Post-Christian holiness?

The Affinity Council sounds like a group of bureaucrats discussing obscure points of order of interest to no-one.

In reality it is a lively fellowship network of leaders representing over 1,000 churches and Christian organisations, encouraging one another, talking about issues facing the church today and praying together.

The world’s values

At our meeting this autumn Steve Timmis (Acts 29) challenged us to consider whether we are absorbing our culture’s values. People around us expect and pursue comfort, happiness and fulfilment. When Christians start to live by the world’s values they are never contented, community suffers, as does our relationship with God, and the Great Commission has to fall in line behind other, more life-affirming, activities. Steve’s observations from travelling across the world is that the church in the West can all too easily take on board society’s endless quest for happy, fulfilled lives. This can be seen in our priorities, in the way we spend our time and money, and can end up impoverishing our hospitality and undermining our concern for gospel work across the world.

In another session, John Stevens (FIEC) spoke about our culture’s obsession with story-telling. One reason that attitudes to sex and gender have changed so completely and so quickly is that people’s world-views are captured by the stories they hear and believe. Biographies, soap operas and dramas have changed the thinking of a whole generation; those who tell the best stories seem to be winning.

Churches are often more focused on the propositional and rational while our culture has become, essentially, ‘romantic’. Romanticism never has to be consistent or logical. This is a great challenge to us because while we may point out its inconsistencies, nobody cares!

Culture’s big story

Our culture is telling a big story of progress and improvement, from primi-tivism to sophistication, from injustice to equality – all of which is much better for human flourishing. Our problem is that the world’s story works for most people: we have unprecedented wealth, health, peace, security and opportunity. The dream is there for everyone to seize.

Only the gospel reconciles the rational and romantic – propositional and emotional, the affective as well as the reasonable. The whole of salvation history is one long narrative, the unfolding of a drama; narrative is normal in the Bible.

But it is not just about competing stories. The objective truth is that God exists and the gospel story only makes sense in the light of the awesome power of a transcendent, holy God and the reality of death, judgment and eternity. Without this, the gospel story cannot compete with the world’s narrative.

John concluded that all this has implications for us: for the way we preach, present the gospel and engage in conversation.

Pornography?

Tom Brand (Evangelical Fellowship of Congregational Churches) made a plea for a more urgent response to the challenge of unfiltered access to online pornography. Statistics show that churches are either unaware or in denial that this is a major issue, especially for children and young people, but also for adults – including Christian ministers. We need to teach and model the ‘better story’ of love and sexual intimacy in marriage. Tom suggested that Affinity might campaign to raise awareness of the issue, and consider setting up accountability groups.

David Meredith (Free Church of Scotland) led us through a time of prayer. We were challenged in small groups to consider what are the top three things that we should pray for our nation. Apart from the obvious (more disciples of Jesus) we prayed for boldness in an increasingly radical, secular culture, for wisdom to know how to live as God’s people in exile, and for freedom of speech to be preserved.

We need to know the times and do our part, but only God in his mercy can bring about revival and restoration across our nation. We pray that this might be so.