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This morning, just for something different, and not at all because some of the Sola Panellists have gone quiet and there's nothing in the cupboard (guys!), let me suggest that you spend your time doing some listening instead: check out this month's Briefing Lounge podcast, ‘Shifting to the personal’.

One thing nearly all the Sola Panellists have in common is that, at one stage or other in our ministry lives, we've been profoundly influenced and trained by Col Marshall. When people think of the ‘St Matthias Movement’ of the 80s and 90s, the planting of 17 churches, the massive growth in people going into Moore College, the large and paradigm-shifting campus work at UNSW, the change in ministry culture that was influential in so many places, and all the rest, they tend to think ‘Phillip Jensen’, and understandably so. And they tend to think that the whole movement was built around Phillip's singular preaching gifts and personality and energy.

But those of us closer to the action know that none of it would have happened, humanly speaking, without Col Marshall. Col was the ‘ministry brains’ of the operation (if I can put it like that). His relentless focus on people, and his equally relentless determination to keep going back to the Bible and rethinking what we were doing in ministry, shaped everything that happened in those extraordinary years.

Col is probably best known for his leadership of MTS (the Ministry Training Strategy), but in ‘Shifting to the personal’, he talks about how institutionalization affects all of us (including MTS), and how we are drawn almost magnetically to structures and programmes rather than people. What would Christian life and ministry and church be like if our priority was to build and work with people as individuals, and to disciple and train them as followers of Christ, rather than to keep the wheel turning on all the programmes and events and structures that seem to take on a life of their own? And what if our home groups really functioned as small ‘c’ churches, and took responsibility for their members, with thoroughly trained leaders who taught and pastored them? And what if the fad for ministry ‘training’ didn't just equip people with skills, but shaped their whole life, character and discipleship?

All this and more, as they say, in this month's Briefing Lounge (the best yet, I think). Have a listen, and pop your comments and questions back here.

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In the comments from one of my GAFCON posts, Sam asks this interesting question:

While reading the material on the GAFCON website during the conference I couldn't help notice the charismatic flavour of many of the comments, particularly those of the African Bishops. Do you have any thoughts on how you see this impacting the wider Anglican community in the future?

I'm not sure exactly which comments Sam means, but in the conference generally there was certainly a bit of mild charismaticism here and there. It was more a matter of flavour than real substance—a few arms in the air, the way the singing was done, some ‘praise the Lord’-style language, but not much more than that. It seems to be part of the unique recipe that is African Anglicanism: a splash of high church colour and movement, a few dollops of charismatic vibrancy, and several cups of good old-fashioned evangelicalism. Charismatic theology or practice wasn't prominent, nor particularly significant in its influence as far as I could see. And whether it will have a wider impact via the growing influence of African Anglicanism, I'm not entirely sure. I suspect not, but I don't feel particularly qualified to make a prophecy.

However, what I would like to do (and hence to the point of this post) is to share a personal observation and a wild hunch, and see if anyone else is as crazy as I am.

I have always thought that something about the charismatic vibe grates with Australian culture. When I was involved in the charismatic movement (nearly 30 years ago), I remember standing there, hands raised, eyes closed in ecstasy, body swaying to the music, calling out “Thank you, Jesus”, or stringing syllables together tongues-style, and feeling ... well, like a bit of goose. A sincere goose, and glad to be a fool for Jesus of course, but a goose all the same.

Now I'm not commenting at all on the genuineness of my devotion at that time, or of those around me, nor on the theology that lay behind it (let's leave that for another time). Nor am I talking about the offence of the gospel, or the way in which living for Jesus means being different from those around us. I'm talking about the style, the little rituals, the patterns of language, the way we arranged our gatherings, how we expressed and enacted our deepest feelings and thoughts—the ‘culture’, in other words. And I never shook the feeling that culturally, Pentecostalism was an odd fit. It felt weird and imposed, like a big Aussie boofhead wearing a grass skirt.

And what has all this to do with GAFCON? Well, as I stood (and sang) shoulder to shoulder with charismatically inclined Anglicans from many different parts of the world, I couldn't help noticing how naturally the African bishop next to me wore the ‘charismatic vibe’. He swayed and waved and sang with a huge smile on his face, and it seemed like the most natural thing in the world. Then there was the white charismatic guy in the row in front of me. He still looked like a goose.

The obvious but somewhat politically incorrect thought struck me: is it possible that classic ‘charismatic’ culture really is African culture? That the late 19th-century black holiness churches which gave birth to pentecostalism passed on to the 20th-century charismatic movement some of its cultural flavour? And that one of the reasons it all feels so strange to Aussies, and maybe less so to Americans, and probably even more so to Brits, is that it is just not us? We have our own ways of rejoicing and celebrating and expressing sincere gratitude. They are no less real or heartfelt or sincere. But they don't usually involve repetitive singing, swaying, dancing and waving.

Maybe this is what we should learn from our joyous, uninhibited African brothers. Maybe we should feel free to be ourselves. And love it.

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There is an insidious and dangerous teaching that I've noticed creeping in to my church, threatening my Christian hope, and stifling my evangelistic effectiveness. Up to this point, it hasn't had a catchy title.¹ But I want to correct that. I'm going to call this teaching ‘nowism’, from the English word ‘now’, meaning the present age.

Are you a nowist? How do you recognize nowistic tendencies? It's not so much seen by what you profess but by how you live. The fundamental feature of nowism is the tendency to live for this world and to forget about the glorious new heavens and new earth that God will bring about when Jesus Christ returns.

It's not a particularly new teaching; there were nowistic teachers in the Apostle Paul's day. In 2 Timothy 2:16-18, we read about Hymanaeus and Philetus who taught that the resurrection had already happened. Presumably, they were teaching that all of God's promises (particularly his great promise to restore the dead to life and to bring a final judgement and restoration of this fallen world) have actually been fulfilled in this present age. Paul saw their nowistic doctrine as destructive and gangrenous, bringing hopelessness, death and destruction, eating away at the body of Christ, poisoning and killing—because it robbed people of their true and glorious eternal hope in Jesus, and stopped them from trusting in him and being prepared to suffer while they longed for his return.

But nowism is alive and well today too. There are nowistic books, spreading like gangrene through Christian bookstores, and therefore Christian homes. You could take the title of Joel Osteen's book Your Best Life Now as a classic expression of pure nowism. But you also see it in that plethora of books that seem to assume that God's plan for your life is primarily directed towards helping you with your weight loss, your business sense, your church attendance numbers, your marriage and family life, your kids' education or your coffee making skills—as if the resurrection has already happened.

It's not surprising that nowism is becoming influential in Christian circles. Bad teaching always ends up conforming to the pattern of the world. In the early 20th century when moralism was the rage, much of the evangelical false teaching involved an unhealthy emphasis on ‘holiness’. But now the mood has shifted. There aren't many holiness teachers around any more. In my part of the world, at least, nowism seems to have taken over. A lot of it has to do with the fact that we live in times of unprecedented economic prosperity. Many of us have careers; all of us have peace and social security. Nobody need starve in our country. If we want heaven, we can get it now; it comes on a stick in the ice cream section of the local supermarket! In fact, most of us have quite a lot to lose when Jesus returns, and we don't have much reason to be very keen to see him come back and spoil it while we're all enjoying ourselves so much. At least he could wait until the kitchen extension is finished and we get back from the overseas trip!

Ironically, there's also a kind of prosperity paradox going on. We have this ‘great life’, but we also have less time to live it. To maintain the lifestyle, to maintain the big houses, to keep the backyards, to further our careers and to fulfil our dreams, we're working longer hours and feeling more exhausted. We're so busy because everybody else is competing with us for this good life too. There's that relentless competition which drives rises in property prices and soaring rents—which drives the need to work harder and longer just to keep up with the Joneses. And that combination of a great life and an exhausting schedule to maintain it means that we have no time for the future—at least not for the future that matters.

So we've become consumed with questions of now (or, at most, the next few decades): what job should I get? How can I make sure my kids are happy and fulfilled at school and home? What superannuation do I need? What diet will enable me to extend my life? And so, despite our professed orthodoxy, we Christians are becoming (bit by bit through our desire to conform to the world and through our own desires and yearnings) nowists.

In my next post, I'll write a little about how we can counter this insidious false teaching, and what it might mean for our evangelistic efforts.

¹ The theologians have a boring name for it: ‘overrealized eschatology’

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Gordon, how did you come to Christ?

A school friend told me that if I was a Christian and wrong, I would have just wasted a lot of Sundays with nice people. But if I was not a Christian and I was wrong, then I was going to hell! I realize there are logical flaws in that argument now. But it was enough to convince me to keep talking to him. He told me the gospel, and started me off going to church and reading the Bible.

I realized from reading the Bible that Jesus was Lord and God, and I also woke up to the fact that being a Christian wasn't about being good, but about asking Jesus' forgiveness. Luke 15 talks about the angels rejoicing when someone realizes this, which I thought was rather marvellous. So here I am, in God's grace.

How do you occupy your time?

Read. Write. Edit. Sleep. Talk to friends. Enjoy the family. Cook. Eat. Houseclean. Pray. Inhabit dark corners of the internet. Catch buses. Oh, and I am a promiscuous Facebook befriender. Try me! I've only ever dropped three people, but then three people have dropped me, so there's a bit of yin and yang going on there, or something. (DON'T think I haven't noticed, you three!)

Tell us a bit about your background and interests.

My background is that I am half-Chinese, half-Swedish; I grew up in Sydney, went to an agricultural high school, studied Psychology at the University of New South Wales, got married, studied Theology and ministered in Melbourne for 10 years with the Australian Fellowship of Evangelical Students. Fiona and I have three lovely daughters. I'm also an ordained Anglican minister.

As for interests, I hope I'm capable of being interested in just about anything other people find interesting. But, at the moment, I am playing the piano, singing in a choir, watching the Tour de France, luxuriating in having finished a Masters thesis after 20 years, and trying somewhat sluggishly to run at least an hour every second day (not there yet).

What are five books that really helped you grow as a Christian?

1. Mere Christianity by CS Lewis
2. Fundamentalism and the Word of God by JI Packer
3. The Book of the Judges: An Integrated Reading by Barry Webb
4. Institutes of the Christian Religion by John Calvin
5. The Everlasting God by D Broughton Knox.

What are you reading now?

Just sitting on my desk I have an abridged version of Augustine's Confessions which I am planning to carry around and read when I'm waiting in queues or whatever. Under that is Walking with Gay Friends by Alex Tylee, which is really good but I am worried about the looks I get when I carry it, so I tend not to read that on the bus.

Then there's Engaging with Barth by Gibson and Strange. Barth was a brilliant and compelling theologian, and therefore all the more dangerous to evangelicals; Ovey's chapter on Barth's trinitarian theology made me feel particularly anxious just in the last few days about what looks like Barth's Sabellianism.

Then underneath that are Calvin's Institutes—although, if I am going to be honest, it's really just the stuff on church in Book IV that I've been skimming. With that is Luther's Table Talk, The Deliberate Church by Dever and Alexander, The Reformed Pastor by Richard Baxter and A Lifting up for the Downcast by William Bridge, another Puritan.

I seriously recommend the last one if you are worried about Christians and depression, but even though it is not that long, it is not a skim read.

Buried under all that is an old Atlantic Monthly.

Just lately I've also read Kate Grenville's The Secret River, and some great detective fiction by Peter Temple, whose books you read for the descriptions of Melbourne and the fans of the Fitzroy football club as much as anything else. Language and adult themes warning.

And what books would you recommend as must-reads right now?

I already mentioned Engaging with Barth by Gibson and Strange, but that is more for the theologs out there. Any of Broughton Knox's Selected Works. Let's not get carried away though; you really only need to read the Bible. Start with Romans and memorize that, as Luther recommended; that's what I'm teaching my daughters.

Oh, if you are even a little bit interested in the evangelical heritage of Anglicanism, especially with all this GAFCON bizzo that has been going on lately, then you could do a whole heap worse than read Ashley Null's brilliant Thomas Cranmer's Doctrine of Repentance: Renewing the Power to Love. It will cost you an absolute bomb, but just quietly ...

What would your friends say are your hobbyhorses?

Low-cal milk is the abomination that causes desolation. Pork fat is actually necessary to the taste of pork, bacon, etc., so why breed it out or trim it off. Salt is good. Corduroy was a mistake. Buses are cool. Trams are cooler. Riding bicycles is safe. How come there aren't more orange cars. Robotic implants could work really well for us. Ten hours sleep per night is acceptable. Sydney weather is fantastic. We should name names. Why is everyone so down on smoking? Netball is over-regulated. Clapping between movements is fine, just get over it. Joe Jackson can't sing in tune—really, he can't. Bratz dolls are disgusting. Non-peer-reviewed medical treatments are largely effective because of empathy plus placebo.

I have a few more ideas, but perhaps you can e-mail me.

What's something that makes you angry?

Selling out the terrible glory of the risen Lord Jesus in the interests of marketing the Christian message to modern hearers.

And who is someone who inspires you?

Bruce Hall, the senior minister of our local church.

What is your ideal day off?

Driving to Austinmer with the family.

Give us your top five musicians.

• Bach
• Bartok
• Mozart
• Bob
• Joni Mitchell

Thanks Gordo!

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