Author: Lioness Writing Ltd

James’s Blog: The Parable of the Talents – Two

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James’s Blog: The Parable of the Talents – Two

My family and I were part of Cornerstone Community for about eight years. For those of you who don’t know, Cornerstone is an Australian mission and discipling movement, and it’s been going for about as long as I’ve been alive. It’s far from perfect, but it must have been doing something right. There are countless well-meaning Christian communities that have imploded within their first five years. Why has God kept Cornerstone around? What is the magic ingredient?

I wonder if one of the things that God enjoys about Cornerstone is that, fundamentally, it’s a risk-taking venture. I’m sure those who are responsible for the organisation’s accounts will agree with me, but others might not be so sure. Well, trust me. I’ve been involved in local church leadership and been a member of the Baptist Union of Great Britain, so I know what I’m talking about. There are churches that consider themselves ‘edgy’ because they’ve recently changed the time of their evening service. There has always been a touch of the Mad Scientist about Cornerstone – “Well, if Jesus really said that, what happens if we try this..?” I think God likes it. I’m not sure there’s  a risk-free way to build bridges to heaven.

There’s a lot of theology you can be wrong about, and still be a Christian. Predestination, women in leadership, the Rapture, what worship really is, the role of Israel in God’s plans, what the point of the Sabbath is, whether or not Donald Trump is the Antichrist etc.  I used to think that my position on some of those things was really important. Now I’m not so sure. However, I do know that there are plenty of churches where the stuff about Jesus being God and dying for our sins and all that is just a given, and that the real meat and drink is in the kind of stuff that I’ve just listed – and you’d better make sure that you believe the right things. I know of at least one church where ministers are selected based on their response to a grilling from the congregation about these kind of issues (maybe not the Donald Trump one).

The thing is, what happens if you subconsciously create a church environment where it’s a terrible crime to believe the wrong thing about these topics? What if everyone has to be on the same page about everything, or they’re persona non grata? What if what you’ve communicated over the years is not actually the gospel, but rather the message that the worst sin in the world is to get it wrong? What happens to a church like that? It won’t be a risk-taking church, because the problem with risks is that sometimes you can get it very wrong.

I remember taking a very specific risk once, and it going wrong. I crashed and burned in a humiliating way. The scars from that failure are still with me – all these years later and I still haven’t totally recovered. But I don’t regret it for a second, because I know that if God ever brings it up in conversation I can say, “Sure God, it didn’t work out brilliantly, but at least I tried.” I’m sure that God’s response will be to smile, because He is a risk-taking God and has a soft spot for risk-taking children. I remember hearing a story once about a woman who criticised D.L. Moody for the way that he evangelised. His response: “I like my way of doing it better than your way of not doing it”. I think that God agrees.

When I read ‘The Parable of the Talents’ another thought that I can’t get out of my head is that there are no rewards, no prizes in heaven for caution. Quite the opposite, in fact. Sometimes, as I read it, I wonder what the master’s response would have been if the servant with five talents had lost them all in his investment scheme. I like to think that he would still had more time for that servant than for the one who sat on his hands. I don’t know for sure, and such speculation doesn’t really have a place in the interpretation of parables anyway. Jesus told it to make a specific point, and a different point would have required a different parable altogether. Maybe if he’d been surrounded by reckless, careless disciples he would have told a parable about a man who suffered because of a foolish risk, but as it is he told a parable about a man who was rejected by his master because he was too cautious and not risk-taking enough. I wonder why he felt the need to tell us that one?

Updates from Publishing: Cute Kitten, Audiobook and Illustrator for Second Book

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Updates from Publishing: Cute Kitten, Audiobook and Illustrator for Second Book

 

The Audiobook, narrated by James, has been released on www.audible.com and FREE review copies are available. Contact us if you’d like one.

The Second Listening Book will be out later in the year. Carys Jenkins is our illustrator, with Josh Gauton hopefully contributing a picture.

James’s Blog is a great weekly read – if you haven’t already done so, sign up on the website to get a FREE chapter from the next book.

The picture is a Cute Kitten taken by Mark Lewis, TLB photographer – there are more and lots of other photos at his phanfare site!

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James’s Blog: The Parable of the Talents – One.

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James’s Blog: The Parable of the Talents – One.

Ah, Matthew 25:14-30. ‘The Parable of the Talents’ practically writes its own sermon. “So, in conclusion, God wants us to use our gifts for Him. Coincidentally, we need people to help lead the Sunday School. There’s a sign-up sheet at the back.” I did mention that I’m cynical, right?

I remember sitting in a classroom, waiting for the lecturer to arrive. He came in and, out of the blue, went off on a rant that had nothing to do with the session that was scheduled. “Some of you,” he said, “are frustrating God because you’re not using your gifts”. Having delivered this message, he calmed down and got on with the lecture that we were supposed to have. I suspect that, years later, he wouldn’t even remember that he’d done this and I’m certain that he has no idea that he was talking to me. Make no mistake, he was talking to me.  That random little outburst changed my life. There would be no The Listening Book if he hadn’t been obedient enough to vent on the Holy Spirit’s behalf.

If Jesus had wanted the message of this parable to be ‘God wants you to use your gifts’ then he probably would have finished at verse 25, but he didn’t. Verses 26 to 30 bring the story to its chilling conclusion. The servant who buried the money loses the little that he was entrusted with and is thrown into the sinister ‘Outer Darkness’. No wonder we don’t dwell on that bit. After all, you can understand why the servant did what he did, right? Would a little empathy have killed the master? And before you check, Luke’s version isn’t much better.

These days, when I read this parable I think about the times that I diligently prepared sermons, carefully making the message of Jesus a little more palatable for my congregation. Perhaps it was because I’m a sensitive, pastoral soul, or maybe it was because I was labouring under the mistaken belief that you can make a rose more beautiful by removing its thorns. These days I am even more committed to taking responsibility for how  I am communicating, but I am equally aware that I am not doing God some great favour by coming up with eloquent and clever ways to de-fang the Gospel.

What if Jesus’s message here isn’t ‘God wants you to use your gifts’, but rather that ‘Waste makes God angry’?

If that’s true, what do you make of that?

James’s Blog: Indifference.

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James’s Blog: Indifference.

When Jesus came to Golgotha, they hanged Him on a tree,
They drove great nails through hands and feet, and made a Calvary;
They crowned Him with a crown of thorns, red were His wounds and deep,
For those were crude and cruel days, and human flesh was cheap.

When Jesus came to Birmingham, they simply passed Him by.
They would not hurt a hair of Him, they only let Him die;
For men had grown more tender, and they would not give Him pain,
They only just passed down the street, and left Him in the rain.

Still Jesus cried, ‘Forgive them, for they know not what they do, ‘
And still it rained the winter rain that drenched Him through and through;
The crowds went home and left the streets without a soul to see,
And Jesus crouched against a wall, and cried for Calvary.

G. A. Studdert-Kennedy

James’s Blog: Giving God Room to Speak.

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James’s Blog: Giving God Room to Speak.

When I set aside time to spend with God, I make a habit of trying to spend some of that time listening. This can take many forms. Sometimes it’ll be about what I’m reading, or what has been happening in life, but often I will have a time of silence where I wait on God and see if the Holy Spirit has something to say.

When I was the dean at Cornerstone Canowindra I would get phone calls from people who were interested in coming to spend a year studying and working with us. Sometimes, as the person told you their story, you would get a clear feeling that them coming wasn’t going to be a good thing for them or for the community. But, if I could, I would avoid saying “No” right there and then. My preferred option was to explain to them what my concerns were, and then suggest to them that I have a few days to think and pray about it, before getting back to them with my final recommendation. After all, it’s in your own interest to give God the opportunity to let you know if you’re about to make a mistake.

The Listening Book has this thinking at its heart. It’s really nothing more than a tool to help you slow down and give God some space to speak. You don’t need it – there are plenty of ways to do that – but it’s an important idea to me, and I thought that it wouldn’t hurt to have a book about it. I know that when I talk about ‘hearing God speak’ there are all kinds of things (and warning bells) that can go through people’s minds, but I am convinced that we don’t really expect God to speak to us, so we don’t even give Him a chance, and so it’s no wonder that we never hear anything.

James’s Blog: A Lesson in Humility.

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James’s Blog: A Lesson in Humility.

When it comes to me, most worship leaders are up against it from the start. I have no musical talent myself, and therefore little appreciation of the skill required to play the handful of chords that most worship songs seem to employ. Neither am I a big fan of the contemporary worship style – on the whole, I like my music to have a little more edge. Furthermore, I’ve suffered over six years of formal theological training, so find myself hyper-critical of and disappointed by the content of most lyrics. Finally, many more years of hard yards in following Jesus, and trying to help others to follow Jesus, has resulted in me having nothing but contempt for the shallow, I-feel-pretty-good-about-God-right-now sentiment of many worship songs.

However, whenever I find myself drifting too far down the path of seething rage, I remember what C.S. Lewis said. He too struggled with the church music of his time, considering it fifth-rate poetry set to sixth-rate music, but he also wrote, “I realised that the hymns (which were just sixth-rate music) were, nevertheless, being sung with devotion and benefit by an old saint in elastic-side boots in the opposite pew, and then you realize that you aren’t fit to clean those boots. It gets you out of your solitary conceit.”

Hard as it is to believe sometimes, not everything is about me.

James’s Blog: The Myth of Good Stewardship.

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James’s Blog: The Myth of Good Stewardship.

Paul writes a few things about giving money. He tells us to be generous, to be cheerful, to give as God has given to us, but he never tells us to be shrewd with what we give. And yet, some of us treat our financial giving like we might treat a stock portfolio.

“I must get the biggest bang for my buck. I must make a good investment, and get the biggest return I can on my money…”

I’m sure, somewhere, that there’s a man who has compiled a spreadsheet, where he is comparing various good causes and working out the ‘Souls Won per Dollar’ ratio. I imagine that he also thinks that God is likely to give him a pat on the back at the end of the day, but I wonder if instead God might aim a bit lower down and use His foot.

Like everything else, our giving must be submitted to God’s agenda. And by God’s agenda, I don’t mean ‘what we assume God’s agenda is’. You don’t arrive at God’s agenda by dividing Middle Class Values by the Protestant Work Ethic. You arrive at God’s agenda by seeking, praying, fasting and listening.

Have you ever given to someone who is needy through their own sin and short-sighted mismanagement? Have you ever given to someone even though you know that there’s a better than even chance that they’ll waste or misuse your gift? Have you ever given to someone who has taken advantage of your generosity once already, and is coming to you a second time cap in hand? God has, and does every single day. And I’m not just talking about salvation, I’m talking about every aspect of His providence. I’m talking about how he gives to you and me. We are called to give as God does, and yet I know that some of us break out into a cold sweat at the thought of such irresponsible generosity. Yet, good stewardship is not about using your resources according to the values of Middle Britain. Good stewardship is about using your resources to the best of your ability according to the call that God places on your life. You give as He gives to you, whatever that may look like, and leave the rest to Him.  I’m not talking about being stupid or irresponsible, I’m talking about being obedient and about not being self-righteous enough to assume that God only wants to give to the people that you think deserve it.

Fred Craddock once preached on the parable of the Prodigal Son, and was approached afterwards by a member of the congregation who happened to be a lawyer. He proceeded to tell Fred that he didn’t like that particular parable.

“What is it you don’t like about it?” said Fred.

“It’s not morally responsible,” he said.

“What do you mean by that?”

“Forgiving that boy,” said the lawyer.

“Well, what would you have done?” said Fred.

“I think when he came home he should have been arrested.”

“What would you have given the prodigal?” said Fred.

“Six years.”

James’s Blog: God Bless Restrictions.

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James’s Blog: God Bless Restrictions.

One piece of advice that artistic people often give is that restrictions and constraints are good for creativity. I’ve heard this from artists, writers, film makers and computer game programmers, so it must be true.

Actually, it is.

If you give an artist a blank piece of canvas then what is he supposed to do with it? If you tell him that you want a picture of a tree, well, it doesn’t require much in the way of creative thinking but at least it’s something. If you tell him that you want a picture of a tree, and that it can only be in black and white, and that if you turn it upside down it must then look like a picture of a little girl – well, now you’re talking. That’s when the creative muscles get a workout.

I’ve dabbled in Microfiction (aka Flash Fiction), which for those of you who don’t know, is a discipline where you subject yourself to an arbitrary word count (usually well under a thousand words) and set yourself the task of writing a complete, coherent story. I’ve found it a highly useful exercise, especially as my stumbling attempts to transfer my fleeting philosophical musings from the centre of my thought processes onto a sheet of blank paper have a disarming habit of running to the verbose. You know what I mean.

I’m currently working on editing a batch of stories for the sequel to The Listening Book, and a couple of those were born from constraints. When I was describing The Listening Book to a friend he asked me if one of the stories was called ‘The Parable of the Boy who Ran with Scissors’. Trust me, this is fairly typical of the type of question that he asks. I replied that there was not, but the very next day I sat down and set myself the task of writing a story with that exact title. I’m quite pleased with it.

Perhaps that’s the way I should go. I could get other people to suggest titles, and then I have to write a story to attach to them. So, if you have any imaginative titles lying around feel free to throw them in my direction, and if I’m looking for a challenge one day I could try writing a short story for it. Maybe I’ll post it here, maybe I won’t. It depends on whether or not it’ll make me look creative.

James’s Blog: Walking with God.

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James’s Blog: Walking with God.

There are many reasons why I like to go for a walk, but two of them are as follows:

a) I like to get away from people every now and then.
b) I like to spend time with God.

However, those two reasons are not mutually exclusive, which is a common mistake we introverts often make. Another mistake is to assume that during those lonely strolls the only thing God wants to do with us is internal. Those of us prone to mysticism can be so lost in our thoughts that the rich young ruler could come to us and say, “What must I do to be saved?” and our instinctive response would be, “Push off, I’m praying.”.

The thing is, when you try to get away in order to spend time with God, you’re climbing into the ring with Him, and sometimes He fights dirty. You just want a bit of peace and quiet in order to reflect and have Him all to yourself, but He just can’t help trying to draw your attention to the universe outside. If you really want to spend time with God, you have to take the rough with the smooth. Thankfully, I’ve had some excellent teachers, so now I tend to go for my prayer walks with one eye on my soul and the other on the world around me.

Richard Wurmbrand tells of the first time that he ever entered a church. As an eight-year old he went in with a school friend who had been sent to deliver a message to the Catholic priest. After the message had been passed on, the priest spoke to Richard.

“What can I do for you, little fellow?”

“Nothing. I just entered with my friend,” said Richard.

“I am the disciple of One who has taught me never to allow anybody to pass near me without doing him at least a little bit of good. It is hot outside. Would you allow me to bring you a cup of cold water?” said the priest.

Wurmbrand said it was the best cup of water he’d ever tasted.

That’s pretty good. I would like it if the word ‘Christian’ was synonymous with ‘One who never allows anybody to pass nearby without doing at least a little bit of good’. I try to keep that in mind when I’m out and about, because God’s always at work. If I’m trying to hang out with Him then I should expect to be dragged into such things.

The Second Listening Book: We found our illustrators

Lioness Writing Ltd Publisher
The Second Listening Book: We found our illustrators

‘The Second Listening Book’ is nearly ready. Carys Jenkins, Alice Journeaux and Josh Gauton have provided beautiful illustrations. Mark Lewis’s fab photos have also been included. Contact via the website www.thelisteningbook.org.uk for more information. If you want to put in a pre-order, it’s ready to go on Amazon.