Infantish Baptism

Our youngest daughter just got baptised on Sunday. She’s 18 months. Everything went great. There were no dramas.

But I am interested to hear from those who support the practice of infant baptism, at what point does infant baptism become adult baptism? Our daughter surprised us with her advanced communication skills (far quicker than her brother). At 18 months she can clearly and audibly say ‘No, I really don’t want to!’ (she says it a lot). My question is, if she said that during the baptism (which she didn’t, but it was a very real possibility), what do you do? Pack-up and sit down? Tell her to quieten down and do what she’s told? Is 18 months too late to do an infant baptism? The whole Baptism thing gets pretty weird when you dissect it like this, doesn’t it?

5 things we overuse in our preaching: The World as one big bad guy

(See previous post here)

3. The World as one big bad guy

Since when did I have conversations with a guy called ‘Society’ or a man called ‘The World’. I’ve never met either of them. Yet I wait in earnest, because they apparently talk to everyone else.

“The world will tell you ‘to look after number one’”

“Society doesn’t like talking about religion”

Perhaps you could accuse John of doing something similar In 1 John 2.15-17; 4.4-6. Here John makes the important distinction between the evil desires in the world and the desires of the people of God. The latter are being transformed by God. The former by the collective desires of the people in the world. If we’re making that point in our sermons, fine. But (sadly) in our sermons we rarely make that point. Instead we over-use John’s ‘World’ personification as a non-confrontational, short-cut device, which replaces investigating, discerning and articulating the actual voices vying for the hearts of the listeners.

Jesus and Moses

My good friend Tim and I are in the midst of a 4000 word essay on how Jesus is presented as Israel in Matthew’s gospel. We both have our own ways of procrastinating. I generally annoy people. He makes cool pictures (he was a graphic designer before College).

5 things we overuse in our preaching: Light Relief

(See earlier posts here)

2. Light Relief

‘Light Relief’ (LR) is fast becoming the caffeine of sermons. A sermon just can’t seem to start the day without an early hit of LR. Congregations have become dependent on the smooth sounds of the personal anecdote, the funny Herald story or the quote from the Castle. And what’s worse, the LR hit seems only to last five minutes before another one is needed to keep the sermon going. Maybe the best way for us to get back into shape and into a healthy lifestyle is to detox. Kill the opening gag. Ditch the feel good news story. Get straight into the grueling task of being woken up by God’s word.

The best way to appreciate Sydney’s public transport.

Take someone who has never been on it before. 

(We had a great Easter Saturday)

5 things we overuse in our preaching: the printed outline

This is the start of part 2 of the Sydney Anglican preaching trilogy. (See part 1 here)

5 things we overuse in our preaching.

(Purely subjective generalisations, which is the blogger’s privilege. And I was going to list all 5 here, but I’ll do them in separate posts instead)

1. The printed outline.

I am very much a preacher on L-plates, but my sermons have yet to befriend the printed sermon outline. They just never seem to get along. They kind of politely smile at each other. But so far there has been no chemistry, they don’t click. Maybe it’s because they don’t hang out enough. My sermons always rock up to Church at the last minute, but my printed outline always needs to get there really early (like 4 days early!)

And so when I get up to preach, my printed outline shows no interest in my actual sermon. And my actual sermon has kind of forgotten about the printed outline. When the sermon is trying to bring people to repentance, instead of bringing pen to paper, the outline is trying to bring pen to paper with a note saying ‘don’t forget to repent when you get home!’. They’re not the best of friends. Maybe we should think about separating them. Or they should at least get some counseling. Maybe the printed outline might have more fun dating a lecturer or an OH&S seminar presenter.

phillipjensen.com

I wasn’t expecting to see this. There’s a lot of good stuff there.

A bloody good friday.

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.

- Colossians 1.15 – 20

4 steps of sermon application

Timothy Keller (as part of his preaching course) provides this succinct (Luther-esque) 4 point argument which is the heart of his sermon application.

1. The Plot winds up: WHAT YOU MUST DO.
‘This is what you have to do! Here is what the text/narrative tells us that we must do or what we must be.’

2. The Plot thickens: WHY YOU CAN’T DO IT.
‘But you can’t do it! Here are all the reasons that you will never become like this just by trying very hard.’

3. The Plot resolves: HOW HE DID IT.
‘But there’s One who did. Perfectly. Wholly. Jesus. He has done this for us, in our place.’

4. The Plot winds down: HOW, THROUGH HIM, YOU CAN DO IT.
‘Our failure to do it is due to our functional rejection of what he did. Remembering him frees our heart so we can change like this …’

For me, it seems too rigid to be a template for every sermon. Yet as a tool, I  imagine it would be very helpful.

Preoccupied with preaching: the danger.

As you may be aware, I have set aside a lot of this year to think about preaching. This is because I’ll probably be doing (at least) a bit of it next year. A number of recent conversations have drawn my attention to the danger for preachers (and those writing about it) of neglecting the full scope, diversity and interdependence of Christian ministry. Hopefully those reading this blog will pull me up when my talking about preaching undermines the priesthood of all believers. Chris Swann wrote a timely warning about this.