I have added a new post on the seeds of change page which expands a bit on what I have been saying about church and ecclesia

Over the coming week I will try and progress thinking around four subject areas that have emerged from blog comments over the last few days. These will be

i) a bit more on money, particularly looking at the practical challenge of what to do with”what is already in our hands”

ii) a look at the role of the angelic in creation and how we work with them

iii) a closer examination of the nature of the contemporary nation state in relationship to the ecclesia and the kingdom of God

iv) some reflections on the implications of making use of any available tax exemption for charitable status or Christian ministry

So watch this space!

Hi all you bloggers! I’m beginning to realise that some of you are regulars as well as random surfers. Having just finished writing up a major chapter of my research I am now focusing on a paper on church, sovereignty and money in the genesis of modernity that I will be giving at the Anabaptist theology forum next week. As a result, apart from posting a stray paragraph on Stanley Hauerwas, a contemporary Anabaptist theologian, on the theopolitics page, [I explain why I describe him as such there], I am not brimming with any stirring new subject to post here. This has made me think about who clicks on and why and made me decide to offer to give a considered opinion on any stuff anyone would like me to have a go at, within reason, and then we can get a discussion up and running. So feedback and any questions please …

More on money

Big thanks to Johnny for his comments that are so wonderfully indicative of his ongoing gift of push you pull me! Before I begin to add fuel to the fire, as David Leigh’s encouraging comment puts it, I would like to explain how I see this blog working. My hope is to be a catalyst for collaboration on a journey of discovery. My desire and anticipation is that the destination is the fulness of the kingdom of God. To this end I am beginning to put together a number of pages that act as background for my more immediate outbursts and reflections. The brief outline on the my thesis page hopefully makes clear that I am emphatically not talking about or recommending western individualism in my recent post about money. Jesus’ parable of the unrighteous servant describes money as unrighteous mammon and only redeemable by making friends out of it [Luke 16:1-13]. In the history of the modern west the link between money and mammon is total. As I understand it, modern money is essentially a confidence trick promoted by the failing partnership of church and empire or in other words Christendom, at the end of the 17^th century, in order to finance war and sell sovereingty to produce and maintain the nation state. This state is itself the progeny of the miscegenation (cross-breeding of different species) of the ecclesia and empire. This trick has effectively displaced Christ and his Spirit as the means to the kingdom of God and is producing in its place a world system ultimately destructive of creation and humanity. It is this that has produced the modern western individualism which is so opposite to the kingdom of God. This western empire of capital is soon coming down, together with all other forms of empire. The ecclesia of God is intended to be a little stone hurled at the basis of the edifice of empire [Daniel 2: 31-45]. So in my reflections about money and faith I am not advocating a return to an individualistic abuse of gift, relationship and communication in order to manipulate the western capital based economy. Phew, something else I’ve got off my chest!

But what was I trying to say in my encouragement to trust God for financial supply? It was the sense that for some of us who God is currently repositioning in the world for the world, there is evidence of the rediscovery of the base line of the divine economy, which is faith not fear. From this base line there are going to be a variety of different ways of operating within the increasingly global financial system of the west as it shakes and falls. It is important that these different ways of cooperation access this base line otherwise they will rapidly default to or reconfigure the empire of mammon. My concern here is certainly not to discourage exercises in community living. These need as far as possible to be made up of individuals who are personally trusting God for their daily needs and not trusting somebody else’s vision and direction. As I see it absolute dependency on others is necessary either at times of total immaturity, as with a baby, or in illness or disability, or as the result of the destructive effects of empire. The kingdom of God is about mutual interdependence and collaboration and works to the fullest possible expression of it that can be achieved in the circumstances. For me this is the positive aspect of the story of Ananias and Sapphira [Acts 5:1-11] which reveals the base line of personal faith that underlay the first experiment in Christian community [v4]. This is not at all the same as western individualism. My final reflection for now is to note that in the birth of the nation state both individual sovereignty and corporate sovereignty were equally destructive, which is why both the French revolution and the development of the British constitutional monarchy had some of the same negative repercussions. The history of Soviet communism that has done so much harm to the reputation of Marx, who I take to be a serious secular prophet who we ignore to our great loss, reveals that the power of the People is equally destructive to that of an individual dictator. This is precisely what many of our experiences of the oppressive power of the local church, denomination or network has taught us. If the ecclesia is to be set free, then we must rediscover the base line of personal faith in God’s supply from which to move out into our experiments in survival and divine economics.

The Leeds Summat yesterday was a great experiment/ experience. Thank you Together for Peace and Mike, Ed and co! Zygmunt Bauman’s lecture on the Triple Challege was particularly stimulating. His analysis of the end of the trinity of State/ Territory/ Nation as the basis of political power was very penetrating. As a result of yesterday I find I have lots to say for those of you who have the perseverance and tolerance to keep logging on! And the many comments of the last days on money among other things have also given me lots of food for thought and of course a bit more to say! So I will get there by Tuesday if not before but right now I’m cracking on with writing up a chapter on subsumed theology for my thesis and chasing a deadline. So all for now!

Have a look at Sue M’s Blog and her comments on the years to 2012 and related topics, and the way the global commodifiers pick stuff up and trivialise it

I’m currently in conversation with several people who have been trying to forerun for the kingdom of God and are facing big financial challenges at this time. I don’t think that this is the ordinary constraint of financing the work in an economic downturn.  Rather I believe that it is to do with prophetically important shifts that are happening in the ecclesia and in the western global empire. Some people are just taking this on board of part of the recession and taking practical steps to get alternative employment, fundraise or make or take redundancies, depending on the nature of their situation. In one sense this is only right because the people of God are in the world for the world and shouldn’t always try to evade its problems.

However my conviction on this occasion is that we have entered a prophetic season that is quite simply about the coming down of empire and that the shaking of our western post-Christendom capital based global empire is part of that. I would go so far as to suggest that it is part of the intervention of God through the church into the world. We have had three generations of revival and can rightly expect a cosmic shift. The consequential worldwide prayer and prophetic movements, although often misdirected, have been used by God, together with the hidden impact of the deconstruction of centrist church structures and have combined together to release a contemporary version of the stone cut by no human hand (Daniel 2:44-45). Therefore our role in the world as forerunning people of God is to demonstrate a totally different means of life which must mean a totally different source of supply. The Western Christendom initiated financial system is based on empire which is in turn based on fear. We have to find our way back to provision based on faith. I am not referring to the kind of ‘living by faith’ that has sometimes come from a wrong spirit of manipulation, obligation and moral pressure. This is of course just a covert means of parasitic dependence on the western financial system. I am talking about radical dependence on God. In our personal experience and a number of significant situations in which we are currently involved the opportunity to come in a different spirit and trust God more directly has issued in some exciting breakthroughs. Not surprisingly I want to encourage friends who are facing tough financial challenges to trust God and experience the same kind of breakthroughs in provision.

I think there are at least three conditions that need to be applied here in order to avoid blatant stupidity! I would like to encourage some serious discussion about this, by all means through the blog, if anyone would find it a helpful medium. Firstly the condition is the way of the cross, simply the Jesus kind of life laid down loving living. This is a wholehearted dependence on the principle of resurrection with is ready to go through death in hope. Secondly, there needs to be a rejection of fear. Empire and all its consequential legal, military and economic structures are based on fear. We must reject fear and embrace God’s reputation and promise to supply for those who lay down their lives in faith. Thirdly, there needs to be a prophetic commitment to the new day, to coming out the other side of empire in ecclesia and world. This is an issue of the spirit and is not always outwardly obvious. Some people appear to be operating outside the box but are carrying the spirit of empire. Some that appear to be inside concentric structures of church and western world are actually the most kenotic of people. We have to know who we are at heart. Finally we need to know the Spirit’s call and timing to us to embrace and embody this kingdom way of life at this time. If this is all coincides for us then let’s take the great leap forward one step at a time!

I’ve added a new section on this subject under November 15th on the Seeds of Change page

I’ve been thinking a lot about connecting with God to the maximum, which is a great idea whoever you are as long as you are ready for the consequences. The thing is that given that God is spirit then you have to exercise your spirit to properly communicate. The apostle Paul made the interesting comment that no-one knows the thoughts of a person except the spirit of that person. From that you can argue that if you stop and ask yourself what you are thinking then you are exercising your spirit. Well that’s a start!

My old supervisor suggests in his new book that every wink, blink or gesture can open you up to eternity if you let it. I think his point is that every involuntary movement you consciously stop and choose can become one of those ‘time in between times’ when eternity can break in. These eternal instants are opportunities to break free from the tyranny of time itself and have the potential to disrupt all manner of forms of empire. He calls them eschatological moments when the future can come and meet you wherever you are! These are potentially moments of significant change in which the kingdom of God can break in. These are not just religious experiences  but opportunities for shifts in our personal relationships, job situations and political worlds. If it’s the God whose just like Jesus that we are connecting with then his way of being is but a moment away.

Of course when you do enter the eternal now like this it is important to realise that God is not the only Spirit out there. This is why not all forms of consciousness and happenings that humans can induce connect us to God. I think this is what it means that Jesus is the door. At the fulness of time he took a step that changed everything. Law, control, judgement, the whole empire deal was trumped by his hand. Connect in his name and his love, mercy, presence and provision come tumbling through!

I was chatting with someone the other day about possible causes of stress. I found myself prayerfully coming up with two essentials. Do you know that you are unconditionally loved and do you have a sense of call or destiny? Being sure of neither or having one without the other can cause stress I think. The problem with being liberated by God (at last!) into the postmodern, postchristendom world is that for some of us it loses the certainty of his love and the possibility of his call. Both came second hand from a bible that was used to keep us secure and a church that controlled us. However the living word is still here in the Holy Spirit revealing Christ and the Father’s love in the freed up scriptures, in the liberated ecclesia, and in the waiting created world. Don’t panic. Unconditional love and the divine call to live it and pass it on to our fellow humans and the creation is still available in the good news of the kingdom of God. It’s not lost, its being liberated from its captivity to empire, and us with it if we will. Now there’s the rub…