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Josh Moody

Date posted: 1 May 2009

Military theorists will often espouse that the tendency of all armies is to be prepared to fight the last battle. Because it takes time for large institutions to change, because humans typically respond to experience, there is an inertia towards preparedness for yesterday’s battles. The classic example of this is the French army’s readiness to fight a World War 1 style of battle on the eve of World War 2.

Well, new data from the American Religious Identification Survey (March 2009) shows, it claims, that ‘the challenge to Christianity in the US does not come from other religions but rather from a rejection of all forms of organised religion’. If that is true, and it seems to have some purchase, then what we need as a church is a way of doing church that answers that question about organised religion. Instead, of course, what we find is a highly organised mega or traditional church that is geared to answer the question of felt needs through a multitude of programmes. We have an army ready to fight World War 1 on the eve of World War 2.

Josh Moody

Date posted: 1 Apr 2009

Various trends within evangelicalism, and the surrounding culture, seem to be combining to present, if not the perfect storm, at least a tipping point where things could either move forward in exciting new ways or backwards alarmingly.

David Olson, the director of the American Church Research Project, has come out with a new book called The American Church in Crisis. In this book he catalogues the gradual decline in church attendance in America, and predicts that by 2050 there will be around 10% of the population in church. You can find an interview of Olson at http://www2.journalnow.com/content/2009/feb/28/study-finds-attendance-at-churches-still-falling/living/ In a slightly different take on the same issue, the Southern Baptist pastor Bob Pearle has written The Vanishing Church. He writes that the biblical church in America is being replaced with ‘Wal-Mart’ churches which are geared towards providing what their consumers want. There’s a discussion of this book at http://www.star-telegram.com/religion/story/1230235.html

Josh Moody

Date posted: 1 Mar 2009

I don’t know whether it is conscious or not (and I trust not), but, in my observation, more and more of the discussion in Christian circles is generated by a concern to establish, and then develop, a market niche.

First, you have had a spate of books which are either manoeuvering for religious market share or debating theological angels on a pinhead. I don’t propose to list the titles, but those of us who keep track of such things can nod in agreement now at the numerous books of that form, as well, of course, as the many wonderful books being produced alongside. Then you have the ever-growing Christian conference season. Perhaps it is less pernicious in England, but on this side of the Atlantic while there are worthy conferences, and probably a need for more of that ilk, on the other hand you only have to sneeze to give birth to another conference which is pushing a particular niche brand of Christianity.

The Rev. Dr. Michael Ward is an Anglican minister and the author of Planet Narnia: The Seven Heavens in the Imagination of C.S. Lewis. It was made into a BBC documentary called The Narnia Code, broadcast on BBC1 on April 16 and repeated on BBC4 in May. He spoke to EN.

EN: Explain simply your thesis.

MW: In a nutshell: Narnia is based on the seven heavens. Now for the longer answer!

Josh Moody

Date posted: 1 Feb 2009

A new Barna poll (January 12 2009) claims to show that most American Christians are adopting a pick and mix attitude towards Christianity and (indeed) other faiths.¹

In itself, such a claim might not appear particularly surprising. It is certainly part of a long observed trend from objective truth to subjective interpretation, and from acceptance of authority to individual choice of belief.

Josh Moody

Date posted: 1 Jan 2009

Everyone is talking about it. Endless chat shows. NPR (National Public Radio), CNN, NBC, Fox – you name it, they’re talking about it.

The economy is having a little teeny-weeny problem right now. Same in the UK, I hear. Same just about everywhere. People are comparing it to the Great Depression (thankfully no one’s claiming it’s going to be as bad yet). People are coming up with plans and building projects. Newsweek is saying it’s worse than we think,¹ The Washington Post reviews books that point the blame at the Government,² CNN discusses our emotions and how they affect the economy.³

Josh Moody

Date posted: 1 Nov 2008

Whoever is at fault, and wherever the blame lies, the last few weeks in America have shaken many people’s confidence in the financial system.

You probably know the news as well as I do. What’s really important from an evangelical Christian point of view is the opportunity this crisis has created. We are being called to examine where our hopes lie and witness to a confidence not ultimately in the market but in our God and his Word.

Josh Moody

Date posted: 1 Dec 2008

It is not the best of times, nor the worst of times. It is a time of uncertainty.

As President elect Barack Obama waits in the wings, the economy, in particular, appears to be on the verge of something akin to the ‘R-word’ (= R***ssion), if not, some fear, actual Depression. It could get worse. It could get better. It could be one thing. It could be another. People talk about it. People wonder. No one knows for sure. It is, in short, a time of uncertainty.

Josh Moody

Date posted: 1 Oct 2008

Whatever you think of America, you can’t deny that its Presidential elections this year are fascinating.

There’s Barack Obama — first African-American candidate for the White House. Now there’s Sarah Palin — first female candidate for Vice-President. And, in between, there’s…what’s his name again?...oh, yes, John McCain.

Josh Moody

Date posted: 1 Aug 2008

When we first arrived in America, some nine or so years ago now, petrol (‘gas’) cost a little over a dollar an American-size gallon. This summer gas registers at over $4 a gallon. That (for the mathematically challenged among you) means a price hike by a factor of four times. What’s more, much of that increase has happened within the last year. For a while beforehand gas prices had hovered more normally around the mid $2 range.

Of course, in England petrol remains far more expensive. But what matters for the impact on the culture is the differential. Petrol is still, when you calculate it all in terms of dollars to pound and gallons to litres, about twice as expensive in the UK as in the USA. But when we arrived the difference was far greater than that. Petrol in the UK was at least four times as expensive back in the late 1990s, if not rather more.

Josh Moody

Date posted: 1 Jul 2008

Obama has finally won the presumptive Democratic nomination for the next President of the United States. If it did not quite go down to the wire (or to the Convention) it came as close as could be. Hilary Clinton, apparently stunning even her close supporters, still did not resign her intentions immediately, but left a day or two before announcing that she accepts that Barack Obama has won.

It must be difficult for Hilary. She, we might guess, thought she had the market cornered on ‘firsts’, running as potentially the first woman President, only to be defeated by potentially the first African-American President. Even as late as this week, her supporters were claiming victory in the ‘popular vote’ (sounds familiar?), others suggesting that Clinton had been subtly disparaged by anti-feminist or misogynist sub-texts — how can you be both tough enough and likeable as a woman in power?

Josh Moody

Date posted: 1 Jun 2008

The ubiquitous cry of children on a long journey (‘Are we nearly there yet?’) has often been at the back of my mind watching the off-again, on-again foray of the Clinton-Obama smack down.

Clinton’s donations receive a massive boost after one win — a million over the internet in 24 hours. Obama plays down the win. Clinton plays up the win. Next round, and this has been going on for month upon month already, and it’s two more states, one goes just barely to Clinton, the other easily to Obama. Played up by Obama, played down by Clinton. Clinton has less money. Obama has more. The pundits talk. The spin doctors spin. The voters vote. The talk show hosts talk. News item after news item. Yawn. ‘Are we nearly there yet?’

C.S. Lewis once said that an atheist couldn’t be too careful of his reading. There are traps everywhere, according to George Herbert — ‘Bibles laid open, millions of surprises; fine nets and stratagems’.

At the age of eight I wouldn’t have called myself an atheist, but God had certainly mapped out a strategy to call me to himself through my reading. The oldest in a rowdy family of five children, I sought solitude in books as soon as I could read. We lived in an outer borough of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, a bit too rural at that time to warrant a public library, though we did rate a weekly visit from the bookmobile.

Josh Moody

Date posted: 1 Apr 2008

‘Cussing’ is American slang for swearing and — yes — there is a preacher who has been given that nickname.

Mark Driscoll, pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle, has lots that would commend him to EN readers. He is theologically conservative. He is Reformed. He has grown a church from a plant in 1996 to around 5,000 or so today. And all this in Seattle, after New England the least churched and most secular region of America.

Josh Moody

Date posted: 1 May 2008

After various senior Moslem and Christian clerics co-signed a document called ‘A Common Word’ in the New York Times, John Piper appeared on YouTube distancing himself from the document. More recently still, Yale University is calling a conference to further develop the ‘common word’ agenda. You can find details about that at http://www.yaledailynews.com/articles/view/24022

Here are some excerpts from a document some of our Yale students looked at recently as a response to these new ‘common word’ initiatives:

As I wondered what to call this piece, two ideas popped into my mind. One was the haunting KJV version of Acts 27.27, where we read that before the shipwreck ‘we were driven up and down in Adria [the Adriatic]’. The other was the equally haunting title from old Etonian, social critic, master satirist and beautiful writer George Orwell: Down and Out in Paris and London. Suddenly my own title was fully formed in my mind.

So, now, my story

My wife and I moved to Canada in 1979. Principal James Houston had recruited me to teach theology at Regent College, which I still do. God’s call was clear. Our only uncertainty was where we might find a spiritual home. New Westminster Diocese, of which Vancouver is the see city, was decidedly liberal, and its few evangelical clergy seemed to be keeping their heads down. But in 1978 my oldest friend among Canadian clergy, Harry Robinson, became rector of St. John’s Shaughnessy, nearby where God gave us a place to live. So that problem was solved. Called as I am to be a pastor, alongside my teaching duties, I became Harry’s honorary assistant. (For the record, I am now the longest serving clergyman in the St. John’s team.)

Josh Moody

Date posted: 1 Mar 2008

At the time of writing we have just been through ‘Super Tuesday’. It’s been a fascinating series of Presidential primaries, as the Democratic hopefuls for their party’s nomination dish out to each other, and the Republicans likewise. Mitt Romney has suspended his candidacy.

And so we have left in the field McCain, who appears at the moment to be certain to win, against Huckabee (R), and Clinton against Obama (D).

The radio work of Grace Baptist Mission (GBM) began in India 50 years ago. It was a cause for deep gratitude that the recommendation from Conference in India to the Mission Council in London asking permission to establish a radio ministry was unanimously accepted in the 1950s.

Not all Strict Baptists of that generation were happy about radio. Even in 1963, when in the UK on furlough, a missionary was told by one pastor that, ‘Radio is the devil’s instrument’.

Josh Moody

Date posted: 1 Jan 2008

‘Evangelical Elite’ – can those two words really go together? Apparently they can, and increasingly they do, according to Michael Lindsay’s new book, Faith in the Halls of Power: How Evangelicals Joined the American Elite. You can read a full and fascinating interview with Lindsay about his new book in Christianity Today at http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2007/november/33.35.html.

Lindsay has conducted an astonishingly wide-ranging and penetrating research into the ‘elite evangelicals’ who function in small cabals at the top of the greasy pole of such institutions as Harvard, Hollywood, Fortune 500 companies, and Washington DC. He finds that they are consistently orthodox in their faith, by his definitions, despite being exposed to such a high level of the power that corrupts. Frequently they encourage one another in invitation-only small groups that meet once a month, like the Boston First Tuesday group convened by Tom Philips, former CEO of Raytheon.

Josh Moody

Date posted: 1 Feb 2008

As long as it’s not Clinton (and at this stage it still could well be), America will have someone in the Oval office whose name is not Bush or Clinton for the first time in five terms. First there was Bush Sr., then there was Clinton, then Clinton again, then Bush Jr., then Bush Jr. again. Now — well, if Hilary gets it that will make six Presidents in a row coming from two families. Whoever said America doesn’t have ruling elite?

Intriguingly, though, it could be someone different. Huckabee is an ex-Southern Baptist pastor, who, despite his relatively unsophisticated sounding educational or professional background, is gathering a reputation for impressive speaking abilities. Obama — wouldn’t it be something for America to have a President called ‘Obama’? That would certainly strike against those who caricature the current global war on terror, if it be such, as simplistically cultural, or religious, though Obama, of course, seems to be a church attendee of some sort. (Mind you, it’s hard to get anywhere in current American politics unless at some point you say something about your ‘faith’.)

Josh Moody

Date posted: 1 Dec 2007

Willow Creek has become probably the most influential church movement in America and perhaps around the world.

As their pastor, Bill Hybels has introduced a seeker-driven structure to their church whereby the church engages creatively and with contemporary relevance to the needs of the non-Christian. Their discipleship structure has tended to be very programme-orientated.

Josh Moody

Date posted: 1 Nov 2007

So here’s the kind of question I most commonly get asked about our church. Not ‘what do you believe?’, not ‘what is your vision for the church?’, not even ‘what kind of programmes do you have for our children?’ No, the question I most commonly get asked — by outsiders, you understand — is ‘who do people vote for?’

The election is still a year away (November 2008…), but already positioning is going on for the religious vote. Rudy Giuliani, famed former mayor of New York City, is trying to deal with the possible negative repercussions of his well-known pro-abortion stance. Conservatives, it is felt, will not possibly support him for that single reason. And, in fact, an influential group called The Council for National Policy, has voted that if Giuliani is nominated as the Republican presidential candidate they will seek to form a Third Party. That’s fighting talk.

Josh Moody

Date posted: 1 Oct 2007

On July 21 2007, William Lobdell, the Los Angeles Times Religion writer, authored a piece which described how being a reporter for religion caused him to lose his.

Apparently, Lobdell had viewed the post as Religion writer for the LA Times as a calling, an opportunity for a serious Christian like himself to set straight the many inaccuracies that the main stream media foisted on an unaware audience. He had come to Christ years previously at a retreat run by an Evangelical Mega Church. He had accepted Christ in his heart, had sensed that he was born again, and had become part of the culture that encourages quiet times and devotion to God.

Josh Moody

Date posted: 1 Aug 2007

So I can never tell how much any one issue is becoming controversial in the ‘broader’ church — after all, we all live in villages, so to speak.

But one ‘emerging’ issue seems to The Emergent Church (though I bet they’d rather we say ‘the emergent church’; postmodern sensitive dudes seem to like lower case grammar, just read any McLaren book).