Augustine on an iPhone

Below you will find my notes from a lecture I attended at Hillsong College. I took them on my iPhone Notes app – a first for me, as I went in unprepared to be so engrossed that I’d want to take notes! (See previous post).

They appear here as I took them, unedited, typos, spellos, my own abbreviations (btw why is abbreviation such a long word?) So, for those of you who are interested, let’s see if you can make sense of my fingers and thumbs…

Dr Neil Ormerod - Lecturing on Augustine's De Trinitate

Hillsong College: Lecture
Augustine & De Trinitate – Dr Neil Ormerod (RC)
Rec Bernard Lonergan – Augustine
Grace – understood common sense wise or theoretically.
Lonergan suggests another realm – interiority: the object being our own operations. What does our questioning say about us? Understanding why & how we get to common sense or theoretical conclusions.

In De Trinitate book 8 Augustine begins to argue from the practical “you know what this is like… You can work this out”

What is A doing in De Trin?
bk 1-4: scriptural argument vs Arius & Arians ie whatever attributes are given to the Father is given to the son. Effectively Homoousios but using scriptural language: whatever is true of the F is true of the Son & the Spirit. A’s hermeneutic rule: what is the context of the scripture. Sometimes Jesus is talking about his humanity & others his divinity. He anticipates Chalcedon in developing a 2 nature Christology.
Also… The Father sends the Spirit (texts); Jesus sends the Spirit… so the Sp proceeds from the F & the Son.
With Arius the church had to use & understand his language to address the issues he was raising. These bks 1-4 have a limited impact, acknowledged by A himself, he indicates a shift at the end of bk 4, and bks 5-7 are not based on script arguments. He introduces 10 categories from Aristotle. This provides a theoretical framework for a philosophical argument. The Q now is ‘in the one God how can we make distinctions’ – substance, person, essence, accidence, location …  and esp Relation – this provides a distiction which does not impact upon the unity of the godhead. He takes issue with the Cappodocean fathers for not making proper distinction between categories.
The category of person is esp important. Persons are defined by their relationships, processions. Other things are attributes. These attributes pertain to the divine substance not individually to the person. BUT The term person is not an attribute of being. For there are 3 persons not one.

Aug did not really comment on ‘one substance’: homoousios’ substance refers to ‘under-standing’ ie the Father & the Son are of the same understanding. Tertullian confuses things stoically & empirically however as he uses ’substance’ to mean ’stuff’. Descartes similarly muddles things by defining substance as about what ’stands under’.

In proceeding from the Father the spirit is different from the son. We say the father is the f of the son; and the son is the son of the father; The spirit is the spirit of the father but the father is not the father if the spirit. One is symmetrical the other is not. Aquinas in his Summa Theologica takes this further. But the Arian argument does not follow that because the father is not begotten as the son is begotten we cannot say that this is a non reln argument with respect to the father.
One script text in bk5-7 majored on, rel to common sense – theory: Jesus is the power of God & wisdom of God. These are attributes & in the realm of theory this does not make sense. He argues this is an appropriate way of speaking (an ‘appropriation’) so we need to recognise the general way scripture talks in certain places.
End of bk 7: reln between God & the creature; how is it that we might enter into the Trinitarian relationships. Robert Doran takes this up more recently.
{break 20 mins}
Bk 8 talking about a more inward realm (interiority). Like 5 finger exercises. Eg have you experienced this? Have you thought about that? Now he is coming from a faith seeking understanding. Eg. Given this doctrine, what are the ways we understand God as Trinity? Takes issue with tradtional ways because of their materialistic analogies, eg. Water, ice, steam; tree – root, branches, trunk.
Turns to human beings – made in His image. Lover, beloved, loving. Mind, knowledge, love. Understanding – conceive – concept. Understanding – speak – word (but internally not orally). AHA! moment because YOU understand. Like a judgment: we weigh up the options, we judge the possibilities. The interior word of God is the YES of judgement. Eg. Paul says in Jesus there is no yes and no, there is only Yes. So its scriptural basis is fd in Jn1 and in Paul. The Father’s ‘generation’ of the son is like a perfect concept. One speaking, the other spoken. Identity between the known and the knowing – the psychological response to the Arians. Speaker – Word.
Bk 10 – hard
Bk 11 – ex of analogies
Bk 12 – back to theology, scripture, the Cross. Transcendence – where we know & love God. Final section here is very prayerful & worshipful. Can we have an analogy that is based on my knowledge of God & my love of God: a realm of grace. Admits that you cannot do it, and comes back to his lover, beloved, loving analogy.

Hillsong #5: Invisible Scaffolding

Building with bamboo!

The bamboo scaffolding we’d observed being used to construct massive sky-scrapers in Hong Kong was very visible, very strong and very flexible. Although very strange to western eyes, this was totally appropriate for use in building massive high-rise blocks in a place where typhoons and strong winds can provide adverse conditions at any moment.

The massive edifice that is Hillsong also has scaffolding being used in its construction; it is equally strong, flexible and appropriate, however much of it is invisible.

I wrote about the campus strategy in the last post; now I want to outline the second equally revelationary growth strategy that I discovered. Again, this was not unique to Hillsong Church or to Australia. A similar phenomenon would be pointed out to me several weeks later at Mars Hill Church Seattle. The strategy was most clearly defined to me in Sydney by one of the senior leaders who had been with the church for many years and so had been part of the outworking. It is this: The leadership of Hillsong Church unashamedly concentrates on a few areas in which the Holy Spirit has gifted the church, and in so doing seeks to trust God for the outworking of other areas where it is weak. In other words they do not seek to work hard on making up for their weaknesses at the expense of their strengths. No, rather they invest more in their strengths and talents; they strengthen their strengths, working through them to accomplish all the things they are believing God for.

In this respect I met with a remarkable degree of humility and honesty from pastors and leaders; they would often openly confess “That is not one of our strengths” and I pondered a lot on the significance of this frankness. One leader asked me if I’d noticed anything unusual about the number of visiting speakers they hosted at Hillsong. I confessed that I had not really thought about this, however as we talked it was clear that for a church of this magnitude it was indeed slightly unusual that they invited so many guest speakers on a regular basis. Brian Houston certainly seems to undertake a lion’s share of the preaching, but nearly every other week there does seem to be a visiting speaker from elsewhere speaking at one of the meetings or at a special event. The reason given was that preaching and teaching is not one of their main strengths, and, although no-one would exactly call it a weakness either, Robert Fergusson clearly is an anointed expository preacher, however they have not majored on trying to build the church in this way as others might.

Instead they have and continue to identify their unique God-given strengths and put effort into developing these. We discussed what these were and I discerned from my conversations what was emerging as the top three ‘main strengths’. Although the Hillsong leadership would probably use other terminology, I feel the best way to categorize them for this purpose would be under the general headings of:

Worship and Music Ministry (exemplified most easily through Hillsongs near global influence in song-writing and worship style. Need I say more?)

Reaching & Gathering Young People (the 15-45 age group has been the most unreached and under-represented age demographic in Western Church – Hillsong are strong reaching and keeping in this age group)

Engaging & Integrating People Effectively & Culturally into Community (the many culturally engaging ways in which they connect with, and equip so many people into becoming a serving community)

In a way this strategy went against the grain for me. I have tended to feel there are things we just have to do as a church or leadership in which we are weak or do not have particular anointing in; the need is there so we just have to fulfill it. But at the same time I realised I had also become critical of churches who recruited to make up for their weaknesses from the outside. So this was somewhat inconsistent on my part! Nevertheless I regularly justified my view by quoting Paul’s exhortation to Timothy to “do the job of an evangelist” [2 Tim 4:5] where, by implication, it would seem Timothy is instructed to do something he is not especially gifted or called to do, but falls under the heading of “duties” which you undertake just because you are a minister of the Gospel.

During my time away as I meditated on these things I felt God persuade me that I had been wrong about this. I concluded that this was not the norm. I saw in Jesus how he testified “I only do what I see the Father doing” [John 5:19] – indeed this comes on the back of the incident earlier in the chapter when Jesus had just healed one man at the Bethesda Pool when clearly there were many more in need of healing all around. This was not of course a sign of weakness in Jesus. On the contrary it was a sign of his being focused on God the Father, setting his face like flint towards the goal of his mission, a sign of absolute trust in God to deal with everything else if we simply do what he requires us to do. This seems to be truly seeking first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness in the sure hope that everything else will be added unto us.

Similarly I saw how Paul encouraged Timothy on more than one occasion to “stir up the gift of God” in him – clearly the things he was gifted in, and in fact in 1 Tim 4:14-15 Paul writes “Do not neglect your gift, which was given you through a prophetic message when the body of elders laid their hands on you. Be diligent in these matters; give yourself wholly to them, so that everyone may see your progress.” This seems to be an encouragement or even perhaps a warning to Timothy not to forget investing in his main gifting and become a generalist in ministry, or perhaps get caught up in so many areas where he was not gifted that he neglected his God-given, prophetically identified and anointed gift, at the expense of trying to meet all the needs around him.

Doing a few things well may not sound very sexy as a job description but it is certainly how a Kingdom extending church like Hillsong has managed to remain strong and focused on bearing fruit that remains.

There is one final aspect relating to this strategy that needs to be highlighted. It falls under the third category relating to the way in which Hillsong Church connect with and equip many people into becoming a serving community.

Duncan Corby

It was clearly identified for me during my thoroughly enjoyable conversations with a very cool-headed and genial man called Duncan Corby who is effectively the person we would call Vice-Principal of Hillsong’s International Leadership College; a fully university-validated tertiary theological school for undergraduates and post-graduates which was established twenty years ago and has now built up into a training base for thousands of students today. This is the College at which Chris Parkes has been studying for past few years. Duncan is a clear thinking, enthusiastic, hands-on trainer – not an ivory tower academic. He is not only intelligent, he is a very likeable fellow with a real zeal for God and for His church. It is evident that he loves what he does and he spoke passionately with me about how the College had grown, their curriculum development – for which he is largely responsible – and the importance of the College in the whole ethos of what Hillsong stands for as a church with a particular vision. He also talked with me about his aspirations for Chris, with whom he is undoubtedly impressed!

Part of the multi-functional gallery of the Convention Centre being prepared for use as a lecture theatre

I too was certainly impressed with the standards of training at Hillsong College; in fact it is fair to say that I was very pleasantly surprised at the depth and breadth of the theological and doctrinal study being done. This was not what I had anticipated experiencing at a Pentecostal Seminary and I had to repent of my poor attitude. I’m not sure where my low expectations came from – I searched my memory in vain – so perhaps it was just plain, simple and ugly prejudice on my part!  Whatever the case I certainly had to repent for what I saw at Hillsong College was very healthy in terms of well-rounded Christian doctrine and understanding.

Let me illustrate this: One afternoon that week I accompanied Chris to a 3 hour lecture on Augustine’s epic and significant apologetic defending Trinitarian Theology De Trinitate. It was hosted by the Hillsong College lecturer responsible for the doctrinal unit being taught, but the teaching on this day was delivered by Dr Neil Ormerod, a Roman Catholic visiting lecturer who was also an expert in Augustinian theology. Dr Ormerod is a Professor of Theology, and indeed Director of the Institute of Theology, Philosophy and Religious Education at the Australian Catholic University. He is not someone I would have expected to hear teaching at Hillsong! He was warmly welcomed, and well received by the students. Greatly inspired by the works of Bernard Lonergan a Jesuit theologian, Neil gave us first a comprehensive overview of Augustine’s life and thought as it related to De Trinitate, followed by a contextualisation of the issues being tackled in the work, then he gave a well structured basic survey of the arguments of each book in the treatise.

Dr Neil Ormerod lecturing at Hillsong College

I was transfixed – the three hours passed in no time at all and I could have continued for another three without blinking an eye! I found myself taking copious notes on my iPhone’s Notes application – not the easiest of tasks as those of you who have tried two finger typing historical, theological and philosophical information as fast as you can using a screen the size of a… well, a phone, in fact… will understand. [For those of you who like this kind of thing - theology I mean - I will endeavour to upload my notes onto this blog as is, i.e. like they currently appear saved on my iPhone, to see whether you can make head or tale of my jargon and abbreviations! For those of you who don't enjoy this kind of thing, take this as a warning to skip the next post.]

So the Church and thus the College take seriously the task to identify, raise up and equip existing and potential leaders in Word, Spirit and Deed. All the College students are engaged ipso facto in various aspects of Church life and leadership. Serving for them is part of their training and as such it means the church has at its disposal an army of volunteers with the time, desire and inclination to put into practice what they learn. This means on a Sunday students can be found all over, in set-up teams, children’s ministry, youth work, bands, singers, Audio-Visual teams, host-teams, serving drinks, setting out chairs, flyers, hand-outs, leading groups of other volunteers, praying in ministry teams… you name it. During the week they are leading small groups, preparing curriculum, rehearsing music, drama, dance, evangelising, creating promotional material, following up visitors and new Christians. In turn this creates a culture within the whole church of volunteerism, for there are several thousand students among the 20,000+ attenders, nearly 10% of the church. As someone pointed out to me without a hint of cynicism “… and they pay us for the privilege!”

Students originate from within the local church as well as many from other churches in Australia, New Zealand, the Asia-Pacific area, and indeed the world over. There have been five Guernsey students studying there in recent years! Many come from different ethnic backgrounds which helps add to the church’s international flavour. They come to study and specialise in Worship Music, Pastoral Leadership, Media, Dance as well as to undertake the more Theologically based Degree Programme. Some are on courses which last just a year, others three or four years, but the student ethos is a huge part of church life because of the numbers involved. A large proportion of students stay on to become leaders in the church, serve overseas on mission, or to find work nearby and remain active, well-trained members. All the students we met were motivated, happy, thoroughly engaged in church life, buzzing I would say!

Duncan pointed all this out to me. He clearly believes they would not be where they are today as a Church in terms of ethos and size without the College and the students and I believe he could be right. The teaching and learning environment, energy, creativity and sheer momentum provided by such a large body of young people ready and willing to serve the Lord Jesus surely adds something special to this special church.

Hillsong #4: Campus Crusade

Hillsong Church's City Campus in Sydney's Waterloo area

It would be a phenomenon that I would observe in many others places on these travels – Redding, Seattle, New York – but I saw experienced and saw it at work first at Hillsong Church Sydney. It was not new to me, but often it seems to make a real difference seeing things work in the flesh compared to reading about them in a book, or hearing them described in a seminar.

What I saw was simply this – Hillsong Church, like many others, is evangelizing and growing most effectively through a campus strategy. What I mean by this is that the church does not seek to grow one meeting in one place by trying to make that meeting serve all kinds of needs, and overcome all the multiplicity of cross-cultural mission issues that are commonly found in any cosmopolitan metropolis these days. Neither does the church just seek larger meeting places in order to accommodate more people. Certainly it can already accommodate thousands. But even a mega-church needs to keep advancing and growing in order to fulfill the great commission, and Hillsong does not look to do this through just seeking to attract more people to its current services. No, instead the church seeks to reach and serve as many people as possible by providing as many options as possible for as many people as possible to experience the presence of God in a church service, hear the Gospel, be included in a spiritual community, feel like they belong, engage, etc.

This is achieved through establishing fresh congregations or campuses. Depending on how you define your terminology, these refer to different times and locations of services. I tend to mean the following by these terms:

campus = a separate geographical venue or location for a church gathering

congregation = a particular group of people meeting at a specific time

Hillsong has been innovative and flexible with its strategy in these areas over the years. Obviously because it sees itself as a city church and thereby reaches out to a cosmopolitan area inhabited by multiple millions, there are many differences between the manner in which this church goes about things and the way in which we might do things as a church on a rock inhabited by 65,000 people. There would still be marked differences if we were comparing it to a city of perhaps 500,000. Nevertheless there are, I believe, fundamental principles at work which can speak to us in Guernsey and indeed into every situation if we are teachable and wise.

Most days I spent meeting a pastor or leader responsible for a particular area of ministry, training or pastoral oversight. Some had been in leadership, indeed in membership at Hillsong Church for only a few years, others virtually since the beginning in the early 1980s. There was nevertheless a clear picture which emerged from my conversations with each of them. I was seeking answers to the questions I had formulated long before I set out on this time away, and we spent time at each meeting talking through some of these issues. (See blog entry Tempus Fugit for details of these questions.)

There are two specific strategies which seemed to help answer my questions at Hillsong. As my time spent there developed the Lord seemed to anoint both of these phenomena particularly in my thinking so that I would say they both became a revelation to me of God speaking directly to my heart for revival and church growth. I will talk about the second of these in the next post. Here I will cover the campus strategy. Certainly this strategy at Hillsong impinges upon the first three of my questions. Right from the very start, it was seemingly in Hillsong’s DNA to establish campuses in order to reach people who would otherwise struggle to come regularly to church or feel part of a community, and catch them up in the vision and mission of the church. A campus in this sense is not an independent church, although it may look different on the surface in size and make-up. It is one in mission.  As mentioned in a previous post, the Hills

Old Logo of Hills Christian Life Centre

Christian Life Centre (as Hillsong was originally called) was established in the Northern Suburbs of the city by Sydney Christian Life Centre (SCLC – now the city campus of Hillsong Church) largely because there was a massive suburban housing development taking place in the late 70s and 80s; in order to reach the many thousands of people moving into these new towns and estates, the leaders of SCLC at the time realized they needed to establish a presence right there in the centre of things. You don’t have to get terribly spiritual to think through this, although it is clearly what happened in the days of the early church, as you discover in the book of Acts – when people moved out of Jerusalem into the surrounding areas, even when the reason was persecution, they took the Gospel and therefore the Church with them. Other expressions of human community and activity also establish and reestablish and develop themselves in this way, e.g. schools, sports clubs, societies, associations, super-markets, banks, shopping malls, even offices, work-places and government agencies.

Certainly there are some people who are willing to travel or drive (if they can afford to) through miles of suburban traffic and past many alternatives in order to get their child to the right school. However for the vast majority this is not a viable option. As a result, schools, clubs, shops, etc. get established near where people live and work because these institutions are people-focused, community-dependent, and empower people to make the choice to use them. The church of Jesus is God-focused and therefore also people focused and people-empowering, because God so loved the world He did not wait for the world to come to Him (we could not!) He took the initiative and came to us. And wherever the church of Jesus exists it should empower people to experience God – it should give those who currently do not or cannot experience the presence of God and the family of God the opportunity of choosing to do so. The church is a community within the community, a city within the city, for the glory of God and extension of His Kingdom.

Jesus modelled this principle by going from village to village and town to town preaching the message of the Kingdom of Heaven; he did not expect everyone to come to Nazareth Community Church! In fact more than that, he trained and appointed the Twelve also to go about preaching the Good News into more regions beyond. So I’m saying there is a pattern to follow here based on a missional principle. You can even discover in the New Testament what happens when this is not the focus of attention – it took persecution and the raising up of Paul and Barnabas at Antioch to refocus Christians on the as yet unreached – to get on with the very last instructions of the Lord here on earth – Matt 28; the Jerusalem church and leadership seemed somewhat caught up in their own little ‘Jewish world’ to begin with. We must remember that the ‘ends of the earth’ start at the ends of our streets!

As a local church Hillsong has established multiple campuses and congregations in the city (even now into Brisbane which is nearly 1000km/600 miles away). It is true that its City and Brisbane campuses are effectively adoptions of existing churches, but the principle remains. Additionally Hillsong has over a dozen other campuses meeting in school halls and other rented buildings each weekend. Hillsong Church does not call these campuses – although they fit my definition – instead these are referred to as extension services and are aimed at local communities of various ethnic, national, cultural or language backgrounds. These communities often link with either the Hills Campus or City Campus for Sunday evening services (which are not duplicates of the Sunday morning services).

The advantage of a campus philosophy is that in this way resources and can be shared and you are not so dependent on raising up all the additional infrastructure you need to make church happen in each location. Key ministries can be shared, training can be shared, funding can be shared, there is better stewardship, things can be done in bulk, there are more opportunities to serve, be an apprentice, strengths can be shared and weaknesses covered more easily. Hillsong have developed these strengths in every area and continue to do so. By using common ministry models in a manner which might be described in the world of commerce as branding they create a larger net to work with, eg. their women’s ministry – Sisterhood and its annual Colour Conference, their various children and youth ministries – Hillsong Kids (primary school age), Fuel (school years 7-9), Wildlife (years 10-12), Powerhouse (ages 18-25), Frontline (25-35), can all be resources and developed centrally, hold joint camps, events and training;  a small success can be celebrated and enjoyed by all, creative excellence can be achieved, a broader group of people are reached, and costs are kept to a minimum, particularly in areas such as children’s curriculum development, and event promotion.

Chris with Nathan McLean, Children's Pastor

Although it may not be visible unless you search hard and deliberately for it, much is made of the use of technology, especially information on databases, communication using IT, and a standardized method of integration and follow-up of all newcomers. I was given a glimpse into how this works and I must say it looks excellent, especially from a pastoral perspective, and especially too for the purpose of minimising communication and information failures as the church grows. It is inappropriate to go into great detail here; suffice to say that there is a clear understanding of how membership is expressed – not by a signing on the dotted line attitude, nor by having completed a course, certainly not by giving a tithe, although none of these things are despised in themselves. Rather, the pastors and key leaders see membership expressed in various degrees from simply regularly attending a worship service, belonging to a Connect Group (home groups which meet fortnightly), or serving in a ministry area, and then right the way through to becoming a pastor or key leader. This flexible, grace-focused paradigm helps the leadership “correct, rebuke and encourage—with great patience and careful instruction” as they watch over the growing flock of God in accordance with the teaching of Paul in 2 Tim 4:2.

Hillsong #3: Transformed Lives Transform Lives

Jesus = Hope

It soon became very clear during our time at Hillsong that seeing lives transformed was a common thread running through everything that goes on. So many people we met shared their testimony with such genuine thankfulness and joy – finding Jesus had really been for them the life-changing catalyst it should be. Those we met – pastors, students, leaders, serving members, young and old – regularly and unashamedly spoke of the grace of God at work in their lives, and at each meeting there were testimonies of one kind or another, whether on video, personally shared or communicated as prayerful thankfulness by one of the leaders, all inspiring faith and hope that God is in the business of transforming lives today.

It soon dawned on me that we, indeed I, do not do this nearly enough. Many of the testimonies and stories I heard were not revolutionary tales (some were!) but simple recognition of the hand of God by His Spirit at work in ordinary daily life. It was truly an attitude of gratitude – not forced or fake – but in keeping with this cultural lack of cynicism, a real acknowledgment of trust and active joyful faith. I should, we should be more like this. And we can be!

The clear effect of this culture is that it feeds itself, it encourages others, it helps build faith and hunger in others for more. This was not some shallow optimism or refusal to accept pain and hardship – quite the opposite. Several stories were real tales of overcoming, and some were still in the midst of overcoming but displaying thankful hearts for present mercies. This did not seem like unreality, rather the deliberate fostering of a ‘Jesus focused culture’ which was contagious.

Chris with Frontline Pastor Brenden Brown

Brenden Brown was one person I met with a revolutionary tale; meeting this humble leader who gave up his valuable time to answer my questions and help me understand how the church lives and breathes was one of those occasions when you know you are being changed through just being with someone. At the end of our time talking I simply asked a few more personal questions and quickly I became aware that I was in the presence of someone whose passion for Jesus and to see the Gospel transform lives is backed up by his own testimony of grace. Brenden is married to Jacquie and has a young son, he is now a Pastor at Hillsong and responsible for Frontline (the 25-35 age group).

As an aside, both Judith and I were encouraged to see that the “youth ministry” at Hillsong goes all the way up to 35! By being only 10 years outside the bracket to be included in the youth we felt strangely young and carefree again!

When Brenden speaks he talks with passion about his calling, the people and teams he works with, the outreach they are planning, the care-filled pastoral network that they have purposefully built to ensure that they minimise any feeling of being left out or not belonging. He seems energised and proactive about his whole life. But things were not always as hope-filled and positive for Brenden. His story of how his life was arrested by the grace of God, as he was headed for self-destruction, really touched my heart. To see him now a happy husband, doting dad, and influential leader of an aspiring vital generation of young people was truly inspirational. To hear how the love of Christ extended through Christians at Hillsong had brought him into new friendship, a sense of belonging, a new identity and then very quickly the power of the grace of God lived out through his new family transformed him from the life of a loser to being a leader of thousands – well, I can only say it truly touched my heart deeply.

There is no doubt in my mind that at Hillsong Church you can see all around that transformed lives do transform lives!

Thousands of lives transformed by Jesus!

Hillsong #2: Smaller Than We Expected, Bigger Than We Imagined

“The Australian Book of Etiquette is a very slim volume” – Paul Theroux

I’ve got to be frank about what I’m going to say here, because I’m aware that there are others who have felt like us in some way. So if you’re not in this category you are either a) a very lovely godly uncynical person, or b) a member of Hillsong Church, or probably both. What I’m on about here is this: I knew I would be visiting a mega-church, I knew Hillsong Sydney was very large indeed, I knew that this church produced very high quality, slickly produced worship music albums acclaimed globally, I knew there was a high investment in excellently produced and presented worship services, I knew the church regularly hosted international conferences and invited international guest speakers who were often leaders of mega-churches and mega-ministries in their own right, I knew they would likely have big facilities, big premises, big people, big grounds, big car-parks… and so I expected, at least subconsciously, to feel like I was attending an event, certainly an excellently run event, but an event never-the-less, some spectator-sport,  an impersonal experience, feeling like an individual in a crowd of individuals. This is what we both expected.

How wrong we were!

Also, it is clear that when Paul Theroux wrote his witty aphorism, above, he was not referring to Hillsong Church Sydney. For what we found there was quite the opposite of what we expected, and certainly no caricatured rudeness, neither of course were there any stuck-up anglicanish airs-and-graces either, rather we found ourselves amongst a large, yea, verily, very enormous family of Christ-centred lovers of God, of one another and of people, that I think we have ever come across!

Hillsong was bigger than we imagined and smaller than we expected!

Lots of creative art, designs and media to communicate the Gospel

Everywhere we went, everything we went to, everyone we met, almost without exception gave us the same impression, the same feeling: this was a church that was successfully managing to keep a big heart as it grew. This was a growing, evangelizing, discipling community that retained its value on relationships; it felt like you weren’t just a spectator, you were a valued participator in this Gospel revolution that is Hillsong. Add this to the cultural lack of cynicism in the church I mentioned previously and maybe you can see why we were regularly humbled by this.

I attended a large church whilst I was studying at La Sorbonne, Paris, in the mid-80s. Le Point du Jour was a thriving church, 800 or so attended regularly – very large for then, very large for France even now! Whilst I made some good friends and really enjoyed my time there (and Paris!) it was an eye-opener for me in terms of big-church experience. The church met at the time in a semi-converted cinema in the west of the city. (I say semi-converted because the church had kept the fixed plush cinema seats, which like separate arm-chairs you could literally sink into! These were really totally inappropriate for keeping people awake during sermons – the exact antithesis of the Methodist pews I knew as a teenager!) Each week I attended for most of the first semester I was asked by someone if it was my première fois! It was amusing to begin with, then I found myself getting a little upset being thought of as a first-time visitor each week, especially when I was desperately trying to feel part of the church. The fact it that it was pretty easy to turn up each week for a good worship service and just remain anonymous in the large crowd. Of course some newcomers at church like to feel anonymous, at least to begin with, but when you want to belong it doesn’t help. It was when you began to feel like no-one noticed you, so no-one would notice or care if you were not there, that it started to become lonely and sad.

I found out that there was a regular young people’s meeting, but this was held on the exact opposite side of the city to where I lived and it started and therefore finished late so the couple of times I attended I had to leave before the end in order to get back to my digs. So I didn’t really get to know anyone there either as I always missed the coffee & fellowship time at the end. Part of their problem in this church which looked successful from so many angles was the rapidity of growth – at least that’s how I see it now; they had grown so fast there had been little planning for what increased numbers would entail. They did have a type of welcome/host team set up on a Sunday but the layout of the building was such that you could be so easily missed going in and out. Those days were without the benefits of the internet, electronic communication, mobile phones, SMS texting or even computers in churches really. So the concepts of printed response forms and flyers were not really strategically developed as far as I can remember, certainly not in the French churches. As a result I felt like an anonymous head in the crowd for a long time; and I was already a believer, and wanting, indeed trying to feel part of things. How would a timid seeker have felt?

Gordon Neal today

Three things redeemed this situation for me; one of the elders, a lovely man by the name of Gordon Neal, invited me to a mid-week group which met in his home in the eastern suburbs of Paris. For one, this was nearer where I was living at the time and so the journeys were not so long. Gordon, a francophone Briton who was something big in Nestlé, was warm and friendly but evidently a very busy man in the secular world as well as in the church. (Today, released from secular employment, Gordon is now one of the co-pastors of our Newfrontiers church in Paris!) Sadly this home-group only ran for a few weeks before he had to end it due to pressure of work. However Gordon was very helpful to me at the time in that, hearing I was musical and had a sense of calling to leadership, he introduced me to two people, one who was a leader of the church’s worship ministry, and the other who helped run an evangelistic outreach, in conjunction with Youth With A Mission (YWAM), in the open square just outside the Centre Georges Pompidou every Friday night. For the rest of my time in Paris engagement with some brilliant jazz musicians from the worship band, and regular forays with creative street evangelists on a Friday night kept me actively involved with this large church. The Friday nights were particularly exciting – it was here I first came across really effective Christian street drama, Christian folk-artists, fire-eaters, etc. We prayed on the streets for people every week and I got regular opportunities to preach and share testimony in an exciting and sometimes hostile environment! It had to be said however that the Sunday church services remained slightly detached for me as a result!

Centre Georges Pompidou & plaza, Le Baubourg, Paris

It is certainly through fostering and maintaining strong, healthy relationships that a sense of family and belonging can be kept in a large, expanding church. When a church is small, perhaps 20-50 people it is possible to do this almost without trying, but as it grows past 100, and especially 150 there are dynamics which come into play whereby unless something deliberate is done that sense of belonging easily dissipates and it becomes difficult for newcomers to be added into the community. Cultural issues also come into play making it difficult to integrate. Hillsong Church has definitely been deliberate about seeking to keep that sense of belonging as they have grown, but as I found out, they had to learn this and engage with the culture around them. You can see some of this learning curve at work in the very first Christian community in Acts 6.

Back to Sydney, Hillsong Church and 2009!

The first day at the Hills Campus I went to visit the Hillsong Conferences Office where Chris Parkes works a part-time post in administration which helps pay his bills. His boss, Autumn, is a lovely lady responsible for a small staff who run not just the conferences Hillsong host in Australia but often elsewhere also. The office also does some event management and mailing work for a couple of other charities and so it is never dull. With media such as TV and internet as well as books DVDs and CDs these days there are often times when the staff are working around the clock as well as recruiting a whole load of extra volunteers to come in and help when a big church conference in about to roll or in the follow-up just afterwards. As with everything and everyone we saw that week the level of volunteer support and servant-heartedness is really second to none. It was very inspiring.

Chris Parkes with Sam DiMauro

A little later I met Sam DiMauro who kindly showed me around the whole of the huge 21 acre campus, with all its various buildings and facilities. Sam is a Powerhouse (18-25 age group) Pastor and responsible for the early morning 8.45 service each Sunday. On a Sunday morning most rooms and public spaces in this multi-facility site are utilised. Sam showed me the original building – a large block nondescript edifice which houses the main church offices for pastors and staff, a 1000+ seat auditorium, Hillsong International Leadership College Headquarters, a main reception area and foyer, training facilities,

The auditorium, Hillsong Convention Centre - at weekends this is pumping with people!

children’s and youth halls, counselling rooms, seminar spaces, creative arts facilities, design workshops, dance studios, music practice rooms etc. Then we walked across to the fairly new Convention Centre where the largest weekly gatherings are held. This is a large round building, with effectively two main entrances and miles of circulation space. It was been exceedingly well designed to incorporate lounge areas, books & resources shops, flexible spaces for coffee and refreshment, hosting smaller functions, hospitality, etc., as well as the massive auditorium which can accommodate over 3500. Even this has been cleverly designed to appear smaller than it actually is, with the ability to walk down from galleries all the way to the ground level. Sections of the gallery can also be divided up so as to provide lecture-theatre style spaces for use by the College during the week. As a result it is certainly not one of those church buildings which is only used at weekends.

Outside across the extensive car-park stands a smaller building known as the Chapel. This edifice is of modern ecclesiastic architecture, and has been deliberately designed for events such as weddings and funerals where a smaller congregation is expected and also where presumably a ‘conference hall’ atmosphere is not so appropriate!  It seats around 150 I would guess in “comfortable pews” and is also used on Sundays and other days for events like Chinese translation extension services, creative arts and worship team gatherings, etc.

Interior of the Chapel

Sam showed me some nearby land and buildings which are being purchased by Hillsong for future use. At the moment the church has to rent some facilities (e.g. where Chris works in the Conferences Office) and it would be better stewardship in the long-term if this could be reduced. We then walked down to the nearby shopping mall for a coffee and chat – the first of many occasions that week where I would find myself with one of the many people I met enjoying an espresso or a latte in Gloria Jean’s Coffee Shop – the Starbucks of Sydney! Sam shared his testimony with me – and what an amazing story of grace – one of many I would hear during our time there.

This is indeed an amazing community of servant-hearted joy-filled disciples, steadily determined and pressing forward with the good news of Jesus, seeing lives transformed, healed, restored and integrated into a true family of faith. Moreover, like Sam, many find themselves being arrested by the Holy Spirit’s call, equipped and trained, and fast-tracked into leadership where their creative gifts and skills coupled with an integrity and humility which was evident all around, are put to immediate use for the glory of God and the extension of His Kingdom.

We loved being amongst such saints!

Hillsong #1: You’re Welcome!

Chris & Jonathan at Balmoral Beach, Sydney. Chris is trying desperately to look as cool as Jon, bless!

It was so good to have Chris Parkes – our Guern in Oz – to plan and arrange for us a week visiting Hillsong Church in Sydney Australia. Chris has been studying at their ministry training college and working in the church there for over three years now. He is coming to the end of his Degree course having previously completed what can be best described as a Diploma in Ministry during his initial year in Sydney.

The 4000-seat convention centre at Hillsong's main campus where several services are held each weekend.

Hillsong is well known in most of Charisendom if not the wider Evangelical world, firstly for its prolific worship and song-writing output as a community which began dramatically to influence beyond its Sydney based church in the early 90s with songs like This is My Desire and Shout to the Lord. Since then the trickle has turned into a torrent of wonderful, catchy, Jesus-centred worship songs of which you’re now very likely to find peppering song set-lists from Littlehampton to Little Wanganui.

We arrived in Sydney late at night and were met at the airport by Kim Drew, a lovely South African friend who used to live in Guernsey. Kim attended an Alpha course we were running a couple of years ago after which she joined our church but sadly only for a few months before her husband Colin’s job moved them and their family to Australia.

Colin & Kim Drew

I had never met Colin nor their children, and so it was very gracious and generous of them both to have us to stay, initially for three nights, but in the end, as other accommodation fell through, for a whole week! It was thoroughly fortuitous also that the Drews live in Cherrybrook, a suburb of North West Sydney which is about 10 minutes drive from the main Hillsong Campus in Baulkham Hills.

This massive suburban district North West of the city is one residential new-town after another, and is collectively known as ‘the Hills’ district because so many of the residential clusters in this region have the word ‘hill’ in their title, and also because… well, they’re hilly, I guess. Anyhow this is the reason the church has the name ‘Hillsong’, it was originally founded in the early 80s as The Hills Christian Life Centre. As an affiliated Assemblies of God church (in Australia the denomination is known collectively as Australian Christian Churches) it was part of a generic “Christian Life Centre” movement in the AoG which was a kind of renewal and restoration movement and as such influenced Europe also.

Brian & Bobbie Houston

Hillsong thus started off life as a kind of suburban church plant from the Christian Life Centre in downtown Sydney which has now somewhat ironically become the city campus of Hillsong Church. Brian and Bobby Houston, the senior leadership couple in Hillsong Church are a bubbly, trendy, fatherly-motherly couple who set the tone for much of the culture in this massive church of over 20,000 people. It was Brian’s father who was the pastor of the original Sydney Christian Life Centre which is now the Hillsong city campus.

Chris (Parkesy to his friends) lived only a few minutes drive from Colin and Kim’s place too, so he was able to pick us up each day and taxi us around which was just great. Chris is fully engaged in Hillsong Church and loves all that he does there, which includes the theological degree course that he’s been on the past few years, but this is only part of the picture. When I say fully engaged I mean fully. Chris is also a Connect Group Leader (i.e. home-group leader), and as one of the Powerhouse leaders (no, not primary kids for any Rockers reading this, in Hillsong this means young people aged 18-25) he also oversees a Tribe which consists of around 400 people – a collection of around 40 Connect Groups, and of course he is involved with leading and serving at at least two weekend services, as well as the Powerhouse midweek service!

Chris does all this voluntarily as thousands of others do, but he also does a small part-time paid job for roughly two days a week in Hillsong’s international conference office which is often manned 24 hours a day. So together with college lectures, study and course-work, Chris has a pretty full week! But as with so many we met who are equally full-on engaged in church life, Chris loves Jesus full-on too, inside-out, enjoys everything he does, takes responsibility seriously, wants the world to see the glory and excellence of the Lord Jesus through the church and seems thoroughly satisfied! What a joy it was to be with Chris and so many others like him at Hillsong all week. It does your soul good to be with such energetic, uncynical, Jesus-centred people who love and enjoy God, love loving people with the love God gives, and love the abundant life he has given us fully too!

This was the overriding theme weaving through our Hillsong experience in Sydney – we felt so welcome from the moment we arrived, we met such genuine lovers of Jesus who took time and effort to make us welcome all week and clearly enjoyed doing so, and we met people whose lives have been transformed through being wonderfully ’sucked in’ by this welcoming unworldly love and have thereby met Jesus. As one guy, now a youth leader, expressed it to me – “I know now that the Saviour sought me out and found me through the overwhelming love and joy of this powerful community of friends called Hillsong”.

Wow! And double wow!

As we talked together and prayed at the end of our time at Hillsong Judith tearfully summed it up like this, “I don’t think I have ever met so many genuine, uncynical, loving, passionate people!”

A Small Oversight

“May I have your visas please?” asked the friendly check-in clerk.

“Visas?” I said “No, you don’t understand. Let me explain – we’re British, we’re flying to Australia, we don’t need visas.”

How many of you know you need a visa to enter Australia? Well, how were we to know? Why didn’t you tell us! What ever happened to the British Empire and the map with a quarter of the world painted pink? You blink for half a century and it’s disappeared. Huh? We’re subjects of the same Queen! Isn’t Oz part of the Commonwealth for crying out loud?

We knew we needed extra security checks when travelling to the USA. The flight booking website informed us that the old Visa-Waiver system was no longer sufficient for Brits and that we had to apply on-line a month or two before with passport and travel details so as to get a Homeland Security check before entering the country. But you still didn’t need a visa for North America.

And so it was that we found ourselves at the Qantas check-in desk at Central Station in downtown Hong Kong, thinking we had timed things just nicely, early morning, a couple of hours to spare, we’d check in our bags at Central Station then take the MTR underground to the Airport and have a leisurely hour or so sipping lattes and espressos whilst waiting to board. Instead we had a rather sudden shock and a tense wait to find out if perhaps neither of us, just one or us, or (preferably) both of us could board the plane and fly to Oz!

I have to say the staff at Qantas Hong Kong were fabulous! On realising our predicament the check-in clerk informed us that they could apply to the Australian authorities on our behalf then and there, but could not of course guarantee whether we would be allowed visas. So they did, and whilst copies of our passports and documentation were made and quickly electronically whizzed into the ether, we were instructed to wait at Central Station. After about half and hour or so we were informed that Judith had been granted a visa but that they had not been informed about me.

Typical!

I remember once completing a life-assurance questionnaire; one of the questions was “Is your job dangerous?” I immediately thought of pastors and missionaries I knew who were daily facing persecution around the world, and hesitated for a moment before answering “It should be”. Perhaps this was now coming back to haunt me. Somewhere in the International Electronic Database there was an entry on Comrade Le Tocq J. P. which read “BEWARE: this man thinks he’s dangerous.” There’s only one thing worse than a man who’s dangerous and that’s a man who thinks he’s dangerous. At other times I would have been proud of this accolade but now there it was causing me to be barred forever from enjoying boomerangs in their natural habitat. Perhaps I would not be allowed back into the UK! Maybe I would end up marooned as some crazed, volatile, politico-religious exile in Hong Kong, without citizenship, lost in the maze of streets in Kowloon, trying to communicate in Pidgin-Cantonese “Oh Pea Roh… Me No Visa… Lob Loofah!”, proclaiming the end of the world, and thinking himself dangerous for the rest of his life.

We were informed that, because of time getting short now before take-off, we should make our way on the MTR from Central Station to Hong Kong Airport where we were to inquire at the Qantas desk whether I had been granted a visa or not. So off we went. And what a peaceful and gleeful train journey that was, as we calmly discussed whether just Judith should fly or should she wait in Hong Kong with me if it transpired that my visa was not issued in time, and whether we could afford the extra cost of new tickets. Of course we prayed a little too.

And so it was as the Qantas assistant at the airport desk recovered from the sloppy kiss I gave her (or was it ‘him’? – I never stopped long enough to check) having informed us that my visa had been granted, that Judith and I could be seen skipping through the Departures gate with time enough for a much desired espresso and a latte before we boarded the flight and headed south for the next part of our adventure towards Sydney, the land of Oz and Hillsong Church…

Q: What Have Communism, Superstition & Legalism Got in Common?

A: they all bind you through fear.

Pensées on Seeing the Effect of these Three Influences in Hong Kong

In the sense that Communism, Superstition and Legalism bind people through fear, they are all religious. Because of this they are also in a curious way attractive, at least to certain types of people, but maybe to all of us, just in varying degrees.

Many people like to be told what to do. They like not having the responsibility to think through things for themselves. I think this is a fundamental and perhaps universal human flaw.

Fear and faith also have a lot in common; in both cases you believe that what you cannot yet see will happen to you. The difference is that fear is not based on trust. In fact in many ways fear could be said to be the opposite of trust.

The word religion comes from a Latin root which means to bind. Under communism, superstition and legalism, human beings find themselves bound to act in certain ways, not in the end because they trust those who have dictated things to be so, but because they fear the consequences of resisting and not doing what they are told to do.

The kind of questions they are faced with are: What will they do to me if they find out? What will my fate be in their hands? What will others think?

Fear is not based on reason. In fact fear undermines reason to the extent that people who allow fear to dominate their lives eventually stop thinking reasonably for themselves.

Faith, especially the Christian faith, invites reason, encourages reason, is a healthy environment for reason to flourish. Faith is based on trust, and where there is trust there is progress. You can talk openly, you can even disagree. You confess that you are on a journey together and that you do not know all things but have much to learn.

A few Christians might subscribe to communism (but I don’t know any personally!) Some Christians are strangely superstitious in their behaviour. But there are many more Christians who remain sadly bound by legalism as if it were the acceptable face of being a Jesus follower. As if you blend in better with the religious world by so doing. The deeper sadness is that most do not even realise it, thinking instead that this is as good as it gets in the Christian life.

As we meandered around the Hong Kong and learned more of the diverse cultural history of the city and its environs it made me think about the legacy of these influences today. Eastern Mysticism in its plethora of manifestations, from Buddhism to Taoism/Daoism (neither of which incidentally is especially theistic) has held people in superstitious bondage to a greater or lesser degree for years; rooted in animism and with so often the common thread of reincarnation these -isms, religions and philosophies still focus on a human being’s individual moral obligation to do right things and abstain from wrong things in life in order not to be punished in the future. Thus this fear is a major motivation and the onus is totally on the individual’s responsibility to earn the right to a better life. Communism more recently has built on this culture of fear and perhaps even in its less vicious modern incarnation mixed now with the demiurge of materialism is still overshadowing Hong Kong’s future with its claws of control; in this case Big Brother is certainly watching, not only next-door but now lurking in the corridors of power waiting for an opportunity to inflict its crushing fear. It was indeed Mao Zedong who professed “Communism is not love. Communism is a hammer which we use to crush the enemy.” The fearful question is then ‘Who is the enemy?” and the supplementary one is “Have I become the enemy?”

Now the impact of Christianity sadly has also often done little to thwart, in fact sometimes it has added to, this oppressive weight of the culture of dos and don’ts, ask not and question not, tick all the boxes and feel proud; for this is the bewitching effect of legalistic Christianity, which can come in and immediately attract those who have grown accustomed to this lifestyle based on other fear-founded -isms.  The Apostle Paul goes so far as to call this “another gospel… no gospel at all” [Gal 1:6-7] It is surely not the Gospel, for it is not good news at all. And yet it has and still is masqueraded as the Gospel around the world by well-meaning ministers. It is not even new news, for it is based so much on the worldly concept of earning favour – do good = be accepted, do bad = be rejected. It just perhaps seems more holy when wrapped up in Christian paper.

The Gospel of Grace in the Lord Jesus Christ is the exact opposite. He gives rest to the heavy laden. We simply come to Him and ask. [Matt 7:7, 11:28; Luk 11:9, 13]

So it is basically this ungospel of legalism that Rob Rufus and others like him are vehemently seeking to see stamped out, and I for one am glad for it. We must pray for this glorious good news to go out far and wide, especially in a place like Hong Kong sitting, as it has for centuries, like a gateway into China and the East. But currently City Church International’s impact on Hong Kong, and on locals, let alone on China, is, in reality, minuscule. It is out of proportion to the thousands of downloads of Rob’s sermons in the rest of the world via the web. So we must pray too for churches like The Vine whose impact in Hong Kong is growing rapidly and currently have, I believe, at least the nascent strategic apostolic and administrative gifting to reach out and sustain evangelism and church-planting within Hong Kong and into mainland China. In my humble opinion these two mixed together would be a lethal weapon against the kingdom of darkness, much like Wesley and Whitefield might have been if they’d been able to work together more often!

Nate-the-dude & Amy Sarchet-Waller of The Vine

John Snelgrove of The Vine

Rob & Glenda Rufus of CCI

Hongsong – The Vine

Much like Hillsong only different… in Hong Kong, the singing city.

We were staying with Judith’s brother Graham and his wife Luise who were fantastic hosts. Since their arrival in Hong Kong some three years ago Luise has, for part of the time, been on the staff of the Vine Christian Fellowship which is where we decided to worship that afternoon, joining in with the third of their three services each Sunday. It was great to experience this church first hand; we had heard so much about it not only from Luise and Graham but also because of its support and connections with Care for Children – the Beijing based charity established and run by Rob and Liz Glover over ten years ago when they left our church in Guernsey with a call to the far East!

So after the morning with Rob Rufus at City Church International in Kowloon, then catching the Star Ferry back to Hong Kong island for a spot of lunch, we headed for The Vine Centre, which is actually not a separate building but a suite of rooms situated on the 2nd floor of Two Chinachem Plaza tower block and accessed by lift from the 1st floor office lobby. Complicated to find? Actually no, because a)

Two Chinachem Plaza - access to lifts to The Vine by the walkway with the Delifrance sign!

their church website has comprehensive directions for arriving on foot, by bus, MTR (metro) and tram, b) there is even an interactive google map on their site which allows you to put in your own address so as to produce detailed personalised directions, and c) there is a colourful band of welcomers you can’t miss in the plaza area where the lifts are situated ready to help you find your way up where you are greeted by more friendly welcome hosts. All in all they have done their best to ensure that their ‘Centre’ meeting venue, hidden as it is up a skyscraper, is as accessible and visible as possible.

Despite the fact that the location is clearly not ideal they have transformed the space in an incredible way! What they have done is to create a church meeting space using two or three floors of office space – amazing in itself that they got permission for this! They now have a vision to procure a purpose-designed facility in due course (the plans were available for viewing while we were there). In the meantime this office conversion gives them a theatre-type hall which holds about 150 people (looks like they knocked through two floors to get the height for this), and includes some clever sound-proofing, trendy unobtrusive lighting (there is no natural light), a smallish (in terms of depth) stage and excellent  AV/PA facilities. In addition there is an small lounge area, coffee-bar serving Starbucks-style drinks, reception area, and rooms for kid’s ministry, counselling, storage and a small suite of offices. It perhaps helps that one of the two leading pastors, Tony Read, was an Ove Arup engineer before entering full-time ministry!

So in order to grow and accommodate new growth the church now holds three services on a Sunday (9:30am, 11:30am – both with kids & teen ministries,  & 4:00pm – with kids ministry) We arrived with a few moments to spare and were warmly greeted by a group of teenagers who were manning the area around the access lift from the first floor walkway which is one of many walkways linking the plethora of high rise buildings in Hong Kong, and making it easier to get between one building and another without having to go down to street level each time.

There are many off-quoted urban myths about Hong Kong, such as the one about Hong Kong being so densely populated that the inhabitants would not be able to fit if they all had to stand at ground level. Clearly this is not exactly true, as there are huge areas of unbuilt space in the whole of the territory, but in a single section of the urban area like Mong Kok for example it might come close to the truth as the statistics show only 3.9 m² or 42 ft² per person, (whereas in Hong Kong as a whole it is 158 m² or 1702 ft² per person). This is certainly dense (compares to Guernsey’s around 1,190 m² or 12,800 ft² per person) and can truly feel so at certain times and in certain places, but the Hong Kong Government and planning authorities have been intuitive and forward-thinking in how they have allowed the city to be developed, especially in the last 40 years or so. As a result there are people everywhere but everything seems to flow much better than in a city like London for example. Moreover their public transport system is at least on a par with that in Paris; the trams, underground and buses coordinating seamlessly so that as long as you know where to get off and change it should not be difficult to find your way around in the urban area.

Having thus been flagged and greeted by a bunch of enthusiastic red T-shirt wearing youths we took the lift to the Vine Centre level and were similarly greeted and welcomed by more young people – the youth group were clearly on welcome ministry this week! We just had time for a brief introduction and chat with John Snelgrove one of the two Senior Pastors – who could almost be a body double for Hillsong’s Brian Houston in looks and mannerisms! The other, Tony Read was also present but already helping lead things at the front. John remembers visiting Guernsey 20 years ago and attending a Baptist church called Bethel (now Shiloh) while he was working around the UK. As the meeting hall is smaller and a more compact theatre-style than we are used to the feeling could best be described as cosy. I guess around 160 people were present as there were no empty seats visible, the rear doors were open and a few chairs spilled out into the lounge area.

The Vine band lead us in worship

The band struck up a song – I wrote in my journal “Hillsong style” – by which I meant it both looked and felt like I know Hillsong church ‘does’ worship; not in any critical sense, simply an observation: the singers were placed along the front of the stage, either side of the worship/band leader, four or five of them, a couple of yards space between each, encouraging and exhorting the congregation to enter fully into worshipping Jesus through their visible, heartfelt enthusiasm. It was loud, but not ear-splittingly. They sang familiar songs like Happy Day, Alleluia for the Lord God Almighty Reigns, God of this City (I found this quite moving to sing in Hong Kong!) After around 25 minutes the person we would call an “anchor leader” came on stage and brought the worship time to a close with some prayer, followed by a warm welcome to guests and visitors. He then announced the weekly news which took the format of an excellently presented video “Vine News” which was very funny too! So well produced – I think these are accessible on their website. Everything was on screen including a detailed ‘orientation’ for parents of their children’s ministry. Following this the anchor leader gave a short exhortation about giving prior to the offering being taken up (this was also very much in a Hillsong style). As the stewards took up the offering a moving testimony video was shown – an interview with a fairly new church member whom the Lord had healed miraculously. Matt Redman’s lovely song Befriended played in the background. We then prayed for the lady in the video who was present.

The preacher was Dawn Strachan and her text was Rev 3:7-13. If you’d asked me as she began what her profession was I would have guessed she was an unmarried school teacher. She was a good communicator, direct, made you feel like you ought to listen, funny at appropriate moments, spoke with a fairly loud voice and a fairly formidable presence on the stage. She was in fact an unmarried school teacher. Her text about Jesus’s message to the church in Philadelphia focused on one main point – that God is calling the greatness out of us; he is always in the business of doing this. She illustrated this ably from her own experience and of individuals in the church. There was a bit of camaraderie going on at one point with a few of the congregation members; being visitors we didn’t always get the joke, but it was not overplayed and demonstrated the strong sense of community and purpose that there is in this great church buzzing with potential.

There were lots of encouraging cries of amen! and right! during her preaching and it was here that I first noticed someone shout out “Come on!” – something I would hear lots more of in the following weeks at Hillsong in Australia as well as churches in America. I don’t know if this is a new phenomenon in terms of Christian affirmative quasi-imperative interjections but I certainly had not heard it in church before! And for a few moments I wondered if it was intended critically as in “Come on! Get to the point!” or even “Come on! No-one’s going to believe that!” I’ve heard many kinds of affirmative quasi-imperative interjections in my time in Charisendom, some carried over from Pentecostalism, others newly formed in the last thirty years (none as far as I’m aware from Methodism – we were lucky if we got a muffled amen after a corporate prayer back in those days!) So I was familiar with absolutely [very popular in the 90s], affirmative [Star Trek fans], agreed, all right [British], alright [US], alrighty [very US], as you say, assuredly [RSV readers], aye, certainly, exactly, good, hear-hear [slightly political], indeed, indeedy [British ex-pats in the US], ja [South Africans], most assuredly [NASB users], of course, okay, oui [Europhiles], positively, preach it [someone who's just woken up in the middle of a sermon], precisely, quite [very English], rather [Famous Five fans], right [Charismatic & Reformed], right you are [Archers fans], righto [Narnia fans], sure [middle-aged & trendy], sure thing [middle-aged & sad], true, verily verily [KJV readers], yay [teenagers], yea [teenagers trying to sound like KJV readers], yeah [thirty-somethings], yep [forty-somethings], yes, yessir [moderate Western fans], yessirree [serious Western fans], you bet [North American pentecostals], you betcha [British ex-pats trying to sound like North American pentecostals], you said it [probably either the most inane or the most profound comment anyone could make], and the like. But I had not yet come across come on! Nevertheless it grew on me and I began to practise it from time to time as we travelled. By the end of my sabbatical I was a real come on-er!

But enough of that.

Mine's a skinny grande caramel latte, half caf and half de-caf, with mocha shot and room for whipped cream and sprinkles on top...

The service finished with prayer and one final song before we followed the crowd out into the packed lounge where visitors can get a free coffee at their Starbucks-style coffee-bar, newcomers can chat to leaders and parents are reunited with their kids. We were introduced to Nathan and Amy Sarchet-Waller, a great couple who have a connection with Guernsey as Nate’s father’s family was from the island, brought up in the Elim Pentecostal Church. Paul (Nate’s dad) planted Elim Full Gospel Church a thriving Cantonese-speaking Charismatic church with a base in Hong Kong, as well as dozens of other churches planted in neighbouring SE Asia. Nate is a qualified teacher and together they serve as youth leaders at the Vine. It was fun talking with him about Guernsey, a place he obviously loves too – they usually visit once a year – so we hope to see them next time!

After a long day, we made our way back out into the humid heat of the city in search of some supper. Graham and Luise took us via Hong Kong’s great electric ladder, the Mid-Levels Escalator, to one of their favourite

Soft-crusted crustacean

Vietnamese restaurants where soft-shell crabs were on the menu – a first for most of us and a real winner – absolutely delicious!

This was then followed by a long journey – about 4 metres – across the road to a restaurant which served only desserts. Of course all the girls were in heaven, whilst Graham and I humoured them and forced ourselves to eat some fruity syllabub or other. Whilst we sat their licking our lips we observed what looked like a Hong Kong Chinese family group setting off a small incendiary device across the road on the edge of the pavement. This turned out to be a religious ritual including chants and prayers to ward of evil demons and invoke ancestral gods, after the death of a family member and the closing of a business nearby. It made a huge mess and I’m not sure what our Health and Safety officers would have said back home with cars and pedestrians passing so close by.

superstition is alive and well in Hong Kong

Nevertheless it emphasised for me the massive opportunity as well as the massive and essential mission that the Christian Church is faced with in this singing city where the temples to hedonism, materialism, consumerism as well as paganism are not hidden but there for all to see, painted in garish colours in honour of the known and unknown gods who bind this people, packed so tightly together in their cosmopolitan millions.

Absolutely disgusting... but I forced it down as a necessary sacrifice to maintain family harmony

Thank God for Hong Kong, and pray God that he moves in great revival power there!

Finding Rufus II

Simple eh? Until you get there!

It looked like a short stroll using the map on their website, maybe it was the near 100% humidity and 40°C heat, but it was soon seeming like an unguided tour hiking through back streets of Kowloon in search of City Church International’s meeting place at the YWCA.

Searching for a church in York once I stopped a guy carrying a guitar to ask for directions (I know, a man asking for directions – but I was desperate). He looked like he would know since who else but a Christian carries a guitar around, and wears slightly dull semi-formal casual clothes at 9.30 on a Sunday morning? Turned out he was a Christian and although he was not going to the church we were searching for he ably guided us there. Well, we did ask a couple of people where the YWCA was but they did not know, nor had they heard of City Church International, not surprisingly. I even tried asking “You no weh fine Wa Dub You See Eh?” or “Lob Loofah?” but I just got strange looks. That Church in York and Rob Rufus’s in Hong Kong shared a similar learning need: if you meet in an unpresupposing building, in a fairly hidden part of town and you want newcomers to visit and attend your services you need to provide a) good information about transport links  – the church website map was poor on detail and did not even mention the fact that the Number 8 bus which links perfectly with the Star Ferry terminal, stops just 50 yards away! – and b) proper signage outside.  Otherwise only the really determined will come. And we were really determined.)

Eventually, overheated (it was very very hot this Sunday morning and the humidity was near 100% again) and somewhat flustered – definitely in need of grace – we found a building which looked like it was a YWCA centre. “I think this is it” I announced. I was at the head of the trail of course (which included Judith, Grace, Emily and Luise) with my trusty iPhone GPS google maps sat-nav – although between tall buildings it was not that useful for detail! We felt like we’d just walked 1000 miles, and soaked with perspiration I declared that even if this was not the right place we were going to go in and hold church there ourselves as it was at least likely to have air-conditioning and refreshment.

Thankfully it was CCI’s meeting place and once we had cooled down and glugged some water we entered the hall. In reality the building is not hard to find when you know where it is!

We were about 10 minutes early and although there were no signs outside the building, as you entered the hall there was a table with posters and some of Rob’s audio CDs. A pre-service prayer meeting had started a few minutes before at the front of the chairs around the worship band. About 30 people including the worship band, gathered around Rob and Glenda and were evidently praying for the service. There were no welcome stewards evident in the hall so we quietly found some seats in middle and sat down.

The hall has a high ceiling conference room with potential seating for perhaps a few hundred, it looked like there was a sectioned off balcony area too. Chairs for about 150 were arranged theatre-style facing the stage, and at the back behind the middle block we were sitting in there were toddlers’ toys on a mat and a 18 inch high children’s paddling pool filled with water, which at first I thought was an innovative touch – the kids could splash around during worship! (Actually it was there to be used for baptisms which occurred at the end of the service, but during our time of worship one toddler ventured towards the sides of the pool – it was not the inflatable but the ‘floppy’ type – and promptly fell in! I had moved to the back during worship to take a couple of photos and saw this happening in my camera lens. Water began to flow out in the direction of the PA and videoing equipment! I ventured towards the toddler to pick him up, but the toddler’s mum, who had been gloriously ‘lost in wonder’ somewhere while her child baptised himself, quickly came to his rescue and helped in the clean up operation which ensued as we appropriately sang a song with a line about “washing me clean”!)

We used to run a prayer time at the front of our meeting hall just before the service started. I was thinking about this as I observed theirs now from a visitor’s point of view. We moved it into a side room when someone suggested that it was not very visitor friendly as newcomers could feel awkward not knowing whether they should join in or not, whether they could talk or should sit quietly. At the time I remember responding with something dismissive like “Of course visitors are welcome to join in – it’s not exclusive!” But you get a new perspective when you’re on the receiving end, and there is a marked difference between visitors being welcome and visitors being made welcome. Actually we did feel a tad awkward and excluded as the group at the front got louder and louder in their excitement in the Spirit; and we were Christians – not sure how an unbeliever or an newcomer would feel (cf. Paul’s concern for ‘outsiders’ and the ‘uninitiated’ in 1 Cor 14:16, 23ff). There were a few other folk milling around, setting up tables for refreshments and children’s ministry stuff, but strangely no-one spoke to us until just before the band struck up when Glenda came over to say hello and introduce herself to Judith, Luise and the girls. She was warm and friendly and made us feel immediately at home.

Worshippers at City Church International

The meeting was scheduled to start at 10am, but there were plenty of empty chairs! Hmm… this reminds me of somewhere I thought. About 5 minutes later the band struck up a song and people stood to join in. The music was lively, Jesus-focused, and heart-felt. The mainly familiar songs ranged from Hillsong to Chris Tomlin. We even sang Jason Upton’s In Your Presence. As with the home-group meeting the participation in this section was all sung; prophetic songs, singing in the Spirit, sung prayers, participants were singers and those leading at the front using the mics – the music continued in the background throughout. After 20 minutes Glenda Rufus invited us to take our seats, then she welcomed newcomers and guests (including us) and shared the notices for the week. She invited a guy who had been with them for the majority of the 5 or 6 years the church has existed there to give his testimony and be prayed for because he was returning home, which I think was somewhere in South Africa. He had been initially drawn to the church because he’d heard there were South Africans there.

By now there were around 70-80 people present and Glenda announced that the children would be leaving with their leaders. There were around a dozen who left for the children’s group which was held in another room.

Rob got up to preach. I will try and give a synopsis of the notes I took because it was a timely preach for the church and also reassured me in some matters we have had to face as leaders. He based his sermon on Romans 5. He started out by saying that this had been a tough year for them as a church. They had lost a young man through suicide, but he reminded us that many have been saved from suicide by the grace of God. Nevertheless Rob had just completed a teaching series on “Dealing with Hardships” in response to the troubled times they had been through. He now wanted to return to the topic of the Grace of God, mainly he said, because it also fundamental to handling issues like this because grace is the only way God relates to us all the time. He emphasised that grace is not about living selfishly but living for the benefit of others. The Bible does not speak of cheap grace – i.e. sinning as much as we want; nor any sort of distorted grace – e.g. seeking our own pleasure at the expense of others. The issue is: the free gift of righteousness. This is not earned, it cannot be earned; it is a gift. But there are still Christians who sadly believe the opposite and this affects the way they relate to God. E.g. They think “When I sin God punishes me; when I’m good he’s gracious.” No! In fact that is the world’s way of relating to us, not God’s.

Rob read again as he had done Thursday night (see earlier post) the prophetic word he’d written out about a new season of revelation on grace and the gift of righteousness. He emphasised a section about being unchangeably, perfectly qualified to rightstanding with God… That some folk are waiting for a greater thing. But that God says “There is no greater thing I have to give you… If there is a greater thing I have to give you it is a greater REVELATION of that righteousness… So I’m inviting you to a further lifting of the veil. A supernatural grace avalanche will sweep the earth as an international tsunami of glory.” In his letters to Timothy Paul makes it clear that prior to his conversion, when he was a Jew under the Law, he was a violent man [I Tim 1:13]. Under the law you are angry, grumpy, self-righteous. Religion is satanic, it’s the same power that deceived Adam & Eve. Violence caused by religion is satanic. Jesus brought a revolution: He was not a wimp. Jesus lost his temper. He was a real man with testosterone. He got angry when it was appropriate: he got angry with religion and religious people. A revolutionary challenges the ruling legalistic Pharoahs who are controlling things for the benefit of a small elite.

Genesis chapters 1-3: In Eden (which in Hebrew means “place of pleasure”) the fruit of the Tree was the Knowledge of good & evil. The deception was about being righteous apart from God – knowing good and evil without God.  i.e. being self-righteous. They were actually already like God (imago dei – made in His image) and with God, in His presence; the Devil’s temptation was to be like God without God. He said they could know righteousness apart from God. To know how I stand with the Father I don’t look at myself I look at Jesus. I no longer have an old nature but now a new nature that wants not to sin. But even if we do sin the Holy Spirit is there to help us out of it.

He pointed out that Rom 5:12.ff makes clear that your sin did not bring sin into the world. Neither did your sin kill you or condemn you. It was through Adam that sin came into the world and condemns us. He argued from v13 that despite the fact that God does not count sin where there is no law, however death still reigned even though they didn’t sin in the same way as Adam by breaking a commandment. They sinned because in Adam all have sinned. This is so because Paul argues in vv14-19 “How much more will those who received the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ.”

Rob stated that he did not hate the law of God he loved the law!  But not because it makes him more holy (Col 2 – law is cancelled to those who are in Christ) but rather the law was given to increase sin! (No one is going to stop sinning altogether until Jesus comes again.) The law actually incites us to sin. So he asked the question which sin did Jesus die for? Our sin in breaking the law, or Adam’s sin? It was Adam’s sin [N.B. actually I think it was both - i.e. all our sins, viz. those which separate us from God - our 'conditional' and 'positional' sin we are born with, as well as the sins we commit 'in the flesh' because of this condition - which we do need to continue to confess and repent of as the Spirit reveals. Cf. Isa 53:6, Heb 10:17, 1 Jn 1:9, but his point is valid in this context because it is in Adam that we inherit our enmity with God - Jon]. Because in Adam all sinned and inherited death. But no-onene was aware because we thought we were OK through self-righteousness. v21. The cure is infinitely greater than the problem. Once that problem is cured  people need to be made aware of this fact. But with our new nature we learn new joys and pleasures and we don’t desire to sin. Rob said while he knew a Christian was free to sin without condemnation, he said because of the new nature he had no desire to sin – “It’s like a third shoe” he quipped, “I don’t need it, don’t know what to do with it.”

Baptisms in the paddling pool!

The service finished with a song and then we celebrated the baptisms of three people who had recently joined the church. This is where the paddling pool came in handy although it was so shallow those getting baptised had to sit in it and were dunked backwards, just about getting totally immersed with a little effort! After the service tea, coffee, biscuits and buns were served. We stayed and chatted for a while and I talked briefly with a couple of the worship team members and with Rob and Glenda again.

Rob & Glenda Rufus

It was good to get a bit of background on this church, where they’re at and where they are currently heading. Much falls on the shoulders of Rob and Glenda who really run the place. They suffer from a transient membership which many city churches do – people come, especially ex-pats, stay for a couple of years then move on. So it is not easy to build consistently. In addition Rob and Glenda travel a lot, speaking at conferences and churches in their network New Covenant Ministries International, as well as hosting conferences themselves. Through these means they seek to get the grace message spread abroad, but it does mean that they are not always around which for the only full-time pastor/elder in the church must be tricky, especially when Glenda is basically the church administrator.

Speaking to those who attended the home group and others on the Sunday morning, the church seems to have what I have sometimes referred to as a ‘Field of Dreams‘ vision. Field of Dreams was a slightly bizarre 1989 movie about an Iowa corn farmer who has a kind of epiphany involving a dead baseball player, and hearing voices he interprets them as a command to build a baseball diamond in his fields. When he does so the Chicago Black Sox team arrive and play there. It includes (apparently) great sporting heroes like Shoeless Joe Jackson (sounds like Baseball’s equivalent of Seasick Steve!) and the immortal line whispered by The Voice “If you build it, he will come.”

In the early days of our church and my experience in what was then called the ‘Restoration movement‘ we had a Field of Dreams vision for the local church; we believed that all we needed to do was to build local church right, with the correct ingredients, Baptism in the Holy Spirit, freedom from denominational structures, New Testament teaching, apostolic and prophetic leadership and no dead religion… If your built according to this pattern then ‘He would come‘ and dwell there, and by implication ‘they would come‘, i.e. the lost would automatically start getting saved, the church would grow and revival would follow.

As a result most of the growth we had at that time was from existing Christians, disgruntled with their dead church life, leaving one church and joining ours which was marginally better. We did some occasional outreach and evangelism but we did not really engage with the culture around us, learning its language in order to communicate the Good News effectively. And so our church life did not really attract non-Christians and the few that ventured in, found it intriguing at best but confusing in the main and difficult to interpret. We were very inward focused – what we did satisfied us and other Christians who were looking for ’something deeper’ but did little to enable us to be salt and light, or to fulfill the Great Commission or impact and transform the world around us.

I was not disappointed by my visit to City Church International, for Rob and Glenda are wonderful warm people; Rob is a powerful communicator who has a gift of putting ideas into pithy little saying often using rhyme, alliteration or assonance, which make them humorous and easy to remember; they are both genuine exhorters of the flock and clearly father and mother the work – a trait which the Lord would impress upon both Judith and me over and over again in Australia; and the congregation is like an extended family, totally supportive of their ‘parents’, convinced of the doctrines of grace and living in the good of this. Nevertheless I was surprised that the church was not larger, given Rob’s inspiring zeal, and not more conscious of the need to be seeker-accessible given that it has been in existence for over 5 years and Hong Kong is a city of several millions.

But we left filled with the presence of Jesus and touched by the love of his people, and caught a passing Number 8 bus back to Central Hong Kong via the Star Ferry.