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Published on 5 Comments on Where is the power?

We're in the middle of a mission at the moment (prayers always welcome!).  One of the things we're doing is door-knocking our neighbourhood and we've seen people turn to the Lord even on the door-step.  Praise God!

In our morning meetings there seems to be one kind of prayer that recurs more than any others - that God would prepare hearts so that when we arrive they are open to the gospel.  Now I'll give a hearty Amen to all such prayers and, in His grace, God may well grant this.  But when we think about hearts opened, wouldn't it be better to pray that the word itself will open hearts, conquer unbelief, awaken faith?  Is it possible that we're separating word and Spirit by conceiving of evangelism in these terms?  Is there a danger that the power is thought of as separate from the gospel and not as the gospel itself?  (Rom 1:16).

I think I'd rather pray, "Lord, though the people we meet be stone-hearted, blind and lost in sin and blackest darkness, bring life and immortality to light through your gospel.  May your word do its almighty work and bring life from the dead."

I'd certainly rather conceive of evangelism in those terms.  When we tell the gospel we're not basically hoping that some have previously enjoyed God's power.  Rather, we're going with the power of God which is unleashed upon all, every time we speak of Christ.

 

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Published on Leave a comment on Love is the greatest thing… or is it?

Ok, another little example of engaging with non-Christian world-views.  This is from a wedding sermon I gave a few weeks ago.  The great majority of the congregation were not Christians. The couple asked me to speak from 1 John 4:7-12.  I'll quote a part of the sermon and then make some comments.  (Just so you know I've tweaked the last paragraph since giving the sermon.)

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Why is virtually every film, every TV show, every novel, every pop song obsessed with people falling in love and getting together?  If they're not obsessed with falling in love and getting together, they're obsessed with falling out of love and drifting apart.  You can't get around it: this kind of committed, mutually self-giving relationship consumes our culture and consumes our hearts.

Why?  Why do all the songs say ‘Love is the greatest thing'? 

Craig and Debbie know.  That's why they chose this reading from the bible.  Why does the world say ‘Love is the greatest thing.'??  Because God, the greatest thing, is love. 

That's the famous phrase from our reading.  Verse 8: "God is love."  Coming into church this afternooon you may not have known any verse of the bible - now you know one.  "God is love."

God's not just in a long-term relationship.  God is an eternal relationship of committed love.  God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit love one another, uphold one another, pour their life into one another from eternity past to eternity future.

The committed love of marriage is a faint picture of the incredible love that binds the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Whether you believe in Him or not, whatever concept of God you've brought to church this afternoon, allow it to be shaped by God's own word.  God is love.

God doesn't just do love.  God is love.  His very existence is an existence of love.  Love is the very stuff of His being.  The Father, Son and Holy Spirit are who they are because they are constantly giving and receiving love.

Why do the songs say love is the greatest thing?  Because the greatest thing, God, is love.  To put your finger on the ultimate pulse of reality you will find the committed love of these three Persons.  Of course the whole world sings of love.  How could it not?! 

But here's the terrible tragedy.  The world doesn't know why love's the greatest thing.  And so the world is left with this groundless, abstract thing called love.  It becomes a mere feeling for us to praise and magnify, and, in all probability, to watch slip through our fingers.  Love, without this grounding in God, becomes only a sentiment to be admired.  But if that is all that love is, then today is robbed of it's meaning.  If love is just a feeling, we may well smile at the happy couple, we will praise their participation in this grand myth called love.  But then we'll go home wondering if there's any real substance to it all.  But to all that, the bible says Perish the thought!!  Love has a grounding.  As verse 7 says "Love comes from God".  That's why Craig and Debbie want us to think about these verses.  The God who is love will breathe meaning back into that old cliche that 'love is the greatest thing'.  And in doing so He will provide a foundation not only for Craig and Debbie's marriage but for all of our lives.  So let's pay attention to these verses for the next couple of minutes...

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Four observations.

First, the Christian can take upon their lips non-Christian sentiments and use them truly.  But in doing so we commandeer those propositions and press them into a quite different service.  So 'love is the greatest thing' on the lips of a non-Christian means what?  Well it could mean many things but at the end of the day it effectively boils down to 'love is God.'  Love itself becomes the object of worship.  But what does 'love is the greatest thing' mean on the lips of a Christian?  Well in the kind of context I tried to give in the sermon, it becomes testimony to the entirely different truth 'God is love'.

Secondly, I really mean it when I wonder out loud How can the world not sing of love?  I am happy to draw attention to this universal sentiment that 'love is the greatest thing.'  But I will tell the non-Christian that he or she doesn't really know why it's their sentiment.  And that even the terms of that sentiment are distorted into falsehood.  'Love is God' seems a hairs-breadth from the truth, in fact it's idolatry.  And idolatry is not a stepping stone to true worship.

Thirdly, none of this depends on agreeing with a non-Christian definition of love.  It's not a case of saying 'Hey, you love love, I love love, everyone loves love.  Lemme show you the best love.'  We can't do that because verse 10 describes love in terms that are completely off our natural radar screen.  According to God's word, love is bloody, sacrificial, atoning death.  And that for enemies.  I've never found the non-Christian who will agree to that definition of love in advance!  We simply do not share a common understanding of love from which we can argue to divine reality. 

Fourth, I'm very fond of that kind of phrase: 'Allow yourself to be told...'  I don't know where I first picked it up but it's kind of my whole theology of revelation.  Preaching (but in fact all speaking of Christian truth) is declaring with divinely delegated authority: 'Allow yourself to be told something you do not know, could never anticipate and will never have under your belt...  Put yourself in the path of this meteor from above...  Receive something that you absolutely do not already have in your grasp.'  It is news that we tell.  Revelation.  I try to have my rhetoric shaped by that.

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Published on Leave a comment on Trivial pursuits

Here's an evangelistic talk I gave last year.  I'm giving a version of it again in a fortnight so any critique would be gratefully received (especially in light of our recent discussions).  It was given at the half-way point of a pub quiz...

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I don't really think this quiz is fair.  I'm not doing half as well here as I do in London quizes.  I think it might have something to do with my mobile phone reception.  I tell you - the blackberry has trasformed the pub quiz has it not?  Not so much a quiz as an internet research challenge.

But I'm sure that no-one here would do something so under-handed!

I'm Australian - I just say that because you might listen in and think I have an accent.  You'd be wrong, I don't have an accent - you have the accent.  I speak perfectly normally.   I've lived here in the UK for about 12 of the last 14 years... give or take the odd deportation.

I have to say though that Australia and England share a common love of quizzes.  We're all trivia lovers.

I love trivia.  When I was growing up my favourite book was called ‘the Big Book of Amazing Facts.'  And it was full of all sorts of trivia like the fact a squid has three hearts and a sheep has six stomachs and all polar bears are left handed and if you folded a sheet of paper 20 times you'd reach the moon but of course you can't because you can only fold a piece of paper 7 times.  All those sorts of trivial facts fascinated me.

And trivia fascinates us as a culture.  We're a very prosperous culture and a very safe culture today.  In the history of the world we have never lived at a more prosperous time or a safer time and on planet earth there are few places that are richer or more secure than right here, right now.  And in the absence of great life or death issues, our culture loves to stare at its own navel. 

And so our best selling books are Sudoku puzzles and cook books and trivial lists called miscellanies.  When you look to TV all our prime-time programmes are diets and cooking programmes, make-overs, celebrity nannies and reality TV.  Of course reality TV is just trivial TV isn't it.  Dull, lifeless, drab and excruciatingly boring.  We are fascinated with the trivial.

Now it's fine to like trivial books and trivial tv, and it's fun to test our trivia knowledge.  But wouldn't it be a tragedy if you got to the end of your life and the verdict on it was "Trivial"!  That would be a very great tragedy. 

But the scary thing is - all it takes to live a trivial life is for you to try very hard and be very productive and very successful at irrelevant things.  That's all it takes to waste your life - simply to ‘major on the minors' as the Americans say. If you work hard at the side issues in life, your life is trivial.  If you miss the main thing in life, you could be very industrious, very determined, very successful even but you would have utterly wasted the life God's given you.  I don't want it said of anyone here on the Day coming that really matters - ‘your life was trivial.  You missed the main thing.'

I want us to think about four words from the Bible this evening.  They come from a letter in the New Testament written by the Apostle Paul.  He writes to Christians and he says to them:

CHRIST IS YOUR LIFE.  Christ is your life.

In 1998 my mother bought me a T-Shirt she'd bought at a London market.  The T-Shirt had a cricket bat and a cricket ball on it, and it just said ‘Cricket is Life: The rest is mere details.'

This is because, at the time, cricket consumed my life.  I was never happier than when chasing a small red ball around a park.  Cricket was the driving passion of my life and every other priority in life had to give way.  Friends, girlfriends, certainly school and university study - they all very much took a back seat, because cricket was my LIFE - the rest was mere details...

Now you are thinking - what a trivial pursuit - cricket!  Is there anything more boring? 

Groucho Marx once went to a cricket match at Lord's and halfway through the match he turned to his host and said "And when will the actual game begin."  Cricket is dull.  Cricket is trivial.  But it was my life.

Do you know what I have to show for my years devoted to cricket?  Any cricket fans here may know of Wisden which is the cricketer's almanac recording the more serious games of cricket that take place in the world.  There have been 144 editions of the Wisden cricketing almanac and they each hold over a thousand pages.  I am on one of those pages.  Halfway down p886 of the 136th edition of the Wisden cricketing almanac my name appears in 6-point font.  And it's mis-spelt.  That's what I have to show for years and years of obsessive devotion to cricket.  You know what that means for those years - they were trivial.

And you know how I felt when I hit a level of cricket that was just too good for me and I got dropped from the team?  I wanted to die.  Cricket was life and when I failed at cricket I didn't just fail at a sport I failed as a person.  That's how it felt.  Because cricket was my life.

Whatever you devote yourself to has the power of life or death over you.  So what about you? What's your trivial obsession.  I've told you mine, now it's your turn, let's get up one by one...  What's your life?  What's on your T-shirt?  What do you day-dream about, when you're doing the washing up or standing in the supermarket queue or the last thought at night.  What do you think ‘if only I had that then everything would be ok.'  What is it in your life that you think, ‘if I lost that, I wouldn't want to live.'  That's your life.  And that thing - whatever it is - has the power of God over you.  If it comes through for you it feels like life, if it fails you, it feels like death.  What's on your t-shirt?  What is your life?

It might be something much more noble than cricket.  I'm sure it is!  Perhaps it's your job, perhaps it's your friends, perhaps it's your spouse or your family.  But whatever it is - your life orbits around that thing.  But let me assure you there is nothing on earth strong enough to take the gravitational forces you're putting on it.  Family, friends, loved ones will all fail you - they'll either let down or they'll get sick and die.  But one way or another, if they are your LIFE, your world will come tumbling down. 

Our Bible verse says there's only one thing that ought to be your life.  CHRIST IS YOUR LIFE.

But wait.  Maybe you don't think Christ is strong enough to be the centre of your world.  Perhaps you don't think this Galilean carpenter would make a very good life!

Well the bible insists He is far more than a Galilean carpenter.

In the book where this verse is found it says this.  "ALL THINGS WERE MADE BY CHRIST AND FOR CHRIST"

Jesus is not just the founder of Christianity.  Jesus is the founder of the universe.  He is not just 2000 years old, He was there in the beginning.  Everything came FROM Jesus and it is all FOR Jesus.  The Bible insists that Jesus is our Creator and He is the Goal of all things.  "All things were made by Christ and for Christ."

How can we get our head around that?  Imagine this.  Imagine a child blowing a bubble through a bubble ring. That's a bit like creation.  Because God kind of blows the bubble of creation out through Jesus Christ.  A bubble ring defines and shapes the bubble and Jesus Christ defines and shapes the universe.  All things were made by Him and for Him.

You might have all sorts of questions about that.  That's fine, Christ Church exists as a place where you can ask those questions and get answers.  But that's what the Bible says - "All things were made by Christ and for Christ".  You were made by Christ and for Christ.

Therefore the BIG question about whether you're living a trivial life is this:  Are you FOR Jesus Christ?  Are you FOR Him?  Do you know Him, do you know Him as your goal, the meaning of your life, are you for Him?  If you're not then you might be doing a thousand good things - but you're not involved with the main thing.  The main thing is Jesus.  Christ is your life... the rest is mere detail.

Imagine you were invited to Buckingham palace for tea with the Queen.  You come back and all I want to do is ask you about what she was like, what she said, was she nice, was she bored, was Philip there, did he offend anybody??  Imagine you come to me and say, "I couldn't be bothered with the Queen or any of them.  But, my gosh, let me tell you about the tea!"

I don't care about the tea, and you shouldn't either. You're invited to the palace to meet the Queen.  And you exist on planet earth to meet Christ.  Christ is your life - if you're missing Him you're in grave danger of living a trivial life.

When I failed at cricket - that was a gift from God.  He showed me that I was trying to find LIFE in a place it was never meant to be found.  He showed me I was living a trivial life.  He used this massive disappointment to make me realise the MAIN thing in life.

But what about you?  What is your driving passion?  

Most of my wife and my friends are not Christians.  And we have seen with them at least three different driving passions.  The first passion was obvious - we met at university and so what did we talk about when we got together?  Parties.  We'd tell each other the best parties we'd been to, how drunk everyone got, the drugs everyone took.  Parties were life. 

Eventually my friends stopped partying so much.  Why? Did they get religion or something?  No, they'd just found a new driving passion - it was called career.  Then every time we met up they'd brag about how many hours they were working.  They'd say ‘I work 60 hour weeks. I work 70 hour weeks.  I go to work in a nappy just to save on bathroom breaks.' It got ridiculous. 

But you know, eventually they're getting over their workaholism.  How?  They've got new will-power? No they've got a new passion.  And the new passion is family.  So now they're up to their eye-balls in nappies and competing with the other mum's over who's the cutest, smartest, most likely to marry a footballer.  Now ‘Family is life, the rest is mere details.'

But the point is this:  No-one ever gives up on one driving passion without being convinced that there is a better driving passion on offer.  No-one gives up the ‘My job is my life' t-shirt without being assured that there is a better t-shirt with a better life to put on.

For me, it took a time of great depression to realise, my life wasn't working.  I'd tried the academic success t-shirt, I'd tried the sporting success t-shirt, I'd tried the women t-shirt.  And they all failed me.  All of those things are GREAT in their own place.  Friends, relationships, family, job, sport, success they're all great in their own way - but they are not life.  And what it took was for me to pick up the Bible and meet Jesus Christ in it.  In Jesus I found a centre to my life big enough to take the weight of my hopes and expectations.

You'll only make Christ your life if you see Him in all His glory.  And the Bible is a book that shows off the glory and the wonder of Jesus.  It tells you that Jesus MADE the universe AND He stooped down to become a man.  It tells you He rules over all creation AND He humbles Himself onto a bloody cross.  It tells you He is worthy of all praise and service AND He comes and serves us.  You've never met anyone like Jesus.  But you need to meet Him - He needs to be the centre of your life.  So why not come along to Christ Church tomorrow morning. Why not commit to coming to church and finding out who this Jesus is.  Find out why He is the central figure of all history.  Find out why the calendar revolves around HIS birth.  Find out why He commands more allegiance than any other human figure.  Come and meet Jesus Christ and then everything else falls into place - friends, family, work, play.  Your life will find it's true order when Jesus is at the centre. 

Well those are just a few thoughts from me.  I hope you're enjoying your evening and that you enjoy your trivia. Trivia's fun, but I hope our lives revolve around someOne far more worthy.

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Published on 20 Comments on The truth that is in Jesus

Ok, so we've noted the danger of fiting Jesus into a pre-fab system of truth. We don't want to do that.  But Missy has asked the $64 000 question.  It's basically this: What do we do when speaking to a non-Christian - isn't it desirable at least sometimes to bring Christ to them according to their preferred programme?? 

I'm not going to be able to answer this very well.  But I'm just going to give some thoughts as they occur and then I'd love if others chimed in with how they go about this.

My first thought is this:  If we're doing evangelism then we are necessarily relating Christ to non-Christian thought-forms.  Even if all we do is read out the sermon on the mount it will be heard from within a pre-existing mindset.  What's more it will be heard as remarkably similar, if not completely continuous, with human philosophies.  Think about it.  We all live in a universe made by, through and for Christ and which proclaims Him in every detail. Everyone is working with the same conceptual raw materials and can do no other than come up with some re-arrangement of Christian truth.  When the pure stuff is brought to bear on discussion people will say 'Yeah, yeah.  That's just like X.'

But is it?  And is it ever true to say to a person 'You know it is just like X.  And I'll add Y and Z to your X and we'll build towards saving knowledge of Christ.'

Well let's think about the nature of truth.  Paul says we find truth in Christ - hidden in Him in fact (Eph 4:21; Col 2:3).  Jesus says He is truth (John 14:6) and even goes so far as to say that God's word (which He also calls 'truth') when not related to Him, leaves people in terrifying ignorance.  (John 5:39f; 17:17). 

Truth is relative.  It stands in strict relation to Christ the Truth (good name for a blog I reckon).  His subjectivity is the one objectivity.  What is there outside of Him in Whom all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden?  Rearrangements of Christian reality yes - but because of that re-arrangement they are rendered blasphemous falsehoods.  The true test of a proposition is not its conformity to an abstract notion of reality or reason or scientific law.  The true test is its relatedness to Jesus.

It is simply not the case that discrete parcels of truth lie around the universe largely intact.  It is even less true that sinful humanity has some capacity (or inclination!) to assess these propositions, divorced as they are from Christ.  It's outright Pelagian heresy to imagine that such 'discrete propositions' and such 'objectively assessed' truth will lead a person to Christ.  Christ leads us into the truth.  Study of abstract truth does not lead us to Christ.

Now, what about non-Christian philosophies?  Can a Christian take a sentence from Homer (either Simpson or the poet!) on their lips and use it to testify to Christ?  Of course!  But in doing so they have vindicated Christ not Homer.  They have not given testimony to the rightness of that proposition in its own context.  They have commandeered it and pressed it into Christ's service - the service it should have always rendered.  This is precisely the language of 2 Corinthians 10:5 - taking every thought captive to make it obedient to Christ.

In this verse Paul paints the picture of these renegade 'thoughts' that have gone AWOL from Christ.  We arrest them and press them back into the Lord's service.  But what we don't do is grant these thoughts a civilian existence, as though they'll do the Lord's service no matter what uniform they're wearing.  No.  Either they're in obedience to Christ (explicitly wearing the uniform) or they're a pretension setting itself up against the knowledge of God (2 Cor 10:5).

Ok, but now we're back to the inescapable problem.  Here is a non-Christian with all their presupposed notions of truth that can only lead them to error.  Now here comes Christ the Truth.  And we've already conceded that the non-Christian cannot but hear Christ according to their presupposed notions.  So what do we do?

Well here's one tempting response.  Simply oppose everything they say.  They buy into post-modernism - we counter with modernism.  They're comfortable with irrational claims - we respond with rationalism.  They say 'truth is relative' - we insist 'truth is absolute.'  They indulge in immorality - we preach morality.  Well you may well get a discussion going.  But have you brought them to Christ?  Or to the 1950s? 

Tim Keller ministers among the groovy lefties of Manhattan.  What's his approach?  Traditional religious values?  No, as he likes to say the bible is not left wing or right wing - it's from above.  Whatever we say into these debates must make that clear.

Another thought.  Jesus did not come onto the world stage addressing 'universal human concerns'.  He wasn't born into the Areopagus as the Ultimate Philosopher.   He did not open with: 'We all know the truth about relationships, money, power etc.  I've come to bring you the ultimate experience of these.'  No.  He comes specifically and almost exclusively onto the Jewish scene, addressing Jewish hopes and concerns.  He comes as Messiah into a very specific, encultered setting which He had been meticulously preparing for Himself for centuries.  A people had been formed, a law had been given, a land, kings, prophets, priests, the Scriptures.  And the understanding, ideals, hopes and problems of this people are actually quite strange to the natural ear.

They worried about ceremonial cleanness and atoning sacrifice; about land and exile; about Sabbath and the throne of David.  They were a particular people with particular patriarchs and a particular God called Yahweh who was (and is), among other things, their tribal deity.  They were concerned about His particular promises - His covenant - and their particular fulfilment.  The Jesus-shaped hole at the heart of Israel was a very peculiar shape indeed - at least to modern sensibilities.  It is, in many ways, very different to what contemporary evangelists consider as the Jesus-shaped hole of today's 'enquirer'. 

And so when the LORD incarnate comes as His own Prophet, He does a couple of peculiar things that we modern evangelists don't really do.  First He comes in fulfilment of the Scriptures.  All the Gospel writers do this but Matthew especially introduces Jesus as the fulfilment of the Old Testament.  Here is the One at the centre of this history and this people and these hopes.  Do we present Jesus like that? 

The other peculiar thing Jesus does is to begin by saying 'Repent and believe the gospel.'  That's not His punchline - that's His opener.  'Repent and believe the gospel' He commands.  And then He unpacks the life of the kingdom.  On those terms He speaks of relationships, money, power etc.  First the beatitudes - the gatehouse to the kingdom - then a description of this kingdom life.

What would evangelism look like that followed this pattern?  Something like this I think: "You've been speaking to me about love / freedom / fear / power / addiction / sexuality / abortion / capital punishment / healthcare / education / the state / animal rights / whatever.  Jesus has a lot to say on those issues but I'm going to have to back up from our discussion and give you a bird's eye view.  Let me give you the bible's view on X in three minutes."  If your friend isn't willing to do this then they're not willing to have a serious discussion anyway.  Present your biblical theology of the issue with Jesus at the centre.  Now Jesus is your non-negotiable.  He is the vantage point from which you address the subject.  He is not in question - everything else is.  Even use language like "For the sake of argument, work with me on this.  I'm describing Christ's universe - He made all things, He came into the world to reconcile them etc etc...  Doesn't that explain perfectly what we find when it comes to X?'

What you don't want to do is say 'X is absolutely true.  Now please investigate Jesus and I hope you find that He fits the criteria already established by X.'  I find Karl Barth's warning on this particularly salient:

The great danger of apologetics is “the domesticating of revelation… the process of making the Gospel respectable. When the Gospel is offered to man, and he stretches out his hand to receive it and takes it into his hand, an acute danger arises which is greater than the danger that he may not understand it and angrily reject it. The danger is that he may accept it and peacefully and at once make himself its lord and possessor, thus rendering it inoccuous, making that which chooses him something which he himself has chosen, which therefore comes to stand as such alongside all the other things that he can also choose, and therefore control.” (II/1, p141)

More Barth quotes here.

Anyway I've got a few more things to say but I've rambled on too long.  Maybe a worked example or two would help.  Perhaps that's what I'll blog next.

But I'll leave it there for now.  What do you think?

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Published on Leave a comment on Four Bishops, Four Pearls

I was reflecting today that in the last fortnight I've received four pearls of wisdom from four Anglican bishops.  That's right, I said Anglican bishops.

The first pearl came from retired Bishop John Taylor who spoke at our ordination retreat.  He told the story of a pastoral visit to a very ill woman in hospital.  It represents brilliantly what I think pastoral practice (and good evangelism) boils down to.  Here's how I remember his re-telling:

I told her God's grace was for her - even for her.

She said "No, it couldn't be, you don't know what I've done."

I told her "Christ said 'The healthy don't need a doctor, the sick do.  I've not come to call the righteous but sinner.' It really is for you."

She said "No."

I said "Yes!"... 

...Eventually she received Christ.

 

Brilliant!  The word from beyond comes, contradicts and finally comforts.  It perfectly encapsulates my understanding of ministry.

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The next pearl comes from my Bishop of Chichester in his charge to us priests prior to ordination.   He spoke about public worship:

It is fundamental for biblical faith that God is the subject and not the object of the liturgy.  In [OT] Temple worship, it is God who reveals himself, his presence, his name, his will.  The cultus was not a kind of magical conjuring up of a compliant deity but the place at which by thankful remembrance of what God has done in the past God himself has the opening to disclose himself again, here and now, to renew faith and secure its transmission to the next generation... it is something which lies in God's own hands...

...Let me finish by trying to draw together a few scattered strands of this charge.  First, I would like you to remember always that true worship is not something we do, but a moment in which God discloses himself to us.  Second, I would like you to remember that both praise of God and thanksgiving for his actual gifts are central to authentic worship and third, I would like you to remember that worship has an important role in reconvincing people of his concrete, actual, historical acts of mercy so that they can become effective witnesses to those who do not believe.  And finally, I would like you to remember that if our worship is genuine, it can be a powerful witness to both those who believe and those who do not yet believe, that God is real and has been among his people.

We do not pull God down (through our faithful preaching, our good music or our sacramental practice).  These things, in God's good pleasure, are a means of His grace.  The direction of the arrow is DOWN.

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Next pearl was from my area Bishop, Wallace Benn who preached at my ordination.  His passage was John 21:1-19.  He spoke of the importance of feeding the sheep (v15-17) and of the sure expectation of suffering in ministry (v18-19).  But first and foremost he drummed into us the vital importance of 'maintaining your love relationship with the Lord' (v15-17).

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Finally, Douglas Milmine - former Bishop of Paraguay - was at my ordination.  He's been ordained since 1947, been a bishop for 35 years and absolutely brim full of the joy of the Lord.  Just minutes before the ordination service he said to us in the vestry: 

I've only one regret in my ministry - that I didn't save more souls.  That's the only reason we're here - saving souls.

 

Go bishops!

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Published on 27 Comments on The Allah of the Quran is not the God of the Bible

These are thoughts that I've been sharing over at Between Two Worlds on a post called Is the Father of Jesus the God of Muhammed?

My answer?  Of course not.  Here are some points in no particular order:

1) Let's let Allah define himself:

"He does not beget nor is he begotten." (Sura 112)

The Quran defines the god of Islam explicitly as not the God of the Bible. Let's respect Muslims enough to let them define who their god is. He is not the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We honour their faith by speaking of Allah as another god - that is how Allah defines himself. From our perspective we cannot speak of Allah as anything other than an idol - anything else fails to take Muslim faith on its own terms.

2) Can anyone really imagine the prophets addressing the Edomites, Philistines etc saying 'Yahweh is very much like Baal/Molech/Asherah'??! Never!

The question for the nations is not 'Do you believe in God?' But 'What god do you believe in?' Whether you're evangelizing in north Africa or north America "God" cannot be assumed.  In fact "God" is the least obvious word in our evangelistic encounters.  How on earth do we get to a position where people make it the point of commonality!

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At this point a commenter replied that the 'Baal' analogies do not work because Allah is thought to be 'the transcendent Creator' and not simply a power within the world.  He claimed that a Muslim convert would have to repent of many beliefs but not his belief in 'God as infinite transcendent Creator.'

To this I replied...

3) We don't say "Baal is called 'Lord' and receives worship therefore no convert from Baalism needs to repent of their notions of Lorship or worship."  Of course they will have to repent of all of this.  So then why would anyone claim that a belief in the 'infinite transcendent Creator' is of a different order?  Fundamentally I see this as committing two errors.  It is to say...

A) 'Transcendent Creator' is more foundational to God's being than His triunity.

B) The Muslim means roughly the same as the Christian when speaking of the 'Transcendent Creator'

I strongly disagree with both.

A) i) If God is transcendent Creator you've made Him dependent on creation.

A) ii) It is a position that leads to Arianism. Athanasius complained that Arius' error was to conceive of God as Unoriginate and then to consider trinity. On this trajectory he could never affirm the homo-ousios of One whose being was 'ek tes ousia tw patri' (out of the being of the Father). Similarly if your conversation with a Muslim begins with some 'bedrock' notion of transcendence before introducing them to Jesus it will necessarily mean introducing them to one who is less than the transcendent one. You'll have shot yourself in the foot from the very beginning. Let's not define Jesus out of full deity before we've even begun. We therefore must not begin on the Arian trajectory of affirming transcendent Creator first - Jesus will not come out very well from such a starting point!

B) Only the God who exists as Himself in relations of otherness can actually have a relationship with creation in which we can know Him as transcendent. 'Transcendent Creator' is dependent on trinity (not the other way around). The Muslim account of transcendence is completely confused (as is every unitarian account). Allah is a prisoner of his 'transcendence' - by definition cut off from any relationship with it (whether transcendent or immanent).

'Transcendent Creator' is neither the foundational nor a shared understanding of the living God. And it's not desirable that it should be.

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At this point my interlocutor (rightly) suspected I was denying the possiblity of true philosophical reflection on divinity apart from Christian revelation.  He claimed I was being overly Barthian ;-)   I replied with these points...

4) In terms of theological method, "Christ alone" is not a Barthian novelty!  It's difficult to think of a more crucial verse in the history of the church for theological method than Matthew 11:27: "No-one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him."

To this let's add John 1:18; 14:6 and Colossians 1:15. To this let's add the continual Scriptural witness that we are blind, dead, enemies of God unable to know Him apart from His Word to us.  (e.g. Ps 14:2; 2 Cor 4:4; Col 1:21).  These plain and central truths cannot be evaded by crying 'Barthian'!

5) Nicea's "The Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth" was a deliberate and crucial choice of order. Triunity precedes creation. Of course it does - unless we want to define God as dependent upon creation.

6) Even Jews who have the Scriptures do not know the Father if they reject the Son. (cf ALL OF JOHN'S GOSPEL!)

7) To go over a previous point - there are tremendous Arian dangers of considering 'Creator' more foundational than trinity. Once you have assured your Muslim friend that she really does know God and that the God she knows is definitionally the infinite, transcendent Creator, do you really think you've helped her towards faith in Jesus of Nazareth?? Have you not just given her every reason to reject divine honours (thus defined) being attributed to Christ. Won't she simply thank you for confirming her own doctrine of God which by definition precludes Jesus from being anything more than a prophet??

Athanasius rightly said 'the only system of thought into which Jesus Christ will fit is the one in which He is the starting point.'

The Rock upon which we build is nothing and no-one else but Christ.  Let's be clearer on this whether we're evangelizing Muslims or our friends in the pub.  They do not know God and besides - why would we want to confirm for them a sterile, non-relational doctrine of God in the first place??  Let's tell them, 'The god you had thought existed was not God - let me tell you about the living God who is unlike anything you've imagined.  His name is Jesus and He blows your god out of the water!'

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Published on Leave a comment on Door to Door?

A friend of mine recently posed this statement for discussion

"Five sessions of 5 pairs spending two hours door-knocking is better spent having 5 pairs having neighbours round five times in a season" Discuss.

Some responses:

  • Good thought!  See especially here where Rory Shiner discusses Gospel intentionality as a good 'third way' between cold-contact and friendship evangelism.  He (like my friend) has been very impressed by the Crowded House churches.
  • The personal investment involved in such hospitality is often far greater than the fear factor involved in door-to-door.  In this sense door-knocking, though appearing to be the more impressive, can often be more of a cop-out.
  • A deep sharing of life is surely a far superior context for sharing the faith!

But having said that

  • The context for sharing my faith is, fundamentally, not my friendships down here (though clearly that is ideal).  More fundamentally though, the context for sharing the faith is resurrection, pentecost and second coming. Christ is risen - this is my authority to speak of Christ.  The Spirit has been poured out - this is the power to do so.  He is coming - this is the urgency.  I realise my friend would not wish to disagree with this but it's still good to remember what is at root my authorisation for my speaking.
  • There are millions in this country alone who don't have Christian friends (at least Christian friends who are willing to share their faith).  Friendship evangelism will not reach them.  (Rory's proposal linked above speaks to this - gospel intentionality seeks to reach a wider network of people than those we already know).
  • If it's a question of 'effectiveness' - stranger evangelism 'works'. I will post figures from Bridge Builders when I have them confirmed.  But I know also from personal experience that people are converted through these efforts - this is precisely what we expect given the point above regarding resurrection, pentecost and second coming. 
  • Think of the beginnings of the Salvation Army or David Wilkerson (Cross and Switchblade) - there was no bridge upon which they built their ministry apart from the declaration of the word.  Now they committed themselves to those who responded and very meaningful relationships blossomed (along with ministries that often lost their confidence with the power of the word proclaimed plainly!).  But the footing on which those relationships were placed was the proclamation of the gospel to strangers.  (But again perhaps this is closer to the 'gospel intentionality' model than to 'stranger evangelism')
  • Jesus did both - He did blow into town and speak to strangers.  And He also went to dinner parties and built into very significant relationships.
  • We are to sow on all the soils (Mark 4).

In all I think I agree with the statement in terms of priorities.  I'd want to make sure that those we invite are not simply our friends (Luke 14:12-14) and that we target those who are not only beyond the walls of the church but beyond our friendship groups and comfort zones.  Door to door is never to be an end in itself but the basis on which a relationship will ensue.  It should never be "Gospel apart from relationship."  But if it were ever a choice between "Gospel => relationship" or "Relationship => Gospel" then there should certainly be no theologically decisive preference for the latter!

 Therefore I would certainly not want to abandon door-to-door but seek for all evangelism to involve relationship building. In short, let's sow on all the soils.

What say you?

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Published on Leave a comment on What age are we in?

Are we in the Post-Christian age? 

Is this age characterized by total cultural memory-loss regarding our Christian heritage?  Is this the age in which people are so far back in their Christian understanding that the mission stategies of previous centuries are virtually useless? 

Are we in the Post-Modern age?

Is this age characterized by the total devaluation of truth-claims?  Is this the age of story rather than argument?  Of dialogue rather than preaching?  Is this the age in which declarative proclamation will be basically impotent? 

Are we in the Post-Ascension age?

Is this the age characterized by the Spirit's pentecostal power?  Is this the age in which every minute represents the LORD's gospel patience?  Is this the age in which the church is commissioned to make disciples of all nations, empowered by His resurrection authority and accompanied with His living presence? 

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I am tired of hearing Christians rehearse 1 and 2.  We all know about 1 and 2.  But what's fundamental here?  What age are we really in??

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Published on 2 Comments on Calling sinners to Christ

I've just written an essay on repentance and evangelism.  It was very hurriedly written, but basically my point is: Unbelievers can't repent, believers must - all the time. 

One of the implications is that evangelism is calling sinners to come to Christ just as they are.  Two men preaching in the 19th century grasped this very well indeed.

Here is Spurgeon calling sinners to repentance:

Do not attempt to touch yourself up and make yourself something other than you really are, but come as you are to Him who justifies the ungodly. ...The Gospel will receive you into its halls if you come as a sinner, not otherwise. Wait not for reformation, but come at once for salvation. God justifieth the ungodly, and that takes you up where you now are; it meets you in your worst estate. Come in your disorder. I mean, come to your heavenly Father in all your sin and sinfulness. Come to Jesus just as you are: filthy, naked, neither fit to live nor fit to die. Come, you that are the very sweepings of creation; come, though you hardly dare to hope for anything but death. Come, though despair is brooding over you, pressing upon your bosom like a horrible nightmare. Come and ask the Lord to justify another ungodly one. (From "Justification of the Ungodly" by C.H. Spurgeon.  A sermon on Romans 4:5)

And this is from a wonderful piece called Evangelical Repentance by John Colquhoun (1748-1827) 

Do you postpone the act of trusting in the Lord Jesus for all His salvation, till you first sit down and mourn awhile for your sins, or till your heart be so humbled that you may be welcome to Him, and so have from your own resources a warrant for trusting in Him? Do you object against coming to Christ because you are not certain that your conviction of sin and your repentance are of the right sort? Do you apply yourself to the exercise of repentance in order to be qualified for believing in Christ, or do you apply your conscience to the commands and curses of the broken law, in order so to repent as to be entitled to trust in Him? Know, I entreat you, that this preposterous and self-righteous course will but sink you the deeper in unbelief, impenitence, and enmity to God the longer you try in this manner to seek for evangelical repentance in your heart or life, the farther you will be from finding it... Do not try to wash yourself clean in order to come to the open fountain of redeeming blood; but come to it as you are, and, by the immediate exercise of direct confidence in the Lord Jesus, wash away all your sins (Ezek 36:25).

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