A Meal With Jesus

This new book from Tim Chester sounds really interesting: a Biblical theology of food, meals in the life of Jesus, the Lord's Supper, the Wedding Supper of the Lamb and how we might use meals in evangelism. Chester suggests that one of the great things about sharing meals with people is that it doesn't involve adding anything else to the schedule: we have 21 ready made opportunities each week to eat with people.

Mission

More alliterative headings, this time from Richard Coekin's Passion for Life Prepared For Mission talks:

Our motivation - 2 Corinthians 5:10-6:2
Our message - Romans 1 & 1 Corinthians 15
Our method - 2 Corinthians 4:1-10
Our manner - 1 Peter 3:15-16

What's in a name?

I'm told that a certain church that used to be called something like High Street Strict and Peculiar Evangelical Free (Full Gospel) Church (Continuing) changed its name to something like Christ Church and found that numbers went up very significantly. It seems that many people who might go to a church like it to be called something fairly traditional and C of E sounding, not crazy cultlike. You live and learn, eh?

John Dickson on promoting the gospel at EMA

Every Christian should promote the gospel by living, giving, praying and speaking.

How and when does the Lord expect us to speak up for him?

A) Some to be evangelists - specially gifted gospelers in localities and districts to be identified

B) All to declare his praises - praise as proclamation in church

C) Each to give an answer - on the basis of allegiance to Jesus and in the right manner

Practical tips and insights included.

How to be happy

Or The Secret of Happiness.

D.v. I'm going to be giving an evangelistic talk with some such title in Oct / Nov. Any tips (including the best title) gratefully recieved.

I might end up with one of the Bible's "blessed"s.

Weaknessed of 2WTL

Two Ways To Live has been my gospel tract / gospel outline of choice for years. I regularly give it out, we have it available at church and we'll be using it prominently on camp.

Yet, recently I've heard some criticisms of it:

(1) It can seem rather complicated and a bit much for non-Christians

(2) It emphasises head-knowledge of the fact of sin without being affecting and giving much sense of the great horror of sin etc.

(3) It seems Arminian by presenting us with a choice without speaking of the work of the Spirit and the need for God to have mercy on us and regenerate us if we are to make the right choice

(4) It implies that we become Christians by praying a prayer rather than repenting, believing and being baptised

What do you think? Are any of these criticisms fair? Have you heard any others?

Is there a better reasonably complete brief gospel outline available?

For myself, I'm not inclined to criticise such a brief tract for its omissions unless they are really essential and I reckon we could argue about emphasis untill the cows come home.

If I were asked to sum up the gospel in 4 words (conveninetly) I'd go for "Jesus Christ is Lord". But if were allowed 6 pictures, I think I'd still go for Two Ways To Live.

Cathedral or warehouse?

What type of church building would you ideally like? I'd much rather a cathedral than a converted warehouse, cinema, school or theatre.

I think a specially designed building can affect a mood and send messages. Our buildings are more than rain shelters. That's one reason we have architects! Our homes and our church buildings (and every other building) can be built to the glory of God, but in different ways.

Some evangelicals often claim that non-Christians find it hard to enter (churchy) church buildings. Perhaps. But I've frequently been on holiday and day trips with non-Christian family who are very keen to visit ecclesiastical buildings of all sorts - admittedly for touristy reasons, but they seem to have no problem with entering church buildings as such.

My non-Christian family would like a lovely church building, and I don't think they are hugely weird in that. Many people would like to get married in a nice church, for example. Maybe you'd say that a building might distract them or that they'd like it for the wrong reasons, but there you have it.

If we say some people don't like to go to churchy buildings, we should also remember that some people didn't like school or don't enjoy theatre or cinema and so on, so is there such a thing as a neutral space? And would that be a good thing?

Spurgeon's evangelistic stratergy

Apparently CHS said:

To try to win a soul for Christ by keeping that soul in ignorance of any truth, is contrary to the mind of the Spirit; and to endeavor to save men by mere claptrap, or excitement, or oratorical display, is as foolish as to hope to hold an angel with bird-lime, or lure a star with music. The best attraction is the gospel in its purity. The weapon with which the Lord conquers men is the truth as it is in Jesus. The gospel will be found equal to every emergency; an arrow which can pierce the hardest heart, a balm which will heal the deadliest wound. Preach it, and preach nothing else.

Get 'em when they're born

Visiting Mrs Lloyd and our firstborn in hospital this morning, it was a bit like being on a beech in Tenerife as people came and touted their wares at us. Would we like to have his photo taken there and then? Someone else would make a framed cast of the boy’s hand and foot print, for a hefty fee. We were also given a Bounty Bag of Newborn “Essentials” (!). No Bounty bars, unfortunately, but I was surprised that there was an official form for registering for Child Benefit amongst all the glossy junk mail.

The pack also contained a flyer for naming ceremonies with www.civilceremonies.co.uk who will do you all manner of ceremonies in venues of your choice or flog you a script and let you get on with a DIY option. They could even train you to do ceremonies too!

If there really is a market for such things, I wonder if the church isn’t missing a trick here? Maybe we should be promoting Thanksgiving and Naming Ceremonies to new parents? Maybe the C of E could cut a deal to get its bumph in the Bounty Bag or local arrangements could be made with hospitals?

Someone also told me that when you go to register a death in Eastbourne there’s a poster up advertising funeral ceremonies.

I wonder how many people opt for these new fangled civil ceremonies with their practical atheism or pick n mix spirituality and how much of a loss they really are in terms of evangelistic opportunities.

The because approach: innovationg church for all

In our local Christian book shop I just stumbled across a book I didn’t know existed: The because approach: innovating church for all by Rev’d Andrew Baughen, Vicar of St James, Clerkenwell (Milton Keynes, Authentic Media, 2005). I don’t remember ever hearing a mention of it at vicar factory.


John Stott “heartily” recommends it as having solid theory and experience leading to a realistic plan, passionately committed to Christ, the gospel and the local church. He says: “I cannot imagine that any individual or group could study it without being profoundly challenged and inspired”.

My own Bishop, Wallace Benn, says: “This is exactly the kind of book we need right now…. This is a superb book that should be read by all concerned about the mission of the church.” So I guess I ought to have a look at it!

Rico Tice said: “This book cuts you open. I found it confronted me with the realities from the Bible, from my local church and from the culture. Page after page provokes carefull reflection.”

Chris Green said: “I am thrilled with The Because Approach: gospel driven, evangelistically passionate, warm hearted, culturally relevant, and – above all – practical and achievable stratergies for us to be the people Christ wants us to be.”

Its recommended by Chris Wright, Christopher Ash and The Bishop of London too, amongst others.

On page 1 Andrew Baughan notes lots of debts including to Bill Hybels of Willow Creek, Rick Warren, Nicky Gumbell and Tim Keller of Redeemer Church, Manhattan.

The book is about the local church as God’s hope for the world with the promise that Christ’s church will prevail. The book suggests a six-fold strategic review for each local church.

The six steps (and main chapters of the book) are:

(1) Preparation

(2) Relationship building

(3) Respect Building

(4) Relevance building

(5) Response building

(6) Participation

Within each chapter there’s a section on Scripture, Setting and Solution followed by a study guide. Each section begins “Because…” and the chapter close with an “Expert Witness”, Mark Greene, Paul Perkin, Nicky Gumbell, Rico Tice & J. John

There’s a website at http://www.becauseapproach.com/index.htm which looked pretty rudamentary when I looked at it. Could be a problem at my end!

Stranger Evangelism

I'd say we want less starnge evangelism, myself, but Rev'd Geln Scrivner's 43 thoughts on evangelism to those we've never met before are well worth reading - though I might have some quibbles, such as a more positive view of the value of apologetics. And I reckon there are fewer than 43 thoughts here - some are cheating by giving an example of the previous thought! Naughty. Cold contact evangelism doesn't have to be cold, Glen claims, and I reckon it'd be great to persuade him to show one the ropes some time!

Its brill to have Glen and his "gergeous ulster-woman" (his words, I think) wife here on the Sunshine Coast. Glen is also a new curate - All Souls, Eastbourne. Lots of other interesting stuff at his website Christ The Truth, some of it quite distinctive, for example on Christ in the Old Testament and perhaps with quite a lot of Luther influence?

Action Group

I noticed today that our church evangelism committee is called the "Evangelism Action Group". That seems to me to be a good thing. Nevertheless, we appear to be having a committee meeting on August 13th. We shall see what action points arise.

Speaking of God (apologetically): yes and no

My non-Christian correspondent responded to my 10 points on the problem of evil, so here are some more thoughts arising:

I stand by what I said in point 1.

(1) We cannot hope to completely "solve" the "problem" of evil. God is infitely above and beyond us so he will always remain the great Incomprehensible Mystery to us. Yet we can describe the Mystery: we can say what is not so and mark out the area where the truth lies. If you like, we can know God like a sketch (an outline with features and shading) not a photograph (in every detail).

I didn’t mean it to be an endorsement of strong / thorough-going apophaticism.

A soft kind of apophatic theology / via negativa, which says what God is not (immortal, immutable, impassible, independent, uncreated, immense, incomprehensible, infallible, atemporal, aspacial, incorporeal etc.) is extremely helpful.

But we can also make true statements about God because he has clearly revealed himself in human words in the Bible. Our statements about God can be true and adequate but not exhaustive or entirely precise.

God’s revelation involves accommodation: he graciously condescends to describe himself to us in “creaturely” language that we creatures might understand something of the creator, rather as we might explain something to a 5 year old.

All language about God is analogical not univocal. God is a rock (he is strong, stable and reliable) but he is not a rock (he is not an inanimate lump of minerals). God is a lion, but not in the same way that Leo the Lion is a lion. God’s power is not exactly like human power (e.g. he is never tyrannical) and his power is one perspective on the simple God (considered from God's point of view his power is his love, wisdom, goodness, pity etc).

The fact that God is three persons (the Son reflects the Father but is not the Father) and has made us in his image gives a deep theological basis for analogical knowledge of God.

To predicate anything of God is less than straightforward. For example, to say “God is…” sounds like a statement about the present tense, whereas God is atemporal and eternal, so he has all his attributes in that mode, something that its not easy to capture in English.

Deuteronmoy 29:29 is a helpful verse: “The secret things belong to God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children for ever, that we may do all the words of this law.”

Its worth noticing that the verse implies that God’s revelation is given that we might obey it and live in the light of it, rather than to answer all our questions, to satisfy our intellectual curiosity or for the sake of argument.

God is the creator (the potter) and we are the creatures (lumps of clay). Though he has graciously revealed himself to us, accommodated himself to our weakness and bears with us, he is not ultimately answerable to us. We need to remember our place and watch our words when it come to questioning God. God is and will be the just judge of all the earth. We are not!

The Christian approach is “faith seeking understanding”, not, “God, answer all my questions and then I’ll (condescend to) believe in you (if I reckon you’ve done a good enough job to convince me)”.

Nevertheless, the Christian should explain and defend the faith to non-Christians. The aim here is to show the coherence of the Christian faith and ways in which it can be seen to correspond to reality as we experience it, while showing the incoherence of other world views and their lack of ability to explain the world. If the non-Christian is to accept the reasonable revealed faith of the Christian, God must open his eyes and change his heart.

Why I am Not a Christian

I am a Christian, but I wanted to say something about Bertrand Russel’s essay, Why I’m Not a Christian.

I think I remember GW saying that he found the arguments so bad he thought it could almost be used by Christians as an evangelistic tract: if this is the best the atheists can do…

Whty I Believe In God

One of the blessings of often keeping my study door open is the useful things that can be gleened from the fellow inhabitants of my corridor at Oak Hill. Today there was high praise for ‘Why I Believe In God’ by Revd Dr Cornelius Van Til. It was billed as a beautiful read, properly presuppositionalist unapologetic apologetics. In fact it contains an apology to unbelievers that Chritsians have not been as forthright and clear as they should have been. The piece takes the form of an imagined (one-sided) Sunday afternoon discussion between Van Til and an atheist or agnostic conversation partner.

Here are some of my favourite bits (much of the article!):

… as a person of intelligence, having a sense of responsibility, you have from time to time asked yourself some questions about the foundation of your thought and action. You have looked into, or at least been concerned about, what the philosophers call your theory of reality [evil, life after death etc.] . So… I suggest that you spend a Sunday afternoon with me discussing my reasons for believing in God…

Perhaps you think that the only real reason I have for believing in God is the fact that I was taught to do so in my early days. Of course I don't think that is really so. I don't deny that I was taught to believe in God when I was a child, but I do affirm that since I have grown up I have heard a pretty full statement of the argument against belief in God. And it is after having heard that argument that I am more than ever ready to believe in God. Now, in fact, I feel that the whole of history and civilization would be unintelligible to me if it were not for my belief in God. So true is this, that I propose to argue that unless God is back of everything, you cannot find meaning in anything. I cannot even argue for belief in Him, without already having taken Him for granted. And similarly I contend that you cannot argue against belief in Him unless you also first take Him for granted. Arguing about God's existence, I hold, is like arguing about air. You may affirm that air exists, and I that it does not. But as we debate the point, we are both breathing air all the time. Or to use another illustration, God is like the emplacement on which must stand the very guns that are supposed to shoot Him out of existence.

…there is no sense in talking about the existence of God, without knowing what kind of God it is who may or may not exist.

…You, of course, do not expect me to bring God into the room here so that you may see Him. If I were able to do that, He would not be the God of Christianity. All that you expect me to do is to make it reasonable for you to believe in God. And I should like to respond quickly by saying that that is just what I am trying to do. But a moment's thought makes me hesitate. If you really do not believe in God, then you naturally do not believe that you are his creature. I, on the other hand, who do believe in God also believe, naturally, that it is reasonable for God's creature to believe in God. So I can only undertake to show that, even if it does not appear reasonable to you, it is reasonable for you, to believe in God.

Shall we say then that in my early life I was conditioned to believe in God, while you were left free to develop your own judgment as you pleased? But that will hardly do. You know as well as I that every child is conditioned by its environment. You were as thoroughly conditioned not to believe in God as I was to believe in God. So let us not call each other names. If you want to say that belief was poured down my throat, I shall retort by saying that unbelief was poured down your throat. That will get us set for our argument.

To be "without bias" is only to have a particular kind of bias. The idea of "neutrality" is simply a colorless suit that covers a negative attitude toward God. At least it ought to be plain that he who is not for the God of Christianity is against Him. You see, the world belongs to Him, and that you are His creature, and as such are to own up to that fact by honoring Him whether you eat or drink or do anything else. God says that you live, as it were, on His estate. And His estate has large ownership signs placed everywhere, so that he who goes by even at seventy miles an hour cannot but read them. Every fact in this world, the God of the Bible claims, has His stamp indelibly engraved upon it. How then could you be neutral with respect to such a God? Do you walk about leisurely on a Fourth of July in Washington wondering whether the Lincoln Memorial belongs to anyone? Do you look at "Old Glory" waving from a high flagpole and wonder whether she stands for anything? Does she require anything of you, born an American citizen as you are? You would deserve to suffer the fate of the "man without a country" if as an American you were neutral to America. Well, in a much deeper sense you deserve to live forever without God if you do not own and glorify Him as your Creator. You dare not manipulate God's world and least of all yourself as His image-bearer, for you own final purposes. When Eve became neutral as between God and the Devil, weighing the contentions of each as though they were inherently on the face of them of equal value, she was in reality already on the side of the devil!

If the God of Christianity exists, the evidence for His existence is abundant and plain so that it is both unscientific and sinful not to believe in Him. When Dr. Joad, for example says: "The evidence for God is far from plain," on the ground that if it were plain everybody would believe in Him, he is begging the question. If the God of Christianity does exist, the evidence for Him must be plain. And the reason, therefore, why "everybody" does not believe in Him must be that "everybody" is blinded by sin. Everybody wears colored glasses. You have heard the story of the valley of the blind. A young man who was out hunting fell over a precipice into the valley of the blind. There was no escape. The blind men did not understand him when he spoke of seeing the sun and the colors of the rainbow, but a fine young lady did understand him when he spoke the language of love. The father of the girl would not consent to the marriage of his daughter to a lunatic who spoke so often of things that did not exist. But the great psychologists of the blind men's university offered to cure him of his lunacy by sewing up his eyelids. Then, they assured him, he would be normal like "everybody" else. But the simple seer went on protesting that he did see the sun.

I am just mildly suggesting that you are perhaps dead, and perhaps blind, leaving you to think the matter over for yourself. If an operation is to be performed it must be performed by God Himself.

Imagine teaching not only religion but algebra from the Christian point of view! But it was done. We were told that all facts in all their relations, numerical as well as others, are what they are because of God's all comprehensive plan with respect to them. Thus the very definitions of things would not merely be incomplete but basically wrong if God were left out of the picture.

If my God exists it was He who was back of my parents and teachers. It was He who conditioned all that conditioned me in my early life. But then it was He also who conditioned everything that conditioned you in your early life. God, the God of Christianity, is the All-Conditioner!

As the All-Conditioner, God is the All-Conscious One. A God Who is to control all things must control them "by the counsel of His will." If He did not do this, He would himself be conditioned. So then I hold that my belief in Him and your disbelief in Him are alike meaningless except for Him.

Not believing in God… you do not think yourself to be God's creature. And not believing in God you do not think the universe has been created by God. That is to say, you think of yourself and the world as just being there. Now if you actually are God's creature, then your present attitude is very unfair to Him. In that case it is even an insult to Him. And having insulted God, His displeasure rests upon you. God and you are not on "speaking terms." And you have very good reasons for trying to prove that He does not exist. If He does exist, He will punish you for your disregard of Him. You are therefore wearing colored glasses. And this determines everything you say about the facts and reasons for not believing in Him. You have had your picnics and hunting parties there without asking His permission. You have taken the grapes of God's vineyard without paying Him any rent and you have insulted His representatives who asked you for it.

I must make an apology to you at this point. We who believe in God have not always made this position plain. Often enough we have talked with you about facts and sound reasons as though we agreed with you on what these really are. In our arguments for the existence of God we have frequently assumed that you and we together have an area of knowledge on which we agree. But we really do not grant that you see any fact in any dimension of life truly. We really think you have colored glasses on your nose when you talk about chickens and cows, as well as when you talk about the life hereafter. We should have told you this more plainly than we did. But we were really a little ashamed of what would appear to you as a very odd or extreme position. We were so anxious not to offend you that we offended our own God. But we dare no longer present our God to you as smaller or less exacting than He really is. He wants to be presented as the All-Conditioner, as the emplacement on which even those who deny Him must stand.

Now in presenting all your facts and reasons to me, you have assumed that such a God does not exist. You have taken for granted that you need no emplacement of any sort outside of yourself. You have assumed the autonomy of your own experience. Consequently you are unable -- that is, unwilling -- to accept as a fact any fact that would challenge your self-sufficiency. And you are bound to call that contradictory which does not fit into the reach of your intellectual powers. You remember what old Procrustes did. If his visitors were too long, he cut off a few slices at each end; if they were too short, he used the curtain stretcher on them. It is that sort of thing I feel that you have done with every fact of human experience. And I am asking you to be critical of this your own most basic assumption. Will you not go into the basement of your own experience to see what has been gathering there while you were busy here and there with the surface inspection of life? You may be greatly surprised at what you find there.

…if miracles want to have scientific standing, that is be recognized as genuine facts, they must sue for admittance at the port of entry to the mainland of scientific endeavor. And admission will be given as soon as they submit to the little process of generalization which deprives them of their uniqueness. Miracles must take out naturalization papers if they wish to vote in the republic of science and have any influence there.

… creation, providence, prophecy, and miracle. Together they represent the whole of Christian theism. Together they include what is involved in the idea of God and what He has done round about and for us. Many times over and in many ways the evidence for all these has been presented. But you have an always available and effective answer at hand. It is impossible! It is impossible! You act like a postmaster who has received a great many letters addressed in foreign languages. He says he will deliver them as soon as they are addressed in the King's English by the people who sent them. Till then they must wait in the dead letter department. Basic to all the objections the average philosopher and scientist raises against the evidence for the existence of God is the assertion or the assumption that to accept such evidence would be to break the rules of logic.

… I must again make apologies. The fact that so many people are placed before a full exposition of the evidence for God's existence and yet do not believe in Him has greatly discouraged us. We have therefore adopted measures of despair. Anxious to win your good will, we have again compromised our God. Noting the fact that men do not see, we have conceded that what they ought to see is hard to see. In our great concern to win men we have allowed that the evidence for God's existence is only probably compelling. And from that fatal confession we have gone one step further down to the point where we have admitted or virtually admitted that it is not really compelling at all. And so we fall back upon testimony instead of argument. After all, we say, God is not found at the end of an argument; He is found in our hearts. So we simply testify to men that once we were dead, and now we are alive, that once we were blind and that now we see, and give up all intellectual argument.

The God who claims to have made all facts and to have placed His stamp upon them will not grant that there is really some excuse for those who refuse to see.

… what you have really done in your handling of the evidence for belief in God, is to set yourself up as God. You have made the reach of your intellect, the standard of what is possible or not possible. You have thereby virtually determined that you intend never to meet a fact that points to God. Facts, to be facts at all -- facts, that is, with decent scientific and philosophic standing -- must have your stamp instead of that of God upon them as their virtual creator.

Nor do I pretend, of course, that once you have been brought face to face with this condition, you can change your attitude. No more than the Ethiopian can change his skin or the leopard his spots can you change your attitude. You have cemented your colored glasses to your face so firmly that you cannot even take them off when you sleep. Freud has not even had a glimpse of the sinfulness of sin as it controls the human heart. Only the great Physician through His blood atonement on the Cross and by the gift of His Spirit can take those colored glasses off and make you see facts as they are, facts as evidence, as inherently compelling evidence, for the existence of God.

Deep down in your heart you know very well that what I have said about you is true. You know there is no unity in your life. You want no God who by His counsel provides for the unity you need.

I readily grant that there are some "difficulties" with respect to belief in God and His revelation in nature and Scripture that I cannot solve. In fact there is mystery in every relationship with respect to every fact that faces me, for the reason that all facts have their final explanation in God Whose thoughts are higher than my thoughts, and Whose ways are higher than my ways. And it is exactly that sort of God that I need. Without such a God, without the God of the Bible, the God of authority, the God who is self-contained and therefore incomprehensible to men, there would be no reason in anything. No human being can explain in the sense of seeing through all things, but only he who believes in God has the right to hold that there is an explanation at all.

I hold that belief in God is not merely as reasonable as other belief, or even a little or infinitely more probably true than other belief; I hold rather that unless you believe in God you can logically believe in nothing else. But since I believe in such a God, a God who has conditioned you as well as me, I know that you can to your own satisfaction, by the help of the biologists, the psychologists, the logicians, and the Bible critics reduce everything I have said this afternoon and evening to the circular meanderings of a hopeless authoritarian. Well, my meanderings have, to be sure, been circular; they have made everything turn on God. So now I shall leave you with Him, and with His mercy.

Mission & Evangelism

For what its worth, here's an essay I wrote for the Missions in the Contemporary World course here at college entitled: "How are 'mission' and 'evangelism' related?".

There are some thoughts on the relationship between creation and the new creation, and a post-millenial hope. I conclude:

If mission is all that God sends his people into the world to do, then the Christian prayer and task is to look to God for the transformation of the all the nations and every aspect of individual and community life by the proclaimed gospel. Evangelism is thus the indispensable core and priority of the Christian mission, which involves bringing everything in conformity to that gospel. The gospel that Jesus Christ is Lord which the church proclaims implies the whole of her mission to live under Christ’s Lordship.

Homogenous Unit Principle

Over the years I reckon quite a few Oak Hill students must have written some top drawer essays on the Homogenous Unit Principle (HUP) for the Missions in the Modern World course. It would be great to see lots of these up on-line. Happy to host!

I guess it would also come up in a big way in the newish Race & Religion course?

I thought Dean Jensen spoke a lot of sense on the subject:

Some homogenaity is inevitable once you decide to have church at a particular time and place in a certain language and so on.

We must keep Eph 3:10 in mind: the church is intended to display the manifold (variagated, multi-coloured) wisdon of God.

Remember that there are different types of homogeneity: race, class, education, wealth, language etc. A congregation that is homogenous in one way may be very diverse in another.

A firm principle is that there should be no Christianized aparthied: any congregation should always be open to all.

Having said all that, just because some homogeneity may be inevitable, that doesn't mean that one should give up on the fight for a diverse represntative church.

I think there is much more of a case for homogenous units as a temporary evangelistic stratergy with converts eventually being potted-on into a more deliberately diverse proper Sunday Morning Church.

Evangelism and Social Action (updated)

Pastors (and potential pastors and interested others), please read Revd Dr David Field's paper, "Not The Least Lash Lost" on the argument: "evengelism is all that really matters because nothing else lasts into eternity".

I'm only 9 pages in and I'm hooked.

I tried to write an essay last term on: "What is the relationship between mission and evangelism?". I tried to say that a creation-affirming post-mil vision gives us the bigger project of bringing all things in this creation and all people under the Lordship of Christ through the gospel in the power of the Spirit in obedience to the Word and over the centuries. I used the model of Jesus' resurrection body to talk about continuity between our endevours in mission here and now and the final product: the same universe transformed and renewed with all our works taken up into it.

David Field's paper feels like what I should have said.

Update: Well, I've just finished reading it. Edifying. Fun. Quite brilliant. If you find it a bit speculative in places, don't let that put you off: the case is made.