by Ken Morgan | Jul 15, 2025 | Uncategorized
Imagine how people would respond if I introduced myself by saying, “My name’s Ken and I’m a sinner.” Acknowledging my status as a sinner is theologically accurate. It’s also prerequisite to the repentance and faith that ushers me into the kingdom of God. Yet it would probably trigger a reaction. In an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, people introduce themselves as alcoholics. This is a statement of fact: a fact that shapes behaviour to protect sobriety that brings life and freedom. If that fact is forgotten or denied, the alcoholic risks descent into self-destruction. It’s not about igniting feelings of guilt and shame, it’s a confession of a simple truth. While not a pleasant truth, it’s the foundational confession that’s prerequisite to life. Confession and accountability have gotten a bad rap in recent decades, because of their capacity to evoke feelings of guilt and shame. These feelings have come to be perceived as harmful, and any action or process that may induce them has come to be seen as manipulative and perhaps abusive. Although writers like Brené Brown have pointed out the value of guilt as a kind of internal system warning of integrity outages, shame is almost universally understood as destructive: a sense that we’re flawed and deserve rejection. While both are intensely uncomfortable, our studious avoidance of anything that make evoke them robs us of the opportunity for confession and repentance that will bring us life and freedom. Being a sinner is not how we like to think about ourselves. When we invite someone to pray a prayer of salvation, it often takes the form of ‘asking Jesus into their heart’, glossing over any call to confession and repentance. This...
by Ken Morgan | Jul 1, 2025 | Uncategorized
In Arizona in the early 1990s, the “Biosphere 2” project created a huge dome designed to replicate Earth’s environment within a closed system. Trees planted inside enjoyed abundant light with controlled temperature, water and nutrients – all the support needed to thrive. While the trees grew rapidly, they were so weak they would collapse under their own weight before reaching maturity. Protected from the challenge of wind stress, the trees failed to develop the structural tissues required for strength. To thrive, organisms require a balance of support and challenge. Reacting to narratives of churches preaching fear of hell and soul-crushing guilt, the prevailing ‘gospel’ of the 21st Century western church emphasises comfort and reassurance. We sing about God who will save us from all our trials and troubles, we preach about a God who longs to soothe our pain and set us on a path to wholeness and fullness of life. It’s a gospel of light, water and nourishment with little consideration for challenge. “When Jesus calls a man, he bids him come and die.” stated Bonhoeffer, reflecting on Luke 9:23. There Jesus declared that “…whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it.” While we can quickly write this off as hyperbole, Jesus’ instruction to his followers and would-be followers balanced supportive reassurance of love and forgiveness with challenges to repent, to be single-minded, to forego status and security for the greater ideal of the Kingdom of God. Great discipling movements – like the monastic missionaries of the early medieval period and the Wesleyans of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries – transformed the societies of their time. Beyond...
