Of tall poppies, mateship and pragmatism: Spirituality in the Australasian Context
Australians today celebrate Australia Day. To mark the day I thought I would reproduce a paper on Spirituality in the Australasian Context (I focus on Australia and New Zealand) which I initially presented at a workshop of the Baptist World Alliance, held in Mexico City in July 2006. It was later published in Stimulus – a New Zealand Journal (vol 16, issue 3, 2008). Though a decade has past, I think the insights are essentially valid, and are hopefully helpful. See what you think… 1) By way of an introduction In some ways it feels strange for me to write on Spirituality in the...
Read MoreChurch: A messy, risky but still powerful ideal (Part 2 of So what is church?)
Part 1 of this post set about answering the question, ‘So what is church?’ suggesting that church is a simple, but powerful idea. It did so in response to the earlier post on churchless faith – a growing phenomena that often sees people, in spite of their faith commitment, simply shrug and say, ‘Church – too difficult, too painful, too boring, too political, too time consuming, too compromised, too controlling, too irrelevant’ – or something comparable. They then quietly (or not so quietly) withdraw from active involvement from any local church. As...
Read MoreSo what is church? Part 1 Church, a simple but powerful idea…
We kicked off this short series on the church by looking at the relatively new but rapidly growing phenomena of churchless faith. I wanted to start with that post because the word church increasingly has a lot of emotional baggage attached to it. For many it smacks of control, abuse of power, manipulation, politics and thought control – a rather alarming set of associations. For others it conjures up images of boring Sundays, or of irrelevance or perhaps of sectarian squabbling. Much more positively, for large numbers the images are of spiritual growth, close community, God encounters,...
Read MoreChurchless Faith
I am about to embark on a short series on the church – and what it might mean to be church in the third millennium. This opening post looks at the increasing phenomena of what is being called ‘churchless faith’. I briefly touched on the topic in a post which proved popular, Churched, Unchurched and Dechurched, and I’d like to explore it a little more today, as very close to the surface it raises a multitude of questions of what it means to be church (and part of the capital C universal Church). So what is churchless faith? It is usually understood to mean that someone...
Read MoreAnd every step an arrival… On the gift of the present moment
I am presently reading Eugene Peterson’s wonderful biography The Pastor which has on its front cover Rilke’s memorable line ‘every step an arrival’. It reflects Peterson’s own conviction that when all is said and done, the work of a pastor is not primarily to get things done or to be surrounded by a flurry of activity, but to pay attention and call attention “to ‘what is going on right now’ between men and women, with each other and with God.” What is going on right now. Spotting God in the present moment. It is not the same as...
Read MoreSome great posts…
From time to time I like to refer our readers to some great posts on other sites… though always hoping that they will still keep looking at this site. So what are some recent posts that I have enjoyed? Scot McKnight’s Jesus Creed blog recently ranked this post on being on the wrong side of history as their post of the year. Now there are some great posts on that site, and I wouldn’t necessarily have rated this as number 1, but it is an intriguing read and argues back strongly against the emotional manipulation present in ‘you will be on the wrong side of...
Read MoreBlog Reflections: Most and least successful posts and all that…
With the new year moving along steadily, I thought it as well to write up some reflections on the life of this blog in 2015. For most of the year it lay dormant – an idea brewing and developing. Starting it was on my list of goals for 2015, and with the help of Ben O’Reilly, a domain name and basic site had been built early in the year. True, the domain name was not my initial choice – but the trouble with a name as common as Brian Harris is that more obvious choices like brianharris.com and brianharrisblog.com were already taken. So brianharrisauthor.com it is – a...
Read MoreGratitude and Giving Back: A theme for the New Year
Given that if you aim at nothing, you invariably achieve it, it is probably wise to set some goals for the New Year. In the past I have worked away at detailed plans, trying to set precise markers that will help me assess if the year can be classified a success or otherwise. But this year I have opted for an alternate strategy. Rather than great specificity (like lose 5kg, publish 2 articles, see Vose enrolment grow 7%) I am hoping to follow through on a theme, and to see where it leads. I have a gentle conviction (in other words, not a lightening bolt revelation, but just an ongoing sense...
Read MoreHannah and Mary: Having the faith to let go… by Audrey Francis
I was shopping at Coles yesterday and noticed that they already have Easter hot cross buns on sale. Christmas has only been over for week, and we are already being rushed away from it. But it is better to ponder Christmas a little longer. Audrey Francis, a student at Vose Seminary who has contributed to this blog before, helps us to do so in this message she preached on Sunday 27 Dec 2015 at Rockingham Uniting Church. It is built around 1 Samuel 2:18-20, 26 and Luke 2: 41-52, comparing the sacrifice made by Samuel’s mother Hannah, and Jesus’ mother Mary. It asks what they might...
Read MoreReflections on a two funeral week…
Over recent years I’ve become fairly settled in my end of year routine. Vose Seminary, where I am principal, closes for the week between Christmas and New Year, so when I finish preaching the Christmas day message, I am off for the remainder of the year and for the first few days of the new one. Once Christmas feasting is over, the obligatory maintenance on the home gets undertaken – very poorly to be sure – but nevertheless all paving gets water blasted, our decking gets re oiled, and any other tasks I have been unable to wriggle out of, get performed. After that, I set my...
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