My reflections on Engage conference (part 2)
Yesterday I wrote about my highlight from Engage conference, namely the preaching and teaching of William Taylor from John’s gospel.
I want to reflect on getting and reading the Sydney Morning Herald. This could be my old age, it could be my ignorance and/or I could be plain wrong. Most of all, I’m sure this will sound blatantly hypocritical. After spending the week being reminded of the importance of God’s word taught and spoken, it struck me that all our delegates were offered a copy of the SMH on Saturday morning. Don’t get me wrong, I love reading it. I check out the website most days. In fact I didn’t make enough of the opportunity to read it on a weekend without our children.
A slow start to a Saturday morning with a coffee and the paper is still my ideal Saturday morning. And yet I couldn’t help feeling a little unnerved inside. Part of me wanted to challenge the group from my church, in fact all of us there, who read their Bible before reading the paper? Or, if you’re not a morning person, which is to be expected in the target demographic, did you spend more time over the weekend reading the paper or your Bible?
What do you think? Is it fair to assess our attitudes by our reading habits? Is it fair to expect Christians to spend more time in God’s word than the daily newspaper?
Hey Josh,
Interesting thought. I like the idea of giving the paper out at a camp aimed at young workers. It sends a message that what goes on at a camp, and what goes on during the week, shouldn’t be separated or compartmentalized. It sends the message to a younger generation to not be withdrawn, but to be informed and to try and care about what is going on in the world. It implicitly suggests that the talks from the bible that happened at engage were not a spiritual top-up for an insular group who have chosen Christianity as their spirituality-of-choice, but reminds the attendees that the gospel needs to find it’s way back to Sydney. To take the metaphor way too far – to put bible talks in one hand and the SMH in the other tells people to go and live an integrated Christian life and go and attempt to make the gospel heard in Sydney. (assuming most come from Sydney)
What do you think?
Of course, I could be reading way too much into what is probably just a hospitable gesture from the conference committee.
Hi Tim,
I think you’re right. Giving delegates a paper is entirely appropriate to the demographic and for the benefit of encouraging us to live out the gospel in the world we live and work in. My reflection was whether or not we need to be reminded of the importance and prominence of the Word of God, even at such a conference. I don’t fear that young Christian workers are in danger of not reading the paper and becoming isolated in a Christian ghetto with Christian world views which are unable to interact with the world.
I was thinking that it could be helpful to do something that promoted Bible reading more, rather than at the expense of other reading.
Hey Josh,
Great post! This is something that I struggle with – with reading news, blogs, etc and totally ignoring Bible reading. So now, I have a system in place where I read the Bible first before I read anything else! (Of course, there are days when I am so stuffed, that I don’t do it, so I need to catch up on it later on).
You can read it at Sam’s blog here:
http://fishpiper.freney.org/2009/07/daily-reading/
and on my blog here:
http://stanandclare.blogspot.com/2009/06/reading-bible-regularly.html
Would love to hear you thoughts.
Hi Stan, That’s an awesome idea.
I also know of a few guys who have some app on their mobile phone which has the text for the lectionary readings of the day. Again, over time they will have read the Bible.
I guess I’m trying to work out ways to encourage people who read a lot to not neglect Bible reading.