sustain:if:able kiwi

Dear God, save me from your followers! (in auckland for a day)

I spent today preparing for a 3 hour lecture I’m delivering tomorrow at Laidlaw College (Auckland, flying up at 10 am, back by 10 pm). The topic I’m asked to address is the longest, most convoluted I’ve ever been given: “Doing theology” and expressing the gospel in a postmodern, post-Christian context—the church as missional and multicultural. Current issues of evangelism, theology and conviction.. Gulp! It reads like a whole lot of buzz words thrown into a sentence!

I thought this photo (via Jonny Baker) summed it up much better – A T-shirt with the words: Dear God, save me from your followers!”

(Which hopefully is not saying anything about those God-followers I’ll meet at Laidlaw tomorrow!)

How on earth do we keep “community” in the gospel, when the people of the community are time and again such bad witnesses? (I reflected a bit on this recently, here, my first application point, that Christians need to be better tellers of wilderness stories).

Anyhow, the topic meant I’ve had to work up a whole lot of new material. Which was fun. But I’m also meant to have a 5,000 word book chapter done by Friday. Plus 2 more pieces of written work due by the weekend. So all told, I’m feeling time compression.