Wednesday Giveaway - Winners and Next Week

Congratulations to this week's winners Sally, David, Jonathan, Anna and Gareth.

Next week chances to win a new Bible overview book, something excellent on 1 Corinthians and more helpful apologetics.

Why church IS a place for evangelism

John Stevens, Head Dude (I'm sure his real title is less interesting than that) at the FIEC writes an excellent blog called Dissenting Opinion. I feel slightly embarrassed that, for the second time recently, I'm going to disagree with him (perhaps Anyssstudy should be Dissenting from Dissenting Opinion). I'm sure it won't become a habit!

Here's an extract from John's recent post on Local Church: "We have taken it for granted that unbelievers will come to church, and that we ought to invite them to come in as our primary evangelistic strategy (or even worse to give up and wait for revival when they will come in without being invited!) and as a result tend to treat our church gatherings as if they are a cross between a meeting for committed believers and the lecture hall of Tyrannus (Acts 19v11) where we are addressing interested unbelievers. We have acted as if the church IS the market place or public square for evangelism. It may have been in the past, but in most communities it is not today. This doesn't seem to be the New Testament model. In the NT,  "church" is the gathering for committed believers, designed to encourage and edify them. Occasionally an unbeliever might come in amongst them (1 Corinthians 14v24). The gospel is to be taken and proclaimed outside of the church, whether in the public square, house to house, or in individual personal witness. We need to face up to the fact that we have to take the gospel to people, and not just invite them to come to where we preach it. This is going to be essential if we are to reach the nation."

Let's start with the bits I agree with:

1. Inviting unbelievers to come in shouldn't be our primary evangelistic strategy.

2. Church is not the place where most unbelievers are gathered.

3. The gospel is to be taken and proclaimed outside the church.

4. We must take the gospel to people.

5. This is essential if we are to reach the nation.

I'm totally with all that. Amen.

But it seems to me that between the excellent beginning and the excellent end of his paragraph John creates a false dichotomy.

The church may not be the place for evangelism. But John goes much further and suggests that the church is not the place for evangelism because we should anticipate that only "occasionally" will an unbeliever find their way in to us. This seems to me both dangerous and inaccurate.

1. In 1 Cor 14:24 there is no reason to suppose that "if" indicates "occasionally."

2. John's post says that whatever happened in the "lecture hall of Tyrannus" wasn't church. I'm not sure that the one verse devoted to this in Acts 19 is sufficient to decide that, and certainly not to build a doctrine of church on!

3. In praxctice what the local church does corporately individual Christians do personally. If churches do not pray then, on the whole, the people in them don't pray. If churches don't expect to be friends with unbelievers and to have them around all the time Christians will end up just the same (this objection is also applicable to Greg Gilbert and Kevin DeYoung's recent book What is the Mission of the Church which some of you may have seen).

4. Yes there are lots of non-Christians, of course, who will not come to church. There are definitely fewer who will come to church than who would in the past. But there are many, probably far more than we have asked (!) who will come. I cannot think of a single week in the recent past when there have not been unbelievers in our Sunday services, and often they number 10%+ of the congregation.

5. The whole "attractional v missional" argument (like "evangelism v social action") is essentially ridiculous. "Missional" churches are pretty much only ever going to reach people we already know - they are massively based on relationship. This is great - because evangelism is largely about relationships. But do we really think the Lord only wants to save people we know? We need "attractional" things in our churches as well as to be living as missionaries wherever the Lord has placed us. "Attractional" ministries won't attract everyone. But neither will being "missional" mean we have missionaries everywhere. A large part of this debate (as with evangelism v social action) is fuelled by people (not John!) whose ministries are tied to a particular bandwagon and therefore feel the need to shout loudly about what they are doing as if it is the only show in town.

6. There is no need to do anything radically different for unbelievers anyway. Most of the things that will genuinely "edify" believers are the same things that will be useful to unbelievers. So, for eg, speaking in C18th English, singing only ancient hymns or constantly using long theological words in sermons doesn't edify believers (even if they think it does) - it turns them into people incapable of expressing their faith in normal English to normal people and, worse, encourages the adoption of a post-modern "cult of the initiated" where we consider ourselves a cut above others because we have access to the linguistic tools of power. On the other hand teaching Christian apologetics, explaining the gospel clearly, articulating why your church exists and does the things it does are all massively useful both in helping the unbeliever present to hear and understand the gospel and in teaching Christians how to live as followers of Jesus.

7. We have something to learn here from the evangelicals in the Church of England. Our brothers there are constantly finding unbelievers amongst them. It doesn't seem to me that at, say, All Soul's Langham Place or St Helen's Bishopsgate the congregation are either hindered from being edified as Christians or discouraged from living missionally by the fact that the ministry on Sundays always has an eye on the unbeliever; explaining the liturgy to them, applying the preaching to them etc. I think the expectation of constant interaction with non-Christians is one of the areas evangelical Anglicans are often way ahead of FIEC churches.

In conclusion: We should be active in taking the gospel out to every place we can - to schools, hospitals, offices, neighbourhoods, prisons, shops and everywhere else Christians go. But we should also plan for unbelievers to come to church, invite them to come all the time and expect them to be there as we minister.

Giveaway Wednesday

I know that quite a lot of readers of andysstudy love Tim Challies' Free Stuff Friday posts. So I thought it was time for us to have a UK version of the same thing!

Each Wednesday, in partnership with good friends at 10ofthose.com, andysstudy will be reviewing some good books or other resources and giving away some free copies.

All you'll have to do is submit your name and email address and have a UK postal address the stuff can be sent to if you win.

This week we've got five copies of a Christian classic: C. S. Lewis' Miracles and five copies of the latest book from the contemporary Christian author who perhaps comes closest to Lewis in his combination of incisive critique and winsome persuasion: Tim Keller.

In Miracles Lewis comprehensively and devastatingly critiques both the naturalist's assertion of the impossibility of the miraculous and the chronological snobbery he shows in suggesting that the ancients only believed in miracles because they were too ignorant to know better. There are few better examples of a Christian apologetic that give you all the arguments you need both to engage the guy in your office who says casually that you can't possibly believe in miracles and the serious philosopher.

Tim Keller's Freedom of Self-forgetfulness is a great book. It packs into 48 pages one of the great themes of Keller's preaching ministry; that true freedom is found in not seeing everything that happens as being about us, liberating us from both pride and self-condemnation. If you'd like to win one of five copies of both these books just fill in the form below and your name and email address. A random number generator (really!) will pick out the winners and we'll email you to find where to post the books to.

Entries extended to 12pm Thursday 24th May.

If you don't win (more chances next week!) you can buy C S Lewis here and Keller here.

Discovering the Secret of the Inner Ring

Do you ever feel that there is a group of people in your workplace, school, church or social group from which you are excluded? That there is a set, a gang, an "Inner Ring" into which others are admitted but from which you are firmly excluded, or to which you are only able to cling on at the periphery?

Of course you do! Some people, we often call them "social climbers," are not only absolutely certain that there is such an Inner Ring; they are certain they know who is in it and that the right effort in the right quarters will get them into it too.

These Inner Rings, however, are not limited to places of social greatness. After all one person's desired destination is another's nightmare. "I don't want to be great," you say. "I just want to be part of the group of parents at the school gate who are right at the hub of things."

One of the great lessons of growing up is when you discover that the Inner Ring you know is not be the only one, brilliantly described by David Sedaris in Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim:

"Call me naive, but it had simply never occurred to me that other schools might have their own celebrity circles. At the age of twelve I thought the group at E. C. Brooks was if not nationally known, then at least its own private phenomenon, Why else would our lives revolve around it so completely?... What if I was wrong? What if I'd wasted my entire life comparing myself with people who didn't really matter?"

In one of his many brilliant essays, The Inner Ring, C S Lewis addresses this subject. He says much there that I will not repeat, in the hope that many of you will all go and read the essay for yourselves, here.

But the thing he points out which I have found most useful in dealing with those people who, from time to time, come to me as a pastor to comment (complain?) that they are not included in the "Inner Ring" of church life is this… The Inner Ring is, essentially, an illusion, "you are trying to peel an onion: if you succeed there will be nothing left."

This is not to say that groups of people do not exist who do certain things or have certain powers. I am not in the inner ring of Members of Parliament, the Athenaeum or the school governors. I am in the inner ring of the church elders. But these are not the Inner Rings people dream of joining. The ones we hanker after are less defined than that. They are the "clique," the people "in the know."

Such groups, which exist really only in the minds of those inside them simply in order that there should be some outside, are really of no interest once you are inside! Nothing binds them together except exclusion, a dull reason for existence on any account. As Lewis puts it, "as soon as your new associates have been staled to you by custom, you will be looking for another Ring. The rainbow's end will still be ahead of you."

Lewis' advice is timely for our age when the right "like" or the correct "follow" can seem to promise so much but deliver so little: "the quest of the Inner Ring will break your hearts unless you break it."

Far better, he says wisely, to know in your mind what you consider worthwhile in both your professional and personal life. and pursue it. If you do you will discover that there is a kind of Inner Ring here too, but one that is both entirely accidental and worth being in. It's purpose is no longer to exclude anybody; it is simply composed of those who happen to love string quartets, World of Warcraft or improving widget production.

Though Lewis does not mention it, that is true of the church (and the Church) too. It is, in a profound sense, an Inner Ring; a group that some people are in and some are not. But such exclusivity is not what it exists for - quite the opposite. It exists for expansion, for drawing others in, for growth. And it is all the happier for that.

Should unbaptised Christians be admitted to church membership?

Two good recent articles raise this issue.

David Mathis (on The Gospel Coalition web site) thinks yes.

Jonathan Leeman (on the 9Marks web site) thinks no.

I'm with David for at least the following reasons:

a) Although any human structure inevitably asks some things of church members not required by the Lord Jesus for salvation (attendance?!) it seems to me these should be kept to a minimum.

b) Leeman's analogy of having to wear the team jersey before you can be on the team is surely, if pushed to its logical conclusion, an argument for getting baptised before you, say, do any evangelism? Maybe even before you get converted! Whilst the NT offers some support for baptism instantly upon conversion that is not the historic position of most baptists or the express teaching of the Scriptures.

c) In the UK at least there are quite a lot of places, including the city centre of Liverpool, where there are no churches a convinced paedobaptist (who believes they are baptised even if I don't think they are!) who wanted expository Bible teaching and a missionary focus on the city could join instead of going to a believers' baptist church like ours.

d) There does seem to be something odd about admitting people to the Lord's table but not to church membership - good enough for his family but not for ours. At least "strict baptists" are consistent!

Do Christians talk about sex too much?

This week I've spent a number of hours revisiting the Song of Songs, my first serious look at this wonderful book since I finished a dissertation on the way it's used in the New Testament six months ago. This week I've also been told by more than one person that they think Christians don't say what they really think about sex in public discourse because we are intimidated into silence by the secular cries of intolerance and bigotry whenever we comment negatively on illicit (usually but not always homosexual) sex.

Well it's certainly true that our culture, which smugly congratulates itself on its supreme virtue of tolerance (though why this should be a virtue, when it seems mostly to result in marginalising, demeaning and even killing the unborn, elderly and disabled and putting up with religions and beliefs that do those things, remains a mystery to me) is, in fact, supremely intolerant of anybody who challenges its definition of a person or its insistence that sleeping with whoever you want is a human rights issue.

But I'm not convinced that Christians fail to talk about sex and what we think about it.

In fact I've seen more Christian comment on the government's proposed redefinition of marriage (some of it distinctly crossing the line into what can legitimately be called homophobia) than on almost any other news story in the last year. Full page adverts in Christian conference brochures and denominational magazines, the Christian twitterati bigging up each additional 100,000 signatures. 

I have to ask: Is allowing (or not) a small group of people who already often describe what they've done as getting married to call it legally getting married really the most pressing issue facing the nation? Not the decline in the number of people who profess Jesus as Lord? Not the 180,000 unborn children killed each year?

It seems to me Christians talk about sex quite a lot, even if much of that talk is amplified and cranked up by a secular media who like to report what we say about sex because it sells more than what we say about Jesus.

On reflection I wonder if the problem is not that we talk about sex too much but that we talk about sex too negatively. The (probably unmarried) protagonists of the Song of Songs talk about sex a lot. They celebrate the possibility of sex. They dream about the excitement of sex. They look forward to the possibility of public displays of affection one day when their relationship is publicly recognised.

Maybe that's what Christians are taking about to their friends all around me as well and I just haven't noticed. Maybe our conversations about sexuality are really all about the wonderful, precious and fantastic thing it is. Maybe lots of Christians are saying to their non-Christian friends that we can understand why they would really, really want to have sex because God says sex is exciting and thrilling. But I suspect not. 

Don't misunderstand me. I'm not saying I'm any better. I know it's all too easy to get a purr of approval from the Christians in the congregation and an energising debate with some of the non-Christians by saying something about the erroneous sexual practices of people "out there." It's the preachers equivalent of stand-up comedian's jokes that used to be about Irishmen but are mostly these days about Christians - a cheap way of getting the audience interested.

Whereas if I commend God's beautiful gift of sex and talk about its wonder and pleasure in the way the Song of Songs does I'm much more likely to be accused of insensitivity to the unmarried (an accusation that, if true, could be levelled at the Song itself!).

Until we learn to properly intersperse the biblical warnings about the care with which this hot stuff that is human sexuality should be handled, with more pronouncements that show how much we appreciate God's gift I don't think we can be surprised if the world thinks we're twisted and miserable about sexuality. Given that evangelicals mostly speak about sex in the public sphere it shouldn't surprise us if the culture thinks we're like those tragically misguided fathers of the church who told their congregations Adam and Eve didn't have sex before the fall and that the holiest days should be marked by sexual abstinence.

Six (more) points on women speaking in CUs

The lovely Dave Bish wrote a very thought provoking blog post last week: "Six points on Women speaking for CUs." in which he defended the idea that women should be allowed to preach at CU meetings, even though his own conviction, I think (it's not made explicit) is that they shouldn't preach in the mixed gathering of a local church other than evangelistically (sorry if I've got that wrong Dave!).

First up, some qualifiers:

• I don't think women speaking in CUs is really terrible or anything
• I certainly wouldn't want to go to any stake over this issue.
• I think CUs should each make up their own minds about this issue.
• I pastor a church where women teach in some settings but not others.
• I would personally have some issues of conscience if I was in a CU and we had a main meeting where a woman had been invited to address us from the Scriptures.

It seems to me there are a few weak spots in Dave's article that it's important to address…

"A woman speaking at a CU training event says we need to get trained by the most competent people for the task."

The trouble with this line of reasoning is that it could surely be applied equally to local churches? In reality no healthy local church does simply get the person most "competent" for the task. Some have additional convictions about qualifications required to preach (like being an elder of the church or being male). All biblical church think people have to meet requirements of character as well as competency. If the "most competent person" argument is valid does that mean it should override what I understand to be the teaching of the Scripture on teaching mixed congregations in the local church? If it doesn't override that teaching in a church but only in a CU you have to ask why CUs should be deliberately trying to be different from local churches; unless they think that the institution God has commissioned for evangelism and discipleship requires theological improvement?

"You are not making any particular statement about the positions held by CU members."

I have to say I find this naive. Everything we do make, one way or another, statements about what we think.

"We all think women can... teach in some settings."

Yes, we do. But that doesn't answer the question of whether they can teach in this setting! Dave essentially defends his position with the assertion that "CU isn't a church." But this is far too binary a way of thinking about it. Some CUs (and CU meetings) are much more like church than others. So, when I was a student, the CU I attended, of 400+, gathered on a Saturday night in a church building for hymns, prayers and a 50 minute expository sermon. It was led by a group of eight people, nominated by their predecessors with the appointments confirmed by the CU members. This organisation had a missions budget, did training, ran prayer meetings, evangelistic events and small groups. It wasn't a church - but it was pretty close to being one. It's fine for UCCF staff (whom I love and one of whom I used to be!) to trot out the "CU isn't a church" line," but the reality is that many students in Liverpool (and I'm sure other places) see the CU as their church, despite our teaching that they shouldn't, and that in many CUs up and down the country the meetings look and smell very much like church!

"A CU leader is… a million miles from being a church elder."

I agree there is some distance between the two roles! But a million miles? If the roles are really that different why do so many UCCF new leader training weekends take the Pastoral Epistles as their texts?

"CU is united around the gospel for mission."

And local church isn't?! If you think (as I do) that the teaching of Scripture about who ought to teach the Scriptures is what God thinks will "work" for the mission agency he has set up (the local church) why would you not want to fight for that same pattern in organisations we have set up, such as CUs? I agree that one might not want to insist on your view in that setting but it seems odd to me to actively push for the opposite position to pertain in the CUs you are responsible for than the church you help lead.

"Not all teaching carries eldership authority."

This is formally true. But it's  important not to create a divide that the Bible doesn't create between leadership and teaching. The leaders of a church lead it by teaching the church. So although there is some difference between, say, the Bible study led by an older undergraduate in a church mid-week student group and the preaching on a Sunday morning the authority of the latter doesn't reside solely in the fact that they have been called an elder. It is also connected to the fact that the format will be more one of declaring the teaching of the Scriptures and the fact that the whole body of the church will be gathered for Sunday morning. The more the CU meeting format we are talking about looks like this the more likely it is that people will think of the two as equivalent. My test for this would be: does a typical member of the CU recognise a difference in authority between listening to their properly appointed elder preach on a Sunday morning and listening to a (male or female) UCCF staff worker preaching from a passage at CU on a midweek evening? I am sure that for a vast majority of students in CUs the answer would be "no."

Finally it seems to me that there is a question of motivation that needs to be explored here. If it's the case that the members of a CU want to have women preaching because, having looked into it, they are genuinely convinced the Scriptures say this is what should happen that's one thing. But it seems to me that much of the quest for female leadership and preaching in contemporary evangelicalism is the C21st equivalent of Israel's clamouring for a king in the age of Samuel - we want this so we can be just like everybody else. Surely it's incumbent on anybody with influence over young Christians (church leader, staff worker or whoever) to ask the tough questions about why they want something that, prima facie, is heading in a different direction from the teaching of the New Testament?