Transforming Grace

Back from Easter break in Suffolk. We stopped in Cambridge on the way home and went to St Andrew the Great (we got up at 6:45am the morning after the clocks went forward i.e. 5:45am in old time to get to church but the car would not start! The AA sorted us out in time to get to church for communion).

It was great to see old friends including Mark Ashton whose article in the parish magazine is very helpful. Here’s Mark’s summary of Tim Keller’s talk at the EMA on ministry in the city:

Tim Keller listed eight [seven] principles which he said needed to govern the life of a Bible-teaching church in a Western city.

(1) The first was that we need a positive view of the city. He made the point that there is more image of God per square foot in the city than anywhere else. He suggested that very often Christians in cities don’t particularly like to be there, but the people we are wanting to win do like to live in the city.

(2) His second principle was non-paternalistic service to the city. He quoted Jeremiah’s message to the Jewish exiles in Babylon to ’seek the welfare of the city’.

(3) His third point, and the one to which he gave most time, was adaptation to the culture of the city. He suggested that we must not over-adapt or under-adapt, but work hard to get the right balance in our main meetings, in, for example, the music and the use of liturgy. He put a huge stress on the small groups of the church—”If you are not in a group, you’re not in the church”. He said that folk in the city are looking for non-sentimentality, non-pompous authenticity, charity, humility, and irony without bitterness, in a fellowship of believers. Our tone and demeanour matter. And city people are sceptical about authority.

(4) His fourth point was that a city church needs to be as multi-ethnic as possible. He particularly made the point that at Redeemer they had needed to model multi-ethnicity from the front of their meetings, saying, in effect, “If you look like this, you can become a Christian”. Keller made the point that it takes ‘intentionality’ (I think we would call it `intention’) to involve all races in leadership.

(5) His fifth point was that a city-centre church needs to be outward facing. Every meeting needs to be conducted in such a way that you know it could be overheard by a non-Christian. Keller preaches as if he is preaching to the non-Christian all the time, or to the person confused, bored or offended with Christianity. He said we ought to show great respect to doubts, and to understand those who don’t take the Bible as the word of God.

(6) Sixth Keller spoke about the interdependence of four ministries:
(a) Evangelism
(b) Community formation
(c) Service to the poor
(d) The integration of faith and work
He commented that churches tend to be good at one or two of these, but actually they should be radically integrated. They flourish together, or in his image, “The boats all rise together”.

(7) The church in the city, according to Keller, should always be planting another church. He said this should not be a traumatic hiccup in the life of a church, but normality. He made the point that space is very expensive in the city, so multiple congregations in different neighbourhoods for different types of person are a much better way of multiplying ministry than trying to build a bigger main building.

I’m taking a break for a week or so…feet up, hands down (no problem for a dour Scottish Presbyterian).

A 27-year old father of two, Luke Harris, was shot dead last week in a pub in Wolverhampton. The first comment posted on the local newspaper, the Express and Star, webapage was:

# Karl said: Mar 15th, 2008 at 11:33 am

This doesn’t surprise me one bit! The whole of Whitmore Reans is a lawless area to say the least. And it’s just been worse over the years.

The problem is obvious to Karl and it should be obvious to most people, some areas of our cities are now lawless. Various government policies seek to address the issue:

1. Community development officers on 18 month contracts, which is barely enough time to get to know the names of streets let alone people.
2. Police community support officers are placed on the beat few hours a day.
3. Schools are given a key role in moral education.
4. There’s spending on regeneration as houses, schools and streets are tarted up.
5. Volunteer sector groups are given government funding as long as the group is not faith based.

And yet our inner city areas continue to grow more lawless.

How are inner city communities going to find their way out of lawlessness? The answer is not education, community development, more police or regeneration. It is not moralism or better enforcement through the fear of being caught and given a harsh sentence. The answer to the lawlessness of inner cities in the gospel of Christ and there are two particular aspects which apply:

1. if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. (Galatians 5:18 )
2. Jesus Christ, gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness (Titus 2:13-14)

Communities become lawless as a result of seeking to escape from the individual and collective condemnation, shame and guilt induced by failure to keep the law. But with no law there can be no guilt so the law gradually erodes and a community becomes shameless.

God’s way of releasing us from the guilt, shame and condemnation of moral failure is not by abolishing the law but through faith in Christ crucified for sin, which is the breaking of the law. Christ’s death purifies our guilty conscience not so that we can go on being lawless but so that we can uphold the law. This is God’s purpose in saving us (Titus 3:8).

The only question is, who will take the gospel into lawless communities? Christians need to live in the inner city, plant churches as they share their lives as well as the gospel (Titus 1:5) in places filled with liars, evil brutes and lazy gluttons (Titus 1:12).

Inner city lawlessness is not due to government failure. The government is doing what it can. A lawless society is a symptom of the failure of the church to proclaim the gospel and the law. We should not expect the government to make up for ecclesiastical failure.

I’ve started reading Total Church by Tim Chester and Steve Timmis. The introduction brings in some of the ideas I’ve preached on recently; church being something we belong to not simply attend (1 Cor 12); church being a messy place which demands patience as people are brought to Christ from a broken society (2 Peter 3:9); the need for training young Christians by modelling godliness as more mature Christians hang out with them (Titus 2); not being frightened to go to the fringes of society for fear of being defiled (Titus 1:13-15).

Here’s some ideas from the introduction which make me look forward to reading the rest of the book:

John Stott says: ‘Our static, inflexible, self-centred structures are “heretical structures” because they embody a heretical doctrine of the church.’ If ‘our structure has become an end in itself, not a means of saving the world’ it is ‘a heretical structure’.

Being both gospel-centred and community-centred might mean:

• seeing church as an identity instead of a responsibility to be juggled alongside other commitments
• celebrating ordinary life as the context in which the word of God is proclaimed with ‘God-talk’ a normal feature of everyday conversation
• running fewer evangelistic events, youth clubs and social projects, and spending more time sharing our lives with unbelievers
• starting new congregations instead of growing existing ones
• preparing Bible talks with other people instead of just studying alone at a desk
• adopting a 24-7 approach to mission and pastoral care instead of starting ministry programmes
• switching the emphasis from Bible teaching to Bible learning and action
• spending more time with people on the margins of society
• learning to disciple one another — and be discipled — day by day
• having churches that are messy instead of churches that pretend

Rick Warren notes in The Purpose Driven Church that

explosive growth occurs when the type of people in the church community match the type of people who are already in the church, and they both match the type of person the pastor is.

This is, I believe, a valid observation but we should not read this to mean homogenous leadership works where communities are multi-cultural. If a church leader appoints a staff team or eldership where each member looks, thinks and speaks like him culturally then he must expect his congregation to mirror that cultural homogeneity.

So, when appointing leaders to a staff team or eldership where the church exists in a multi-cultural community, we need to work on diversity of culture but unity in the gospel. Church leaders should be people who think, speak and act out the goal of mission (Titus 1:5) and godliness (Titus 2:1-2) and not simply be united by their ethnicity or culture.

One of the problems with homogenous church growth as practised in many churches is that mission is focused on invitational work. People are asked to come to the Sunday service or central church events. This strategy will result in a church congregation which looks, thinks and speaks like the leadership of the church, which is most often homogenous. People from cultures other than those present at the service will be unlikely to stay regardless of how friendly people are during the service and afterwards because the newcomer can’t see anyone like them.

Eddie Gibbs and Ian Coffey state in their book Church Next (IVP 2001) that homogenous church growth involves the reverse of this principle of invitation. We must not understand the command to “go into all the world” as an instruction to “invite all the world to come into our service”. Seek-and-find necessitates going out and looking because harvesting is done in the fields, not in the barns. Church must move from a Constantinian model – which presumes a church culture – to an apostolic model to penetrate the vast, unchurched segments of society.

I am ashamed by the cultural diversity of the Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses in Wolverhampton. The reason there are so many Asian Mormons and JWs is precisely because their mission strategy is to go into the fields before gathering into the barn.

Whatever people think of Saddleback Church, Rick Warren seems to have made the homogenous church growth principle work in mission without resorting to the formation of homogenous congregations. In The Purpose Driven Church he states that

[God] created an infinite variety of people with different interests, preferences, backgrounds and personalities and that the concept of evangelistic targeting is built into the Great Commission. Each of these unique people groups needs an evangelistic strategy that communicates the gospel in terms that their specific culture can understand.”

Saddleback Church began by targeting a young, unchurched white-collar people group and now includes specific mission to young adults, single adults, prisoners, the elderly, parents with ADD kids, Spanish, Vietnamese, Koreans and many other target groups. Saddleback has adopted an homogeneous church growth strategy which is outward focused so involves developing cultural awareness before witnessing to those homogeneous units. People are brought to faith in Christ where they live or work and are loved by those who bring the good news. The result of this is a gathered church which is culturally diverse. This in turn produces church services which can function as invitational without creating homogeneity because when people are invited they might not see anyone who is exactly like them but they can see a diversity which overcomes their sense of not quite fitting in.

I have heard a number of evangelicals give two preconditions to inner city ministry which effectively rules it out as a future possibility. These preconditions are repeated with sufficient frequency to make me believe that they are now embedded dogma in conservative evangelical circles and need challenging.

The first is “I need to be near the countryside” and the second “my children must be happy in school and have a good education”. I’ll leave the second precondition until later and deal with the first here.

Assuming that the countryside is good for us as a way of escaping the concrete and providing relaxation, then London, Birmingham and Manchester are probably the only cities in Britain where inner city is not within a half hour car journey of the countryside. It takes 15 minutes for me to drive to where I play golf in the Staffordshire countryside most Thursday afternoons. On the golf course I relax, forget the stress of ministry and enjoy what God, not man, has made.

To check whether the “countryside” precondition is genuine or simply an excuse ask yourself:

1. Would a lack of countryside rule out the possibility of me serving in a well heeled inner city church like All Souls, St Helen’s, Holy Trinity Platt or City Evangelical Birmingham?
2. If I could choose between serving in two parishes in a city, one middle class and the other UPA, both within the same travelling time of the countryside, which would I be inclined to apply for?
3. If a post came up in an inner city area would I seriously consider the merits of the church, the surrounding area and travel time to the countryside or would I immediately assume that it failed this precondition and rule out further investigation?

English Heritage and the Heritage Lottery Fund announced on the 6th March that £2 million has been made available for the restoration of Grade I and Grade II* listed churches in the West Midlands, of which St Luke’s is one.

As a church we face a number of repair bills which we can’t afford. The building is rotting, rusting and crumbling in various ways.

Should we accept the offer of money from EH and LHF?

On the one hand, we do not want to cause anyone to stumble (1 Cor 8:13). If we are seen to endorse gambling by accepting lottery money it might encourage some into gambling or cause a Christian with a weak conscience to have their conscience defiled (1 Cor 8:7). On the other hand, Paul himself was happy to eat meat sacrificed to idols. He did not seem to be concerned about the profit from the sale continuing to support the temple and ongoing practice of animal sacrifice.

The money being offered from the lottery may be “dirty” but, like food sacrificed to idols, it cannot defile us (Titus 1:15). Jesus himself received worship from a woman who was a sinner and whose alabaster flask of ointment must have been earned by sinful means (Luke 7:37). Lottery money is just money and differs from tax duty raised at bookmakers, casinos or on alcohol, tobacco and pornography only by being labelled.

The state wants to preserve its historic buildings and funds this through a voluntary tax system in a game of chance. People choose to play the lottery for mixed motives, part greed, part charity. Local people would prefer their lottery contribution to be spent locally. A spokeswoman from English Heritage said

People really care about their local places of worship which are often a focus for the whole community. The Heritage Lottery Fund and English Heritage are helping to secure their future by concentrating on the most urgent repair needs and so making a crucial difference to their long-term survival.

Is this offer an answer to prayer and a means of God’s grace or should we avoid it like the plague?

Comments on the ethics of this issue would be appreciated.

Jonathan Fletcher is quoted in this month’s copy of The Briefing:

There is a craze at the moment for church planting at the risk of neglecting inner-city areas, urban priority areas (UPAs), country parishes, and so on.
…I think the answer is the preaching of the word - and I want to encourage our younger brethren to be prepared to go to villages and the UPAs

It is encouraging that Jonathan has said this as it adds weight to what Mike Ovey recently wrote to Oak Hill graduates. I wonder if there really is a desire amongst younger ministers to move into the inner city? It would be great of more young men made long term aims to minister in such parishes. I’ve a few observations of inner city ministry which I hope will help people decide on this:

1. We need to deeply love Christ so that when we minister the Word of God people see Christ crucified for sin and not a middle class lifestyle.
2. We need to preach the Word to people who don’t speak English as a first language and/or people who don’t make a habit of reading, blogging or listening to Radio 4.
3. As we minister to people with really messed up lives we must love them and work hard not to be seen as a social worker or teacher might be seen because we’re doing our job.
4. We need to be prepared to wait much longer than in middle class parishes for people in the community outside the church to begin to trust us as “their” minister.
5. We need a greater capacity for disappointment as new Christians are generally less able to manage life and more readily let you down.
6. We need to be willing to sacrifice walks in the countryside and to put up with concrete.
7. We need to get used to feeling slightly different world when mixing again with middle class friends as they talk quite naturally about foreign holidays, private schools and nice restaurants.
8. We must accept that our kids might not get a great school eduction (our kids do, as we have a great church school) but that they will learn lots of valuable lessons about what sin does to people and why the gospel matters.
9. We must love people in the inner city because we love and obey Christ. If we go to the inner city as a strategy, under compulsion, duty, because there is no other parish available or out of respect for Jonathan Fletcher, Mike Ovey or any other respected leader we will most likely fail.

Each of these points probably deserves a blog…

Do you find you are joyless or have a gnawing dissatisfaction as a Christian?  Do you yearn for something but can’t quite put your finger on what it is you want?  Do spiritual experiences and observances fail to satisfy your hunger and slate your thirst? Have favourite songs and hymns lost their wonder, bible passages their cutting and comforting edges?  Perhaps you are hungering and thirsting after righteousness.

Thanks again to Thomas Watson who provides five marks of well fed and satisfied sinners. All five marks point to the source of all true righteousness, who is Christ crucified for sin.

Let us put ourselves upon a trial whether we hunger and thirst after righteousness. I shall give you five signs by which you may judge of this hunger.

1 Hunger is a painful thing. …a man that hungers after righteousness is in anguish of soul and ready to faint away for it. He finds a want of Christ and grace. He is distressed and in pain till he has his spiritual hunger stilled and allayed.

2 Hunger is satisfied with nothing but food. Bring an hungry man flowers, music; tell him pleasant stories; nothing will content him but food. ‘Shall I die for thirst?’ says Samson (Judges 15: 18). So a man that hungers and thirsts after righteousness says, Give me Christ or I die. Lord, what wilt thou give me seeing I go Christless? …While the soul is Christless, it is restless. Nothing but the water-springs of Christ’s blood can quench its thirst.

3 Hunger wrestles with difficulties and makes an adventure for food. We say hunger breaks through stone walls (cf. Genesis 42: 1, 2). The soul that spiritually hungers is resolved; Christ it must have; grace it must have.

4 An hungry man falls to his meat with an appetite. You need not make an oration to an hungry man and persuade him to eat. So he who hungers after righteousness feeds eagerly on an ordinance. ‘Thy words were found, and I did eat them’ (Jeremiah 15: 16). In the sacrament he feeds with appetite upon the body and blood of the Lord. God loves to see us feed hungrily on the bread of life.

5 An hungry man tastes sweetness in his meat. So he that hungers after righteousness relishes a sweetness in heavenly things. Christ is to him all marrow, yea the quintessence of delights.

By these notes of trial we may judge of ourselves whether we hunger and thirst after righteousness.

‘Blessed are they that hunger’. Though you do not have so much righteousness as you would, yet you are blessed because you hunger after it.