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.

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.

Here, courtesy of Jon Baird, is an extract from an interview conducted back in March, in Ken’s home of Kiama, for Jon’s 4^th year project at Moore College.

JB: Moving on to theology, as you said with Archbishop Loane being very strongly Reformed, during your time as Bishop were there any notable shifts in theology that you saw impacting the region?

KS: Not shifts on theology – not on my watch!! (Laughs.) One of the things that did happen was, I had a vision. Don’t misunderstand me. I had a sense that the region was ripe for some form of evangelistic crusade.

It was still in the days of Billy Graham. So I myself visited every pastor of every denomination in the Wollongong area and invited them to a meeting with a view to try and get an evangelistic crusade going. It took a bit of a while. But the end result was that we had Leighton Ford, who was Billy Graham’s brother-in-law, come for a 10 day crusade with his team. We had it in Wollongong Town Hall.

So theologically there was a strong emphasis on evangelism and a number of people – you don’t keep numbers – but a number of people did respond to the Spirit of God, and turn to him in repentance and faith.

We had a fair bit of increase at some of the churches. Those that put the most into it got the most out of it, of course. That wasn’t a change in theology, but it was a sense of God’s Spirit moving among us.

JB: What were the challenges that you found to the role of Bishop?

KS: The first one that jumps into my mind, which wasn’t the first highest priority, was travel. I was doing at least 50,000 km a year, just sitting behind the wheel. That was year after year after year.

You’d go to Jannali for a Confirmation. The next day you’d be at Ulladulla or you’d be at Bowral. That was one of the challenges.

Another challenge was I realised that when I was made a bishop, that part of the Ordinal was that I teach. So I took the responsibility, or tried to take the opportunity, for teaching the Scriptures, in addition to what was going on in the parishes.

So I suppose that for about 6 years, I’d prepare a series of 4 or 5 Bible studies on a book. Then I would organise through the deaneries that I’d go and take a teaching session on this book in the deanery on, say, 5 consecutive Wednesday nights. I’d do 5 or 6 deaneries a year.

And it was very exciting. We used to get 100-120 people to come to a Bible Study on 4 or 5 consecutive Tuesday nights. That was terrific. God was very kind. That was another challenge – to thoroughly prepare.

With all the travel and then the preparation the next thing that I found that I had to really allocate time for pastoring my brother clergy. So what I used to do was I’d say to my secretary, “Here are 10 half days – you marry them with 10 blokes.” So I would spend hopefully the best part of half a day with a rector [= ‘senior pastor’].

And we’d talk together not just about what he was doing. But we’d talk about preaching programs, family life, what his day off meant, how he kept spiritual health, and how he prayed. They were pretty personal questions, but I thought, “If I’m going to encourage people then you have to ask these sorts of questions.”

That was a challenge too, to keep going and keep going.

I like administration and so I had to pull back and make sure that the area of pastoral care got enough attention.

In the midst of all this was family life. Our eldest daughter was married just before we came – she’s Simon Manchester’s wife. Then we had two – a son and a daughter down here. David would come in and talk about stuff, because he was the youth worker at St Michael’s. And our younger daughter was at school. It was pretty important… I concede that family life is very important. It mustn’t be squeezed out, nor must it become dominant. I think you’ve got to hold those two together.

I think keeping up with my reading and make sure it’s important. When some of the clergy found it hard going, if they’d had a bit of a prang, you’d spend a lot of time encouraging them – encouraging them in their preaching and this and that.

I was always anxious to have a missionary approach, having spent 10 years as a missionary ourselves in Tanzania. That was not a very strong – it didn’t work like the way I would have liked. But things happened.

…A missionary approach in the churches, because some churches are inward looking. They don’t have a go-into-all-the-world mentality.

Perhaps the highlight was Reg Hanlon who was the rector of West Wollongong. His theology was, if you obey by encouraging your congregation to be looking outward, then God is no man’s debtor and the local parish won’t be left high and dry. So he started supporting missionaries, by prayer, having them come, by finance, and I think that after about 4-5 years, it was something like 35 missionaries were being supported. The local income had doubled, and missionary income was 10 times. It was really quite staggering figures.

But he had quite a bit of opposition at the beginning. People would say, “Ah no, we can’t support this local missionary because the finances will dry up.” He said “You believe me, if we go the way the bible tells us to go, God will do it”. And as I say, the income from the local church at least doubled, if not more – quadrupled perhaps!

To see evangelism going on. I have a feeling these days that I don’t see as much evangelism going on and it worries me. That is, eyeballing people, and talking to them about coming to faith. Not saying, “Are you saved?” …But being willing to talk with them, to bring them to a point where they see their need of the Lord Jesus and come to commit themselves to him.

The whole bit of Romans 1:18 is so important. I’m sure I’ll think of more things as we go along, but that’s enough for now.

[Transcript very lightly edited for clarity in reading.]

+++

From 2015, Jon Baird will be the FOCUS worker with overseas students at the University of Wollongong. You can find out more about supporting Jon here.

William Romaine, courtesy: New Focus http://go-newfocus.co.uk

William Romaine was born 300 years ago, 25 September, 1714 , in Durham, UK.

J.C. Ryle featured Romaine as one of his lesser known pastors in his Christian Leaders of the 18th Century, an excellent and approachable series of short biographical studies.

Romaine’s father was a Huguenot who’d taken refuge in England from persecution in Catholic France. After school, Romaine took an MA at Oxford, immersed in literature, and left a fine scholar and a well-read man.

From the time of Romaine’s ordination in the Church of England, he preached clear and unmistakeable evangelical doctrine. Unlike many clergy in his day, he had nothing to unlearn!

He was curate of Banstead, near Epsom, Chaplain to an Alderman of London, visiting preacher in St Paul’s Cathedral and other London pulpits. After this period, his bags were backed to leave London and return northwards, when an invitation to apply for the lectureship of St Botolph’s, Billingsgate – don’t you love the names – meant he was not lost to city ministry.

Soon after he also obtained the evening lectureship of St Dunstan’s, Fleet Street. But the Rector opposed him and the Churchwardens refused the many people who wanted to hear him easy access. Eventually the Bishop of London intervened, and for 46 years, Romaine retained this role and edified those who came to hear him.

To make ends meet, Romaine occupied various roles over the years, even as a Professor of Astronomy for a short time!

His well-known scholarship commanded respect as Assistant morning preacher at St George’s Hanover Square, one of the most prominent pulpits of London, in the West End. Yet his bold declaration of the gospel of Christ and denunciation of fashionable sins were uncompromising. Five years later the Rector kicked him out because the regular upper class pew-holders didn’t like the crowds attracted by his preaching.

He was into his fifties without a full-time position! Finally, he became chaplain to Lady Huntingdon, and, through her influence, was appointed Rector of St Anne’s Blackfriars, his first full time incumbency, which he occupied for 29 more years.

He was not an especially genial man, and could be irritable. He sometimes had to apologise for his abruptness. He was known to say to those who sought his counsel privately that he’d said all he had to say in the pulpit!

But as rector of a key London parish, Romaine became a rallying point for all in London who loved evangelical truth in the Church of England. With his undeniable learning he took up the cudgels against error and in defence of biblical truth.

At 81, Romaine was still preaching three days each week. During his final illness, he thanked a friend for a visit, saying that, “he had come to see a saved sinner”. He wanted the words of the publican (i.e. tax collector) to be found on his lips when he died: “God be merciful to me, a sinner!” Not long before his death in 1795, he commented to a friend from another denomination, “There is but one central point, in which we must all meet­ – Jesus Christ and him crucified.”

My limited experience with biographies from this earlier era shows they are often intensely interested in a person’s last words, finding them indicative of the convictions that drive a person. Ryle reports that the last words Romaine said to the host of the home where he was being nursed, was that, “He [Jesus] is a precious Saviour to me now.” And to the Lord, he was heard to say, “Holy! holy! holy blessed Jesus! to thee be endless praise,” not long before he breathed his last.

In his sketch of the leaders of 18^th century evangelical awakening, Ryle likens the famous names of Wesley and Whitefield to spiritual cavalry crossing the countryside preaching.

But he said Romaine was a commander of heavy artillery, who held a citadel in the heart of the metropolis, London. Unlike the itinerants, Romaine could not preach old sermons. But, watched by unfriendly eyes, he taught, unflinchingly in the city, as he testified to the gospel of grace.

Ryle commented,

“Well it would be for the Churches, if in this respect there were more evangelical ministers who walked in the steps of Romaine. Grace and soundness in the faith, diligence and personal piety, are undoubtedly the principal thing. But book-learning ought not to be despised. An ignorant and ill-read ministry, in days of intellectual activity, must sooner or later fall into contempt.”

His friends and relatives intended to give him a private funeral, presumably in line with his wishes. But this proved impossible, since, Ryle, writes, “the many hearers of a minister who had preached the gospel in London for forty-five years could not be prevented showing their respect by following him to the grave. Scores looked up to him as their spiritual father. Hundreds venerated his character and consistency, even though they did not fully embrace the gospel he had preached.”

As a consequence his funeral became a very public one, with fifty coaches following the hearse from Clapham Common and a multitude on foot, with city marshals with their men dressed in ceremonial garb, ordered out by the Lord Mayor of London, riding the last leg from Blackfriars’ Bridge, before the hearse, escorting his body to the church.

He had died like a good soldier at his post.

Recently a friend suggested that Australian churches should consider an Anti-Gambling Sunday like in the United States (September 21). As the Americans said, “Gambling, at any level, is an investment in trouble.”

My friend may possibly have noticed I have a bee-in-my-bonnet on this issue, and so expected a warm endorsement!

Economist.com/graphicdetail, 3 February 2014

In fact, I absolutely despise poker-machines and the damage they do, especially to problem gamblers and their helpless families. And the National Council of Church in Australia has suggested this coming ‘Social Justice Sunday’ (September 28), should be dedicated to raising awareness of the dreadful impact of gambling in Australia. Statistics they cite from The Economist, shows that Australians are the world’s biggest gamblers losing over $1000 per adult per annum, which is more than twice the rate in the USA. Only Singaporeans come close to us.

But for all that, I doubt it’s a good idea to populate our Sunday services and sermons with special themes.

As a pastor with a real interest in social issues, here are few reasons for resisting the push towards more and more special theme days.

1. Christians – because we care – will want to keep adding to the list of special Sundays: gambling, indigenous reconciliation, domestic abuse, abortion, racism, refugees, marriage, poverty, pornography and … each one is important and you could keep the list going. But making each one a set feature every year can inadvertently reinforce the message of moralism – that we are mainly on about a series of moral and social issues.

And that’s not the gospel of Jesus, but the gospel’s fruit. And we must never forget it.

2. If one then shapes the preaching to the theme for the special Sunday, more than very occasionally, you undermine the systematic expository preaching pattern that I think is generally preferable as the bread and butter method of a church’s public teaching life.

3. It can lead to tokenism; we all do a number of these special Sundays to ‘tick the box’ of our moral and social conscience. But we don’t really take the time to engage our people deeply on each issue. It’s generally just not possible in the space of a single Sunday to do more much more than awareness raising.

4. I suspect that real progress in terms of ‘campaigning’ on issues like these happens by individual opinion leaders – whether keen church members or pastors – keeping the pressure on, writing, blogging, lobbying, politicking, with occasional big public efforts seeking to draw the masses in.

As a pastor with responsibility for preaching programs, I know how hard it is to get a good expository series going, organising series break up, making it fit the school term pattern, and so on. If the series then gets interrupted a couple of times with special issue Sundays, so much momentum can be lost.

I think I’d prefer to schedule occasional topical or doctrinal series to deal with social and moral issues. For example, we’ve had a good return with a very occasional 4-5 week break from the sequential expository stuff for “issues facing Christians today”, or “the ethics of life, death and the bits in between”.

Or if I am to have a one-off on gambling or abortion or racism or refugees or the definition of marriage, I’d often prefer the freedom to fit it into natural breaks in the preaching program, rather than the inflexibility of being tied to fixed special purpose Sundays annually on the 3^rd weekend in September or whenever! One should also be alert to seize the opportunity when the passage next in your sequence of expositions gives a natural chance to apply God’s Word to the contemporary social issue.

Of course, if for particular historical reasons, it fits your church to go with a few of these special purpose Sundays important to your culture, then by all means. But do remember, there are other ways of managing it, than just turning over the sermon. It could be by more extended attention to the subject in prayer, by a Minister’s letter in the church bulletin, or perhaps by a well-prepared interview with a member.

And definitely, in my opinion, resist the temptation for the multiplication of special issue Sundays. What do you think?

In a month or two I will be giving my first conference talk.¹

I feel a bit like Paul, if you will allow me to rip a verse out of context: “I came to you in weakness with great fear and trembling” (1 Cor 2:3 NIV).

Except in my case the fear and trembling come from less godly motivations. I want to succeed. I want this event to succeed. I want to impress people. I want them to like, respect, admire me. I could go on – I’m a type A person! My ambitions are boundless! – but I’d embarrass myself (like I haven’t already) and you, too.

My gut clenches; my mind hazes over. People say, “You’ll be great!” – my mother, who’s not at all biased, plus a few faithful friends who have far more respect for me than I deserve – and all I can think is, “Now there’s further to fall!”. I remind myself that it’s a small conference among friends;² but it doesn’t really help.

There’s just one thing that helps. It’s one of my favourite Bible passages, Philippians 2:1-11. It keeps coming into my head, driven by the Spirit. When I feel the fear welling up, I repeat to myself (and yes, this is pretty much the 1984 version of the NIV, because my brain is stuck there):

Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit …

Selfish ambition. Vain conceit. Sums up the worst of my motivations quite nicely.

And the alternative:

…but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests but also to the interests of others. Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:

Putting others’ interests above my own. Valuing them more than myself. Doing this for their sake, not mine.

And then the model, Jesus Christ:

Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
but made himself nothing,
taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to death—
even death on a cross!
Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name …

This isn’t about me. It never was. It’s about me laying down my life for the sake of others. And if, in the process, I get cold toes and a wriggly tummy, well, that’s a small price to pay.

I just pray I can forget myself and serve others for the sake of Christ. Not for my own glory, but for his:

… that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.

For his glory.

1. Not watching our lives closely

Nothing brings the gospel into disrepute more quickly than an unwatched life. When we don’t model what we teach, or enable our hearers to see our progress, we can easily bring dishonour to the name of Jesus.

There are many things I could touch on, but the point I want to isolate is potentially glorifying our busyness. This is an innocuous beginning, but as we trace the consequences we can see how this is a failure to trust our sovereign, good, gracious, and wise God.

It starts with our greeting:

“How are you?”
“Oh, really busy.”

Most of us are quite rightly busy: teaching the Bible, training, recruiting, evangelizing, and church planting, because we desire the salvation of all people, especially of those who believe.

But can we inadvertently confuse the ends with the means of what we do? Remember the great purpose clause of the Scriptures—the glory of God.

So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. Give no offense to Jews or to Greeks or to the church of God, just as I try to please everyone in everything I do, not seeking my own advantage, but that of many, that they may be saved. (1 Corinthians 10:31-33)

What grips Paul in his busyness to save people is the glory of God. But is it possible that what grips us to do ministry is the busy means of training, recruiting, and church planting? Is it possible that we are captured more by the activity than the goal—the glory of God? I sometimes wonder if the closing benediction at a ministry conference would more accurately reflect our attitude if it were “Go forth and do more ministry” rather than “To the only wise God our saviour be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and forever, amen”.

The converse, of course, is possible. Especially for those who control their own schedule, the temptation to be irresponsible comes knocking. I have met a handful of lazy brothers and sisters. But most of us are tempted to glorify our busyness instead of God. The irony is that in the end glorifying our busyness is being lazy in our godliness—even in the midst of a very busy ministry.

The hairline cracks often begin with our family. We become too absent physically because of our busyness. Or, less obviously, we become too absent emotionally, even when we are physically present. As such we can either be too tired to engage, or too distracted mentally as we engage with family.

I have seen this crack travel deep and result in one particular scenario over and over again: You may feel like a legend at church/ministry, but you don’t feel like a legend at home. Then Satan gets a foothold when you start to think that someone in your ministry understands you better than your spouse, who just doesn’t seem to ‘get’ the good ministry you are doing. Then a myriad of bad decisions are made.

In my 25 years of ministry, I have noticed that when it comes to adultery there is a recurring pattern stemming from busyness. Rarely is it a matter of sex per se. For the men, it is often a desire to be in control and to be reinforced in their influence. In a tired marriage, busyness can become a way of dealing with such insecurity. For the women, it is often a desire to be connected to a leader or a person of influence. When the two come together, there is a perfect storm.

If your ultimate security rests in your busy position of ministry influence rather than in the glory of God, then beware. As John Owen said in Of the Mortification of Sin in Believers, “Be killing sin or it will be killing you”. But just going after the bad isn’t enough—you’ve got to kill pleasure with pleasure. You’ve got to kill the pleasure of being seen as a person of influence with the pleasure of the glory of God.

There’s some overlap between the first and second points: watching our lives and our doctrine closely (or, as it says in 1 Timothy 4:16, keep a close watch on ‘the teaching’). Life and doctrine go hand-in-hand. It seems to me that almost always ethical compromise comes first and then doctrinal compromise follows. First your life goes wrong, and then your doctrine changes.

Let’s consider a salient example. Someone once described him to me as the best preacher in the English speaking world. But in 1999, Dr Roy Clements very publicly (and sadly) resigned from his position as a pastor after confessing that he had a relationship with his male research assistant.² He then separated from his wife, and wrote an open letter to the Council of the Evangelical Alliance identifying as a gay Christian, exhorting them to take a line that evangelicalism should find room for gay relationships.³ As far as it appears from the outside, the ethical compromise came first, followed by doctrinal compromise.

Now in reflecting on the public matters of people’s lives and teachings, we need to remember that if we have not fallen in this way, it is only by God’s grace! There is no room for self-righteousness. Furthermore, I have no idea if Dr Clements has repented. But if he has, or if he does in the future, then our joy in his repentance ought to be greater than our grief or anger at his fall. We need to watch our own lives and doctrine carefully here, because personal sin very often leads to compromise in other areas.

2. Not watching our doctrine closely

Again, there are many pressure points that we could address. I’ll single out three.

a. Heresies (often) arise from godly desires

Remember Pelagius? He denied the doctrine of original sin (as championed by Augustine). But what drove him was his godly desire to morally transform Rome in the 5th century. Heresy often arises from godly desires.

I have observed this around the world, where godly desires for healing, blessing and justice have sadly led to the heresies of a prosperity or social justice gospel. It is godly to long for heaven in the here and now (“May your kingdom come”). Who doesn’t want blessings poured out on the needy? Who doesn’t want justice in the face of domestic violence or terrorism? Who doesn’t want their spouse healed from cancer?But left unchecked, these godly desires can turn a fracture into a crevice that leads disillusioned Christians into atheism.

b. A godly (but undiscerning) desire for unity

There is of course a godly desire for unity in the gospel, and we want to be as inclusive as the gospel is. Yet on the global stage I continually meet brothers and sisters in evangelical organizations who have a godly (but undiscerning) desire to unite with our Roman Catholic friends who hold to the Council of Trent. This council was prompted by the Protestant Reformation, and spoke very deliberately against the Protestant hallmark of justification by faith alone in Christ alone.⁴ The Roman Catholic church still holds to the rulings of this council.

To accommodate Roman Catholic staff, one evangelical organization removed the word ‘alone’ from its doctrinal formulation on justification. I know of another which dropped its statement of God’s sovereignty and justification altogether to become more inclusive. But the staff of these organizations are lovely pious brothers and sisters who have a godly—but undiscerning—desire for unity.

Please also note that the Roman Catholic church (on the other hand) has a historically discerning desire for unity. You can trace this back to Pope John XXIII and Vatican II. John XXIII longed for the reunion of Christendom, with one sheepfold and one shepherd—the shepherd being the Pope. In a kinder and more generous spirit than his predecessors, John XXIII spoke of Protestants and the Eastern church as ‘separated brethren’ (not ‘schismatics and heretics’ like Vatican I). Vatican II was convened to make the Roman church more approachable and inclusive, but not one canon of the Council of Trent was revoked. And yet, evangelical organizations today not only employ Roman Catholic staff but have them as keynote speakers, together with dedicated Roman Catholic spaces, at their conferences.

If that outcome is something you don’t recognize as your danger, let me bring it closer to home. I know of churches sharing the platform with Roman Catholic churches to “share the gospel” at Christmas carol events. I’ve heard Protestant leaders speak in awe of Pope Francis for bringing unity to a whole new level, in response to a YouTube clip.⁵ If we don’t unite with Roman Catholics after such a plea, it will be seen as red-necked, obstreperous, unloving, and schismatic.

But watch your doctrine closely: an appeal to unity that is not based in the true gospel of our Lord Jesus will not save ourselves or our hearers.

c. A lack of theological clarity

Nowhere is theological clarity needed more than in clearly distinguishing the gospel from its fruit. The gospel is the momentous news of Jesus—his life, death, resurrection, ascension and return—that commands us to repent and believe. Thefruit of this gospel, on the other hand, is the inevitable transformed life of love that flows from repentance. The gospel creates a life of love, “but the life of love is not itself the gospel”.⁶ If this is not clearly pointed out in our teaching, it leads to catastrophe.

At one international meeting I was at, one senior brother said that he thought the number one agenda for our global evangelical fellowship should be climate change! How do you get to this point, where the main item is an activity of social change (however good that activity might be)? By not clearly distinguishing the gospel from its fruit.

If we don’t distinguish this in our teaching, then we reduce the gospel to improvements in our behaviour and in our world. It’s easy to do that in our childrens’ spots at church when we understandably exhort them to read the Bible, pray, be patient, obey parents, be generous, and so on. All good things, but none of them the gospel. Or, as we teach the Bible, we can fail to distinguish our application from the gospel. We need to show how it is thoroughly rooted in the gospel, but it cannot be thought to be the same thing.

The great William Wilberforce was crystal clear on this. He wrote a book called A Practical View of Christianity. In describing nominal Christians, he wrote that their errors:

… result from the mistaken conception entertained of the fundamental principles of Christianity. They consider not that Christianity is a scheme ‘for justifying the ungodly’… nor for making the fruits of holiness the effects, not the cause, of being justified and reconciled.⁷

That is, the nominal Christian pursued justification through their sanctification, but the real Christian saw their sanctification as fruit of their justification. What Wilberforce is known for is his effort to stop the slave trade. But in his mind this was the fruit of the gospel, not the gospel itself.

Wilberforce’s example identifies another stress point for us. I wonder whether we can bear more fruit. Displaying justice and mercy is on par with being faithful to my spouse. It is part of training ourselves in godliness. It inevitably involves caring for the widows, and the poor, and the slaves and the masters accordingly:

Let all who are under a yoke as bondservants regard their own masters as worthy of all honour, so that the name of God and the teaching may not be reviled. (1 Timothy 6:1)

If the fruit of the gospel is not borne it will revile God and the teaching. The fruit of the gospel will adorn the gospel.

3. Not loving one another well

In my neck of the woods there’s been a lot of talk about tribalism, accentuated by a couple of conferences held recently. When I shared with one brother that I was preparing an address for the Nexus conference (out of which has come this article), he said “Oh, isn’t that the ‘Anti-Keller’ conference?”.

Now there’s lots that could be said in defence against this claim. But I want to make a couple of more general observations. When allegations like this are made, we should ask ourselves if there is any grain of truth to them. Is there any perceived “guilt by association” in being involved with one conference or another (or one ministry or another)? Why would that be? I think it’s a useful practice to, at least once a fortnight, just ponder if any accusations are true.

I actually think there is a place for ‘tribes’, as long as what we mean by tribes is a certain fellowship of brothers and sisters who will inevitably be more uniform in how they conduct ministry because of where and how they were most influenced. We can’t help that. And there is a certain level of cost effectiveness in doing ministry a particular way, as long as we don’t always think it is the best and only way to do it. Furthermore, we must never assume that every person in the tribe is uniform in every aspect. With all this in mind, tribes can serve together in great unity as long as they are willing to talk openly and honestly with each other in genuine humility, with a genuine love. This is going to mean, amongst others, talking with each other face to face rather than exclusively on social media.

This is in contrast to what I think many people mean by ‘tribalism’, where there is a sectarianism that is expressed by a suspicion of sinister motives for whatever another tribe does, and an inevitable ‘guilt by association’ that comes with this mentality. This kind of sectarian cynicism is what we must avoid—but I’m sad to say that is what the watching world perceives, given the way we sometimes conduct our debates on social media and other platforms.

As an aside, I encourage staff in my organization to go through the following mental process before posting anything on social media: please think first:

• Is it truthful?
• Is it helpful?
• Is it informative?
• Is it necessary?
• Is it kind?

That’s not to say that we cannot have a robust debate. History is littered with them. The division between Martin Lloyd Jones and John Stott is the kind of example I’m thinking of here. According to Carson and Keller:

The division was based on what each side felt to be significant doctrinal principles. And yet, while many of their followers were subsequently hostile to one another, the men themselves never vilified the other—not in public nor, as far as the historical evidence shows, in private. They maintained great respect for each other as Christian men and ministers of the gospel and never tried to undermine the reputations of the others, even when they came to believe they could no longer work closely together, and even when the differences were significant ones.⁸

We must interact and disagree in such a way that not only the whole watching world, but above all our Lord Jesus, will know that we love one another. We must be as inclusive and exclusive as the gospel is. We must love one another deeply from the heart.

I have suggested here three major ways our evangelical DNA may be corrupted: by not watching our lives closely, not watching our doctrine closely, and not loving each other well. No doubt there are more. In all this, however, I think that the best defence is offence—we need to be people who believe the gospel, love the gospel, proclaim the gospel, celebrate the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, and bear its fruit to the glory of God the Father.