Die Gemeinde

German was never my strongest language. Die Gemeinde may be one of the reasons why. It is untranslatable into English because it means several different things at once for which, in English, we use different words. But one of those words is 'fellowship'.

Recently it was a special joy to get at last to Kelkheim, Germany, during my weeks away. Kelkheim is the twin town of High Wycombe and for a long time our church has had a link with the Evangelical Baptist Church there.

I set out from nearby Frankfurt on an early Sunday morning train in warm spring sunshine. I was probably unique on the train in not having a bike with me - I was certainly unique in not having a back pack! Walking and cycling are the draw to the Taunus Hills on a sleepy Sunday morning and the train wound its way upwards past neat villages until it reached the more substantial town of Kelkheim.

At this point it is worth recording that I had been in Germany for 24 hours, and previously never before. I was a long way out of my comfort zone.
Armed with my map I walked from the station through the warm sunshine and the quiet, hilly streets for a few hundred metres and there ahead of me was the Evangelisch-Freikirchliche Gemeinde (Baptisten). As befits a former shop it looked like, well, a shop!

When the service began the generous visuals on powerpoint and my low level GCSE German meant that I was never far off what was going on. Mysteriously, somehow these hundred or so people were not passing acquaintances but everlasting friends. Our language was often handshakes and smiles more than words but we were one people. I felt at home.

The only point at which I completely lost track was, strangely enough, the very last song. Following the benediction I leaned over to the worship leader and asked if she could tell me what it was about. It turned out it was a song about Christian fellowship and looking forward to meeting again soon.

I thought that was appropriate. The mystery in the whole morning was about fellowship, for which the phrase is Die Gemeinde. Intangible yet real across the borders of history and language I was more at home with these believers than in a body of unbelieving Englishmen. What a privilege it is to have been saved into the Church of the living God!

Headfirst

If you are going to be a Christian, this video reminds you that you may as well throw yourself into it (or rather Him)

In a State

Norway and Denmark (but since 2000 not Sweden) have State Churches. This means that, literally, the parish church (Lutheran) is an arm of Government. This is anathema to Baptists of all shades and varieties. But surely it must provide mighty stability and resources?


Perhaps so, but when you read this introduction from the Kultur og kirkedepartementet (Norwegian Ministry of Culture and Church Affairs) you can't help thinking the Government is struggling to know what to do with the Church:

The Ministry of Culture and Church Affairs was established in 1982, at which time it was called the Ministry of Cultural and Scientific Affairs. Until then, the Ministry of Church and Education had had the overriding responsibility for cultural affairs in Norway. The Ministry changed its name to the Ministry of Church and Cultural Affairs in 1990. From 1991 until 2001, Norway had a Ministry of Cultural Affairs that was responsible solely for culture. From 1 January 2002, church affairs were once again amalgamated with cultural affairs and the current Ministry of Culture and Church Affairs was established on the same date. In January 2005 the Minister of Culture and Church Affairs was assigned responsibility for the voluntary sector. This was the first time the sector had been given its own minister.

The Ministry of Culture and Church Affairs is responsible for culture, church affairs, the media (films, broadcasting, press and copyright) and sport, and for gaming and lotteries. Several other ministries also deal with cultural matters.


So there you have it. The Church and the Lottery go together!

Servant

My friend Richard passed away on Tuesday. Some of you knew him too. He was a servant of the Servant King. This was his favourite song, and I post it in his honour and memory.

This song always reminds me that the Christian life is work as well as inspiration. Not only because of the meaning of the song words themselves but because Graham Kendrick wrote it not in some great flash of inspiration. Instead he grafted away with studies and commentaries to prepare a song for Spring Harvest 1984, an international Christian Conference with the theme that year of 'The Servant King'.

Sometimes our perspiration can become someone else's inspiration!

Alexander

The last of my Sabbatical books I want to comment on is this one. Alexander is an evolutionary biologist who is also a professing evangelical Christian and as you might imagine this book is an attempt to marry those possibly unweddable positions. Does he succeed?

Calamitously not, I'm afraid. I have little doubt that Dr Alexander is something special within the assumptions of his workaday discipline, but in mine - Biblical interpretation - he falls woefully short. His chosen method of interpreting Genesis 1-11 is to wonder whether anything actually means what it plainly says.

This is a legitimate academic approach. We call it liberalism. I can understand it, though I do not believe it it is right and I do not agree with it. I can also understand the Dawkinsian rejection of Genesis as myth or indeed gibberish. That, too, is consistent. The problem comes when a man says, "I believe in the Bible as much as anyone" (Alexander addresses his readers as evangelicals who are just like him faithwise but just not as knowledgable) and then sets about the Biblical text as though it is basically incomprehensible whilst the Theory of Evolution is received Truth.

No reader of the New Testament - I can include Richard Dawkins here I think - seriously doubts that Jesus and the apostle Paul regarded Adam and Eve as the first human beings and derived deep significance from that yet Alexander accepts the idea that not only were they not the first - they were in the later half of the years of the human race. (Of course while his dating of human origins makes sense in his biological framework it makes much less sense when compared to population growth or the development of language - his generations of early humans must have spent aeons of generations sitting watching the trees without reproducing or talking [Did they have souls? Does anyone, comes the question]). His problem is that he does not doubt scientific speculation, he doubts the Bible instead.

Should you read the book, I commend one of many demolitions of it at this link where David Anderson points out the problem I cited above, and, if you have time to read it, a lot more.

So what are we to do with a Genesis account that, even in its own terms, begs many questions (e.g. evening and morning with the Sun not created, creatures designed for a bloody, not paradisical world) when set against chains of leftover genes from our monkey years?

This is what we do.

We genuinely, completely, unequivically accept that the words of the Bible, including and comparing those in Job and the Psalms as well as Genesis, tell us what God wanted us to know for sure about origins, about His creating work. Another word for this material is the TRUTH. It is what God decided we need to know. It is accessible to the child and, by other means, even to the illiterate. We can know where we came from, something of how, and why there is two-gender marriage, a seven day week, clothes, different species and humans are special but not good. We learn why a last Adam was needed.

Then, wherever we learn anything for certain in the natural sciences we see how that relates to that truth, because it always will. Nothing is greater than truth.

But where there are speculations in cosmology, where (as with leftover gene sequences) there are reasonable guesses that might, like natural selection, prove eventually to be inadequate or wrong, we place them in a sidetray that might say 'Not Important'. They can never tell us more than we already know.

Of course by contrast it is a desperate quest on the part of atheists to explain origins; if they could prove the universe is a Mega Accident faith is dead. But they know they will never prove it; origins, creation, will always involve leaps of faith one way or another. They just hope that most people, especially in education, will leap their way.

Dr Alexander has simply leapt their way too.