As I entered full-time ministry in 1995 I read a book compiled by Dr Bill Bright entitled, "The Greatest Lesson I Ever Learned". It was a collection of stories from Christian leaders. It inspired me to ask various Christian leaders in Australia that I knew (or, mostly, knew of) for their story. These have been sitting in my computer for 10 years waiting for publication, but I didn't collect enough to warrant publishing them. So, I am now posting them as blogs so the stories can get out there. I trust you enjoy them as much as I do.
Geoff
Bill Newman
Dr. Bill Newman is an Australian evangelist with an international reputation. Over the past 15 years he has addressed audiences of thousands across the Australian continent and the nations of the world.
He addresses the deep needs of the individual human heart with a compassion and objectivity that leaves people from all walks of life ready to listen and find hope in his gospel message.
Through the years thousands have found the reality of Christ through his unique gift of proclamation.
Bill Newman is also a best-selling author, having written a number of books, the most popular being "The Ten Laws of Leadership”, "Soaring with Eagles" and "The Power of a Successful Life ", which together have sold well over 100,000 copies.
He also has contributed regularly to Australian newspapers, spoken on radio and has produced and featured in several television specials.
Around the world he is held in high regard as a national statesman who is endorsed by Prime Ministers, Government Heads and Civic Authorities for his positive contribution to society.
A family man, Bill Newman and his wife, Dorothy, live in Queensland, Australia with their two sons, Ben & Luke.
THE LIFE OF FAITH
I will never forget the excitement that we had and the adrenaline that was pumping through our veins as we put up, for the first time, our blue and white tent. We had just taken delivery of it from America, people had given sacrificially, others had helped us with seating, still others had donated towards the P.A. and lighting and we were putting it all together for its first time in a united meeting. As it was going up that day we never dreamed how many thousands of people would come under that canopy to hear the gospel and how many would make their way to the front to commit their lives to the Lord Jesus Christ.
I guess we were too young and naive to know what was really happening - the people who were talking about us and saying, "What a white elephant! We will never fill that thing! What a waste of time, tent campaigns are so old and out-of-date, they will never work in Australia!"
We were working too hard and too fast to hear any of these stories, let alone to listen to them. We had a dream that God had placed in our hearts and that is all that we could think of.
That tent would be replaced many times in the future with even bigger and better tents, but it was the beginning, the start. We were stepping out believing God for greater things. We were learning the life of faith.
My wife, Dorothy, and I had been invited to a prayer meeting in someone's home and, as we were leaving, an envelope was squeezed into our hands. As we arrived at our own home we opened the envelope and there, to our surprise, was $1,000! We had never received a gift like that in our lives and the note said, "Put this towards a tent."
God was encouraging us in our dream. Just a little time before that we had hired a tent ourselves. We saw that it was neutral ground and non-threatening. It was a novel attraction. Young people would come into the tent without having to be dressed up. People would be out of their normal church environment so that they weren't conditioned, as they were when walking into their own buildings, as to how they should act and behave. It was a novel attraction in that it brought lots of media attention - the newspapers, radio and television would all come around to find out what was really going on. I guess they thought it was a circus though they couldn't see any elephants anywhere! I guess all they could see were clowns!
We were just walking one step at a time. The logistics at that time weren't important. All we could see was one step that God was opening to us. We would need trucks to take the tent from one place to another, we would have to learn many lessons in how to organise united campaigns, there would be many heartaches and challenges along the road. But in our youthful enthusiasm we could see none of this. All that we could see was just a venue, another way, another opportunity where we could take the precious gospel to so many desperately needy hearts.
I believe that it excites the heart of God to stand back and see His children exercising faith in Him. I'm sure He says in His heart, "There are My children, they believe in Me. They are exercising faith in Me. And I will reach out and bless their endeavours."
Today in our work of evangelism we have all sorts of different venues. They might be auditoriums, stadiums, tents and equipment but, when it all boils down, we don't need any of these things. All that we need is a Bible and a group of people who will stand and listen to us so that we can relate the precious gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.
God honours the life of faith. If there is one gift that I am constantly asking God to give me, it is the gift of faith. To simply trust Him in childlike faith, to take His Word, to read it and believe exactly what it says and to allow that to apply to my life.
Our ministry takes us often into the South Pacific, where we see thousands of people come out to special rallies to hear the gospel. What a delight it is to see many flocking to the front to register their commitment to the Lord Jesus Christ. The thing that always touches me about the people of the South Pacific is their ability to believe God, to exercise childlike faith in Him. Our problem in our Western society is the mindset that we have which stops us from really believing God to do what He says He will do.
We have stood back in awe over the years and watched God work miracles as we have reached out in faith - miracles through radio, miracles in seeing the gospel go out in prime time on the television, thousands upon thousands of books and so much literature. God delights to take the weak and the base things of this world to confound the wise.
I think back to my childhood in a coalmining town in New South Wales, a young boy who knew nothing, or very little, about Christianity. Our family struggled from week to week to make ends meet. God in a remarkable way brought me to Himself through the love and care of other young Christian people. God placed in my heart an intense love for Him and a burning desire to see people coming to the Lord Jesus Christ.
God had placed a dream in my heart and, along with that, the faith to believe Him for great things. So often I stand back in awe and amazement at what God has done, but realising that it must not stop here for God's heart is breaking over this world and there is so much to be done. Each one of us on our team say, "To God be the Glory, great things HE has done."
No matter how much God may use us, all the glory praise and honour must go to Him and to Him alone, but there is no other joy in this life that can compare to the joy of serving the greatest Master - the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords.
Tuesday, 25 November 2008
The Greatest Lesson I Ever Learned - Rev. Gordon Moyes
As I entered full-time ministry in 1995 I read a book compiled by Dr Bill Bright entitled, "The Greatest Lesson I Ever Learned". It was a collection of stories from Christian leaders. It inspired me to ask various Christian leaders in Australia that I knew (or, mostly, knew of) for their story. These have been sitting in my computer for 10 years waiting for publication, but I didn't collect enough to warrant publishing them. So, I am now posting them as blogs so the stories can get out there. I trust you enjoy them as much as I do.
Geoff
Gordon Moyes
Gordon Moyes is one of Australia’s leading evangelists and as Superintendent of Wesley Mission Sydney since 1979, he is one of Australia’s busiest administrators. He leads a team of fifteen ministers at one of the world’s great city churches. Regarded as one of the country’s top motivational speakers Dr. Moyes has addressed sales and management conferences in a dozen countries. He has conducted evangelistic crusades in Australia and overseas, and has an extensive schedule of lectures, writings, films, radio and television programs. Currently he is hosting “Turn ‘Round Australia”, a weekly national television program, and “Sunday Night Live with Gordon Moyes” a weekly four-hour radio talk-back program.
Married to Beverly since 1959, they have four adult children who are all involved in Christian service, and a number of grandchildren.
Wesley Mission is a Christian Church in the heart of Sydney where it conducts 45 services of worship every week, and offers care to people through 230 caring centres in a hundred suburbs of Sydney. Two thousand full-time staff and three and a half thousand volunteers are engaged in a unique ministry of caring for the poor, the needy, the aged, the homeless, the disabled, the sick and unemployed. According to the Government’s Industries Commission, the welfare outreach of Wesley Mission Sydney ranks third in size behind three national organisations, and has the lowest percentage of expenditure on administration and fundraising of all charities in Australia of any size.
{Gordon Moyes has since moved on from Wesley to pursue a career in NSW Parliament with the Christian Democratic Party}
EQUIPPED FOR MINISTRY
The most important lesson I ever learned after becoming a Christian so impacted my life and changed the course of my activities as a Christian Minister that I can point to the exact time and place when this lesson was made clear to me. I had entered Bible College as a young man fresh from High School, while completing studies at the Melbourne University. I was fully committed to working for the sake of Christ and His gospel. The call to ministry was very real and my dedication to Christ and His work was absolutely complete. Apart from studying at Theological College and University, I was also a student pastor of two rather run-down but warm Christian churches in the inner suburbs of northern Melbourne. The Newmarket and Ascot Vale Churches of Christ were less that a mile apart although they had little to do with each other and were many miles apart in their thinking and socio-economic backgrounds. I was to spend eight years ministering with these people among the slums of North Melbourne, Kensington, Flemington and the new Housing Commission areas of Newmarket and Ascot Vale. Those eight years were to be formative for the rest of my life. It was while ministering here in 1962 that I learned the most important lesson of my life.
In these days when a new translation of the Bible arrives on the scene every month or two, accompanied by all the hoopla of promotion and publicity, it is hard to realise what an exciting event it was in the 1950s or 1960s when a new translation, such as that of J.B. Phillips or the New English Bible, arrived on the scene. The New English Bible was to be released on a Monday morning in March at the Bible Society in Flinders Street, Melbourne. Crowds of people packed out the store, clamouring to buy the first available copies of the New English Bible. Having purchased my copy I was sitting on the train heading back to Moonee Ponds where I lived with my new bride, reading passages of the new translation. Suddenly, there it was - a lesson that was to completely revolutionise my ministry.
Up to this stage I had spent the previous five years as a student minister and now, as the first full-time minister in more than two decades of the churches’ life, in doing everything that was needed for ministry. I was preaching, teaching, running home groups, girls and boys clubs, a teenage youth fellowship, a young adult fellowship, an adult Christian fellowship; I was painting the church both inside and out, burying the dead, marrying young couples, working as a parole and probation officer at the local courts, visiting the wayward and erring, going flat to flat in the new high-rise Housing Commission flats seeking out potential new members; serving the needs of people who were poor and destitute, homeless and alcoholic, working on studies, cleaning up after the endless youth activities, stacking chairs, teaching Sunday School and religious education in the local high schools, and running myself ragged. On an average more than a hundred and ten hours per week! Ministry was exhausting. Yet this was what I was called to do, and after all I was the person who had been trained and ordained, and the only one in both congregations who was a University graduate. Leadership was essential, and leadership by practical example was what the people wanted. The more I did, the more they rejoiced.
Then, on an electric train heading for Moonee Ponds I read these words: “And these were his gifts: some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip God’s people for work in his service, to the building up of the body of Christ.” (Ephesians 4:12).
That was me. One of His pastors and teachers, somewhat of an evangelist, but hardly an apostle or prophet. Yet here was my ministry: “To equip God’s people for work in his service, to the building up of the body of Christ”. Up until this moment, I thought my task as pastor/teacher/evangelist was to build up the body of Christ. Now, this new translation told me it was my task “to equip God’s people for work in his service, to the building up of the body of Christ.” I had been running myself ragged doing the work of the ministry, whereas here was an insight: my task was to equip God’s people to work in His service.
I could hardly contain my excitement nor my scepticism. Was this an example of a poor translation? No-one has said to me previously that our task was to equip God’s people for work in His service. I had been advised to “do the work of an evangelist”, and to “fulfill your ministry”. Not only that, generations of Christians at these two inner suburban churches had believed that if only they would get a “good” minister, then their church would flourish. Now that they had an enthusiastic, competent young minister all would be well because the churches would grow.
I went home and in my study looked up every translation of the word, and every usage of the words “to equip” or “to prepare” which I could find in the New Testament. Furthermore, having graduated at University in both classical Greek and New Testament Greek I looked up all the available Greek dictionaries and to my surprise found that the New English Bible translation was the best and most accurate.
The word “katartidzo” is used widely in the New Testament: of James and John who were “in the boats getting ready their nets for fishing” (Matthew 4:21); by Jesus when He said that “no pupil is greater than his teacher, but every pupil when he has completed his training will be like his teacher” (Luke 6:40); by Peter when he said that “Christ Himself will perfect you and give you firmness, strength and a sure foundation” (1 Peter 5:10); and by Paul who said that God “appointed some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, some to be pastors and teachers, to equip all God’s people for the work of Christian service”.
This word is used of getting nets ready for fishing, of preparing pupils through education, of perfecting the leaders with spiritual strength and a sure foundation, of equipping leaders for Christian service, describes the work that I had to undertake as a minister. This word “katartidzo” means to make ready, to furnish completely, to perfect a sure foundation, to equip thoroughly for service. I had the task of training people to fish for men, teaching them to understand the Scriptures, of giving them a sure spiritual foundation, and preparing them for work in His service for building up the body of Christ.
That theme revolutionised my ministry. It was the most important understanding of ministry which I had ever gained and I had learned it not in a theological college or in the university lecture theatre, but on a train reading the Bible.
But would it work in practice? The following week I immediately called twelve people together and asked them to let me train them in the task of reaching others for Christ, of witnessing to their faith, and to helping them to proclaim the gospel so that people might believe. Week after week we met on a Sunday afternoon and finally after having been through all of the relevant Bible passages, having lectures on understanding the cults, the psychology of conversion and the like, I sent them forth to visit two by two the homes of our parish. The program was an abject failure. The people felt incompetent and unwilling to visit and to witness.
I waited some months and called the same people together again and this time gave them twelve weeks of lectures. Surely this would prepare them for the work of the gospel. It was another failure.
It suddenly occurred to me that my method of equipping was wrong. Instead of lectures they needed demonstration. I would take one person with me and over a period of weeks visit with them the homes of non-believers, share the faith with them and gently lead the to commitment to Christ. After two or three months I would then visit with my companion who would then take the lead role and I would remain silent. It worked. Some ordinary persons became great evangelists. Over the next few years I took person after person and trained them in the art of leading others to faith in Christ and commitment to membership in our church. The churches grew.
But there was still something fundamentally wrong with my method of equipping God’s people for work in His service.
After taking one young businessman with me for eight weeks, I was struck by inspiration - why not now have him instruct someone else in how to lead another for Christ? From that moment on two of us instructed and two learned. We also matched each one of us with some other who could neither visit nor speak adequately, but who was willing to spend the same amount of time in prayer for us while we visited. Soon there were eight of us - four visiting and witnessing, and four praying. Then there were sixteen of us each Tuesday night visiting, witnessing, teaching another by example, or praying. Soon the number of new converts began to multiply. Every week I was baptising new adults into the faith. Over the next decade and a half a thousand people would make a commitment to Christ and come within the fellowship of the church. This was the most important lesson I had learned: to equip God’s people for work in His service for the building up of the body of Christ.
I then realised it would need to work in every other area of ministry that I was undertaking. I was writing a weekly devotional article in a church paper. Could I train another person to do that work well? I did, and Florence Rosier wrote the articles for years, eventually having them published in book form. I was writing weekly Bible studies. Could I equip a layperson to do that work equally well? I could, and Fred Drummond’s daily Bible Studies became the basis of personal devotion by hundreds of people each week. I was chaplain to the church’s four cricket teams, but could I equip a dedicated cricket-loving layman to do that work? I did, and Roy Barnett’s ministry was invaluable. I was visiting the widow and the frail aged and spending time helping them with many physical repairs to their houses or running errands or providing company for the lonely. Could I equip someone else to do that ministry? I could and did, and Trevor Adcock in turn eventually had more than seventy people assigned on practical Christian care. I was visiting the shut-in. Could someone else do that? They could and soon Fay Ferris had fifteen dedicated lay people trained on weekly assignment visiting the shut-in.
Every other interest I had - leading music, developing singing groups, doing art work, providing business oversight of the church, and so on - all were approached with this same philosophy. I would equip people who would do the work of building up the body of Christ.
In 1978 when I faced the task of becoming Superintendent of Wesley Mission Sydney, which by that time under the outstanding leadership of Sir Alan Walker, had twenty three centres of care and four hundred staff, with $4 million a year income, I had wondered whether the same philosophy could still work. It has. Today we have two hundred and thirty centres and services in more than a hundred suburbs of Sydney, forty five worship services a week, and two thousand paid staff with more than three and a half thousand volunteers assisting them in their ministry. The church keeps growing. My role is to select, to disciple, to equip, to dream dreams and see a vision. I spend a lot of time training those who will be the trainers of many more people. I spend much time in developing my skills that can be discipled with other people who in turn will be responsible for hundreds of others.
Like Peter and John, most of my time is spent praying, preaching and leading, dreaming and visioning with those who have been equipped building up the body of Christ. This is what the Apostle Paul meant when he said to Timothy: “You heard my teaching in the presence of many witnesses; hand that teaching on to reliable men (and women) who in turn will be qualified to teach others.” This is the most important lesson I have learned and it has guided my ministry every day since.
Geoff
Gordon Moyes
Gordon Moyes is one of Australia’s leading evangelists and as Superintendent of Wesley Mission Sydney since 1979, he is one of Australia’s busiest administrators. He leads a team of fifteen ministers at one of the world’s great city churches. Regarded as one of the country’s top motivational speakers Dr. Moyes has addressed sales and management conferences in a dozen countries. He has conducted evangelistic crusades in Australia and overseas, and has an extensive schedule of lectures, writings, films, radio and television programs. Currently he is hosting “Turn ‘Round Australia”, a weekly national television program, and “Sunday Night Live with Gordon Moyes” a weekly four-hour radio talk-back program.
Married to Beverly since 1959, they have four adult children who are all involved in Christian service, and a number of grandchildren.
Wesley Mission is a Christian Church in the heart of Sydney where it conducts 45 services of worship every week, and offers care to people through 230 caring centres in a hundred suburbs of Sydney. Two thousand full-time staff and three and a half thousand volunteers are engaged in a unique ministry of caring for the poor, the needy, the aged, the homeless, the disabled, the sick and unemployed. According to the Government’s Industries Commission, the welfare outreach of Wesley Mission Sydney ranks third in size behind three national organisations, and has the lowest percentage of expenditure on administration and fundraising of all charities in Australia of any size.
{Gordon Moyes has since moved on from Wesley to pursue a career in NSW Parliament with the Christian Democratic Party}
EQUIPPED FOR MINISTRY
The most important lesson I ever learned after becoming a Christian so impacted my life and changed the course of my activities as a Christian Minister that I can point to the exact time and place when this lesson was made clear to me. I had entered Bible College as a young man fresh from High School, while completing studies at the Melbourne University. I was fully committed to working for the sake of Christ and His gospel. The call to ministry was very real and my dedication to Christ and His work was absolutely complete. Apart from studying at Theological College and University, I was also a student pastor of two rather run-down but warm Christian churches in the inner suburbs of northern Melbourne. The Newmarket and Ascot Vale Churches of Christ were less that a mile apart although they had little to do with each other and were many miles apart in their thinking and socio-economic backgrounds. I was to spend eight years ministering with these people among the slums of North Melbourne, Kensington, Flemington and the new Housing Commission areas of Newmarket and Ascot Vale. Those eight years were to be formative for the rest of my life. It was while ministering here in 1962 that I learned the most important lesson of my life.
In these days when a new translation of the Bible arrives on the scene every month or two, accompanied by all the hoopla of promotion and publicity, it is hard to realise what an exciting event it was in the 1950s or 1960s when a new translation, such as that of J.B. Phillips or the New English Bible, arrived on the scene. The New English Bible was to be released on a Monday morning in March at the Bible Society in Flinders Street, Melbourne. Crowds of people packed out the store, clamouring to buy the first available copies of the New English Bible. Having purchased my copy I was sitting on the train heading back to Moonee Ponds where I lived with my new bride, reading passages of the new translation. Suddenly, there it was - a lesson that was to completely revolutionise my ministry.
Up to this stage I had spent the previous five years as a student minister and now, as the first full-time minister in more than two decades of the churches’ life, in doing everything that was needed for ministry. I was preaching, teaching, running home groups, girls and boys clubs, a teenage youth fellowship, a young adult fellowship, an adult Christian fellowship; I was painting the church both inside and out, burying the dead, marrying young couples, working as a parole and probation officer at the local courts, visiting the wayward and erring, going flat to flat in the new high-rise Housing Commission flats seeking out potential new members; serving the needs of people who were poor and destitute, homeless and alcoholic, working on studies, cleaning up after the endless youth activities, stacking chairs, teaching Sunday School and religious education in the local high schools, and running myself ragged. On an average more than a hundred and ten hours per week! Ministry was exhausting. Yet this was what I was called to do, and after all I was the person who had been trained and ordained, and the only one in both congregations who was a University graduate. Leadership was essential, and leadership by practical example was what the people wanted. The more I did, the more they rejoiced.
Then, on an electric train heading for Moonee Ponds I read these words: “And these were his gifts: some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip God’s people for work in his service, to the building up of the body of Christ.” (Ephesians 4:12).
That was me. One of His pastors and teachers, somewhat of an evangelist, but hardly an apostle or prophet. Yet here was my ministry: “To equip God’s people for work in his service, to the building up of the body of Christ”. Up until this moment, I thought my task as pastor/teacher/evangelist was to build up the body of Christ. Now, this new translation told me it was my task “to equip God’s people for work in his service, to the building up of the body of Christ.” I had been running myself ragged doing the work of the ministry, whereas here was an insight: my task was to equip God’s people to work in His service.
I could hardly contain my excitement nor my scepticism. Was this an example of a poor translation? No-one has said to me previously that our task was to equip God’s people for work in His service. I had been advised to “do the work of an evangelist”, and to “fulfill your ministry”. Not only that, generations of Christians at these two inner suburban churches had believed that if only they would get a “good” minister, then their church would flourish. Now that they had an enthusiastic, competent young minister all would be well because the churches would grow.
I went home and in my study looked up every translation of the word, and every usage of the words “to equip” or “to prepare” which I could find in the New Testament. Furthermore, having graduated at University in both classical Greek and New Testament Greek I looked up all the available Greek dictionaries and to my surprise found that the New English Bible translation was the best and most accurate.
The word “katartidzo” is used widely in the New Testament: of James and John who were “in the boats getting ready their nets for fishing” (Matthew 4:21); by Jesus when He said that “no pupil is greater than his teacher, but every pupil when he has completed his training will be like his teacher” (Luke 6:40); by Peter when he said that “Christ Himself will perfect you and give you firmness, strength and a sure foundation” (1 Peter 5:10); and by Paul who said that God “appointed some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, some to be pastors and teachers, to equip all God’s people for the work of Christian service”.
This word is used of getting nets ready for fishing, of preparing pupils through education, of perfecting the leaders with spiritual strength and a sure foundation, of equipping leaders for Christian service, describes the work that I had to undertake as a minister. This word “katartidzo” means to make ready, to furnish completely, to perfect a sure foundation, to equip thoroughly for service. I had the task of training people to fish for men, teaching them to understand the Scriptures, of giving them a sure spiritual foundation, and preparing them for work in His service for building up the body of Christ.
That theme revolutionised my ministry. It was the most important understanding of ministry which I had ever gained and I had learned it not in a theological college or in the university lecture theatre, but on a train reading the Bible.
But would it work in practice? The following week I immediately called twelve people together and asked them to let me train them in the task of reaching others for Christ, of witnessing to their faith, and to helping them to proclaim the gospel so that people might believe. Week after week we met on a Sunday afternoon and finally after having been through all of the relevant Bible passages, having lectures on understanding the cults, the psychology of conversion and the like, I sent them forth to visit two by two the homes of our parish. The program was an abject failure. The people felt incompetent and unwilling to visit and to witness.
I waited some months and called the same people together again and this time gave them twelve weeks of lectures. Surely this would prepare them for the work of the gospel. It was another failure.
It suddenly occurred to me that my method of equipping was wrong. Instead of lectures they needed demonstration. I would take one person with me and over a period of weeks visit with them the homes of non-believers, share the faith with them and gently lead the to commitment to Christ. After two or three months I would then visit with my companion who would then take the lead role and I would remain silent. It worked. Some ordinary persons became great evangelists. Over the next few years I took person after person and trained them in the art of leading others to faith in Christ and commitment to membership in our church. The churches grew.
But there was still something fundamentally wrong with my method of equipping God’s people for work in His service.
After taking one young businessman with me for eight weeks, I was struck by inspiration - why not now have him instruct someone else in how to lead another for Christ? From that moment on two of us instructed and two learned. We also matched each one of us with some other who could neither visit nor speak adequately, but who was willing to spend the same amount of time in prayer for us while we visited. Soon there were eight of us - four visiting and witnessing, and four praying. Then there were sixteen of us each Tuesday night visiting, witnessing, teaching another by example, or praying. Soon the number of new converts began to multiply. Every week I was baptising new adults into the faith. Over the next decade and a half a thousand people would make a commitment to Christ and come within the fellowship of the church. This was the most important lesson I had learned: to equip God’s people for work in His service for the building up of the body of Christ.
I then realised it would need to work in every other area of ministry that I was undertaking. I was writing a weekly devotional article in a church paper. Could I train another person to do that work well? I did, and Florence Rosier wrote the articles for years, eventually having them published in book form. I was writing weekly Bible studies. Could I equip a layperson to do that work equally well? I could, and Fred Drummond’s daily Bible Studies became the basis of personal devotion by hundreds of people each week. I was chaplain to the church’s four cricket teams, but could I equip a dedicated cricket-loving layman to do that work? I did, and Roy Barnett’s ministry was invaluable. I was visiting the widow and the frail aged and spending time helping them with many physical repairs to their houses or running errands or providing company for the lonely. Could I equip someone else to do that ministry? I could and did, and Trevor Adcock in turn eventually had more than seventy people assigned on practical Christian care. I was visiting the shut-in. Could someone else do that? They could and soon Fay Ferris had fifteen dedicated lay people trained on weekly assignment visiting the shut-in.
Every other interest I had - leading music, developing singing groups, doing art work, providing business oversight of the church, and so on - all were approached with this same philosophy. I would equip people who would do the work of building up the body of Christ.
In 1978 when I faced the task of becoming Superintendent of Wesley Mission Sydney, which by that time under the outstanding leadership of Sir Alan Walker, had twenty three centres of care and four hundred staff, with $4 million a year income, I had wondered whether the same philosophy could still work. It has. Today we have two hundred and thirty centres and services in more than a hundred suburbs of Sydney, forty five worship services a week, and two thousand paid staff with more than three and a half thousand volunteers assisting them in their ministry. The church keeps growing. My role is to select, to disciple, to equip, to dream dreams and see a vision. I spend a lot of time training those who will be the trainers of many more people. I spend much time in developing my skills that can be discipled with other people who in turn will be responsible for hundreds of others.
Like Peter and John, most of my time is spent praying, preaching and leading, dreaming and visioning with those who have been equipped building up the body of Christ. This is what the Apostle Paul meant when he said to Timothy: “You heard my teaching in the presence of many witnesses; hand that teaching on to reliable men (and women) who in turn will be qualified to teach others.” This is the most important lesson I have learned and it has guided my ministry every day since.
The Greatest Lesson I Ever Learned - Dr GD James
As I entered full-time ministry in 1995 I read a book compiled by Dr Bill Bright entitled, "The Greatest Lesson I Ever Learned". It was a collection of stories from Christian leaders. It inspired me to ask various Christian leaders in Australia that I knew (or, mostly, knew of) for their story. These have been sitting in my computer for 10 years waiting for publication, but I didn't collect enough to warrant publishing them. So, I am now posting them as blogs so the stories can get out there. I trust you enjoy them as much as I do.
Geoff
Dr. G.D. James
Emerging out of Hinduism in 1937, Dr. G.D. James has been engaged in full-time evangelistic ministry since 1940 in India, Malaysia, Singapore and Asia. In 1960 the Lord enabled Dr. James to found the Asia Evangelistic Fellowship which is one of the fastest growing third world Missions with 140 national missionaries engaged in dynamic evangelistic, training and church-planting ministry in 15 countries.
One of the top mass evangelists and conference speakers in today's world, Dr. G.D. James has held large-scale evangelistic crusades in Asia and around the world - thrilling his audience with his wit and humour. Recently Dr. James conducted a nation-wide crusade in Hong Kong called "LOVE HONG KONG MISSION" (24th April - 3rd May '87). When more than one million people were exposed to the Gospel through direct preaching, radio, TV and the newspapers and several hundreds of people were counselled for decision and dedication. Dr. James has spoken to seven million people directly and to hundreds of millions on the radio and TV. Little wonder that he is hailed as the "Billy Graham of Asia". A prolific, and articulate writer, Dr. G.D. James has authored 20 books - three of which are best sellers.
{Dr G.D. James passed into the presence of his Lord Jesus several years ago}
OUR OMNIPRESENT FATHER
It happened on one memorable night in July 1937 when I was studying at a Christian School in South India. I was reading from Isaiah Chapter 53 in my Tamil Bible when I was struck by a miraculous vision of Jesus Christ as if He was dying for me there and then. The misunderstandings and misgivings I had entertained about Christianity vanished. I was more than convinced that the Lord Jesus Christ was the Saviour of the world and my Saviour. With my eyes stung with tears, I knelt down and surrendered myself to Jesus.
During school vacation, I went and shared with my parents and other relatives' this most thrilling and exciting experience. As Hindus for generations, they were shocked and were furiously angry because they believed that I had disgraced them by accepting what they dubbed a 'foreign religion.' They gave me two options: either to give up the new religion and enjoy all the privileges of the home or to get out of the family for good lest I should be killed by one of them.
Confusion and perplexity throbbed at my seventeen year-old heart. Just then the words of the Lord Jesus came alive in full force: "I am with you always - even to the end of the age" (Matthew 28:20). Infused by a new courage, I left home that very midnight when everybody was asleep -- armed with my precious Bible and tracts in my shoulder-bag. With the Lord's help, when I had completed my academic studies after three years, the Lord called me to be a full-time preacher, and after much struggle, I abandoned myself to the Master, Jesus Christ, in response to this compelling call.
For a whole year (1940) I travelled from town to town and village to village in South India as an itinerant preacher. No church or Mission supported me. Many a time I went without food and some days the only nourishment I had were a couple of bananas and cold water. But the joy and excitement of the presence of my living Lord Jesus was so real that all the privations and persecutions dwindled to nothing. Again and again my divine Master reassured me that He was with me all the time and that I should not be afraid.
Things began to ease a little on my home front. In 1941, I went back to Malaysia from India as a missionary and, to begin with, gathered my relatives and friends at my father's home and taught them from the four gospels each night for six months. There was a clear evidence that the Lord's presence was with me in this venture. "All authority is given to me," the Lord Jesus assured me “go... and I am with you always, even to the end of the age" (Matthew 28:18-20). The result was fantastic. Some 30 of my close relatives repented from their old sinful ways and trusted Jesus Christ as their personal Saviour and Lord. Mr Ernest Brewerton, a New Zealand Brethren missionary, baptised a few of these new converts and later I baptised the others with the result that a small church was established in the village.
At the end of 1941, the mighty conquering Japanese army descended upon South-east Asia - including Malaysia and Singapore. We were trapped in the doldrums of the Second World War for 3 1/2 years of suffering, privations and constant fear of being clapped into prison or brutally murdered by the Japanese soldiers. In spite of it all, the Lord enabled me to serve him faithfully. Only those locals who were employed by the Japanese or other business companies were safe to eke out a living. For me, to be a full-time preacher in those dreadful years was not only economically hard, but also highly dangerous, because all young men who did not have an 'employment certificate' were arrested and dispatched to Siam (now Thailand) to build the infamous 'death railway.' The Lord's words of assurance, "I am with you" and His conscious presence with me and my wife, Rose, were very real which empowered us to face each day in faith and confidence.
While conducting evangelistic campaigns in the major cities of India, Malaysia and Indonesia, there were occasions when some religious fanatics plotted to kill me or issued death-threats, but the Lord Jesus wonderfully protected me. In two cities - one in Indonesia and another in India - the leaders who carefully strategised to attack us were miraculously converted and their followers ran away. When the challenge came for me to speak to 30,000 to 70,000 people in India, Indonesia and Korea, I was filled with fear and trepidation but again the Lord's assurance armed me with fresh courage and zest. Hundreds of people received Christ as their Saviour at these mammoth crusades.
At the invitation of churches in Singapore and Malaysia. I conducted evangelistic campaigns with abounding blessing. Financially, I was better supported than some Western missionaries. In 1960 while recovering from a heart attack, the Lord very powerfully gave me the vision to start the Malaysia Evangelistic Fellowship, later known as the Asia Evangelistic Fellowship. This brought much persecution and affliction. A cruel web of conspiracy was engineered by a couple of missionaries who influenced the leadership of our church. The result was that the level of our financial support dropped considerably. We had six young children to feed and faced great agony. The gentle, healing words of the Lord Jesus were again heard "I am with you... don't be afraid." The Lord worked some miracles and vindicated us. After three years, our oppressors' gossips were proved wrong to the Christian public and things began to improve. The Asia Evangelistic Fellowship has been much blessed by the Lord that we now have more than 110 national workers engaged in dynamic evangelistic and missionary work in 15 countries. Those who did their utmost to destroy the Mission are all gone, but the Mission which the Lord established is growing from strength to strength.
Satanic attacks were unleashed against me in various ways: sometimes one's own loved ones and close friends hindering the ministry for ostensibly 'good reasons.' At times some 'Christian' leaders concocted false accusations against me, but my Lord and Master whispered "I am with you; the servant is not greater than his Master", strengthened me to go on in the Lord's Rescue Mission of depopulating hell! The Lord also equipped me with three most powerful weapons to use against my enemies - love, prayer and forgiveness, before which my most formidable foes fell flat, disarmed and in disarray.
The greatest lesson I have ever learned in all these 55 years of my ministry as the servant of the Most High God is that the Lord Jesus is a living Saviour who will not leave me or forsake me - whatever happens or whoever opposes me or the ministry. Hence the Lord changes problems into prospects, persecutions into possibilities and tragedies into triumphs.
Geoff
Dr. G.D. James
Emerging out of Hinduism in 1937, Dr. G.D. James has been engaged in full-time evangelistic ministry since 1940 in India, Malaysia, Singapore and Asia. In 1960 the Lord enabled Dr. James to found the Asia Evangelistic Fellowship which is one of the fastest growing third world Missions with 140 national missionaries engaged in dynamic evangelistic, training and church-planting ministry in 15 countries.
One of the top mass evangelists and conference speakers in today's world, Dr. G.D. James has held large-scale evangelistic crusades in Asia and around the world - thrilling his audience with his wit and humour. Recently Dr. James conducted a nation-wide crusade in Hong Kong called "LOVE HONG KONG MISSION" (24th April - 3rd May '87). When more than one million people were exposed to the Gospel through direct preaching, radio, TV and the newspapers and several hundreds of people were counselled for decision and dedication. Dr. James has spoken to seven million people directly and to hundreds of millions on the radio and TV. Little wonder that he is hailed as the "Billy Graham of Asia". A prolific, and articulate writer, Dr. G.D. James has authored 20 books - three of which are best sellers.
{Dr G.D. James passed into the presence of his Lord Jesus several years ago}
OUR OMNIPRESENT FATHER
It happened on one memorable night in July 1937 when I was studying at a Christian School in South India. I was reading from Isaiah Chapter 53 in my Tamil Bible when I was struck by a miraculous vision of Jesus Christ as if He was dying for me there and then. The misunderstandings and misgivings I had entertained about Christianity vanished. I was more than convinced that the Lord Jesus Christ was the Saviour of the world and my Saviour. With my eyes stung with tears, I knelt down and surrendered myself to Jesus.
During school vacation, I went and shared with my parents and other relatives' this most thrilling and exciting experience. As Hindus for generations, they were shocked and were furiously angry because they believed that I had disgraced them by accepting what they dubbed a 'foreign religion.' They gave me two options: either to give up the new religion and enjoy all the privileges of the home or to get out of the family for good lest I should be killed by one of them.
Confusion and perplexity throbbed at my seventeen year-old heart. Just then the words of the Lord Jesus came alive in full force: "I am with you always - even to the end of the age" (Matthew 28:20). Infused by a new courage, I left home that very midnight when everybody was asleep -- armed with my precious Bible and tracts in my shoulder-bag. With the Lord's help, when I had completed my academic studies after three years, the Lord called me to be a full-time preacher, and after much struggle, I abandoned myself to the Master, Jesus Christ, in response to this compelling call.
For a whole year (1940) I travelled from town to town and village to village in South India as an itinerant preacher. No church or Mission supported me. Many a time I went without food and some days the only nourishment I had were a couple of bananas and cold water. But the joy and excitement of the presence of my living Lord Jesus was so real that all the privations and persecutions dwindled to nothing. Again and again my divine Master reassured me that He was with me all the time and that I should not be afraid.
Things began to ease a little on my home front. In 1941, I went back to Malaysia from India as a missionary and, to begin with, gathered my relatives and friends at my father's home and taught them from the four gospels each night for six months. There was a clear evidence that the Lord's presence was with me in this venture. "All authority is given to me," the Lord Jesus assured me “go... and I am with you always, even to the end of the age" (Matthew 28:18-20). The result was fantastic. Some 30 of my close relatives repented from their old sinful ways and trusted Jesus Christ as their personal Saviour and Lord. Mr Ernest Brewerton, a New Zealand Brethren missionary, baptised a few of these new converts and later I baptised the others with the result that a small church was established in the village.
At the end of 1941, the mighty conquering Japanese army descended upon South-east Asia - including Malaysia and Singapore. We were trapped in the doldrums of the Second World War for 3 1/2 years of suffering, privations and constant fear of being clapped into prison or brutally murdered by the Japanese soldiers. In spite of it all, the Lord enabled me to serve him faithfully. Only those locals who were employed by the Japanese or other business companies were safe to eke out a living. For me, to be a full-time preacher in those dreadful years was not only economically hard, but also highly dangerous, because all young men who did not have an 'employment certificate' were arrested and dispatched to Siam (now Thailand) to build the infamous 'death railway.' The Lord's words of assurance, "I am with you" and His conscious presence with me and my wife, Rose, were very real which empowered us to face each day in faith and confidence.
While conducting evangelistic campaigns in the major cities of India, Malaysia and Indonesia, there were occasions when some religious fanatics plotted to kill me or issued death-threats, but the Lord Jesus wonderfully protected me. In two cities - one in Indonesia and another in India - the leaders who carefully strategised to attack us were miraculously converted and their followers ran away. When the challenge came for me to speak to 30,000 to 70,000 people in India, Indonesia and Korea, I was filled with fear and trepidation but again the Lord's assurance armed me with fresh courage and zest. Hundreds of people received Christ as their Saviour at these mammoth crusades.
At the invitation of churches in Singapore and Malaysia. I conducted evangelistic campaigns with abounding blessing. Financially, I was better supported than some Western missionaries. In 1960 while recovering from a heart attack, the Lord very powerfully gave me the vision to start the Malaysia Evangelistic Fellowship, later known as the Asia Evangelistic Fellowship. This brought much persecution and affliction. A cruel web of conspiracy was engineered by a couple of missionaries who influenced the leadership of our church. The result was that the level of our financial support dropped considerably. We had six young children to feed and faced great agony. The gentle, healing words of the Lord Jesus were again heard "I am with you... don't be afraid." The Lord worked some miracles and vindicated us. After three years, our oppressors' gossips were proved wrong to the Christian public and things began to improve. The Asia Evangelistic Fellowship has been much blessed by the Lord that we now have more than 110 national workers engaged in dynamic evangelistic and missionary work in 15 countries. Those who did their utmost to destroy the Mission are all gone, but the Mission which the Lord established is growing from strength to strength.
Satanic attacks were unleashed against me in various ways: sometimes one's own loved ones and close friends hindering the ministry for ostensibly 'good reasons.' At times some 'Christian' leaders concocted false accusations against me, but my Lord and Master whispered "I am with you; the servant is not greater than his Master", strengthened me to go on in the Lord's Rescue Mission of depopulating hell! The Lord also equipped me with three most powerful weapons to use against my enemies - love, prayer and forgiveness, before which my most formidable foes fell flat, disarmed and in disarray.
The greatest lesson I have ever learned in all these 55 years of my ministry as the servant of the Most High God is that the Lord Jesus is a living Saviour who will not leave me or forsake me - whatever happens or whoever opposes me or the ministry. Hence the Lord changes problems into prospects, persecutions into possibilities and tragedies into triumphs.
Wednesday, 12 November 2008
Hungry in the Desert - Part Seven (final)
Now on the first day of Unleavened Bread the disciples came to Jesus, saying, "Where will you have us prepare for you to eat the Passover?" He said, "Go into the city to a certain man and say to him, 'The Teacher says, My time is at hand. I will keep the Passover at your house with my disciples.'" And the disciples did as Jesus had directed them, and they prepared the Passover.
When it was evening, he reclined at table with the twelve. And as they were eating, he said, "Truly, I say to you, one of you will betray me." And they were very sorrowful and began to say to him one after another, "Is it I, Lord?" He answered, "He who has dipped his hand in the dish with me will betray me. The Son of Man goes as it is written of him, but woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed! It would have been better for that man if he had not been born." Judas, who would betray him, answered, "Is it I, Rabbi?" He said to him, "You have said so."
Now as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and after blessing it broke it and gave it to the disciples, and said, "Take, eat; this is my body." And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he gave it to them, saying, "Drink of it, all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. I tell you I will not drink again of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom."
[Matthew 26:17-29, ESV]
We conclude this “Hungry in the Desert” series with a feast in a city.
Sharing a meal together was very significant in Jesus’ time. “Being welcomed at a table for the purpose of eating food with another person had become a ceremony richly symbolic of friendship, intimacy and unity.” [S.S. Bartchy] The ceremony revealed where someone fit in the social pecking order of the village, town or city. One’s position around the table was important. Who was invited to the table was very significant. The Pharisees were disgusted that Jesus would eat with tax collectors and sinners.
[“Table Fellowship” in Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels, S.S. Bartchy]
The Passover was the most significant meal of the year. It was a meal to remember the great deliverance Yahweh brought to his people when they fled slavery in Egypt and became the people of God.
This was Jesus’ last Passover on earth. He wanted to share it with those closest to him. He used it to institute the remembrance feast. Through this feast, his followers would for generation after generation (unbroken now for 2000 years) remember the work he was about to do on the cross at Calvary. Just as Israel had been delivered from slavery and formed into the people of God thousands of years earlier, Jesus’ life and his death on the cross would now deliver the new people of God from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of God.
And yet, amidst this fellowship and significant commissioning, was a traitor. The instructions about where the Passover would be celebrated were cryptic. Many commentators suggest
this was to keep Judas from betraying Jesus too early. The whole middle paragraph of this account is taken up with the question, “Who will betray Jesus?”
“…betrayal or unfaithfulness toward anyone with whom one had shared the table was viewed as particularly reprehensible.”[S.S. Bartchy]
Jesus knew who would betray him, and he still shared this meal with him. He still dipped his and in the dish with him. His table fellowship was so radical it included his betrayer. He is the ultimate model of grace.
I have celebrated the Lord’s Supper hundreds of times. At times I have done it so frequently it was in danger of becoming a routine instead of a remembrance. At other times it seemed so infrequent that its message was stale. But I definitely remember those times when the church I was in was experiencing conflict. Jesus’ words in Matthew 5:23-24 sat at the front of my brain. I wondered how those sitting there could think they were able to take the bread and the wine in good conscience. And then I remembered 1 Corinthians 11:28 and started wondering whether I had something against them!
Unresolved conflict within the body of Christ makes it impossible to worship him properly. Too often we let little things simmer along underneath the surface. They may seem too small to mention, but they are too big to forget. Our relationship with each other is tarnished. It isn’t as innocent as it once was. We are hiding something from each other. There is a barrier. We are protective or ashamed. Let’s reflect on how Paul describes this scenario:
For, in the first place, when you come together as a church, I hear that there are divisions among you…
For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, "This is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me." In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me." For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.
Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord. Let a person examine himself, then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself.
[1 Corinthians 11:18, 23-30, ESV]
In this passage, Paul is very concerned about the divisions within the church. They are divisions along social lines – between the wealthy and the poor. These are the very divisions that Jesus broke down with his example of table fellowship. Through the provision of his own body and blood, everyone is now equal in the great wedding feast of the kingdom. The remembrance feast is a foretaste of that future reality. And if anyone participates in the remembrance feast without “discerning the body”, that is, without accepting that radical inclusiveness based only on the grace of God, what are they really celebrating? It has just become a ritual or a social club.
If someone sits in church week after week with an unresolved issue between them and someone else, they are not discerning the body. They have rejected someone or refused to love someone that Christ himself has accepted and loved. How can any participation in the communal worship of the church be anything but a sham?
I have seen taking communion become a matter of pride (“I do this, but they don’t”) or routine (“But I have always done this”) or selfishness (“But this is MY church”) or shame (“If I don’t do it, people will KNOW that something is wrong”). In each of these situations, the focus shifted from Jesus to themselves. They were comparing themselves to someone else. They were thinking about what they wanted to do. They were claiming their right. Or they were concerned about their status in the community. They forgot that Jesus took the nature of a servant. They forgot that Jesus said, “Not my will, but yours be done”. They forgot that Jesus emptied himself of all his rights on their behalf. They forgot that Jesus bore all the shame and disgrace while hanging naked, beaten and bloodied on the cross.
Jesus table fellowship was so radical that it included his betrayer. At the end of 1 Corinthians, the apostle Paul marvels that Jesus would include him, a persecutor of the church, in his kingdom. The truth is that each of us has rebelled against Jesus. Each of us has betrayed him. And yet we are also included at his table. In fact, Jesus concludes his instruction about communion looking forward to the consummation of the kingdom where he will share the great wedding with all those who were redeemed by his broken body and shed blood.
Those of us who began the journey hungering and thirsting in the desert will ultimately rejoice with Jesus in the greatest banquet of all at the end of the age. Whenever we may feel dry or discouraged or distant from God, let us cling to the hope, just as Jesus did. Let us cling to the vision of the feast.
When it was evening, he reclined at table with the twelve. And as they were eating, he said, "Truly, I say to you, one of you will betray me." And they were very sorrowful and began to say to him one after another, "Is it I, Lord?" He answered, "He who has dipped his hand in the dish with me will betray me. The Son of Man goes as it is written of him, but woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed! It would have been better for that man if he had not been born." Judas, who would betray him, answered, "Is it I, Rabbi?" He said to him, "You have said so."
Now as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and after blessing it broke it and gave it to the disciples, and said, "Take, eat; this is my body." And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he gave it to them, saying, "Drink of it, all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. I tell you I will not drink again of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom."
[Matthew 26:17-29, ESV]
We conclude this “Hungry in the Desert” series with a feast in a city.
Sharing a meal together was very significant in Jesus’ time. “Being welcomed at a table for the purpose of eating food with another person had become a ceremony richly symbolic of friendship, intimacy and unity.” [S.S. Bartchy] The ceremony revealed where someone fit in the social pecking order of the village, town or city. One’s position around the table was important. Who was invited to the table was very significant. The Pharisees were disgusted that Jesus would eat with tax collectors and sinners.
“One distinctive feature of Jesus’ ministry was his practice of radically inclusive and non-hierarchical table fellowship as a central strategy in his announcement and redefinition of the inbreaking rule of God. In doing so, Jesus challenged the inherent exclusivism and status consciousness of accepted social and religious custom and presented a living parable of a renewed Israel.”
[“Table Fellowship” in Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels, S.S. Bartchy]
The Passover was the most significant meal of the year. It was a meal to remember the great deliverance Yahweh brought to his people when they fled slavery in Egypt and became the people of God.
This was Jesus’ last Passover on earth. He wanted to share it with those closest to him. He used it to institute the remembrance feast. Through this feast, his followers would for generation after generation (unbroken now for 2000 years) remember the work he was about to do on the cross at Calvary. Just as Israel had been delivered from slavery and formed into the people of God thousands of years earlier, Jesus’ life and his death on the cross would now deliver the new people of God from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of God.
And yet, amidst this fellowship and significant commissioning, was a traitor. The instructions about where the Passover would be celebrated were cryptic. Many commentators suggest
this was to keep Judas from betraying Jesus too early. The whole middle paragraph of this account is taken up with the question, “Who will betray Jesus?”
“…betrayal or unfaithfulness toward anyone with whom one had shared the table was viewed as particularly reprehensible.”[S.S. Bartchy]
Jesus knew who would betray him, and he still shared this meal with him. He still dipped his and in the dish with him. His table fellowship was so radical it included his betrayer. He is the ultimate model of grace.
I have celebrated the Lord’s Supper hundreds of times. At times I have done it so frequently it was in danger of becoming a routine instead of a remembrance. At other times it seemed so infrequent that its message was stale. But I definitely remember those times when the church I was in was experiencing conflict. Jesus’ words in Matthew 5:23-24 sat at the front of my brain. I wondered how those sitting there could think they were able to take the bread and the wine in good conscience. And then I remembered 1 Corinthians 11:28 and started wondering whether I had something against them!
Unresolved conflict within the body of Christ makes it impossible to worship him properly. Too often we let little things simmer along underneath the surface. They may seem too small to mention, but they are too big to forget. Our relationship with each other is tarnished. It isn’t as innocent as it once was. We are hiding something from each other. There is a barrier. We are protective or ashamed. Let’s reflect on how Paul describes this scenario:
For, in the first place, when you come together as a church, I hear that there are divisions among you…
For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, "This is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me." In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me." For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.
Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord. Let a person examine himself, then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself.
[1 Corinthians 11:18, 23-30, ESV]
In this passage, Paul is very concerned about the divisions within the church. They are divisions along social lines – between the wealthy and the poor. These are the very divisions that Jesus broke down with his example of table fellowship. Through the provision of his own body and blood, everyone is now equal in the great wedding feast of the kingdom. The remembrance feast is a foretaste of that future reality. And if anyone participates in the remembrance feast without “discerning the body”, that is, without accepting that radical inclusiveness based only on the grace of God, what are they really celebrating? It has just become a ritual or a social club.
If someone sits in church week after week with an unresolved issue between them and someone else, they are not discerning the body. They have rejected someone or refused to love someone that Christ himself has accepted and loved. How can any participation in the communal worship of the church be anything but a sham?
I have seen taking communion become a matter of pride (“I do this, but they don’t”) or routine (“But I have always done this”) or selfishness (“But this is MY church”) or shame (“If I don’t do it, people will KNOW that something is wrong”). In each of these situations, the focus shifted from Jesus to themselves. They were comparing themselves to someone else. They were thinking about what they wanted to do. They were claiming their right. Or they were concerned about their status in the community. They forgot that Jesus took the nature of a servant. They forgot that Jesus said, “Not my will, but yours be done”. They forgot that Jesus emptied himself of all his rights on their behalf. They forgot that Jesus bore all the shame and disgrace while hanging naked, beaten and bloodied on the cross.
Jesus table fellowship was so radical that it included his betrayer. At the end of 1 Corinthians, the apostle Paul marvels that Jesus would include him, a persecutor of the church, in his kingdom. The truth is that each of us has rebelled against Jesus. Each of us has betrayed him. And yet we are also included at his table. In fact, Jesus concludes his instruction about communion looking forward to the consummation of the kingdom where he will share the great wedding with all those who were redeemed by his broken body and shed blood.
Those of us who began the journey hungering and thirsting in the desert will ultimately rejoice with Jesus in the greatest banquet of all at the end of the age. Whenever we may feel dry or discouraged or distant from God, let us cling to the hope, just as Jesus did. Let us cling to the vision of the feast.
Monday, 27 October 2008
McLaren & Carson Essay
Write a paper of analysis of and response to McLaren, GO, and Carson, BCEC.
Thoughtfully read the following pages in each book:
McLaren, GO, pp.70-101, and 150 pages of your choice from pp.105-297;
Carson, BCEC, pp.45-182, and 188-234.
Your paper should include the following three parts:
Describe – do not evaluate – the basic arguments and the most compelling major points of McLaren, GO, and Carson, BCEC (approx. 3.5 pages);
Evaluate the most significant similarities and differences between McLaren and Carson and your beliefs and approach to the Christian life (this is a three-way comparison and evaluation – McLaren, Carson and you) (approx. 4 pages);
Describe at least three ways in which the conclusions you draw from your evaluation (b.[2] above) might influence your personal practice of piety and/or your practice of ministry and/or the way your church engages in corporate worship and/or the way your church engages in ministry (approx. 2.5 pages).
Word Count: 3,136
Introduction
Brian McLaren’s “Generous Orthodoxy[1]” is a description of the author’s own encounter with or journey through various faith traditions. It functions as his “confession” or “manifesto”[2]. He calls others to take it up as their creed also. Identified as an influential leader within the emerging church movement, McLaren writes with warmth and insight into many issues of contemporary Christianity. He says,
“The real purpose of this book, and much of my writing and preaching, is to
try to help us realign our religion and our lives at least a little bit
more with that Someone.”[3]
It seems appropriate to point out that the emerging church movement (ECM), as represented by McLaren, has made very little impact on the Christian community in Sydney, Australia. After reading “The Younger Evangelicals” by Dr. Robert Webber[4] and McLaren’s “A New Kind of Christian[5]” several years ago, it appeared to me that the ECM was dependent on finding a significantly large community of people who identified with the Christian faith but were in some way disaffected by the current expressions of the (particularly evangelical) church. In a community like Sydney where only 3% of the population are evangelicals, approximately 3% of children attend church and 60% of the general population do not even have a friend who attends church, the ECM seems mostly irrelevant. The most popular expression of the ECM in Australia labels itself the “missional church” movement, as typified by Alan Hirsch and Michael Frost, but even it is small.
The second of the two books to be discussed, Don Carson’s “Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church[6]” is the author’s analysis and response to this movement. Carson is an influential evangelical New Testament theologian who has also written extensively on the areas of hermeneutics and post-modernism[7]. Here he summarises some of his other writing into a more popular form, then engages with two examples of the ECM and concludes with some theological and Scriptural summaries.
Generous Orthodoxy
McLaren’s most basic argument is that reality, especially the reality of who Jesus is, is not adequately captured by any single expression of the Christian religion. In Chapter 1, entitled “The Seven Jesuses I Have Known”, he describes his own journey from conversion in a conservative Fundamentalist faith tradition, through Pentecostalism, to his present “unfinished” position. Along the way he has had encounters with Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Liberal Protestantism, Anabaptists and Liberation Theology. This chapter is a good summary of his whole approach. McLaren seeks to show the Jesus presented in these traditions as different perspectives to the same answer, rather than alternative answers to the same question. The sixteen chapters in Part Two of his book follow the same approach – highlighting various aspects of each tradition or expression that he has encountered and found helpful for describing a “generous orthodoxy”.
McLaren is concerned that “orthodoxy” has been used define who is “in” and who is “out” of a particular group – including the group of those who are going to heaven. And that “to be orthodox [now] one has to have right opinions about far more things than one needed to have back then, when having a right attitude toward Jesus was about all it took.[8]” Rather than focus on where different traditions may have erred, McLaren seeks to find positive examples in sixteen different traditions that support his view of who Jesus is.
The most compelling part of McLaren’s book is where he argues that by combining the various images that tribes within Christianity hold to we may end up with a hologram: “a richer, multidimensional vision of Jesus”[9]. The warmth of his appeal is expressed in his desire to recover the “simple, integrated richness I knew of [Jesus] as a little boy.[10]”
McLaren identifies thirteen positives he would draw from these traditions: the outward thrust to the whole world of the missional tradition; the passion for making a difference of the evangelical tradition; the faithful remnant idea of the Protestant tradition; the heroism of being post-liberal/conservative; the imaginativeness of the mystical tradition; the (meta-?) narrative of the Biblical tradition; the immediate experience of God in the charismatic/contemplative tradition; the commitment to reformation in the fundamentalist/Calvin tradition; the practice of spiritual disciplines and spirituality in the Anabaptist and Anglican traditions; the spiritual formation of lay people in the Wesleyan tradition; the sense of celebration in the Catholic tradition; positive engagement with all of creation of the Green movement; and the willingness to engage with those of different faiths by incarnational Christians. He also expresses such concern at Christians’ unwillingness to repent that it makes him depressed-yet-hopeful. He has a vision of an emerging alternative understanding of the kingdom of God and the unfinished work of the coming fullness of God’s kingdom.
Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church
In contrast with McLaren’s largely personal account, Carson seeks to objectively survey the ECM and provide a “mature assessment[11]”. His approach is to develop a profile of the movement, describe its strengths and weaknesses, critique the movement, especially through analysing two representative books (one being McLaren’s Generous Orthodoxy) and then provide some Scriptural and theological context for evaluating the movement.
In an obvious effort to connect with a popular audience, Carson does disclose his own experiences and use simpler language than is usual in his academic tomes. He admits that neither the emerging church nor postmodernism are simple, uni-focal movements. Carson’s survey of the ECM relies heavily on published writings of representative leaders (making little reference to the plethora of emerging church material published on websites or blogs). Using these writings he provides a clear summary of the journey that various individuals have been through. From these profiles he identifies its main characteristic as protest against traditional, evangelical (often fundamentalist) churches, seeker-sensitive mega-churches, and modernism in general.
Carson does well in summarising the strengths of the movement: its understanding of the way the culture has changed, its desire for authentic expressions of faith, its acknowledgement of personal perspective, its strong desire to engage with those outside of the faith, and its willingness to explore connections with older Christian traditions.
Carson’s critique of the ECM’s weaknesses is this writer at his sharpest. Those who are attracted to McLaren’s warm winsomeness would be offended by and appalled at Carson’s cold scalpel. His vast academic background gives him the grounding and authority to dissect the arguments of the leaders of the movement. He summarises his criticism into three main points (with a fourth given as a particular example of the three). First, their understanding of modernism is reductionistic and wooden. Secondly, they mock the worst of those they are critiquing rather than providing a balanced assessment of the whole. Thirdly, the ECM’s assessment of modernism and the church under Christendom is theologically shallow because no viewpoint or system is all good or all bad. He also finds its assessment intellectually incoherent because it finds value in anything but modernism.
Slicing through their evaluation of post-modernism, Carson accuses the leaders of the emerging church movement of having labelled a whole range of social changes under the one pop-culture heading of post-modernism.
The most compelling point Carson makes about “Generous Orthodoxy” is simply that the people described by the labels that McLaren uses to head his chapters have little resemblance to the pictures he paints of them. For example, the most defining characteristic of an evangelical is not their passion. McLaren is revealed as seeking to use his own personal encounters with some (often fringe) expression of a faith tradition as evidence to support his own conclusions. Nowhere is this truer than in his depiction of the Roman Catholic Church[12]. McLaren extrapolates from his chance encounter with a woman in a garden across the whole Roman Catholic Church. But, Carson argues, he ignores the whole official teaching and doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church. The expression of the church in a single Californian church garden, or even in the whole of North America does not accurately reflect the Roman Catholic Church as a whole. Carson wishes that McLaren would transcend his own North American heritage by examining both the doctrinal foundations and the expressions of that doctrine in places such as Poland (or, might I add, Sydney). Carson also suggests that McLaren could have made the same point using positive examples from conservative evangelical churches, rather than other traditions.
Similarities and Differences between McLaren, Carson and myself
Like McLaren and many in the ECM, I was raised in a fundamentalist Christian family and church (Plymouth Brethren). The five fundamentals[13] were deeply held convictions by the leaders of our church. The example of mature believers’ own personal commitment was instrumental in shaping my own faith. Their commitment to knowing the Bible, sharing their faith, and having their lives conformed to the Word of God informed the way I lived my Christian life.
Similarly to McLaren, I also encountered Pentecostalism briefly before being more thoroughly influenced by Campus Crusade’s campus ministry. My church leaders had warned me the university environment could threaten my faith and they encouraged me to join a Christian group on campus. Campus Crusade matched my values of commitment to a strong personal devotional life, taking the initiative in personal evangelism and dependence on the Holy Spirit. I became convinced of the priority of the Great Commission.
In my experience, the hard-edge of my fundamentalist church was softened by the heart of its leaders for people. Their passion to make a difference, labelled as an evangelical strength by McLaren[14], moved them progressively forward. Still, a literalistic interpretation of the opening chapters of Genesis and a comprehensive, rigid eschatological scheme made engagement with academic thought at the university difficult.
The strongest campus ministry in Sydney (AFES affiliated with IFES worldwide) is resourced mainly by Reformed evangelical churches, mostly from the Anglican[15] denomination. Their focus on expository Bible teaching, based in a sound Biblical theology, significantly impacted my engagement with the Bible. It took me a long time to reconcile their high view of Scripture with their overt a-millennial and theistic evolutionary interpretation. Carson is a regularly featured speaker at events organised by Sydney’s Reformed evangelical community[16] and so his teaching has influenced my thinking, both directly and indirectly.
However, it was not just my experience in Australia that shaped my thinking. Through Campus Crusade I have been exposed to ministries and leaders from several different nations – including India, Philippines, Korea, Singapore, Japan and Taiwan. In the late 1990’s, I had the privilege of serving with Campus Crusade at the University of Colorado in Boulder for 12 months. I was able to experience church and ministry in a culture far more Christian than my own. Therefore I consider myself sufficiently familiar with McLaren’s context to be able to assess it, while having enough external experiences to allow me an outsider’s perspective.
McLaren’s assessment of the state of much of the church in North America appears fairly accurate. He diagnoses the problems of the church – its firm attachment to a polemical expression of truth or a corporatisation of mega-ministry – accurately and from experience[17]. The disconnection between the culture of churches that focus on the Bible and the increasingly biblically illiterate, unchurched culture is the critical issue.
However, his proposed solution would create a major problem. As Carson writes, in his efforts to be culturally relevant, McLaren has buried the simple gospel message so deep that no one listening to him would be able to discern it. The gospel is a simple, yet profound message. A child can understand it and share it, and yet academic theologians can write thesis after thesis and never plumb its depths. The most personally significant thing I learnt from Campus Crusade was (using the “door to door sales techniques[18]”) how to articulate in clear and simple words the faith I had grown up with and adopted as my own. What I have learned from my study of theology has been the profoundness those simple words seek to convey.
I agree with Carson that emerging church leaders need to work harder at developing theology that is truly biblical. And I agree with McLaren that biblical churches need to apply Scripture to culture more profoundly. In contrast with both, I would also add that a significant role the church needs to emphasise is to expose greater proportions of the community to biblical truth regularly and in an ongoing way. We cannot just strengthen the theological understanding of the church in our present culture. And we cannot just seek to make the expressions of the church more relevant to the culture we are part of. We must engage our communities with the agenda that flows from our theology, not just in response to the popular issues of the day.
Carson’s emphasis on biblical theology[19] ensures that his agenda for engaging with culture is most influenced by Scripture. In contrast, McLaren’s agenda seems to be largely driven by experience. While acknowledging that each of us is influenced by our social location[20], I agree with Carson’s approach: that we cannot know anything omnisciently, but we can know truth accurately, at least that which is revealed to us through Scripture. An appropriate response to our limitations or pre-understandings is to engage with other interpretations of Scripture from outside our own culture, location or time. As we become aware of other interpretations and assess them in the light of the whole of Scripture, we will move asymptotically toward accurately understanding the truth of the Scripture.
Carson focuses on the central failings of the ECM to critique culture and stand for Biblical truth. But he fails to address the underlying motivation for those engaged in the movement – to create authentic expressions of missional community in our contemporary culture. The lone exception is when he holds up Redeemer Presbyterian Church (RPC) as a positive example of a church that has effectively engaged with a post-modern generation and multiplied itself in church plants[21]. But even then he admits that RPC would not identify itself with the ECM.
While disputing over some key issues, Carson misses the main point. We now read the Bible from the perspective of post-Christendom, informed by the issues of mission to pluralistic communities, community formation with increasingly broken individuals and kingdom-thinking amidst tribal globalism. Its own meta-narrative provides the drive for the formation of missional communities. For example, God’s design for a creation stewarded by responsible human beings, who are commissioned to extend order across a chaotic, untamed world, is the impetus for those missional communities who see their mandate as more holistic than saving individuals from a future hell. Similarly, Jesus entrusted the witness of his unique and universal act of redemption to a community of believers. The effectiveness of the ECM to form missional communities – that faithfully extend the transformational good news of the kingdom to the world – must be the main point to be assessed.
Influence on Practice
McLaren’s description of his experiences through various faith traditions confirms my commitment to self-awareness concerning my own pre-understandings and the biases that come from my own background. In evaluating where these life experiences have impacted me most, I need to subject them to the scrutiny of Scripture. I need to actively seek out and genuinely engage with those whose background is different to mine, to see how their experience informs mine. The access to different opinions and experiences is virtually limitless via the internet. Intentionally seeking to humbly interact with ancient commentators, developing world believers and Christian leaders of different traditions will only further my own self-awareness.
Beyond previous life experiences, any present non-rational engagement can influence my thinking about God and the Bible. McLaren models this with his story about the conservation of turtles. My influences may be positive or negative. I am pre-disposed to endorse the music I enjoy. I am more likely to affirm the views of people with winsome personalities than of those with fractious personalities. The beauty of a sunset may move my heart to worship God. I will seek to be aware of how non-rational influences shape my awareness of God’s truth, and how I may legitimately incorporate them into my ministry. An example of this is found in 1 Peter 3:1, where the apostle admonishes wives to influence their unbelieving husbands by their deeds – without a (rational) word! Another is Paul’s own example in 1 Corinthians 9 of identifying with various cultures in order to win them to Christ. An example from my own life was a visit to a cemetery to reflect on the brevity of life.
Finally, the awareness of the shift in culture from Christendom to pluralistic, globalised post-modernism should influence my ministry and church to be intentionally missional. McLaren presents a diagram where, “[Jesus] creates the church as a missional community to join him in his mission of saving the world. He invites me to be part of this community to experience his saving love and participate in it.[22]” No longer is mission something done by people sent overseas, supported from a home church. Rather, it is the experience of each Christian every day. The vast numbers of unchurched people in my community will never be reached by holding slicker, fancier, better resourced Sunday services. The question we must wrestle with is, “how can we support the average, quiet Christian in their everyday activities, so they can be an effective witness for Christ wherever they go?” Part of our answer will include the training and encouragement of individual Christians. However, our answer must also include propagation of the building block concepts of the gospel throughout our society through the use of the media, creative arts and academic world so that people are prepared to hear the gospel shared by average Christians.
Conclusion
McLaren’s book reflects his personal journey through and encounters with various faith traditions. His major concern is that dogmatic presentations of the Christian religion by conservative fundamentalists do not reflect the reality informed by our new cultural context. He proposes a new “generous orthodoxy”. Carson evaluates the emerging church movement, and McLaren particularly, in light of historical understanding, cultural analysis and, ultimately, Scriptural truth and finds them lacking in objective analysis and theological development. He exhorts the leaders of the emerging church movement to be more balanced – less critical of the conservative evangelical church and more critical of post-modernism.
In life and ministry, the impetus for engagement with this new cultural context must be driven from the Scriptures. Those Scriptures must be understood in the context of a whole world of perspectives. Still we can know truth accurately, if not completely. The mission of God must be expressed by the people of God through missional communities who holistically engage the whole world with good news of the kingdom.
ENDNOTES
[1] McLaren, Brian D. A Generous Orthodoxy. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2004. [GO]
[2] GO, back cover.
[3] GO p.26, where the “Someone” is identified something in the church that he loves, i.e. Jesus.
[4] Webber, Robert. E. The Younger Evangelicals. Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2002.
[5] McLaren, Brian D. A New Kind of Christian. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2001.
[6] Carson, D.A. Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2005. [BCEC]
[7] For example, Carson, D.D. The Gagging of God. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996.
[8] GO, p.33
[9] GO, p.74
[10] GO p.73
[11] BCEC, back cover.
[12] BCEC p.172-177
[13] GO p.220
[14] GO p.128-130
[15] Anglican is the equivalent to Episcopalian. The Anglican Diocese of Sydney is one of the few thoroughly Reformed evangelical Anglican dioceses in the world. Their seminary, Moore College, produces many works in the field of Biblical theology.
[16] Two of Sydney’s leading evangelical writers, Philip D Jensen and Tony Payne, feature in “Telling the Truth – Evangelizing Post-Moderns” edited by Carson, published by Zondervan 2000.
[17] Carson probably agrees with McLaren’s assessment of many fundamentalist churches and other expressions of so-called “evangelicalism”, yet he never admits as much.
[18] GO p.132
[19] Carson DA, “Systematic Theology and Biblical Theology” in New Dictionary of Biblical Theology Downer’s Grove: IVP, 2003 p.89 provides an example of Carson’s particular emphasis in biblical theology.
[20] BCEC, p.51
[21] BCEC, p.55-56.
[22] GO, p.118.
Wednesday, 15 October 2008
Hungry in the Desert - Part Six
And again Jesus spoke to them in parables, saying, "The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding feast for his son, and sent his servants to call those who were invited to the wedding feast, but they would not come. Again he sent other servants, saying, 'Tell those who are invited, See, I have prepared my dinner, my oxen and my fat calves have been slaughtered, and everything is ready. Come to the wedding feast.' But they paid no attention and went off, one to his farm, another to his business, while the rest seized his servants, treated them shamefully, and killed them. The king was angry, and he sent his troops and destroyed those murderers and burned their city. Then he said to his servants, 'The wedding feast is ready, but those invited were not worthy. Go therefore to the main roads and invite to the wedding feast as many as you find.' And those servants went out into the roads and gathered all whom they found, both bad and good. So the wedding hall was filled with guests.
"But when the king came in to look at the guests, he saw there a man who had no wedding garment. And he said to him, 'Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding garment?' And he was speechless. Then the king said to the attendants, 'Bind him hand and foot and cast him into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.' For many are called, but few are chosen."
[Matthew 22:1-14, ESV]
What does this parable have to do with being “hungry in the desert”? After all, Jesus spoke this parable in the temple in downtown Jerusalem, not in the wilderness. It was directed against the Chief Priests and Pharisees whose hearts were hardened against him, not to eager followers. It concerns the most exciting of celebrations – a (royal) wedding – not a famine. Yet it speaks to us as we experience spiritual dryness and as we pursue the kingdom of God.
The first thing to note is that Jesus repeatedly uses this picture of a wedding feast as a description of the kingdom of God. We are often tempted to think of the kingdom of God as a poor and needy thing – something we need to prop up with our giving and our labour. This is especially true when we are experiencing spiritual dryness ourselves. Everything we do, every act of service, every prayer, even cracking the cover on our Bible, feels like a chore. But this isn’t true! It is a fabulous feast, a celebration. It is not dour. It’s not a long drawn out meal dominated by a dreary, and slightly embarrassing, speech made by tipsy Uncle Bob. It’s not an eight hour TV special with exclusive pictures licensed to a particular tabloid. It is more like the story from the 1987 Danish film “Babette’s Feast”.
Babette’s Feast
The struggle to follow Jesus here and now may cloud our perspective of the true nature of the kingdom of God. We can extrapolate our present experience into an endless future and fall into despair. But the beautiful picture the Bible presents of a glorious royal wedding feast awaiting the guests should draw us forward. The true destiny of those who pursue Christ, who pursue the kingdom of God here and now, through times of abundance and spiritual drought, is to arrive at a celebration when the kingdom of God is consummated that is beyond imagining.
Anyone who watched the last royal wedding will realise that the money spent on clothing – the wedding dress, the clothes of the attendants, and the guests – and the ceremony, and the feast that follows was extravagant. It was a massive celebration, not just for the family but for the whole nation. And the royal marriage feast of the lamb will cause any earthly royal wedding to pale in comparison.
Read this story from BBC.com about the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer on 29th July 1981:
In comparison we have John’s prophecy,
Then I heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude, like the roar of many waters and like the sound of mighty peals of thunder, crying out, "Hallelujah! For the Lord our God the Almighty reigns. Let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his Bride has made herself ready; it was granted her to clothe herself with fine linen, bright and pure"-- for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints. And the angel said to me, "Write this: Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb." And he said to me, "These are the true words of God."
[Revelation 19:6-10, ESV]
A royal wedding is a major affair. It is a celebration that everyone in the country takes part in, even though only a relative few may be invited to the feast. It carries national and political significance. After all, the reason King Solomon got into so much trouble was because marriage formed the basis of so many of his international alliances. In Jesus’ time the feast was not just a “breakfast”, but a seven or fourteen day marathon of feasting! The point to focus on and remember is that the kingdom of God is a major affair, a celebration, with huge significance for the whole of humanity.
But Jesus’ story is not about the royal wedding feast itself. It is focussed on the invitation to attend the feast. The king’s leading subjects in a city were invited. And they rejected that invitation. This amounted to rejection of the king’s authority, to rebellion. The mistreatment of his messengers was public humiliation of the king. This parable was told, in the first place, against the leaders of the Jews. The nation of Israel had been chosen to be God’s people. Through the prophets they had received lots of advance notice about the coming King. But when the long-awaited Messiah arrived in the form of Jesus, they rejected him. The chosen ones had proven themselves unworthy. The destruction of the city in v.7 must clearly be understood as a prophecy against Jerusalem itself, fulfilled in 70AD.
The invitation is then extended to both “the bad and the good”. This is a reference to the inclusion of the Gentiles. It emphasises the universal or unconditional nature of the kingdom of God. It is not just limited to the Pharisees and other religious leaders. It is not just limited to God’s chosen people, Israel. It is extended universally to all people everywhere. But this had always been God’s intention.
We can jump back to the story of Abraham and review the promise that God gave him,
Now the LORD said to Abram, "Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed."
[Genesis 12:1-3, ESV]
The climax of God’s promise to Abraham was that all the nations (or families) of the earth would be blessed. Abraham, and his descendents - the nation of Israel - were chosen to be the source of blessing to all nations. Their failure to live up to that role, caused by focussing on themselves, led to the hard-heartedness that brought God’s judgement – upon the nation, and upon the leaders in Jesus’ day. What does the selfishness of the people in Jesus’ parable look like? Some were apathetic to the invitation to the feast and just went about their own business. Some were filled with antipathy or hostility to the king and abused his servants and killed them. The Greek word translated as “treating them shamefully” is the word we derive the English word “hubris” from. Hubris means “arrogance” or “insolence”. Both apathy and antipathy brought judgement.
What does apathy look like in today’s society? What does it look like in today’s church? What does it look like in my life?
What does antipathy or arrogance look like in today’s society? What does it look like in today’s church? What does it look like in my life?
After seeing the troops sent in to quash the rebellion among the elite, the general populace are more than willing to attend the king’s sumptuous feast. The invitation is indiscriminate. It was offered to anyone who was walking on the roads through, in or out of town. It was extended to those who were honest, hard-working farmers and to the slimey tax collectors. It included the hard-working wives and the promiscuous prostitutes. It included residents and foreign travellers. Both good and bad were invited to join the celebration. The leaders had proven themselves unworthy. These guests were not presumed to be worthy, they were just invited.
This is helpful for us to remember when we are experiencing a spiritual desert. In Part One we spoke about the frequent encounters with God that his people experienced in the desert. The reason these encounters were so special is because the usual blessings of God are not present in the desert. In fact, the desert or wilderness was usually seen as a place inhabited by evil spirits (c.f. Jesus temptation from Satan in the wilderness, the man possessed by a legion of demons). The desert fathers spoke about how Satan loved to point out their shortcomings, sin and failure during their desert fast. Those of us who wander through a spiritual desert can feel like we are outcasts from God’s kingdom. We can feel unworthy of any spiritual encounter with God. We can experience a heightened awareness of our sin and feel even more distant from God. This parable, with its driving message of the universal, unconditional invitation of the kingdom of God should encourage us to keep pursuing it even when we are most aware of our sin.
The invitation is universal, but it is not unconditional. The second part of this parable makes that clear. The change in tone of the king’s encounter with his guest has caused commentators some confusion. Some think of this as a later story added to the end, or a second parable independent of the first. It definitely makes a different point to the first part of the parable, but it complements the first point. The second point is that to be accepted at the wedding feast, the guests must accept the king’s gracious provision of wedding clothes.
The man spotted by the king must have refused the garments the king supplied to all the other guests. He thought that the invitation was all that was needed. He considered himself worthy of attendance, just because he had been invited. He didn’t act as though the wedding feast a special occasion. He ignored the fact that it meant submitting everything he had to the king. To refuse the king’s offer of appropriate attire was an act of “hubris” too.
In the same way, all are invited to enter the kingdom of God. There is no one who is excluded, unwelcome or left out. But accepting the invitation means surrendering ourselves totally to the Father and accepting all that he has provided for us through the death and resurrection of Jesus. It is a response of faith, demonstrated through obedience.
There is a difference between experiencing a spiritual desert and being cast out into the place of outer darkness. In the desert we are humbled, seeking after God’s righteousness. I have been there – aware of my sin and yearning for God’s empowering presence. In the outer darkness we are filled with angry hubris and mourning at our lost opportunity. I have seen a friend go there – angry at God, filled with darkness, yet still shaking his fist and arguing that God can’t exist. What is the condition of my heart?
"But when the king came in to look at the guests, he saw there a man who had no wedding garment. And he said to him, 'Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding garment?' And he was speechless. Then the king said to the attendants, 'Bind him hand and foot and cast him into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.' For many are called, but few are chosen."
[Matthew 22:1-14, ESV]
What does this parable have to do with being “hungry in the desert”? After all, Jesus spoke this parable in the temple in downtown Jerusalem, not in the wilderness. It was directed against the Chief Priests and Pharisees whose hearts were hardened against him, not to eager followers. It concerns the most exciting of celebrations – a (royal) wedding – not a famine. Yet it speaks to us as we experience spiritual dryness and as we pursue the kingdom of God.
The first thing to note is that Jesus repeatedly uses this picture of a wedding feast as a description of the kingdom of God. We are often tempted to think of the kingdom of God as a poor and needy thing – something we need to prop up with our giving and our labour. This is especially true when we are experiencing spiritual dryness ourselves. Everything we do, every act of service, every prayer, even cracking the cover on our Bible, feels like a chore. But this isn’t true! It is a fabulous feast, a celebration. It is not dour. It’s not a long drawn out meal dominated by a dreary, and slightly embarrassing, speech made by tipsy Uncle Bob. It’s not an eight hour TV special with exclusive pictures licensed to a particular tabloid. It is more like the story from the 1987 Danish film “Babette’s Feast”.
Babette’s Feast
“In 19th century Denmark, two adult sisters live in an isolated village with their father, who is the honoured pastor of a small Protestant church that is almost a sect unto itself. Although they each are presented with a real opportunity to leave the village, the sisters choose to stay with their father, to serve to him and their church. After some years, a French woman refugee, Babette, arrives at their door, begs them to take her in, and commits herself to work for them as aid/housekeeper/cook. Sometime after their father dies, the sisters decide to hold a dinner to commemorate the 100th anniversary of his birth. Babette experiences unexpected good fortune and implores the sisters to allow her to take charge of the preparation of the meal. Although they are secretly concerned about what Babette, a Catholic and a foreigner, might do, the sisters allow her to go ahead. Babette [who had been a famous chef in Paris] then prepares the feast of a lifetime for the members of the tiny church and an important gentleman related to one of them.”[Babette’s Feast, http://www.imdb.com/]
The struggle to follow Jesus here and now may cloud our perspective of the true nature of the kingdom of God. We can extrapolate our present experience into an endless future and fall into despair. But the beautiful picture the Bible presents of a glorious royal wedding feast awaiting the guests should draw us forward. The true destiny of those who pursue Christ, who pursue the kingdom of God here and now, through times of abundance and spiritual drought, is to arrive at a celebration when the kingdom of God is consummated that is beyond imagining.
Anyone who watched the last royal wedding will realise that the money spent on clothing – the wedding dress, the clothes of the attendants, and the guests – and the ceremony, and the feast that follows was extravagant. It was a massive celebration, not just for the family but for the whole nation. And the royal marriage feast of the lamb will cause any earthly royal wedding to pale in comparison.
Read this story from BBC.com about the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer on 29th July 1981:
Crowds of 600,000 people filled the streets of London to catch a glimpse of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer on their wedding day. The couple were married at St Paul's Cathedral before an invited congregation of 3,500 and an estimated global TV audience of 750 million - making it the most popular programme ever broadcast. Britons enjoyed a national holiday to mark the occasion.
Lady Diana, 20, arrived almost on time for the 1120 BST ceremony after making the journey from Clarence House in the Glass Coach with her father, Earl Spencer. She made the three-and-a-half minute walk up the red-carpeted aisle with the sumptuous 25 ft (7.62 m) train of her Emmanuel designed, ivory taffeta and antique lace gown flowing behind her.
Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Robert Runcie led the traditional Church of England service, but he was assisted by clergymen from many denominations. The bride's nerves showed briefly when she mixed up the Prince's names - calling him Philip Charles Arthur George, rather than Charles Philip. Charles, 32, in the full dress uniform of a naval commander, slightly muddled his vows too, referring to "thy goods" rather than "my worldly goods". After a brief private signing ceremony, the Prince and Princess of Wales walked back down the aisle to the refrain of Elgar's Pomp and Circumstance.
The newlyweds took the open-topped state landau to Buckingham Palace where they emerged on the balcony at 1310 BST to give the crowds the kiss they had been longing to see. Afterwards Charles and Diana retired from the public gaze to enjoy toasts and a wedding breakfast with 120 family guests. A "just married" sign attached to the landau by Princes Andrew and Edward raised smiles as the married couple were driven over Westminster Bridge to get the train to Romsey in Hampshire to begin their honeymoon.
In comparison we have John’s prophecy,
Then I heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude, like the roar of many waters and like the sound of mighty peals of thunder, crying out, "Hallelujah! For the Lord our God the Almighty reigns. Let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his Bride has made herself ready; it was granted her to clothe herself with fine linen, bright and pure"-- for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints. And the angel said to me, "Write this: Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb." And he said to me, "These are the true words of God."
[Revelation 19:6-10, ESV]
A royal wedding is a major affair. It is a celebration that everyone in the country takes part in, even though only a relative few may be invited to the feast. It carries national and political significance. After all, the reason King Solomon got into so much trouble was because marriage formed the basis of so many of his international alliances. In Jesus’ time the feast was not just a “breakfast”, but a seven or fourteen day marathon of feasting! The point to focus on and remember is that the kingdom of God is a major affair, a celebration, with huge significance for the whole of humanity.
But Jesus’ story is not about the royal wedding feast itself. It is focussed on the invitation to attend the feast. The king’s leading subjects in a city were invited. And they rejected that invitation. This amounted to rejection of the king’s authority, to rebellion. The mistreatment of his messengers was public humiliation of the king. This parable was told, in the first place, against the leaders of the Jews. The nation of Israel had been chosen to be God’s people. Through the prophets they had received lots of advance notice about the coming King. But when the long-awaited Messiah arrived in the form of Jesus, they rejected him. The chosen ones had proven themselves unworthy. The destruction of the city in v.7 must clearly be understood as a prophecy against Jerusalem itself, fulfilled in 70AD.
The invitation is then extended to both “the bad and the good”. This is a reference to the inclusion of the Gentiles. It emphasises the universal or unconditional nature of the kingdom of God. It is not just limited to the Pharisees and other religious leaders. It is not just limited to God’s chosen people, Israel. It is extended universally to all people everywhere. But this had always been God’s intention.
We can jump back to the story of Abraham and review the promise that God gave him,
Now the LORD said to Abram, "Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed."
[Genesis 12:1-3, ESV]
The climax of God’s promise to Abraham was that all the nations (or families) of the earth would be blessed. Abraham, and his descendents - the nation of Israel - were chosen to be the source of blessing to all nations. Their failure to live up to that role, caused by focussing on themselves, led to the hard-heartedness that brought God’s judgement – upon the nation, and upon the leaders in Jesus’ day. What does the selfishness of the people in Jesus’ parable look like? Some were apathetic to the invitation to the feast and just went about their own business. Some were filled with antipathy or hostility to the king and abused his servants and killed them. The Greek word translated as “treating them shamefully” is the word we derive the English word “hubris” from. Hubris means “arrogance” or “insolence”. Both apathy and antipathy brought judgement.
What does apathy look like in today’s society? What does it look like in today’s church? What does it look like in my life?
What does antipathy or arrogance look like in today’s society? What does it look like in today’s church? What does it look like in my life?
After seeing the troops sent in to quash the rebellion among the elite, the general populace are more than willing to attend the king’s sumptuous feast. The invitation is indiscriminate. It was offered to anyone who was walking on the roads through, in or out of town. It was extended to those who were honest, hard-working farmers and to the slimey tax collectors. It included the hard-working wives and the promiscuous prostitutes. It included residents and foreign travellers. Both good and bad were invited to join the celebration. The leaders had proven themselves unworthy. These guests were not presumed to be worthy, they were just invited.
This is helpful for us to remember when we are experiencing a spiritual desert. In Part One we spoke about the frequent encounters with God that his people experienced in the desert. The reason these encounters were so special is because the usual blessings of God are not present in the desert. In fact, the desert or wilderness was usually seen as a place inhabited by evil spirits (c.f. Jesus temptation from Satan in the wilderness, the man possessed by a legion of demons). The desert fathers spoke about how Satan loved to point out their shortcomings, sin and failure during their desert fast. Those of us who wander through a spiritual desert can feel like we are outcasts from God’s kingdom. We can feel unworthy of any spiritual encounter with God. We can experience a heightened awareness of our sin and feel even more distant from God. This parable, with its driving message of the universal, unconditional invitation of the kingdom of God should encourage us to keep pursuing it even when we are most aware of our sin.
The invitation is universal, but it is not unconditional. The second part of this parable makes that clear. The change in tone of the king’s encounter with his guest has caused commentators some confusion. Some think of this as a later story added to the end, or a second parable independent of the first. It definitely makes a different point to the first part of the parable, but it complements the first point. The second point is that to be accepted at the wedding feast, the guests must accept the king’s gracious provision of wedding clothes.
The man spotted by the king must have refused the garments the king supplied to all the other guests. He thought that the invitation was all that was needed. He considered himself worthy of attendance, just because he had been invited. He didn’t act as though the wedding feast a special occasion. He ignored the fact that it meant submitting everything he had to the king. To refuse the king’s offer of appropriate attire was an act of “hubris” too.
In the same way, all are invited to enter the kingdom of God. There is no one who is excluded, unwelcome or left out. But accepting the invitation means surrendering ourselves totally to the Father and accepting all that he has provided for us through the death and resurrection of Jesus. It is a response of faith, demonstrated through obedience.
“God has provided the feast of the kingdom. It is the wedding feast for his Son. The invitation goes out far and wide. If you reject it, you miss the party. If you think you can get in relying on your own fitness, you will be thrown out.”
Michael Green
"Only our refusal to trust him . . . can hinder his purposes in our lives."
Joni Eareckson Tada
There is a difference between experiencing a spiritual desert and being cast out into the place of outer darkness. In the desert we are humbled, seeking after God’s righteousness. I have been there – aware of my sin and yearning for God’s empowering presence. In the outer darkness we are filled with angry hubris and mourning at our lost opportunity. I have seen a friend go there – angry at God, filled with darkness, yet still shaking his fist and arguing that God can’t exist. What is the condition of my heart?
Sunday, 28 September 2008
Free Summaries of Christian Books
This website has some very interesting and useful book summaries. There is a mixture of recent and classic, well-known authors and anonymous, familiar titles and ones that you are unlikely to have heard of.
And they are all free...
http://www.christianbooksummaries.com/past.php
And they are all free...
http://www.christianbooksummaries.com/past.php
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