Holy Trinity Vision Statement summary

Last week I posted our fully fleshed out vision statement. This is it in technicolour summary:

Salmond sucks life out of Scottish Christmas

The poor Scots. Things just go from bad to worse for the folk in my homeland. Alex Salmond, first minister of the Scottish Assembly, has sucked the life and joy out of Christmas by commissioning this miserable effort of a secular seasonal greeting card:

Have a very merry Christmas Scotland! I hope your season is not as dour as your first minister would have it be.

And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with fear. And the angel said to them, “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of a great joy that will be for all the people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, who is Christ the Lord. Luke 2:9-11

For quotes from great and joyful Scottish ministers search this blog for “Ebenezer Erksine (Stirling) and Horatius Bonar (Kelso).

10 ways in which God in Christ is a God of love #3

Here’s number 3 of Ebenezer Erskine’s 10 points on the love of God in Christ:

Ebenezer Erskine

3. God in Christ is a God sitting upon a throne of grace: and does not this say, that “God is love?” God has a threefold throne,—a throne of glory, a throne of justice, and a throne of grace. The first of these, his throne of glory, is so bright, that it dazzles the eyes of angels, and they cover their faces with their wings when they approach it. The second, viz. his throne of justice, is clothed with red vengeance ; and it is so terrible, that the most holy saints tremble when they behold it. “If thou, Lord, shouldst mark iniquities, 0 Lord, who shall stand ? In thy Sight shall no man living be justified.” And because we were not able to stand here, he has erected another throne, namely, a throne of grace, from whence he issues out acts of grace and mercy to guilty sinners -. and so soon as he is seen sitting upon this throne, he is taken up as a God of love; and thereupon the poor sinner, that was trembling at the thoughts of being cited before the throne of justice, flees for his life to the throne of grace, saying with the apostle, Heb. iv. 16. “Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.”

Self esteem and marriage failure

At our men’s breakfast on Saturday, we discussed an article by India Knight on the break up of Madonna and Guy Ritchie.

Madonna and Guy Ritchie

According to Knight, the 7-year marriage followed a typical path:

1. Two successful, fulfilled people with lots of self-esteem meet and marry
2. The woman continues to be successful whilst the man’s career flounders
3. The man suffers an ego crisis, a loss of self esteem
4. The woman finds his loss of self esteem unattractive and gets irritated, no longer respecting her man
5. The man’s self esteem drops lower
6. The woman finds this even less attractive and begins to be repulsed
7. The marriage is over

Here’s how Knight put it:

It goes like this. You meet each other. You’re doing well; things are going swimmingly at work for both of you; you feel like equals (when Ritchie met Madonna, he was a hot young director, whose film Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels was a worldwide success, and of whom great things were expected).

Fast forward a few years and add children, and sooner or later one of you will get to the point where they can’t shake off the feeling that their star is on the wane while their spouse’s continues to rise.

Worse, the wife knows who she is (she’s Madonna!), she’s good at her job, she knows what she wants and she’s not really in the business of playing doormats to soothe wounded male egos. Aside from anything else, she’s busy.

As the months and years pass, her husband’s lack of success – and,sure as eggs is eggs, growing self-pity – do not elicit cooing sympathy, but irritation. The more irritation she displays, the more emasculated he becomes. And the more emasculated he becomes, the more irritated she feels.

The school of self improvement says  self esteem is good, but this is wrong.  Self esteem is only another word for pride. Being proud of our achievements is a recipe for failure because the consistently high performance which is necessary to produce high self esteem can never be sustained. Pop stars, with the notable exception of Madonna, become passée. Great athletes grow old and start losing. Film directors have a bad run. Company fortunes ebb and flow. Churches grow and shrink.  As the tide of personal performance ebbs and flows, and with it ourself esteem, then attractiveness must ebb and flow too.  It is when the tide is out that self esteem turns to mopping self pity and this is a potential marriage breaker.

So where does our sense of value come from if not from our performance? My value cannot be separated from God my creator and Christ my redeemer.  I know I am valuable not because of what I do but because of what God in Christ has done for me. Human value is extrinsic not intrinsic. The love of God in Christ Jesus is the root of all personal esteem and so, secure in him, my confidence can always be high regardless of how well I perform.

See another similar post on Madonna and Generation X women.

7 more Christian personality types

There are at least three ways God is described in relation to his people in the bible: King, Father and Husband. The way we relate to God shapes who we are, what we feel and what we do.

God as King – sovereign, majestic, omnipotent, good law-giver
God, the blessed and only Ruler, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone is immortal and who lives in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can see. To him be honour and might forever. Amen. 1 Timothy 6:15-16

God as Father – generous, merciful, provider and protector
Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.’ Matthew 6:9-13

God as Husband – loving, faithful, true
“The time is coming,” declares the LORD, “when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their forefathers when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they broke my covenant, though I was a husband to them,” declares the LORD. Jeremiah 31:31-32

It is clear that the way we relate to God will affect the way we behave before him. God is our King, Father and Husband and the following diagram shows what happens when we forget one or more of these aspects of God.

1. Dutiful servant – God is my King
I know the rules and know that I must fear, respect, honour and worship God. I am cold and ungrateful because I do not know the love or gracious provision of God.

2. Cosy Son – God is my Father
I know God is good to me and he provides all my needs. I am reckless and given to sin because I do not know the love of God or acknowledge him as King.

3. Beloved Bride – God is my Husband
I know God’s love and faithfulness. I am romantically attached to God but lack gratitude and obedience.

4. Grateful servant-son – God is my King and my Father
I must respect God and do what he says because he provides all my needs. I do not know the love of God in the life, death and resurrection of Christ Jesus, which was for me and my good.

5. Loved servant-bride – God is my King and Husband
I must respect God and do what he says because he loves me. I know Jesus died for my sins and made me right before the Lord, I love him and obey him but don’t see God as a generous Father.

6. Spoiled child-bride – God is my Father and my Husband
I love God because he spoils me and loves me. Obedience? Why should I obey God?

7. Respectful, obedient, confident subject-child-bride
I respect, honour and obey God because he loves me and provides all my needs in his Son, Jesus Christ. I am confident because I know I am adopted by God, he is my good Father. I love God because Jesus made me beautiful in his eyes, like a bride in white before her faithful husband. I know God’s commands are for my good and so I honour, respect, obey, worship and glorify God, as my good and perfect King.

As a Christian it is my duty and joy to relate to God as King, Father and Husband through faith in his Son who died for me and commands me to live to God.

As a minister it is my duty to always preach the sovereign, majestic, omnipotent, good law-giving, generous, merciful, providential, protective, loving, faithful, true and Almighty God of the bible; Father, Son and Holy Spirit; Husband, Father and King.

Other posts on the same sort of subject:
13 Christian Personality Types
8 Biblical Personality Types
5 Christian leadership types
5 types of Christian preachers

10 ways in which God in Christ is a God of love #2

This is the second of Ebenezer Erskine’s points on how God in Christ as a God of love.

Ebenezer Erskine

2. God in Christ is a promising God; and does not this say that he is a God of love? God abstractly considered is a threatening God, a revenging God; but, in Christ, a promising God; and we find, 2 Cor. 1v20 – that all the promises of God are in Christ, and in him yea and amen.” Whenever you meet with any promise in the Bible, of grace or of glory, of peace or of pardon, or be what it will, you would still take it up as a promise of a God in Christ: Christ having fulfilled the condition of the promise of eternal life, by his obedience and death, the promises are given out to us, through him, as the immediate ground and foundation of our faith…

It is a thing most wonderful

On Sunday evening, the first Sunday of advent, I preached Romans 5:8-9 on the undeserved kindness of God in Christ.

1. God has shown his love to us
2. Jesus did something wonderful by dying for us
3. We did nothing to deserve this gift

While we were yet sinners, enemies of God, Christ died for us.

Our response must be:

1. To show undeserved acts of kindness to our enemies (Jew and Gentile)
2. To repent of the sins which anger God and make it hard for others to live with us

This is the way God brings peace on earth.

We then sang a hymn I had never sung before, which our organist Paul had chosen and which I had read only the first two verses of before the service.  It blew me away as the hymn matched the sermon theme almost exactly:

It is a thing most wonderful,
almost too wonderful to be,
that God’s own Son should come from heaven,
and die to save a child like me.

And yet I know that it is true:
he chose a poor and humble lot,
and wept, and toiled, and mourned, and died,
for love of those who loved him not.

I cannot tell how he would love
a child so weak and full of sin;
his love must be most wonderful,
if he could die my love to win.

I sometimes think about the cross,
and shut my eyes, and try to see
the cruel nails and crown of thorns
and Jesus crucified for me.

But even could I see him die,
I could but see a little part
of that great love, which, like a fire,
is always burning in his heart.

It is most wonderful to know
his love for me so free and sure;
but ’tis more wonderful to see
my love for him so faint and poor.

And yet I want to love thee, Lord;
O light the flame within my heart,
and I will love thee more and more,
until I see thee as thou art.

All praise and honour to God!

Wispa Gold and the gospel

Have you ever thought about what you will be doing at each stage of your life? Our youth did just that last week.

We gave the youth an A1 sheet of paper with columns for 16, 21, 30, 45, 60, 80 and ? years old. Armed with catalogues and magazines they cut out the things they wanted to have or to do at each age of their lives. Our lads had a PS3, Audi sports cars, aftershave, a bride, a teas-maid, incontinence pants and a Wispa Gold advert.

The advert got them thinking. Here’s what it said for the end of life after rearranging the words of the advert:

The sentiment of the advert, when rearranged, reflect the words of Psalm 103:15-16
As for man, his days are like grass, he flourishes like a flower of the field; the wind blows over it and it is gone, and its place remembers it no more.

Life is short, but the gospel of Jesus Christ gives sinners the hope of eternal life:

Romans 6:23 For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

10 ways in which God in Christ is a God of love #1

Here’s abridged extracts from Ebenezer Erskine’s 10 point sermon on 10 ways in which God in Christ is a God of love:

Ebenezer Erskine

1. GOD in Christ is a reconciled God, a God of peace, that has received the atonement : Q Cor. v. 19. “God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself.” Rom. v. 10. 11 When we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son” He both finds the ransom, and accepts of the ransom that he has found; and having accepted of the ransom, of the Surety, he proclaims himself to be ” the God of peace, that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus Christ.” Oh Sirs! does not this say that God is love? what greater evidence of it could God give, than to provide a ransom, and to receive it, than to cry, “Deliver them from going down to the pit, for I have found a ransom ?”

Holy Trinity vision statement goes live

We completed the process of discerning God’s will and purpose for Holy Trinity church last night at church council.  This process began in September and involved the PCC and congregation in thinking about the sentence: “Holy Trinity church exists to…”

We had a vision setting day two weeks ago and the feedback from that session shaped the first draft of the vision statement I had produced.  Last night we ratified this:

Holy Trinity Church exists to…

Glorify God
People are made by God for God’s glory.
We glorify God by looking to him, knowing him, loving him and enjoying him. We therefore aim to grow together in the knowledge and love of God by prayerfully reading and studying all of God’s word together in the light, power and fellowship of His Holy Spirit.

Love, accept, care and pray for one another
Sin divides people and makes it hard for us to live with each other. As believers, however, we are united by God because of his undeserved kindness to us.  We therefore aim to love, accept, care and pray for one another, not because we are lovable but because Christ first loved us by dying for our sin.

Teach the next generation
The next generation depends on this generation for the direction they need.  We therefore aim to teach our children and new believers about Jesus and to model godly love, faith, wisdom and obedience, at home and in school, at church and in the community.

Bless the people of West Bromwich
God has promised that his family will be a blessing to the world. We therefore aim to be God’s blessing to our local community, in West Bromwich and beyond by being good neighbours and multiplying our ministries.

as we hear, believe and joyfully live out the good news and commandments of Jesus Christ together.
True faith and joy come by hearing and believing the good news of Christ.  Obedience to him flows out of love for him.  We therefore aim to continually hear, believe and joyfully live out the good news and commandments of Jesus Christ together.

I’ll blog on the three sessions at the weekend away and the PCC for anyone interested in how we arrived at consensus.