religion as a badge of hipness

more NYTimes goodness.

Wearing Their Beliefs on Their Chests

"The commodification of religious faith "is born of a consciousness that any religious movement, to stay viable, has to speak the idiom of the culture," said Randall Balmer, a professor of American religion at Barnard College in New York."

and from Michael Macko, the men's fashion director of Saks Fifth Avenue,

"...who viewed the Dsquared collection in Milan last winter, said he was somewhat taken aback. "Hmm, I thought, 'Religion as a fashion theme. That's a little different from corduroy or camel. How do we handle this?' " Undeterred, Saks bought the Dsquared line for its stores across the country. "We bought it as a fashion item, not as a moral statement," said Ronald Frasch, the chief merchant of Saks. "We sell crosses, and it's not a big step from crosses to sweaters."

article will be up for a week, follow cheemoth's instructions to save it.

Mushy goodbye

Nawt really la, am not thaaaat sentimental a person.

Actually I meant to post much earlier, seeing the dearth of entries on this blog, but somehow, I forgot both my user name and my password, and several attempts to get Blogger.com to email me the details failed (boo, Blogger!).

May I add that I lurrve the monicker Skinnypastor, or SkinnyP, as it has been abbreviated.

It seems like I spent a lot of my Christian life moaning about the dire shortage of good, like-minded Christian companionship. For years, it was like whine, whine, whine to God, when it was also the lack of trying on my part and the simple fact that double-minded me wanted to have my cake and eat it: church-going Sundays and playing and working hard miles away from Him the rest of the week. I needed my space, plus I was a liberal intellectual, dammit :)

I am starting to realise, in my very slow, 迟钝-fashion, that true freedom really is to be found in seeking a life in Christ. And that this freedom is neither "anything goes", nor is it complex like rocket science. It is based ultimately on trust, the basis of all great relationships anyway. In his dictums, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind" and, "Love your neighbour as yourself", Jesus set humanly impossible standards precisely because they could only be lived out with the help of his holy spirit: throwing ourselves at his feet and hanging on for dear life like so many of the broken men and women in the Bible.

And I glimpsed this, not just from listening to sermons or even pondering and dissecting His word, but through friendships in church, through ministry and seeing people put others first and most of all praying through my needs and warts and black holes with faithful women (awwww, hugs).

In this DG and with other DG-affiliates (haha, you know who you are) I found some kind of a resting place where I could also be me -- pig out, name-drop big words and strange bands, unleash our inner-American Idols in karaoke lounges, argue over movies and generally not pretend that we are perfect Christians.

So after all the whining, I guess God -- who has a magisterial sense of humour -- said See! Lookity! He led me to the water side, and then several months later packed me off on a plane to China.

Do keep me in your prayers because goodness knows I am fallible (especially where manga-jawed men are concerned) and do write because I will write back (I am quite a good writer, ahem). Better yet, come to town for jiaozi and smelly Chinese beer.

Will keep y'all in my prayers.

thoughts on a membership class day

thank you mr moth for reviving the dead as a dodo blog. :)

i enjoyed the article on charles and cami, as well as the exposition on how to zao membership class. :P

membership class was super xiong and going into it with 3 hours sleep is SO not a good idea. But I really liked all the reminders SkinnyPastor (TM Moth) was laying down on us about what it means to be a member of ARPC and more importantly, the Body of Christ itself. I really like the direction ARPC is going in - its renewed focus on dependence on God through prayer, the constant call to humility and servanthood, and rememberance of God's sovereignity.

At one point SkinnyP drew a little tree diagram to summarise the brief history of the Church... I was struck by how every branch and off-shoot of the Church was matched with a name: Martin Luther for Protestanism, John Knox for Presbyterianism, Wesley brothers for Methodist movement etc. etc. Always one man, placed within a nexus of change, playing the role of catalyst. One man probably unaware of the bigness of things to come, unaware of the greatness of changes to be initiated. LIke a viral plague, Christianity moved from Rome, to England, to Scotland, to America, to Asia and Africa. When SkinnyP talked about a little boat of English believers travelling to Germany just to find out what this Luther guy was about, only to return to start the Anglican church.....wow, can you imagine the small conversation that started that?

"Hey, you free next weekend to go up to Germany? I heard this guy has good ideas to reform the church" "Yeah, why not. It;ll be a bit tough - must leave behind my farm unattended and gotta blow my new horsecart savings but yeah, what the heck...."

Boom. Next thing you know, the Church of England springs up and sends forth a thousand missionaries.

I wondered about Jesus' constant refrain for us to Ask and we shall be given, Seek and we shall find. The context of his comments always lay in the asking of things that were for the glory and realisation of the Kingdom of God I guess.

So much in the world convinces us that our individual lives are small, petty, insignificant, pitiful little things. Even we christians find it hard to believe or dream about big things for God's purposes. We play safe, we work within our zone of safe predictability and never venture out for fear of disappointment.

Somehow these ordinary guys - Luther, Knox, Wesley - saw God's work needed to be done and went ahead to do them. I cannot imagine them predicting the changes in human history God set in place through them. How amazing to look back in your life and realise you were a part of God's plan in such a powerful manner.

I read a wise little comment today: "Don't ask God to bless what you are doing. Ask God what He is doing and go do it. For that already is blessed."

If we ask the things that are after God's heart, he will provide...he already has provided and is waiting for us to align our lives and decisions around his. It's so simple that it almost seems banal : Life perhaps is all about learning to Ask and Seek for the things of God. Then we will see a real outpouring of blessing beyond our expectation.

How amazing. How gracious. How divine :)