That may seem an odd observation to make, but it is a critical one. If we run with a passion to grow things without at the same time being aware that it is one of the most dangerous passions you can have, then the passion will destroy us and our work.

The most dangerous people in our Christian community are the leaders and evangelists who not only long to see growth but who also have the closest sympathy with the needs and concerns of the sinners we are seeking to reach. That is, the people who feel most keenly the needs of the unconverted sinner, who feel most keenly their pain and the difficulties caused by the churches that are meant to be attracting them: these are our most dangerous church members. Why? Because that sympathy for the sinner can very easily overpower any other concerns, such that they see almost every issue through the lens of what will make it easy or hard for the sinner to connect in to church life. And because they long to see these people won to Christ and part of his people, they will feel most keenly anything that might potentially make it hard for them—things like what we say, what we do. They will even see some biblical ideas and practices as concerning when it comes to reaching unbelievers.

The more passionate a person is to see the church grow and the more their sympathies rest with the sinners we are trying to reach, the more open they become to the danger of compromise. Leaders and churches can become ‘sinner driven’.

We are very aware of how secular businesses can become consumer driven—they exist to get people to buy their product and will bend and shift almost anything to increase sales. But a church that is sinner driven can adopt an almost identical set of values—we will shift and change whatever we need to make church more attractive to the community of people we are trying to draw in. Barriers to acceptance of church life are identified and removed, driven very largely by the principle that if people find them difficult then we must have done something wrong. Very soon, the barriers being removed are core gospel thoughts, ideas and practices. Talk of hell is very off-putting. People don’t like to hear about it. Cut back mentioning it, lest we turn someone off. Sin is very negative. Make church more celebratory. Pursue inspiration instead of education. Public Bible reading is often clunky and hard to follow. Drop it in favour of something that will engage. And so on.

Further to this is the subtle but dangerous pattern of passionate mission-minded leaders and churches seeing the power of respect in gaining a hearing for the gospel. People will listen if we gain their respect. We shift our focus, embrace practices, all designed to establish our credibility in the eyes of the world. We want so much for church and its leadership to be regarded respectfully by the community around us so that they might listen to the life-saving message. But a church, a leader, is then only a short step away from losing that which makes us the church: the truth of the gospel, and the distinctives of gospel priorities.

It ought to be obvious but it constantly needs to be said: it isn’t our ministry practices and the message we preach that is to win the respect of outsiders. It is our daily lives. The message we preach? It always was and always will be the stench of death to those that are perishing.

It will be this because the gospel, viewed from one perspective, is a prophetic call to the world to lay down its arms, to stop rebelling. Perhaps the shortest description of the gospel in the New Testament is that Jesus Christ is Lord (2 Cor 4:5). What are those words if they’re not fighting words? To the sinner it says: “Jesus Christ is Lord. You aren’t. So turn back, repent. Bow the knee. Find forgiveness by the only means possible: the gift of grace found in the Lord himself.”

For those of us who have found this forgiveness, the gospel message is of course the fragrance of life. But that fragrance is only sweet if you have acknowledged the dent (the death) it makes in your pride. ‘Sin’ in essence is pride. It is the pride of sin that means the vast majority of people are outside the things of Christ. We cannot make the message of Christ sweet to those that refuse to bow. It cannot but be a stench until the Spirit of God gives birth, by that message, to a whole new heart.

All of this is hard for the person most passionate about growth and deeply longing to see it happen. It is hard to see the outrage of people against what we might say, and not feel we have alienated people and lost an opportunity to win the very world that is reacting so badly to us. Leaders need to make a decision: whose friendship matters most? The world’s? Or our heavenly Father’s?

What kind of leadership do we need?

There are fundamental values necessary to minister as Christ’s ambassador here in this age. One of them is this deeply embedded determination and passion to be, above all else, a faithful representative of Christ in an age that is instinctively and innately opposed to him.

The simple fact is that we cannot be friends with the city (or the country, village, isolated station, etc.). We can love it—or, to express it more helpfully, love its people. But beware the leader that needs to be or wants to be liked and wants to position the church as a loved and respected member of the broader community.

It is possible to minister to one generation, for the purposes of gaining people to the kingdom, in a way that destroys the next generation’s grasp of the gospel, and so hinders the work long term. This concept is so important that it needs to be part of a person’s shaping long before they are near to taking responsibility for the community of faith. It will be tested again and again in many different ways. Our great need is to have leaders who not only understand the truths of the gospel and its priorities, but who are also emotionally bound to them so that a shift hurts deeply.

Often this shift occurs in reaction to apparent failings of previous generations or leadership. We see the outsider criticizing the previous leader or the church in general for a perceived arrogance and harshness and so, to win their respect or to gain a hearing—for the best possible motives of their salvation—we seek to establish ourselves as distinct from those that are disliked, and then present ourselves in such a way that the sinner is struck by our warmth, care and inclusiveness.

This will almost certainly lead to growth. We will gain much positive feedback and on occasion great affirmation as the representatives of a kind of Christianity that is so much more appealing.

However, the critical thing to note is that this path will always only buy short-term impact at the cost of long-term gain. Very shortly we will either have to display a very different side—in proclaiming the hard edges of a love that clearly has boundaries (to the disillusionment or greater disdain of the community, for having been conned), or we will shift our presentations so as to never disappoint our newly won audience. In doing this we will have taken the first steps on the path of compromise.

We often (always?) fail to appreciate the great strengths of those previous generations that are now so roundly condemned as harsh, unloving and sectarian. They actually did much to guard the deposit entrusted to us so that through the generations of opposition there was a faithful message to still proclaim. They may be perceived by many to have created unnecessary negative reactions, which may look like inhibiting growth, but over the long haul they have kept the seeds of the all-powerful gospel alive and well, and modelled a God-centered life that is not prone to the whims and shifts of popular culture.

One local example comes to mind readily. It was the Archbishop of Sydney in 1970. That year the Pope visited Australia and called the leaders of various religious organizations to gather together with him and pray. Sir Marcus Loane famously refused to attend the event. For him to attend would have been an act of serious and significant compromise. The Archbishop’s refusal to attend was, by its very nature, public. There were letters to editors across the country. To many church growth observers it was a PR disaster. How can Christianity appeal to the world if its leadership acts in such seemingly divisive ways? Many were so outraged they determined never to set foot in an Anglican church in Sydney again. Many other churches readily capitalized on the uproar by presenting a far softer image to the community—one of inclusiveness and broad incorporation. These churches won acclaim as other churches were condemned.

Now, 40 years later, it is these condemned churches that are alone in experiencing positive growth over the last decade. That growth hasn’t been spectacular, but the churches Sir Marcus Loane led remain determinedly faithful to the apostolic gospel and its exclusive claims in a world that is increasingly pluralistic.

It is not hard to see why such a stand would contribute to faithful leadership. The many men and women who understood what the Archbishop was doing were nurtured in a similar determination to fear God, not man. They saw themselves as functioning as prophetic voices in a world that would always have reason to despise the message of Christ. They nurtured the many who came after them in this same set of values. These things have strengthened the hands of innumerable young men and women to trust the God of the gospel and so stand when narrow strategic considerations would insist it was time to soften.

The need for passion

However!

(And this is a large ‘however’.)

As dangerous as a passion for growth is, and as necessary as the warnings are concerning that passion for growth, if we are to be faithful to Jesus, true to the spirit of the apostles, and read the New Testament rightly, then we need to have passion for growth!

The great danger is that wherever people grasp the church as the pillar of truth, and grasp only that, it is possible to create a ministry that is defensive, reactive and doctrinaire. These things become destructive of what we seek to stand for.

It is so important to see that we are to have a passion for growth that I want to step through the various reasons for doing so.

The gospel itself requires us to be passionate for growth

The gospel isn’t merely a word about God’s honour, to be delivered whatever the response. It is, at its heart, a summons from God our ruler for a response. It is God’s loving movement towards his hostile world to win it back. Note the opening of Luke’s Gospel. At the announcement of Jesus’ birth, the angels say that they bring…

“…good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, who is Christ the Lord.” (Luke 2:10-11)

Note the use of the word ‘saviour’. The gospel is good news because it is news of the Lord who is a saviour. He isn’t just one who testifies to the truth, although he is that. He is one who will actually save. He will bring forgiveness. That is, there is an expectation built into the gospel itself of a response, an expectation of growth—numeric growth.

Then consider 2 Corinthians 4:15: “For it is all for your sake, so that as grace extends to more and more people it may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God”. Paul’s expectation is that the grace of God will extend to “more and more people”. He expects growth numerically. And he sees this very thing—the numerical growth of the church—as the thing that leads to God being glorified.

The shape of the Acts of the Apostles

The book of Acts speaks several times about numbers; it actually reports the number of people responding (Acts 2:41, 2:47, 5:14, 6:7, 11:24, 16:5). This might seem somewhat crass for many modern evangelicals, but it is part of the presentation of the Word. This is all summarized as “the word of God increased and multiplied” (Acts 12:24). The increase and the multiplication is the increase of the numbers of people within whom the Word takes root.

This isn’t arbitrary—of course not! It carries forward an important theological idea introduced in Luke 24, which itself is carrying forward ideas developed much earlier. Jesus in his post-resurrection appearances ends Luke’s account with a statement about the ‘divine necessity’ of not only his death and resurrection, but also the mission to the world: “Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer… and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem” (Luke 24:46-47).

Note here that the divine necessity isn’t simply that a message will be preached, but that a message which brings repentance and forgiveness will be preached to all nations. The gospel is good news because it is news about a saviour who will actually save people through the forgiveness of sins.

This is the foundation upon which Luke’s next book, the book of Acts, builds. Luke follows a major theme of the fulfilment of the mission of repentance and forgiveness of sins being preached, and the impact it makes—how it actually brings repentance and forgiveness of sins, first in Jerusalem and then to the world.

The apostles preach the gospel in Jerusalem to Jews from all nations. Peter issues a call for repentance, promising forgiveness found only in Christ. And it is in response to this first sermon that we are told of the numbers who respond. This recounting of numbers serves an important purpose. It tells us that God’s intention—to send his Son to seek and save the lost—is being fulfilled, that thanksgiving might overflow to the glory of God as the grace of God extends to more and more people.

The model of the apostles

I have made myself a servant to all, that I might win more of them… I have become all things to all people that by all means I might save some… not seeking my own advantage but that of many, that they may be saved. (1 Cor 9:19, 22; 10:33)

Paul was driven to action not only by a duty to simply preach the message faithfully, but also by a real desire to see people saved. God gives the growth and Paul desired to see it.

Passion for growth is dangerous. But a passion for numerical growth (and spiritual growth) is part of the fabric of the gospel and part of the tone and tenor of the New Testament. It is impossible to avoid this tension, even though Paul (for one) was clearly committed to the sovereign work of God in giving growth.

Passion for growth and faithfulness

The nature of the gospel, the shape of the book of Acts, and the model of the apostles compel us to see the need to have a passion for growth—actual numerical growth—and not just passion for being faithful. These things compel us towards this passion, but so too do compassion and love. Imagine being the captain of a rescue vessel arriving at the site of a ferry disaster. Would you care about numbers? If I’m one of those numbers I hope you do! I would want you to be very concerned about numbers, and not merely faithful to your task of captaining the rescue vessel.

Now of course there is the perversion that can come when that captain only cares about numbers for the sake of his personal reputation or his place among other captains or his identity, and so on. And one might understand someone saying that we aren’t to be about ‘numbers’ when ‘numbers’ is really shorthand for the pride that numbers might create. But we don’t then extrapolate from a statement in that context and make it the principle that stands over all our thinking about gospel ministry.

In all of this, these comments go way deeper than merely discussing techniques about how to grow the church. They go to the very DNA of church life and the DNA of its leadership.

The sad truth is that among Reformed evangelicals we have bred a new kind of thinking about pastoral ministry (which is actually very old, but just not as old as the Bible). We have created a legacy of thinking about the pastoral role that is reactionary, passive and small-minded. We have often struggled for so long under small things that our vision is very small. And we have embraced ‘heroic pessimism’ as the controlling mood of our work. In the context of little response we have reduced our gospel ambition to the apparent purity of just being faithful. But under that rubric we have hidden a lack of drive and focus—the things that are necessary if we are to break through and reach the lost—under the gracious sovereign hand of God, who alone gives the growth.

These observations applied

Practically, this applies varyingly in context, and some of us need to attend to different sides.

Typically for the young, there is a need to take great heed of the dangers of a passion for growth.

The gospel is a challenge. It won’t make leaders and churches popular. The church is to be the pillar of truth. It is to be a place where discernment is exercised, disciplines enacted, and challenges issued that will cut people to the heart.

It is necessary to drink deeply of the image of Jesus as the suffering servant, and of Paul, the minister of the gospel who died daily and was despised like his master.

We need to pray that we are able to resist throughout our lives and ministry the seductive call of the world to get its respect, to be its friend. The world, the city, will constantly be saying—actively and passively—that if you want to be accepted you cannot say that and you need to say and do this.

What is necessary is leadership character—the kind that only comes through deep theological formation under leaders who ‘get’ these things and who can model and disciple younger leaders towards them. We need leaders who have the suffering servant values so deeply embedded in mind and heart that they are alert to any small step and where it might take us. This pushes us very firmly towards top-quality theological education, but it also pushes very strongly towards careful and thorough ministry training under men and women who have worked through the heat of the day and lived the life of sacrifice; who know what it is to be unpopular and yet continue to stand for the truth of Christ, graciously.

The young need the first side.

But the older, more established leader may well need the second side.

As we age, it is possible to get stuck. The ministry has been hard. We get worn down. We lose vision. We have battled for so long under the day of small things that our vision has shrunk. It becomes no larger than the day-to-day needs of church. Our people keep us busy—their needs, their problems, admin, weekly preaching. “Think bigger? How? I can’t cope with the load at present.” We don’t expect much. We are heroic in our stand while the church around us dies. Or we settle: we know God can do great things; we’re just sure that he won’t.

We tell ourselves stories to give ourselves some comfort. The soil here is hard. (Perhaps it is.) It isn’t like that area where the church is growing. (Perhaps it isn’t.) If a church is large, we tell ourselves, it must be because it has compromised. (Perhaps it has.) And so, to survive emotionally, we settle for less.

However, the unsettling truth is that the apostolic ministry was shaped by a burning ambition for the truth of the saving work of Christ to be not just known but embraced by the world. And the apostles were prepared to pay whatever price was necessary to see that same world saved by the merits of Jesus. In this they were following the example of Christ.

When we lead churches, we are not running book clubs. The church is the lifeboat in an ocean full of millions of drowning people—without God and without hope. We often allow those already in the lifeboat to shape our vision.

It is urgent that we go past the ‘just be faithful’ line. To be like Christ, like the apostles, connected with the mood of God, we are to seek to actually see people converted, won, saved, and then really grow and change. The more we get this mood back again, the more we are ready to pay the price necessary to do whatever is needed to get our churches moving forward—to change things that are broken in our ministries, in ourselves, in our churches. We are to create a mood within every church where there is a deep dissatisfaction with just doing church.

Satisfactory underperformance isn’t possible if our vision is as large as God’s: all things united under one head, the Lord Christ. It is the vision of countless numbers from every nation gathered around the throne.

Satisfactory underperformance can’t be possible when the realities of heaven and hell are fully known.

A passion for growth is very dangerous to have. But when you understand the nature of the gospel, the shape of the early church, the mood and tone of the apostles themselves, and the vision of God for his world, it isn’t possible to live without a passion to actually see churches grow.

George Whitefield became famous for his highly dramatic style of preaching, aiming at the heart and mind of the working class man, as he taught what the Bible said. He did not merely want to interest or amuse. He wanted people to feel that their souls were at stake.

He also employed the latest communications technology – cheap print and newspapers – to publicise his ministry and itinerary and the gospel he preached. The American publisher of his sermons, Benjamin Franklin, did not believe, but loved to hear Whitefield because his conviction was so clear.

He preached not only in church pulpits, but also to massive crowds of thousands in the outdoors. His first outdoor sermon was delivered at the age of just 24 to coalminers near Bristol, England. He preached to prisoners in jails, but also to lords and ladies. He would go anywhere to preach the gospel of God’s grace, of justification from our sins in Christ alone. Despite the dangers of sailing in those times and with only average health, he crossed the Atlantic thirteen times to bring the gospel to the American colonies.

Yet despite his entrepreneurial methods, he firmly believed in the power of the Holy Spirit, and that conversation was only ever due to God’s electing grace. This was something that led to deep disagreement with John Wesley, his older contemporary in outdoors preaching, the father of Methodism, who sadly denounced him over this.

Like all Christian leaders, he had his blind spots. His relationship with his wife was limited by relentless travels. And in his 30s, he agreed that perhaps some of his earlier preaching had been over the top and overly harsh; more of his spirit than the Spirit of God.

His greatest blindspot was his support of race-based slavery. In the colony of Georgia, he advocated slavery in order to make the impressive orphanage he ran more affordable, and so to care for greater numbers. So when it was legalized there he became a slave owner. Yet he also infuriated slave-owners by insisting on both evangelizing and educating the black slaves. He insisted they had souls, something others denied. He sowed the seeds of emancipation since the gospel said that in Christ they could become children of God, which would mean that they were brothers and sisters to the owners (Gal 3:28). Others could see this would also undermine the whole system. And it is said that when he died in America, he was mourned most by black Americans. Yet he himself remained blind to the contradiction of buying and selling slaves.

By 1740, when George Washington was just 8, he had become the most famous man in America. One biographer, Harry Stout, styled him as America’s first cultural hero. His latest biographer, Thomas Kidd, argues he was the key figure in the first generation of Anglo-American evangelical Christianity. Certainly he preceded Jonathan Edwards (John Piper’s theological hero), who wept at his preaching, as the leader of the Great Awakening.

His life was one of almost daily preaching. Sober estimates are that he spoke about 1,000 times every year for 30 years, sermons, lectures, and talks. That included at least 18,000 sermons and 12,000 talks and exhortations.

Whitefield said,

I know no other reason why Jesus has put me into the ministry, than because I am the chief of sinners, and therefore fittest to preach free grace to a world lying in the wicked one.

Sources: I am indebted to the following articles for my very derivative work!

• John Piper, “I will not be a velvet-tongued preacher“
• Thomas Kidd, “America’s Spiritual Founding Father: Whitefield’s Life and Legacy, Credo Magazine, 4/3 July 2014, pp20-27
• God’s Anointed Barnstormer: Lee Gatiss explains the Holy Violence of Whitefield’s Preaching, Credo Magazine, 4/3 July 2014, pp14-18

The edition of Credo Magazine referenced just above featured more articles on Whitefield (link here to ISSUU and PDF options)

Most women live quite different lives now than they would have in Titus’ time, but we still need to be self-controlled, pure, kind and submissive, adorning the word of God in our daily lives. The women on a staff team are to help the women in the church to do this.

Church ministry is a family concern. I don’t believe church is a professional organization with portfolios, or an institution with traditional roles. We’re a family where men and women, younger and older, married and single, all serve the Lord together. In families, fathers are different from mothers: the two parents offer different things to their children. Women on a staff team are the mothers and sisters, personally ministering to their part of the church family in a way only a woman can. On my staff team, I’m a woman serving in ministry doing the bits that I can do and that Sarah can do, that Phillip and Chris and Rob and (the other) Chris can’t do.

Ministering to the women is only one part of my current ministry, of course. I’m aware that I am in a very particular context, as I am serving in a cathedral church in central Sydney. Actually, I sometimes talk about ‘doing cathedral’ as a different thing to ‘doing church’. The Cathedral is an amplified parish experience, an amplified city church, with a few out-of-the-box formal occasions, like last Easter when royalty attended.

Other unique questions we deal with are: How do you work with potentially meeting 50 new people every Sunday? How do you get people who think church should be an anonymous experience to get involved (people love to hide behind the columns that come with cathedrals)?

As well as the ‘spending time teaching women’ bit, my ministry also involves such roles as:

• helping with the Sunday gatherings
• training the team of student ministers and ministry apprentices
• getting our anonymous fringe and our newcomers known and involved (the role I was brought in to specifically do).

So now that you have my background, what obstacles do I face in my ministry, and what do I do about them? What are the ‘corruptions to the ministry DNA’ in my world, especially as a woman in my particular ministry?

There are two obstacles peculiar to women’s ministry that I’ve been reflecting on.

The first one is a big one that’s pretty common for women in ministry, and especially single women in ministry. It’s when the women you’re meeting with assume you’re there to socialize, and it’s very hard to get them to open their Bibles with you. It can be very easy to end up as part of their social calendar and nothing more.

However, I’m paid to teach the Bible, not to hang out with women. And while I’d love to sit and relax over coffee with them, I don’t have endless time, and there are endless numbers of people who have just joined the church whom I want to make time to meet. I want to be running groups, and doing walk-up evangelism, and looking for opportunities to have outreach events and to speak at some of them.

Some women are hoping we can spend hours together every week, but my limited time means I can’t use all my time with the lonely women in the congregation. But for a lot of women, ‘caring’ to them means spending lots of time, talking through their issues. It can become complicated, balancing expectations and reality while still faithfully serving.

And that can lead to another obstacle to gospel ministry: I’m a Bible teacher. I’m not offering free counselling. I’m not trained to do that. But a lot of women hope that’s what I can give—solutions to their problems.

When I meet with a woman one-to-one, I’m offering them the Word, and there’s not often a proof text for how to deal with their current issue. There’s only the slow discipline of growing their trust in God by persistent study of his Word. That’s disappointing to women familiar with self-help philosophies and the latest improvement tricks and techniques.

Titus 2 describes women’s ministry as women serving other women by helping them not to revile the word of God through their lives; helping them to be self-controlled, godly and upright; and helping them to wait for Jesus while actively growing in good works.

I try to keep these things in mind, and help the women I meet with to see this bigger picture of both great need and also the solid ground of God and his word that’s available.

So how do I put this into practice? By using the majority of the time that I spend with women as time spent over God’s word.

I need to be setting that up as the expectation. I need to be clear that although the nature of our meetings is personal, they are structured around the Word and prayer, not around our problems.

In the end I also have to analyze the nature of the particular relationship between us. There’s no end to the women I could be meeting with. Unfortunately, if all the woman wants is a friend to spend lots of time with, that’s a role I can’t fulfil, and sadly I have to get that message across to her—that I don’t have the same amount of free time that she has. It doesn’t mean I don’t like her, but I have a responsibility to bring God’s word to lots of women, which is time consuming… but very good!

And I need to be raising up others to do this too.

I need to invest time in training fellow workers in the congregation so that more women can be taught. As I focus on a lot of one-to-one meetings and small group ministry, I need others to also be doing one-to-ones and leading groups, in order to reach all the women at church.

Those are obstacles reasonably peculiar to women’s ministry, but there are also obstacles to the ministry DNA that are peculiar to the female minister herself. I’ll just pick two brief ones.

The first has to do with the role that we female ministers try to fulfil.

We’re not the ones who must find the solution to every problem, the makers of all happiness, or the models of perfection. That’s Jesus. But the pressure we women put on ourselves to have everything under control can lead us to do things in ministry for the sake of appearances.

We have this picture in our heads of what the women’s minister should be, and then we fall agonizingly short of it. Not only do we have these expectations of ourselves—we know that the women in the congregation have these expectations of us too!

I’ll give you an example. I know of women in my congregation who are going through big life issues, and I also know that several of the other women in the congregation are caring for these women. But I feel the pressure to be seen to be talking to them fairly regularly to show that I, the women’s minister, am caring, and integrally involved.

This is despite the fact that I know they’re being looked after, and I know of women who aren’t known and aren’t being helped, or who are new and not Christian. I know where the gospel priorities lie, and so I have to go with the gospel motive when using my time and picking my opportunities, not the appearance one. I have to bury that sense that the women are wondering why I’m not meeting with so and so; sometimes they even ask me if I have been to see them, whether I know what’s going on, and what I am doing about it.

But my ministry is before God, not the women’s committee, and I must battle to use my time rightly in the light of that reality.

The second thing we women do, which is again connected to the first, is to waste time and energy beating ourselves up about it all. Just in general, even as a response to these reflections, I want to urge all the women reading not to put too much pressure on themselves! Because you most likely do.

As you make the decision to help Mrs X and not Miss Y, don’t then fret that Miss Y or the friends of Miss Y will think you’re incompetent or lazy or uncaring. Don’t go home from work each day worrying over whether you’ve got your ministry all wrong. Work on a couple of changes to make, sure, but also just get on with it! No-one gets it right all the time. I certainly don’t. We get stressed and overworked and distracted. But we need at least to aim at the ministry DNA or we’ll always be distracted.

Titus 2 calls the older women to be ‘teachers’. Let’s remember that: we’re not merely friends, counsellors or Mrs Fixit.

And there’s only one thing to be teaching: the grace of God that’s appeared, bringing salvation to all people.

Courtesy: Tim Challies, challies.com

Mightn’t it be true that sometimes God lowers our standard of living to raise the standard of our giving!?

This meme is one where I feel very ambivalent (see original at end of this post). I normally like Tim Challies‘ illustrated quotes. And I understand Alcorn is a solid evangelical. And I know nothing of the context of this thought Challies has featured from Alcorn’s works. [* see below for update.] No doubt he says much that’s good. 

And no doubt the Bible talks about prosperity and plenty at times. And if we prosper, we should be generous.

But still I get nervous about prosperity talk. And I want to push back on this quote.

I am thinking of the widow’s mite, of course, in Mark 12:41-44. 

I am thinking of the Macedonians’ generosity, in 2 Corinthians 8:2, and following.

Just pause a moment and actually look the references up! Their generosity welled up in the context of a severe trial that God willed for them.

I am also thinking of an architect I knew, whose income fluctuated widely depending on business, who always insisted on putting something in the offertory bag even when there was no income (or negative income through continuing business expenses), and was (I believe) still generous when a big job paid off.

We learn dependence on God when our income goes down. We learn to live simply. We are tested to discover whether we can still keep being generous to others.

And conversely I am thinking that sometimes greater riches are a great danger (1 Timothy 6:9)!

Proverbs 30:8-9

…give me neither poverty nor riches, but give me only my daily bread.
Otherwise, I may have too much and disown you and say, ‘Who is the LORD?’…

+++

* UPDATE: A friend supplied this photo from Alcorn’s book for context, under a heading called “When God prospers us, why?” which occurswithin a chapter refuting prosperity theology.

I also appreciate Tim Challies taking the time to comment below graciously and pointing me to the context of the quote. Totally fair enough.

For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.
So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

Ask your average punter on the street what the most important mark of a Christian should be, and you’ll invariably get one answer: “Love.” Followers of Jesus should be loving. And although 1 Corinthians 13 appears a painfully obvious passage to choose on the topic of Christian love—it gets a very good workout at wedding services, both in church buildings and also those done by civil celebrants—there are some strong words here for us. The context is the first thing to notice: chapters 12 and 14 both talk about how God helps his church by giving them gifts by his Spirit. So then this chapter: great spiritual gifts minus love equals nothing.

The Corinthians put tremendous emphasis on abilities and characteristics that they had been given by God for the good of the church; much more emphasis than on love for one another. But without love controlling and driving everything, even when the most other-worldly gifts are used, both the action and the person lose their significance (1 Cor 13:1-3).

In order to articulate why love makes such a difference, Paul goes on to describe love (13:4-7). As he does so, however, it becomes clear that the characteristics he lists don’t describe us, or our love. I am not patient or kind, or without envy—at least not in any more meaningful sense than superficially, and only on fleeting occasions. But they do describe Jesus. Jesus is infinitely patient, perfectly kind; never envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. He doesn’t insist on his own way; he rejoices in truth rather than unrighteousness. If you want to see love in higher definition than anywhere else, look at Jesus on his cross.

Paul expects that we as Christians will display this same love. How can we not? If we have felt that love, how can we not love others in the way that God first loved us? If his Spirit empowers us, how can we not love as he loved?

This is part of what allows us to understand why love is given so much importance by God, over and above any spiritual gift (13:1-3). While the punter on the street might say that love is the defining mark of the Christian, the person in the pew may well name something more ‘spiritual’ as the mark of a Christian. Speaking in tongues, prophecies, having a distinctive knowledge of God—these things might impress us, and they definitely impressed the members of the church in ancient Corinth. Yet Paul does not hesitate to say that he cannot write to the Corinthians as spiritual people (3:1), for these gifts are earthly. When Jesus returns in his triumphant glory and judges all people throughout history and takes his forgiven people to unending life with him, there won’t be any tongues. There won’t be any prophecies. There won’t be anyone with a distinctive knowledge of God. Why? Because when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away (13:10).

Faith and hope will not look the same when Christ comes in glory. I take it that we will continue to trust in God’s ways and live according to them, albeit with sight (cf. 13:12). And I take it that we will continue to hope in Christ even as we experience the blessings we currently long for. Not only love, but also faith and hope remain. For when love defines the Christian life, it will necessarily result in faith and hope: love believes all things, hopes all things (13:7).

There are three things in particular that I’m looking forward to in heaven. The first is that there will be no more sadness or suffering. The second is related: that I won’t be part of that problem anymore; I won’t hurt others by my selfishness and lack of love. But the third thing is what Paul tells about in verse 12: we will see God clearly in the face of Jesus. At that point I will know the one I love to the fullest extent possible, as will each of us who have trusted in God in this life. You won’t need me or anyone else to tell you anything about God—in any language!

Love never ends; love will always be the defining characteristic of our life with God. Do you want a window into what heaven will be like? Love is that window. This passage calls us to love like Jesus loves in recognition of how he has loved us, and as a foretaste of the life to come.

In my part of the world, many in our churches have been part of university Christian groups, and have experienced the model of ministry training taking place there.

Although it varies from campus to campus, this generally involves large public meetings, evangelistic events, training in personal evangelism, reading the Bible one-to-one, and quite possibly some sort of trajectory towards a ministry apprenticeship—certainly conversations about the possibility of full-time vocational ministry. This style of ministry training has produced a reaction I hear time and time again from those ministering in local churches: that it’s great for university ministry, or if you’ve got a big evening congregation full of university students, but it simply doesn’t work in the local church. Often people say something along the lines of, “Yes, I believe all that stuff about our ministry DNA in The Trellis and the Vine.¹ but we need something else because it hasn’t worked in the parish”.

The implication is that the model may be fine for someone in a large university ministry where there are lots of people with available time, at a malleable stage of life, who can be gathered easily without distractions, slotted into the training structures (Bible talks, small groups, etc.), invited along to training courses and one-to-one ministry along with what seems like thousands of ministry trainees… but it’s different out there in the local church. People are time-poor, especially in morning congregations (typically people above the age of 35). They’re set in their ways, already formed; it’s difficult enough getting them to church two weeks out of four, let alone into a small group and then running training for them.

Perhaps you resonate with this assessment—that what we learned in university ministry where we focused on one-to-one discipleship and running Two Ways to Live courses was great, and it still is for that type of ministry, but we need something different for church ministry.

I don’t agree

I agree with the problem, but I don’t agree that the model doesn’t work.

I have two brief responses to make. Foundational to the rest of what I’m about to say is Peter Orr’s argument in Briefing #313 in his article on ‘The work of the Lord’: that because of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, every Christian is to devote themselves to work that has specific Christ-centred content, with the aim of advancing the gospel and building Christians up in the Lord. It’s an extremely important argument to make, but here I’m just going to presume you agree with it.

Firstly, what do ‘it works’ and ‘it doesn’t work’ mean? By way of an answer, I have just one passage to point you to: 1 Corinthians 3. Some of us plant, others water, but it’s God who brings the growth. We work hard in the Lord’s field, but any success comes from him, not us. I’ve seen a shift happen over the last ten or fifteen years, and I wonder if many of us are, often, effectively Arminians. We don’t intend to be, and we preach to others that it’s the Lord who brings the growth, that we’re called to be faithful. We preach it to despondent missionaries. We say to our parishioners, “You’re striving in your workplace to witness to Christ, and you’re not seeing much fruit, but you might just be the one who’s planted the seed…” To ourselves, on the other hand, we say, “I’m working hard, but I’m not seeing much fruit. I must be doing something wrong.”

It’s right to question and critique ourselves. But we need to do it in the context of 1 Corinthians 3. It might be that you’re being the faithful servant that God intends you to be, but God does not choose to bless that work at this particular time. Not seeing fruit may be an indicator of unfaithfulness, but it also may simply be that God is choosing to do otherwise than your intentions.

Secondly, ‘training’ doesn’t work if we just transplant directly from one context into another—which is exactly what my peers and I have often tried to do.

The key is really believing that training is for a life of godliness and service, not skill development. Training is equipping people for serving God and the church, and for godliness in everything. If we see training as something we add to pastoral care, teaching, or anything else we do as a church, we’ve missed the point. Training is not an optional extra.

Ends, means and tools

If training is about a whole life and not just a program transplant, how do we think about achieving this in our churches? I should point out at this point that I’m no expert—just someone convinced that this is the biblical model of ministry and trying to put it into practice.

We and our leaders need to have a clear understanding of our goal in ministry (we often don’t). We need to distinguish between the means, the ends and the tools.

We often confuse the means and the ends. That is, we think that having people in small groups is an end, in and of itself. We think that running a training course or having people meet one-to-one are ends. They’re not: they’re means to an end, and they’re negotiable, not required. We need to remind others and ourselves constantly that we do not exist in order to run groups. We do not exist to run training courses. We exist to grow disciples. We exist to see people presented perfect in Christ (Col 1:28). Whenever we talk with our leaders, we need to give clarity about the ends we’re aiming for. That’s where Peter Orr’s article is so helpful, because this is the focus: doing the work of the Lord to advance the gospel of Jesus and build believers up in him.

I drum three passages constantly into the leadership of our church: Colossians 1:28, Ephesians 4 and Matthew 28.  We need to be clear, and our leaders need to be clear, that our main goal is making disciples and presenting them as perfect, mature and holy before our Lord Jesus Christ. What we’re after is seeing people stand there with Jesus Christ on the last day, declaring that he is their Lord and Saviour, and that that they are found in him.

That is the ‘end’ of our ministry. Everything else is a means to that end, and is therefore negotiable.

The tools are the means of grace: the Word of God, prayer and fellowship. There’s nothing new about this; they don’t change, they don’t get added to. The context in which they come, however, is totally free to change.

Instilling a culture

How do we make this our church’s culture? This is how we have tried. Again, we’re not perfect, and we haven’t done this perfectly, but I hope it will be instructive all the same.

The air war

The first thing is what I call the ‘air war’. This is setting the culture—which is far more important than setting the program. For what we often do is say, “We want evangelism to happen”, so we get 100 people (or ten people) and we run an evangelistic course with them. What happens? Not a single one of them uses it. Why? Because all we’ve done is give them a means, without helping them understand the end.

Communicating our key goal to all is essential. This will impact our preaching: if our preaching has the end goal of helping someone become a better accountant or school teacher, we will not achieve this aim. ‘Six points on being a better person in the workplace’ preaching won’t do this.

What we need is preaching that gives people a gospel-shaped and gospel-sized vision for the world, and therefore for their life. I don’t care whether they end up in full-time ministry or work as a plumber, because when people are captured by the gospel and that incredible vision for the world—of Christ coming and ruling all of creation at the end of time because he has given his life for it, redeemed it, and risen from the dead—this leads them to desire training for a lifetime of service and godliness. Running the course doesn’t lead to a change of heart: Christ-shaped and Christ-sized preaching of the gospel does.

We need proclamation of God’s word that teaches people the end that God desires for them. It’s not that they be a faithful accountant. The end that God desires for them is that they would glorify Christ by doing the work of the Lord in the setting in which he has placed them. Part of that is being a godly accountant (if you’re an accountant; it’s not if you’re a school teacher).

When we have preaching like that, that we will see people wanting to be trained and equipped. It’s normal for Christians to be trained and equipped in godliness. It’s not an ‘extra’. There aren’t Christians and trained Christians. There are just Christians, who are trained and equipped to speak the word of truth in love so they can build the body of Christ, edify the saints, and proclaim Jesus to a world that is in desperate need of him.

That’s the air war.

The ground war

Then there’s the ‘ground war’, which is providing the means through which people can be equipped and trained. The problem we often have is that we assume many of our means are non-negotiable. Instead of starting with the means—or ‘structures’, if you want another word for it—we’ve got to begin with the people in front of us. There’s no use acting like you’re running a large university ministry if you’re not. One of the members of my staff team runs a small church with about 45 adults and what feels like 3,000 children. There’s no use this man planting a university ministry structure down on top of those people. He’s got to look at the people he’s serving and where they’re at. Then he can consider the means he can use to move his people forward. That’s then the time for creating structures to do that—or, more commonly, to redeem non-functioning structures to achieve that end.

We say, “We need more training”. What do we often do? Well, bigger churches get another staff member and give him the ‘training’ portfolio. In smaller churches, we add one or two training courses to our existing programs, and the keen beans come along. We act like it’s in addition to our other activities. I think both of these strategies misunderstand training as something that gets added to the Christian life.

Instead, we need to seek an integrated culture in our churches where everything we do moves people along. If we imagine a continuum of training and equipping in godliness and service, from non-Christian to new believer through to mature and fully equipped Christian, then we want to help people along that continuum for a lifetime, whether their context is a bakery, professional firm, school or church.

The worst thing about our churches

This brings me to the vexing issue of small groups.

I have come to the view that in many churches our small groups are actually the greatest hindrance to training people for godliness and service. They are the worst thing about our churches.

(I tend to speak in hyperbole.)

I’ll tell you why. In most of our churches we tend to park people in small groups to keep them Christian. We absolve ourselves of our pastoral responsibility, and ensure that they have no time to be trained. Yes, people get Bible, prayer and fellowship, and that’s never a bad thing—that’s where I’m exaggerating about small groups being the worst thing—and yes, it connects them to church for good reasons. But there is no intentionality about these groups.

I wonder if, for our time-poor family congregations in particular, small groups are the greatest hindrance to really growing disciples and growing a disciple-making culture. But I also wonder if we can redeem them, because they have the potential to be the true training engines of our churches.

Here’s the process we’re working through in the congregations at my church. We want to give the vision to small group leaders in our church that their role is not to run a good Bible study. Their role is to fulfil Colossians 1:28 with the group of people under their care: “Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ”.

Their goal is not to run a good group or good Bible study, because those are just means to an end; their goal is to help each individual mature. That is, their goal is to train every group member to be further along that lifetime-of-training line than when they first started in the group.

We need to help our leaders see that they are not first and foremost the leader of a small group. That’s not what I am—I am a pastor-teacher. I am responsible for a group of individuals whom I want to see, individually and collectively, presented perfect in Christ. That’s what they are too.

If a leader thinks that way, they stop worrying so much about how they run a Bible study where everyone feels better at the end of a Wednesday night, and they start prayerfully considering each member of the group, wondering where they need to grow. Notice how different that is to “What program should I impose on this group of individuals?” It leads to a whole collection of related questions:

Do they need to grow in personal Bible reading and prayer? Do they need someone to help them with it?

• Do they need instruction in doctrine?
• Do they need help in godliness in the workplace?
• Where do they need correction, admonishment?

Given the group of individuals under their care, and the answers to these questions, leaders can then work out how to adjust the teaching time and the group program to achieve this.

My job as a leader is not to run Bible studies on Romans—although that is generally the tool I’ll use. My job is to work out how to run the group to help participants mature—and, often more importantly, to work out what needs to happen outside the group time with each person. When leaders are clear on what the ends are, they’re free to shape the means to the specific people under their care. They have the same tools, for they never change—the Word, prayer and fellowship—but they are applied intentionally to growing and training and equipping individuals.

It hasn’t led to a massive revolution, but our groups are making some changes to serve the needs of their people better. For example, some groups use a different Bible reading technique every week for Bible study, such as the Swedish method. They then suggest that group members go and use that method in their own Bible reading times, then talk about how it’s going. This means that not only are the group members studying Romans; they’re also learning how to read the Bible for themselves. Other groups, who are in the midst of family life, have decided that everyone has to choose something they’ve learned in the group to share with their son, daughter or wife.

What we’ve learned is that small group leadership is a much bigger job than just running a study and praying for people, which is how we thought in the past. You can’t just ask your small group leaders to do it: you need to train them. And you have to make it possible. We realized we needed to make groups smaller, because it’s not realistic to mature twelve people. We needed to work at having teams of leaders, and working with them. We’ve found GoThereFor.com very helpful for investing in our leaders: we can send people a link to, for example, the Daily Reading Bible notes and so give them a resource for training someone else in reading their Bible.

This process of changing the model of what it means to be a small group leader has been enormously helpful for us. We haven’t done it perfectly, but we’ve been working to change the culture towards being intentional in training. But hear me correctly: I’m not saying go and do just that with your church. I’m saying apply the principles to the people you have. It might be that you think that your church ought to drop small groups altogether, and each person should meet with one other Christian one-to-one. That might be the best thing to do with your congregation of 40 people.

Whatever the case, we need to do more than simply take a known structure of training, thinking it’s an addition to the other programs we run, and plonk it down on our existing church. To build the church up to be mature and unswayed by falsehood we need to work with the people God has given us, and equip them in the best way we can for a lifetime of service and godliness.

And he said,”Go out and stand on the mount before the LORD”. And behold, the LORD passed by, and a great and strong wind tore the mountains and broke in pieces the rocks before the LORD, but the LORD was not in the wind. And after the wind an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake. And after the earthquake a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire. And after the fire the sound of a low whisper.

The ‘still small voice’ of 1 Kings 19 is possibly the most frequently preached text from the books of Kings. Preachers love to point out that hearing God is often a matter of quietness, that God more often speaks in whispers than thunder, and that sometimes the most spectacular signs are the ones that pass by almost unnoticed. This is true, but often what passes by unnoticed is the biblical-theological significance of this moment.

Things had not been going well for the Northern Kingdom of Israel. The current king Ahab had married the Sidonian princess Jezebel, who was determined to do everything possible to exterminate the worship of Yahweh from Israel. This is the context of Elijah’s famous confrontation with the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel (1 Kgs 18:20‑46). Once and for all Yahweh would show them that he is God and that Baal is not. It was a ridiculous showdown—the odds dramatically stacked in Baal’s favour. Over 400 prophets of Baal, just one for Yahweh. Their offering dry, his drenched in water. But while their ritual cries and hours of pleading fell on non-existent ears, it took a simple prayer from Elijah and fire burst forth from heaven and consumed not only the offering, but the water, wood and the stone altar as well. The people repented! The prophets of Baal were put to the sword! Surely this dramatic display would be enough to finally put an end to idolatry in Israel? A campaign of shock and awe that would at last firmly plant the kingdom of God in the hearts of the Northern Kingdom!

But this repentance lasted only until Jezebel found out what happened. No sooner did the Israelites reach Samaria than they turned to Baal once again, and Elijah was forced to flee for his life. He went to Horeb (Sinai)—back to the mountain where it all began. Yahweh asked him, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” (19:9). It’s a good question. What did Elijah hope to accomplish here? Perhaps a new beginning for Israel? Elijah knew that God would do what he promised—that he would build a kingdom from Abraham’s descendants. But how could that happen when everyone lay captive under a pagan queen worshipping foreign gods, Elijah alone left following Yahweh (19:10)? Might God send a strong wind to part the waters? Would he descend once more to claim this people as his own, in a blaze of smoke and fire, causing this mountain to shake a second time (cf. Exod 19:18)? But no; this time the Lord wasn’t in the wind, or the fire, or the earthquake.

Elijah’s lament was met with an unexpected response. Yahweh spoke not in further acts of power and wonders from heaven, but in a still, small voice. A remnant: 7000 in Israel who have not bowed the knee to Baal (1 Kgs 19:18); a small, broken few—cowering in caves from Jezebel; the downtrodden, the poor in spirit, the meek who will inherit the land. And something entirely new besides: for the first time in the Old Testament, a foreign king is to be anointed (“Messiahed”, 19:15), but this Messiah comes against Israel. This is the moment when God began to raise up the nations against his own people. The exile had begun.

The significance of this moment lies far beyond hearing God in our daily quiet times, because this is when we learn that the Old Testament is not a theology of glory. It’s not the story of a God who wins by overwhelming force. In this moment it becomes clear that the Old Testament is a theology of the cross. Israel must die. Yahweh’s land, his people, his temple and even his own glory will be handed over to the Gentiles, because no amount of winning was able to build the kingdom of God. But through this death Yahweh’s kingdom will come. The prophets must now learn not to despise the day of small things (Zech 4:10), because the time for calling fire from heaven has passed (Luke 9:54-55). God will now work through the faithful remnant, the suffering servant, the humbled Messiah, the foolishness of the cross. No longer in the earthquake, God will be heard instead in the rasping whisper from the cross: it is finished. 

It’s accompanied by the claim that Facebook is banning Christians from sharing pictures like this and so we should all protest by sharing the image.

Firstly, please pause to note the irony that you read the information and saw the picture via the medium which is supposed to have banned it!

But secondly, I wonder that more Christians don’t check their outrage longer in order to fact-check the reliability of the info.

As it happens this meme has been circulating the internet since 2012 – i.e. for at least two Christmases prior to this one! A quick check of the Snopes or Hoax Slayer websites would have de-bunked it.

Given Facebook permits all sorts of rot from both extreme and silly viewpoints, is this allegation of censorship of Christians really plausible? Or does it just make us seems unduly sensitive and gullible?

Proverbs 23:23 says:

Buy the truth and do not sell it; get wisdom, discipline and understanding.

Lets save our energies for genuine and serious cases of censorship and persecution. Once again the advice to ignore it seems worth considering.

[P.S. To all my dear friends I have already ‘chipped’ for passing this meme on, I am not mad at you. I’m not trying to embarrass you personally. The fact so many committed and thoughtful Christians have passed it on shows that it’s an easy mis-step to make in the social media space. (I’ve made a few of my own!) I’d just like to help us avoid similar mistakes more often in the future.]

Photo: istockphoto.com

I’m not marketer, but I’ve heard more than once there’s no such thing as bad publicity. I guess there’s exceptions to the rule, but not too often when you are trying to get your product onto people’s radar.

In recent times, my digital friends, mostly Christian but also others with a moral compass, have protested against:

• a computer game which apparently involves running women over with cars;
• the screening on TV of an American football variant which involves women wearing skimpy underwear as the competition uniform;
• the visit of some sort of dating coach to Australia with offensive views about women.

In each case, the suggested protest involves sharing the link to a blog critique or petition site. And this almost always involves Facebook picking up as its preview the picture of the very person or practice you are protesting against!

In each case, until then I had been barely aware of the product, if not completely unaware, so I’m sorry if I got a detail wrong.

But as the protest spread in that viral digital way, I kept getting the image shoved in my face through my Facebook feed. Ironically it was by my friends, who don’t want this sort of thing being promoted!

Counter-productively, this can lead your friends into temptations we might not otherwise have faced. (“I might just click on that link to find out how bad it is…”) At the very least, it can become an unwelcome distraction.

Here’s a couple of alternatives.

1. Ignore it. Don’t give it any air. Don’t give it any extra publicity. Being ignored is a promoter’s nightmare, so help make it a flop and ignore the offensive product.

I wonder if the wisdom of Proverbs 26:20 could sometimes be applicable here.

Without wood a fire goes out; without gossip a quarrel dies down.

2. Keep the image out of it. If you must share a protest, then encourage the protest in a way that does not keep bringing the offensive image to everyone’s attention. Risk that you won’t get the visual hook. Or use a different image that does not serve to highlight the product or person you are protesting.

Trust that the merits of the case you outline without a sensational image will persuade people to join you.

Naïve, I know.

I guess I am struggling with how to apply Ephesians 5:11-12 –

Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them. For it is shameful even to mention what the disobedient do in secret.

Some of these things need to be exposed. But the Apostle says that sometimes the details should not be mentioned, let alone inadvertently promoted.

And context suggests that most of all, it’s the gospel light of Jesus that should do the exposing.