Mike McLoughlin's Blog

Shutting down this Blog

Mike McLoughlin — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 11:11:00 -0700

I am shutting down this blog. It will remain as an archive of previous blog posts. My new blog can be found at http://mcloughlin.posterous.com. Please feel free to visit me there.

Rereading A Hidden Wholeness by Parker Palmer

Mike McLoughlin — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 20:52:00 -0700

I am rereading Parker Palmer's book. He begins with the picture of a farmer who ties a rope from the barn to the backdoor at the first sign of a winter blizzard so as to prevent becoming lost in his own backyard during a whiteout.

I like Palmer's optimism that the blizzard of the world can never overturn the order of the soul though it might obscure it for a while.

I feel the need to have that spiritual rope to guide me home in the blizzard of my life which is in full swing right now!

Here is the quote: "So it is easy to believe the poet's claim that "the blizzard of the world" has overturned "the order of the soul," easy to believe that the soul—that life-giving core of the human self, with its hunger for truth and justice, love and forgiveness—has lost all power to guide our lives. But my own experience of the blizzard, which includes getting lost in it more often than I like to admit, tells me that it is not so. The soul's order can never be destroyed. It may be obscured by the whiteout. We may forget, or deny, that its guidance is close at hand. And yet we are still in the soul's backyard, with chance after chance to regain our bearings.
This book is about tying a rope from the back door out to the barn so that we can find our way home again. When we catch sight of the soul, we can survive the blizzard without losing our hope or our way. When we catch sight of the soul, we can become healers in a wounded world—in the family, in the neighborhood, in the workplace, and in political life—as we are called back to our "hidden wholeness" amid the violence of the storm." (Hidden Wholeness, p. 2)
Cheers!
Mike
_____________________
Sent from my BlackBerry

Is God GOOD? - The Shack by William P. Young .

Mike McLoughlin — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 10:38:00 -0800

"He could see a deep sadness in her eyes. I am not who you think I am, Mackenzie. I don't need to punish people for sin. Sin is its own punishment, devouring you from the inside. It's not my purpose to punish it; it's my joy to cure it."

Some would say that it IS God's will to punish sin in all its forms. Sin is lawbreaking and there is always a penalty exacted otherwise the law is without effect. Without the threat of punishment the Gospel loses its saving impact. I mean why would we need a Saviour from sin's penalty if there was no punishment? (see Prodigal Magazine review on the problems with the theology in The Shack). So I take issue with Young's softness on sin if that is what he is trying to do here.

BUT I don't think that is what Young is trying to do with this exchange. He is dealing with a perception issue on the part of MacKenzie.

Later, we discover that Mack's big question is NOT does God punish sin BUT is God GOOD?

And if God is good HOW do I know that given my awful life experience especially given the loss of a child.

That is what is at issue in the book. It is the age old question - how can a GOOD GOD permit BAD things to happen to GOOD people?

Dusting Off My Blog

Mike McLoughlin — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 16:11:00 -0800

I am starting to feel the itch to blog again. It might or might not be a regular thing, but at least I think I can start posting some new material here.

Come on New Life! It is time to HOPE again!

Mike McLoughlin — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 10:46:00 -0800

This Sunday morning Rebekah Croker (New Life Children’s Leader) preached on the subject of HOPE. The message was entitled Hope, A Living Conversation. The passage referenced was from Hebrews 6:19-20. “We have this HOPE as an anchor for our soul…”

Rebekah challenged New Life Church to HOPE. She lined up children, youth & adults with balloons that spelled out the verse: Hope deferred makes the heart sick… (Proverbs 13:12a). The whole morning was devoted to stirring our hearts to hope again.

New Life church has been through a season of much disappointment. Disappointment in finances. Disappointment in relationships. Disappointment in leadership. Our hopes as a church for the glorious promises that God has bestowed upon us have remained unrealized. Our hearts have grown sick with disappointment because our hopes have been deferred.

Yet Christian faith is all about HOPE! The world lacks HOPE! We have what the world lacks! Is your heart feeling sick? Do feel your HOPE has been deferred? Then you need more HOPE!

Rebekah exhorted us to HOPE again!

This happened not just with words. There was a HOPE WALL where people wrote their hopes and dreams. Sara Gagnon painted colorful expressions of HOPE on a canvass on the stage. The youth worship team led us in a reprise of Isaiah 61 – a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair… Church youth acted out various stories of HOPE from the Bible including the story of Abraham and God’s promise of Isaac. They built a bridge of HOPE with chairs. The Master’s Commission Young Adults group from the USA did a sketch on the Christian HOPE!

Nadira Deschner joined Rebekah to tag team the preach reading Biblical passages concerning HOPE! Romans 4:18;Romans 5:1-5; and Romans 8:24-25. (For more reading see: Romans 15:4; Colossians 1:5; and 1 Peter 3:15). (Roll over the texts with your mouse to see the verses). Nadira showed us painting of a morning sunrise she had done. On it were written the words of Jeremiah from Lamentations 3:21-23 - Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: Because of the LORD's great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.

Rebekah challenged us to HOPE in God and not in HORSES! Horses are a VAIN HOPE! Proverbs 33:17. Horses are all those things we tend to hope in such as technology, money, real estate, friends, family, etc.. These are vain hopes, since it is only God who can truly save. He did that by sending Jesus and through his death he has made a way for us to enter his presence.

So in Jesus we have a new and living hope! Even if there is no reason to HOPE we can HOPE against hope because Jesus has opened up the way to GOD!

In conclusion, the whole morning was a kaleidoscope of intergenerational expressions of HOPE. It was full of colour, sound, and imagination from all of the generations. It was not simply a conversation on HOPE. It was HOPE embodied in music, art, drama and visual demonstration.

Thank you Rebekah for calling us back to HOPE! As Rebekeh exhorted us: New Life church, IT IS TIME TO HOPE AGAIN!

This message stirred much passion in me concerning HOPE! Thus it is fitting that I relaunch this Blog.

One drawback, though, was the absence of the HOPE OF RESURRECTION. I may have missed it but I did not hear it mentioned. I think this is a common problem with us Charismatics. We get the part in the gospel about Jesus, signs, wonders, the cross and heaven, but we don’t seem to get the resurrection.

It is often tagged on as a post script to the story we tell. I see this often in YWAM. Whenever the good news is shared with groups, the truncated version of the gospel often leaves the resurrection out.

That is too bad, because when you really boil it all down, the exciting about Christianity, even more than forgiveness of sin, even more than access to God’s presence, even more than heaven, is the HOPE of a RESURRECTION to life eternal in a new creation.

Contrary to popular opinion we do not spend eternity in disembodied heaven but in a new material reality with new physical bodies that will enjoy new heavens and a new earth. (Revelation 21). That is why Jesus taught us to pray, your kingdom come and your will be done ON EARTH as it is in heaven (Matthew 6:9-10;)

I have written about that already in this article When Heaven Invades Earth Twenty Four Seven! Grounding the Charismatic Hope in the Resurrection.

Now let the conversation on HOPE at New Life begin.

My Blog is on Hold while I sort out some Family, Business & Church stuff

Mike McLoughlin — Sat, 19 May 2007 22:21:00 -0700

I have life matters that occupy my time right now. Please stay tuned. I will be back at writing this blog soon.

Canadian Christianity Consumed by the Holy Spirit?

Mike McLoughlin — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 12:01:00 -0700

Watch for the book mentioned in this article. There is such a thing as a text for Pentecostal Theology after all!

The StarPhoenix
10 Mar 2007

Ecstatic spirit of Pentecostalism gaining strength in Canada
CanWest News Service

OTTAWA — The first time Michael Wilkinson saw Pentecostals at worship, he was a teenager, dragged along by his parents. “These people are all crazy,” he came away thinking. “I’m not ever going back.”

But then the kids in the youth group asked him to some concerts. The music was terrific and the teens were fun, not losers or hopeless squares. “You can be cool and go to church,” he thought.

Now 41, he is both Pentecostal and associate professor of sociology specializing in Pentecostalism at Trinity Western University in Langley, B.C.

He maintains the Canadian Pentecostal Research Network and is compiling a study of Canadian Pentecostals, one of the first books of its kind. His colleagues are pressing him to finish so their graduate students can use it to undertake studies of their own.

Canada has about 4.4 million renewalists — some 500,000 classical Pentecostals, members of churches developed in the early 1900s; 2.5 million charismatics, people who are “spirit filled” but stay within their denomination; and about 1.3 million neocharismatics, or neo-Pentecostals, a movement that began 10 to 20 years ago among people who want to steer clear of some of the strictures of traditional churches.

Renewalists don’t all share the same beliefs or worship practices, but they are united by their experience of God — “an intense, direct and overwhelming spiritual experience centred in the Holy Spirit,” says Wilkinson, quoting from Frank Macchia’s Baptized in the Spirit: A Global Pentecostal Theology, one of several new books coming out on the subject.

The Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements says Pentecostal/charismatic Christianity is characterized by “exuberant worship; an emphasis on subjective religious experience and spiritual gifts; claims of supernatural miracles, signs and wonders — including a language of spirituality (as it is experienced), rather than a theology; and a mystical ‘life in the Spirit’ by which they daily live out the will of God.”

Psychology might describe it as magical thinking. Political science or sociology might see it as “enchantment,” a worldview that embraces wonder, belittled in western civilization but very much alive in other countries.

Renewal resides at the mystical end of the religious spectrum and much of it is an outright mystery, which is just fine with its adherents. For them, reason has its limits.

As one renewalist minister describes it, “When philosophers and theologians get to do enough thinking or talking, they eventually run themselves in a circle. . . . They’ve bumped their brains on the ceiling of a mystery, but don’t want to admit it, so they keep talking.”

Probably the most mysterious are the “gifts” of speaking in tongues, prophecy, deliverance and healing, and the signs and wonders, or modern-day miracles, “a foretaste of the coming kingdom of God,” according to Wilkinson.

Evangelicals are also turbo-charged in their worship but they believe the miracles in the Bible were intended simply to help the Apostles get the church started. Most don’t believe they are available to believers today. Pentecostals do.

Since Pentecostals take their name from a passage in the Bible in which the Holy Spirit imbues the apostles with special gifts and powers, their outlook is hardly surprising.

Tags: Pentecostalism, worship, Pentecostal, sociology, Canadian, renewal, charismatic, spirit+filled, Holy+Spirit, Christianity, supernatural, miracles, signs, wonders, tongues, healing, kingdom, God, Evangelicals

Biblical Interpretation for Dummies

Mike McLoughlin — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 12:29:00 -0800

Is it the Truth?

That is the question my pastor would always ask me whenever I spoke publicly to our congregation. It was his concern that those who would presume to be teachers of God's people, be so acquainted with God's word that what they said was the truth, and nothing but the truth!

This concern for truth was engrained into me when I enrolled along with some other young men for a preaching course taught by our pastor at our church in 1992. We were to craft a sermon and deliver it to the rest of the group. My message was entitled, "How Then Should We Give?" My main point was that giving was a sacred duty for Christians and a measure of their spiritual maturity, so we had a spiritual obligation to give.

In my application, I concluded that since God's gift of salvation is offered us without the condition of our doing anything to deserve it, we should offer salvation likewise, we should give to the undeserving. I found support in a proof text from Matthew 5.42: "Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you." A prooftext is a verse taken out of its context to support an assertion.

In case my audience did not understand my point, I concluded with the application that if a drunk on the street corner asks you for money for more booze you have a sacred obligation to give it to him! I backed that up with a proof text from Matthew 7:1: "Judge not, lest ye be judged."

After coming to that conclusion, you may well imagine what my pastor's response was! Also, the group was somewhat aghast at my application, since our church was located downtown and one often passed by panhandlers on the way into the building.

My pastor had some questions for me. Is that the truth, Mike? Is it really true that we ought not to judge when it comes to giving? Does the Scripture really teach that? Is it really true that Christians must give to anyone who asks them? Is that what Jesus was really saying?

These are very important questions to say the least. My simple reading of the text had led me to a rather strange conclusion. While it is true that giving is a spiritual discipline for Christians, if I had taken the time to research the rest of Scripture, I would have discovered that God loves a cheerful giver who gives voluntarily and not under obligation. (2 Corinthians 9:7)

So here I was standing before the group, preaching from the Bible and laying down an authoritative application that was simply wrong! Perhaps it was fine for me to do it, to empty my pockets to every passer-by who holds out his hand, but for me to preach that to our congregation and lay that burden on them as a matter of gospel truth was inappropriate.

In my naïve desire to read out of the text its proper application, I had read into the text something that was not there. I could not be faulted for bringing to the text a compassionate heart for the poor, an understanding about our duty to love our neighbors unconditionally, a spirit of extravagant generosity and a zealous desire to hear God's voice and obey it implicitly. However, I was wrong to discern that my Biblical interpretation was a universal principle and sacred obligation put on all Christians by their Lord. I believe there are universal truths in the Bible that require our acceptance and obedient application, but giving money every time someone asks was not one of them!

How did I get mixed up like this? What happened in my reading and thinking that led me to such a conclusion? Since I was so sincere, zealous and prayerful and thought I was following the leading of the Holy Spirit, how could I have gone so wrong? These are questions every believer must face at one point in their spiritual journey when they are confronted with the fact that they have not only erred in their interpretation of Scripture, but have also erred in its application.

Sincere believers will inevitably get it wrong when it comes to biblical interpretation as I did. Instead of giving up on it altogether, we ought to pick ourselves up from the dust of confusion and learn how to interpret the Bible better because it is an important responsibility of every Christian to "rightly handle the word of truth" (2 Timothy 2:15).

So, let me share with you what I have learned over the years concerning the interpretation of Scripture. I call this my ten lessons in Biblical Interpretation for Dummies.

I. Evangelicals believe that The Bible is the final authority for faith and practice. (See National Association of Evangelicals Statement of Faith).

Everything needs to be judged by the standard of Scripture as found in the Christian Bible. In no way can we sit over top of Scripture and pass judgment on it, selecting passages that we approve of and ignoring others that we do not approve of. We must always sit under it and allow it to "read us" as we read it, otherwise we become the authority and not the Bible. So we interpret our experience in the light of Scripture and not the other way around.

The reason it is our authority is that it is God's truth. That is, what Scripture says, God says. It is God's revelation of his mind and heart to humankind. It comes to us through a written text which is 'God breathed' as Pauls says in 2 Timothy 3:16-17.

All scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. -- ...

Faith At Work Blog has moved to BlogHarbor

Mike McLoughlin — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 00:55:00 -0800

The Faith at Work Blog has moved to Blog Harbor.

Click here to visit the new location.

I will continue to publish my personal blog here.

Faith at work articles will appear at the new location.

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Thank you for supporting both my personal blog and the new Faith at Work Blog.

An Apology for Back Seat Driving

Mike McLoughlin — Fri, 05 Jan 2007 13:40:00 -0800

No one likes a back seat driver least of all one criticizes your driving style loudly and in public. I confess I am guilty of backseat driving. In my last post (Establishing Trust Through Emotionally Healthy Leadership), I started out by speaking up about being an emotionally healthy church but I ended it with back seat driving comments for church leadership. That was not appropriate. I am grateful to those on the Leadership team who gently pointed it out to me. I apologize and ask for forgiveness.

Leadership has a hard enough job sorting through all the pastoral and governance concerns to worry about me telling them how they ought to run the church. They are the ones with the responsibility not me, so it was fair for a number of them to express their concerns and feelings about my directive comments. I should have addressed these comments directly to them rather than posting them at the end of my blog.

The problem with doing that in a blog on the Internet is that once you say something it immediately becomes public property and you can't really undo what you did.

So I need to make it a part of the public record that I was wrong to be critical or directive in my writing about transitions at our church. I stand behind and pray for the leadership and I wish them well as they navigate through some difficult waters.

Apologizing publicly when you have screwed up is actually one of the things recommended by Peter Scazzero in his book The Emotionally Healthy Church. It is a part of his chapter on Living in Brokenness and Vulnerability.

However, I don't recommend screwing up just so you can learn to be broken about it. Better to avoid the screw up! So one of my new year's resolution for 2007 is no more back seat driving! Feel free to point it out when you think I am doing it!