Now let us turn on our phones and browse to John chapter 3

How many times have you heard a mobile phone ring during a church meeting and wished that people would show a bit more courtesy about turning them off? Well, all of that is about to change.

No, not because someone has invented an effective phone blocker, or that everyone in church has been struck by an attack of consideration for others. No! Now we'll be asked to keep our phones on, because we need them to participate in the service!

I was alerted to this revelation (or is that 'revelution'?) by a post on Dean Peters' Heal Your Church Web Site - Pastors preach: turn on & tune in … to your Blackberry. Apparently a pastor informed his congregation:

‘“Please bring your cell phone with you to the service this Sunday. Yes, you
read that right. I, the President of the ‘I hate cell phones going off in church
club,’ am inviting you to bring that blasted thing to church this
Sunday. At the end of the teaching on prayer this weekend I am going to
devote about 7 minutes to answering questions on the topic and the way you will
pass on your questions is by texting them to a number you will receive during
the service. We will of course all have our phones on SILENT won’t we!”’

So now, instead of counting the number of colours in the stained glass windows during a boring sermon, you'll be able to surf the web on your phone, or even play solitaire, and everyone will think you are tuned in to what is going on.

Really though, some are finding it's easier to surf to a Bible gateway than to carry a heavy book around anyway.

Brian McLaren Trilogy - A Real Bargain

I've been wanting to buy emerging church author Brian McLaren's classic trilogy A New Kind of Christian: A Tale of Two Friends on a Spiritual Journey, The Story We Find Ourselves In: Further Adventures of a New Kind of Christian, and The Last Word and the Word after That: A Tale of Faith, Doubt, and a New Kind of Christianity, for some time. Apart from it being difficult to get them all in Australia, they are expensive at $32.95 each from Koorong.

Amazon.com have all three books in a boxed set for US$19.75. Check it out here: McLaren Boxed Set (A New Kind of Christian; The Story We Find Ourselves In; The Last Word and the Word After That).

The great thing about this, apart from the US$46.09 saving, is that it ships as one item instead of three, so you save another US$9.98 on postage. With the Aussie dollar over US$0.83 at present this works out pretty reasonable.

Steve Chalke - Storyteller

I first encountered Steve Chalke in Birmingham at the Baptist World Alliance Centenary Congress in July 2005. I remember sitting spellbound as this master storyteller shared his tale about how the church is having a powerful effect in the most hostile and disadvantaged areas in Britain, winning the approval and support of both national and local government, and Islamic and Hindu communities, and all of this without a moment's compromise of the Gospel of Jesus.

I remember thinking then that Australian Christians really need to hear this man.

So it was with delight that I discovered a couple of Steve's books at Koorong the other day. I bought his Intelligent Church: A Journey Towards Christ-Centred Community.

I've only just begun to read it, but what I want to share now is something that Brian Mclaren says in his foreword to Steve's book:

... too often our churches have become human warehouses, where people are
gathered and stored so that they can be delivered after death to heaven with
minimum loss, spoilage, rust, rot, or breakage. These air-conditioned warehouses
are equiped with every comfort - from padded seats to a kind of religious muzak
- so that those who enter will be happy and never want to leave until they are
shipped to their final destination.

Steve Chalke's message and mission is to get us out into the streets. Often those involved in what is now called emerging church profess this aim, but my experience of it has not been too encouraging so far - the danger of just creating a different warehouse looms large. As Steve says in his introduction to the book:

Much has been said of late about the concept of 'emerging church' - the
phrase itself speaks the language of change and transistion. But the truth is,
of course, that the church has been emerging for two thousand years.

We at Beth Tephillah are certainly conscious of the need to take a fresh look at ourselves through the eyes of Jesus, and not just because we are beginning a new year!