A little slice of Evangelical history

One well documented achievement of the late John Stott was the re-establishment of the Eclectics. This became for a time in the late 20th century a significant gathering of the Anglican Evangelical constituency, and it continued after John Stott's direct involvement ceased. The last national conference was held around the middle of the last decade. When our children were small, our annual trip to Swanwick was one of the highlights of the year and we still miss the fellowship there.

Less well-known is the history of the Eclectics' Wives Society, which subsequently changed its name in 1987 into the Wives of Evangelical Anglican Clergy (WEAC). WEAC is still going strong, and my wife has just returned from the latest annual conference with the archives of the organisation. The minutes over the past 40 years are a fascinating reflection of trends within evangelicalism, but there is probably much more information out there, mostly unrecorded.

Of course much has changed during this time. We now have ordained women. The life of clergy wives has changed considerably - and there is far less expectation that they play a set role. But through all the changes WEAC has kept going, and it acts as an important gathering point for fellowship, prayer and input. Certainly those who do know about it keep coming back, again and again, and in my opinion it deserves to be far better known. 

Jesus, the bread of life - a sermon on John 6:25-40

2012 is a significant year for many reasons. The Olympics, the diamond jubilee, the 200th annioversary of Dickens birth etc... But as I said in my all-age worship slot, we ought to spend a moment thinking of an invention 100 years ago by Otto Rohwedder that changed the world. If you don't know who Otto Rohwedder is, you won't get the link to the following sermon!

How many people here have recently read the book of Ecclesiastes? If you haven't then I suggest you look at it when you're feeling reasonably cheerful. Because of all the books in the Bible, Ecclesiastes has to one of the most depressing, as well as one of the most difficult to spell. It is written from the viewpoint of King Solomon looking back over a life of great wealth, and political success, a time of great prosperity both for himself and his country. And what is his verdict on all that he has achieved? The opening verses give us the answer: The words of the Teacher, son of David, king of Jerusalem: "Meaningless! Meaningless!" says the Teacher. "Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless." If you're not feeling down before you start reading, you certainly will be afterwards.

But the reason why Ecclesiastes is in the Bible is that it taps into the sort of feeling that many of us experience at one time or another in our life. I don't know if you've ever had the kind of day where you wake up late, you run to the stop just as your bus is pulling away. You get to work or school late, and it all goes downhill from there. Your computer crashes and the boss is shouting at you 'cos you've missed your deadline. On the way home it's pouring with rain. You get in, and find the cat's been sick, and there's a large gas bill lying on the doormat. It's hard, sometimes, not to wonder after a day like that, "What's the point?" I think we've all been there, one way or another.

So it comes as a huge relief, doesn’t it, to turn over to our gospel reading this morning and read these words of Jesus: I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty. Jesus promises to give us a purpose and a point to our daily activity, to satisfy our deepest need for meaning and significance in our lives.

But on the face of it, it is an outrageous claim.

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Call the midwife - while you can

It is often said that in troubled times we like a slice of nostalgia on our screens. The recent Sunday offering from BBC, Call the Midwife, provided just that. It lovingly recreated the London of the 1950s and the experience of the young midwives seeking to provide the best possible community for the local area.

It was a splendid piece of prime-time television, and it has stayed with me for two particular reasons:

First of all, it showed the value of a Christian community. The midwives were based at Nonnatus House, run by a community of nuns. While I am not necessarily advocating the return of religious orders, I have long believed that one of the most effectively ways of re-establishing a Christian presence in some of our most deprived areas is precisely by the setting up of communities who seek to serve the local area. We tend to focus so much on church planting, but one of the most effective witnesses to the love of Christ is by Christians offering the sort of community that sadly nowadays (and certainly more so than in the 1950s) does usually not exist in urban priority areas.

Secondly, this programme also reminded me of the great beneficial changes that the NHS brought in. When a baby was due to be born, there was a midwife there. The NHS is one of the great achievements of the last century in British society. Of course it has to adapt to this century, but it certainly does not require the sort of dismantling that the government seems to be suggesting in its reform bill. When we have a need, we want to know that the need will be met. We don't want to have to choose between health providers, or decide if we want to pay for the treatment. We just want to know that at our time of need someone will care for us.

Of course the programme also reflected a very different situation where the presence of actively professing Christians was welcomed in the public sector. How much things have changed in the last 60 years.

The lessons David learnt - a sermon on 1 Sam 24:1-22, Matt 5:38-48

What do you think of when you hear the word "education"? I guess most of us think of teachers and classrooms and long, gloomy corridors smelling of disinfectant.  Schools play a huge part in our life, and I think nearly every grown-up has some childhood memory of a special teacher, or classmate, or some misdemeanour that may or may not have gone unpunished. And whether or not our experience of school was positive, I believe we should all give thanks for the fact that in this country we have an education system to which so many people devote their lives - Education Sunday today gives us a chance to do just that.

But there are other forms of education as well. There is all the stuff that we learnt from our parents, or other carers, right from our earliest years. There is that constant flow of information that pours into our living rooms through the Internet and our television screens. And of course there is what is sometimes called the "university of life", those experiences and events that mould and shape our lives, and make us very much who we are.

And it's on this kind of education that I particular want to focus today. We're continuing with our series looking at the making of a great king, David. In our story this morning he has still not yet reached the throne. Yes, he was anointed by the prophet Samuel way back in chapter 16, but since then he has spent much of his time on the run from the current king, Saul, whom the Lord had rejected. So as I began to look at this chapter, I found myself asking why David had to go through so much before he took his rightful place at the head of his people. Wouldn't it have been simpler all round if once David had been anointed, Saul had been removed from the scene – killed by a passing Philistine, perhaps, - and David given the throne there and then. I am sure that given the choice David would have preferred that outcome to living like an outlaw.

But the more I thought about David's life, the more I realised that the Lord was preparing David for an exceptional job by taking him through some exceptional experiences. 

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The medium and the cross

I was asked this week to deal with a ghost someone sensed in their flat. As I sat down to talk with the young family in the shiny new flat I noticed there was a rough wooden cross lying beneath the glass coffee table. Apparently the medium they consulted earlier had left a couple of crosses around, one in the living room, and one in bedroom where the presence had been detected. Talking further, it turned out that the medium came fully armed both with a cross and a Bible, but she had been unable to deal with ghost.

So I asked the couple what the cross was all about. They didn't know really, so I explained to them something of the basics of the Christian faith and prayed in the name of Jesus for whatever it was that was troubling them to go. At the end we had a good discussion about baptism and marriage. I couldn’t help thinking there was an awful lot of spiritual confusion going in, consulting a medium, having crosses lying around to ward off evil spirits and yet wanting the baby christened.

It was a small example of the general truth, that when folk stop believing in Jesus, it's not that stop believing. It's rather that they start believing in anything. I find the task of explaining the gospel in this kind of situation all the harder because people have such a muddled view of what the Christian faith is, let alone any real understanding of who Jesus is.

It makes me realise yet again what a poor job we have done as a church in explaining who Jesus is, and what the cross stands for. More and more I am coming to the view that we can reorganise the church as much as we like, we can change who becomes a bishop, we can experiment with all kinds of novel ways of mission, but unless we return to a clear and unequivocal proclamation of the gospel we will not see the sustained growth that we all long for.

Meanwhile people remain lost in a haze of confusion, and have no idea there is power in Jesus' name. That to me is the real tragedy of our situation today.

Jealousy - a sermon on 1 Sam 19:1-24

We started this sermon with a clip from Toy Story 3 where the toys are heading towards the flames, having been betrayed by someone they thought would rescue them. They hold hands, expecting the worst. Then right at the last minute a grab comes down and lifts them up. It seemed appropriate when preaching on this passage!

Have you ever found yourself in a situation where there seemed no way out? Maybe a situation caused by the betrayal of someone you thought you could trust?

That was the situation David faced. He had entered the king's service as a harpist, to relieve Saul's troubled mind. He had won a great victory for the king over Goliath and the Philistines. But our chapter starts with Saul issuing orders for his son Jonathan and all his attendants to kill David. If I'd started by showing a western, this would be the scene where sheriff puts posters up around town and sends out his posse looking for the outlaw.

Except, of course, David is no outlaw. He has broken no rules, he has not defied the king. And that's exactly the point Jonathan makes to his father. Verse 4: Let not the king do wrong to his servant David; he has not wronged you, and what he has done has benefited you greatly. There is no doubt that Jonathan was a tremendous ally and friend of David, and we'll be looking at his whole example of friendship next week. But for now all Jonathan is able to do is grant David a temporary reprieve.

 

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Gospel v. Social Progammes?

I recently heard someone say that the world expects the church to run social programmes. Churches too like to run social programmes, for the commendable reason that they become visible in the local community. Clearly at a time of economic hardship it is hard to be unmoved by the scale of need, and it is great that Christians are seen to be engaged with issues of the day. A church near us has recently received a large grant for a CAP (Christians Against Poverty) debt counselling service, and on this side of Plymouth such a service is desperately needed.

And yet, there can be some dangers if the church makes a social programme too much of its focus. When I arrived in my current post about 9 years ago, there was the remnant of a social project in one of the churches. It had been fully funded for the first three years, but the money had run out. It was taking considerable effort and energy for a team of volunteers to run, and with a scarcity of able people in the congregation it was taking away valuable resources from the task of proclaiming the gospel.

I made there and then a conscious decision not to spend my life chasing charitable grants, but focus on preaching and pastoring. Over the past nine years I have wondered if I have made the right decision. Gospel work is not often visible, and the outcomes aren't as tangible as a social programme. The results are in God's sovereignty often mixed and patchy - think of the parable of the sower. Yet I still believe in the long run I made the right decision.

I was chatting with a retired vicar this week, and he made the point that when the gospel is preached, then the social work follows, which is something that is borne out by my experience. Because when the gospel starts to change hearts and minds, you have to work out how to apply it to the very real-life situations your hearers face day by day - such as alcoholism, mental health, homelessness, pressures at work etc. It may be then that a social project needs to be launched (which is what the neighbouring church have done in setting up a CAP service), but that project is then properly understood as a fruit of a gospel ministry, and not mission in itself.  

As the Ugley Vicar points out, there is after all only properly one mark of mission after all. Besides which, there are others who are paid to carry out much of the social work, and as professionals they can often do a better job. I believe it's far better to point people to those agencies, than to try and duplicate their work.

Faith v. religion

Last week I published this article on the church website.

Today I posted a follow-up as follows:

Since the video I posted last went viral, there is been quite a deal of discussion on the blogosphere about faith and religion – for example here – mostly concerned that making quite so big a division between faith and religion is not so helpful.

In response, it’s worth making  a few points.

First of all, there is good religion and bad religion. There is a word for religion in the Greek New Testament, which twice occurs negatively – Acts 26:5 and Col 2:18 – and twice positively – James 1:26 and 1:27. (The NIV also uses the word religion in 1 Tim 5:4 but it’s not there in the Greek). If there is a positive use of the word religion in the Bible, so it is argued, we ought not to be so negative about it today. To which, I would respond that words change their meaning over time. For example the word “silly” once meant “blessed”. That’s an extreme example, but it makes the point that once a word gets a negative overtone, then it’s hard to shake it off. If it’s not helpful to talk to folk about religion, then don’t use the term.

Quite understandably there is concern that by separating faith from religion, we are saying it’s OK to believe without joining in fellowship. But we need to understand properly what faith entails. To accept Jesus as Lord and Saviour is to be in Christ. And if you are in Christ then you are in His body, the church. We may cut short our gospel talks by ending on an appeal to accept Jesus as Lord. But if we do not also talk about the need to belong, then we are selling the good news short. Believing and belonging go together. That’s why – although they’re not perfect – I like use to images like being transferred from one team to another, or being adopted into a family. We have to make sure our talk about faith does not pander to the current mood of individualism.

There’s also another really important point to make about faith. The Greek word for faith also means “faithfulness”. In other words, faith in Christ also implies faithfulness to Jesus, not just in the privacy of your own home, or your own church, but being faithful to Christ and bearing witness to Him twenty-four seven. In this respect it’s worth noting that instead of asking believers to adopt a religion the letter writers of the New Testament so often ask them to follow a way of life (e.g. 1 Cor 4:17, Jam 3:13, Heb 13:7, 1 Pet 1:15), learnt by example from leaders and lived out as proof of the change Jesus has wrought in their hearts.

Of course words are difficult, but it is noteworthy that the early believers were called followers of the Way (Acts 9:2). It’s probably too late to rescue this term, but it would be helpful in making clear what the Christian faith is really all about!