Two Ways News

In recent times, dictionaries have gotten into the habit of giving an award to the ‘word of the year’. It provides some motivation, I suppose, to all those other words to try harder next year, while also allowing the dictionary companies to parade their social consciences. Recent winners have included ‘climate emergency’, ‘toxic’, ‘cancel culture’ and ‘they’ (as a non-gendered singular pronoun).I’m guessing 2020 will have plenty of candidates: ‘pandemic’, ‘social distancing’ and ‘black lives matter’ are obvious favourites. My personal choice would be ‘unprecedented’, which has been used at unprecedented levels. But my way into the rest of today’s post is to suggest that essential services has been one of the phrases of the year in 2020. The privations of lockdown have forced everyone in the community to pause and consider what really matters. When severe limits are placed on what can or should be done, what essential things must be done? This has been true, of course, for churches. We’ve had to consider how to retrieve as many essential services as possible, given that nearly all our normal activities have no longer been possible. And now, as we start on the road back to normal, it’s an excellent time to reconsider what ‘normal’ essentially is. This is not only because we will still have limitations placed upon us for some time to come, and some tricky choices to make. It’s also because the coronavirus lockdown should help us realise that we always have limited resources and opportunities, and that tricky choices always have to be made about what is essential and what is peripheral. For many of us, restarting church is a chance to reboot—to consider what existing essential things we must put back in place, what new essential things we might take the opportunity to start, and what non-essential services, activities or priorities we might quietly allow to remain in ‘shutdown’. And following on from my post a couple of weeks back on pragmatism, we need to make these decisions with a conscious reflection on our principles—that is, on what the Bible itself directs us to consider as essential. That’s what I thought I would do over the next few posts: go back to Scripture with the posture of an apprentice, and have a crack at laying out the essential principles of church ministry. I’m sure I won’t get everything right or complete, and I’m equally sure that there will be other good ways to express the same principles. But I hope my attempt will stimulate you to articulate your own version of the essentials more clearly.Where to start? Our instinct is to start with what and how. What are the essential activities or events or programs that we must get up and running as soon as possible? And how could we do them as effectively as possible?It’s better, though, to start with the essential why, because what and how always flow from why. The reason or purpose we have for doing something generates particular aims or goals, which in turn lead us to think about exactly how we will achieve those aims, with what particular resources and actions. But it starts with why. Why are we churching? What reasons or purposes shape the whole enterprise, provide it with meaning, and direct the particular strategies and activities we undertake? The why of church comes, of course, from God, who gathers his people together (‘church’, remember, is a jargon word for ‘assembly’ or ‘gathering’). You could describe the whole Bible as the story of God scattering people in judgement (think driving out Adam and Eve from the garden; the tower of Babel; the scattering of Israel), and then acting in his grace and power to gather his chosen, redeemed people around himself. The why of church is the story of Scripture, and many of the Bible’s major events and themes are milestones towards God’s ultimate purpose to gather his scattered people around himself. Take Sinai. When God brought his redeemed people to the rock of Horeb and spoke to them “on the mountain out of the midst of the fire”, it is described in Deuteronomy as “the day of the church” (or ‘assembly’, Deut 9:10; cf. 5:22, 18:16; Acts 7:38). The redemption from Egypt generated a congregation, assembled at Sinai, in which God spoke to his people and they responded (in fear, in protestations of obedience, and in gross apostasy and idolatry—but that’s Israel for you). Deuteronomy also speaks of another place of gathering still to come: the Place God will appoint in the promised land that will be the divine assembly point for Israel, where they will come together and meet with him (Deut 12:5-7). That place turns out to be Jerusalem (or Zion), the city where God causes his name to dwell—and from which he withdraws his presence in judgement as the sad, sinful history of Israel unfolds. Once more the people are scattered among the nations, and once more God promises to gather them “out of the countries where you are scattered, with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, and with wrath poured out” (Eze

Some things are best done quickly. Being reconciled with someone, for example (Matt 5:23-25); or putting some distance between yourself and idolatry (1 Cor 10:14); or listening (Jas 1:19).But on the whole, hastiness isn’t a very healthy thing in the Bible. The feet of the wicked always seem to be hastening off after their latest wicked plan (Prov 6:18). In fact, hastening off after anything that you desire isn’t a good idea and usually results in getting lost (Prov 19:2). And of course, the man who is hasty in his words? “There is more hope for a fool than for him” (Prov 29:20). In the coronavirus bubble that many of us have been occupying in recent months, I’m sure I’m not the only one who has rediscovered the value of slowing down. My daily Bible reading and prayer, for example, is the best it’s been for a while. Rather than hastening out the door to catch the morning train, I take the 12 slow steps up to my home office, ignore the computer that is silently begging me to turn it on immediately, and sink into the old armchair of my mother’s that sits in the corner. I pick up two yellowing books that I unearthed while sorting out my library—an aging copy of Search the Scriptures, and an even older copy of the Revised Version of the Bible—and spend a blessed half hour in quiet reading and prayer. I’m not late. I’m not hassled. And when I finally answer the computer’s pleas and turn it on, I’m ready to be its master rather than its servant. I’d forgotten that I owned either of these old books, and how wonderful they both are. Search the Scriptures (first published in 1949) points me each day to the shortish passage I’m supposed to read next (which is half the battle), and poses two or three insightful questions for me to ponder. And in the (unlikely) event that I use it every single day without fail, I will get through the whole Bible in three years.As for the Revised Version, I’d also forgotten what a joy it is to read the Scriptures slowly. The RV forces you to do that. First published in the 1880s as a comprehensive update to the King James Version, the RV sits very much at the literal or ‘formal equivalence’ end of the translation spectrum. It tries to preserve the word order and idioms of the original language, while also retaining as many of the classic formulations of the KJV as possible. The result is a whole foods Bible rather than a processed one—it takes more time and effort to digest, but the health benefits are real. For example, quite often the RV retains the more concrete idiom or imagery of the original, and thereby brings a more vivid image to mind. To give a small example, Luke 4:36 in the popular NIV translation reads: All the people were amazed and said to each other, “What words these are! With authority and power he gives orders to impure spirits and they come out!” The RV puts it like this: And amazement came upon all, and they spake together, one with another, saying, What is this word? for with authority and power he commandeth the unclean spirits, and they come out.The differences are subtle, but they add up. The RV’s language paints the picture of amazement ‘coming upon’ all of them, almost as an external force or experience that descends on them at the same time. They then speak together, ‘one with another’, evoking the image of each person turning to someone next to them and trying to understand what is going on. ‘What is this word?’, they ask. Following the Greek, the RV leaves ‘word’ as singular, emphasizing the simple authority of Jesus’ command that the ‘unclean’ spirit come out. And by using the word ‘unclean’ (rather than ‘impure’) to describe the demonic spirit, the RV sets off a resonance in my head regarding the potent Old Testament category of ‘uncleanness’. There is no question that the NIV is easier to read, just as white rice is quicker and easier to cook and goes down more smoothly than brown. And just as there is a time for white rice, so there is a time for simpler modern translations (such as reading aloud in church). But chewing over the RV has enabled me to metabolize the riches of God’s word more slowly and appreciatively.It has also pushed me to consider new ways of reading familiar texts. Here, for example, is how the RV renders Luke 5:21-23 (after Jesus has forgiven the sins of the ‘palsied’ man who was ‘let down through the tiles with his couch’): 21 And the scribes and the Pharisees began to reason, saying, who is this that speaketh blasphemies? Who can forgive sins, but God alone? 22 But Jesus perceiving their reasonings, answered and said unto them, What reason ye in your hearts? 23 Whether is easier, to say, Thy sins are forgiven thee; or to say, Arise and walk? But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins … That ‘whether’ at the beginning of verse 23 opens up a way of reading Jesus’ words that I’d never considered—i.e. that the comparative ease of telling a paralytic his sins were forgiven (as opposed to actually healing

As churches consider what to restart, discontinue or create from scratch post-coronavirus, how pragmatic should we be in our decisions? [Click play to listen, or read on. Up to you!]Uncovering the principles in our pragmatismMy mate Phil has a nickname that we love to tease him with. ‘Pragmatic Phil’ we call him. It comes from a (typically ill-informed) Sydney Morning Herald article late last year that styled him this way. The reason it works as a nickname for Phil is the same reason that ‘Bluey’ works as a funny and perverse Aussie nickname for redheads. Anyone who knows Phil well knows him to be a very principled pastor, and certainly no ‘pragmatist’.That’s the way we normally think of it anyway—that there are biblical principles in ministry (and people who major on them), and then there is pragmatism, where the decisive factor is whether something works practically or not. (‘Pragmatism’ is the view that a course of action is best judged not by some external rule, ideology or theory, but according to its practical consequences.)We usually think of principles and pragmatics as opposing forces to be negotiated or balanced in some way. There’s the urgent impulse to just do whatever is going to be effective. And there’s the nagging voice in our heads that reminds us of our biblical and theological principles. And so it is common to speak of ‘principled pragmatism’ as the ideal middle way—an approach that acknowledges the necessity (and unavoidability) of thinking pragmatically at various points, but gives due weight to the important biblical principles that should discipline and control our sometimes rampant pragmatic impulses. I’d like to suggest a slightly different angle for thinking about pragmatic decision-making—one that I hope might be useful as we emerge from the COVID19 chrysalis and face a slew of decisions about what to do next and how. The common ‘principled pragmatism’ approach assumes that pragmatism is principle-free, and requires principles to be added to it for discipline and control. And this is how pragmatism likes to market itself as well: “Never mind your theorizing and your purist theological principles—I’m about smart, practical solutions that actually get results”. However all pragmatism is deeply principled. It likes to pretend that it’s not, but it is. (And in this, it is like most forms of consequentialist ethics—but that’s a discussion for another time.)Let’s bring four of pragmatism’s principles to the surface and shine the light of day (or the light of Scripture) on them. The first is a general underlying principle that the world we’re operating in has a rational order to it, where effect follows cause in a predictable manner—so that it is possible to devise actions that predictably bring about certain results. Pragmatism assumes an ordered field of action, and reasonably so—this aligns not only with our experience but with the Bible’s teaching that the world was created in God’s wisdom to be a good and ordered habitat. However, the Bible also teaches that as a result of sin and judgement, the created world is a disordered field of action, subject to futility, frustration, decay and death; that hard work produces thorns and thistles, as well as bread. The biblical principle leads us to regard the rational predictability of the world with caution, recognizing that cause does not always lead to a predictable effect in a fallen world. The second principle of pragmatism is that we humans have the knowledge and mental power to master the rational order of the world, and bend it to our will; that we’re smart enough to figure out the lines of causality, and come up with solutions that work. Again, this is also consistent with our experience and with the Bible—up to a point. Mankind is indeed gifted with the powers to ‘keep’ and to ‘work’ the world (as Genesis 2 puts it). We can acquire wisdom to master the ways of life in the world (including stunning technological achievements like those described in Job 28). And this is true in ministry as well. It’s possible to observe the effects and outcomes of certain actions and approaches, to notice which ones tend to be more successful than others, and to improve the way we do things accordingly. But the Bible also acknowledges the profound limitations to human wisdom. There is Proverbs, but there is also Ecclesiastes. We are limited at one level by our finitude—we just don’t have the capacity to know and comprehend the vast number of different factors and variables that produce different outcomes (and all the more so when we are trying to predict what people will do). We can’t see the whole (in its entire complexity, and in its overall purpose), nor can we objectively ‘see’ ourselves as part of that whole. We are also limited by the warped and fallen minds we possess—minds that malfunction, and that are twisted out of shape by our sinful desires. We aren’t nearly as clever or as objective as we think we are. Not only is it impossible for us to

[Click to listen, or read the text version below … up to you!]George Floyd and the Problem of GoodnessSince last week’s ‘worthless cockroach’ post, I’ve been thinking more about goodness and evil, and what a problem they are for our world.The Problem of Evil we know very well. He often pops up and starts making a noise after a particularly catastrophic event: “How can you believe in a so-called good and powerful God”, he asks accusingly, “when this kind of thing happens?” (where ‘this’ can be a global pandemic, or a child’s cancer, or the senseless, unjust death of George Floyd). Sometimes the Problem of Evil has a smug, self-satisfied demeanour about him—as if he is the clever and righteous person for having noticed how bad evil is, whereas Christians are dumb and monstrous for perpetuating their belief in a good creator God. Exhibit A in this respect is Stephen Fry (once described by Julie Birchill as “a stupid person’s idea of a clever person”). In a 2015 television interview, Fry famously excoriated God for being “a capricious, mean-minded, stupid” deity, for having created a world with so much suffering and injustice. “It’s perfectly apparent that he is monstrous. Utterly monstrous and deserves no respect whatsoever. The moment you banish him, life becomes simpler, purer, cleaner, more worth living in my opinion.”However, what Fry and most mouthpieces for the Problem of Evil don’t seem to realise is that whenever the Problem of Evil comes trip-trapping over the bridge, his bigger and more difficult elder brother, the Problem of Goodness, is not far behind. And the Problem of Goodness is not one that we think about very often. In some ways, that’s what my post last week was about—the fact that even as Christians we sometimes struggle with the idea of goodness within our world, or within ourselves. Goodness is particular problem for the modern God-banishing world, of which Stephen Fry is just one particularly articulate example. Evil can only be said to exist (and thus be a problem) if it describes the absence or destruction of some ‘good’. That’s what evil is. It’s when the good thing that is the life of George Floyd is cruelly and senselessly snuffed out. Floyd’s death is only really evil (and surely it is) if Floyd’s continued life is something really good that should not have been cut off. The ‘should not’ in that last sentence is very important. It demonstrates something that we, and all the protesters in their outrage, know to be true—that the goodness of George Floyd being alive is something real that imposes an obligation on those around him. But if the goodness of people and things in our world is real, that presents a huge problem for Stephen Fry, and every modern God-banishing person. The English ethicist Oliver O’Donovan put his finger on this issue when he wryly observed that everyone who starts to think about morality and goodness and evil finds themselves pretty early on with a momentous decision to make. Is moral goodness and evil an objective thing that exists in the world—or not? When we sense or experience anything good or evil in the world, are we perceiving something real that is ‘out there’, beyond ourselves? Or are we merely projecting a set of personal preferences or feelings onto the blank screen of the world—preferences or feelings that we choose to call ‘good’ or ‘evil’, but which are only expressions of our minds?If we say the latter, we find ourselves on a path to nihilism, banality and despair. There is no objective good that we can rejoice in together, nor evil that we can protest together. There are only my sensations and preferences, which I arbitrarily label ‘good’ or ‘evil’. But if someone wishes to acknowledge that moral goodness and evil has a reality beyond our perceptions and thoughts—that it actually exists and is worth having or arguing about—then that person has stepped “despite himself, on to theological ground”, says O’Donovan.This is the Problem of Goodness. If goodness doesn’t really exist, then neither does evil, and our outrage against injustice or suffering is a vacuous tantrum. But if goodness does actually exist, where on earth did it come from—if not from the hand of a good Creator? And if you banish that Creator, then you have also banished the possibility of anything being actually, really, objectively good. And so the third, and biggest, billy goat gruff comes tramping over the bridge. The Problem of Evil is followed by its elder brother, the Problem of Goodness, who is followed in turn by the biggest brother of all, the Doctrine of the Good Creator.For all the density and complexity of his writing, this is the simple truth that O’Donovan has been worrying away at in most of his work—that the world we inhabit really does have a moral order to it, a good-though-fallen order of kinds and purposes woven into its fabric and history by its Creator; an order that is misunderstood and misconstrued by humanity in our sinful rejection of the Creator; an order

[Click on the play button above to listen, or read on … up to you.]Dear Worthless CockroachI hope you don’t mind me following up our conversation with an open letter like this, but I’m sure you’re not the only one who feels like you do. Let me see if I’m capturing your question. I think what you’re saying is this: * I know I’m a sinner through and through; that’s true because the Bible says so, but also in my experience;* I also know that God has loved me and saved me, not because of anything I have done, or because I am worthy of his love, but purely by his sovereign, wonderful grace;* But is there anything about me (as myself, as the person I am apart from God's saving grace) that is actually worthwhile or lovable? Am I just a worthless, sinful cockroach that God has chosen to love? And if so, am I wrong to feel bad or uneasy about this? To feel (as I sometimes do) that underneath everything, I really am pretty worthless and unlovable?Is that right? If so, let’s see if I can say something useful without it becoming one of my usual long and boring lectures. I could start by saying that you are certainly worth much more than a cockroach, on the basis of Matthew 10:29-31. If I can slightly paraphrase Jesus’ words: “Are not 50 cockroaches sold for $5? And yet not one of them will be eaten by someone’s pet reptile apart from the will of my Father … Fear not, therefore; you are of more value than many cockroaches!” So that’s already a small improvement. You’re worth more than a whole intrusion of cockroaches (the collective noun for cockroaches). Jokes aside, this is actually the beginning of an answer to your question. Because although sparrows (or cockroaches) aren’t worth very much to us, it’s clear that they are valued by God, and are encompassed in his sovereign fatherly care. And of course, so are we, only much more so (which is Jesus’ point). It’s the same lesson as in Matthew 6—God’s generous fatherly provision for the birds of the air should reassure us that he will most certainly provide for us as well (‘Are you not of more value than they?’). But why do flowers, sparrows, cockroaches and humans have value in God’s eyes? Is there a sparrowy kind of goodness that God sees in that little bird, that he wants to protect and nurture and provide for, and see flourish? Or is the sparrow actually worthless in itself, and only made valuable because God arbitrarily chooses to love and care for it, for his own sovereign reasons? This is actually a much-debated question in moral philosophy. (Oh great, I hear you say.) But the simple biblical answer is that the sparrow is indeed good and valuable in itself, because it is one small but wonderful part of God’s good creation. It is good, valuable and lovable, because God made it good, in his own infinite goodness. And so are you. Everything God created is good and is to be received with thanksgiving, says Paul to Timothy (1 Tim 4:4), and that includes the extraordinary created gift that is you—with all the attributes that God’s providence has brought forth in you. Everything that God has done for and in you over the years—the provision of food, drink, clothing and learning, the maturation of intelligence, the development of personal qualities, talents, relational gifts, and so on—all of these, he has nurtured and grown in you, just like he dresses the flowers of the field in their unmatched finery. This is one reason that you have value and are lovable in and of yourself. Because the infinitely good God made you, and has nurtured you in his providence to be the lovely creature you are. In fact, this is one way of understanding what ‘love’ really is. It’s an affectionate knowledge or perception that something is good, with the accompanying desire to participate in that good and to see it grow and flourish. God’s loving providence for the sparrow and you corresponds to the goodness that you and the sparrow share—because God made both of you with your own kind of sparrowy and human goodness. We see this in all human relationships. When we love someone—whether or not we or they are Christian—we are responding to a good that is really there; a good that attracts us, that we want to be part of and enjoy, and that we’d like to see continue and flourish.So there really is something good and valuable about you, whether you a Christian, a non-Christian, a sparrow, or even (yes) a cockroach—because all God’s works are fearfully and wonderfully made. But of course there is a but. There is something profoundly not good about you as well (and me too, if I’m honest). Our stupid, sinful rejection of God throws a giant spanner into the goodness we were created to enjoy and become. It alienates us from our creator, and introduces corruption and death into every part of our lives. In fact, this is what the classic Reformed doctrine of ‘total depravity’ means—that our sinfulness penetrates into every part of us; into our hearts and wills and minds and desires and actions. It doesn’t mea

One of the central claims of The Trellis and the Vine was that Christian ministry is founded not only on preaching and teaching, but also on training. In fact, the chapter in which that argument was advanced most forcefully has always been the most controversial part of the book (Ch 8: ‘Why Sunday Sermons are necessary but not sufficient’).Col Marshall and I have often been asked about what we mean by ‘training’, and how it works out in practice. Does training essentially mean ‘running more training courses’ like Two ways to live? And if that’s too simplistic a picture (and of course it is), then what is ‘training’ exactly? How is ‘training’ different from ‘teaching’ anyway?This week’s Payneful Truth presents a fresh take on this topic, in two parts: via a recent interview with Marty Sweeney (Marty is the ministry director of Matthias Media USA); and then with some additional thoughts to round off.First, here’s an edited excerpt of my interview with Marty.Marty and Tony talk about teaching and trainingMarty: Today, I want to talk to you about what I’ve colloquially said is teaching versus training. Let me set this up for you.Tony: Yep. What do you mean by that?Marty: I’ve been reflecting on my now 15-plus years doing ministry, specifically teaching ministry, in front of a classroom or in a small group, and I realized that often, I just default to content dissemination and I shorthand that as ‘teaching’.Tony: Okay.Marty: Now, I know that’s probably not fair to the word ‘teaching’, but what I mean by that is this—I’ve got all this content in my head, I’ve worked hard at developing a structure to deliver it, and I download it, so I’m teaching people. But what I realized is that I’m giving them content, but I’m not training them to be disciple-makers or to get that content out for others. That’s what I mean by ‘training’ them.It’s one thing to just give people content. It’s another thing to teach them and train them in a certain way that they are applying that to themselves, but also thinking about their neighbours, their friends, their coworkers. I think I’ve been a content disseminator but not a trainer.Tony: Yeah.Marty: Do you see that difference or maybe do you have any better words to describe it?Tony: Well, I’ll outline some of the things that I’ve been digging into over the last couple of years regarding the ‘one-another’ word ministry of Christians, because it’s the same issue. What’s the relationship between that kind of more practically oriented, everyday Christian speech, and the preaching or teaching that we receive in church or in a Sunday school class? (Hint: I think it’s much the same as the relationship between ‘training’ and ‘teaching’.)First, I don't think we have to denigrate teaching by calling it ‘content dissemination’ as if it doesn't do anything powerful, because it does.Marty: Right. Yeah.Tony: If you teach well—and I’ve been in some of your classes, Marty, and you do teach well—you’re not just blurting out material that washes over people; you’re actually forming and changing their minds. You’re providing them week by week with a new way to think about the world and themselves and God and everything. You’re forming their mind and heart, as that content you’ve disseminated seeps in. It restructures the way that your hearers think about everything and understand everything. How does Paul put it in 2 Corinthians 5? When I’m in Christ, it’s a new creation and I no longer regard anything from the standpoint of the flesh. I now regard everything from the standpoint of Christ. That’s the wonderful thing that preaching and teaching does. That’s why it’s so powerful, and that’s why we need to keep listening to it!But nearly all knowledge has two dimensions or axes to it. There’s a kind of knowledge that changes your whole mind and way of thinking about the world—but there’s also a kind of practically immediate knowledge, the knowledge of how to actually do things.If we can come to my second favourite topic after God-Jesus-and-the-Bible, which is golf—you can read as many golf magazines as you like, and I read plenty and watch interminable YouTube videos. But there comes a point where you need the practical immediacy of actually doing it, and having someone alongside you to help; someone to say, “No, no, don't do that!”And I think that’s what we're talking about when we talk about ‘training’. It’s not just the mind of my hearer that is being changed; it’s their behaviour and action being changed. If it just stops with their mind and their understanding, and doesn’t lead to a new way of speaking and living, then something’s missing; it hasn’t gotten the whole way.And this is where ‘training’ (as we’re calling it) comes in. Training is that kind of instruction and learning that takes place in the ‘practical immediacy’ zone—where you’re learning, for example, not to be angry, or not to let the sun go down on your anger, or what it means in practice to love others. You need someone alongside you at

In last week’s edition, we discussed the advantages of thinking about Christian disciples as ‘apprentices’—that is, as the kind of learners who devote themselves to learn a new knowledge-based practice from their Master, the Lord Jesus Christ. In this week’s edition, we’re going to bring the idea of ‘apprenticeship’ to bear on the question of how to read and apply the Bible to our lives. And (eventually) we will cycle back briefly to the issue of church and ‘worship’ that started this train of thought running. Two things, though, before we go further. Firstly, I do recognize that the ‘worship’ issue is not the most pressing question in the world, especially at this moment. And to be truthful, it doesn’t quite get my juices flowing as it once did. But it does serve as a convenient illustration for a larger and more important point that is the real subject of this week’s post. And secondly, the larger issue (of how to apply the Bible) is indeed a very large issue, and I have struggled to keep the length of this week’s edition down, without really succeeding. It’s a longer than usual Payneful Truth this time around. Happily, though, I am on holiday next week, and won’t be posting anything next Monday—so you have two weeks to chew your way through the exciting adventure that is … Apprenticeship to ScriptureBeing ‘biblical’ in our thinking and action is a bit like ‘healthy eating’. Most Christians would like to think that they are at least trying, but it’s not always clear what qualifies. For example, is a practice or concept ‘biblical’ if it fits within the bounds of what the Bible permits, or is at least silent about—or is that too low a bar? Is something only ‘biblical’ if the Bible explicitly commands or positively endorses it in some way? Or is acting in a biblical way more about the theological vibe that you get from putting together the various teachings and themes of Scripture? Or is it some combination of all of these? How does one start with all the various things that the Bible asserts, teaches, describes or exemplifies, and then conclude (in any particular situation) what would be the good or right or ‘biblical’ thing to do? It’s not always straightforward. With regard to church and worship—as an illustration—is it perfectly reasonable and biblical to use the category of ‘worship’ as a primary way of describing our gatherings, and in particular the singing we do in our gatherings, as many churches do? (As in, ‘welcome to our service of worship this morning’; or ‘please join us now as we worship our God together in song’.) Or would it be more helpful to avoid ‘worship’ as a primary category for understanding our church gatherings and/or singing, on the basis that the New Testament doesn’t command us to, and in fact hardly ever does so itself? How does the Bible direct us towards an answer on this, or for that matter any, contemporary issue? Now, in thinking about this question we are about to traverse some deep and complicated waters, in which theologians and ethicists much smarter than me have been thrashing about for centuries. To name-check just three historically massive debates for those who are up on such things: we are in the same waters as the regulative-versus-normative principle discussion at the time of the Reformation; and the hermeneutical debate that has been raging for most of the past hundred years about whether and how ancient texts can speak to modern cultures; and the contemporary controversy within Christian ethics about the place of the Bible as a source of authority in ethical thought. I have been swimming in these waters quite a lot over the past several years, but I don’t intend to take you with me on a deep academic dive. We will be sticking fairly close to the surface, and I apologise in advance for the various things I will no doubt miss out or treat simplistically in what follows. (For those who do wish to think deeper and further, I’ll mention some things to read below.)I want to outline two good but inadequate approaches to ‘being biblical’ about our circumstances and decisions, and then suggest a third approach that is very useful, and that (unsurprisingly) has something to do with apprenticeship. Focus on commandsThe first common approach to applying the Bible to our lives is to focus on the Bible’s explicit commands. And this is of course a great and godly thing to do because, after all, to be a disciple (or apprentice!) of Jesus is to learn to keep all his commands (Matt 28:20). Not only are God’s commands as sweet as the honey comb, they are jolly useful in lots of circumstances, especially for people like us. Very often, we don’t have the need, the time or the ability for a complicated thought process about what to do. We need a short, sharp, simple word that simply says, ‘Be angry but do not sin’, ‘Don’t commit adultery’ or ’Flee from idols’. But as useful as commands are, they have some inadequacies, especially if they are the sum total of our biblical thinking. T

I received a number of requests after last week’s post on the ‘Yeah-But defence’ to say more about the little hobbyhorse I mentioned in the PS—regarding how we think and talk about church and worship. I’ve already written quite a bit about these issues over the years (see some references below in the PS), and am not super-keen to trawl through that material again here (much to the relief of some, I am sure).However, there is something important and (I think) fresh to say that relates not only to that hobbyhorse topic, but to nearly every other topic we grapple with in biblical interpretation and application. It’s a subject I’ve been thinking about a lot over the past three years or so, not only in relation to discipleship and disciple-making (in various ‘Trellis and Vine’ seminars and conversations), but in the methodological phase of the PhD work I’ve recently completed. It comes in two parts (this week’s post and next week’s), and those of you keen to think further about church and worship will have to wait patiently for the end of next week’s post before we get back to that topic. The subject is apprenticeship. The apprenticeIt’s funny how words shift and slip. ‘Myself’, for example, now apparently means the same thing as ‘me’—as in ‘If you’d like to know more, please come and see myself after the meeting’. And my kids were aghast when they discovered recently that I didn’t know that ‘beard’ means ‘a woman who marries or accompanies a gay man, in order to conceal his homosexuality’—although I may have just discovered this word-meaning in time for it to become redundant (because no-one seems very interested in concealing their homosexuality these days). There’s nothing wrong with the constantly morphing nature of words and language. It’s how language does its thing. But it does occasionally mislead us, or get in the way of clear communication. We know this well enough when we’re trying to communicate some aspect of the gospel to completely unchurched people, and discover to our frustration that what we mean by words like ‘sin’ or ‘faith’ or ‘God’ bears little relation to what our hearers think these words signify. Imagine how annoying, then, it must be for the Bible—because the Bible is mostly a simple, plain-speaking communicator. It enjoys using normal everyday words that, in their original context, were as about as religious or technical as words like ‘dog’ or ‘rock’ or ‘washing machine’. But over time, words shift and slip. They gather connotations and associations. And so to the Bible’s frustration (well it would annoy me, if I was the Bible), many of its everyday words have become specialized, inhouse religious words with a raft of extra meanings and associations. The ordinary Bible-words that mean ‘ask-for-something’, ‘assembly’ and ‘honour-or-serve-someone’ are for us the rich, tradition-laden, Christian words ‘pray’, ‘church’ and ‘worship’. The English word ‘disciple’ is a fascinating case in point. Along with its related forms ‘discipling’, ‘disciple-making’ and ‘discipleship’, this word has become a specialized Christian word with a large range of connotations: ‘a follower of Jesus’, ‘to mentor a younger believer’, ‘evangelism, especially on an individual level’, ‘one-to-one Bible reading’, ‘the daily practical side of Christian belief’, ‘a kind of pastor or department in large churches’, and so on.However, in the Bible, the word we translate as ‘disciple’ or ‘to make disciples’ is one of those ordinary, straightforward words (Gk mathetes or matheteuo). It pops up a couple of hundred times in the Gospels and Acts, and according to the standard Greek dictionary (known in the trade as ‘BDAG’), the word refers to someone who: * ‘engages in learning through instruction from another’* ‘is rather constantly associated with someone who has a pedagogical reputation or a particular set of views’ (BDAG, 3rd Edn, 609-610).If we were using corresponding English words, we would call that sort of person a ‘student’ or a ‘learner’ or a ‘pupil’ or, even better, an ‘apprentice’—because an apprentice is a particular kind of learner. Apprentices associate themselves with a specific teacher over a period of time (often a master craftsman) in order to be instructed by them and to learn from them. An apprentice carpenter binds himself to a master tradesman for a period of some years, and learns from him not only the key knowledge that he requires but the practical wisdom that puts that knowledge to effective use in different circumstances. He learns not only what a hammer is and does in theory, but how to use one, and when to use one. This is the kind of student a mathetes (or ‘disciple’) was in the NT. They were not so much classroom students seeking to master a body of knowledge, as people who left their nets to be devoted to a particular Teacher, and to learn the knowledge-based practice that the Master knew and taught and exemplified. The Christian life is this kind of apprenticeship. We commit ourselves in fait

When someone challenges me to change the way I think or act, they can expect to meet a well-organized resistance. They will have to punch through a layer of conceit that doesn’t want to admit that I may have just possibly been slightly, but very understandably, mistaken in this one instance. Then they will have to overcome a quivering blob of inertia that is designed to keep things just as they are, because I like it that way. After that, they will have to hose down a fire of social fear that springs to life whenever I am faced with making a change that my friends might think weird or mistaken. So good luck with that.But somewhere among all those defences to changing my mind about anything, there is a layer of resistance that I have come to call the Yeah-But defence.I have seen it occasionally in myself (in rare moments of self-awareness, possibly in relation to my wife being right about something). And of course, I notice it all the time in other people—because other people are mostly wrong, and for some reason use these kinds of dodges to avoid coming around to my way of thinking.The secret of the Yeah-But defence is to start by acknowledging with a weary nod of the head the very strong, even overwhelming, nature of the argument someone is presenting to you. Yeah I hear what you’re saying. Yeah I’m aware of that. Yeah I’ve read those verses. Yeah we all know that. And then to introduce the But. * But it’s not quite that simple, is it?* But there is an interesting verse that might be an exception to what you’re arguing. * But surely the evidence you’re presenting isn’t the only thing to say about this subject.* But I’ve heard that some scholars take a quite different view. * But I’ve seen a documentary on Netflix. * But I’m not sure that the consequences of your argument would be easy to put into practice. * But if we accept your argument, won’t that lead to (insert alarming consequence here) down the track? * But I feel like what you’re saying owes too much to (insert modernism/postmodernism/individualism/Western-guilt-culture or some complex cultural movement that neither of you really understand here). * But surely there are more important things for us to be addressing right now. The genius of the Yeah-But defence is that most of these ‘Buts’ are in themselves perfectly reasonable things to say. Nothing is ever that simple. There are always exceptions. Every view is always challenged by some scholar somewhere. We all have mixed motives. We are all influenced by cultural trends. And there are always other important things to be talking about. It’s just that none of these ‘Buts’ actually respond to the evidence or argument that has been presented, nor give due weight to its volume and strength. In fact, the purpose of the Yeah-But is to deflect the force of strong arguments or powerful evidence, and (if possible) to avoid actually having to interact with them.A well-executed Yeah-But, and especially the very powerful Combination-Yeah-But, can neatly sidestep even the strongest challenge to our thinking or behaviour. To take one example. When theologians or preachers aren’t comfortable with putting the substitutionary atonement of Christ for the forgiveness of sins right at the essential centre of their thinking and gospel, they are faced with the awkward fact that the New Testament does precisely that, at point after point. How do they respond? * Yeah, but surely the salvation of individual sinners through the atonement is not the only thing that the Bible says about Jesus death or the gospel? * Yeah, but that’s a naive approach to evangelism these days. We need to use categories and ideas that resonate with the cultural narratives of modern people. * Yeah, but isn’t your obsession with sin and atonement just an expression of individualistic, guilt-centric Western thinking? * Yeah, but we don’t want to end up in some kind of life-denying fundamentalist sect that has nothing to say to the modern world.* Yeah, but there are many reputable NT scholars who think that the traditional understanding of the cross is simplistic and outdated. And so on and so forth. Let’s divert attention from the elephantine quantity of evidence in the room by pointing to some interesting features of the wallpaper. How can we respond to the Yeah-But? At one level, we could always counter with a Yeah-But of our own. “Yeah, those caveats you’re raising are worth addressing, and we should look at them. But let’s start by looking at the mountain of evidence that’s in front of us, and assessing its validity. And let’s commit together to obedience in light of the weight of the evidence as we find it.” Might that work? Perhaps. But only if a spirit of humility and repentance is wafting through the conversation—and that leads to the second and more significant response: to pray for our conversation partners (and ourselves), that God would grant us both repentance in light of a clear understanding of his truth. The Yeah-But is not simply

After living in Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians an awful lot over the last three years, I have realized two things—first, I’ve been living in Corinth for most of my life; and second, with God’s help, I hope to live a Corinthian life till I die.I’ve lived so long in Sydney now I can hardly remember what a shock it was to arrive here as an uncomplicated country boy in my late teens. Brash, beautiful, vibrant Sydney, with its abundance of natural gifts, its melting pot of cultures, its love of money and real estate, its status anxiety, and its rampant, polyvalent sexuality—a city as much like ancient Corinth as I suppose any modern city is likely to be. And just as churches in Sydney cannot help but be corrupted by the characteristic sins of its city—perhaps materialism and status-seeking would be on the list—so the church of God in Corinth struggled to escape the gravitational corruption of its own civic culture. To that church, the Apostle writes the masterpiece of Christian instruction that we call 1 Corinthians. In this extraordinary letter, he skewers the sins and pretensions of Corinthian culture, especially its arrogant pride and obsession with status. And at the same time, he describes and commends the radical alternative culture that the immature Corinthian Christians should have grasped by now, and should be living out. The Corinthian church should have understood and embraced the new culture of Christ, because it is simply the daily outworking of the most important thing the Apostle ever told them—the message that he passed onto them as of first importance: “that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures” (15:3-4). Or as he puts it in the two word summary of his entire preaching: “Christ crucified” (1:23; cf. 2:2).What the Corinthians had not yet really grasped was that this twin event—the death and resurrection of Christ—was not only the stupendous truth that brought them righteousness, sanctification and redemption (1:30); it also laid out the entire shape and course of their lives. It was their wisdom, a wisdom from God that proud, worldly Corinth could only regard as foolish and weak. Part of the genius of 1 Corinthians is that the letter teaches this wisdom in its very structure. The shape of the Christian life is the shape of 1 Corinthians—starting with the foundation of the cross and its stunning reversal of their previous cultural values and narratives (ch 1-4), proceeding through all the different issues the church faces in its context (ch 5-14), and concluding with the resurrection of Christ, which guarantees the Corinthians’ own resurrection on the last day (ch 15). As each issue is dealt with—whether factionalism or sexual immorality or marriage or how they are to behave their gatherings—the answer is always the wisdom of the cross, awaiting resurrection. The confounding, counter-intuitive wisdom of the cross, which turns upside down the worldly values and cultural narratives of Corinth (and Sydney and every city), is the wisdom that now teaches them to make judgements about all things (ch 2). For example, if God chose to save us by the seemingly weak and stupid message of the cross, so that there could no boasting except in the Lord, how could we be so juvenile as to boast in impressive individual teachers or leaders, and factionalize around them (ch 3-4)? And if God has cleansed, redeemed and justified us for himself at the cross, how could we think of reintroducing into our midst the ‘old leaven’ of sexual immorality and greed and all the other sins of our former Corinthian selves (ch 5-6)? And if Christ laid down his life in sacrifice for others, how could we do anything but sacrifice our own preferences and lives so that we might save some (1 Cor 9-10)? And if the heartbeat of the cross is self-denying, other-person-oriented love, how could we use our gifts for arrogant self-expression and personal status rather than for the advantage and edification of others (ch 12-14)? This is the new Corinthian life—a life lived in the wisdom of the cross awaiting resurrection, the life I hope to keep living in the particular Corinth in which God has placed me. I have been writing this week’s post in the midst of the strange, post-apocalyptic Easter that we’ve all been experiencing, with its deserted streets and parks and churches. It occurs to me that the new life Paul is describing in 1 Corinthians is like a life lived on Easter Eve—which is what the Saturday between Good Friday and Easter Day is properly called (Easter Saturday is the Saturday after Easter). Easter Eve, which is a bit of a nothing day for most of us, is the day that looks back to the cross and forward to the resurrection. That is the day in which we now live, whether we’re in Corinth or Sydney or anywhere else—a life lived by the wisdom of the cross; a life that runs counter to the narratives and ‘wisdom’ of

It’s an ad that Aussies of my generation grew up with. Jack Thompson, in his ruggedly good-looking larrikin phase, says to the barman, “Claytons thanks, Brian”. A dumbfounded onlooker responds, “On the wagon, Jack?”“Nah” drawls Jack. “When I don’t feel like alcohol, I have Claytons.”(Voice-over): “Claytons: the drink you have when you’re not having a drink”. And so an expression entered Australian vernacular. When you can’t have the real thing, but you have to make do with a less than adequate substitute, it’s a Claytons. This is often derogatory, of course (in typical Aussie fashion). You really don’t want to end up with a Claytons car or work for a Claytons boss or (worst of all) be described as a Claytons husband.But it doesn’t have to be negative. Sometimes, because of the situation you find yourself in, you just have to say, “I’ll have Claytons, thanks”. I think that’s where many of us are at with church, in this surreal coronavirus moment. We’re genuinely thankful for the technology that allows us to connect with our church communities online in the various kinds of simulated Sunday things that many churches are doing. And yet we also can’t help feeling the Claytons nature of it all—in the lack of physical presence with one another, the diminished communicative power of the preaching, the absence of communal singing and the Lord’s Supper, and so much more. We miss the real thing, but we’re grateful in the meantime for the ‘church you have when you’re not having church’. I think both of these impulses are healthy—the sadness at no longer having the real thing, and the gratitude for the Claytons substitute. In fact, I think embracing both of these attitudes will be important over the coming difficult months.On one hand, the benefits of gratitude are obvious, and I won’t dwell too long on them. Thanksgiving in all circumstances is one of the basic characteristics of the redeemed life. And now, in these particularly difficult circumstances, there is much that we should thank God for—for the opportunities some of us have to spend more time with our families; for the undoubted gospel opportunities that are opening up as we interact with friends and neighbours whose secure worlds have been rattled; and for our pastors, who are all working long hours under stress, scrambling to minister to the flock when most of their normal tools for doing so have been suddenly withdrawn. Let’s be thankful and positive about the extraordinary technology that is allowing us to stay in touch online, to hear each other’s voices and to see each other’s faces, even if in a mirror darkly (when the webcam is positioned facing the window).On the other hand, it will also do us good to openly embrace the fact that what we’re doing online is not the real thing—that it’s Claytons church—for at least two reasons.Firstly, I think it’s spiritually healthy for us grieve the loss of our local church gatherings. It’s good to miss meeting together as a congregation, to long for its return, and to realise (perhaps for the first time for some of us) just how precious, unique and important the weekly gathering of a local congregation is. I wonder if this will be a Hebrews 12 moment for us, in which God disciplines us as his children to appreciate afresh something that we frequently take for granted. (And I don’t think we want to convey the opposite theological lesson over the next several months—namely, that church-without-actually-gathering is still pretty much church, so long as you catch up with an online sermon and sing along with some Christian music in your lounge room.)Secondly, if we embrace the Claytons nature of what we’re doing online on Sundays, it may actually help us do a better job. I don’t just mean that it will motivate us to lean harder on the ‘one-another’ aspect of ministry during the week (as I suggested in an earlier Payneful Truth)—although it will. I mean that if we embrace the fact that it’s not possible to re-create the reality of our Sunday gatherings in an online space, it may liberate us to use the technology at our disposal more flexibly and effectively. In Claytons mode, we can experiment with various ways to achieve as much as possible online with each other, without feeling like we have to re-create ‘Sunday’ for people—something that the circumstances and the medium make impossible. Let me give just one example: I strongly suspect that online ‘sermons’ will be more effective if they stop trying to be a real sermon (of the live-audience, preached kind) and embrace the character and limitations of the online video medium. Live, preached sermons are a form of ‘hot’ media (to use Marshall McLuhan’s term). They require the full engagement of the listener in the communicative event—to follow the argument being laid out, to imagine the story the preacher is telling, to picture the imagery he is referring to, and so on. This is partly why physical presence is so important for a sermon. What a sermon requires of its listen

In this week’s edition, I want to answer an insightful question that Dave Pitt posed after reading my piece about small groups and one-another edifying speech. Hi Tony,Thanks for this great article. It provides some really helpful language around the difference between the preached word and the one-anothering the NT speaks of. You’re focussing on the way the word grows Christians.I’m wondering if the same idea applies to the way the word saves people—i.e. the difference between the proclamation of the gospel at an event vs. inviting an unbeliever to read the Bible with you.I guess the question is: Is there an equivalent language to the one-anothering for what the Christian does with an unbeliever, in the NT?Well spotted, Dave. And in our current strange circumstances, this is perhaps an even more pressing question. In a context where many of our normal, event-based opportunities for gospel proclamation are denied to us, what is the role of smaller-scale, one-another-style gospel interactions? My PhD research focused on one-another speech within the Christian community, but there are good reasons to think that this way of thinking about different kinds of speech could provide some fresh thoughts about Christian speech outside the Christian community as well. (Who knows, we might even be able to cut through some of those old arguments we’ve had about evangelism and the everyday Christian.)While there are lots of passages in the New Testament that speak about one-another speech within the Christian community (25 of them by my count), we have fewer passages that touch on the spiritually significant speech of everyday Christians to outsiders. There’s Acts 4:31, 1 Cor 14:24-25, Phil 1:14 (I think), Col 4:5-6, 1 Pet 2:9-10 (perhaps), and 1 Pet 3:15-16. Let’s look really quickly at three of them that touch on the issue that Dave raises. In Acts 4:31, the apostles Peter and John had been boldly proclaiming the gospel, and facing opposition in doing so. And as the whole company of believers prays for ‘your servants to continue to speak your word with all boldness’, God answers their prayer in a surprising way. The whole place is shaken, and “they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and continued to speak the word of God with boldness”.This is like Pentecost all over again. The Spirit is poured out, and the believers pour out speech. All the same, did the believers in Acts 4 go out and do exactly what Peter and John had been doing in bold public proclamation? Possibly, but very possibly not. Was the context in which all the believers ‘spoke the word of God with boldness’ as varied as their different circumstances and opportunities allowed—such as in their households, or in their regular interactions with outsiders? I suspect so, but we don’t know. However, whatever the context, what the speech of Peter, John and all the believers had in common was its enabling power (the Holy Spirit), its essential content (the apostolic word of God) and its motive and character (boldness in the face of threats). We see a similar commonality in Col 4:2-6, where Paul asks for prayer for his speaking of the word (the logos, in v. 3), and then urges the Colossians themselves to let their word with outsiders (their logos, v. 6) be always gracious and seasoned with salt. The essential content is shared (the speaking of the logos), but the context or mode of the speech seems to be different. Paul is an itinerant proclaimer, now imprisoned for his preaching; the Colossians are having regular daily interactions with outsiders, and making the most of opportunities to converse graciously and ‘saltily’ in those contexts. Likewise (and very briefly), we observe a similar pattern in 1 Peter. Peter’s readers have received and set their minds on a ‘living hope’ of salvation, through the evangelistic preaching of the living and abiding word of God (1 Pet 1:3, 10-13, 23-25). This is the hope that they are to explain and defend in their gentle, respectful conversations with outsiders (in 1 Pet 3:15-16). Same content; different mode of interaction.What we see in each of these examples is the preached (or ‘evangelised’) word of the gospel having its counterpart in the speech of believers more generally with outsiders—in a way that is obviously closely related, but also different. But different how? Here’s where the parallel work I’ve been doing on ‘one-another edifying speech’ (OES) within the Christian community might be useful. As I looked at all the passages regarding OES, what became apparent was that the best and clearest way to differentiate OES from the ‘preaching-teaching speech’ of pastor-teachers was not in their essential content (both were centred on the apostolic gospel), nor in their motivation (both were driven by love for others in light of God’s purposes), nor in their overall purpose (both sought to see others grow to maturity in Christ), nor in their sense of obligation or commission (both sorts of speakers are urged or commanded to e

Perhaps predictably, last week’s post about ‘ministry in the year of covid19’ generated quite a bit of interest. This week’s edition is a follow-up about the power and possibilities of ‘one-another ministry’ in these difficult times, with one practical suggestion to think about next. In my part of the world, the churchly response to covid19 has been swift, responsible and admirable. Many Sunday gatherings have been cancelled, with church staff moving quickly to put together online versions. In many places, small groups have also been put on ice, although churches are making different decisions about that. I suspect that it won’t be long before most small groups in most churches have ceased to function. Again, the suggestion is that we move our small groups online as best we can.No doubt virtual church gatherings and virtual small groups will help—and no doubt we will learn to make the most of them over time. But the reason that many of us are worried about the spiritual consequences of these (right and responsible) decisions is that virtual church and virtual small groups are virtual in one sense, but not the other. The word ‘virtual’ has two main meanings: * ‘pretty much the same’ — as in ‘I was virtually exhausted’ or ‘I was virtually dependent on her for everything’; * ‘the simulation or extension of something through software’ — as in a ‘virtual disk’ or ‘virtual meeting’. The problem is that virtual church is not virtually church, and ditto for small groups. I think we all believe this—or we would have gone online years ago. (It would certainly be cheaper, easier and more efficient!)But apart from theological issues, when we try to express what exactly is missing in a virtual church or small group, it can be hard to put into words. We might still share the word together and pray together; even sing (awkwardly) together. But there is a power in physical presence and physical gathering that we can’t replace—of experiencing other people as embodied persons (for that is what we are); of seeing them, and listening to them, and speaking face to face; of being one of multiple voices raised together in confession or prayer or song. Of being together.It’s the kind of thing Paul means as he prays “most earnestly night and day that we may see you face to face and supply what is lacking in your faith” (1 Thess 3:10). It’s what John is referring to in that lovely little verse that I’m thinking of adding to my email signature: “Though I have much to write to you, I would rather not use paper and ink. Instead I hope to come to you and talk face to face, so that our joy may be complete” (3 Jn 14). There’s an encouraging, exhortatory, joyful power in personal presence that a letter or podcast or virtual meeting can’t replace. And this is why we are understandably concerned about the spiritual effects of prolonged periods without it—where we are not meeting together, face to face, for what could be six months, or even longer. In last week’s Payneful Truth I talked about the importance of ‘one-another ministry’ in this context, and how the lack of one-another culture in our churches can often be exposed at times like this.But (speaking more positively) can anything be done about that? What could we do to promote and build a ‘one-anothering’ culture in the new disconcerting reality of covid19?With some caution, I’d like to offer a simple practical suggestion. I’m cautious to do so, because things are still changing pretty rapidly (as I write), and something that is confidently asserted today will very possibly be outdated tomorrow, if not next week. I’m also cautious because we’re all still getting our bearings, and calibrating what loving, reasonable, responsible behaviour looks like in this new landscape. And I’m cautious because I know that different Christians and churches face different distinct challenges, and will quite rightly come to different conclusions about how to act.But with those caveats in place, I’d like to open a conversation about the benefits of face-to-face groups of three people. You might call them trios or triads or troikas or even triumvirates—for convenience, I’ll call them ‘Bible triplets’. What might it look like, and what would be the advantages, if we encouraged and helped people in our congregations to gather in regular, face-to-face Bible triplets? Here are some initial thoughts. If it was the same three people meeting regularly, and appropriate precautions were enforced (hand-washing, 1.5m distancing, staying away when sick, and so on) the risk of viral transmission would be very low—certainly below any current advice from the health authorities about the kinds of gatherings that can responsibly continue. (As of this morning—March 23—the official advice here in Australia is that while religious services should not take place, small groups can continue to meet with appropriate care. This may change, of course, but that is no reason not to be begin this conversation, and to do some planning

One of my hopes for The Payneful Truth is that it will be an opportunity for the very thing I discussed in last week’s edition: for us to speak the truth in love with one another, for mutual instruction and encouragement.So far so good! Thanks for the many emails and comments that have done just this. And in the coming weeks, I’ll be touching on some of the specific questions you’ve asked, including these two: * Does this view of overlapping ‘zones’ of speech in the Christian community also help us think about Christian speech to outsiders? Do we also have ‘preaching-teaching’ style evangelism and ‘one-another’ evangelism?* Small groups are a good opportunity for ‘one-another speech’ but what about the main Sunday gathering? Shouldn’t it also be a place where we encourage and exhort each other? If so, how? Stay tuned for more on both of these questions. But in the meantime … Neither a prophet nor a prophet’s sonAs a number of Payneful Truth readers have pointed out, last week’s post on the importance of ‘one-another edifying speech’ takes on a particular relevance in the era of COVID19. In fact (as some others also reminded me), the final paragraphs of The Trellis and the Vine rather spookily made this connection. The following words were written in 2009, not long after the swine flu epidemic:Try this mental experiment. Imagine that a swine flu pandemic swept through your part of the world, and that all public assemblies of more than three people were banned. And let’s say that, due to some catastrophic combination of local circumstances, this ban had to remain in place for 12 months.How would your congregation of 120 members continue to function—with no regular church gatherings of any kind, and no small home groups (except for groups the size of three)?If you were the pastor what would you do?I guess you could send your people regular letters and emails. You could make phone calls, and maybe even do a podcast. [The idea of livestreaming services didn’t cross my mind in 2009! TP] But how would the regular work of teaching and preaching and pastoring take place? How would you encourage your congregation to persevere in love and good deeds, especially in such trying circumstances? And what about evangelism? How would new people be reached, contacted and followed up? There could be no men’s breakfasts, no coffee mornings, no evangelistic courses or outreach meetings. Nothing.You could, of course, revert to the ancient practice of visiting your congregation house-to-house, and doorknocking the local area to contact new people. But how, as a pastor, could you possibly meet with and teach all 120 adults in your congregation, let alone their children, let alone doorknocking the entire suburb, let alone follow up the contacts that were made?No, if it was to be done, you would need help. You would need to start with ten of your most mature Christian men, and meet intensively with them two at a time for the first two months (while keeping in touch with everyone else by phone and email). You would train these ten in how to read the Bible and pray with one or two other people, and with children. Their job would then be twofold: to ‘pastor’ their wives and families through regular Bible reading and prayer, and to each meet with four other men to train and encourage them to do the same. Assuming 80 per cent of your congregation is married, that would be all or most of the married adults involved in regular Bible-based encouragement.While that was getting going (with you offering phone and email support along the way), you might choose another bunch to train personally—people who could meet with singles, or people who had potential in doorknocking and evangelism, or people who would be good at following up new contacts.It would mean a lot of personal contact, and a lot of one-to-one meetings to fit in. But remember: there would be no services to run, no committees, no parish council, no seminars, no small groups, no working bees—in fact, no group activities or events of any kind to organize, administer, drum up support for or attend. There would be just personal discipling, and training your people, in turn, to be disciple-makers. Now here’s the question: after 12 months, when the ban was lifted and you were able to recommence Sunday gatherings, and all the rest of the meetings and activities of church life, what would you do differently? (Colin Marshall and Tony Payne, The Trellis and the Vine, pp. 165-167). Now, I am neither a prophet nor a prophet’s son (Amos 7:14); nor do I know anything about viral outbreak management, flattening the curve, or any of the other subjects about which people on Facebook suddenly seem to be experts; nor is this little parable meant to prescribe what should be done in 2020. But it does seem to me that the current circumstances will provide a stress-test for the quality of the ‘one-another’ culture in our churches. When our normal opportunities for public preaching and teaching ministries

(Welcome to the second edition of The Payneful Truth. Feel free to forward this email to your friends or use the ‘share’ button at the end to spread the word.)It’s early March (as I write this) and all across this burning, flooded, toilet-paper deprived land, churches are launching their small Bible groups for the year—or ‘missional disciple-making gospel community growth teams’ as I am suggesting we call ours, just to cover all bases. It’s a time to reconnect with members from last year, make newbies feel welcome, and get back into the rhythm. But the rhythm of what exactly? What are these MDMGCGTs that are now such a fixture of church life? In practice, there is wide range of answers to this question—all the way from ‘a relaxed care-share-and-prayer evening with light touch facilitation’ at one end, through to ‘a full-on church in miniature with responsible pastoral leadership’ at the other. And obviously enough, where you land on that spectrum will have serious implications not only for group expectations and norms, but for what sort of leader is trained and appointed, and what kind of activities the group focuses on. I suspect that not many Payneful Truth readers are at the extreme ends of that spectrum. Not many of us want our small groups just to be loosely organized friendly Christian catch-ups. But I also doubt that many of us think that our small groups are a viable replacement for ‘church’ (in the sense of a local congregation). Good small groups share some of the qualities and nature of ‘church’—they are opportunities for Christians to gather around the word of Christ together, in the fellowship of the Spirit. But we also sense that they are not equivalent; that the community that is defined and constituted by the larger Sunday gathering (the local ‘church’) is a different thing in key ways from the small Wednesday night gathering (the ‘small group’). But different how exactly?There are various ways to answer that question, but the PhD research I’ve been doing over the past few years (now blessedly completed!) has pointed me towards a fresh approach. And it has to do with how Christians grow through the word. Broadly speaking (and I mean as broad as Bob Katter’s hat), in the New Testament the ministry of the word within Christian communities operates in two overlapping zones. In one zone, the Christian mind of the whole congregation is formed, developed and guarded through the faithful, consistent teaching of the Christ-centred truth of the Scriptures by qualified, recognized pastor-teachers (e.g. 1 Tim 5:17; Tit 1:5-9; Heb 13:7). In our churches today, this routinely happens through faithful, expositional Sunday-by-Sunday preaching. Let’s label this kind of word ministry ‘congregational teaching-and-preaching’. But there is another zone of Christian word ministry in the NT—one that is the responsibility of all Christians (not just pastor-teachers or elders). This form of speech focuses on exhorting, encouraging, instructing and admonishing one another to make the preached word a reality in our daily lives (e.g. Col 3:16; Heb 3:12-13; 1 Thes 5:11, 14). Let’s call this ‘one-another edifying speech’. These two kinds of speech are both vital for Christian growth and maturity. And they do overlap. ‘Congregational teaching-and-preaching’ does contain exhortation, admonition and encouragement—applied to the congregation as a whole. And ‘one-another edifying speech’ does contain, and is based upon, the true teaching of the Scriptures. But the focus and function of the two ‘zones’ of word ministry are different. 'Congregational teaching-and-preaching’ expounds, explains and guards the whole truth of the gospel, and shows its application to all of life; ‘one-another edifying speech’ takes that truth, and brings it to the particular contexts of individual people and situations. The former trains my heart to approach every circumstance with the mind of Christ; the latter meets me in that circumstance and provides the help and encouragement I need to express that mind of Christ in godly action. To put it simply, ‘congregational teaching-and-preaching’ is the zone of word ministry at the centre of our Sunday church gatherings; small groups provide an ideal opportunity for the other vital kind of word ministry to come to the fore and flourish—the ‘one-another edifying speech’ in which we help one another as individuals to understand, remember and apply the word to the granular complexity of our lives. Thinking about small groups through this lens helps to calibrate our expectations for what small groups should achieve, and what role small group leaders play in that. It pushes us away from the loosy-goosy end of the spectrum, because the subject of our mutual sharing and exhortation is not ourselves and our problems but the word of Christ, which is supposed to dwell richly among us as we speak to each other in all manner of ways. This in turn means that small group leaders need to understand this priority, and

(Welcome to this first edition of The Payneful Truth. For the audio version click on the play button above, or for the text version, just read on … )Naming anything is difficult. Babies, sporting teams, cars. Especially cars it seems. Some genius from marketing must have argued for the Kia Pro_cee’d, and the Subaru Brat, and (my very favourite) the Nissan Cedric.My irreverent son came up with The Payneful Truth for this new weekly journal, and it has grown on me, I have to say. It has a touch of Australian self-mockery about it, and it rolls of the tongue easily enough. And the more I have thought about it, the more The Payneful Truth captures what I’m hoping to achieve in this weekly journal.For a start, it names the essential nature of every kind of Christian ministry, including this one, which is to speak the saving, judging, life-changing truth of Christ. This is the truth that convicts us, critiques us, corrects us, trains us, and sets us free. It redeems our minds and hearts to know and live in reality—like the proverbial fish stranded on a sandy shore that has now been set free to swim in the ocean. This is the truth that Paul urges all us of to speak in love—not only to stabilise us when the buffeting winds of false doctrine blow, but to nourish and grow the body of Christ (Eph 4:14-16). And that really is the main and simple reason that I’ve launched this new journal—to speak the truth about every aspect of Christian life and ministry, so that those who read (or listen) will be encouraged and equipped to do the same.Νοw, this truth is ‘in Jesus’, as Paul puts it (Eph 4:20). It is certainly not ‘in Payne’! It is only available through the Word that has come to us from outside—from the God who is the truth, and who has supremely and finally revealed the truth of reality in the person, teaching and work of his Son.But this truth of Christ is only made available to us through human speech—through the authoritative speech of the Scriptural authors first of all, but also through each one of us as we convey the Scriptural truth to others, in whatever form, context, length, mode or vibe in which we speak it. The fulness of God is in Christ, and that fulness is made known as each one of us brings the word of Christ to others, each in our own unique way, with our own unique contexts and opportunities. In that sense the truth of Christ is always Smith-ful and Lee-ful and Patel-ful—and even Payne-ful. Which also means that I am hoping and praying that all you Smiths, Lees and Patels out there will also be speaking the truth—not only to all those around you, but back to me, and to other readers. (Fee free to hit ‘reply’ and send me a message, or make a comment in the comments section.)Of course, speaking the truth is usually ‘payneful’ in the other sense as well. It often hurts to speak the truth, because it exposes us to the criticism of others. And it hurts to hear the truth, because it exposes the lie that we’ve been living—whether the primary cancerous lie of being a rebel against God’s truth, or all the little lies that metastasise from that, and spread through our lives and personalities, and continue to afflict us as Christians. The truth undercuts and rewrites the false narratives that the world continually whispers in our ears, and which we come to cherish. And because those narratives are so pervasive and so easily and widely accepted (the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction), Christian truth is very often painfully contrarian. In fact, when an opinion or view is widely and commonly held by the world, my immediate (and I think right) instinct is to suspect that something somewhere is wrong.In our current climate, where moralistic secularism seems to be getting more censoriously aggressive with each passing social media outrage, we need to speak and hear this truth of Christ more than ever. That’s the big aim of this little journal, The Payneful Truth. Thanks for being with me at the beginning. Please let me know how it’s going (as I get into the rhythm), and if there’s a pressing question or issue you’d like me to address, don’t hesitate to get in touch. And as for whether The Payneful Truth is a good name—or another Nissan Cedric in the making—only time, and the ridicule of future generations, will tell.PS. If you’re not already a subscriber, jump on board. It’s free, and it’s the only way to get The Payneful Truth regularly. PPS. I’m planning to finish each edition with a fairly random or tenuously connected image (so that the post archive has a bit of visual interest). And today it has to be the venerable Nissan Cedric. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe