Musical Mondays (IV)

Feel

Feel, did you feel the isolation?
feel through the fragments, feel through the glare
steal, did you steal a sensation?
‘cause nothing was there, nothing left to feel

wandering the shadows and wandering the alleys
and sweeping out the corners of my heart
looking for a question and looking for an answer
and looking for a place to start

feel, did you feel the isolation?
feel through the fragments, feel through the glare
steal, did you steal a sensation?
‘cause nothing was there, nothing left to feel

nothing left to long for and nothing left to wonder
and nothing left to teach us how to wait
but thirty shining seconds like thirty silver pieces
like thirty burning tears of fate

feel, can you feel / feel can you feel
what’s left for us, what’s left there
 if our hearts have grown cold
what’s left for us, what’s left there
if we can’t feel our souls

feel, did you feel the isolation?
feel through the fragments, feel through the glare
steal, did you steal a sensation?
‘cause nothing was there, nothing left to feel?

Saturday Morning Sermons (IV)

This another excerpt from our sermon series in Acts.  The passage was Acts19:11-20, looking at Paul's "deliverance ministry" in Ephesus. 

My earliest and most vivid experiences with "deliverance ministries" was listening with chagrin-tinged flabberghastment to Bob Larson broadcast "call-in exorcisms" (and then advertise a wide range of expensive Christian "resources" between calls) on the local Christian radio station back in the day, so I've always been pretty cautious with this stuff.  But one of the things about a Biblical preaching ministry is that the text chooses us, we don't choose the text, so I had to exorcise my own Bob-Larson-demons and work through this one honestly. 

You can listen to the full sermon here, but here's a key insight that was really significant for me while I was working on the sermon:

I mentioned already that I don’t have a lot of experience in this area, so I’ve been doing a fair bit of research this week, and one of the things I keep coming across is that spiritual deliverance is about truth. Not power.

This is vital for us, because we’ve grown up with images of Linda Blair twisting her head around in the Exorcist and we figure that casting out demons is about some sort of power struggle with the devil. I mean: That’s certainly what the Seven Sons of Sceva thought it was about, wasn’t it? But when Jesus starts to set the captives free in Ephesus, notice it doesn’t happen through power.

Freedom comes through truth.

At least, that’s what it looks like in verses 18 and 19. It says that “many of those who believed now came and openly confessed their evil deeds. A number who had practiced sorcery brought their scrolls together and burned them publicly.”

Confessing the lies of Satan. Publicly renouncing them. And then claiming the truth. That’s what deliverance looked like in Ephesus: people bringing the lies of Satan out into the open—rejecting them—and then discovering the truth about who they are and how they’re loved in Christ.

Neil Anderson puts it like this: “In a power encounter, the struggle is between some outside agent and the demonic stronghold. But it’s not power that sets the captive free, it’s truth. Living in defeat, believers often falsely conclude that they need power, so they look for some religious experience that promises power. ... [But] the power of the Christian lies in the truth. ... In contrast, the power of Satan is in the lie, and once you expose the lie, you break his power.”

Jesus himself said it like this: you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.

5 Ways Riding Your Bike is a Spiritual Activity

My older brother inspires me in a number of ways, but lately it's been to cycle more.  He recently completed a cycling tour of epic (by my definition of epic, anyways) proportions.  So inspired was I that a few weeks ago I lowered my bike from the rafters of my garage, replaced an inner tube or two (yes it's been that long), and made a personal commitment to start biking to work.  ("I'm a cyclist now!" is how I announced this decision to my wife, to which she lovingly replied:  "Why is it always all or nothing with you?"  I was sporting a bright red cycling jersey and an aerodynamic helmet at the time.)

Anyways, on the ride to work this morning I was mulling all this over and it occurred to me that, even though we don't normally group it with the regular spiritual disciplines, there are a number of ways in which cycling is actually spiritual act.  Consider the following:

1.  Spirit-Body Connectedness.  I know this sounds a bit new-age-y, but hear me out.  Most biblical scholars would agree that biblical anthropology tends to eschew dualism when it comes to the body/spirit relationship.  In other words, the way the Bible sees you, you don't have a body, you are a body; neither do you have a spirit, you are a spirit.  One of the curious things about the technological world we inhabit, I think, is that this unity has become obscured-- reality has become "virtual," communication disembodied, and travel (hint, hint) disconnected from the body we once used to get there.  But because we are embodied spirits and en-spirited bodies, this disconnect has significant, (though often unnoticed) implications for our spiritual health.  By requiring the body to do the actual work of getting around again, cycling helps to re-connect that disconnect, reminding the spirit that the body is far more than just the disposable cup it got poured into.

2.  Stewardship.  Stewardship is the theological word we use to underline the fact that all we have and all we are really belongs to God, and we will give an account to him in the end for what we did with it.  Usually it's used in reference to our money, not cycling, but again, hear me out.  A) cycling is good exercise and B) regular exercise keeps us healthy and C) as a rule when you tend to be more productive with your time and energy when you're healthy.  Ergo, cycling is good stewardship.

3.  Social De-fragmentation.  We don't always notice it in the individualistic west, but the Bible places a premium value on healthy, well-connected community.  Car culture, by contrast, places a low value on healthy well-connected community.  Garages that gobble up front-porches and highways crammed with single-passenger vehicles all roaring along at break-neck speeds by themselves together make for fragmented communities.  But I noticed on the ride to work today:  the kids waiting for the school bus with mom waved at me, the other cyclist I passed gave me a nod, I was going slow enough to notice the senior out walking her dog, and in all this I felt like the disk-drive of my soul was being defragmented.  Community starts, it occurred to me, when we're going slow enough to notice each other.

4.  Green footprints.  I won't save the planet by cycling.  I know this.  But biblical scholar or not, you'd have to agree that a cyclist creates far less pollution than a motorist going the same distance.  If you've read terra incognita enough, you'll know I've said a lot about the way Christianity should translate into a healed and healing relationship with the earth, but lately I've felt deeply convicted that I'm not actually walking the talk.  Cycling is a small start, and if nothing else it renews my convictions.

5.  Simplicity.  Un-business, I'm beginning to believe, could become the radical new spiritual discipline of the 21st Century.  Everyone is so maxed out with calendar-debt that items1-4 seem next to impossible to achieve.  Who's got the time for healthy, connected, green community that stewards God's resources well?  Cycling, I'm learning, requires me to slow down, and in this, too, it is a spiritual discipline.

A Bottle of Pop for Eddy Bearnaise

I can still remember that day standing in front of the pop cooler at the local Mac’s store when I realized I’d been had. I was around 14, and reaching for a bottle of 7-Up, when right in mid-reach it suddenly dawned on me that I hated the taste of 7-Up. I’d only started drinking it a couple of months ago, but in those last few months I’d bought 7-Up regularly and exclusively and I couldn’t for the life of me say how it had become my soft-drink of choice.

It was mystery enough to freeze me for a moment in front of the cooler, trying to figure it out. And in that brief moment of soul-searching, the sudden knowledge that I’d been duped hit me on the noggin like the rear-end of a south bound bumble-bee meeting a north-bound wind-shield at 100 clicks.

That summer, 7-Up had started a new advertising campaign, which those of you who were teens in the 80s may remember as well as I do. There were 4 or 5 different spots, but the storyline was always essentially the same. A young, free-spirited, and gorgeous (I can only assume from the way girls threw themselves at him) dude driving around in a green convertible finds himself in a spot of trouble, which resolves itself through some ironic twist or other that leaves him with a pretty girl on his arm and a can of celebratory 7-Up in his hand.

In one spot, for instance, he pulls up to a crossroads next to a guy and his girlfriend riding “two up” on a racing bike. The biker gestures ominously that he wants to race, and our hero gives his engine an aggressive roar or two to accept the challenge. The girl, a pretty read-head, we learn when she gets off the bike and removes her helmet, pulls a bandana from her back pocket to serve as a starting flag. Engines roar, the flag drops, and when the dust clears we discover: the green car sitting unmoved at the crossroads and the biker nowhere to be seen. Our hero grins rakishly at the girl, who smiles knowingly in return and sidles into the passenger seat. As they share a 7 up in the closing frame, the tag line is heard over a rocked-up 80s theme song: “Are you up for it?”

In case this isn’t jarring any memories, I did track down one of the spots on YouTube, which I offer here for posterity’s sake (and for the sake of the cringing it’s likely to induce):



The semiotic associations here are so blunt they barely merit the term “subliminal”: irresistible chick-magnets who are too-cool-for-words drink 7-Up; ergo, to become one yourself, make 7-Up your soft-drink of choice. To a 38 year-old, the message is laughably transparent, but to a 14 year-old boy—a relatively new and terribly self-conscious immigrant to that strange land called Pubescence—a fourteen year-old boy for whom the idea (let alone the possibility) of being an irresistible chick-magnet had only just appeared on the horizon of consciousness, for a fourteen year-old boy, like I say, the implications were almost mythopoeic. What separates you from stunning sexual success is simply a matter of the soft-drink you consume.

So drink 7-Up.

And I did, for about 4 months, even though I hated it and didn’t know why, until that day I caught myself in the act and understood: I was trying to buy the sexual self-assuredness that those ads had promised me in 7-Up. I didn’t use those words at 14, of course, but I realized that I was trying (vainly) to become the man in those commercials by drinking the soft-drink he was hawking.

Now, it’s not just because of the undertones in the commercial’s tag line (“Are you up for it?”) that I’m thinking about 7-Up and Freud today. I watched a documentary called “Century of the Self” a while ago, which was about the work of Sigmund Freud’s nephew back in the 1920s. Though Edward Bearnaise’s name is not nearly as household a word as his uncle’s, he was the first person to take uncle Sigmund’s psychological theories about our subconscious impulses and apply them in an intentional way to manipulate the masses. In particular, he was the guy who showed corporations that they could get people to want things they didn’t need by linking products to their unconscious desires. Those 7-Up spots are the direct heirs of Eddy Bearnaise’s legacy.

But here’s the really fascinating part of this story, and the reason for my little stroll down memory lane to the local Mac’s store. Besides the obvious benefit of making money, one of Bearnaise’s motives in bringing depth psychology to bear on marketing the way he did was to control the masses. He believed (and many politicians of the time believed along with him) that the mass of society was fundamentally irrational and volatile; and in 1924, they had, of course, the evidence of the First World War to prove it. According to Bearnaise, the best way to manage the “irrational force of the masses was to stimulate people’s inner desires through advertising and then sate them with consumer products.” This would keep them happy, docile and, consequently, cooperative. He called it “the engineering of consent.”

In layman’s terms: if subconsciously I believe a can of 7-Up will satisfy my “natural impulse” to be a rebellious, self-asserting rakehell, then I am far less likely actually to be rebellious, self-asserting or rakish. And as long as we all sublimate our impulses like this, society holds together and we all get along.

Not to put it too bluntly, but Bearnaise was one of the first people to propose the idea that we could save ourselves by buying stuff. Quite literally, in the Bearnaisian ideology, consumerism is salvation, products are saviour, and advertising the divine vision that mediates it to us.

Here’s the whole movie, if you’re interested (or skeptical):



Well: I don’t drink 7 Up anymore—too sharp for that old trick—but the other day I was in a local Christian mega-store, and I caught myself in mid-reach for the latest DVD Curriculum produced by some miraculously-huge mega church in the States, offering a “spiritual experience” that would “revolutionize my church’s ministry.”

At 38, of course, I wasn’t taken in by the promises, but the thing is, I don’t really have to be. I live in a world that has believed (sometimes quite explicitly and earnestly) for almost a century now that salvation—the saving of our society, our sex-lives or our churches—is simply a matter of buying the right product. And whether I like it or not, I am so steeped in this worldview that it’s become subliminal, in the Freudian sense: the solution is as simple as a purchase.

Of course, buying the latest book on prayer, or the next big purpose-driven media campaign, or the new small-group “experience guide,” or attending the next big worship event, or whatever it is won’t save anyone’s church, anymore than 7-Up made me an irresistible super-stud. And when we reach for these things thinking they will, whether we articulate the belief or not we are reaching for an idol.

Sometimes when preachers get going on the old epic struggle between Baalism and Yahwehism as it’s recorded in the Old Testament, they say a lot about materialism: the condo in Florida, the unnecessary mid-life- cruise, and so on. But I’ve almost never heard anyone draw a line between Baal and, say, the Prayer of Jabez (TM), the Passion of the Christ (TM), Courageous: The Movie (TM) or the next big what-have-you out of Willow Creek. Of course, ministry resources are often just a matter of practicality, I realize that, but I also realized, that day in the bloated Christian marketplace, that the idols of our day are far more comfortable in our churches than we want to admit.

Lord have mercy.

Musical Mondays (III)

This is a song I wrote last year about my daughter; it was inspired by the Hey! Rosetta song "Welcome."  Kind of self explanatory, I hope, though the imagery comes (in part) from Psalm 127:3-5.   The "All I worhip" bridge, incidentally, is a song my daughter wrote when she was three, I came home from work and she was all excited to sing the song she'd written; thought it was fitting. 





Sunday's Child

Fly true, little arrow,
right through the city gates
Fly free, little arrow,
everywhere you go
He will speed you home

Sunday's child, bonny and blithe
The days are wild, but you're full of life
With mommy's eyes, you're daddy's risk-taker
Chasing down a dare
With spark and spunk you're daddy's peace-maker
Shining everywhere

Fly true, little arrow,
right through the city gates
Fly free, little arrow,
everywhere you go
He will speed you home

Sunday's child, fair of face
Far to go, and full of grace
With mommy's heart, you're daddy's dream-catcher
And you'll grow strong with wisdom and  stature
Precious in his sight

Fly true, little arrow,
right through the city gates
Fly free, little arrow,
everywhere you go
He will speed you home

"All I worship  is God on high / All I worship is God on high"


Fly true, little arrow,
right through the city gates
Fly free, little arrow,
everywhere you go
He will speed you home

Fly true, little arrow,
right through the city gates
Fly free, little arrow,
everywhere you go
He'll be there you know
Like an arrow
He will speed you home

Saturday Morning Sermon (III)

Here's another excerpt from our sermon series in Acts.  The text was Acts 14:8-23. Paul and Barnabas visit Lystra:

There’s this theologian named T. F. Torrance—he’s one of the deepest thinkers about God I’ve ever read—and he’s had a pretty major impact on my own understanding of God.

Well: T. F. Torrance served in North Africa during World War II. He was hoping to be a chaplain, but instead they made him head of “Huts and Canteens,” which meant he spent most of his time delivering supplies to troops in the field; which was okay, actually, because he loved ministering to the soldiers on the front line.

So: in October, 1944, he served as a stretcher-bearer during an assault on San Martino-Sogliano, in Italy. They were under heavy fire all night, and in the morning, Torrance had an experience that haunted him the rest of his life. He says, “When daylight filtered through, I came across a young soldier, a Private Philips, who was barely 20 years old, lying in the mud.” He was mortally wounded and didn’t have long to live, so Torrance knelt with him on the ground. As they sat there in that death-watch, at one point Private Philips said, ‘Padre, is God really like Jesus.’”

Is God really like Jesus? Torrance writes: “I assured him that he was—the only God there is, the God who had come to us in Jesus ... and poured out his love to us as our saviour. As I prayed and commended him to the Lord Jesus, he passed away.”

I don’t want this to sound at all flippant, and I guess I’ll only know for sure when my time comes, but I think that I would be able to die in peace, knowing that when I see God, he’ll be like Jesus.

But like I say, Private Philip’s question left a lasting impression on Torrance. Later he would write these words about the experience: “There is no hidden God lurking behind the back of Jesus... but only the one, Lord God, who became incarnate in him.” Jesus himself said it more simply still: “If you’ve seen me, you’ve seen the Father.”

I’m telling you this today, for the same reason Paul said it to those Lystrians that day, who were trying to sacrifice a bull to him because they were under the wrong impression about God.

Listen: if you’ve been struggling under the wrong impression about God—that God doesn’t care and can’t be trusted, that he’s out to get you, or doesn’t want anything to do with you—that “the Father up above will squish you like a bug”—if you’ve been living with these impressions of God—or worse—then this is your invitation today: look into the face of Jesus Christ, and let God make a lasting impression on your life.

Because the Gospel heals our wrong impressions of God.

The Seven Works of Mercy and Christian Discipleship

I've been thinking a fair bit about the Seven Works of Mercy lately.   This is a traditional list of seven acts of service that the church used to encourage all Christians to participate in.  For the most part they come from Matthew 25:31-44, where the Son of Man assigns the sheep a place on his right hand because they fed him when he was hungry, and visited him when he was sick, and so on.  If you recall the parable, they express surprise. "When did we ever do this for you?" they ask, and he replies: "I tell you the truth whatever you did for the least of these my brothers you did for me."

For the record, the "seven works of mercy" are: 

1) feeding the hungry
2) giving water to the thirsty
3) sheltering the stranger
4) clothing the naked
5) visiting the prisoner
6) caring for the sick
7) burying the dead

What stands out to me as I look at this list (and in this I am following Richard Beck over at Experimental Theology), is how the works of mercy have lost some of their immediate urgency in our modern, institutionalized world.  Giving a cup of water to someone who's thirsty in our world probably has less significance than it would have had in the arid land Jesus travelled.  Unlike inmates in modern correctional facilities, a prisoner in Jesus' day was often responsible for his own food, medical attention and general upkeep, even behind bars, a fact which made a visit a potentially life-saving act.  So it's hard to do a one-to-one comparison.

But then again, all it takes is a little creative imagination to overcome the generation-gap here.  A cup of cold water might not do much today, but a Jesus Well or a BioSand Water Filter would (and does).  Visiting prisoners in modern day Canada can be a complicated, red-tape affair, but it can be done, and writing a letter to a prisoner is something anyone could do (See here, here or here).  They don't let just anybody bury the dead anymore, but anybody can show practical love, help and support to the grieved and bereaved.  And it doesn't take too much imagination to think of ways that welcoming the stranger might happen in our modern world, from mentoring new-comers to Canada to getting involved in a local shelter.

So it can be done.  Like I say, all it takes is a bit of imagination, and a desire to encounter Jesus.  Because in Matthew 25 Jesus said, or at least strongly implied, that if you really want to encounter him in a life-giving way, you'll have to look for him among the grieved, the starving, the homeless and the persecuted.  That's where he is, and when you're serving them, you're serving him.

What about you?  Where or how have you encountered Jesus by praticipating in one of the Seven Works of Mercy?

Sometimes we sing a song in church about how we want to see Jesus "high and lifted up / shining in the light of [his] glory," and I never thought about how risky a thing it was to ask God to open the eyes of our heart in this way.  Because if anything Jesus said in Matthew 25 can be trusted, when he grants that request we'll probably find ourselves standing among the hurting, the vulnerable, the outcast and the helpless.  And if we want to make sure we don't miss him when we're there, it probably couldn't hurt to make ourselves familiar with the Works of Mercy.

Bible Camp: The Good, the Bad, the Beautiful

One of the highlights of my summer was the week we spent serving at Bible Camp. Our youngest daughter was a camper for the first time. Since she was nervous about a week away from home, we volunteered to serve at the camp for the week so that at least we’d be “on site” and have enough contact to help ease the home-sickness.

So my wife and I cleaned bathrooms, taught Bible lessons for 9-year-olds, and ran a tight ship in the dish-pit for a week. I don’t like to brag (until I know if it’ll still be standing by the end of the season) but there’s also a re-built flight of steps on Cabin 3 with my name on it.

Anyways, I love Bible Camp—it’s where I cut my teeth in ministry, long before God told me I was going to be a pastor—and to be honest, a week at Bible camp for me is as relaxing as any old cruise.

It was this year, anyways. But home now and reflecting, I’m looking over the whole Evangelical Bible Camp phenomenon with my theological glasses on, and here’s what I’m seeing.

The Good:

Service: Christian service is not optional for the life of a Christ follower and Bible Camp is the kind of place where every gift and talent has a place, from cooking to speaking, to building to playing.

Hard Work: Working hard alongside brothers and sisters in Christ for the sake of Jesus builds a kind of spiritual camaraderie that is deeply formative and irreplaceable.

The Outdoors: One day I’m going to write a theology of the outdoors; until then I’ll simply mention the radiance that people get when they are spending swaths of time outside and together.

Role-models: There is something profoundly moving seeing young men and women build into the lives of children by modelling Christian love and life for them over a week together.

Fun: I forget the theologian anymore, but I remember reading a book that developed a theology of “play” around the “cosmic reversal” themes in the gospel and the idea that humans discover their identity as made in the image of the creative God especially when they find the grace to be homo-ludens; “man at play.” I’ll have to dig that out again, but in the meantime I’ll just recall the joy of seeing kids playing in the presence of Jesus.

The Bad:

Gospel-Lite: By its nature, Bible Camp is not the place to develop an understanding of salvation that goes much further beyond an ask-Jesus-into-you-heart kind of proclamation, so this is maybe to be expected, but it still merits scrutiny. There’s just no permanent community that can consistently disciple these kids long term, and even the best efforts at follow-up are hit and miss.

Easy-Believe-ism: In the olden days (say 4th century and onward) if you wanted to become a Christian you underwent a 40-day Lenten Journey with daily catechism, fasting and exorcisms that culminated in a public baptism (and then there were follow-up classes, too). Of course, this was fraught with its own theological problems and open to its own spiritual abuses, but I mention it here only to point out the stark contrast between the historic Church’s “10-course meal” approach to discipleship, and Bible Camp’s “TV-dinner approach”—just pop them into the microwave oven of the sinner’s prayer and they pop out Christians.

Churchless Christianity: Ecclesiology is the fancy word we use to describe one’s “theology of the church.” In as much as it reflects the ethos of Evangelicalism at large, Bible Camp ministry has profoundly weak ecclesiology. The Church (holy, apostolic and universal), if it gets mentioned at all, is simply a means to an end: a place where individuals can follow Jesus on their own, together. Alan Hirsch once made the controversial claim that Ecclesiology follows Mission; at Bible Camp, I think, we see the sad corollary of this idea: mission that has eschewed ecclesiology altogether.

The Beautiful:

Seeing Jesus introduce himself to young people through the loving witness of his followers. Having given the theological fuddy-duddy above his time on the soap-box, I have to say that seeing Jesus work in kids lives the way he does at Bible Camp is beautiful and humbling. Kids who didn’t even know that God existed a week ago find out that not only does he exist, he actually loves them dearly. If it doesn’t move you to be part (even a small part) of this work, you may want to avail yourself of the advice posted at this link here.

Musical Mondays (II)

As the Tree

As the rain in the springtime
As the summer sun
As the winds in the autumn bring change
As the mists in the winter turn to spring again
Let this land feel your mercy, let this land feel your mercy
Let this land feel your  mercy once again

As the tree in the springtime puts forth her green
As the tree bears in summer her fruit
As the tree in the autumn bears crimson gold
Let this land bear salvation, let this land bear salvation
Let this land bear salvation once again

Let salvation spring up from the ground
Let the new grain of your love abound
Let the valleys and the hills resound
With echoes of rejoicing
Let the autumn rains of righteousness
Come and soothe us like a summer mist
Send the morning dew of holiness
To bring this land to life.

As the tree in the springtime puts forth her green
As the tree bears in summer her fruit
As the tree in the autumn bears crimson gold
Let this land bear salvation, let this land bear salvation
Let this land bear salvation once again

Saturday Morning Sermon (II)

Another excerpt from our work in Acts this summer (August 5).  The text was Acts 9:32-43, the post resurrection miracles of Peter.

You may not have heard of John Wimber before, but if you’ve attended a contemporary worship service sometime in the last 20 years, you’ve encountered his influence.

He was actually the keyboardist for a band called the Paramours, back in the day. The Paramours would go on to form a group called The Righteous Brothers, but not with John Wimber; John met Jesus back in 1962 and his path had a major course correction.

After becoming a Christian, he read his Bible voraciously. The story goes that he would read about the life-transforming miracles in the Bible, and then attend church services where the only miracle, it seemed, was that everyone was still awake at the end. So one Sunday he approached one of the pastors.

He said: “Pastor, when do we the stuff?” “What stuff,” asked the pastor.

“You know: the stuff. In the Bible. Like healing the sick and raising the dead—the stuff Jesus did.”

“Well,” said the pastor, “We don’t do that anymore.” John looked confused: “So what do you do?” “What we did this morning.” And John said: “Pastor: you gotta understand, I gave up drugs for this.”

Wimber would go on to become an influential leader in the charismatic movement of the 80s and 90s, a revival that challenged the church to start taking the Holy Spirit more seriously—and—as Wimber would maybe put it—to start “doin’ the stuff.”

He wrote books with titles like “Power Healing.” He taught courses called “Signs, Wonders and Church Growth.” He was also the leader of the Association of Vineyard Churches, from 1977-1994.

But I’m telling you about him today, because Acts 9 here is kind of asking us the same sort of question John Wimber asked his pastor back in 1963. When are we going to do the stuff?

And just to be clear, the stuff I’m talking about are the signs and wonders that the Holy Spirit does through us and among us, to show the world that Jesus really is alive, and to give the world a glimpse of what his kingdom actually looks like when it draws near. Just to be clear. We’re talking about the ministry of the Resurrection.

And I think I’d side with Wimber on this one, in principle anyways: a church that isn’t doing the “stuff of the Resurrection,” probably has some explaining to do. So I guess we should listen closely to what this passage has to say here about “the ministry of the Resurrection”; and let me start by pointing out that—according to Acts 9, at least—every good resurrection ministry needs an Aeneas, a Tabitha and a tanner.

You can hear the whole sermon here:  Acts 9:32-43 "Doin' the Stuff"