Post by JEM on Jan 27, 2014 23:58:54 GMT
SOME THOUGHTS FOR THIS DAY
which is International Holocaust Memorial Day - this year, themed Journeys.
Not just a day of remembering the 6 million Jews, and the Gays, Gypsies. Communists, Muslims, Confessional Protestant Christians and Partisans , killed by the Nazis on Hitler's orders, who was, believe it or not, a Roman Catholic, with the idea in his bewildered head of setting up a Teutonic master race based on the medieval Holy Roman Empire [which had later survived as the Austro-Hungarian Germanic Empire until 1914 associated with the Ottoman Empire ]-
but also a Day to remember all other acts of Genocide as in Argentina, Angola, Biafra, Rwanda, Cambodia, Bosnia, the Central African Republic and Syria because of Humanity's insatiable inhumanity to each other.
We do well to remember too the Catholic/Protestant wars in France and England and the general hostility of different nations and races towards one another, when we all arise from one basic human stock.
In August this year we mark the beginning 100 years ago of the Great War, that was thereafter determined should be regarded as the war that ends war. In which 37 million people died and from which the League of Nations was set up to draw nations together in harmony.
Similarly was set up the World Council of Churches, and various attempts to harmonise different world religions, and yet that conflict was just Chapter 1 of a conflict resumed in 1939 because the Great Powers never solved the Franco – German problem from the 19th century, and that war created the next.
So the 1939 – 1945 conflict also created the next - the Cold War, based on deep mutual distrust between the Communist and Capitalist movements that divided our global village.
Out of that conflict developed as a sign of hope, the United Nations, and the European Union, and several other multi-national groupings around the world like the All Africa Union and even NATO and SEATO, but still not a week has passed since 1945 when war has not broke out somewhere and a spate of them are going on today.
The only reason why world war is not functioning and has not been since August 1945 is the existence in great numbers of nuclear weapons that have created a deep fear of doom into the hearts of billions of people, and of their leaders. The genie came out of the bottle in 1945 and fear of it. No wonder the western scientists who created it begged the politicians not to use it, though Hitler's mob were creating it too and would have used it.
The one unifying factor that should unite us is the God of Abraham – Yahweh, Jehovah and Allah by his Hebrew, Greek and Arab names who is much more powerful than all our nuclear bombs and it's not for want of Him trying.
It is humans, because of our human nature, that have failed to recognise and obey Him. Many do not even believe that He exists which in itself is a major stumbling block to progress and peace.
But for many people who do claim to believe in Him it is a one day in seven belief. The Muslims have Friday prayers, The Jews treat Saturday as Sabbath as their holy day and Christians focus on Sunday the first day of the week, the day Jesus Christ rose triumphant from death - then for many the rest of the 6 days of the week they largely forget God.
Mark Greene CEO of The London Institute of Contemporary Christianity in his booklet “THE GREAT DIVIDE” states that GLOBALLY 98% of Christians are neither envisioned nor equipped for mission in 95% of their waking lives, BUT just imagine if they were ?
He claims that we have a leisure-time Christianity not a whole-life Christianity.
I overheard a banker telling the son of another banker how banks try to give the impression to customers that they are highly ethical trustworthy and reliable but in the banking industry behind the public gaze life it is more like international warfare with deep distrust on every side, and that may be true of much else in life.
The Heart of the issue is that we can win a lot of skirmishes without winning a battle. We can treat a lot of symptoms without defeating a disease.
We can do an awful lot of good things without tackling the one thing that might really make a difference.
We give up too quickly and try something else that is no more successful.
Mark goes on to say that in the last 20 years the UK Church has taken many many good and fruitful initiatives in evangelism, in social action, in youth work, in resource development, in a host of areas of our seemingly hopelessly divided Nation and yet research reveals 2 sobering truths.
1.Church attendance based on a minimum of once per month that was 9.6 per cent of the population in 1990, 7.6 per cent in 2000 is down now to 6.3 per cent and other observers claim will drop below 2% by 2050 if the decline is not reversed.
2.The vast majority of Christians have not been equipped for mission in their daily contexts nor are they being helped to live out the abundant life in Christ where they spend most of their time.
However maybe he fails to realise that in that 20 years the population has mushroomed by millions from uncontrolled emigration including the arrival of many Muslims so there are more people but Christians are a smaller percentage of the new total.
Also is attendance at Church the best criteria for judging the state of Christianity and its effect on the wider population?
The Church is not somewhere we attend but the People who do the attending and many of them may have stopped attending in order to be out in the wider community making a difference and trying to improve living standards and quality.
After all locally Street Pastors was set up last year to engage with the wider community but having got out there the pastors have been well received every where they have gone in late night shops,
the pubs, clubs, bookies, queues, car parks, the leisure centre, the skate park, the cafés, and restaurants. Because most people are basically decent fair friendly and often kind and generous.
What is true in Britain of the Church is also true across Europe in general and in the United States, although the Church in Africa, Asia and South America is rapidly increasing in numbers.
In 1900 there were about 500,000,000 Christians on the planet, today there are over 2.300,000,000 but mainly outside Europe – the Dark Continent of the 20th and 21st century.
Mark Greene asks why do 50% of Christians say that they have never ever heard a sermon on work, though they may never have asked for one either.
Why do we pray for teenagers to go on short term mission overseas but not for their daily mission in their local schools.
Why are there so few contemporary worship songs about the nitty gritty of daily life , and of contemporary needs of the world we are part of, compared with many of the “old” but broader hymns of the Church of earlier centuries.
Why do we seem to believe that church-paid ministry and mission is a higher calling than any other career, vocation or job, when God clearly intended us all to regard our work as serving His purpose for our world.
Fortunately for the World, God does not wait for Humans. God is at work changing the planet preparing for it's future, using whom he can and gradually worldwide more people are recognising the fact and co-operating with him. Are you one of them, and if not should you not consider it?
The Cold War ended because of two movements.
1. World-wide millions of Christians focused prayer on the Soviet Union falling before the 1000th Anniversary of the arrival of Christianity on Russian soil.
2. In the crypt of a church building in Leipzig in East Germany some Christians, a few dozen at the most, began to pray each Monday evening at 5pm for the liberation of their country and of the Church. Over several years their numbers increased to 4 congregations across the city and into the surrounding graveyards.
The groups would walk home through the city singing the great hymns of the Lutheran Reformation 500 years earlier .
The groups thus attracted each other and merged and grew in number over the weeks of 1989, bearing candles and banners. The most benign of political demonstrations.
Gradually the movement spread to other parts of East Germany. The Communist government began to get worried and tried on October 9th to stop them, Erich Honecker the East German communist leader gave instructions to shoot the demonstrators. 2000 Communist party members flooded into the Nikolai Church to stop the prayer meeting. The Church opened the seldom used galleries and a 1000 protesters took possession.
The soldiers held their fire and that night 70,000 people marched peacefully home. The next week it was 120,000 and the next week 500,000. One night in November, 1 million people marched through the capital East Berlin. Erich Honecker resigned and fled the country by plane.
That night with most of the population on the move and the government in emergency session, the crowds hit the Check Points, thrust the guards aside who dropped their weapons and fled, and the crowd scaled the Berlin wall and broke through the barriers and swarmed into West Berlin and West Germany where huge crowds of westerners welcomed them. God's power and people power brought down Communist power.
Within a few months that peaceful movement had spread to 10 Communist countries producing a domino movement across Eastern Europe and eventually toppling the Soviet Union.
Some weeks after East Germany was liberated a huge banner was put across the main street in Leipzig “ Wir Danken Dir, Kirch” meaning WE THANK YOU CHURCH
After the dust had settled secret papers on both sides showed that neither side had any intention of starting a nuclear war but they both feared that the other side would, and Fear had kept the world divided.
In the end God will prevail and achieve his goal even if we fail to achieve our part in it, but the struggle has been long and will take long because of humanity's inhumanity and unbelief.
Perfection is impossible while anything or anyone is imperfect but through faith in Christ and obedience to his teaching He can make up for our imperfection .
Mark Greene's book published in 2010 remains widely unknown to most Christians but maybe it should be essential reading of all.
The London Institute of Contemporary Christianity may be contacted on http://www.licc.org.uk It was founded by the Revd John Stott, who passed away on 27th July 2011 at the age of 90.
which is International Holocaust Memorial Day - this year, themed Journeys.
Not just a day of remembering the 6 million Jews, and the Gays, Gypsies. Communists, Muslims, Confessional Protestant Christians and Partisans , killed by the Nazis on Hitler's orders, who was, believe it or not, a Roman Catholic, with the idea in his bewildered head of setting up a Teutonic master race based on the medieval Holy Roman Empire [which had later survived as the Austro-Hungarian Germanic Empire until 1914 associated with the Ottoman Empire ]-
but also a Day to remember all other acts of Genocide as in Argentina, Angola, Biafra, Rwanda, Cambodia, Bosnia, the Central African Republic and Syria because of Humanity's insatiable inhumanity to each other.
We do well to remember too the Catholic/Protestant wars in France and England and the general hostility of different nations and races towards one another, when we all arise from one basic human stock.
In August this year we mark the beginning 100 years ago of the Great War, that was thereafter determined should be regarded as the war that ends war. In which 37 million people died and from which the League of Nations was set up to draw nations together in harmony.
Similarly was set up the World Council of Churches, and various attempts to harmonise different world religions, and yet that conflict was just Chapter 1 of a conflict resumed in 1939 because the Great Powers never solved the Franco – German problem from the 19th century, and that war created the next.
So the 1939 – 1945 conflict also created the next - the Cold War, based on deep mutual distrust between the Communist and Capitalist movements that divided our global village.
Out of that conflict developed as a sign of hope, the United Nations, and the European Union, and several other multi-national groupings around the world like the All Africa Union and even NATO and SEATO, but still not a week has passed since 1945 when war has not broke out somewhere and a spate of them are going on today.
The only reason why world war is not functioning and has not been since August 1945 is the existence in great numbers of nuclear weapons that have created a deep fear of doom into the hearts of billions of people, and of their leaders. The genie came out of the bottle in 1945 and fear of it. No wonder the western scientists who created it begged the politicians not to use it, though Hitler's mob were creating it too and would have used it.
The one unifying factor that should unite us is the God of Abraham – Yahweh, Jehovah and Allah by his Hebrew, Greek and Arab names who is much more powerful than all our nuclear bombs and it's not for want of Him trying.
It is humans, because of our human nature, that have failed to recognise and obey Him. Many do not even believe that He exists which in itself is a major stumbling block to progress and peace.
But for many people who do claim to believe in Him it is a one day in seven belief. The Muslims have Friday prayers, The Jews treat Saturday as Sabbath as their holy day and Christians focus on Sunday the first day of the week, the day Jesus Christ rose triumphant from death - then for many the rest of the 6 days of the week they largely forget God.
Mark Greene CEO of The London Institute of Contemporary Christianity in his booklet “THE GREAT DIVIDE” states that GLOBALLY 98% of Christians are neither envisioned nor equipped for mission in 95% of their waking lives, BUT just imagine if they were ?
He claims that we have a leisure-time Christianity not a whole-life Christianity.
I overheard a banker telling the son of another banker how banks try to give the impression to customers that they are highly ethical trustworthy and reliable but in the banking industry behind the public gaze life it is more like international warfare with deep distrust on every side, and that may be true of much else in life.
The Heart of the issue is that we can win a lot of skirmishes without winning a battle. We can treat a lot of symptoms without defeating a disease.
We can do an awful lot of good things without tackling the one thing that might really make a difference.
We give up too quickly and try something else that is no more successful.
Mark goes on to say that in the last 20 years the UK Church has taken many many good and fruitful initiatives in evangelism, in social action, in youth work, in resource development, in a host of areas of our seemingly hopelessly divided Nation and yet research reveals 2 sobering truths.
1.Church attendance based on a minimum of once per month that was 9.6 per cent of the population in 1990, 7.6 per cent in 2000 is down now to 6.3 per cent and other observers claim will drop below 2% by 2050 if the decline is not reversed.
2.The vast majority of Christians have not been equipped for mission in their daily contexts nor are they being helped to live out the abundant life in Christ where they spend most of their time.
However maybe he fails to realise that in that 20 years the population has mushroomed by millions from uncontrolled emigration including the arrival of many Muslims so there are more people but Christians are a smaller percentage of the new total.
Also is attendance at Church the best criteria for judging the state of Christianity and its effect on the wider population?
The Church is not somewhere we attend but the People who do the attending and many of them may have stopped attending in order to be out in the wider community making a difference and trying to improve living standards and quality.
After all locally Street Pastors was set up last year to engage with the wider community but having got out there the pastors have been well received every where they have gone in late night shops,
the pubs, clubs, bookies, queues, car parks, the leisure centre, the skate park, the cafés, and restaurants. Because most people are basically decent fair friendly and often kind and generous.
What is true in Britain of the Church is also true across Europe in general and in the United States, although the Church in Africa, Asia and South America is rapidly increasing in numbers.
In 1900 there were about 500,000,000 Christians on the planet, today there are over 2.300,000,000 but mainly outside Europe – the Dark Continent of the 20th and 21st century.
Mark Greene asks why do 50% of Christians say that they have never ever heard a sermon on work, though they may never have asked for one either.
Why do we pray for teenagers to go on short term mission overseas but not for their daily mission in their local schools.
Why are there so few contemporary worship songs about the nitty gritty of daily life , and of contemporary needs of the world we are part of, compared with many of the “old” but broader hymns of the Church of earlier centuries.
Why do we seem to believe that church-paid ministry and mission is a higher calling than any other career, vocation or job, when God clearly intended us all to regard our work as serving His purpose for our world.
Fortunately for the World, God does not wait for Humans. God is at work changing the planet preparing for it's future, using whom he can and gradually worldwide more people are recognising the fact and co-operating with him. Are you one of them, and if not should you not consider it?
The Cold War ended because of two movements.
1. World-wide millions of Christians focused prayer on the Soviet Union falling before the 1000th Anniversary of the arrival of Christianity on Russian soil.
2. In the crypt of a church building in Leipzig in East Germany some Christians, a few dozen at the most, began to pray each Monday evening at 5pm for the liberation of their country and of the Church. Over several years their numbers increased to 4 congregations across the city and into the surrounding graveyards.
The groups would walk home through the city singing the great hymns of the Lutheran Reformation 500 years earlier .
The groups thus attracted each other and merged and grew in number over the weeks of 1989, bearing candles and banners. The most benign of political demonstrations.
Gradually the movement spread to other parts of East Germany. The Communist government began to get worried and tried on October 9th to stop them, Erich Honecker the East German communist leader gave instructions to shoot the demonstrators. 2000 Communist party members flooded into the Nikolai Church to stop the prayer meeting. The Church opened the seldom used galleries and a 1000 protesters took possession.
The soldiers held their fire and that night 70,000 people marched peacefully home. The next week it was 120,000 and the next week 500,000. One night in November, 1 million people marched through the capital East Berlin. Erich Honecker resigned and fled the country by plane.
That night with most of the population on the move and the government in emergency session, the crowds hit the Check Points, thrust the guards aside who dropped their weapons and fled, and the crowd scaled the Berlin wall and broke through the barriers and swarmed into West Berlin and West Germany where huge crowds of westerners welcomed them. God's power and people power brought down Communist power.
Within a few months that peaceful movement had spread to 10 Communist countries producing a domino movement across Eastern Europe and eventually toppling the Soviet Union.
Some weeks after East Germany was liberated a huge banner was put across the main street in Leipzig “ Wir Danken Dir, Kirch” meaning WE THANK YOU CHURCH
After the dust had settled secret papers on both sides showed that neither side had any intention of starting a nuclear war but they both feared that the other side would, and Fear had kept the world divided.
In the end God will prevail and achieve his goal even if we fail to achieve our part in it, but the struggle has been long and will take long because of humanity's inhumanity and unbelief.
Perfection is impossible while anything or anyone is imperfect but through faith in Christ and obedience to his teaching He can make up for our imperfection .
Mark Greene's book published in 2010 remains widely unknown to most Christians but maybe it should be essential reading of all.
The London Institute of Contemporary Christianity may be contacted on http://www.licc.org.uk It was founded by the Revd John Stott, who passed away on 27th July 2011 at the age of 90.