Tomorrow is a verge collection day for us. We’ve been in the process of gathering up all of the junk that has slowly accumulated in our house and putting it out on the verge so that it can be collected and disposed of.
I’m pretty good at this stuff—those ‘death cleaning’ Swedes would be proud. I can be utterly ruthless when it comes to sorting through items that no longer need keeping. To be fair, some of it is the leftover stuff from when dad and mum died. An old gas heater, a lowline black TV cabinet and assorted detritus that somehow found a way to hide in our home and sheds.
I was particularly happy to farewell a large wooden chair that I purchased in the late 90’s while we were living in the hills. Danelle and I have had a running battle with this one—her wanting to fix it up—me knowing it’s unlikely to ever happen and just wanting to declutter. Finally after 15 years of living in Yanchep it is gone… no longer an eyesore at the end of our balcony!
I went thru my shed again and managed to offload some gear I had been keeping “just in case”, but when it came to this old stool I hesitated. The stool, along with various pieces of timber, made their way from Belfast to Perth in 1974 and it had been a permanent fixture in my dad’s shed for as long as I can remember. It could be 50 years old… Maybe more.
On one hand it’s junk. I rarely use it and I can’t imagine it will get a new lease of life, having now survived the ‘great cull of 2026’. But it stands as a positive memory of my father—a bloke who loved his shed and who loved building and fixing pretty much anything. Dad could hang a door, rebuild an engine, glaze a window, or any practical task you might throw at him.
So the stool has history and heart. In true dad character there was a handwritten note underneath saying the top had been replaced in 2000 and again 2011. The stool serves as a warm memory of the man who was my father.
That said, the greatest sadness of my father’s passing was my own absence of sadness. I have been relatively unaffected by dad’s death and if anything it has been a relief. I don’t think that’s how things should be and I know he didn’t want it that way either. He desperately wanted more affirmation from me particularly, that he had lived a good life and been a positive influence on me.
Towards the end of his life he carried the lyrics of a song around with him. “My Old Man” is a son’s reflections of his love for his father. He would frequently ask me if I had heard the song / listened to the song / read the lyrics. I once sat through a very uncomfortable youtube video of the song, because as we sat there the dissonance between the lyrics and reality was simply too great.
He printed this song on small slips of paper and dispensed them to the women he managed to con into giving him a ride home from the shops. I’m not sure if Dad wished for more in our relationship, or if he just regretted some of the hostility of years gone by. But when you are in your late 80’s the ‘horse’ of good fathering has long bolted and instead you simply reap what you have sown.
For me that meant at best a passive and indifferent relationship. I had counselling for this stuff in my late 30’s and managed to put to bed my disappointment with dad’s inability to see a point of view other than his own. I don’t think he ever came to grips with it himself. We could have had so much more than an awkward and combative relationship but he was never at ease veering into more personal territory. In my younger years I was too immature to ignore his taunts and barbs. Instead I would launch into full scale attack and we would both end up shouting.
Then… distance.
Repeat that same process many times over and all that happens is the distance increases and increases…
So in the later years of life, rather than savouring the final moments of a beautiful connection you dutifully go to visit a person you hardly know.
I’m sometimes reminded that my experience of dad is unique and that other’s have encountered him quite differently. Only this week I was weighing a car and caravan for a couple, and discovered the woman had been a clinical nurse in the facility dad was living in. I jokingly apologised for whatever inappropriate things he may have said to her, but she replied, “we quite liked your dad. He had some energy and spirit.” She wasn’t the first person to voice this.. a reminder that the perception of a son is quite singular.
While Sam was alive we talked about the broken relationship I had with dad and how Sam’s own experience of him was also a bit weird. ‘This song makes me think of grandad’ he said. It rang true with me too… ‘A handshake not a hug to say goodbye’… Just one of dad’s ‘things’.
We spoke frankly about this and agreed that we would recalibrate what it looked like to be Hamilton men. But that didn’t go to plan either…
I’ve found it difficult to articulate the underwhelming connection (or disconnection) I had with my father, because it seems a little disrespectful to him. But it’s also reality. We weren’t close and the hopes he may have held for me missing him and having wonderful memories to return to were never realised.
I do have some memories, but few that swell ,my heart. I sense father son relationships operate a bit like superannuation. If you do the small things early on and stay constant then later down the track it really pays off. If you come late to the party then there simply isn’t the time for your contributions to have the impact they could have had over time.
So the stool remains — not because I desperately miss my father, but because it speaks to something good and commendable about him – and I am grateful for that.
An observation – untested – but I would suggest largely true – is that evangelicalism is heavily populated with white collar workers.
Why is it that are our churches generally composed of people with higher education, or those who work in professional / corporate roles?
As I began to look around for churches where tradespeople are the larger group I found myself coming up short. Even in the classic blue collar suburbs of Perth, the church is generally still heavily composed of middle class, more educated people.
It’s difficult to write of this without the distinction between degrees of education sounding disparaging. Often a trade was often presented to us as the only option for the less academic sorts. When I was a student a significant number left at the age of 15 – currently the end of year 10 – and found a trade/apprenticeship where they learnt on the job and with some TAFE based education. I remember thinking ‘ok so the smart people keep studying while the rest ‘drop out’. You can hear the pejorative thinking around this subject.
While that mindset may still be present to a lesser degree today, I feel like we have come to recognise different forms of intelligence. I have friends who can pull apart car engines, hang doors and fix a leaking pipe in their sleep. Some academic types have never invested time in practical learning so they feel all at sea in this regard.
There are obviously many many people in our communities who build & fix things, or who work in jobs where higher education is not required, but they are under-represented in our churches. If I had to offer a few un-researched reasons for this these are what they’d be:
a) People like me – most of us join groups where the other people are somewhat like us. It’s just a sociological norm – ‘like’ hangs with ‘like’. And over the many years as the evangelical work ethic has done its thing the church has become increasingly a place for those who have moved out of a working class space and into a more middle class life. In days gone by tradies didn’t earn as much as teachers, so the lack of earning generally made for a harder life. This is no longer the case for many trade workers who can now make a lot of money doing the jobs that people simply don’t know how to do or can’t be bothered doing. Despite this change in income levels, there is still a difference in education that can cause a feeling of superiority or inadequacy.
b) Learning style – In most of evangelicalism the sermon is the centrepiece of the Sunday experience. It’s possible that the form alone isolates some practical people. Sitting and listening is not their learning style and unless the speaker is genuinely engaging they will likely be bored in minutes. When preaching is heavy on the exegesis and abstract theological ideas, tradies may simply detach. If they are faced with a form of thinking that doesn’t express itself practically then I suggest they zone out and eventually drop out. The dominance of sermon style communication can often say ‘you don’t belong here’ as this message doesn’t have a direct correlation to the life you live.
c) They need a day off – all work is tiring but physical labour is very tiring. Many trades also work 6 days / week so the thought of spending a Sunday in a room with people ‘unlike me’, listening to what may be seen as an irrelevant lecture is gonna be a stretch. Even those of us who work 5 days know that Saturday is when all the jobs get done around the house so space in the week can be hard to find.
d) Culture – compare the vibe of the building site with that of the school staff room or the office and generally there is a perception that the culture in these work areas is quite different. Generous slatherings of expletives are common on building sites, but not so in office settings. The attire of each environment also communicates something – work boots, hard hats and work wear ‘feels’ different to collared shirts and maybe even ties. The language and tone of the work site doesn’t feel like it belongs in the church gathering, but (and I know I am generalising) the tone of the office feels more akin to a Sunday space. Generally speaking we have done better at relaxing our expectations of dress-code around church so that thongs and t shirt is now quite acceptable in some communities. We no longer frown at those who smoke or swear, but I sense we still give off a more ‘proper’ tone than is gonna make the average tradie feel at ease.
Perhaps a valuable point of leverage may be engaging tradespeople more intentionally into church leadership teams. When I think of virtually every leadership team or board I have been part of, the demographic missing is always the blue collar. I wonder why that is… I don’t sense tradespeople are better or worse in leadership capacity than the average corporate type. Maybe the skills of a board are better suited to those in professional roles, but I’d suggest we would do well to find a way to raise up leaders who do not live in white collar world. Not that it’s bad to have a professional job – but it is a concern that we seem to be lacking these people in our church communities.
Anyway I’d love to hear your comments and observations. A friend suggested to me recently that the ethnic churches (Vietnamese / Burmese etc) have a higher representation of trades, perhaps because these folks are needing to re-orient their lives in a new country where their quals are unrecognised.
Another random comment from a friend was about the ‘right leaning’ of more tradespeople today. What used to be a politically left demographic does seem to have shifted. Or is that just me?…
So those are a few reasons I see for the conundrum we find ourselves in, but what can we do to somehow broaden the reach of our church communities. Is it even possible to see a significant non-professional/corporate/academic demographic represented in our churches.
I got my dates mixed up and on Wednesday last week realised I was speaking in church on Sunday… Oops… I normally take a couple of weeks just to muse on a subject before beginning work putting it into a form that can be understood and digested.
But it was Wednesday and the end of my week was busy, so I needed to get moving. For better or worse it was a ‘free kick’ week, where you get to choose your own adventure and speak on whatever topic you think is relevant and suitable for the people in the community. Yes, I do have a stack in the ‘filing cabinet’, but I don’t like going that route if I can avoid it.
So, Thursday morning I began jotting down some ideas, I had a sense of what I wanted to say, so I just kept going and the main body of the teaching formed up. But I knew as I worked that what I was wanting to say was nuanced and somewhat provocative. And that nuance is important for the teaching to connect positively rather than simply sounding like a ‘cage rattling’.
A few books had been percolating in my thinking:
Jesus and John Wayne by Kristen Kobes Du Mez – a tracking of the rise of ‘militant masculinity’ in American culture and how that had impacted the church… think evangelicals voting for Trump…
How Did We Get Here by Todd Wilson – a very helpful history of the rise of the church growth movement, looking at how McGavran’s original idea of connecting gospel to culture, morphed into various techniques and hacks for getting your church to grow bigger. It is both a history and a critique—a helpful reflection on our tendency to pragmatism and our obsession with growth and what may appear to be success.
Baal and the God’s of More—Rescuing Church Growth From Idolatry by Andrew Root – this one I began listening to last week and it is a very provocative thesis—that we worship at the altar of ecclesial success and we have been seduced by the market economy into believing this is good and normal. So he’s not criticising growth per se (that would be dumb) but rather he is critiquing what he sees as an obsession with bigger and better in church life. I’m not sure if it is the AI voice making it hard to digest via audio, but there are some very big words and concepts I find hard to access via listening.
Against the Machine by Paul Kingsnorth – another fairly challenging read where Kingsnorth argues that the machine of economic progress has hollowed out the soul of culture and the church. Like Root, he says some really insightful stuff, but I also sense there are places where he is rather polemic (as prophets tend to be)
The McDonaldisation of the Church by John Drane – an older book (2000) that takes George Ritzer’s ‘mcdonaldisation’ paradigm which he applied to society and then lays it over church. A group has been ‘mcdonaldised’ when the 4 elements of efficiency, calculability. predictabillity and control have been applied and used to guide its’ progress and development. Think ‘franchise’ churches where the menu, vibe and style is identical no matter where you go.
There were a few things I wanted to draw out that I felt like I didn’t communicate well. That happens sometimes, especially when I don’t take long enough to ruminate on the core message – the one big idea.
But here’s the way I intended to go…
We began by looking at church pre 1970 – virtually every one of us did the same thing. 3 hymns, played by an organist while the pastor held the floor for 90% of the service, before hustling to the rear door following his closing prayer to shake everyone’s hand. It was very much the same every week – and what seems bizarre now is that we then went home, had lunch and came back and did it all again on Sunday evening!
There was encouragement to bring friends to church, but few people did, so churches didn’t grow exceptionally quickly and there didn’t seem to be too much angst over this. It was also a time much closer to Christendom and many people felt they were already ‘Christians’ partly because they were born in a ‘Christian country’ and partly because they lived a reasonably moral life.
It was the late 70’s when the effects of the church growth movement began to ripple across our way and we began to ponder what we could do to ‘grow the church’. We all agreed that churches growing was a good thing, but where it got interesting was the ‘how‘. Todd Wilson writes that McGavran had encouraged American to think like missionaries – which is very good – but as various strategies for reaching people in one part of the country began to work, they became adopted by others elsewhere and it wasn’t long before techniques and hacks were packaged as keys to ‘growing your church’. Two important elements were apparently adequate parking and clean bathrooms… we chuckle now…
And this is where nuance matters. I am not opposed to church growth – not at all. My hope is that our church will grow and flourish, but the question I found myself reflecting on was ‘how and at what cost?’ Andrew Root suggests that an urgency for church growth is just an inevitable outcome of a capitalist protestant culture where the focus of life is on economic development. We want to see the numbers going up and to the right, and we will do whatever it takes to get that happening – church included.
But in this era as the church shifted from being primarily a family to becoming an enterprise with a bottom line, KPIs and ‘shareholders’, the dance with consumer culture got a whole lot more risky. And what developed was an almost obsessive focus on growing our numbers on Sunday.
Growing the church became the goal and with both Willow Creek and Saddleback (to name just two) packaging their strategies and techniques, then selling them to us we felt we were also on track for big things. In reality it was more like we had just bought into a timeshare and the aftertaste left us wondering just how that happened.
There were and are a few churches who have the resources and leadership capacity to do attractional church growth effectively. But they are generally the exception and a lot of smaller churches with fewer people are constantly under the pump trying to do their own best version of a ‘Hillsong’ style service. Why? Because we need to grow the church and these are the ‘tried and true’ methods.
And this is where I pause and reflect on the time and effort that churches spend each week creating a worship event, that will hopefully both enable the locals to connect with God while winning over the casual visitor on a church shopping expedition. There are signifcant man hours that go into Sunday services and the bigger you are, the bigger reputation you have to maintain. Part of the reason we may spend so much time on Sundays is to eke out our own bigger portion of ‘market share.’ Yes, it’s tacky language for a church, but when there are bills to pay and staff who need wages then you can’t drop the ball even for a week. What if those visitors go somewhere else – them and their wallets?…
So you’d think Jesus spoke a lot about church growth then hey?
Yeah I’m being a little facetious there. He had very little to say about church in general let alone trying to break the 200/500/1000 barrier. I can somehow imagine him smiling wrly and asking ‘so tell me again, why is it you want to do that?’
And if questioning this sounds strange to you then please keep reading.
As most people know Jesus had little to say about church, but great amounts to say about the kingdom of God. It was the kingdom of God he came to announce and to establish. And while the kingdom and church are related, they are not synonymous. And when we focus narrowly on growing the church rather than kingdom we actually move away from the core of what Jesus was about.
It was Aussie Gil Cann who once said ‘the church is to the kingdom what scaffolding is to a building.‘ The scaffolding serves to establish the building. I imagine if Gil were still alive he’d be wondering why we have spent so much effort prettying up the scaff, rather than focusing on the building.
For sure – there is overlap with church and kingdom and this is where we can get muddled. And rather than leading people to live in the way of God’s kingdom, a focus that is tricky to measure and assess, we have often chosen to work on ‘growing the church’ where we can at least have hard data – stats to tell us if we are winning or losing. The problem is if you measure the wrong things then you inevitably come up with incorrect answers about your effectiveness. Having played this game as a youth pastor I remember the pressure of Sunday rolling around every week and having to deliver the goods again—or maybe the crew might just leave and go somewhere else, where there is better music/preaching whatever.
I hope you can feel the nuance in what I am saying. My desire would certainly be that our churches would all be growing with people new to faith, but that it would be a growth that has come because we have kept our eyes on the ball – the kingdom of God.
When growth becomes an end in itself we end up marketing the church and luring people across to our ‘event’ where we promise better music / preaching / kids / youth etc. than the church down the road. I don’t hear this said overtly, but this is the function of marketing—to win the customer over.
American pastors are abandoning their posts, left and right, and at an alarming rate. They are not leaving their churches and getting other jobs. Congregations still pay their salaries. Their names remain on the church stationery and they continue to appear in pulpits on Sundays. But they are abandoning their posts, their calling. They have gone whoring after other gods. What they do with their time under the guise of pastoral ministry hasn’t the remotest connection with what the church’s pastors have done for most of twenty centuries…
The pastors of America have metamorphosed into a company of shopkeepers, and the shops they keep are churches. They are preoccupied with shopkeeper’s concerns — how to keep the customers happy, how to lure customers away from competitors down the street, how to package the goods so that the customers will lay out more money.
Some of them are very good shopkeepers. They attract a lot of customers, pull in great sums of money, develop splendid reputations. Yet it is still shopkeeping; religious shopkeeping, to be sure, but shopkeeping all the same. The marketing strategies of the fast-food franchise occupy the waking minds of these entrepreneurs; while asleep they dream of the kind of success that will get the attention of journalists. ‘A walloping great congregation is fine, and fun,’ says Martin Thornton, ‘but what most communities really need is a couple of saints. The tragedy is that they may well be there in embryo, waiting to be discovered, waiting for sound training, waiting to be emancipated from the cult of the mediocre.’
The biblical fact is that there are no successful churches. There are, instead, communities of sinners, gathered before God week after week in towns and villages all over the world. The Holy Spirit gathers them and does his work in them. In these communities of sinners, one of the sinners is called pastor and given a designated responsibility in the community. The pastor’s responsibility is to keep the community attentive to God. It is this responsibility that is being abandoned in spades.
Working the Angles: The Shape of Pastoral Integrity (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1987), pp. 1-2.
Petersen is much revered among pastors, but his challenge here is still hard for us to grapple with. It seems like in 21st C pastoring there is an inevitability about the need to function as a ‘shop-keeper / marketer’. This is a deeply disturbing reality we are confronting. There is competition for market share and if you choose not to engage then chances are your church will limp along and struggle to be financially viable (not a New Testament concept BTW)
How do we worship and follow a master who was continually thinning the crowd with hard words and difficult requests – demanding people’s lives and allegiance rather than just their synagogue attendance?
What I wanted to say on Sunday – but didn’t quite articulate – was that we do this by focusing continually on grappling with what it means to live in and under Jesus rule in every part of life. We forget growing the church and we give ourselves to his kingdom and whatever that may mean for us.
Our mission is to (together) live out Jesus’ way both in the community around us and amongst ourselves. It is not to run better church services to attract more people in.
Jesus did not say ‘they will know you are my disciples by your great music, barista coffee and bonus welcome pack.’ And honestly – it’s not that these things are bad – but in a consumer culture where these things become necessary to keep the doors open they come as a poisoned chalice. I have respect for those larger churches that have chosen to do what they see as important whether the crowd stays or goes. But that is hard if there are people’s jobs on the line or a church loan to repay.
That said, if the focus isn’t on church growth, growing our reach and influence, then what is it to be on? It is simply on the things that speak to the establishment of God’s kingdom here on earth. I fear we get distracted from these simple, un-sexy things because the beast needs feeding and we cannot allow it to go hungry. Please don’t hear me say there is no place for a communal gathering, or even that we shouldn’t make it engaging and helpful to those who attend. My concern is more around the distraction this event becomes from the more basic elements of discipleship.
So if Sunday is not our central focus where could it be?
Surely this is as simple as:
a) Loving one another – ‘by this they will know us’, Jesus says. Our challenge is to create communities were genuine costly love can be given and received. That’s unlikely to be simply a large Sunday event where people can simply be a face in a crowd. To be fair it’s not impossible, but it doesn’t feel like the primary objective of the gathering. And yes—it’s certainly possible to hide in a small gathering and fly under the radar.
Loving is the core of God’s character and it is to be the absolute top of our own list when it comes to being a disciple of Jesus. The beauty of this simple act is that everyone can do it and in this way we show God’s kingdom most truly.
Last week Ryan asked when we have felt most loved in recent times and my heart raced back to the week after Sam died. The idea of Christian community we often speak of was a beautiful and overwhelming reality.
If our focus is on creating a space where loving is encouraged, where authentic relationships grow and where we demonstrate to the community around us what the kingdom of God looks like then we are on the right track.
b) Blessing our local community – this means being a church that would be missed if we were not around. If we for some reason evaporated off the planet tomorrow our community would be sad, if not devastated. I don’t know how many communities would be sad if a large Sunday gathering ceased to exist in their neighbourhood, but if that same church had an active presence, loving and caring for the people in the community then it may well change people’s perception and expectation.
Our own little church in Yanchep is involved in distributing food every Tuesday evening to a large group of needy people. One or two have come to church over the years, but that is not the purpose of the event. The simple goal is to help struggling families survive the week and make ends meet. It feels like when they take home a bag of food each day, they experience something of God’s kingdom coming here on earth.
And as our people work together to that end they also experience his rule as they serve and care for the needy. I’m reminded of the difference between the sheep and the goats. It wasn’t church attendance or the provision of a sparkly gathering for people to attend. It was seeing the need and stepping up, both corporately and as individual.
c) Living Right – this is as simple as living up to and into the life God has called you to. Choosing kindness over criticism, generosity over stinginess and hospitality over closed doors. There are many elements to living right, but the word we never want to hear are those that say ‘I thought you were a Christian…’
If we live under God’s rule then we will inevitably pursue a life that looks more like Jesus. A righteous life isn’t easy – it’s way easier to live right when it suits us and to do what is self serving.
It mean we run our businesses differently, we see our neighbourhoods differently and we choose to operate with honesty and integrity at every turn.
I want people to know we keep our word, we turn up when we say we will. We choose to do what is good rather than what is convenient.
Together those 3 sound a bit like Micah 6:8 ‘And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.’
The challenge in all of this is to avoid getting sucked into the competition trap – which is hard for high achievers who are naturally competitive. But if we choose that path we submit to another Pharaoh who enslaves us and requires that we deliver the ‘bricks’ on time every week with no relief in sight.
In his final post, shortly before his recent death, Melbourne pastor, Simon Carey Holt wrote this piece, affirming the ‘idiosyncratic’ nature of the local church. He begins by lamenting the blandness of much of his experience of local church life:
In the last twelve months I have visited many churches here and overseas. I’ve been struck again by the very packaged nature of contemporary practice, especially in my evangelical tradition. Most obviously the package includes a particular blend of architecture, music and technology: big-box auditoriums eschew windows for controlled lighting and sound; state-of-the-art worship is highly staged, often leaving congregations mute; the symbols of cross and communion table are replaced by the iconography of multiple cinematic screens. In the style and ethos of such places, there’s both high energy and noticeable uniformity.
No doubt, this repeatable package appeals to a sizeable share of the religious market. Even more, it has worthy things to teach us about relevance and adaptability. What’s awkward is when the package is held up as the gold standard for success in the church more broadly, and the inference that anything outside of it is at best quaint and at worst a failure. The truth is, when every corner church is driven to mimic this style of gathering without thought or critique, there is little respect held for the small, the left-of-centre, the uniquely local — in short, the idiosyncrasy essential to the nature and mission of the church.
He then goes on to affirm the quirky and sometimes odd nature of many local churches where there is a lack of resources, a small congregation and a struggle to survive:
Honestly, most churches are not like this. They are decidedly short on hype, their congregations small, their ministries stretched, their idiosyncrasies multiple. Yet time and time again these churches persist as communities of faith and mission at the heart of their neighbourhoods. In all their oddity, these gatherings of faithful people remain deeply committed to the call of Jesus to ‘follow me!’ What’s more, they are doing their best to live that commitment out in particular neighbourhoods with as much integrity as they can muster.
In an age of digital fetishism, standardised plans for growth in market share and success measured entirely by numbers, I reckon its three cheers for local, idiosyncratic churches that give it their best shot to love God and neighbour in their own peculiar ways. Granted, they are sometimes off key and out of sorts, but more often than not these communities embody faithfulness, persistence and authenticity in the most reassuring ways. Perhaps it’s time for churches like these to embrace their idiosyncrasy, not bearing a weight of inadequacy but with new courage and a deeper sense of identity and vocation as the people of God.
And in that final line he nails one of the toughest things we face – a weight of inadequacy – that we do not fit the paradigm for what a successful church should be.
If there is anything I would want to say to small struggling local churches it would be that the absence of pizazz from your gatherings is not a sign that you have failed. It may be a consequence of many things – but it is ok to gather each week – love each other, encourage each other and go back out to do the same in the community. A better Sunday service is a very small goal – a community transformed by the kingdom of God is what we hope for.
So that was where I intended to go Sunday, but it’s a tricky line to walk in a brief verbal presentation – that of challenging the status quo of church as commodity, while not condemning those who are gifted with creative and musical people – but then calling people to focus their best attention on the core elements of God’s kingdom – a life that looks like Jesus – that loves God, loves one another and loves the surrounding community.
Lately I’ve been doing a lot of listening to other preachers as I drive here and there—not ‘big name,’ famous people—just a whole range of Aussies from various state and denominations, trying to make faith connect with their congregations and community.
My observation from listening is that preaching seems to have become significantly more expositional in its approach. ie. following a passage of scripture from verse x to y and explaining its content with an occasional illustration if deemed necessary.
The era I learnt to preach in (admittedly self taught) was equally intent on communicating the truth of scripture, but involved more story telling, both to keep attention but also to help people grasp an idea. I am noticing the absence of story from a whole lot of preaching and I am wondering why.
Is it simply a shift in the way people are preaching? Is this method taught exclusively in Bible college? Is it learnt thru watching other pastors? Or do busy pastors no longer have sufficient time to connect real life stories to text?
I get the value of expositional preaching and it was a significant part of our diet when I was a pastor, but I definitely don’t see it as the only way of communicating – and it was also done with an element of story present. Jesus was very big on story – usually real life stuff and he seemed to realise that people ‘lean in’ when a story is told.
From the time I began preaching I knew that stories generally captured and held people’s attention, whereas raw theological explanation tended to see minds wander if the material became tough or dense. Has the approach changed and if so why?
Every time I hear a sermon open with ‘turn in your Bibles to…’ or ‘Today we are talking about X’ and I find myself wondering, ‘why didn’t you try harder to capture your audience’s attention right at the front end?‘ Why open with something so pedestrian?
I remember it being said that you have around 30 seconds to capture people’s attention and if you haven’t given them a reason to listen, then chances are their minds will wander elsewhere. This is where good story is so valuable. When it is used well, preaching becomes less of a theology lecture and more of a way of helping people really engage with the text and find a way to live it out the next day. Of course story can be used badly and can detract from the focus if there is no point to it.
But I’m wondering if I am observing a shift. Have we intentionally moved away from the use of good story telling to more expositional preaching? Or have I generally worked alongside good story tellers and assumed this was the norm?
I’m not much good at keeping track of dates – lucky to remember my own birthday let alone anyone else…
But this morning I looked down at my watch, saw that it is the 24th — and now 2 1/2 years since Sam drowned. It feels like if the event was an earthquake then the aftershocks have largely stopped but we live in the rubble of what remains.
And this is where it gets a little complicated. I love my life—pretty much every part of it—so on one hand I am as happy as a pig in mud. But through it all there is a scar of absence—of wishing things were different—but then just picking up and carrying on—because they’re not. He is dead. Not coming back, so for now we have no choice. Actually not true—we do have a choice— whether we learn how to live with pain, or we allow ourselves to be crushed and disabled by it.
I decided early on I would choose to let the pain form me and I wouldn’t run from it—partly because the other option, of simply being ruined by it, couldn’t be allowed to win the day.
And it definitely has been formative, especially in shaping how I respond to others in deep sorrow. Empathy was never a strong point for me — and it’s still not my natural inclination—but through this tragedy I have learnt how to sit with devastated people and not hurry them on. That is good. Not worth losing a son to learn—but still good.
Our family suffers deeply from the lack of his big presence. You knew when he was in the room. He took up space emotionally, verbally and just with pure energy. It also meant that when he was struggling the same was true. Sam had ongoing mental health stuff around OCD—essentially thinking he was a bad person and unworthy of love. (I know it sounds strange and hard to fathom—but there you go—we all have our ‘demons’) So when he was in pain and wrestling with intrusive thoughts we all felt it. He seemed to be just getting on top of the issue when he died so we didn’t get to see a more mature and resolved Sam.
As a dad I often feel the absence of my son—the man in whom I wanted to invest my own energy and fatherly love. I observe other men with their sons and wish it were different for me. But it’s not. And I accept that.
I have been blessed with many other younger men in my life who are happy to spend time with an older ‘father-type’ bloke, so I send my unused energy in those directions—knowing it’s not the same—but it’s also one thing I can do that negates wallowing or self pity.
A few weeks back we watched the movie ‘Unsung Hero’, the story of Helen Smallbone and her family’s move to America after a large financial loss in Australia. In her audio book she says ‘we lost everything‘. And as Danelle and I heard those words we both looked at each other and shook our heads. We have also had a huge financial loss, but I remember my mantra in that time was simply, ‘no-one has died. No one is going to die. It is just money.’ When someone dies it raises the stakes. Even then we didn’t lose everything. It just made me aware of how careful we need to be with language in this space. I imagine a refugee whose, home, livelihood and family has been decimated may have the right to use those words, but they shouldn’t be used lightly and certainly not to describe a financial loss.
What does the road look like from here?
Our trip to Denmark mid-year was a marker for me. I have long mused on moving to the country and living rural—bush and beach being the dream. But as I pondered that life more deliberately it drew me to realising what we would lose. Fifteen years in one small community means we know many people and are also well known. It would mean starting over with friends and church communities. In my head I figured if we did move, it would be our final move and we would be ‘there’ until the end.
But for someone with a sense of calling to local mission it seems a bit futile to do the spadework of digging deep into the soil of a community, only to pull stumps when the hard work is done. I put a flag in the ground after that trip that said, barring a voice from heaven, we will stay here. We will allow those roots to go deeper and the fruit of a local life to ripen. To be honest I can’t help but keep an eye out for those idyllic properties, but these days it’ just pure window-shopping.
As a result we both agreed to be elders at our local church here in Yanchep, not a role I take lightly. It means deliberate bedding down, choosing a focus and giving it significant energy. I will still do some speaking around the place in the mornings, but our commitment will be to Yanchep church and it’s health.
Alongside that I will run my various business ventures at a pace that fits the life we feel called to live and I will enjoy the many significant and beautiful connections that have come from living in this place.
Similarly Danelle has a small venture up and running now, recycling vintage fabrics into beautiful clothing. In the sewing and creating she has found joy again and whether it’s rollicking business success or not is somewhat irrelevant. She is feeling renewed and able to function again in a more healthy way.
Most days we just get on with life and do our various things but occasionally there are moments when memories flood back, glimpses of him haunt you or you just simply reflect on the loss. This was our last photo of him alive, and it is so full of joy and connectedness that I can’t look at it without tears. Two ‘kids’ just loving life—so totally unaware of what was about to happen.
We miss him deeply, but he is never far from our hearts and thoughts.
An elderly friend is nearing the end of life—he has lived long and well, but his body is slowly shutting down. His mind is still razor sharp and he is able to joke and converse easily, but the oxygen tank that he has carried with him everywhere for the last four years is a constant reminder that he is on borrowed time.
His body is shutting down.
It has been 3 months in hospital now—lying on his back and unable to do much more than hobble to the toilet on a good day — while bad days he is confined to bed and feeling miserable.
We have gone to see him, knowing that he has chosen to ‘call it’ later this week. He elected for the voluntary assisted dying (VAD) path a few weeks ago. but changed his mind at the last minute—this time he says he is certain. It’s a big call, and one that is contested by so many in the theological world I inhabit. I can see his reasons for checking out and I imagine I may even do the same in his situation.
The hospital can keep him alive indefinitely, but for what purpose? If daily hospital care was removed he would die very quickly. Perhaps nature ought to be allowed to take its course—or in this case allowed to move more quickly to ease his suffering.
When does intervention actually become interfering?
When does preserving life become harmful to the person it is seeking to serve?
These are questions we must grapple with and I sense the issue is less black and white and more a shade of grey. Rather then simple dismissing VAD as anti-Christian we have to consider how we are now able to manipulate the key elements that give life so as to extend a person’s days well beyond what would have been possible in days gone by. When my brother had his heart attack he was ‘kept alive’ ie. his heart was pumping blood and he was breathing – artificially for 7 days. He was never ‘coming back’, but it was seven days of being sustained by machines before the end was acknowledged. Our friend can see the finish line, but needs a mercy rule to be enacted to help end his pain now rather than later.
We enter his room and he is sleeping. Our presence seems to wake him and he recognises us. His handshake is still vicelike—firmer than many a younger man. It’s hard to believe he is at this point. I am not naturally at ease in these spaces, although continued exposure seems to have helped me be present with minimal awkwardness.
Going with Danelle makes it easier. She reads the room well and knows the tone to take—the conversation that is appropriate. We discuss family and friends, before coming to the point of our visit—the stark reality that we won’t meet again in this life.
This is goodbye.
Our friend talks of death matter of factly. He is not afraid and sees that he has simply come to the end of the road. Nine decades of life has slowly wound down. It’s not that he gets to ‘go out on his terms’, but rather that he is able to end the daily misery. In early 21st C Australia we have mastered the art of eking every last drop of life out of people—drops that maybe don’t need to be eked out.
I know that theoretically I am supposed to be against interfering with the work of God to ‘give life and take it away’, (does he actually take it away?… I’m not so sure…) but when those words were written could anyone envisage the life extending measures we have today?
Our friend is a person of faith—a different shape to ours—but he holds to the hope that when he dies he will be with a God who loves him and welcomes him. I can’t help but wonder if he has met Jesus personally, or if his life of church attendance and community service is his hope. Somehow this isn’t the time to ask those questions—to crunch out our perceived theological differences.
Is he ‘saved’?
I have grown up with and lived around communities that have quite specific criteria for salvation. It’s true that most of it is drawn from scripture and I would likely affirm all that is spoken of. But when I find myself face to face with someone who wouldn’t have grown up around sinners’ prayers and phrases like surrendering all to Jesus, I can’t help but feel that the faith they do have will be enough—a mustard seed?… Surely the understanding that formed them and shaped them will see them welcomed by a God who is far more gracious than many theological experts seem to be.
He speaks of seeing his wife again, of his longing for his family to find their way to church and faith. We tell him if he sees Sam to give him a hug from us as well as a smack around the head. There is laughter and tears, a recognition of the reality he is facing—both wonderful and devastating.
As the time comes to leave I ask him if he’d like us to pray for him. He says ‘oh yes please’ and reaches out to take each of our hands. As my eyes well with tears, I nudge Danelle and tell her to take this one. He holds my hand tight and she prays for all the things we have discussed—and for peace in his heart as he makes the final crossing.
Then its time to leave and we are reminded again of the privilege it is to sit with someone at the end and bless them and offer them hope.
(I wrote this around a month ago and our friend went thru with the VAD that week)
I spent the morning putting a diesel heater into a client’s camper van – a tight operation with limited space inside to work with, but this was around my 300th install so I’m fairly good at it now.
With it all done neatly, I was almost finished when I went to replace a panel and the phillips head bit in my drill scratched the black glossy surface of his Thetford fridge – it left a small scratch – probably something you wouldn’t notice if you didn’t look closely – but when you did look closely it was about 4cms long and in the right light was visible.
Bugger…
And then begins the internal wrestle… Do I tell him?… or do I say nothing and hope he discovers it a few months from now and figures he must have done it himself?
And in all of the internal wrestle I know what’s right – and I know what’s dodgy. But even this far down the life of business and faith I still find myself tempted to hide it and say nothing.
What’s with that?!
One part of my brain is saying ‘it’s no big deal – just leave it…’ while another part of my brain says ‘Own it. Suck it up and fix it up.’
Isn’t this where some of the rubber hits the road for those of us who want to do business and life with integrity? ‘Can I get away with it?‘ shouldn’t be a question we are asking ourselves – but here I am…
I have written before about how I approach business. I try to do my job as if I were Jesus, and to treat my client as if he were Jesus. It means always doing what is good and right. Would Jesus fail to report the scratch? Would Jesus leave someone else with the problem?
The answer is glaringly simple, so why the wrestle? Why does my brain still tick with schemes for avoiding responsibility?
When we talk about the idea of sin – or a sinful nature – it can all feel very heavy, but this is simply what is happening. As a Christian I am being transformed into the likeness of Jesus on an ongoing basis – but that only continues to happen while I live in his way – while I submit my darker side to his rule. The ongoing nature of transformation means that I am not there yet – that I will not ‘arrive’ in this lifetime. As a result I am still going to feel the effects of a self that is focused on gaining my own advantage first – of looking out for number 1.
There is a voice in my head saying ‘you can get away with this – just keep his attention on the heater and not on the fridge…’ That voice isn’t Jesus. There is another voice that says, ‘treat people as you would like to be treated,’ and yeah… of course that sounds more like him.
So yes – I told him… You’d hope that, but the point of this post isn’t to say ‘hey look at my virtuous choice’, but rather to acknowledge the wrestles we all face in our workplaces – the challenges to our integrity that will come in various forms – and then to call us to the tougher choice, because it simply is the right thing to do.
A long time ago I came across a Proverb (22:1) that says, ‘A good reputation is preferable to riches, and the approval of others is better than precious silver or gold.’ On days like these I revisit these words, along with Jesus simple call to love your neighbour as yourself.’
There’s no rocket science here. It’s all very simple – yet it’s also very confronting because I am ‘not there yet’… and I’ve been on the road of faith a very long time.
I guess I will lose a few hundred dollars on today’s job because of that mistake – and that’s annoying – but I will sleep better at night knowing I have made the right choice and been consistent in my thinking and practice. And next time it happens (because it will…) the ‘wrestle’ will hopefully be easier as the habit of ‘doing what’s right’ begins to come more naturally and easily.
So if you find yourself at work sometimes wondering, ‘can I get away with this?Can I pretend it wasn’t me?‘ just know you’re not alone. The lure of a self serving solution will always be there. But we also have the capacity to choose.
We sometimes talk about ‘old man strength’, the kind of toughness and resilience that can hold you strong in situations where it would be easy to quit – because you have been here before and you can ‘tough it out’. But I sense there is also ‘old man knowledge’ that can shape and form your identity.
I did a short interview with my friend John Finkelde this week, for his YouTube channel, talking about some of what I wrote in Hi-Vis Faith and my other book, The Future is Bivocational. My ‘prep’ was a gym session where I read the questions and formed some gut level responses.
The final question was this one:
You’ve experienced massive loss in the last few years your son Sam, your brother, your parents. How has that grief reshaped the way you think about work and what really matters?
I pondered that for a bit, wondering what I could offer here, and then realised that the reason I was struggling to form an answer was because it hadn’t ‘reshaped the way I think about work and what really matters.’ In fact what it did was showed me that the stuff I am betting my life on is trustworthy. I didn’t feel like I needed any massive shift because we try to live in light of who Jesus is and what he calls us to. So when tragedy struck we were devastated but not disillusioned.
On Thursday night this week we watched Unsung Hero, a pretty simple story about an Aussie Christian family who lose everything in a bad deal and make their way to USA to try and start over. I’m not usually a fan of ‘Christian movies’ because they often just ooze cheese, but this one was a good story and very ‘easy watching’ when you are tired – unlike a Bourne identity spy thriller. On my way to a job the next day, I was listening to a podcast with Helen Smallbone, the ‘mum’ of the family (the ‘unsung hero’) where she was asked if her faith was rocked by the total financial wipeout. She paused for a moment then said ‘No – our faith wasn’t rocked – our faith and trust in God was what got us thru.‘ She sounded solid and strong – not trying to hard to convince anyone – just a knowledge that this is how it is.
I smiled as I heard that. Her words rang true. When you have as much experience of God’s faithfulness as we have had over our lives then your response to tragedy, disaster or pain isn’t immediate questioning or doubt. It’s taking hope and finding strength where you don’t have strength. I don’t mean that to sound easy, but in one sense it is. If our practice is to reflexively turn to God in every moment of life – in gratitude, in seeking direction or in suffering then this is what we will do.
So if you’re reading this and you’re 21 years old and thinking ‘good for you old man’, then I would want to say that the place we find ourselves today is the result of years and years of practice – decades of ‘focusing Godwards’ in whatever situation we find ourselves. We have had so much to give thanks for over the years – it has been a very good life so far. Yes, we have had tragedy as well and it has marked us, but it hasn’t shattered us.
So if you’re wondering what the key is to a rugged, resilient faith is then my suggestion is that the key is found in regularly turning to God in the many different moments in life. Sometimes that turning may be in gratitude and awe, sometimes in anger and pain – but in all of it acknowledging that a good and trustworthy father is who God is.
If you are over 50 and a cricket fan then chances are you will remember the rise of World Series Cricket in 1977, an attempt by Kerry Packer to make the game faster paced and more engaging for the spectators as well as more commercially viable – for his personal gain of course…
However if you were born 1975 onwards you will never have known a time when players all wore white, where there was only, red balls and 5 day tests with some lesser prioritised one day games. Prior to 1977 cricket was a conservative person’s game and you didn’t mess with the culture in any way.
Packer did. In fact he took a sledghammer to it. His aim was originally to lure cricket from the ABC to his channel 9, but despite pitching significantly higher offers for the rights he was knocked back. So he decided to ‘take his bat and ball’ and set up his own league. He recruited many of the best players in the world —who he knew were badly underpaid— into his rogue competition. And so began World Series Cricket.
The purists hated it. It just ‘wasn’t cricket’. But many top level cricketers dissatisfied with the establishment and lured by the promise of real money signed up for it. Many ordinary punters loved the new approach—white balls, coloured uniforms and field restrictions that made the game more entertaining and watchable. Add to that a cast of star performers (including previously banned South Africans) and it was just the recipe for a consumer culture to lap up. People began to come back to cricket…
Similarly if you had entered a church in the early to mid 70’s chances are you would have been met at the door by a man dispensing hymn books while shaking your hand and welcoming you. Ushers may have guided you to a very hard wooden pew and the room would have been eerily silent, even though it was full of people—all dressed to the nines. The hymns for the day would have been clearly displayed on the hymn board at the front of the building and the order of service would have been entirely predictable. It was church… and this was how you ‘did church. No one questioned it or considered any other way.
Some of you reading this born in the 80’s and later will have never experienced this version of church.
But you get the parallel I’m sure. It seems that what Packer did for cricket, the church growth movement did for church. Even if some of Donald McGavran’s key ideas were employed haphazardly the focus was on the church connecting with the people living locally who were unchurched, dechurched or just over church in general. McGavran was a missiologist who was thinking thru how to connect gospel with culture. Some local church pastors co-opted his ideas much more pragmatically and decided the goal was to serve the ‘customer’ in a better way.
Ah… and so emerges the era of congregant as customer. You reckon that mighta changed things just a little bit?…
Some of the better known outcomes of this era are Saddleback church and Willow Creek church who each innovated to effectively reach thousands of people who had given up on God, church, religion and the whole shooting match. One of Carey Nieuwhof’s recent podcasts explores the impact of the church growth movement and how it moved from being initially focused on missionary thinking to becoming more of a commercial enterprise, asking how a church can achieve greater market share (although no one would ever call it that)
World series cricket changed the game of cricket forever and most of it was for the good. You have to admit cricket could get very very boring some days… Packer and his crew reshaped the game in ways that offended the traditionalists but that appealed to those who were marginally interested, but could be won over. (Think people like my mum…) Nowadays many of the ‘changes’ are woven into the game and the multi-faceted approach to cricket seems to be more attractive to potential viewers.
In a similar vein for better or worse the church growth movement changed the DNA of many churches as they recognised that converts were few and far between and ‘we just have to do something’ to win people back. Some of this was courageous and good. Some of it cringeworthy and horrible. Sadly what happened was that Australia imitated the USA (as we often do) without realising that our cultures were worlds apart. A sympathetic unchurched/dechurched population in the US responded far more easily to churches that sought to reach them than did Australian churches who simply tried to copy their strategies.
The ‘attractional’ expression of church was effective in reaching many people and drawing them back into the fold. But it’s greatest strength was also its achilles heel. If you win them over with bright lights and great music then you better keep dishing that stuff out week after week or they will eventually grow weary of your best efforts and seek a ‘better’ church. My experience as a youth pastor at Lesmurdie Baptist in this time demonstrated this perfectly. We were ‘flavour of the month’ for a while… until we weren’t.
And then there is the question of how to move a person from consumer to disciple without them feeling somehow duped?
Here we are in 2026 and most people will have no memory of hymn books, wooden pews and pastors in suits and ties. Most people will not be aware of the ‘church growth movement’, the ‘missional movement’ or any other culture forming entity. They simply attend church and want to be part of a ‘good church’, however that may be defined.
Fifty years on, the landscape has shifted significantly and the impact of the church growth movement is here to stay. Even if its impact – seen in the formation of larger attractional churches – was not its original intent, it is the outcome that happened anyway. And now it seems to be expected that a church will dish up excellent music, outstanding kids and youth programs as well as spotless bathrooms and easy parking.
I mused several years ago that I saw the church moving in two directions. The big getting bigger and the small either adapting and tapping a niche of people, or simply ceasing to exist. Of most concern were those in the middle with some capacity to imitate the megachurches, but likely at the cost of willing volunteers who would have to serve on rosters more frequently than is fair if they were to keep up. The middle will get exhausted. The middle will struggle.
But the big will get bigger. Bunnings will always outdo Mitre 10 because most people prefer what Bunnings have on offer. Just this week Christianity Today ran an article titled US Megachurches Grow Bigger as Smaller Churches Decline. It’s what I call simply the ‘hardware shop effect’ and I think it’s here to stay.
What does that mean for those of us who inhabit the smaller communities?
Should we just call it a day now and go join a bigger church?
I’d suggest that in the absence of a conscious missiological focus the answer is ‘yes’. If you are trying to do exactly the same thing they are doing and they have 1000 people and you have 50, then it may be a good idea to go and join forces with them. Why duplicate the weekly event? Surely your church could still ‘exist’ in small groups within the larger gathering and perhaps it would be a win/win.
That said, your church may have a clearly thought out missiology that is owned by your people and that is not dependent on church size in any way. It may be that you have excellent clarity around who God has called you to be as a community and you have a strategy for thriving in spite of the hardware effect. If so do your thing and do it well.
There are some things that only a small community can do – but if this is your choice then you do it knowing that some people will come and sniff around for a while before realising your music is average, your programs lack the sparkle of the bigger churches and your facilities are somewhat tired and jaded.
Then they make a choice.
Either they stay with you because you have articulated a reason for the shape the church is taking – why it isn’t strongly attractional – and why you have adopted your approach to community.
OR
They leave and go join a church that fits them better. And that is also a win. Hopefully a win for the larger church as they receive new members to serve and participate – but also a win for the smaller church as they don’t have unhappy members constantly sniping that they want better this that and the other.
You don’t have to be Einstein to know which way my heart leans on this subject. I believe deeply in the local church and in its genuine connectedness in the neighbourhood. 30 years ago I gave the attractional church a caning – I was 32, full of fire and it was easier to polarise than to sit in the grey that is a multiplicity of church forms. (To be fair that post was part of a deliberate exercise in polemics and was the text for a bigger group debate.)
30 years on I have to accept that some attractional churches can produce strong committed disciples and some smaller so called ‘missional communities’ can be gatherings of disaffected, exvangelicals with little focus other than their own gripes.
But… I wonder what the future holds and how we as the Church hold together in the challenges ahead. Smaller churches will need to sharpen their focus and their energies if they want to remain in existence, while larger churches will need excellent systems and processes to ensure people cannot simply remain as attenders, enjoying the show. Add into this the complexities that come with governance and compliance and I am ready to tap out. This is where I do see greater potential for the large and small to work together and serve one another. If a larger central entity can take care of all of the red tape and BS then it relieves the smaller churches of a massive burden. If the smaller churches can then do their focused missional activity well then that can also inform and serve the larger body.
While it may have been driven by self interest and financial gain, Kerry Packer initiated some significant and important changes in the game of cricket – and he copped some heat for it. Similarly McGavran began a process that departed from his original vision, but brought some real focus and purpose back to churches that had become religious clubs. We live in their wake and our job is to sift thru the learning and apply what is relevant to our own unique context.
All that said, I’m still trying to work out what the ‘Big Bash’ ecclesial equivalent would be!
The Bible is a tough book to read and understand sometimes.
I have been reading 1 & 2 Samuel each morning and following the story of Saul and David. There’s a section in 1 Samuel 16:14 that states quite clearly that ‘God sent an evil spirit to torment Saul’
“Now the Spirit of the Lord had departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the Lord tormented him.”
It is repeated in verse 23, again with the evil spirit attributed to God.
So how do you read this? I sense how we read it depends on where we start with our thinking. If we begin with the authority and inspiration of scripture then chances are we will take it simply as it is stated and accept that God did something we can’t ever imagine him doing.
If we begin with God as revealed in Jesus and then try to imagine him intentionally sending an evil spirit to torment someone it becomes extremely difficult. That isn’t an action I would ever attribute to Jesus so I can’t imagine God doing it.
Conclusion? Whoever wrote this attributed Saul’s actions to God.
I sense we have been trained to interpret scripture using the lens of authority and inspiration first and any time a difficult passage like this arises we accept that God sometimes does things we can’t understand. That’s a fair position as I don’t think we can ‘understand’ God.
The problem it raises is that God sometimes seems ruthless and cruel. Flick across a few chapters to 2 Samuel 6:1-7 where the ark is being brought back and the oxen carrying it stumble. A man named Uzzah sees it about to fall and reflexively reaches his hands out to prevent it.
7 The Lord’s anger burned against Uzzah because of his irreverent act; therefore God struck him down, and he died there beside the ark of God. 8 Then David was angry because the Lord’s wrath had broken out against Uzzah, and to this day that place is called Perez Uzzah. 9 David was afraid of the Lord that day and said, “How can the ark of the Lord ever come to me?”
It’s ‘clear’ in the text that ‘God struck him down’, because of his ‘irreverent act’. The problem is that once again it just doesn’t sound like the God I have come to know.
Having been raised evangelical I am very conscious that scripture is always our authority and everything else runs a distant second. I get it. But I wonder if we have so needed to protect the integrity of scripture that we have allowed God to be portrayed as a monster sometimes.
It is Peter Enns who says ‘God let’s his kids tell the story’. In other words, the person writing this story has perceived the event as the work of God – and it may not be. While I was raised to simply take the words at face value, the more I get to know God, the more I question whether this was actually him doing these things.
So do we begin with scripture or with the character of God?
And yeah, I know… I’m pretty sure the answer is ‘yes’…
