A national survey samples the PCC’s spiritual soil.
posted on May 1, 2009 in Features
Only God can make the seed grow,” observes Rev. John-Peter Smit, “and only God can make the church grow.” Smit made his comment before getting into the details of an ongoing survey on the health of the Presbyterian Church in Canada.
The details aren’t pretty. They suggest that if the church is soil for the seed, it is sorely in need of some tender care.
In all categories, Presbyterians ranked themselves poorer in spiritual health than other Christians in Canada. The lowest ratings are about how people live out their faith on a daily basis, what the survey calls “passionate spirituality,” and an ability to discern and meet the needs of people outside the church, what it labels “need-oriented evangelism.”
The survey results were compiled over a seven-year period under the auspices of Natural Church Development. NCD’s program is designed to help churches assess their own organizational health through a benchmarking survey of church members. Smit is congregational development consultant for the Synod of Central, Northeastern Ontario and Bermuda and the national church’s staff liaison with NCD.
A major survey provides an important benchmarking tool.
posted on May 1, 2009 in For the Record
Seven years ago in an editorial for this magazine, I quoted the following passage from Prof. Reg Bibby’s then latest book, Restless Churches. “I am convinced,” he wrote, “that the resources and the will exist for ministry to take place that touches people who are not actively involved in the nation’s churches. … What is required, however, is a clear-cut strategy that is informed by sound research and sound congregational input.”
posted on May 1, 2009 in Letters
I’ve just read the March issue and feel a rising indignation within me, particularly due to two articles that put Jesus Christ on the same level as any other “saviour”—Two Kinds Of Knowledge—or with Mohammad—Journey To The Centre Of Our Faiths. I don’t get it? I don’t get how anybody who has met Jesus can then say He is not Lord of all Lords, God of all Gods, King of all Kings, Saviour of all saviours.
posted on May 1, 2009 in Letters
Science rests on the presupposition that the phenomenal world is perceived only through the five senses. Anything beyond that is not a fact and scientifically verifiable. Religion, on the other hand, is based on experience. This experience is communicated from person to person and generation to generation through rituals, dogma, theology and so on. More often than not, these instruments or vehicles of communication become institutionalised and substitutes for The Experience.
posted on May 1, 2009 in Letters
I would agree with Dr. McLelland’s view that science and religion should not be treated as opposed to each other, they should be both able to correspond with and compliment each other; their relationship is more subtle and intimate than generally acknowledged.
posted on May 1, 2009 in Letters
Dr. McLelland rather neatly categorizes the first eleven chapters of Genesis, up to the birth of Eber (the first Hebrew?) in 11:14, as Saga. Such a division of the Genesis account is quite arbitrary, to say the least, and is done to support a particular worldview or cosmology. McLelland implies that a more prevalent literal understanding did not become widespread until the 19th century rise of fundamentalism. Saga, of course, need not be synonymous with Legend, and in fact may be rooted in history. The historicity of the biblical accounts of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph was accepted both by the Israelites and the early Christian church, and is accepted by a majority of Christians today. Yet those particular chapters (Genesis 12ff.) contain many more of the elements of Saga than do the first eleven chapters.
posted on May 1, 2009 in Letters
Rev. Dr. McLelland writes in his usual entertaining yet provocative style. As usual, he is writing about the current leading edge of theology. In today’s world, that edge is of course inter-faith dialogue. McLelland calls us to recognize with humility that we as Christians may not be the apple of God’s eye, but rather that we recognize that other faiths could be circling around God with their varieties of faith and truth just like us.
posted on May 1, 2009 in Letters
What a delightfully sane article from — if I may take the liberty — an old curmudgeon of the church!
posted on May 1, 2009 in Letters
Dr. McLelland surmises that science develops many theories on many topics in a quest for the truth and then uses these theories to reach a conclusion it believes to be true. However as has been demonstrated it never ends there and there are always unanswered questions and new theories to consider. Science never quite obtains the whole truth and often leads to confusion. For example—the claims as to the veracity of the Bible in such areas as the age of the creation of humans and the building of a large boat (Noah’s Ark) have never been satisfactorily disproven.
posted on May 1, 2009 in Letters
Having visited Israel twice, I really do find Jerusalem to be one of the most beautiful cities in the world. The photographs that accompanied the March feature article on Jerusalem really bring that to expression.
posted on May 1, 2009 in Letters
Thank you for your article, Breaking the Silence, February, about clergy and human weakness. Too many have carried emotional burdens, too heavy, for too long. My father tried lay ministry in northern Ontario over 50 years ago, when I was very young. With no guidance, and with unrecognized emotional issues going in to the position, he struggled, floundered and attempted suicide before his trial year reached an end. He carried this “secret” deep inside ever since; never telling anyone—not his own family, not his siblings, nor any friend. I believe this isolation; his anger and his shame affected his whole life. He is in a nursing home now, 87 years old, struggling with dementia. To what extent his occasional violent outbursts relate back to these old issues is anyone’s guess. Ministers, priests, deacons, and all leaders of the church give so much to so many, but often at great cost.
posted on May 1, 2009 in Letters
I look forward to reading more from Rev. Ian Clark on water in the Jordan Valley. According to a detailed, thought provoking, and sad CBC Radio documentary, drought is not the only issue. Security is indeed a matter of water, as Clark states, but water supplies are being managed primarily to supply and secure Israel, notably Israeli settler communities dotted across the West Bank on hill tops, and Israeli farming.
posted on May 1, 2009 in Letters
It must be emphasized that, unfortunately, with racial/ethnic diversity, often comes bigotry—and it’s not a white and non-white immigrant issue that can be alleviated by some miracle.
posted on May 1, 2009 in Letters
Re: story on ‘awesome healing mission by the Blue Mountain Pastoral Charge, N.S.’ This submission appeared only in your online version and not in the printed magazine.
posted on May 1, 2009 in Letters
Just got the March Record and was interested to see some grad pictures from Ewart College on the back cover.
posted on May 1, 2009 in Letters
I read Principal Vissers’ March article entitled Teaching The Teaching Elders with great interest. As a theological student who has a great respect for the historical witness of the Reformed Church and its accompanying doctrine, there was much to celebrate in Vissers’ treatment of Calvin’s case for theological education.
Reading Malcolm Gladwell in light of the church.
posted on May 1, 2009 in Pop Christianity
The buzz from Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers has been about the 10,000 hours of diligent work required to be a success in one’s chosen field. Diana Butler Bass, speaking at Rosedale, Toronto, in late February, mentioned the 10,000 hours while speaking of successful churches she had studied. Gladwell gives the example of the Beatles and Bill Gates, amongst many others, who through a combination of luck and grace were able to spend an extraordinary amount of time perfecting their craft.
The Saint John’s Bible recreates a medieval tradition.
posted on May 1, 2009 in Art, Features
The Saint John’s Bible follows in the tradition of the painstakingly crafted manuscripts of the Middle Ages. The seven volumes took a decade to create, and feature the work of artist and calligrapher Donald Jackson, who works in the Scriptorium in Wales.
In the 1970s, Jackson expressed his lifelong dream to create an illuminated Bible. The Saint John’s Bible was officially commissioned by Saint John’s University and Saint John’s (Benedictine) Abby in Collegeville, Minnesota in1998, and its first lines—the opening sentences of John’s gospel—were penned on Ash Wednesday in the year 2000.
Marilynne Robinson’s essays bring theology to life
posted on May 1, 2009 in Books
The Death Of Adam: Essays On Modern Thought
By Marilynne Robinson
Mariner Books
“Then felt I like some watcher of the sky when a new planet swam into his ken.”
- John Keats
Yes, that has been my reaction to Marilynne Robinson’s collection of essays. This work was first published over ten years ago but has only recently received public acclaim because of Robinson’s highly successful novels. Her novel Giliad won the Pulitzer Prize in 2005 and her more recent parallel novel Home has received many favorable reviews.
These Essays On Modern Thought are deserving of similar attention, and more! Adherents of Reformed Christianity should be especially grateful that at last, among public intellectuals, we have a champion. Her essays on Calvin are both revealing and revolutionary. After generations of Calvin and Calvinism’s being denigrated and ridiculed, finally Calvin and even Calvinists are being carefully reread.
The third in an excellent series of gospel sermons.
posted on May 1, 2009 in Books
The Master Teacher: Sermons From Mark
by Roy Sheldon MacKenzie
Fairway Press
A sermon is an oral/aural event that takes place in a specific time and context within a specific congregation. As the Spirit moves over the gathered community and brings the word to life through the words of the preacher, by God’s grace the people of God are blessed. Books of sermons, on the other hand, are often lifeless and dull when removed from worship and read instead of heard. How a sermon ‘reads’ can be like asking what ‘flavour’ a Mozart sonata is. The wrong context and the wrong sense are involved. Hence, publishing sermons takes great courage in the face of such difficulty.
Thankfully, Rev. Dr. Sheldon MacKenzie blesses us with such courage—pastor, preacher, teacher (and I am privileged to add friend) expands his series of books of sermons based on the gospels with this latest edition, The Master Teacher: Sermons from Mark. It follows on the heels of editions on Luke (The Master Story-Teller) and John (The Master Preacher) and continues their engaging qualities of good teaching and solid scholarship, deep devotion and accessible inspiration.
The 24 sermons in The Master Teacher take the reader through Mark from its beginning at Jesus’ baptism to its mysteriously truncated ending of the story of his resurrection. The journey tours from the streets of Galilee and Jerusalem through Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and British Columbia, and the guides quoted along the way range from Kierkegaard and Pope Benedict XVI to an anxious woman in an emergency room and a confused tourist who insisted that MacKenzie was, in fact, Michael Gorbachev traveling incognito.
MacKenzie’s unique gift is to convey to the reader deep faith, solid theology and practical lessons in Christian discipleship in a contemporary, humorous and personal way. Always true to the text under consideration, the sermons unfold the glories of the sacraments, the Christian hope for the future, the challenge of living for Christ in the midst of current dilemmas, and the generosity that springs up in anyone grasped by the generosity of God. They are refreshingly simple in language, personal in tone, and so well crafted that the reader barely notices how much they are learning and how deeply they are being challenged by the claims of Christ and his gospel.
Whether one occupies the pulpit or the pew, or stands aside wondering what “this Jesus fellow” is all about, one will find in MacKenzie’s The Master Teacher instruction, inspiration and delight.
