Two Ways News

A couple of posts ago, I talked about whether church should be thought of more as a family (or community) or as a society (or enterprise). I ended up arguing that both were important, and needed to be held together. And this got me thinking. Have you ever pondered just how many different aspects of Christian teaching are exactly like this—consisting of two truths that need to be held together at the same time? Always two there areAt the risk of opening a can of bantha fodder with all you Star Wars nerds out there, one of the very few interesting things to emerge from the otherwise execrable Episode I: The Phantom Menace was the elucidation of the ‘rule of two’. The evil Sith lords, it seems, were very much into ‘two’ as a number. ‘Always two there are’, croaks Yoda, ‘no more, no less; a master and an apprentice’. Which is a tad ironic coming from Yoda, because it’s not just the Sith. The whole ridiculous philosophical mashup of the Star Wars universe (of which Yoda is the main spokes-jedi) also depends on a basic dualistic fight between two—between the good side and the dark side of the Force.But how are those two related? In Star Wars (as in its ancient real world ancestor, Manichaeism), the two are in constant tension and war, striving for supremacy. In other philosophies (like Buddhism and Gnosticism and all forms of mysticism), the basic two-ness of the world is resolved by downplaying, denying or demonising one side of it—the physical world and its suffering is bad, nasty and not quite real; only the spiritual, non-physical realm is real and good and worth pursuing. And in modern rational humanism (following Hegel) we are confident that we can think the two antithetical sides together, and by so doing come to some new and greater synthesis. To which I would say—two world wars, and 100 million killed in genocides? Synthesize that! However, the biblical universe has its own distinctive approach to the ‘twoness’ of reality. Think, for example, about the following pairs of theological truths: * God’s sovereignty and human responsibility, in our conversion and in the rest of our Christian lives; * God’s providential upholding of the creation at every moment, and the rational, cause-and-effect functioning of the world day by day;* the divine authorship and human authorship of Scripture;* the full divinity of Jesus Christ and his full humanity;* God’s immanent, close presence with all of us and his holy transcendent otherness, far above all of us; * the ‘vertical’ element of our church gatherings (our engagement with God himself) and the ‘horizontal’ element (our engagement with each other);* the fact that we are fully and completely justified by Christ’s blood, and yet at the same time remain sinful in our character and behaviour (simul justus et peccator as Luther put it; ‘at the same time justified and a sinner’); * the reality of of being seated at God’s right hand now, and yet remaining fully here in this present evil age—our eschatology is now but not yet; * we stand before God as individuals and grow as individuals; and yet we are unavoidably part of a corporate body as well (whether that is all of humanity in Adam, or the body of Christ). Perhaps you can think of others.It is very striking how many of the great truths of Christian revelation consist of two truths held together at the same time—neither denying one side nor the other, nor seeking to resolve the apparent tension between them. In fact, the history of Christian heresy and error could be told as the failure to hold two truths fully together, either by downplaying one truth or the other, or by thinking that the way to hold them together was by balancing them in some sort of proportion. The Christological heresies of the early church, for example, almost all ended up choosing a side—Christ’s divinity or his humanity—and failed to hold both together fully, as the orthodox creeds insisted that we must. The Pelagian and Semi-Pelagian heretics (who believed in salvation by works or partly by works) couldn’t bring themselves to say that salvation was through faith alone by grace alone, because they felt that to do so was to sideline or eliminate human responsibility. In much the same way, Arminianism can’t cope with saying that humans are fully responsible and culpable, while at the same time affirming that God is utterly sovereign in election. Likewise with eschatology—if we lean too hard on the ‘not yet’ we lapse into an other-worldly quietism (there’s no point doing much now, because everything is future); but if we lean too hard on the present blessings of salvation, we find ourselves on the road to the prosperity gospel, or to its less aspirational twin, the social gospel. And we could go on. In each case, the answer is not to deny one side or the other, nor to sit on the fence in between, nor to seek to balance the two sides in a certain proportion, as if God were 73% sovereign and we were 27% responsible. In each case, it’s a matter of givi

Thanks for the very thoughtful emails and responses to last week’s post about whether church is more like a family/community or more like a society/enterprise. If you haven’t already, you should go and read Callan Pritchard’s reflections in the comments. Very insightful. (And if you didn’t get last week’s post because you’re not a ‘Payneful partner’ and you only get these free posts every three weeks or so … well, there’s something you can do about that as well.)One implication of last week’s discussion is that if churches do have at least some characteristics of a society or enterprise, then we have purposes or outcomes that we seek together—purposes that are given to us by God, according to his marvellous plans in Christ. And if that is the case, then it’s reasonable to ask how we could go about seeking those purposes or outcomes in the best way possible. And that brings us, perhaps reluctantly, to the difficult business of ‘strategy’ … Strategy, schmategyCampus Bible Study is doing something radical. For the first time in three decades we’re officially doing some ‘strategic planning’—and everyone is a bit nervous.There’s a voice in most of our heads saying, “Strategy, schmategy! Do we really need all this stuff? These ‘Wildly Important Goals’ and ‘Key Strategies’ and ‘Vision Statements’, and all the rest? Can’t we make ‘glorify God’ our Wildly Important Goal and ‘prayerfully proclaim Christ’ our Key Strategy, and just get on with it (like we’ve been doing pretty effectively for the last three decades)?!”I have these thoughts and feelings, I have to confess. In fact, it’s because of these thoughts and feelings, and the current state of play in the CBS ministry, that I’ve come to think that it’s just the right time for us to do some strategic planning. Just as Nixon was the right president to go to China, so it is anti-pragmatist, Bible-obsessed, sovereignty-of-God-loving strategy-sceptics like us who are just the right people to do some strategic planning.Let me explain why, and why you should possibly do some strategic planning too, if you’re sceptical enough about it. First of all, what is ‘strategic planning’? ‘Strategic planning’ is just ‘planning’, except more so. Planning is leaving work early and taking a slightly different route so as to get milk at the servo on the way home. Strategic planning is the work that the milk corporation did to get that bottle of milk into that servo, positioned and marketed in such a way that you chose to buy it. 'Strategic planning’ is just like other planning in that it considers our present situation (milkless), looks forward to some future desired state of affairs (avoiding wifely wrath upon returning home milkless), and then formulates a plan of action that hopefully achieves that outcome (detour via servo). In the currently popular jargon, all planning consists of asking Now? Where? How?'Strategic planning’ is just a bigger, more complex and more far-reaching version of the everyday planning we all constantly do. It considers the current state of play more broadly and deeply, looks further into the future to articulate some goals or outcomes, and then works out a co-ordinated plan of action that encompasses a larger, more complicated mesh of people and resources. It’s not just looking at how one soldier might prevail in one personal fight but at how the whole army is going to work together to win the war. (In fact, that’s where the word ‘strategic’ comes from. As Gus from My Big Fat Greek Wedding might say, “is come from the Greek word strateuo, which is mean ‘to wage war’”). So strategic planning of some kind becomes necessary the larger and more complex any enterprise becomes. If we’re going to avoid working at cross-purposes, or setting up little independent fifedoms, it’s really useful to articulate clearly what we’re trying to achieve together, and the main priorities or approaches we’re all going to focus on in order to do that. And that’s where it gets interesting for us evangelical Calvinists. We say, “Yes, Yes, we understand all that. But isn’t the diagnosis of our current circumstances, and the outcome we’re shooting for, and indeed the main strategies for achieving that already given to us by God? Our Now is this present evil age, our Where is the glory of Christ in making disciples of all nations, and our How is to prayerfully proclaim the Word. And besides, isn’t God in control of the future? Isn’t it the height of folly and arrogance to declare that we are going to achieve outcome X in three years time?”Precisely so. But none of this actually obviates the need to think through what we’re actually going to do together over the next two or three years (i.e. ‘strategic planning’). It just disciplines and determines the kind of ‘strategic planning’ that we do as evangelicals. It means, for example, that the diagnosis of our current circumstances will start with the Bible’s description of the world, the flesh and the devil as unavoidable realities of our

Last time, our discussion about training and pastors led us towards a related and very important question: Is the church like a family that is focused on the spiritual welfare and growth of each individual member? Or is the church more like an army or a mission society with a vision and purpose that lies beyond itself in reaching the lost? In the language of classical sociology, is the church primarily Gemeinschaft (community) or Gesellschaft (society)? Is the church a family or an enterprise?They say that death is often a musician’s best career move. Elvis sold more records in the seven years after his death than in his entire earthly career.But imagine what death by Nazis would do for your career. I can’t help wondering whether Dietrich Bonhoeffer would have become a megastar of 20th century Christian theology had it not been for the noble and tragic manner of his demise at the hands of Hitler.But a megastar Bonhoeffer certainly is, who managed to pack into his brief life enough different kinds of writing to become beloved by evangelicals (for The Cost of Discipleship and Life Together), by liberals (for his later advocacy of a ‘religionless Christianity’), by social justice types (for his civil disobedience to the Nazis), and by theological academics (for the profundity of his theological and ethical writings).In one of his early heavy-duty ecclesiological works (Sanctorum Communio), Bonhoeffer enquires into the kind of ‘sociological grouping’ that the church is. How are we to understand it? In the categories of classical German sociology, is the church to be understood as Gemeinschaft or Gesellschaft? Gemeinschaft (often translated ‘community’) is the kind of social grouping that is glued together by personal ties and relationships. A Gemeinschaft exists because of some permanent bond that glues people together with a lasting commitment to each other that has little or no reference beyond itself—like shared blood or location or personal friendship. The ‘community’ exists for itself and is an end in itself, not the means to some other end.The family is a prime example. What is the purpose of a family? Simply to be and grow and flourish a family—to love and care for the people that we find ourselves in familial relationship with. We don’t choose our family or its members, and our commitment to one another is not based on the need to achieve some external purpose. When a family member turns up on our doorstep in desperate straights asking for money, we don’t hesitate to help. We don’t pause to consider whether they deserve it, or whether this is a useful or effective use of money, or whether they can pay it back. We just help them, because we are committed to them. If a perfect stranger turns up on our doorstep asking for money, our response will be different. In this sense, families are like little socialist communes. The old communist adage applies perfectly to families and to most Gemeinschaften: ‘from each according to their ability; to each according to their need’. In fact, as an aside, one of the most perceptive criticisms of socialism is that it seeks to impose the model of community or family on an entire society, when the bonds of unconditional mutual commitment simply cannot be stretched that far. The fact that most people are willing to provide a rent-free room in their house for their 10-year-old daughter, doesn’t mean that they are willing to do so for everyone who needs it. But I digress. The counterpart to Gemeinschaft is Gesellschaft—often translated ‘society’. A society is a group of people who decide to get together to pursue a particular external purpose. We choose to be in a Gesellschaft because we share the goals or purposes of the other members of the society. Classic examples would be a commercial business, a lobby group, or a sporting club. ‘Societies’ of this type may indeed care for their members, and develop close relations, but these are subordinate to and shaped by the goal that the society has—to make money, to exert influence, to enjoy football and win games, and so on. So what is a church? We can immediately see elements of both sociological types. At one level, the church seems very much like a community. It is an end itself, not the means to some other end (unless that be the glory of God). It’s a body in which all the members are valued for themselves, and where the contribution of all the parts of the body—even and especially the ‘dishonourable parts’—is welcomed and celebrated for the welfare and mutual benefit of the whole. The church is a household, in which the communist adage seems quite appropriate: ‘from each according to their ability; to each according to their need’ (this feels like a summary of the New Testament’s teachings about gifts and mutual obligation in the church). Then again, like a Gesellschaft, the church does have a purpose that is given to it. The church is an enterprise with a mission or goal that comes to it from outside (from God), and provide

(Click the player to listen to the podcast version of this post, or read on …)Here’s the third (and final for the time being) of a little ‘Back to School’ series on what I’m learning by being back in campus ministry. In the first two posts, I talked about the centrality of the Word and the power of patient culture building. The kind of pastor that's hard to findIt’s amazing how many different kinds of pastor there are these days. There was a time—it didn’t seem so very long ago—when there were only a few options. You could be a plain unadorned ‘Pastor’ or ‘Minister’, or you could put a few simple modifiers in front of that if you had to—like ‘Assistant’ or ‘Associate’ or maybe ‘Youth’. But today, the possibilities are endless. You can be a Lead, Senior, Executive, Discipleship, Children’s, Youth-and-Children’s, Children-and-Families, Middle School, High School, Young Adults, Women’s, Men’s, Campus, College, Worship, Creative Arts, Mission, Evangelism, Community, Maturity, Membership, Ministry or Magnification Pastor—and I’m sure many others besides. This is all a bit bemusing (and in some cases amusing), and might lead to a discussion about the nature of ‘pastoring’ and which roles or activities really deserve that description. But I want to focus on a positive if rather mundane lesson from this proliferation of pastors—the perfectly reasonable point that if you want to make progress in a particular area, it usually involves commissioning Someone to take responsibility for it, whether in a paid or voluntary capacity (and whether they are called ‘pastor’ or not). The Unmodified Pastor, on his own, hasn’t the time or the gifts to do everything. He needs appropriately gifted people to step up and take the lead in different areas—whether that’s with a particular group of people (like ‘youth’ or ‘seniors’) or a particular purpose that we pursue as a church (like ‘evangelism’ or ‘membership’). If we want some group or ministry to thrive, we can’t just hope it will sort of happen as a natural consequence of everything else we’re doing, or that an already over-worked pastor will somehow get to it after everything else. Someone needs to be thinking and praying and organizing and working hard under God for it to happen and improve and grow. So far so obvious. What has this got to do with me being back in campus ministry again? Well, when I was negotiating with Carl Matthei about exactly what my role would be back at Campus Bible Study (CBS), and what we would call it, I looked around at all these various pastoral titles for some inspiration. But the strange thing was that in all the big staff teams I looked at, with their many and various role descriptions, and in all the lists and discussions of pastoral titles I found online, there was one kind of pastor I couldn’t find—that is, I found virtually nothing that described the particular role or focus area that I was about to embark on. Which of course was training. My role at CBS is to help drive those activities that equip or train the students in aspects of Christian life and ministry—how to read the Bible themselves or one-to-one with someone else; how to really know the gospel well, and be able to talk about it with others in conversation; how to understand and live out biblical ethics; and so on. And on top of this, my job also involves the ongoing coaching and training of the ‘trainees’—the 25 young men and women doing a ministry apprenticeship at CBS at the moment.We toyed with the idea of calling me a ‘Training Pastor’, but since that sounded a bit too much like ‘pastor-in-training’ we ended up going with ‘Ministry Trainer’.The title doesn’t matter very much—what does matter, and what I’ve appreciated afresh since being back at CBS, is that if ‘training’ is to be a normal and effective part of church life, it’s difficult to see how that will happen unless we make it a conscious focus, and appoint some people to drive it and champion it. CBS has done this effectively for a long time. I’ve joined a sub-team of pastors who have been responsible for this area for some years, and have made it part of the CBS culture. This has led me to ponder a number of questions.First and most obviously, where are all the other ‘training pastors’ out there? Is it that ‘training’ is not really worth focusing on as an area of ministry (like mission or membership or youth)? Is it too niche or peripheral? Is that why it’s almost impossible to find any ’pastors of training’ among the proliferation of pastors in churches today? Or is it really happening a lot, but just not being acknowledged or named or reflected in people’s role descriptions in any way? (I somehow doubt it.)Or is ‘training’ perhaps something that can only really happen on university campuses? So that this remains a shortish set of reflections rather than an essay, here are five brief responses to these questions. * I’ve already written on this recently, but to clarify first of all—what I mean by ‘training’ is the proc

[Listen to the audio version, or read on … Up to you!]In this week’s Payneful Truth, a slight divergence from my normal practice, which is to avoid writing about anything newsworthy or topical. Some recent sad accusations against a prominent Christian leader caught my eye this past week, and prompted the following reflections. Conspicuous sinsIt’s happened again. A much-loved, high-profile evangelical leader is being accused of sexual impropriety. I won’t mention his name, not only because I have no way of knowing whether the accusations are true or not, but because his particular name and his particular case is not the reason for this week’s Payneful Truth.I’m writing because I wonder whether you get the same sick feeling in your guts as I do when you hear about these things. Is there no-one with integrity, not even one? Can’t these people just keep their pants on? And where on earth do they find the time?Why is it that these high profile Christian leaders—the mega-church pastors, the denominational head honchos, the international speaker-circuit guys—seem so regularly to have their feet of clay exposed and smashed?At one level, I suppose it is because of their very prominence. The sins of some men are conspicuous, going before them to judgement (says Paul); but the sins of others appear later (1 Tim 5:24). The sins of famous pastors are news. The sins of ordinary pastors are known only by a very few. But although the sins themselves might be different in character and appearance, they are sins nevertheless. Like loving God, sin is a single, unitary phenomenon, with one object and one goal. Sin is the proud rejection of God and his ways, and the exalting of ourselves and our purposes above all others. And just as the love of God manifests itself in multiple virtues, so sin reveals itself in multiple vices. What, for example, would we say are the common but less conspicuous vices of the ordinary pastor—say, the pastor of a smallish, just-viable church of 80 adults that potters along and makes do from year to year? Despair perhaps, or laziness? Self-pity or blame-shifting or resentment of others’ success? A persecution complex? Comfort-gluttony or alcohol abuse? An unwillingness to take a risk in case it fails (again) and my battered self-image takes another blow? A lack of outward success hurts our pride, and wounded pride looks for relief wherever it can find it. The mega-church leader, by contrast, has a surfeit of outward success, and faces a different set of temptations. I was chatting not long ago with a prominent US-based Christian author, and he asked me what I thought was the besetting problem of the mega-church. I fumbled around and said something about a lack of personal relationship among the members. “No”, he said. “It’s corruption.”The truth of this observation hit home immediately.Imagine how difficult it must be to become a beloved and powerful leader within such a massive group of people without it inflating your pride and corrupting your integrity. The high profile church leader begins to believe that he must indeed be worthy of all the admiration and acclaim he so regularly receives; that he has a special place in the church and in God’s purposes; that the little embellishments and exaggerations he starts to make to burnish his image are helpful for the church, because they provide an inspiring example; that his sins and weaknesses are understandable and forgivable, given the extraordinary pressure he is under, and how lonely and hunted he often feels; that he deserves the expensive toys he indulges himself with; that any problems that do emerge are less important than the continued growth and success of the ministry, and so can be rationalised away; that his poor (even abusive) treatment of church employees is the cracking of a few eggs in order to make God’s omelette.He begins genuinely to believe, in other words, that he really is the most important person in the room, which is the essence of pride, which (according to Augustine) is the essence of sin. And so a double-life develops, with a public church persona on one side and the various compromises and sins of a private existence on the other. It all comes out eventually, and we shake our heads. But it leaves us wondering: how would our integrity hold up, if we were the leader of a 10,000-strong church? Would we also be very capable of compartmentalizing the dysfunctional and sinful habits that were emerging in our lives, and maintaining (and even believing in) the image that everyone else saw, of the godly, inspiring pastor? Personally, I wouldn’t like to find out. None of this is to say that large churches are a bad idea because their leadership can breed corruption, any more than it is to say that small churches are a bad idea because their leadership can breed complacency or inwardness. It does say, however, that in each case, godly character is more important in a leader than gifting or results. We should know this anyway from ho

Something different this week—the first in what I hope will be an occasional series of ‘book talks’ on The Payneful Truth. The idea is pretty simple: I ring up a good friend and ask them what book they’ve enjoyed recently and would like to talk about; I then read the book too, and we have a conversation. I hope every book and conversation is as stimulating and enjoyable as this first one, a chat with former Moore College Principal John Woodhouse about Tom Holland’s 2019 book, Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind. Holland seeks to demonstrate that the attitudes and values of our modern Western society are not ‘self-evident’ (as the American Declaration of Independence says), but are profoundly Christian in their shape and origin. No other civilization has ever thought that every human person has certain rights that attach to them simply by virtue of being human, that it is more noble to suffer than to inflict suffering, that the rich and powerful have a moral obligation not to oppress the weak and poor, that all people should be treated equally, and so on. All of these ideas are Christian in origin; or to put it another way—the only civilizations in world history ever to have adopted these ideas are those that have been profoundly touched by Christianity. From Marxism, to the French Revolution, to the rise of science, secularism and gay rights—all of these movements, even those that are explicitly non-Christian, owe the foundations of their philosophy to Christianity. John and I talk about some of the key aspects of Holland’s thesis, and how it helps us to understand and respond to the challenges of our present moment.I hope you enjoy it. PSI did begin to transcribe our conversation for those of you who prefer to read rather than listen. But looking through the first draft of the first section, it was very obvious that this was one of those occasions when the verbal doesn’t translate very well to the written!Just click the play button (above) to listen via the Payneful Truth website; there is also a little link just under the media player to listen in your favour podcast app. 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

For those who haven’t caught up with this, I started a new role in January this year at Campus Bible Study, working as a ministry trainer about 40% of my time, with the rest of my week spent writing things like The Payneful Truth and new ministry resources. The student ministry at CBS was where nearly everything started for me, back in the 1980s. It’s where I learned what it meant to be an evangelical Christian; it’s where I learned most of the foundational theological and ministry truths that still drive me; it’s where Matthias Media started, and more besides. Today’s post reflects on some lessons I’ve already learned from nine months back with the young people. Back to SchoolLet’s just say that it’s been an interesting year to be back in campus ministry at the University of NSW—for all the reasons you can imagine. For a man like me, just entering middle age (58 being the new 40), developing good rapport and engagement with a training group of first year students is enough of a challenge. Trying to do that over Zoom? Tricky. For one thing, I’ve had to learn to avoid the Middle-aged Technology Squint—leaning in to the screen, head tilted slightly back to engage the multifocals, mouth ajar, brow furrowed, puzzled eyes scanning for options. Not a rapport builder.And I’ve also generally steered away from references to Rodney Dangerfield’s character in the screwball comedy Back to School, because although a bit of self-mockery always goes down well, there’s nothing worse than the old guy whose idea of pop culture is stuck in 1986. On the whole, though, diving back into Campus Bible Study (CBS) after all these years has been every bit as refreshing as I hoped it would be. It’s not only the uncluttered and infectious enthusiasm of the students and apprentices. It’s been an opportunity to go back to where most of my views about ministry were formed, and to re-engage with them—but in a new millennium, in a new culture (the campus is a very different place demographically now), and after having spent around 30 years in parish-land. Back to school, you might say. The contrast between parish and campus is something of a cliche. I can’t say how many times I’ve heard it said: “Yes, well, that might work on campus, but not out here in the real world”. And (like all cliches) there is truth in it. Students have relatively uncomplicated lives, are self-selected for intellectual ability, and have plenty of time and energy—all of which does make a material difference to the kinds of activities or structures you can run, and how quickly you can achieve certain things. Things are different in parish-land. But is the fundamental theology of ministry that should drive us any different? Not if it is theology, as opposed to certain models or activities or structures. Models and activities and structures can and must change as circumstances change; but the theological convictions that drive ministry shouldn’t change (unless they are mistaken). You might say that trellises need to be constantly renewed and reinvented, and can take a multitude of forms; the vine remains the same kind of organism. One of the reinvigorating joys of being back on campus after all these years is to discover that the CBS vine really hasn’t changed. The theological culture of ministry that the staff team is working to spread and cultivate is largely as it was when I left over a quarter of a century ago, and largely what I have continued to teach and spread ever since. But coming back to school after all this time has also challenged my convictions—or at least, the degree to which I have been consistently practising them in the intervening years. In this post (and in a few others forthcoming), I’d like to reflect on some aspects of the CBS ministry culture that have been particularly striking to me—coming back to it after all this time. The purpose is not to praise CBS or its leadership (who will very quickly tell you that the jars of clay in our ministry are as full of chips and cracks as everywhere else), but to share some old lessons I am learning afresh, in the hope that it will stimulate you to do the same. The first is very simply that the Bible itself is the textbook, the exercise book and the curriculum for everything that happens in this particular ‘school’. We all know that the Word is central, and must drive all we do, but I’ve found it refreshing to see just how deeply that conviction penetrates what happens in the ministry at CBS. It’s seen in multiple things: in the prominence and seriousness of the weekly Bible expositions; in the trouble that is taken to train the students in how to read the Bible, and to lead others in doing that in small group discussion; and in the prevalence of one-to-one Bible reading (more on which below). Surprisingly (to me) it’s also reflected in the pervasive presence of physical Bibles. I fully expected all these millennials to be thumbing their phones at Bible reading time. But instead, nearly all the students and

This is a free post for everyone on the Payneful Truth list. If you’d like to get every edition every week, see below in the ‘PS’.This is the third in a series of four posts that seeks to answer the question: Why is it that some churches raise up plenty of people for full-time gospel work and some not so much? I’ve been suggesting that there are four key factors or drivers, and as we’ve looked at the first two, I hope it’s become obvious that they are characteristics that any healthy evangelical church should possess. The first two factors are: 1. that the radical call of the gospel to die to self and live for Christ is being boldly preached, taught and exemplified (Part 1 in the series);2. that a clear theology of secular work is taught, which neither under-values nor over-values its importance, and which teaches that all Christians have the same true ‘career’—a life-calling to live for Jesus Christ (Part 2 in the series).Now to the third factor, which flows out of the first two.The training cultureChurches that recruit people into full-time, occupational ministry almost always have their own distinctive culture of training. ‘Training’ is one of those big, baggy words, with lots of associations, and so some definition is needed. In recent Christian history, ‘training’ has come to mean something like ‘running courses or seminars that teach certain competencies for Christian ministry’—whether classic courses like the Two ways to live personal evangelism course, or a set of training sessions on small group leadership, or some training videos on an aspect of team leadership, or perhaps a Saturday morning parenting seminar. All of these things can be excellent and useful, but they are not the essence of ‘training’. Biblically speaking, ‘training’ is a persistent effort to help someone else live out the healthy doctrine of the gospel. It’s what the older women do for the younger women in Titus 2. They are to “teach what is good, and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled” (Tit 2:3-5). This is part of Titus’s overall mission to teach what accords with sound or healthy doctrine—that is, to teach the way of life that is the necessary outworking of the true and good doctrine of the gospel. We’ve already seen (in the first post in this series) that the gospel is this kind of message. It ends one life and begins another. It calls us to a radical new existence in service of him who for our sake died and was raised (2 Cor 5:14-15). If we believe that the gospel is this kind of life-changing message, then we must be committed to teaching, helping, encouraging, supporting and exhorting one another to live out this new life, day by day. ‘Training’ is one way that the New Testament describes this ongoing, granular process of helping others to learn to live out the truth of the gospel. It’s about more than practical skills or the ability to do something, although it’s rarely less than that. It’s the steady development of Christian character, built on an ever-deepening understanding of the truth of Christ, and expressed in daily, godly action. It’s learning to pray, learning to persevere in Christ, learning to give thanks in all circumstances, learning to love our families, and more besides. Very importantly, it’s also learning to be an ambassador for Christ, a fellow-worker in his ministry of reconciliation—because this too is a fundamental aspect of living each day for Christ. What we often call ‘ministry skills’ are really just particular aspects of Christian living or maturity, that we also need to be trained in—for example, learning how to be concerned for the non-Christian people around us, to interact with them wisely and graciously, and to explain to them the hope that we have; or learning how to encourage a fellow-believer in the faith through speaking the truth in love. These godly actions and abilities are an integral part of living out the truth of the gospel in our lives, just as loving husbands and children is an outworking of gospel doctrine for young women. ‘Training’ is this patient work of helping people live out the gospel practically in their lives. Training assumes that becoming more like Christ in our actions and character happens over time; that it’s a life-long process of ‘putting on’ and ‘putting off’; and that God has given us each other to help and encourage and teach and exemplify and exhort and admonish one another, as we seek to live out the truth of the gospel in our lives more and more. Training, then, certainly involves knowledge, teaching and content, but it also requires time, example, correction, practice and perseverance. It needs more than a sermon on the subject—although that is an excellent framework and foundation. And it requires more than a set of videos or a six-week training course —although those sorts of things are often very han

This is one of the free posts that goes out every three weeks or so to everyone on the Payneful Truth mailing list (i.e. ‘partners’ and those on the free list). If you’re a ‘freelister’ and wondering what you’ve missed over the last few weeks, we’ve had posts on:* ‘masculinism’ (a follow-up to that post about feminism)* a discussion of the nature and value of gospel outlines, and whether Two ways to live is worth renovating after all these years;* plus a draft new version of the Two ways to live outline for comment.If you’d like to catch up on those topics, or start getting every week’s post, just hit the subscribe button to become a regular partner. Or if you’d like to be a partner and get every edition, but are really skint, just send me an email at [email protected]—I’d be happy to enrol you as a ‘free partner’ for the next 12 months.The Bible verse that still kills meIn my part of the Christian hive, the bees have been buzzing recently about an apparent shortage of senior pastors—the ‘minister drought’ as it’s been dubbed. Various theories have been put forward. It’s the system. It’s the selfish materialism of the current generation. It’s the ridiculous burden of administration and compliance that senior ministers now have to bear (and about which they loudly complain). It’s our failure to cast a positive vision. It’s that Phillip Jensen was a savant and we don’t have a replacement. And more besides. I’m not going to try to untangle the spaghetti of factors and influences that are at play in regard to this particular question.But the discussion has prompted me to think again about something that has been on my mind for a while. Why is it that some churches have the happy knack of recruiting a steady stream of people for full-time gospel ministry, and other churches don’t? Even accounting for demographic, socio-economic and other contextual factors, some churches keep sending keen, gifted, godly men and women off to theological college and into full-time ministry; and others not so much. Why is this? Reflecting theologically on my own experience of being ‘recruited’ like this, and of seeing it in action in various ministries for the past nearly four decades, I can identify at least four key factors. Perhaps there are more. But in my observation, when these four factors or drivers are all present, people with full-time ministry on their hearts somehow keep bubbling to the surface and heading off to Bible college. Over the next few posts I’m going to explore these factors—not so much because doing so might help solve a particular current problem, but because these four factors are an indicator of good health for any church. In fact, if they are not present in your current ministry, then the failure to recruit people for full-time ministry might be the least of your problems. The first key factor is that the radical call of the gospel to die to self and live for Christ is being boldly preached, taught and exemplified. I still vividly remember when this happened with me. I was about 20, a keen but still very green young Christian, fresh from the country and a misspent youth in high-church, charismatic Anglicanism. I was discovering for the first time the heart-expanding delights of expository Bible preaching. I never knew that so much profound truth could be found in a Bible passage, if you took the time to really listen to it. And I never anticipated what wonderful spiritual carnage could be wrought by concepts like ‘election’ and ‘propitiation’ and ‘biblical theology’, when they went off like colour bombs in your head. All in all, it was dawning on me that this Christianity caper was a deeper and more profound thing than I had realised. Then, one evening at a conference, a preacher gifted with clarity and boldness explained 2 Cor 5:14-15 to me. “For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died; and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.”As the truth of these verses started to break over me, the whole universe went out of focus for a minute. And when it resolved back into sharpness, everything had changed. As it says in the following verses, The old had passed away; behold, the new had come. It’s not as if I was unfamiliar with the gospel up to this point. I already knew and believed that Christ had died as my substitute, that my sins were forgiven by his blood, and that eternal life had been granted to me as a gift by his grace. I knew and believed that Jesus was Lord, and that I should obey him. I was a Christian (as I guess Paul assumed his Corinthian readers were).But the message of 2 Cor 5:14-15 went further or deeper than that. It showed me what the gospel of Jesus’ death really meant for my life. It meant that it was over—my life, that is. It was not just that Christ had died for me on the cross; he had died as me. He had died not only as my subst

Welcome to another a partners-only edition of The Payneful Truth. Today’s ruminations concern little subjects like the nature of the gospel, evangelism and the importance of catechism. Is it worth fixing? The washing machine was flashing ‘F06’, and as my eyes scanned down the list of error messages in the dog-eared manual, I knew in advance what it was going to say. Not something simple like “F03—“Turn the tap on, you idiot” or “F10—“Clean the filter like you were supposed to do every six months but haven’t done for six years, you idiot”. Of course it was: “F06—Call our service department, and get ready to bleed cash, you poor sap”. And so the internal debate begins. Is it worth fixing? Do I want to pour $400 into a 15-year-old washing machine? Or pay $1000 for a new one? $400 would be good value if you got another 10 years out of it. But will we? Is this a good-money-after-bad scenario?I hate these sorts of dilemmas, but every exercise in repair or renovation raises them. I’ve been thinking in this vein recently about the revision of Two ways to live (2wtl). The 2wtl outline itself has been around now for around 40 years, with only minor nips and tucks over that time. The training material that utilises it is nearly as old, and had its last major revision about 20 years ago. It’s certainly time for some renovation, but is it worth it? Or was 2wtl great for its time and context, but now just no longer relevant or useful? Would it be better to start again? This leads to the underlying questions: Why have a gospel outline in the first place? And how would you evaluate what a good one was like? Thinking back over the many conversations I’ve had about this since my involvement with 2wtl started in the early-80s, I think I’d summarize the rationale and nature of a gospel outline in the following six points (I guess it has to be six). OneAny outline like 2wtl is predicated on the idea that the gospel is a certain thing and not something else—that it has identifiable content that is capable of being summarized, learned and shared. A gospel is not a philosophy or a theory (although it has philosophical underpinnings and implications); it is not a story (although it has narrative elements, and often sits within a larger historical story); and it is not primarily an answer to a question that we have (although depending on the news it may answer certain questions). A ‘gospel’ is the announcement of grand news. It’s a trumpet blast declaring that something of great import has happened. In the case of the NT gospel, it is an announcement that certain meaningful events have taken place concerning Jesus Christ, leading to a particular state of affairs now being in effect, and a particular future being in store. (In this sense, the NT gospel announcement has the character of a promise—to be heard, believed and acted upon.) TwoWhat is the identifiable content of this announcement? It is that the crucified and risen Jesus has been established as the Christ, the Lord of all the world; that God now offers forgiveness of sins by Jesus’ atoning death to all who repent and trust in him; and that in the future he will return to judge the world and save his people. Or something like that. We could argue about the precise way of putting it, how to connect the elements of the announcement together, and what background knowledge might be required to understand the announcement (e.g., knowing what ‘sins’ are, or what a ‘Christ’ is). But the gospel is a thing like this—a declaration of the meaning and implications of certain historical events. It’s not a malleable set of metaphors that answers certain human longings. It’s an announcement about Jesus that calls for a response from us. ThreeHow do we know this? How do we discover that the NT gospel is an announcement with this kind of content? The answer (as always) is to be good apprentices and sit at the feet of the apostolic authors—starting with the nutshell gospel preaching of the Gospels (“The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe the gospel”), through to the commission to preach the gospel to the nations in Luke 24, the actual examples of gospel proclamation in Acts, and the retrospective summaries of the gospel contained in the epistles (classically in places like 1 Cor 15:1-8). If we attend to these carefully, we discover a consistent core of content—a ‘tradition’ as the NT sometimes calls it—that was to be kept, guarded, preached, taught, and passed on. This is in fact how 2wtl was originally written—through a process of looking at all the gospel summaries and gospel-preaching examples of the NT, identifying the core elements of the announcement and how they fitted together, and seeking to summarize them in a coherent, memorable, understandable form. FourThis leads me to a little sidebar. In pondering whether or how to renovate 2wtl, I’ve been looking over the various bits of feedback and critique we’ve received over the years. One of the more s

I made a bit of a blunder in last week’s Payneful Truth. Yes, I hear you say, you wrote in very short, simplistic fashion about feminism. You should have known. But no, that’s not what I mean. I’m talking about the line in my spiel about becoming a ‘partner’ where I said: “from Sept 4 onwards, only partners will get The Payneful Truth every week (every third edition or so will go out free to the whole list.)” What I meant to say was “from Aug 4”—which is next week. For the blessed among you who have already joined up as partners (thank you!), it won’t make any difference of course. You’re all set. But for those who have not gotten around to it yet—it means that it’s time to get organised. If you’d like to get next week’s edition, and to keep reading or listening every week, you have two options:* click the button below to join as a partner (do it now before you forget);* or if you’re not in a position to be a partner at this point but would still like to get every edition (every week), just send an email to [email protected] saying simply “Please put me on the free weekly list”. And if you’re content to get the occasional free edition every third week or so, no need to do anything. That will be the default outcome. God bless you and I’m delighted to have you on board! Thanks, too, to those who got in touch about feminism. I asked you how to improve my little summary, and you’ve helped me to do that in several ways (the version on the website has now been updated with those improvements). Of course the main weakness in my little summary was also its strength—that it was so short. If you’d like to read something on the subject that goes into more detail (and more nuance), I’d suggest these two articles by Katie Stringer and Ruth Baker, both of whom interacted very graciously with me about the article.Some of you asked for more on the subject, particularly about the other side of the coin—that is, the ways in which men have contributed to the problem, and how men should respond. I’ve started to draft the companion piece—‘Shortest summary of masculism ever’—and if I manage to get over my masculine failings will send it out in the next few weeks.But onto this week’s post.What if ministry doesn’t work? In my recent ‘Essential Services’ series about the non-negotiables of church and ministry, I argued that our essential task is to be Christ’s fellow-workers in building his heavenly church, and that the nature of our work could be described in simple terms as the apostolic ministry of word and prayer. Someone emailed back with a very good question: But what if that doesn’t work?What if you’ve been labouring away faithfully in the word and prayer—whether as pastor or a keen layperson—and things are pretty stagnant or even going backwards? No-one is getting converted. Disciples are not noticeably growing in maturity. Numbers are steady or declining. What then? In a sense, a book or two is required to answer this question—and you can’t say I haven’t tried. The Trellis and the Vine and particularly its sequel, The Vine Project, are really attempts to answer this question. Providing an answer in 900 words is a challenge. But I love a challenge, and so here is my best shot, in six points.* First of all, beware any ministry author or guru who says that this kind of question is susceptible to a simple, short-term or mono-causal answer. It takes time and persistent effort to diagnose what ails any particular ministry that is not experiencing healthy gospel growth, and to arrive at a plan for change. The problem is usually cultural—which is to say that it’s bound up with a wide range of activities, traditions, personalities, structures and values that your ministry has come to embody. It’s rarely one thing; it’s usually the whole thing. And it takes time to figure this out. (Free plug: I’m a big fan of Craig Glassock and the Vinegrowers ministry (link); they help churches figure this out and walk through a ‘culture-change process’ over time.)* As per my earlier piece on the ‘principles of pragmatism’, it’s also important to interrogate the circumstances closely to clarify what we mean by ‘not working’. What would be our criteria for saying that the ministry ‘is working’ or not? What would ‘working’ look like for us, theologically and contextually? Numbers will no doubt be involved, but let’s be clear at the outset which numbers or indicators are significant, and why. * In describing the ‘word’ part of ‘word and prayer’ ministry, I suggested that the goal for churches is to “create, foster, equip and organise as many effective contexts and opportunities as possible in which the word of truth is being spoken by the members of the body for the building of the body”. In my experience, one reason that apostolic word ministry is ineffective is not that it’s been tried and found wanting, but that it hasn’t been tried enough. How many effective contexts or opportunities for word ministry exist in your church, and among the non-Chris

Many thanks to all those who have already signed up as partners to The Payneful Truth! I’m hugely grateful for the encouragement and the support. For those who are planning to join, but haven’t gotten around to it yet—you’ve got just a little bit longer to get yourselves organized. This is the second last edition that will be sent out free to everyone. From September 4 onwards, only partners will get The Payneful Truth every week (every third edition or so will go out free to the whole list.) To become a partner, just hit the button below, enter your email address and choose your option (monthly, annual or lifetime). For more about partnership, and what to do if you’d like to keep getting the weekly edition but can’t afford to become a partner, see below in the PS. Shortest summary of feminism everI was preparing to speak with some ministry trainees a few weeks ago about men and women in ministry, 1 Timothy 2, and other simple subjects like that, when it occurred to me that we couldn’t really discuss these questions without dealing with … Well, I was going to say ‘the elephant in the room’, but it’s more like the wallpaper, the carpet, the table, the chairs and the air conditioning in the room. It’s a set of settled and pervasive ideas that form the environment in which any discussion of men and women takes place these days—without us being really conscious of their existence. I speak, of course, of feminism.Feminism is hard to identify and even harder to critique. It’s hard to identify not only because we barely even notice it any more (such is its social pervasiveness), but because everybody has their own version of feminism that are in favour of (at least in some way)—usually while having very little idea of what feminism has actually taught and done over the past 50+ years. The variety of feminisms makes it a hard movement to understand and critique, but so does its status as one of the moral orthodoxies of our time. To resist genuflecting to feminism, or at least nodding appreciatively in its general direction, is to risk nutcase or pariah status in our culture. It’s like criticising air, or Jacinta Ardern.So to help my trainees think about men and women, 1 Timothy 2 and complementarianism, I figured I had to make the core assumptions of feminism visible, and to show how they related to the Bible’s view of men and women. Hence this shortest summary of feminism ever.Lets start with the biblical worldview:* Men and women are equally created in the image of God, and yet are not uniform. The created differences between men and women are a reality and are good. * Complementary, ordered relationships between men and women (e.g. in marriage and in church life) are also a good created reality.* Sin and the fall make the conduct of these ordered relationships difficult, but men and women experience a satisfying, productive unity in their difference, as they pursue God’s purposes together in the world.2nd Wave Feminism (the bra-burning, women’s lib feminism of Betty Friedan and Germaine Greer, dominant from the 60s to the 80s):* There is no material difference between men and women; we are all just people. Every woman can and should be able to do anything a man does; sex difference should be radically de-emphasized. * There is therefore no ordered relationship between men and women. Any attempt at ordered relationship is repressive, because it denies the total equality of persons (i.e. equality = sameness). * The goal is not unity (which implies difference) but uniformity—the dissolving of difference so that all individuals can pursue personal freedom and self-actualisation in the same way (a way, ironically defined in terms of the various things men do and achieve). 3rd/4th Wave feminism (a variegated set of movements from the 90s to now, partly a reaction against the failure of 2nd wave feminism to deliver the nirvana of equality it promised; encompassing various kinds of ‘difference feminism’, and the intersectional/identity politics feminism of the current moment; mostly dismissive or openly hostile towards 2nd wave feminists):* A renewed emphasis on the uniqueness or difference of women, whether in the feisty ‘grrrl power’ feminism of the 90s or the more recent emphasis on women as an oppressed identity group (a class identity you can choose to identify as, regardless of biological gender). In this view, men are different, but not in a good way. Masculinity is toxic, and leads only to violence, rape and the oppression of women.* There is an ordered relationship between men and women—it is a power relation of oppression and violence in which men are the perpetrators and women the victims.* There can be no unity between men and women—only a social and political struggle in which the power and dominance of men is finally overthrown. What all feminisms have in common:* They reject any concept of good created difference between men and women (there is either no difference, or the difference is oppression);* Ther

Today: a final post in this mini-series about church and apostolic ministry; plus my ‘partner’ scheme is now up and running (see details at the end). A good friend who shall remain nameless (but was in fact Col Marshall) sent me a brief message after one my recent articles about the heavenly church. Knowing my love for golf he wrote: Having teed up the church ball so nicely I can hardly wait to see how straight you hit it, neither slicing (‘high congregationalism’) nor hooking (‘low congregationalism’).I’ve edited Col’s message to replace the names that he put inside those brackets, and who represent those two understandings or tendencies about church. Truth be told, I also could have put my own name inside both of those brackets at various points in my life (in fact, if I’m honest, on various days of the week). Col wants me to write about this issue that has been burbling away among Reformed-evangelical pastors and leaders (and in my brain) over the past 15 years or so—and who am I to resist a holler from the Marshall? So what are these two approaches to being ‘congregational’ and what might a fairway-splitting drive between them look like? (See the PS for a brief note about the labels I’m using in this post, and why I’m not really happy with them.)By ‘high congregationalism’, I mean the idea that the actual physical gathering of the local congregation is definitive for our thinking about ‘church’. As a Sydney Anglican, this strand of thinking is in my bones, via the teachings of Donald Robinson and Broughton Knox. They insisted that the New Testament word ekklesia (‘church’) always meant an actual gathering of people, and that accordingly the local congregation or assembly was the earthly expression of ‘church’, not a bishop or a denomination or a vague worldwide entity (one of the issues in their context was the debate about the value of ecumenism and the World Council of Churches, but that is a story for another time). For them, the regular weekly gathering was the earthly get-together that visibly expressed the heavenly assembly around Christ; it was the household that visibly expressed the heavenly household of God; it was the motley-but-unified bunch of humans that visibly expressed the ‘new humanity’ created in Christ. (And this would be as true of a traditionally structured Sunday congregation in a church building, as it would be of an underground house church in China with very lean or minimal structures associated with it.)I’m almost always a high congregationalist on Sundays. I’m reminded every week that there is something irreplaceably important about this particular group of people that I’m committed to—that I pray with and stand next to and rejoice with and speak to, with whom I sit under the word of God as it is read and preached, and with whom I also get together for mutual encouragement during the week. On Sundays, I remember that there’s something precious about these particular newcomers and fringe-dwellers that God has given us to love and to evangelise and to welcome in; and something noble and necessary about these particular pastors who teach and exemplify the word of Christ in our midst. Apostolic ministry is people ministry, and these regularly assembling people are the ones that God has given me to love.In this sense, nearly everyone I know is a ‘congregationalist’ of some stripe, and especially so at the moment. As we observed in last week’s Payneful Truth, there are not only many tangible benefits of actually getting out of the house and gathering together in a particular place, but also a thousand intangibles that we often don’t appreciate. However, for my high congregational friends (and me on some Tuesdays and Thursdays), the centrality of the local, gathered congregation goes a little further and has other implications. It makes you think twice, for example, about multi-site and multi-service churches—about whether you have them at all, or at the very least how they should be organised. If the gathered congregation is of defining importance, then surely the identity and integrity of each congregation should be recognized. In other words, isn’t a ‘church’ with multiple services or sites actually a ‘fellowship of churches’? If so, then shouldn’t each one of those congregations have its own character and membership, and its owns elders or leaders who take responsibility for shepherding this particular flock, and to whom this flock submits (Heb 13:5)? For some of my higher congregationalist friends, this means that the path to growth is to build each congregation as a unit, and then to plant new ones (or rejuvenate other assemblies)—rather than multiplying services within one local ‘church’ structure. My low congregationalist friends (and me on Mondays and Fridays) lean harder into the other aspect of what we’ve been talking about in recent posts here at The Payneful Truth—that Christ is building his heavenly church not only through the activities of local assemblies, but also t

So far we’ve talked about the big why of Christ’s heavenly church, and the local purposes that this generates for us as members of that cosmic gathering (i.e. to ‘build’ that gathering by joining together in apostolic ministry).But what about the actual physical church meetings that many of us are keen to get back to? What have we learned that can guide us in that task?That’s the focus of the third installment in this mini-series on ‘Essential Services’. I’m also glad to introduce a guest co-author into this post. As I was in the middle of writing this series, my friend and colleague at Reach Australia, Andrew Heard, sent me a draft of something that he had been writing along a similar line. It had so much good stuff in it, and was so similar to the direction I was heading, that we decided to collaborate on this final post in the series. (The bits in plain text are mine; the sections in italics are Andrew’s.)So—given all that we have said so far (particularly from Ephesians), what is the rationale or purpose of actually gathering together in physical, local assemblies? Interestingly, when we look in Ephesians (or elsewhere) for a link between the heavenly gathering and its earthly counterpart, we don’t find the kind of explicit connection we might expect—something useful for pastors to exhort their people with like: “Because you belong to the heavenly church, make sure that you join a good earthly, local church and go every week!” In fact, in Ephesians, as in much of the New Testament, the importance of actually meeting getting in local gatherings is not so much an application or conclusion as a baseline presupposition. Of course we gather together, because what else would we do—as members of the new household of God, the body of Christ, the new humanity? The heavenly church of Christ is like a homing beacon that calls its earthly members together in local assemblies—all of us belonging to that cosmic body of Christ, delighted to be unified together in him, and seeking together to grow and fortify his body through the apostolic ministry of word and prayer. The physical gathering of believers around Christ and his word in a particular place at a particular time is the visible expression of an invisible reality that is at the very heart of God’s purposes. He brings peace to us by reconciling us to himself, but at the same time he brings peace to the various groups that have been hostile to one another, that by his grace we might together be ‘one new man’. In Christ, we are all one—all sinners saved by grace to share the same standing before him, and with each other.This is true spiritually in the heavenly assembly, and is understood to be true by faith. But it is given visible expression here on earth when sinners actually get up out of their houses, go to a common place, and stand shoulder to shoulder with other people they used to be alienated from—the Gentile actually standing together with the Jew—and both declaring and rejoicing that Jesus Christ is Lord. Without physically gathering we simply can’t give expression to this. We might hold this thought in our heads as we watch a centralized stream or video clip, knowing that others who are different from me are watching the same stream. But it is a pale thing in comparison to actually standing with those same people in a common space. It is this reality, of being gathered physically with one another, that brings glory to God in the heavenly realms as the forces of evil look on and see the victory of God in gathering people from all nations, tribes and tongues. This was God’s purpose from all eternity, though it was kept hidden for generations past. But now, through the church (the physically gathered assembly) the universe is made to see that God has won the victory. Why do we go to church? It’s not actually about us. It is about the glory of Christ that we gather—that we might show the universe that he is Lord and that he has won. We haven’t been doing this while streaming content to our lounge-rooms on Sundays. We haven’t been churching. But we are now moving into a phase when we can church again, and it is imperative that Christians seize this opportunity to come back together, even though it may be lame and limited in various ways for some time. Non-churching Christians deeply offend their God. They deny the very thing his Son died to create—the reality of a new, unified humanity, gathered together around him, giving testimony to the universe of God’s manifold wisdom and power. As astute readers may notice, Andrew reads Eph 3:10 a little differently from me—he takes it as a reference to the earthly gathering (which it may well be; see my post last week for more on this). I entirely agree, however, with the point he is making. The physical assembly of Christians, in loving unity with one another in Christ, is a powerful testimony or proclamation of the power of the gospel. 1 Cor 11:17-34 makes this point, as Paul lays into the feisty, factionalized Cori

In last week’s post, we started to look at the essential why of church, and came to the conclusion that the key purpose of a local congregation lies beyond itself—in the cosmic, heavenly, spiritual congregation that Jesus Christ is building. This is the primary reality of church in the New Testament, and the local, immediate purposes that we pursue in our churches lives stem from this larger, heavenly reality. But how exactly? How does the big, primary reality of the heavenly church provide an essential why (and how) for our church life now? With the possible exception of Colossians, no epistle answers this question more profoundly than Ephesians. And so as good apprentices to Scripture, in this post we’re going to learn from the Apostle how the big why of Jesus’ heavenly church connects with the everyday why and how of earthly church life. [A quick note: So as not to get bogged down too much along the way in the wonderful but intricate details of Ephesians, I’ve provided some endnotes for those who want to chase up some of the intricacies; they are referred to along the way like this (#1).]In heaven and on earthYou can tell how massive and mind-blowing the opening chapter of Ephesians is, because half way through Paul pauses to pray for his readers’ comprehension—that God would open the eyes of their hearts to grasp how extraordinary it all is (and he prays much the same again in 3:16-19). According to Ephesians 1, God’s plan is to shower spiritual blessings in the heavenly places upon the adopted, blood-bought people that he has chosen from all eternity to be the inheritance of his Son.(#1) The risen Jesus Christ is the One in whom everything is brought together, “the things in heaven and the things on earth” (1:10). This introduces one of the major ideas of the letter: that the work of God in Christ creates a new reality that spans heaven and earth. Through hearing the gospel and responding to it in faith, all God’s people (both Jews and Gentiles) are united in the risen Lord Jesus Christ, who sits now in the heavenly places far above all rule and authority (1:20-21). We are all now there, spiritually speaking, blessed in the heavenly places ‘in him’—or as 2:5-6 puts it, as Jews and Gentiles, we have all now together been made alive and raised up and seated in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.(#2) This is the body of Christ, his heavenly gathering or church, the fullness of him who fills all in all.This cosmic, heavenly reality keeps re-emerging throughout the letter, described in various ways—for example, it’s the holy temple in the Lord in which both Jews and Gentiles are being built together (2:19-22); and it’s the heavenly assembly that Gentiles are now also members of through Christ—thus revealing God’s extraordinary wisdom to the powers that be in the heavenly places (3:1-12; #3).However, very importantly, this heavenly gathering has an earthly existence too. It’s ‘the whole family in heaven and on earth’ (3:15; #4). In fact, the agenda of what we do here and now on earth is determined by our membership of that heavenly church and family. This comes out in multiple ways throughout the letter, especially as Paul urges his readers in the second half of the letter to ‘walk’ in a manner worthy of their calling. In light of the heavenly reality, we are called to act in a certain way now; to think cosmic, and act local.The various aspects of this worthy local walk provide us with the agenda that should direct our everyday lives and our local earthly churches. Let me tease out three of these essentials that are prominent in Ephesians, with one eye on our current unusual covid circumstances (and also leave one as a cliffhanger for next time). 1. Building the body through apostolic ministryThe first essential item is to build the heavenly church by taking part in ‘apostolic ministry’. ‘Apostolic ministry’ is my catchy summary (!) of the earthly work that builds and grows the heavenly church. It’s the divine work that Paul himself has been commissioned to participate in as a go-between (or minister) of the gospel.(#5) Like the rest of the apostles, he has been entrusted by God with the gospel of Jesus and sent off like a courier to deliver it everywhere, to see it take root and grow, so that all who believe its promises might be included in the body of Christ (3:6).But the apostolic ministry doesn’t stop with the apostles. By Christ’s gracious gift, it spreads out to a much larger web of gospel activists—starting with the apostles and prophets and evangelists, and cascading out through pastor-teachers and ‘the saints’, and to every single member of the body, all of whom speak the truth of Christ in love to grow and build the body (that’s a quick summary of 4:8-16; #6). What Paul himself is doing as a courier of the word of Christ, he wants the Ephesians to be doing with each other in all sorts of ways (whether in daily conversation in 4:29, or in singing to one another in 5:19, or in fathers teaching thei

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