born but then drive home with no child. That was a challenging time to go through that obviously tests your faith.”

But Sanga learnt that it’s okay not to be able to fully comprehend why things happen and why trust is so vital.

“It’s not until you got through something like the death of a child where you realise I don’t understand why, I don’t understand, God, why this has happened! And that’s where I had to learn ‘well, this is what it means to trust in God when I don’t understand. I can’t lean on what I don’t understand; I’ve got to lean on my trust in God.’ ” He needed his newfound trust a few years later when Kety gave birth to their son, Taj. During the pregnancy they were told Taj had the same complications as Noah.

They were both distraught at the news but Kety, while crying, did a “flick and pick,” as Sanga described it, where she opened the Bible to a random page and then pointed to a random part of Scripture.

“It was this Scripture in John 4; it said ‘You may go, your son will live’ and the man took Jesus at his word and departed. And I remember reading that and just thought ‘you know, we’re going to believe in that for Taj.’ ” It seemed their prayers were answered but then Taj died just after birth. But was resuscitated.

“To see him born and then

sins and homosexuals were God’s enemies. This rhetoric missed the reality of what I was going through and closed me down to the honest confession and self-acceptance I deeply desired ever since I awoke at the onset of puberty to my attraction to men. The widely variant views of why people are homosexual – genetics? abuse? father issues? something else entirely? – bombarded me. I felt so confused.

On top of this, coming to terms with my attractions at the age of fourteen meant entering an ugly, polarised culture war that spanned the globe. All I wanted was a place where I could be honest. All I wanted was to find a boyfriend and escape the monotony and ignorance I perceived in the people around me. Then I could finally be accepted and move on with my life.

One night I cried out, “Take these attractions away!” Nothing

changed, and the silence drove me farther away from Christianity. The attractions I’d felt since age nine weren’t about a lifestyle I’d chosen.

They were about who I was. Since a young age, I’d understood that a person’s romantic attractions shape their humanity. Love makes us human, and without it, life is not worth living. I wanted all that life had to offer, so I knew I had to keep my distance from those Christians who were getting in my way. Still, the message that God didn’t approve of people like me gnawed at my conscience.

For a year, I tried to think of the opposite sex the way my peers did.

Then I dismissed such thoughts as ridiculous. I didn’t believe in God, so why worry anymore? My growing interest in men’s bodies had only increased, and the nervousness I experienced around certain members of the same sex brought me to a place where I

die – and he was only dead for 20 seconds but it was the longest 20 seconds of our lives – but I just kept thinking about that verse.

‘Your son will live, your son will live, your son will live.’ And to see him get breath back in his lungs was a little miracle.”

Sanga and Kety now had two children and were happily pastoring at their church and preaching. But their ultimate test of faith came with their fourth child, Zac. Kety once again was facing complications with a pregnancy, so she was put on bed rest on the doctor’s orders, which meant she had to stay in hospital for a few months leading up to the birth of Zac. Kety’s mother was in Australia during this time, so at home it was Sanga, his mother-in-law and the the two kids, Jaya and Taj. “I don’t know what was harder, Kety being in hospital or me living with my mother-in-law! One of the only things she could cook is cabbage stew. I remember coming home every night to cabbage stew.

And I remember the kids would say to me ‘Dad, can we have anything other than cabbage stew!’ And I talked to bubba [Sanga’s motherin-law] but the next night on the menu was cabbage stew!” said Sanga, chuckling.

After Zac was born, sadly, he had some complications and had to stay in the children’s ward for two to three months while Kety lived there with him. To make matters a little more difficult during this time Sanga got appendicitis and ended up in the same hospital!

But again, while relating the story, Sanga laughs it off.

Then Zac took a turn for the worse, his health deteriorated very quickly and he died. Sanga reached his lowest point.

“I remember when Zac died that was like … probably the biggest blow I’d ever faced. I felt like I was strong with Noah, I felt like I handled it with my mum but when

knew I was attracted exclusively to men. I even wrote a poetry anthology about my inner secret.

As the chapel service ended, I concluded I could no longer put off the reality of my attractions.

The more I denied them, the more miserable I became.

Searching through science

Why was I gay? Shows like Queer as Folk or Will and Grace simply told me I was made or born this way. That wasn’t particularly specific. I began searching for an answer. I read through nature versus nurture arguments in studies. I googled everything I could find.

Simon LeVay’s research in 1991 showed there was a substantial difference between the brains of gay and straight men in the hypothalamus. Other studies found

it happened again … when Zac lived for three months then died – man, that really rocked my world.

I’d lost my faith. I still believed [in] God; I still came to church. But if I was honest with myself, I was just all out of faith. I felt like I couldn’t believe for anything and I really chose not to. I really chose because I thought ‘I’m not going to believe for anything anymore because I want to avoid disappointment.’

And that was my view towards faith in God.” But what shocked Sanga was suddenly Kety’s faith became rock solid.

“She would say to me ‘No! God is going to do a miracle for us! He’s not finished with us!”

Sanga was completely broken.

But six to eight months after the death of Zac he read and heard the words “I [God] will heal your brokenness” in a sermon at Hillsong Church in Newcastle.

This put him on a path to regaining his faith and hope.

“The transformation happened in the journey after that as I started to take baby steps back towards my faith in God and building my faith in God and trusting in him and believing in the promises I had always known and had always read.”

Sanga was living one day at a time. He felt he wouldn’t have the strength to go through another day but began to see that God would give him the strength to get through one more day.

“When I stood on God’s word, trusted in his word in those seasons where I felt I was out of faith, God really began to reveal to me how his revelation is greater than my situation.”

This was the greatest revelation for Sanga – that he could indeed rely on God revealing himself, the answer to all situations. He began to once again feel he could preach about faith with no shame.

“How can I still stand and preach faith with joy? Because I speak from a place of victory now.

You can go through valleys and you can go through highs, but in every season when you stand on God’s word, that revelation will carry you through every situation.”

Sanga and Kety stood on the word of God and, indeed, God was not finished with them, as Kety put it. A few years later their tears turned into joy with what could be called their “double rainbow baby,” with the birth of their fifth child, Aria.

that gay men responded to the pheromones of men, not women.

Studies on identical twins showed a genetic contribution to sexual orientation, but not a genetic determination. More recent studies had shown the potential influence of the hormonal environment of the womb. Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic theory for homosexual behavior linked same-sex attraction to parental relationships. Environment?

Biology? Genetics? Nurture?

Hormones? Conditioning? Nothing was conclusive. Little was clear or known about the why of it.

And that almost crushed me.

Understanding myself seemed completely out of reach.

A war developed in me about how to understand this part of my identity. The belief that we’re all born this way wasn’t the whole story. I was more confused than ever.

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FEBC SPONSORED LIFT - OUT

For the millions of listeners who respond each year to international media mission, FEBC, radio is a lifeline.

How one small radio changes millions of lives

In an age of internet, satellite, digital streaming TV, smartphones, Google Play and Amazon, it’s hard to imagine a solar or wind-up radio having any relevance. But for the millions of listeners who respond each year to international media mission FEBC, the small, humble radio is a lifeline.

Whether it is offering aid in emergency situations, encouraging Christians in persecuted countries, teaching women in the Philippines how to study for their high school exams, or helping women and children in India escape the sex trade, one small FEBC radio has immeasurable power and reach.

FEBC goes into more than 49 countries, multiplying hope for 840-plus hours each day, speaks in 113 different languages and reaches three billion people who have not heard the Good News in their heart language.

“People today know well the power of media and the accessibility of all kinds of technology,” said National Director of FEBC Australia, Rev. Kevin Keegan. “Media is vital for relaying information and providing critical help and support – and that is why a mission like FEBC is so important.”

Starting with radio, and still primarily using this most versatile and ubiquitous medium, FEBC now broadcasts internationally on many platforms, such as internet, mobile app and satellite.

“FEBC has been using various media for almost 75 years, recognising the way it can get into places and reach into situations and circumstances that people often cannot get to,” he explained.

In many parts of the world, radio is still the only medium people

“

The reason FEBC programs – whether for health, family, marriage, kids, teaching, or leadership - are life-changing is because they all share a message of Christ’s hope.”

have. A radio supplied by FEBC is often shared by up to 25 people in a village; it connects them together and speaks directly into their lives in their heart language.

“Radio is a critical lifeline addressing the physical, emotional and spiritual needs of millions of people. God is using radio broadcasts and radio mission today as a powerful means to change lives and transform communities,” said Rev. Keegan.

While more and more Bible resources are being translated

and made available throughout the world – the fact is that there is still 17 per cent of the world’s population that cannot read.

“Literacy rates continue to rise from one generation to the next.

Yet according to new data from the UNESCO Institute for Statistics, there are still 750 million illiterate adults, two-thirds of whom are women.”

Over 75 per cent of the world’s illiterate adults are found in South Asia, West Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, and women represent

almost two-thirds of all illiterate adults globally (UNESCO figure).

FEBC mission radio is often the only means by which people hear the Good News of Jesus because it breaks down the literacy barrier.

But that’s not the only barrier that radio overcomes. It also reaches listeners who – because of political, physical or geographical boundaries – are unlikely to hear the message of Jesus in any other way. This message is not only getting to these people, it is also coming in their own indigenous

tongue.

“Many have never heard of the name of Jesus until they tune into a mission broadcast, yet as they hear the words in their own heart language their lives are dramatically changed.”

Rev. Keegan urges anyone thinking about making a charitable Christmas gift this year to consider giving a $30 FEBC mission radio.

“Someone in Australia giving a gift of a radio to someone overseas has life-changing impact – today and into eternity. The reason all the various FEBC programmes, whether for health, family, marriage, kids, teaching, or leadership, are so life-changing is that they all share a message of hope that transcends poverty, disease, homelessness, and despair. It’s the message of Jesus Christ.”

NOVEMBER 2018

E FEBC SPONSORED LIFT - OUT 10

Reaching and teachin

Radio, in the heart language of ethnic minorities, reaches thousands of unreached for When you live in rugged, mountainous countryside, getting to church or joining a bible study group is impossible. This is why FEBC remains committed to reaching and teaching those who live in the remotest of places.

Ensuring radios reach those people is vital.

In Thailand, a team of seven from FEBC’s radio studio recently made a journey to a minority language listener in the mountains, an 8-hour drive north from

Bangkok. The van could not go all the way into the village, which was established 60 years ago on a steep mountain side. Radios, clothes, and other items to share were carried down four levels of steep paths to the listener’s home.

Thankfully, radio reception in this region is good, as the village is at the end of a valley between the mountains. Showing his heart for Jesus and FEBC, the listener went on to distribute 20 radios to others in his village the following day.

A voice of hope durin Mr. Arthur Dunstone, faithfully supporting FEBC for 67 years.

Go into all the world Mr. Arthur Dunstone started supporting FEBC 67 years ago when he and his wife became committed followers of Jesus.

“Our pastor was very enthusiastic about mission giving, and I thank the Lord for him,” said Arthur. “I chose to support FEBC financially and prayerfully because of its reach to the unreached and I’m very thankful for its work and what God is doing through radio.”

As a young man, Arthur learnt about the importance of mission, the need to reach the lost and make known the Good News to all. He represents a generation of faithful men and women who continue to support mission across Australia, people who have proved through their lives the faithfulness of God and who believe in the great commission to go into all the world and make known the Good News of Jesus.

Now 98 years of age, he uses a magnifier to read his Praise & Prayer and Skywaves prayer points and newsletters from FEBC Australia. In them he is

“

Matthew 28:20 reminds me why I need to be constantly living a life that will give glory to the Lord Jesus.”

encouraged by the work God is doing through radio across the world. He shares and prays for FEBC and other global missions each Tuesday at his Bible Study group. Sitting in his care facility in northern Victoria, he says it is the verses of the Great Commission that resonate most strongly in his heart.

Hearing him read Matthew 28:20 from a well-worn, well-thumbed

Bible, in language familiar to older Christians, brings a tear to the eye: “Go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature, baptising them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and the Holy Ghost. And, lo, I am with you always, even until the end of the age.” As he reads, he emphasises ‘all’ and ‘always’.

“This verse brings back to me why I need to be constantly living a life that will give glory to the Lord Jesus,” he says simply.

Arthur has been faithful for more than a generation – and is both an encouragement and challenge to young and old Christians alike.

His heart for the great commission is unwavering and he knows the truth of Scripture, which shows a little placed in the hands of a great God can accomplish much. The impact of Arthur’s support over so many years is immeasurable. Its true value will be seen in eternity.

God provides and His mission is sustained by the consistent, sacrificial, financial commitment of people like Arthur.

Refugees or Christians who flee persecution hear a friendly voice in their heart langua Imagine being displaced from your home country, fleeing oppression, corrupt legal systems, economic hopelessness, persecution for your faith, and a culture that leaves you fearful for your future or for the future of your children.

There are over 7000 Persian refugees in Indonesia. Some

are Christians who have fled persecution. Yet many more are families who flee their homeland due to poverty, fear and hopelessness. When there is no future, many decide to look for hope in other countries.

One refugee is FEBC broadcaster, Javad*. He came to

NOVEMBER 2018

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ng in remote communities

r the very first time with the message of Jesus.

Radio, in the heart language of ethnic minorities, reaches thousands of unreached for the very first time with the message of Jesus. In Thailand, FEBC program manager shared: “Two new language listeners received Jesus yesterday. A new language listener came to a small church in the mountains.

There are many people listening to the Good News on radio, so our programmer took more radios along to give out.”

Radio with hands and feet

“

More than on air: FEBC teams work directly with communities on the ground.

Along with its other programs, FEBC Thailand broadcasts a Bible Correspondence Course. Almost 41,000 people have completed the course since its inception, which is broken down into three units, with six lessons in each unit.

Here are what some of the course participants have to say: “Before I took your Bible Correspondence Course I didn’t know much about Jesus, but after I’ve taken the lessons I know more and I can apply it in my daily life.”

“I have been willingly receiving Jesus as my Saviour.

I intend to continue my learning to the next lessons,” said Mr.Apiwat,Nakhonrajchasima Province.

“Since I have learnt God’s word, my life has changed a lot. My life is getting much better as I have listened to God’s teaching. I felt that I have received a lot of God’s blessings. Thank God that He has changed my life,” said Mr.Yanan, Nongkai Province.

ng humanitarian crisis

While FEBC uses shortwave, AM and FM radio to deliver the Good News on air, and via streaming done online, another vital link in the success of FEBC’s media mission is radio with hands and feet: FEBC teams working on the ground with churches, people in the community, other missions and NGOs. For example, in India, Suhasini Bagal, or ‘Pinky’ runs an NGO called RUN – Reach Unreached Nations – and is a vital volunteer member of the FEBC India broadcast team.

RUN is engaged with the community in development and awareness of human trafficking.

Together with FEBC India, they run a radio program for women at risk of being targeted by the sex trade. However, for a small NGO like RUN, it is a great challenge to reach out to this vast audience with their limited resources.

FEBC provides RUN with greater amplification.

“By partnering with FEBC India to do a program called Narimon which means ‘The heart of a woman’ we had an easy entry strategy to reach many communities. It opened up the doors for future relationships,” said Pinky.

It is the program follow up on the ground where they see huge impact. Siliguri

FEBC shares the Good News on-air, online and on the ground.” is a trafficking hub, close to four country borders Nepal, Bangladesh, Bhutan and China.

“There are many women who get trafficked through the borders and end up in red light areas. In North Bengal there are 14 red light areas. Being able to reach them via radio and then meet them in small groups, face-to-face, to offer counselling and help means we build strong relationships for ongoing support.”

Pinky and the FEBC India team produce weekly programs on awareness, trafficking, and health related issues. “As a result of our program, many women have changed their thinking and they desire to protect their daughters and other young women.”

The great joy is not only the help being provided to women to restore dignity and hope, but also the prevention and awareness now taking place in communities and remote villages that is saving lives.

Suhasini Bagal

age, and receive encouragement and hope.

Christ after being given a Farsi Bible in Iran and, after being imprisoned and beaten severely for his Christian faith, fled his home country to Indonesia.

Or Zand*, fleeing Afghanistan, who capsized twice in an overcrowded boat, witnessed many drownings and desperately

E

seeking hope. Betrayed by those he thought he could trust, he heard a friendly voice in his own (Farsi) language on FEBC radio and turned to Christ.

The FEBC Indonesia team ministers through radio, listener groups and aid packages of shoes, clothes and toys to

refugees, offering hope to those who have fled their homes. How wonderful FEBC can reach these displaced souls and deliver Jesus’ nourishment via a small, solarpowered/wind-up radio or internet app that brings a voice of comfort in their own language. *names changes for security purposes.

NOVEMBER 2018

E FEBC SPONSORED LIFT - OUT 12

Joy to the world: Give a radio and reach 1000s

If you want to reach out, go further and do something a little bit different with your Christmas gifts this year, give a radio.

9 million people annually tell FEBC how their lives are changed by what they hear on our radios and see from our teams on the ground. You can be part of that change this Christmas.

One $30 solar/wind up radio goes a long way. Our listeners write, call, sms and visit our stations to tell us: “If I tried to tell about all the blessings from God, there’s not enough paper. From the time I started studying your Bible lessons, I’ve experienced much joy. I also share them with others and they, too, have turned to Christ.”

“My life has changed because I listened to your programs and trusted God. Please continue broadcasting to my people. All of your programs are like a good meal that I want to eat every day.”

“I share my belief with them when they seek to know more.

Many people keep asking me questions about it… I listen to various kinds of programs, and then share the touching episodes with others and introduce the programs to them.”

Please consider giving an FEBC $30 radio to someone in need of a friendly voice – either for yourself or on behalf of a friend or family member. You can also order gift cards that explain how the gift of a radio delivers joy to the world this Christmas time.

Reach out with a gift that goes further.

How a $30 radio

FEBC GIVES A GIFT OF A RADIO TO A PERSON OVERSEAS ON YOUR BEHALF

helps people in need

Give a $30 FEBC radio. Give a friendly voice speaking hope into someone’s life. + A solar/wind up radio is shared by up to 25 people.

7.8 MILLION PEOPLE EACH YEAR TELL US THEIR LIVES ARE CHANGED BY WHAT THEY HEAR AND SEE FROM FEBC.

UNREACHED, PERSECUTED AND SUFFERING PEOPLE HEAR ABOUT THE HOPE OF JESUS

+ Going into more than 49 countries. + A friendly voice in 113 different languages. + Changing more than 7.8 million lives each year.

THERE IS AN EXTENSIVE FOLLOW-UP MINISTRY ON THE GROUND: LISTENER GROUPS MEET TOGETHER

FEBC’S RADIO PROGRAMS EDUCATE LISTENERS: SOCIAL ISSUES ARE ADDRESSED TO CHANGE LIVES.

If projects are oversubscribed, gifts will be allocated where most needed

Give a radio and order your gift cards at febc.org.au or call 1300 720 017 FEBC Australia, ABN: 68 000 509 51 FEBC Relief, ABN: 87 617 872 287

IN DEPTH

NOVEMBER 2018

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Green shoots: church plants bloom City on a Hill in a city near you BEN MCEACHEN Many churches have vision statements. Melbourne’s City on a Hill church network has a “ridiculously big and huge” vision to plant 50 churches in 10 cities.

“We love the vision because it reminds us that it’s not ultimately about us,” explains Guy Mason, lead pastor and founder of City on a Hill. “It’s about God and his love and commitment to building his church and to reaching the lost people with Jesus.”

The “10 Cities, 50 Churches” vision was cast three years ago and Melburnian Mason happily clarifies there is no timeframe attached. Even the cities themselves and how many churches in each one are not rigidly defined. Instead, this movement wants to be dependent upon God, not a strategy document.

“We wanted to step out with something big, bold and audacious.

Something that could only be answered in his grace.”

Mason says City on a Hill’s church planting plans are ridiculous in light of where the church came from. In 2007, Mason was a recent father with fledgling plans to pastor a church.

He remembers standing in the rain wondering if anyone would come to his apartment for a first night of Bible study. Nine people gathered in his lounge room.

A decade later and five City on a Hill churches have sprouted from Mason’s lounge, with three in Melbourne, and Brisbane and Geelong being further flung. “Over the last ten years we have seen God gather and build; we’ve seen hundreds of people get saved and baptised.

And yet it still seems huge and, sometimes, challenging. Australia is tough soil and there are the statistics of churches in decline.

It’s easy to let those voices play into the narrative yet we want to break through it. I think it is important to own where you feel God has called you to and you perhaps have a connection to.”

Guy Mason and his team of leaders enjoy the city and they promote, like any missionary, being part of the culture you feel equipped to reach.

“The message of the gospel needs to be heard and lived. Anyone who wants to communicate the gospel always wants to do so in a way that’s not only getting the message out but getting the message in, which means understanding who you are talking to.

“You just can’t do that from afar.

You really have to be in.”

Southern Beaches Anglican, Tas KALEY PAYNE When Jamie Bester decided to plant a church in the southern beaches community southeast of Hobart, his first challenge

Southern Beaches Anglican Church, Tasmania. was breaking into a close-knit community. Several, in fact.

“The southern beaches are actually about five different, small communities. They’re geographically separated and we saw straight away that it was going to be pretty hard to get people to travel to meet on a Sunday.”

It’s why they decided on the SOMA model of church planting, which Jamie describes as “planting small groups first,” or “missional communities” which connect people together in private homes. Jamie and his wife Claire started with one group in 2017, which grew to over 30 people. Then another was planted in one of the other southern beaches small towns.

And then another.

Their first official church service was launched in March 2018, in the local school hall.

Jamie says by that time they had about 60 people in their “missional communities,” but only about 20 were coming to church. Six months on and plenty more people from the small groups are now going to church as well.

“We want to be concerned about the same things our community was concerned about,” says Jamie.

“So we did a survey. We spoke to local police, teachers, shopkeepers, we knocked on doors, talked to people in the streets.

“People told us they were really worried about the kids not having much to do, about old people being lonely, about coast care and looking after the local beaches.”

The church has taken those comments on board as a way of focusing what they do first. They’re running a thriving mentoring programme and youth group in the local school. One of the missional communities is part of a scheme called “Adopt a Neighbour,” where they volunteer to help mow a neighbour’s lawn or do odd jobs for elderly community members.

“Everyone who is part of our church is active. There’s a real culture growing that it’s just a natural part of being a Christian to tell other people about Jesus.”

Uniting, planting, building JOHN SANDEMAN

South Australia’s Uniting churches has a Church Planting officer.

Graham Humphris has a good track record in growing his own church, and now he’s turned his hand to the UCA’s own green shoots. “The good news is that three church plants have begun in 2018 with at least one more planned for 2019,” he tells Eternity.

“The three that have started are Encounter Church, which meets at Prospect using a Catholic school hall, Outpost Church at McLaren Vale Uniting and Mitcham Hills Church in the Scotch College library. In 2019 another church plant will begin in the CBD.” He points out that the Uniting Church in SA has adopted church planting as part of its strategic plan to: “prepare for the regeneration of the church by exploring diverse models of church-planting.” They have put their money where their mouth is: “A sustainable funding model for 10 start-up church plants has been agreed to, which provides up to $50,000 for a church plant, Humphris says. “These funds will be given on a dollar-for-dollar basis and within a ‘pay it forward’ model. $500,000 has been set aside for this.

“Our prayer is that everyone in the city of Prospect has an encounter with Jesus,” Encounter Church co-pastors Mike and Jenny Wardrop report. “Encounter has currently been running for five months. We get around 32 adults and 13 children on an average week, including three new people per week. The average age of adults is approximately 25. The congregation is primarily from dechurched and unchurched people. Since we have started, we have seen two adult salvations, two child decisions for Jesus and will be having our first baptisms in early December, as well as running two Christmas services.

Thank you deeply to everybody who has prayed for us, encouraged

us and championed us – it moves mountains! We mean to keep inspiring and challenging our people to follow the way of Christ, give their lives wholeheartedly to him, to grow as disciples and sharing the life-changing gospel of Jesus Christ to Prospect and beyond.”

Down in the wine region south of Adelaide, Outpost Church is led

by Shane and Christy Rayner and a core group of about 16 people, Humphris reports. Their vision is to see the family of God expand through a shared kingdom life in McLaren Vale. The church started with a dedication service on Sunday September 2 (Father’s Day) with about 200 people in attendance. In the first six weeks, Outpost has had an average attendance of about 30 people.

Worship, sharing meals, Bible study, prayer and Alpha courses are key aspects of the Sunday and mid-week gatherings.

Humphris knows Mitcham Hills Church the best because he is part of it. “We commenced on 4 March 2018. The church is centred around 5 key values: · Declare Jesus is Lord. · Engage with the Bible for lifechange. · Focus beyond ourselves. · Build relationships that matter. · Empower people to lead.

An average of about 55 people of all ages attend with many of these being unchurched and dechurched people.

The future is regional and bi-cultural REBECCA ABBOTT GracePoint Presbyterian – a bicultural, multi-site church in Sydney’s inner west – is a model of churchplanting success, in reformed evangelical circles and beyond. The church has grown from

130 members to about 1000 in the past 20 years, since being planted by the Chinese Presbyterian Church in Surry Hills, Sydney. It now has a total of seven services across three sites, including the church premises in Lidcombe and two different locations in Burwood – 8km to the east.

GracePoint has uniquely divided its ministry to Chinese and English speakers into two separate, independently-operated churches.

This is a key reason for the church’s growth, according to lead English Pastor Eugene Hor, who coordinates four English-speaking services, along with three assistant pastors. GracePoint also has three Chinese-speaking services at the Burwood site – one in Mandarin and two in Cantonese – which have their own pastors.

“We’ve adopted different strategies because we recognise that the English speakers have a different culture,” Hor explains.

The flexibility of this model has allowed GracePoint to respond to the growing appetite for church community among Chinese migrants, while also catering for the different needs of secondgeneration Australians.

“It’s hard for East-Asian ministry to stand alone,” says Hor. “A lot of it has to be connected to second-generation ministry, because people come as families.

In our migrant ministry, we noticed that sometimes people would go to the Chinese-speaking congregation and their kids will go to the English-speaking service.

That’s an avenue of growth.”

Hor suggests that, when planting, churches should be looking to areas that are easily accessible by public transport and target people within a 30-minute radius, in order to be “hubs of mission and growth.” GracePoint is already a regional church, with 60 per cent of the congregation living outside the local area.

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BIBLE @ WORK

Tears of joy as Audio Bible is launched Nami – in purple – works on the Pitjantjatjara Old Testament Translation Project in the Red Lime Shack Cafe in Port Adelaide.

ANNE LIM Nami was moved to tears when she heard her own voice narrating the Gospel of Mark in the new Pitjantjatjara New Testament Audio.

When Bible Society’s Louise Sherman played the Audio to Nami on her phone, she sat quietly while Louise drove.

“The occasional ‘wiru’ (wonderful) and ‘palya’ (good) escaped her lips. It was only when I pulled up that I realised Nami was in tears,” recalls Louise, who is Bible Society Australia’s Remote and Indigenous Ministry Production Coordinator.

“She smiled and said ‘I am crying because I am so happy. Even once I am long gone, my children and grandchildren will still be able to hear me sharing the gospel with them.’

“She wiped her tears, smiled and said, ‘This is rikina!’ (This is superb!)

“Many of the Pitjantjatjara

(Anangu) people we met were overwhelmed when they heard the voices of their relatives on the recording,” adds Louise, who recently joined a roadshow taking the new Bible app to Aboriginal communities in the APY (Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara) Lands in South Australia.

Bible Society’s Translator and Bible Engagement Coordinator, David Barnett, had some very encouraging experiences while visiting eight Aboriginal communities east of his base in Ernabella. (A second team visited 11 communities west of Ernabella.)

“We were just helping people to install the Bible app on their phones and also hand out to church leaders and schools these ‘proclaimers’ – which are little black boxes with speakers that can run off solar, which include the recently recorded New Testament,” he says. “We arrived at Titjikala and there was a sorry camp on, which was basically a time when people mourn someone who has

passed away recently. The pastor there had lost his wife and we gave him one of these proclaimers and he was thrilled to have the Scriptures to encourage him at that time when he was grieving the loss of his wife.

“All his family were sitting around and they put it on and listened to the Gospel of Matthew and it was fantastic to see how much encouragement it actually brought them.”

David said he was reminded during the recent launch of the Bible app in Adelaide how powerful it can be to hear, as opposed to read, the word of God. “It was the first time a lot of them had heard the Scriptures in their language and it dawned on them how important this was, how significant it was for their families,” he says.

“I think often in the West we forget that, for most of the history of the church, people actually haven’t had access to printed Scriptures, so for a long time

faith has come by hearing and not necessarily by reading the Scriptures. So there’s something powerful about having the word proclaimed orally and I don’t think we should underestimate the impact this new recording might have.”

David has noticed how the Audio Bible has further intensified the enthusiasm of the 30 or 40 translators who are involved in translating the Pitjantjatjara Old Testament.

“Part of my role in the project is to produce front translations for them to work from – these are English translations that can be easily adapted into Pitjantjatjara – and there’s such a great demand at the moment for people to have the Bible, so a lot of people are wanting to get involved and I’m struggling to keep up with the translations – a good problem to have!”

More than half of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are Christians (54 per cent, according to the 2016 census), but most

have never heard the Bible in the language of their heart. With the recent launch of the Kunwinjku New Testament in Arnhem Land, 17 Indigenous communities now have a New Testament in their language. However, there is only one full Bible in an Aboriginal language – Kriol – which means thousands of Christians are missing out on God’s word.

More than 20 Indigenous Bible projects need urgent funding to equip our brothers and sisters to share the Bible their way, through art, storytelling and in their lives every day.

Will you help support the work of the Remote Indigenous Ministry Support team? As well as publishing and distributing Bibles and recording Indigenous Scripture in audio, the team supports translation of the Bible into more languages, and prepares special Bible resources.

+ If you would like more details, visit biblesociety.org.au/waysep Artist: Katrina Tjitayi

*

Their way, their words. $40 helps us print more Scripture in the heart languages of Australia’s First Peoples. Will you help?

Call 1300 BIBLES (1300 242 537) or visit biblesociety.org.au/waysep

NOVEMBER 2018

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OPINION

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Gospel meets social justice Michael Jensen page 19 Australian War Memorial

A crowd in Martin Place, central Sydney, celebrate the news of the signing of the armistice. This date was celebrated in subsequent years as Remembrance Day.

What do we want? Peace

SIMON SMART on the end of the war to end all wars I recently came across a photograph from the Australian War Memorial taken in Sydney’s Martin Place on November 11, 1918. The crowds have come out in

force at the announcement of the armistice in Europe. The length of the promenade is heaving with men and women jammed together in a mosh pit of jubilation. Flags and hats are waved in the air and the unbridled joy on each and every face is unmistakable. It’s a beautiful moment in time.

That moment didn’t last of course. Armistice Day eventually gave way to Remembrance Day – and a more sober reflection on all that had been lost. Sixty thousand young men dead.

Thousands wounded, scarred and traumatised. The knock-on effects are incalculable. And even as humanity briefly laid down its arms, the influenza pandemic of 1918-19, the deadliest since the Black Death 600 years before, went ahead and killed more people than all the World War I battles put together.

The “peace” that humanity longs for, in all its many facets, is defiantly elusive. It’s an elusiveness that U2 gives voice to in their song Peace on Earth, which feels like

“

Hear it every Christmas time, but hope and history won’t rhyme.”

a biblical lament. “Hear it every Christmas time, but hope and history won’t rhyme,” sings Bono, reflecting on the gap between the dream and the reality, and imploring Jesus to “throw a drowning man a line”; to intervene in the tragedies and travails of human life.

The biblical tradition of lament – rarely given much attention in the modern church – provides a language to express the anguish, frustration and heartbreak a “fallen” world inevitably delivers.

But it also conveys a dogged trust

in God and the “peace that passes all understanding” despite the circumstances we find ourselves in. Plenty of believers can attest to that peace, as ill-defined and mysterious as it is real to them.

A few years ago, I interviewed Marwat*, an Armenian pastor of a congregation in the northern Syrian town of Aleppo. At the time Aleppo had just passed the 50th day without electricity. For nine months there’d been no internet.

Fuel and water were in short supply and temperatures were freezing at night. ISIS controlled territory to the east and northeast of the city.

Heavy fighting was taking place in the surrounding province and life was extremely tenuous. Two-thirds of the Christian population had fled the country. Death and fear were all around.

And yet, when I spoke with him in the lead up to Christmas, Marwat insisted that celebrating Jesus’ birth, even surrounded by such desolation, meant that “the Prince of Peace brings us inner hope and inner peace … despite

these difficult days, the Lord is with us.” He spoke of a deep sense of Jesus suffering alongside his people in their pain, and that he and his congregation still believed that God had not abandoned them.

The violence of ISIS was all about human brutality, said Marwat, and he said he was praying for the perpetrators of such barbarity that they would “come to know the Lord and to discover what real peace is. To learn that peace does not come by killing people.” This stunning response was all the more remarkable to me given that at the time I was preparing for a typically peaceful and bountiful Australian Christmas. But the truth is we all long for that quality of peace, whether we are in war-torn Syria, or San Francisco, or St Kilda.

It’s a peace that springs to mind at the time in a church service when communion, or the Lord’s Supper, is celebrated.

Different traditions have different ways of doing this of course, but continued page 16

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Peace

“

Shalom, says Wolterstorff , is about more than simply the absence of conflict.” says Wolterstorff, is about more than simply the absence of conflict.

Instead it captures a sense of finding the delight and joy of being in right relationship with God, with other human beings, with the natural world and even right relationship with ourselves. John Stackhouse adds that in a state of shalom individuals flourish, but so too do families and communities, even businesses, systems and institutions. It is a time or place where everything is what it can be.

It’s a vision that goads us to action, and at the same time makes us patient under the inevitable setbacks and disasters of a world that is divided and broken, groaning in anticipation of its restoration.

As John Stackhouse concludes in Why You’re Here, his book about shalom, Christians can work towards the flourishing of everything “with peace and joy, retiring each night to sleep in a world of unfinished business, because we hope in the God who one day will make all things new.” * The name has been changed to protect the identity of this person.

Simon Smart is a Director of Centre for Public Christianity.

Richard Smead

from page 15 the general shape and purpose is essentially the same. My experience of this is one where, briefly, there is actual peace and rare stillness. A few moments to sit quietly and reflect. Approaching the communion table or altar or simply accepting the bread and the wine, there is something about the bodily enactment of these richly symbolic moments recalling sacrifice, pain and death that speaks to all of our pain; to our failures and disappointments; our anxieties and dashed hopes.

As such, there is an appropriate gravity to what is experienced.

“Take and eat and remember Christ’s body broken.” “Drink from this in remembrance that Christ’s blood was shed for you.” But there is also (or at least there should be) an unmistakable hopefulness to what is taking place. The communal experience of this “meal” tells us we are not alone.

The simple ceremony signifies God’s presence with us. This particular eating and drinking is a pointer to God’s continued redemptive action in the world; to new life and the promise of ultimate peace and true rest. At its best, it sends us back to our seats and then out into our lives with a renewed sense of purpose and of what the Bible means by peace.

The Christian philosopher Nicholas Wolterstorff is one of a host of scholars who suggest the English translation “peace” in our modern Bible doesn’t do justice to the much richer and multi-layered Hebrew word, “shalom.” Shalom,

NOVEMBER 2018

Megan Powell du Toit and Michael Jensen feature in With All Due Respect, Eternity’s first podcast.

Meet Michael and Megan Eternity has launched its first podcast. Michael Jensen and Megan Powell du Toit offer good disagreement in the “With All Due Respect” podcast, which can be found on most podcast apps or at eternitynews.com.au.

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holds barred but ... with all due respect." - Michael Take a break from the world of outrage and offence with Eternity's new podcast “With All Due Respect,” as Megan Powell du Toit and Michael Jensen demonstrate the art of good-humoured disagreement, talking theology, relationships, pop culture and all things in between.

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OPINION

NOVEMBER 2018

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Stress is the number one work issue Kara Martin on practical and Christian ways to cope with stress

pixabay / caio triana

A couple of years ago, I taught a masters class of students who had been asked to survey their church about the most difficult issues faced by Christians in the workplace.

In reverse order, number three was conflict at work, with workplace Christians conscious that as Christians we should be peacemakers yet facing the reality that it is difficult for people to get along in the pressure of work.

Number two was ethical challenges, with workplace Christians reporting difficulties working out how to navigate the murky ethical issues of our working, while upholding biblical standards.

Dealing with conflict and ethical challenges were prominent but the most outstanding issue, by far, was handling work stress. Christian members of congregations reported feeling stretched and overwhelmed by the pressures of work, and finding it difficult to find a balance.

This is the number one issue for all workers, not just Christians, with the 2015 Stress and Wellbeing survey run by the Australian Psychological Society finding a trending increase in workplace stress and anxiety. About 45 per cent of Australians complained of work-related stress, costing an estimated $20 billion in lost productivity.

To move from statistics to a typical real-life example, Joanne has felt lots of stress at work.

Leadership changes caused this, as well as lack of consultation about her workload, and the threat of job cutbacks. In addition, there was the breakdown in some key workplace relationships.

She suffered from sleep deprivation; when she awoke, she was distracted by her worries about work. She also had increasing stomach irritation, and occasionally felt her heart racing.

She was also often grumpy with others at home, and sometimes used wine as self-medication to cope with the feeling of being overwhelmed.

At first, Joanne was angry with God for allowing her to get into such a stressful situation. However, over time she found that God’s presence was a great source of solace and comfort.

Nevertheless, she often felt depleted at church, and incapable of participating in church activities. It was something Joanne found difficult to discuss with her church friends, feeling embarrassed about her inability to cope at work.

Joanne’s story is common but also very sad. She hesitated to tell others about her struggles, out of fear of the stigma of stress being seen as a mental illness. She waited too long to get assistance, and by then the situation was spiralling down, both at work and at home.

The stress affected her spiritual relationship, and her capacity to serve in the church community.

A Christian approach to managing stress

Some of the most obvious steps to help deal with stress are to eat, sleep and exercise well. However, there are other significant steps we can take to access God’s power to overcome harmful stress.

Pray through the stress, even when you are not conscious of God hearing your prayers.

If possible, have others who will commit to pray for (or preferably with) you.

Remember that your identity, esteem and security need to be found in Christ rather than in your work. You are God’s child, made in his image, with eternal hope. Those truths cannot be undermined by what is happening at work.

Keep a Sabbath, a weekly time of rest and focus on God that acts as a contrast to the stress of work. Let it be a time of preparation for the week ahead, as well as genuine gratitude to God

1 2 3

for his mercies, his provision and his sustenance.

There is much in Scripture that encourages us that we can cast our anxieties on God because he cares for us (1 Pet 5:7), and that Jesus will take our burdens on himself.

Matthew 11:28-30 is beautifully paraphrased by Eugene Peterson in The Message: “Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me – watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.”

Biblical stories are also a source of encouragement – consider David’s confidence in God in the midst of his stress as he flees from Saul, expressed in Psalms 7, 27, 31 and 34. We also see a godly response in Jesus as he wrestles with his impending arrest, trial, death and separation from God in the Garden of Gethsemane (Matt 26:36-46). As he prays, he tells God his frustrations and fears,

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yet submits to God’s will.

Work sometimes feels like it is too influenced by sin for us to be effective for Christ there. However, Colossians 1:16-17 reminds us that in Jesus “all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him.

He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.”

Jesus is sovereign over the whole earth and every relationship, including our workplace; therefore, they can be places where we look to see what God is already doing, and join with him, asking for discernment and wisdom as we seek to be Christ’s ambassadors.

Our stress, ethical quandaries and conflict issues can be minimised as we practise the spiritual discipline of working for an audience of one: God. As it says in Colossians 3:23: “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters.”

Kara Martin is Project Leader with Seed, and lectures with Mary Andrews College.

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NOVEMBER 2018

Maintaining a fruitful life Lucy Gichuhi learns from King Josiah

with God’s purpose for our lives.

In politics today, the pace is so fast that this gap is blurred. Who is praying for our leaders from all the political parties? Like science, politics is another avenue God has

given us so we can come to know him more and deeper.

One signal that we may be fighting other people’s battles is when we have to disguise ourselves to fit in. By this, I mean mental,

Pixabay / Gellinger

A common goal we all strive for is success – for example; success in politics. In other words we want to strive to grow and be fruitful in this life. We soon discover the real struggle is how to remain in or maintain that success once we have got it. We call it moving from glory to glory. When we study the life of King Josiah, who began his reign at the age of eight years old, we see a king who quickly marked himself as one of the Kings of Judah who pleased God. Witness his genuine enthusiasm for the word of God when he gathered the entire nation for the reading of the Book of the Law. It’s obvious that he must have understood that law is here to protect us, not to punish us. It is

the same with the Bible today – a book of law, not a religious book.

Note that King Josiah came from a horrible family background – he had a terrible father who was killed because of his evil deeds.

King Josiah turned out differently.

Thankfully, our backgrounds do not matter or determine our success.

Notice what happened when he finished building the temple. I have always thought we are vulnerable – especially when we finish one task and get ready for the next.

Without stopping to reflect, pray and fast we may find ourselves moving to other people’s projects.

King Josiah involved himself in a war he did not have to fight and he marched his army into battle against King Neco without just cause. When we do this, we get wounded – which could result in imminent death and or destruction despite our past successes.

In life we often work towards achieving a goal, whether political, financial or social, and we need to prayerfully consult with Scripture to envision the completion of our current project and the start of the next one. This is so we can lay foundations and become aligned

political and even socio-economic disguises. Ultimately, disguises result in becoming wounded and many times we may not recover.

I must admit, I was invested in the story of King Josiah and this was not the ending I expected. God-driven success will always enable us to be true to ourselves, needing no disguises whatsoever.

There is nothing harder than trying to be like somebody else. It is the highest form of disguise. As I mentioned at the beginning, King Josiah was only eight years old when he assumed the throne. He had to grow up and do what his father failed to do and this was only made possible because of God’s miraculous intervention.

Maintaining a fruitful life rests upon seeking wisdom. Reading Scripture is not a onetime event. It is a lifestyle – especially in our transitional periods.

Finally, the benefit of maintaining a fruitful life is finishing the journey more effectively than when we started.

Matthew 7:15-20 (NKJV) says, “Therefore by their fruits you will know them.”

Lucy Gichuhi is a Liberal senator for South Australia.

Sulawesi made Tim long for a new earth

Tim Costello says we are all fragile Can we find any objective rationalisation for the natural evil that afflicts our world?

I was recently in Sulawesi

province in Indonesia, soon after a massive tsunami and earthquake struck. Working with local World Vision staff and volunteers in an intensive search to find children missing in villages in the wake of the disaster, I reflected on the indiscriminate nature of natural catastrophes that claim lives irrespective of age, gender, innocence or religious belief.

Natural evil does not separate the righteous from the wicked or the poor from the rich. It is impersonal.

In Sulawesi, terrified people watched as constant tremors caused their land to sink and slide.

The ground had liquefied and swallowed people like quicksand.

You could see the panic and fear in the faces of parents who didn’t know if their children had survived.

When you can’t trust the very ground you’re standing on it’s terrifying. What can you have faith in?

The suddenness of the Indonesian deaths reminded us again of the sometimes uncomfortable truth that, in the end, we are all equally fragile.

The magnitude of suffering will have forced many to ask an eternal and fundamental theological question: Where is God in all this?

Bushfires, earthquakes, tsunamis and cancers are natural evils that plague us for reasons

we don’t and perhaps can’t understand.

We live, as Thoreau put it, “lives of quiet desperation’’ unless we can sense something beyond sight and human understanding.

The issue isn’t why God does not intervene to save everyone in the face of natural evil, but why we humans seem to care so little about each other.

Clearly the earth is in agony.

Destructive earthquakes, hurricanes and tsunamis regularly take place in the poorest communities, but Westerners generally show little interest in them. Undeserved pain, disease, and death are daily facts of life for hundreds of millions of people on

the planet because the world has certain imperfections built into the natural order.

C. S. Lewis, in Mere Christianity, makes a profound statement: “If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.”

We yearn for the promised new heaven and new earth where suffering and evil are things of the past and creation is renewed. We may be consoled that Scripture’s final word on evil – both moral and natural – is triumph.

That may be one of life’s deepest and most beautiful mysteries. It is all about human experience and of making some sense of the chaos.

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OPINION

NOVEMBER 2018

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Social justice meets the gospel Michael Jensen Saved people do seek justice

Love Makes A Way

Let me start with what may be a controversial statement: The gospel of Jesus Christ demands social justice but working for social justice is not the gospel.

One of the great divides that emerged in Christianity in the 20th century was the division over the place of what we may call “social justice.”

Recently, that division has become even more pronounced.

A group of US evangelical leaders has recently produced a statement called “The Statement on Social Justice and the Gospel.” This statement has produced a good deal of controversy. It argues, for example: We deny that political or social activism should be viewed as integral components of the gospel or primary to the mission of the church … We deny that laws or regulations possess any inherent power to change sinful hearts …

It goes on: We emphatically deny that lectures on social issues (or activism aimed at reshaping the wider culture) are as vital to the life and health of the church as the preaching of the gospel and the exposition of Scripture.

Historically, such things tend to become distractions that inevitably lead to departures from the gospel.

The statement has been sharply criticised by conservative evangelical leaders such as Al Mohler for its attitude to race and racism. Although it repudiates racism as a grave evil, it seems to minimise the need to change laws, systems and cultural attitudes that promote it.

The evangelical movement always had, alongside its belief in the necessity of personal conversion, a passion for social reform and issues of justice. Great heroes of evangelicalism include William Wilberforce and William Carey, just to name two. There was no doubt in their minds that the gospel of Jesus Christ compelled Christians to do good works – and that this included changing social structures, where necessary and possible, to provide more compassionate and humane outcomes for all people.

Later on, though, the divide emerged between those who were committed to personal conversion through evangelism as the supreme, even only, calling of the church, and those who argued that the Christian gospel was advanced as much by social justice as by evangelism.

In the 1920s, a Baptist pastor called Walter Rauschenbusch argued that the Christian gospel was really about extending the kingdom of God. He criticised what he felt was a narrow focus on personal conversion.

For Rauschenbusch, this was disastrous, because it meant that we missed the devastating impact

Can social justice movements such as Love Makes a Way (supporting asylum seekers) be considered part of obedience to the gospel? of sin and evil on and through social structures.

For Rauschenbusch and those he influenced, the church’s mission was to bring in the kingdom of God by social action primarily – and indeed, almost exclusively. So, to this way of thinking, Christians are doing gospel work when they argue for racial equality or promote more just treatment of the poor, regardless of whether the gospel is preached or not.

On the other side of the ledger, you find someone like D.B. Knox, former principal of Moore College in Sydney, who argued that there was no such thing as “social justice” in the Bible. Christians were called to compassion (and he was a fine example of that) but seeking to reform social structures was not their mission. Our task is to preach the gospel, and when hearts are changed we find that society is changed. This is very similar to the approach of the “Statement on Social Justice and the Gospel.”

As you can see, this has been a polarised – and polarising – debate. And I think it takes careful navigation to see the way forward. We need to define and explore the terms we are using, and to be aware of how we may be misheard. We also need to work from Scripture rather than from sentiment or from fashionable politics, left or right.

The first thing to say is that the gospel of Jesus Christ calls on us to love our neighbour, and even our enemy, as ourselves. Nothing could be clearer than that. Without love – and that love expressed in practical compassion and generosity – the gospel has not taken root in a person’s heart. We have not heard Jesus at all, and not understood the gospel of forgiveness of sins through his atoning work on the cross, if we are not concerned for the poverty, loneliness and pain of our neighbour.

Often, arguments about social justice and its relationship to the

gospel make it too complicated.

Are not Christians commanded to “do good to all, and especially the household of faith?” (Gal 6:10). It is surely unarguable that Christian obedience demands us to seek justice – especially when, as is often the case, we have more power to change the structures of society than early Christians did.

We could make the theological point even more profoundly by appealing to two Old Testament concepts: peace and righteousness.

God’s peace, his “shalom,” is his vision for the created world living in harmony with him. His righteousness, likewise, is not the same as “justice” as an abstract balancing of the scales, but rather something like “everything in right relationship, especially to God.” We see extraordinary pictures of God’s peace and his righteousness in the book of Isaiah, especially from chapters 40-66. These two concepts are interesting because God is at the centre of them.

They involve right relationship or harmony with God first and foremost. If we have God’s heart for the world, we will want to see his peace and his righteousness reign, but especially that comes about as people are reconciled to the creator.

The second point is to do with sin and evil.

Rauschenbusch was right: sin is not just individual; it is social. But it would also be a distortion to say that it is only social.

The Bible gives us both: Jesus dies for our individual sin, for us as individual sinners. And he also dies to triumph over the powers and principalities that are arrayed against God. Human beings collectively and individually sin.

And that means we cannot think of

discipleship in simply individual terms. Neither can we think of the Christian gospel as only a matter of the individual’s reconciliation with God. But if it doesn’t begin with the individual’s reconciliation with God, it is not the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Jesus did not just die for sin. He died for sinners.

Thirdly, we need to recognise that the term “social justice” is particularly loaded and needs clarification. At face value, the good news of the rule of Jesus Christ has always implied “social” “justice” – that is, it always creates and commands a new form of common life. The church itself is to embody life with one another and with God based on grace and peace. From the earliest times, the church shared its goods in common and overlooked social distinctions. Slaves and masters, men and women, Jews and Gentiles, poor and rich all worshipped side by side. They were to find harmony in difference and to lay down their rights in order to build one another up. That’s God’s vision of a renewed humanity, gathered together on the basis of the forgiveness of sins in Jesus Christ.

But “social justice” as it is used in common parlance has the flavour of a progressive and highly secular political vision. This is where great care needs to be taken when Christians use it. The gospel

imperative to practise social justice may be attached to a number of different political programmes. Is it more socially just to have more taxation, or less? Is it more socially just to defend traditional marriage, or to allow people freedom to marry a person of the same gender? Is it more socially just to increase welfare or decrease it? Is it more socially just to give a social advantage to historically oppressed minorities, or does it just further deepen their dependence on identity as victims?

These are all very serious and important questions – and there are answers that are more or less Christian. But a particular vision for how justice is to be implemented in a given society at a certain moment in history is not the same as the gospel of Jesus Christ.

I take issue with the “Statement” because obedience to the gospel demands that we think about social justice. It is vital to our health as a church, if we are to be obedient to our Lord.

It is shameful when the people who belong to Jesus are indifferent to injustice. Compassion (for example) was not enough in South Africa under the apartheid regime – which had been justified by a dubious reading of the Bible. The word of God needed to be spoken and lived into that situation, to name its evil and to expose its terrible hypocrisy.

But I do agree that we can too easily substitute working for social justice for the gospel – in which case we just become a reflection of whichever political philosophy we prefer, progressive or conservative.

The power of the Holy Spirit to change hearts, by drawing repentant sinners to the cross of Jesus Christ and by unleashing his resurrection power in them, is the power we wield for change.

Michael Jensen is the rector of St Mark’s Anglican Church in Darling Point, Sydney, and the author of several books.

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OPINION

20

NOVEMBER 2018

Peachy Christians

With strongman politics currently dominating world affairs, I’ve been pondering what Christian leaders should look like. Do we try to keep up with the tough guys, going toe to toe and showing that Christ is stronger – the Lion of Judah?

Or do we try to look different to the worldly powers, and adopt the stance of the Lamb of God, the slain Lamb who, according to the Book of Revelation, sits right there next to the all-powerful throne of God in the heavens? Lambs are soft, fluff y, delightful, seemingly powerless. Lions are terrifying, proud, strong and hard to ignore.

Which should we be?

My conclusion: Christianity is soft.

finally getting up and doing something.

The joyful person can get overlooked as just being here for fun, whereas the serious driven type seems like what we need.

Maybe not, if you are looking for spiritual qualities.

Kindness is hardly ever a KPI for Christians in leadership: why not? The opposite is harshness, and that still seems to get rewarded. Something is wrong there.

Self-control seems to me to be the only fruit where hard might trump soft. I don’t know about you, but I think it might be the slowest and trickiest spiritual fruit to ripen. It’s about truly understanding your weaknesses, and throwing everything you have at killing off that old self and letting the sanctified self shine through. Perhaps this type of fruit is different because it is truly about how you deal with yourself, not how you treat others. All the other

Pixabay / mongsang2014

Greg Clarke on one fruit (of the spirit)

Soft is where we need to stay.

Soft is the side of the good guys.

Soft is strong. Behold the Lamb!

Take a look at the fruit of the Holy Spirit. That famous passage from St Paul’s letter to the Galatian church gives us a list of things that will be evident in people who have dedicated themselves to following the way of Jesus Christ: “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.” (Galatians 5:22-23) They’re all soft.

Dangerously, there are several loud voices in the public arena claiming to represent Christians in politics, cultural commentary and ethical debates that I find hard to square with this list of spiritual virtues. I suggest we ask this question of them as we read and hear their words: are they soft? And if they aren’t soft, they probably aren’t bearing the fruit of the Spirit, so we should be wary about lining up with them.

The people to look to for Christian leadership are therefore, by nature, hard to find. Soft is harder to detect than loud. Gentle is harder to notice than aggressive.

Forbearance and patience can look like caving in or going quiet, whereas angry protest feels like

fruit is about who you are towards your neighbour, your family, your church, your communities.

Maybe that’s it: Christians are to be soft on the outside, and rock hard within. Soft in our dealings with each other, and hard in our dealings with ourselves. Working hard on getting our internal spiritual lives sorted, so we can be generous towards everyone

else. Hardening up our insides without letting that hardness affect those we seek to love and serve.

We are to be like peaches. That decides it: the peach is the fruit of the Spirit.

An important caveat is this: these instructions from Paul are first and foremost about how Christians treat each other. They are not a treatise for engaging in politics, unless they have first been a treatise for how you behave towards your brother and sister in Christ. Judgment begins with the household of God. We need to clean up our own act if we think we have anything to offer the wider world. And what we have to offer should be pretty soft.

That’s a hard ask.

Greg Clarke is CEO of Bible Society Australia.

Bible Stat 3,937,476 Bibles distributed in China in 2017.

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