EAUK.org
Share
Looking for Good News - podcast
Download: Looking for Good News - podcast 
(Note: Right-Click / Save Target As...)
Looking for Good News - PDF
Other FNT's you may be interested in
| ||||
Topic(s) for this FNT
Data Protection Act 1998: By providing your personal details you agree to allow the Evangelical Alliance to contact you by mail, email, telephone or SMS text message in connection with its charitable purposes. The Evangelical Alliance does not make personal data available to external individuals or organisations.
Looking for Good News
6 November 2009
My first interaction with the world each morning is to get the news on teletext and see what's going on in the world and locally. Sadly, today was one of those days where my first reaction was almost to want to pull the covers back over my head and hide, and not just because my beloved Liverpool Football Club seems to be in disarray!
All around the news was bad; the tragic murder of 5 soldiers supposedly in a safe place in Afghanistan; debates over pulling out and the realisation that many of us don't know what the war is all about; the economy facing further challenges and Vauxhall under threat; government ministers and scientific advisers at war in public; one teenager child-killer stabs another in prison; claims that the Northern Ireland process is in freefall; the list could go on.
We look to our leaders for words of wisdom and signs of action, and we may well be forgiven for thinking that sometimes they seem to resemble rabbits caught in headlights with no idea what way to turn. Then again, they are, like us, victims of what happens around them, especially with global issues, and we can't just expect them to have all the solutions. On the other hand an election is looming so no one wants to take any action that may have an element of risk and consequently when we look for action and signs of hope there don't seem to be any. Good news does not seem to be forthcoming!
Just this morning, however, I've been challenged to think about where we should be looking for the good news stories and remembering some of the words of Jesus. Of course when he walked the countryside around Galilee or the streets of
'For I was hungry, and you fed me. I was thirsty, and you gave me a drink. I was a stranger, and you invited me into your home. I was naked, and you gave me clothing. I was sick, and you cared for me. I was in prison, and you visited me.' (Matthew 25:35-36 NLT)
It challenges me that Jesus put the responsibility for being good news, gospel people on our shoulders and that it shows itself in the ordinary actions and relationships of life. Sure he expects us to be involved in impacting the 'big issues' of society and government but our first challenge is more straightforward.
Today I can't help but ask myself, 'In the light of what's going on in the world around, to whom will I be good news today? Who will have cause to be thankful today, whose life will be a bit brighter, who will be given fresh hope because of something I have done in the name of Jesus?' Good news - isn't that what 'evangelical' means?! - is my responsibility.
Stephen Cave, Northern Ireland National Director, Evangelical Alliance
Latest comments
:
(The views below are the authors', and not necessarily those of the Evangelical Alliance.)
| Written by Noel Heather on 11 November 2009 at 15.38 |
| Understanding the church, as the believing community's socio-cultural arena, is the key to a lot. The Gospels are partly about moving from a previous theocratic + Friday night domestic context focus to a collectivist one in which the memes of Christianity will flourish syntagmatically. One is suppose to notice (eg) that Christ's recorded first and last (pre-death) social acts are to separate his mother from her biological offspring. This is dramaturgically all about changing to the new collectivist, socio-cultural 'physics' of the new religion. We hear earlier that he has 4 sons, and in most primitive societies you're going to hand your mother over to a male biological relative. Christ however hands her to the beloved disciple -- dramaturgically the first spiritual sibling. So 2,000 years later it's in a collection of spiritual siblings called the church that an Evangelical bachelor won't tell you he's going out tonight...Nicely parallel with Foucauldian perspectives -- and for me as a critical sociolinguist of religion: sentences of belief and practice (the socio-theological grammar of which is mainly 'induced' from the corpus of scripture) of the believing Evangelical community are intricately bound up with/occur within the relevant socio-theological discourse arena -- the church. These textual, socio-cognitive issues are part of form and process, but should not of course be viewed as overshadowing faith and the work of the Holy Spirit. |
| Written by Richard on 11 November 2009 at 14.49 |
| Hiya, I'm not sure many would call me evangelical!! I'm a therapist and a Christian, though I haven't found a tag that feels like home in terms of what stream I could inhabit yet - my mum tells me she finds that sad because being homeless leaves one open to the elements. I will have to have a read of your stuff; sounds interesting. I am interested in psychosexual development and religious aproaches to minority and often vulnerable people groups. The research I did was looking at the evidence around what social exclusion And moral stigmatisation does regarding LGBT folk and consequent mental health issues and addiction issues, and how Christian treatment services either perpetuate or counter this in their thereaputic models and ethical approaches. I don't really know or think enough about church culture, although I'm in one so probably should. I'm more fascinated by the things people believe |
| Written by Noel Heather on 11 November 2009 at 12.02 |
| Richard, The sociological research on-line article seeks to explain eg 'why an Evangelical bachelor won't tell you he's going out tonight.' He won't do this because he doesn't feel the need to map onto you the idea you think he's sad because he's not married: the social cognition you and he share as Evangelicals doesn't have a slot for 'single'. This is because in the 'bonding group' more-like-a-secular-business social culture of classic Evangelicalism, spiritual-sibling intersubjectivity rules: analogous to the 'bonding group' which a secular business is, where the culture similarly does not encourage an employee to mentally divide their business colleagues into two groups -- those single and those married! This doesn't work so well in 'bridging group' more-like-a-golf-club churches which may in one sense be more 'open', but where relationships are looser. In such a church last week (eg) an informant bachelor hinted several times he's wasn't gay. (As a surprising number still do in secular society.) This kind of hinting doesn't happen in classic Evangelical bridging-group churches for parallel reasons to the 'single' stuff above. My article attempts to explore the underlying parameters re the gay issue in terms of Evangelicals' greater attachment to syntagmatic replication of religious memes, in contrast to others' greater focus on paradigmatic 'choices now'. |
There are 14 additional comments for this page.
Comments for this article are now closed
Subject: Media | Evangelism | Theological issues
Author: Cave, Stephen
© Evangelical Alliance
