Pastors and politics

13 February, 2014 — 2 Comments

Last week I asked my Facebook friends: “Are you a signed-up member of a political party? If so why? I’m thinking about it…” There were over 70 comments which is a lot for one of my Facebook status updates. I have found the engagement interesting so share some of the ideas here.

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My initial question wasn’t intended to be about pastors and politics, but that was one of the dominant themes that emerged – probably because a lot of my Facebook friends are pastors.  A few main themes emerged, and I outline them below.

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New research shows women can make a difference.

30 January, 2014 — 15 Comments

I read an article last week in which I saw parallels with the church context so thought I would write about the same topic. The article by Olga Kahzan in The Atlantic is titled: “The Easiest Possible Way to Increase Female Speakers at Conferences.” The quick summary is: having just one woman on the organizing committee for a conference greatly increases the likelihood of women appearing at the front of the room.

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The contribution of women is a topic that concerns me because I am part of a Christian ‘movement’ that struggles with this: the New Zealand Baptist Church. This also appears to be a widespread problem for the church in general. Three points come to mind and I outline them below. Continue Reading…

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The best communication ever: God with us

20 December, 2013 — 7 Comments

The city I live in is recovering from a series of earthquakes that began three years ago. It’s a long slow grind. Earthquakes damage a city’s infrastructure, such as roads, and the sewers and water pipes that are mostly hidden deep below the road surface. Christchurch post-earthquakes has been riddled with orange road cones to highlight damage and repairs in progress. In June last year there were 100,000 road cones in Christchurch, worth more than $3 million. A day doesn’t go by without seeing many of them, they are a part of life here.

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This photo is a simple nativity scene made of road cones. Local artist Pete Majendie from the Side Door Arts Trust has placed this pregnant Mary and Joseph upon a pile of rubble on the corner of a busy intersection. The pile of rubble was once an historic church building.

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Perceptions of church

12 December, 2013 — 10 Comments

How some New Zealanders view the church

In this post I list the nine perceptions of the church discovered in my recent doctoral research titled The disconnected church. This involved qualitative research where I talked to some people who were not what I call Christianised. This means they had never had any intentional engagement with the church throughout their life. The people I talked to also defined themselves as “spiritual”.

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In previous posts I’ve attempted to get you thinking about how people outside the church see or perceive the church. In this post I start talking about what I actually found out. Continue Reading…

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Just Church

9 December, 2013 — 3 Comments

This is the first time I’ve used a blog post to promote or advertise an upcoming event. I’m planning on attending this and hope you will consider it too (if you’re able to get to Auckland, New Zealand in March 2014).

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It’s being promoted as:

A gathering at the intersection of faith, justice, worship and the arts; to inspire, model, sustain and resource Christian communities in their building for the Kingdom of God.

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See the church in someone else’s shoes

6 December, 2013 — 3 Comments

You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view – until you climb into his skin and walk around in it. [Spoken by Atticus Finch in “To Kill a Mockingbird“, by Harper Lee (1960)]

The quote above and the play on the saying in the heading are known for their attempt at getting us to consider understanding others: people not like me.

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If church people are serious about what some of us call “mission”, or evangelism, or simply any sensible, authentic and transparent connection with Christian spirituality and people not part of the church, we need to consider and apply the type of understand the above quote is getting us to think about. How do people outside your local church context understand the church? …understand your church? Continue Reading…

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The disconnected church

26 November, 2013 — 21 Comments

My PhD thesis has been signed off and it is now public on the university’s online scholarly commons. It is called:

The disconnected church: a critical examination of the communication of the Christian church in New Zealand.

Below is the 500 word abstract from the start of the thesis which gives a concise picture of what it’s all about. If you’re interested in reading more, you can download the entire thesis from AUT here: http://hdl.handle.net/10292/5922

Crudge-PhD-Thesis-The-Disconnected-Church Continue Reading…

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Calamity or Intrigue: An artwork for Oxford Terrace Baptist Church, from Cityside

23 October, 2013 — 1 Comment

After the Canterbury earthquakes of 2010/2011, the Baptist Union of New Zealand partnered together churches around the country to support churches in Canterbury.  At the church I’m part of we had five churches doing various things to help, such as regular prayer, sending teams of people for a weekend to help tidy up, or to run a Sunday church service to give pastoral staff a rest.  Cityside Baptist Church in Auckland is one of our supporting churches, and last Sunday I was at Cityside representing the Oxford Terrace Baptist Church as they presented to us something they do so well: art.

Calamity of Intrigue artwork by Cityside Baptist Church Continue Reading…

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Church cafes: good or bad? Third place, Oldenburg, Host & Moot

3 October, 2013 — 17 Comments

Recently, for the first time, I realised church cafes could be a good idea. By “church cafe” I mean a cafe on a church premises that is obviously part of a church complex/campus/property/institution. Until now my experience of church cafes have given me the impression that they are either cafes for church people, or church tourists, and I have never seen the appeal or point of that since there are so many good cafes around, why does a church need one?

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Three weeks ago I went to Host cafe in London. They’ve been running for a year, so it’s early days, but I think it’s the best church cafe I’ve been to. If I had a “third place” test, Host would pass it. This is why:

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The queen’s English was good enough for Jesus Christ

18 September, 2013 — 6 Comments

I’m currently outside my usual routine, having spent a month away from New Zealand. Today I’m traveling home from China where I’ve spent the last ten days. In this post I’m recycling an idea I wrote about several years ago in another context, on the subject of language, based on a song from a New Zealand band called The Mutton Birds. Being an English-only speaker in China has reminded me of this song, as well as listening to a Mutton Birds live album at my kiwi friends’ place in Beijing yesterday. Listen to the track:

“The queens English was good enough for Jesus Christ and it’s good enough for me”

According to the song, this was the supporting argument of a US Congressman who was a guest on a talk show on the subject of “language”. Among other things, this guy is a xenophobe, and wants the whole world to speak his language. You could say he has an inexcusable naivety merged with arrogance and ignorance – and that makes for a really good song.

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