Maxelcat Speaks

Nearly 5 whole days of the residential.  Ohhh – the excitement, the anticipation, the purchase of ear-plugs.    I arrived full of youthful vigour, rearing to go, shiny new pencils in hand.

And by the end? The longing for sleep, decent coffee, an Internet connection that works! A feeling that my brain is going to burst if anyone tries to put anything else in there! A sense that God has been at work deep in me and that the results will follow. Deeper friendships, answers to age old theological puzzles and one less pencil than I started with.

What a great, great time. Thanks to all the lecturers, teaching staff, admin people, cooks etc etc etc. Can’t wait for the next one.

Now, how am I gonna get that essay done? Anybody know anything about the Danielic son of man?

and left as a zombie. It was all excellent – what would be my highlights? The food? The worship? The teaching? Getting into intense conversations? Ministry?

After some 15 hours on missiology, liberally scattered with earth shattering testimonies (and I do mean “Earth Shattering”) it was time to try move out of the comfort zone we like to inhabit and out on the rainy Lichfield streets.

In threes asked God for revelation – did He want to reveal to us anything about who we could talk to – the idea being, that we wanted to be doing “What the Father was doing”. So off we went into Lichfield to “Look for treasure”. Personally, I was dead excited – I really want to get out of aforementioned zone. I want to experience some of what I have been hearing about…

Almost immediately we found the “Old man walking on a hill wearing a trilby with a scarf”. He was very keen to be prayed with and seemed really pleased that we had done so. When we finished he asked us to pray for his brother too. So that was a great start. More please.

We had two other people to find – and we think we found them, but both were pretty dismissive to be frank. There’s seems to be a real knack to what you open the conversation with. Let’s face it, if any approaches me I normally close them down so it wasn’t really surprising!

Mission? Yawn? Well, maybe not yawn as such – more guilt and “Please, not me”.

Is mission in Genesis 1?

Today I have started the “Missiology” module of my theology studies in anger. One of my favourite bits in the bible has always been Genesis ch 1 – 3.  I find that even after years of “Study” there’s still more in there. Ever asked yourself why so there has been so much attack against the early books of the bible???

C’mon - Is mission in Genesis 1?

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.

What would the Hebrew mind have understood by “The earth was formless and void., and darkness was over the face of the deep”? These are pictures of chaos, of evil and of death. This is further backed up understanding that other creation stories of the ancient Near East (aNE) descibe a battle often involving the sea, and a “Chaos monster”. Now we can’t take our theology from these “Secondary sources” but they can shed light on what the Hebrew’s would have thought.

Just what happened between vs1 and vs2? Could it be that Elohim created such things; things that are clearly evil? I don’t think so. But its very clear that by verse 2 of the bible things are NOT perfect and that God is already hovering over the chaos – and when God is hovering things rae afoot!

Chaos and Mission

As we were asked several times today “Is there chaos around at the moment?”. Of course there is – everywhere – but along with this comes the question “Do you ever in your life sense God hovering over the chaos”. And we were hearing testimonies of the oppresed, down-trodden and addicted saying “Yes I sense God’s presence – I don’t know what ‘IT’ is, but sometimes I sense it”.

Just as in verse 2 Elohim hovered over the “dark, formless, void” so He still does today. In fact, God’s first recorded actions are to bring the very opposite of these things into existance – light, structure and fruitfulness.

God’s first recorded acts are “Missionary acts” – not just creating a perfect world out of nothing after which Adam and Eve mess it all up. But actually acting to bring (dare I say) “Prosperity” to a pre-existing, but fruitless cosmos. Where there was darkness there is now light. Where there was formless chaos we now have a thriving, ordered, life sustaining environment. Where there void we know have life.

Surely that’s mission! To bring back the presence, the kingdom of God. So, right from the very start God shows himself to be a “Missionary” God.

And that, dear raeder, is just the first lecture – only 7 hours worth tomorrow!

In my church the word “Amazing” is used nearly as often as the word “Awesome” so I hesitate to use langauge that is in danger of losing its meaning.  However, today I heard a testimony that deserves the ephitat! What’s more it was given by the man to who it applied – our new missiology lecture.

Now I was a little unsure about what to expect from this module – was it going to be a “Make the people feel guilty” session – the type of which we have all heard before? So far, so absolutley not!

So what was it about? Really, it seemed to be man’s journey from a certain level of power (with which I’d have been satisfied! – really? No.) to a place where everybody (like all of them, yes every one) were healed in one sitting. And it didn’t just happen once. This guy works in prisons and with the poor. And the miraculous seems to be almost everyday.

My response? Same as yours – “Yes please God, I want that too!”