The Holy Pasty?

As the night settled and the computer whirred away in the background as my wife continually tapped away on Facebook Jon and I settled in for a long wait. There are three who meet regularly for the idea freeflow that is a Soteria planning meeting and one of them is always late – that someone is always Greg. Having missed the last meeting this time he is an all time record 2 1/2 months late! The meeting was due to start at 8pm, at quarter past 8 I rang the man himself and he was still at home, but just on his way out of the door!

When he finally arrived we got started. We prayed together and the meeting set off with a dead stop after I mentioned Greg’s recent trip to America where he visited the Kentucky Answers in Genesis Exhibition. The brilliant idea was formulated to discuss Creation and Evolution, a topic we hadn’t discussed for some time. That is where the ideas stopped.

Sure it’s a huge subject, we three all agree in a Biblical 7 day creation. How do you write a whole magazine though to promote a Christian lifestyle and to preach Jesus while focussing on such a topic. We discussed the “Creation” magazine which runs adverts encouraging people to “Help spread the message of creation” but that is not our mission – our mission is to spread the message of Jesus. After running headlong into a conversational silence we re-thought the idea. Broadening out to encompass the whole of the Old Testament and asking “What is the point of the Old Testament?”

Many Christians see the Old Testament as; a bunch of laws that aren’t relevant because we live under Grace. A load of history that is regularly challenged (even if the challenges don’t always hold up) by archaeologists and scientists. A bunch of songs that are irrelevant because they don’t worship Christ. Old prophecy that has mostly been fulfilled.

We want to challenge some of these views, especially off the back of the last magazine that heavily featured Old Testament characters as stories in a gossip magazine. Christians today, and not just young people, are missing chunks of information about the Old Testament because they haven’t been taught about it. Bible Studies and sermons tend to feature more of the New Testament, but we ignore the old at our peril. That is where God sets out his plan for life for the Israelites, and we as current believers have been grafted into that blessing. We must understand where we have come from to know how Jesus fulfills and know where we are going too.

Soteria normally takes a couple of hours to plan, especially with the articles in the last magazine, this it meeting was thought up and planned within an hour! Not bad going, now it’s just the execution!

So that’s the next magazine, with a vision. One problem stands in our way at the moment – we need at least £300 in order to purchase the toner we need to print it! Please, please pray!