Andy's Study

Fred Goodwin and the Gospel of Grace

2012-02-01T01:00:00.000-08:00

Fred Goodwin, former Chief Executive of RBS group, rescued from bankruptcy with hundreds of billions of pounds worth of UK Government support in 2008, yesterday (31st January 2012) had his knighthood (for services to banking) rescinded by the Queen following advice from a government committee.

Most people are rejoicing at this news. coming just a day after RBS's current Chief Exec (Stephen Hester) turned down £1 million in shares after considerable public and political pressure it seems a potent symbol of people power - the 99.9% getting something back from the 0.1% perhaps.

You would be hard pressed to find anyone who thinks "Fred the Shred" did a good job (much as you would have been hard pressed in 2006 to find anyone who thought he had done a bad one - hindsight is a wonderful thing!). Yet as Charles Moore has pointed out in the Telegraph recently the decision smacks of political opportunism and is rather a cheap gesture. After all many other people who have been recipients of honours failed miserably in the banking crisis too - civil servants who were meant to be regulating the system, politicians who are elected to represent people not just rich people and ordinary citizens who have a responsibility only to buy things we can afford.

How is it decided who has behaved sufficiently badly to lose their knighthood? Previously it was only people who have been convicted of a serious crime. This means Goodwin joins Anthony Blunt and Robert Mugabe, which does seem a little bit disproportionate. Now it seems that just not doing very well at your job is sufficient and, indeed, politicians are now calling for other city figures to lose honours. I think these politicians are treading a path that might go somewhere they don't want it to. Would taking the country into a war in which at least 100,000 people died to find weapons of mass destruction when there were none count as not doing your job very well? If so surely the entire cabinet of the last government should cease to be Lords, Sirs and Honourables? How about fiddling your expenses? Won't be many politicians knighted in the next few years then...

The sad truth is that if honours are only to be given to the honourable there aren't going to be very many of them awarded! And if they are going to be awarded only to people we can be sure have made a reasonable decent fist of their life waiting till a good 10 years after their death before awarding a knighthood would seem wise - though it might rather limit the satisfaction of the recipient.

There are those, of course, who think of the badge "Christian" as a bit like an honour; earned by goodness and capable of being lost by failure. But the truth, gloriously, is the opposite. Becoming a Christian, that is receiving the gift of salvation by faith in Jesus Christ, is an honour bestowed only on the undeserving. It cannot be lost by failure; indeed the regular admission of failure is just about the only true demonstration that you have received the honour at all.

Wonderfully the Lord Jesus Christ will not strip the title "brother," or the Father the honour of being called "child" (so much better than "Sir!") from anyone no matter what our failures.

Personal Faith is NOT Private Faith

2012-01-31T10:27:00.000-08:00

In our Christ Church Liverpool staff book club we've been reading Jim Packer's wonderful Knowing God, perhaps his best book.

There are lots of gems in it, especially the challenge to recognise the incalculable difference between merely knowing about God and actually knowing God; and the hugely different fruit of pride and humility respectively, that those two things produce.

But the thing that struck me this week that I've never thought about before is the way Packer uses the word "personal" to describe a Christian's faith.

As my colleague Maurice McCracken (check out his posts at http://bigbadmo.wordpress.com/ - if you all visit he'll maybe write more!) pointed out we are prone to use the word "personal" as a synonym for "private." When we say our faith is 'personal' we are often trying to put it beyond the reach of anyone else's opinion. That's very useful for Christians who want to hold on to Christianity without rally thinking through how to defend it to non-Christians.

Much more disturbingly it's also a device we tend to use to avoid having to listen to any other Christian's views about how we behave - whether that's our commitment to fellowship, sexuality, work ethic or any one of a dozen other "sensitive," "personal" matters.

But as Packer uses the word though a "personal" relationship with God is all about knowing God as a person. Packer was mostly addressing those for whom Christianity was too much knowing about God and not enough actually knowing him.

But the truth Packer teaches, that knowing God is, essentially, personal, is valuable for our somewhat different times. Because the very fact that your relationship with God is personal means that it is not, essentially, private. Yes surely some aspects of "you and the Lord" are not to be the detailed business of all your mates and everyone in your church. But you are in a relationship with a person (or perhaps, better, three persons!) such that your attitudes and actions matter to him. And God has placed you, his child, in a church family whose job is precisely to help you understand better what pleases and what grieves him.

Thanksgiving Sermon, Psalm 84

2012-01-28T11:23:00.000-08:00

A few folk have asked for a transcript of the sermon from today's Memorial Service for Ruth Radcliffe. Here it is.

“Darlingdaughter, you will rise and shine like a star, yea, like the sun. I am happy inspirit, but the flesh is sorrowful and will not be content, the parting grievesme beyond measure. I have sent a saint to heaven.”

Sospoke the great church reformer Martin Luther on the death of his beloveddaughter Magdalene.

I’msure everybody here this morning, even those of you who weren’t privileged tomeet Ruth, relates to Luther’s grief. For what, in our world, could be sadderthan the death of a child; a little girl with everything in life to lookforward to? Our flesh is sorrowful and will not be content.

Butfor many of us relating to Luther’s “happiness in spirit” at “sending a saintto heaven” is quite another matter. Youmight be here this morning feeling that there is nothing but tragedy in thissituation. You might feel that any sense of hope or joy today is inappropriate,even offensive.

Butthat’s not what Nick and Julia think. Shortly before Ruth diagnosed, beforeknew she was ill, Nick preached on these words from 1 Peter:

Praise be to the God and Father ofour Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into aliving hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and intoan inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. This inheritance is kept inheaven for you, who through faith areshielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to berevealed in the last time. In all this yougreatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer griefin all kinds of trials.

Ifyou ask him Nick will tell you that those words, preached in the convictionthat they were true then, have become very precious to him over the last twoyears. Not because they have become any truer, but because their relevance hasbecome more and more obvious.

Weall need to know this morning that the comfort of heaven is not something Christianshave made up to deal with tragic days like today.

Thismorning’s service with its mixture of grief and hope is a product of theconvictions this family, and all Christians, have always held, in good timesand bad. Followersof Jesus have always known that being a Christian is being a pilgrim – livinglife as a journey. Christianshave always known that journey has a destination – not the grave but the courtsof the Lord God, our creator and redeemer.

Wemeet this morning in the conviction that though our flesh may not be content,we can yet be happy in spirit, even in the face of tragic death.

Ourloss is, indeed, grievous. Nick and Julia have lost a child. Emily and Fliss asister. Whether we are Ruth’s grandparent, cousin, Auntie, Uncle, nephew, nieceor friend we are right to grieve in the flesh.

Ruth,though, as a follower of Christ has now come to a place so wonderful that it isbetter to be the person who opens the doors there than it is to be the proudowner of a sumptuous mansion here.

ThePsalmist, writing chiefly of the beautiful stone temple Solomon had built inJerusalem, but with one eye on the true, eternal home of God, of which thattemple was just a picture… ThePsalmist longed for those courts. His flesh might fear the cost of the journey.But his soul, his inmost being, yearned to arrive there.

Ruthhas gone before us to the courts of the Lord, whose time is so sweet that thepassing of 24 hours there, the Psalmist says, is not even to be compared withthree years of earthly life.

Aswe celebrate Ruth’s life our thoughts turn, inevitably, to what we have lost.To the growing up, the going to school, the exam successes, the unsuitableboyfriends and all the rest of it that we will not now experience. But todayabove all days we must remind ourselves that the loss is ours, not Ruth’s.

BecauseRuth is somewhere lovely. Sheis with the Lord. Nodoubt we would have honoured and loved Ruth much. Butshe is now in the presence of the one who bestows favour and honour withoutlimit. Ruthis with him who withholds no good thing from those, like her, who put theirtrust in him.

TheLord, the ruler of these courts, is not too proud, not too grand to welcomelittle Ruth into his home, the house of glory. Infact, the Psalmist says, even the sparrows and the swallows, those commonest ofbirds that we haughty human beings, filter out as of little significance in ourworld, can find a place in the courts of the Lord, even a central place, onenear the altar.

Weshould be comforted this morning that the living God, the God and Father of theLord Jesus Christ, who took children in his arms and blessed them, has manyplaces, special places, in his courts even for those, like Ruth, who will neverbe considered by this world to be amongst the great.

Thecourts of the Lord are beautiful.

Thecourts of the Lord are welcoming to all who trust in him.

Andthose on their way to God’s house bring great blessing on the journey.

As they passthrough the desert valleys

They makethem oases of water.

Ihope that, for those of you who were privileged, as I was, to see Ruth’s lifeat close quarters, you will hold onto a quirky memory of her uniqueness. Itmight be her voracious appetite for meat or her uttering of a sentencecompletely incomprehensible to adults but perfectly translated by Emily.

Itwould be easy to think those were just quirky things about Ruth. Which theywere. But they were more than that. They were green places. They were a gift ofGod to us through Ruth, even as he strengthened her for her own pilgrimage tohis courts.

Thosecourts, where she now lives, are lovely. Ruth’spresence in them shows that they are especially open and welcoming even to thesmallest and weakest of us. Andour own testimony, our experience is that Ruth, like all followers of Jesus, broughtus green places in the desert.

Ruthwas greatly blessed in being brought up to know the Lord. Thatblessing has now come to its full flowering in the house of God. Aswe remember Ruth’s life with gladness and thanks let us remember that one daywe will all follow her into death. Myprayer is that each of us might be trusting in Jesus Christ when we do.

I am a Church Member

2012-01-25T05:46:00.000-08:00

Really helpful reflection from Thom Rainer on what it means to be a member of a church.

Grieving Well - for unbelievers

2012-01-24T02:55:00.000-08:00

All of us have friends and family members who we know will die but who we also know are not trusting Jesus as their saviour. How should we face that?

The issue of how we should deal with the deal of a non-Christian we love and care for is not addressed by 1 Thess 4:13-18, which we've looked at at Christ Church this week. But it's an important and pressing question for many of us.

Here are just four observations that might help. I come from a family where almost everyone is not a Christian, so I personally find this pretty difficult. Most of the things I’m going to say are things I’ve found helpful for myself. It's important to say that none of them solve the problem; none of them take away the pain of knowing that those we love may face a lost eternity.

The first thing I need to know is that all my grief, for Christians and non-Christians, is put into better perspective if I love God more than anyone else. The best cure for almost all my struggles is to remember that I am made first for relationship with God and then for relationship with other people.

The second things I need to know is that I know less than I think I do. When you stand by the grave of a dead unbeliever you very rarely know whether they have made their peace with God in their final hours, or even perhaps their final minutes. We cannot presume that they have. But many do. Faced with the final undeniable reality of death and the deep, deep knowledge that this is not how things are meant to be, many people have finally stopped running from God and, blessedly, embraced Christ just before they meet him. Which is a remarkable testimony to God's grace and patience! For that reason it is so, so, important that we tell all those we know and love how to be right with God through Jesus. We never know at what point they may want to throw themselves on his grace. When a person who has not professed Christ but who knows what the gospel is dies you may not have much hope, but you usually have some hope, and that is precious.

The third thing I need to know is that however hard it is to face the death of people who do not trust Christ in a world where God does not save everybody it is much better than all the alternatives. Would it be better to live in a world where everybody faced eternal judgment, as we deserve, and there was no saviour? Would it be better to live in a world where there was no God and, therefore, no hope and no ultimate purpose for anything at all? Would it be better to live in a world where God saved everybody regardless of justice so that those who have no desire for Christ to pay for their sin are forced to glorify God for doing that forever? Even with my very, very limited human insight it seems to me that none of those worlds are any better!

The final thing I have found helpful is to remember that God loves people, even those whom he will judge, more than I do. He is the one who cries to the sinner “why will you die?” and who gave the treasure of heaven for the sins of the world. My grief at the death of unbelievers is not greater than God’s but merely a pale reflection of it, and so in my grief for unbelievers the God I worship is not distant and disapproving but near and understanding.

Grieving Well - 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18

2012-01-23T06:51:00.000-08:00

Theexpected, though still profoundly shocking death of Ruth Radcliffe fromleukaemia this week is the first death in our church family since Christ ChurchLiverpool was started back in 2003. Thedeath of a child is now such a rare thing in our country – only one child in200 dies before their fifth birthday compared to over 40 in 200 in many partsof Africa – that, for many people in our congregation, Ruth may be the onlychild you have ever known who has died.

Herdeath this week is the first in our church. But if there is oneprediction about the future of Christ Church Liverpool I can make without muchfear of contradiction or need of prophetic gifting it’s that it will not be thelast.

Wemight, as a culture, have utilised wonderful, God-given medical technologiesand insights about diet, exercise and all the rest of it to delay death, formost people, until we’ve been around 8 decades or thereabouts. But all the wonderful research those ofyou completing PhDs are doing, the great care our doctors, nurses and physiosprovide in hospitals, has, ultimately, a 100% failure rate. Thereis a lot of death in Christ Church’s future.

Sothis is a particularly appropriate time to think about what we are goingto do with all that death and all that grieving.

Theadvice of the world varies massively. In21^st century British culture we are massively confused about it. Westand uncomfortably, somewhere between very public tears for celebrities wedon’t know in any meaningful way at all and stoic silence at the graveside offamily members we have spent our lives with.

Butsuch conflicting approaches are not new. Back in the 18^th century thediarist and dictionary writer Samuel Johnson was definitely of the stiff upperlip school. “Grief,” he said “is a species of idleness.” By contrast hiscontemporary, the poet William Cowper (who gave us the phrase “God works inmysterious ways” through one of his many hymns), said that “grief is itself amedicine.”

Infirst century Greece the popular sentiment of ordinary people encouraged greatand noisy grief. Onthe other hand, stoics and other philosophers urged rationality and reason sothat one writer summarises the typical ancient letter to a grieving relative asusually containing six teachings:

1 Death is inevitable.

2 Death is the fate of all, king and beggars, rich band poor.

3 The person's memory and honour will live on in spite of death.

4 Death releases one from the evils of life.

5 The funeral and tomb are a great honour to the deceased.

6 Either death is nonexistence and does not matter to the dead or itleads to some happier state of existence.

Inthis confusing maelstrom of varying advice it wasn’t surprising that theThessalonian Christians, introduced to a new way of thinking about the whole oftheir lives by the apostle Paul with his good news about Jesus Christ, weren’tquite sure how to react when Christians died.

Andit’s not surprising that, with so much bad advice around, many of us here havelittle idea what a Christian response to death is.

Shouldwe, as W H Auden said, “pack up the moon and dismantle the sun” becauseeverything is worthless now, or take Henry Scott-Holland’s view that just a“negligible accident,” and act as if our loved one is just in the next room?

Intothis whirlpool of emotion and confusion steps the apostle Paul with some wiseand timely advice about death and grieving.

1 Whatgood grief is: grief with hope

During the three weeks or so that he spent with theThessalonian Christians, Paul would have explained his understanding of whathappens when Christians die. Sowhat he’s doing here isn’t teaching them something new. He’s just remindingthem of things that it’s hard to keep in mind when you are going through themill and feeling pierced by grief. Whatdoes Paul want the Thessalonians, and is, to know? Well it’s simple. Here’sJohn Calvin’s brilliant summary of this whole passage: “we must notgrieve for the dead beyond certain bounds, for all God’s children are going tobe raised again.”

Howshould we face death? Well when you read v13 it’s actually quite oddlyconstructed. I wonder if you noticed the double negative? We do not want you to grieve like men who haveno hope. Youcould rearrange that positively. How should we grieve for Christians who havedied? We should grieve like thosewith hope.

Thereare, I think, lots of traditional churches and Christians in them, that givethe impression that we shouldn’t grieve. Things are better for them now, peoplesay. They might even quote some Bible verses for you – the Lord gives and the Lord takes away, blessed be the name of the Lord. There is nothing wrong with us offering each other truthsfrom the Scriptures that are, indeed, here to give us comfort and hope in theface of death.

Butcan I say to you that when you are confronted with a tearful relative or friendof someone who has died you must not offer Bible verses as if they were anantidote to grief. Because they aren’t. Sometimespeople have described Christian funerals to me as “not being sad at all.” WhichI think is just weird. Because death should rightly produce grief.

Yesof course God is good, no truth is clearer in the Bible. Yesof course the Lord has the right to take life because he is the one who givesit. Butthat does not mean that I cannot grieve.

That’swhat Jesus did when confronted with the death of his friend Lazarus. Death shouldmake you angry. It should make you feel the wrongness of a world that is nothow it was meant to be.

Deathshould shout to you about a universe that, as Paul writes elsewhere, is cryingout for liberation from its slavery to decay and destruction. Death, though itis God’s just judgment on all sinners, is not how things are meant to be. Deathis unnatural.

Mygran, a Christian believer I think, though in a rather confused way, diedpeacefully at the age of 95 after just a few short weeks in a nursing home. Shehad kept her own home for over 60 years, led an active life until she was about94, had a wide circle of friends and a loving family. She lived till the kindof age of some Old Testament character. Did it feel like a right time for herto die? Not at all. There is no good time to die. Death is unnatural.

Whichmeans that it is not wrong to grieve death, however old, sick or senile theperson who has died. Ifyou have some Christian brother and sister in your life who has fallenasleep and you have not shed tears for them because of some fear that would beless than godly, let me say to you that it is OK to grieve that loss.

Death,which we brought into the world with our sin, robs us of relationships whichare precious to us. It is not wrong to grieve. Fortunatelyvery few of us need bereavement counselling. Such counselling is indeed veryhelpful to those whose grief has exceeded normal bounds and become a realmental health issue. But the danger of a culture of counselling is that itgives the impression that heart rending grief in the face of death is not normal..But it is normal. It is how we may well feel when confronted with the lastenemy.

Andmostly to come through that valley of darkness when we need is simply to knowthat God says grief is legitimate.

Secondly,we should grieve like those with hope.

Whenanother Christian dies they have gone to be with the Lord Jesus and we too,will be with him soon. Thatdoes not change the fact that we have lost something. But it does change whatwe have lost.

Whena Christian dies there is no need to grieve for them. Not because, as thecliché puts it, they have gone to a better place (though that’s true), but because they are with a better person.Dead Christians are with Christ. They are with the person they love most in allthe world. They are happier with him than they would be with you.

Itis vital that we remember that. Christian parents: you are, I hope, bringing upyour children to trust God and to love Jesus more than they love you. Christianstudents: your parents, if you have been brought you up in a Christian home,love Jesus more than they love you and more than they love each other.Christian couples: your wife or husband does not love you as much as they loveJesus.

Whatthat means is that if they die, when they die, they will be with someone theylove more than you. Someone you will be with too, very soon.

Sowhen you grieve you are grieving for a world where death reigns. You aregrieving for yourself and your loss of relationship with someone you love. Butyou are not grieving for them.

Thereis nothing wrong with grieving for your loss. If someone you love dies yourloss is real and your tears are legitimate. When you lose a son or daughter, aparent, a spouse or a sibling you will never be the same again. That scar ofloss will remain until you too go to glory. But you need to realise that theloss is yours not theirs.

2 Whygood grief is possible: because Christ is risen

Forme, looking at v15-17 of this passage always makes me think: “man, this is abit weird.” Calvin describes these verses as talking about things that are“incredible to the human mind.”

Soit’s really important that Paul introduces us to these teachings on what willhappen to Christians at Christ’s return, which we might feel are impossible, bypointing us to something that seems equally impossible but which has definitelyalready happened:

V14: We believed that Jesus died and rose againand SO we be believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleepin him.

TheChristian hope for the future of those who have died, and our hope in the faceof our imminent death, is based on faith. But faith isn’t, as Mark Twain suggested“believing what you know ain’t so.” It isn’t something that Christians make upwhen they are confronted with death to make ourselves feel better.

It’ssomething we believe all the time, even when death isn’t on our horizon at thatmoment. Christian faith is having a settled conviction about facts based onevidence. We believe that Jesus diedand rose again. And there is as much reason today as ever there was to believe thatJesus Christ didn’t just die; he also rose bodily and physically from the dead.

Ifyou are a Christian here this morning then, by definition, you already believein the resurrection of Jesus. You already believe that he is the glorious Sonof God who died for our sins and was raised to new life from the tomb beforeascending to his position of reigning power in heaven.

Youmight, like me, find it difficult, almost impossible, to comprehend how, at theend of time, God will give all his people resurrection bodies and house us in anew earth. It’s fine not to be able to imagine the process or the scale ofthat! But you don’t need to feel sceptical about it. You don’t need to doubt inyour mind that God can raise you, raise us, from the dead. Because God is notasking you to believe something for which there is no evidence. He is askingyou to believe something that follows entirely naturally from the historical factthat Jesus has already been raised from the dead.

WhatGod is proposing for the human race is not something new. It is not somethinghe has never done before. What God is going to do for his people is what he hasalready done for his Son. He is going to repeat something that hundredswitnessed. He is going to do again the resurrection miracle, a miracle that thosewho saw it were so convinced was real that they were willing to put their liveson it.

Itis possible for us to grieve with hope, not because Christians have some“faith” gene that enables us to believe three impossible things beforebreakfast, but because Jesus died and rose again.

3 Whatgood grief recognises: that dead Christians will be honoured.

Itseems that the Thessalonians were particularly concerned that those Christianswho died before Christ returned would miss out in some way.

ManyJewish teachers in the first century taught that the blessings of the kingdomof God would only be for those who were living at the time it came. That wouldhave been fine when the Thessalonians had first become Christians because ifChrist had returned at that point all those who had believed in him would stillbe alive to share in the kingdom. But once some of them started to die itraised some difficult questions.

Paulwants to reassure them. Far from missing out on the blessings of the kingdom ofGod, the remade perfect world that Christ will bring on his return, thoseChristians who have died before Christ comes will be right at the front of thequeue.

Atthe time when Paul wrote this letter it was common for visiting dignitaries toa city to be greeted some way outside the city gates by important people of thetown and escorted back to the city. Ambassadors and others would send ridersahead to let people know they were coming and announce their progress withinstruments and heralds so that the appropriate crowd could be gathered.

Thiskind of honour was even accorded to the apostle Paul on one occasion – you canread about it Acts chapter 28 later if you like. Paul was a prisoner beingtaken to Rome, and the Christians in that city travelled some 30 miles down theAppian way to greet him at the Forum of Appius and escort him to the world’scapital city.

WhenJesus returns, Paul says, there will be a much more impressive escort thanthat.

WhenJesus returns there will be lot of noise. There will be a loud command fromheaven, archangels will shout and the call of God will sound like a trumpet.The volume of the announcement will make the coming of a Caesar seem like someschool children blowing a kazoo. Itwill be such a noise, he implies, that it will awaken the dead.

Andthose deceased Christians, now clothed in their resurrection bodies, will go,with those who are alive when he comes, to meet the coming Lord Jesus. Wherecould you go to meet someone who is coming to be the king of the whole earth? Onlyinto the sky to greet and escort the coming ruler of the world to his realm.

Thereis not going to be some sort of “rapture” of Christians to be with Jesus afterwhich things will carry on in the world. On the last day Christians will beresurrected to meet Jesus in the air only to immediately escort him to theearth where is will remake everything and reign as king forever and ever.

Atthe head of that great procession of joy and triumph celebrating Jesus’ victorywill be brothers and sisters who have died. If he waits a long time before hecomes we will be in that group. Butif Jesus comes tomorrow we will be there as well; applauding and cheering theking as he comes as we are caught up and transformed into our eternal form.

WhenJesus comes we will all be there. Dead Christians will be alive. LivingChristians will be more alive than we have ever been. And we, together, all ofus, will be with the Lord forever.

Thereis a lot of death in life. But Christians face death, both our own death andthat of our fellow believers, knowing that there is eternal life after death.

Notall tears are an evil. We should weep as we face the temporary parting of ourfellowship with those in our church, those of our family and friends, whodepart ahead of us to be with Christ.

Indeedwe should weep so that, as people did who saw Jesus by the grave of is friend Lazarus,the watching world says of us “see how he loved him.” If our grief forChristians who die is shallow it may also reflect that our love for them wasshallow and that should not be.

Butour grief must always be infused with hope and with the conviction that thebest thing in the universe is to be with Christ whom we love. Itis tragic when children or young people die? Yes, for those who are left it is. Suchdeaths are gutting. Those funerals are massively painful. Butfor the child, for the student, for the graduate professional, the young parentand the middle aged amongst us, if we die today, we have not lost out; the deadin Christ will rise first. There is nothing any amongst us can look forward toin this life that will not be infinitely surpassed by the perfections of whatawaits us.

Sowhen your Christian brother or sister dies, grieve as those who loved them, butwith hope. Such grief is good grief. Not just good for you, setting your worldin its right perspective, but also good for the gospel; commending the love ofChrist and our hope in Christ to a watching world.

Whenyou Christian brother or sister dies, whoever they were to you, you must not believethe lie that their loss is the end of the world, or even the end of your world,even if it may well feel like that.

Andif you are grieving do not despise those who encourage you with the hope ofglory. That does not mean glibly telling every grieving Christian you meet thatit’ll all be OK. But it does mean that as we weep together, as we seek to sharein the pain of loss, we must constantly return, in the church, and in ourconversations to the reality of the resurrection of Christ, even as we expectpeople still to grieve.

Heis risen. He will come again. And when he does his people, every one of us,will be caught up with him in the air and form his cheering, joyful escort ashe comes to reign our new and perfect world.

Laura Robson, the rainbow hairband and evangelical Christians

2012-01-18T00:30:00.000-08:00

The offending hairband - actually it didn't
offend anyone but the Guardian wants you
to think it did.

British tennis player Laura Robson has been in the news this week, not so much for losing in the first round of the Australian open (that's pretty much a given for British players, sadly), but because she wore a rainbow-coloured hairband because, in her words, "I believe in equal rights for everyone."

This probably wouldn't normally have excited comment except that gay rights activists had called for people to take rainbow coloured flags into the stadium, which is named after Margaret Court, a great Australian tennis player who now pastors a pentecostal church and last month described gay people as engaging in "abominable sexual practices."

A few observations...

1 Assuming that political and/or religious symbols (and there's no doubt that the rainbow as a symbol of gay rights is both political and, in a sense, religious) are permitted by the organisers of the tournament Laura Robson had every right to wear a rainbow hairband and shouldn't be criticised for doing so. I imagine they are as I'm pretty sure I've seen players wearing crosses. If such symbols aren't permitted the tennis governing body needs to deal with the issue accordingly.

2 Margaret Court's comments about homosexuality (such as: "I've nothing against homosexual people. I help them to overcome. We have people [at the Victory Life Centre] who have been homosexual who are now married.") probably sound rather insensitive even to my more evangelical readers. It's important that we understand that the reason for this is not, I think, that she is 'homophobic' (which in our culture is largely a word used to mean 'critical of anything a gay person does in relation to their sexuality') but that like many people in churches like Victory Life Centre she has an over-realised eschatology; her expectation is that many (most) of the problems that afflict us in this life - including issues of sexuality - ought to be resolved in this life. This is, of course, a view that takes too much from one set of Bible texts and not enough from another. It fails to find a biblical balance between the wonderful power of Christ now and the struggles with sin and living in a messed up world.

3 To have this whole debate around women's tennis, several of whose most decorated and adulated stars are gay (Martina Navratilova and Billie Jean King among them), seems slightly ironic as it provides at least some evidence that homosexuality is not necessarily a bar to progress; though I am sure there are prejudiced people in tennis as there are everywhere else in the world. A bit like western evangelical Christians western homosexuals are prone to seeing persecution everywhere!

4 The real problem in the story, as reported by the Guardian, is that despite the claim of a "political row" that snagged the readers' attention in the first sentence, not one single person quoted in the article or anywhere else that I can find, actually criticised Robson for wearing the hairband. In other words this "reigniting" is in reality a "row" manufactured by a newspaper to make it sound like nasty evangelical Christians are persecuting a 17 year old tennis player - when they totally aren't!

Why Mariella Frostrup is quite right about church

2012-01-16T08:39:00.000-08:00

In this morning's Guardian 'problem page' Mariella Frostrup is asked by her correspondent if going to church might be the solution to the "sick feminist joke that my life is"?The real surprise of the article is that her reply is that, yes, church could be the answer.

Granted that the article is heavily caveated ( I'm more naturally tilted towards Richard Dawkins and the late Christopher Hitchens's atheism") and laden with irony ("desperate times call for desperate measures"), Frostrup is clearly genuine when she says that "embracing religion is one of the few guaranteed ways of joining a real-life community, carving out a blame-free 90 minutes a week for yourself against the backdrop of Mass, and experiencing a cathartic blast of exuberance during hymn singing."

Frostrup thinks that it would be truly desperate to contemplate embracing a religion you don't believe in to get some respite from your daily life, but recognises that that is precisely how desperate some, perhaps millions of, women in our culture are.

I wouldn't want to claim that churches are the only place where you can guarantee to be part of a real-life community. But my experience is that they are one of the few places where regular attenders are massively keen to welcome newcomers, not just because of a missionary zeal to see more people come to know Jesus Christ personally (though I hope we have that) but because the Christian gospel teaches us to be interested in people, precious bearers of God's image, for their own sake.

Interestingly lots of the comments on the piece seem to think that going to church when you don't believe is a sort of hypocrisy. If that view is at all representative (and I suspect it is) then Christians need to work hard to correct it and show that anybody who attends a church is most welcome to join in all sorts of aspects of our community even though they might not, in Christ, be part of the church family.

The reality is that people start to come to church for all sorts of reasons - sudden change in belief, interest in spiritual aspects of life, a way to meet new people or simply an escape from the pressures of life. No Christian minds anybody coming to church for any of those reasons - because no Christian pretends that going to church is what makes you a Christian, important though it is.

It would be a disaster, however, is people in these situations who do come to our churches, were able to get involved without coming to realise through our explanation of the gospel that the root cause of many of the stresses and strains of the post-feminist life are curable in the end not by a loving community (though it may help you cope) but by a radical shift in belief and a rejection of the values that lead so many women to be slaves to a hopeless ideal of homemaker-businesswoman-mother-goddess,

We need to challenge the consumerism that says we all need more stuff obtained by more work. We need to challenge the right-culture, which means that when members of our family fail us we become embittered, resentful and self-righteous.

Most of all though we need to make sure that our church meetings are about worship. The fact that a church service is primarily about God (and, as a result about loving others) not me, unlike a Zumba class or a book group say, is a wonderful antidote to the self-obsession that infects our entire culture.

Only as we point stressed out, frazzled, overworked, overconsuming, rights obsessed modern people to the reality of our identity as finite creatures accountable to a great King who offers his eternal covenant love in Christ can we really offer them the hope of real rest.

Good Books on Guidance

2012-01-16T06:49:00.000-08:00

Perhaps reflecting our rather narcissistic culture books on guidance seem to be one of the bestselling subsections in Christian literature. Having read a lot of them over the last few weeks my conclusion is, mostly, that there's no need to read more than one or at most two because all the good ones say the same things:

God sovereignly guides us in line with his good plan for our lives.
He only very rarely reveals that plan to us in advance.
The Bible gives us all the guidance we need for righteousness.
God has placed us in churches where people will give us wise advice and loving support.
So we should trust God, do what the Bible says, take heed of the wisdom of church leaders and others and then just get on and make decisions.

All the books that follow contain these elements, but they all expand on them in helpful ways with subtly different emphases and at slightly different levels. Take your pick:

1 Decision making and the will of God, Gary Friesen, Multnomah.
The mother of all recent good book on guidance; that is to say I suspect it's the one where most of the other writers got their ideas from! Longish (450 pages) but easy to read with loads of helpful diagrams. I will be forever grateful to former boss Dr Jason Clarke for introducing mew to this book.

2 Finding the Will of God: A Pagan Notion? Bruce Waltke, Eerdmans.

Shorter and simpler than Friesen with a particularly good part one, which shows why lots of contemporary Christian notions of how you discover God's will are basically pagan ideas. Frightening and sobering!

3 Guidance and the Voice of God, Phil Jensen & Tony Payne, Matthias Media.
Probably the best known book on this subject in the circles I move in. Jensen & Payne's book is clear (sometimes painfully so) and practical. As a result of its brevity it loses some of the helpful nuances you get in Friesen. I also preferred the original, provocative, title The Last Word on Guidance!

4 Just Do Something: How to make a decision without dreams, visions, fleeces, open doors, random Bible verses, casting lots, liver shivers, Kevin DeYoung, Moody Press.
Another short punchy take on guidance with the sort of down the line (and occasionally across the line) humour you'd expect from the kind of preacher who hangs out with ark Driscoll a lot. DeYoung's helpful take on the subject is that he writes specifically with the aim of getting people to do something. This is the book to read if you're feckless and irresponsible - well if that's you you're probably not going to get round to buying it. But if you know some feckless and irresponsible you could give them the audiobook version?

5 Finding God's Will: Reaffirming the Sufficiency of Scripture, Colin Hamer, Wipf and Stock.
Another brief book, divided into 16 short chapters - this is the one on the list most likely to make it as your daily Quiet Time reading for a couple of weeks. Colin's writing style is punchy, no-frills and clear to the point of painfulness. If you like your doctrine unadorned with fluff this is the choice for you.

Does Jesus hate religion?

2012-01-15T00:15:00.001-08:00

Jefferson Bethke's YouTube video Jesus hates religion has had millions of views over the last week.Perhaps inevitably it started with loads of Christians liking it and then there was a bit of a backlash ad lots of criticism. If you want a considered, thoughtful and gracious analysis I'd recommend a look at Kevin deYoung's post: http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/kevindeyoung/2012/01/13/does-jesus-hate-religion-kinda-sorta-not-really

Sex and Preaching

2012-01-14T03:12:00.000-08:00

Click here for an excellent post from Carl Trueman on the Reformation 21 blog about the place of sexual imagery in the Scriptures and how we preach.

Driscoll, British Preachers and all that

2012-01-13T04:44:00.000-08:00

Christianity magazine has reignited the fires of an old Mark Driscoll controversy (I'll call him Mark from here on in, not because I'm pretending he's my best mate but because calling people by their surnames feels a bit unfriendly to me). If you're not up to speed on this one here's a quick summary:

Christianity implies Mark said our preachers are basically all a bit rubbish and that he was having a go.
Mark says that he has been misunderstood and that he asked the question who aren't British preachers better known in the context of a challenge to our boldness and a loving tone.
Several people, including widely read blogger Krish Kandish have waded in.

The original event to which this controversy seems to refer is an Acts 29 event in Birmingham back in the summer. I was there are joined a smaller group for dinner with Mark Driscoll afterwards so feel vaguely qualified to make the following observations:

1 Mark did basically imply that British preachers aren't particularly good or very bold. That was what people there at the time understood him to be saying. It is absolutely right to say that the context was one of challenging us to be bold - which is a fair challenge. It is also fair to say that, at the time, a lot of people present were quite irritated by what he said which suggests that we misunderstood him. If so that is mostly our fault not his.

2 Mark is not only a great warrior for the gospel being mightily used by the Lord but also a delightful, kind and considerate man. It was a privilege to share a meal with him and I feel like I learned a lot in that couple of hours. That doesn't, of course, mean I know him! But it is the case that lots of the things we find difficult about other people are a result of our not having any relationship with them - people should definitely not make a judgment about Mark Driscoll (or anyone else!) as a person based on what he said once on a platform in Birmingham.

3 Part of the reason for this controversy is that Mark's stage "persona" and style when he preaches is very different to what he is like in smaller groups. I am not sure who has advised/encouraged him to maintain a very combative style of preaching but I am not at all convinced they are doing him a service.

4. Mark is right to point out that magazines have their own agendas; both theologically and in terms of sales, so we should take what they say with a pinch of salt.

4 I think Krish Kandiah and others who are lighting the blue touch paper on this one are in danger of damaging a good man's reputation based on something frankly fairly innocuous simply because it's the sort of criticism which get's our hackles up (even though it shouldn't). On the other hand I think it's also unfortunate that Driscoll's response doesn't actually recognise that it might not have been a very helpful thing to say.

Much more important, however, is the substantive issue: why aren't British preachers used extensively at our own major events and known all over the place?

I have several reflections:

a) It's not entirely true - Liam Golligher, Alistair Begg, Rico Tice, Vaughan Roberts and others have extensive global ministries. Two of those people have, in fact, been "pinched" by US churches! UK conferences are, I think, getting better at using home grown speakers (FIEC conference is a model of good practice in this regard).

b) It's partly true - a lot of reformed preaching in the UK is entirely sound but really quite boring and it doesn't surprise me that people outside our local churches (who listen because they know us and know we love them) don't want to hear us. We need to raise our game (well I do and I suspect some others need to as well).

c) It's partly because of a (perhaps wrong) British tendency not to talk about what we think we're good at. This can be either appropriate humility or a false reticence about the Lord's gifts! Either way it's a reason for the lack of (self)publicity around preachers that Mark referred to.

d) Partly because our churches are much smaller than many American churches (for all sorts of reasons that I think are nothing to do with our preaching - because churches in Britain led by Americans are usually small too!) pastors don't have nearly as much opportunity to go speak at conferences and events as they don't have large staff teams to cover for them.

e) At the risk of a sweeping generalisation I think British people (in fact nearly all people in the world) are perhaps a bit more open to learning to people from other countries than Americans are; so we invite Keller, Driscoll, Carson etc to our conferences. Americans (like Brits in the C19th) have an undercurrent of global empire syndrome - when you rule the world it's hard to see that you can learn from other people and places.

f) Yes British conference organisers (PT, Word Alive, Keswick) could and should change this by asking more great UK speakers. Some of our most brilliant Bible teachers (Hugh Palmer, Rupert Bentley-Taylor) are not as well known as they ought to be. So too could our American brothers - if more Brits were invited to speak at the Gospel Coalition Conference or T4G they would inevitably also become more widely known here too.

g) I'm available! That's not an entirely flippant comment - any of us who believe that God in his grace has gifted us to teach the Scriptures and miraculously moved us to be passionate about doing that ought to say so and be willing, within the constraints of the responsibilities we have in our local churches, to go and do that in places where people want us to.

Christians and Debt - your help needed!

2012-01-12T02:45:00.000-08:00

Dear Andysstudy blog readers,

I've been asked to give two seminars on the issue of debt at New Word Alive this year (if you're not going to it you really should - see here!).

As I think about preparing this I'd like your help in answering any (or all) of the following questions, or any other questions you think need answering on this subject:

Have you ever heard a sermon/had a Bible study on debt in your church? If so what did it say is a biblical understanding of debt?
Do you think it is morally wrong for Christians to have debt? Why/why not?
Are some sorts of debt more acceptable that others in our churches? Which? Are the reasons for this biblical or cultural?
Where would you advise someone struggling with debt to go? Do you think sources of help are widely known about?
If you have experienced problems with debt what consequences did it have for you practically and spiritually?
What things do you think churches should be doing to address this issue either amongst our own fellowships or in the communities we are located in?

If you have seen any good resources on this issue I'd also appreciate you letting me know! Please use the comments facility on the blog.

Andrew

A small worry about church plants (part 2)

2012-01-11T00:49:00.000-08:00

In Part 1 of this post I explained a little bit why I think that the model of church where a single church planter (or a group of planters who make their living from the church) hold most of the decision making power is a potentially explosive way for a church to be structured.

In this post I'm going to explore, briefly, four better ways of doing things, one of which I reckon is the best (or least worst!) option. In a future post I hope to expand a bit on how we try (and often fail!) to work this one, congregational governance, out at Christ Church Liverpool.

Option 1: Episcopacy

Regular readers of this blog will know that I am in general no great fan of Anglican church structures. But they do have going for them that the Vicar/Rector is accountable to his Bishop for the way in which he conducts himself.

Those of us in free churches lament the fact that Anglian bishops today do not have bishops who ensure that ministers who teach heresy are expelled from their posts (and sometimes not even those who live unrepentantly immoral lives). But the provision in the Anglican structure of a mechanism by which church leaders are accountable to people with authority to get rid of them is a good thing.

As an outsider looking in to the C of E my advice to church planters who are Anglicans would be: if you believe in episcopacy then you ought to submit yourself actively to the authority of a bishop and be in a role where the bishop can fire you for doing bad stuff. Even if the systems of the C of E permit you to get to a position where you can fudge such submission don't do that.

On the other hand if you don't really believe in episcopacy (or you do believe in episcopacy but don't believe the C of E is a very good version of it!) then it seems to me you should leave the Church of England and join another type of church for the sake of your conscience - unless you don't think church governance is very important in which case you probably shouldn't be a pastor!

Peter Leithart, recently tried
(and acquitted)
for heresy by the PCA

Option 2: Presbyterianism

In Presbyterian systems the presbytery (usually the pastor of each of a group of churches) is able to investigate and take action against those whose doctrine or living is thought to be incompatible with the teachings of the gospel - witness the recent heresy trial of Peter Leithart in the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA). In many Presbyterian churches (such as the PCA) the congregation also has powers much wider than in many UK church plants - for example the congregation may elect the church's trustees and instruct them in the purchase and disposal of church property and management of funds.

It's not good enough, I think, just to start more than one congregation and declare that the head of each is a member of the Presbytery and that you'll hold each other accountable. The truth is that such relationships probably have too much invested in them for you to be able to see things clearly from the perspective of a congregation member or outsider and that the tendency will always be to be too soft on one another, especially where your livelihood is at stake. Particularly if there are only two people it creates massive possibilities for stalemates.

It's a bit like episcopacy - if you are a convicted presbyterian join a presbyterian church and submit to the authority of the presbytery. If you aren't don't pretend that the pastor(s) having all the power is a form of presbyterianism. It isn't.

Option 3: Elder Governance

The first church in which I was an elder has origins in the Brethren movement. Here elders were appointed by the existing elders, rather than by the congregation. This system worked especially well because historically in Brethren churches there were no paid staff so the eldership was very much a group of peers who were usually working in very similar jobs to the rest of the congregation. This meant that, for all that they lacked formal theological training, they had a good sense of the needs and concerns of the saints they were shepherding.

Today many churches with elder governance have a mixture of staff and non-staff elders. This works well as long as equality of the elders is respected; everybody's voice has equal weight and, if it ever comes to it, everybody's vote counts the same. Ideally the chairman, who should hold any casting vote, will not be a member of staff.

This is not to say that every elder has equal wisdom or experience. But in a functional system the staff elders will recognise that on a day to day basis the non-staff elders have work and life experience rather closer to t atypical congregation member than their own and the non-staff elders will recognise the theological and pastoral expertise that comes with dealing with church issues full-time.

Option 4: Congregationalism

Yes this really is the top Google image
result for "Congregationalism"!

In my view the best way to ensure the proper accountability of the church planter/pastor is through the congregation of the church. Why? Because in the end it seems that God holds each of us accountable for the teaching we choose to listen to. So it follows that it is for each Christian, so far as possible, to be able to participate in the recognition of those they believe are gifted to be Bible teachers within the church.

Congregationalism doesn't mean, as some seem to think, that every person in the church has to make every decision - any more than parliamentary democracy means that we should have a referendum on every issue. The congregation's role is to recognise those biblically qualified to lead and then let them lead; but with the continued ability to revoke that recognition should the elder not merit it any longer.

The main objection I hear to this from church planters/pastors are that:
a) the congregation aren't mature enough to make those decisions and
b) what if they stop wanting me to be their pastor?

To which I want to reply (a) your job is to teach them so they are mature so get on with it. And (b) would you really want to work for a church where the people didn't want you to be their pastor?!

My own view is that, when done well, congregationalism enables the whole church to be actively involved in the most significant decisions in church life but can also give great discretion to the leaders who are appointed to then get on and lead. Yes there are congregational churches where (stupidly) the church vote on everything - from the brand of photocopier to the colour of the carpets). But there are also elder led churches where the leaders make decisions about, for example, church planting, without any formal opportunity for the church to express its view.

It is sometimes objected that congregationalism means every member gets one vote on (for example) who should be an elder irrespective of their maturity. True. But a system where the elders merely seek "wise counsel" is equally in danger of being one where the elders simply assign "weight" to the opinions of the spiritually mature who, surprise surprise, are usually those who agree with what the elders want to do!

The issues about church governance has raged in Protestantism for over 400 years. I don't suppose I can make much contribution to solving them. But I am passionately certain that any of these four historically tested ways of leading a church is better than having one or two people who are, de facto, accountable to no one, make all the decisions.

So if you're a church planter or in a church which needs to improve its governance don't take the option which just looks like it will enable you to get most things done most quickly. Think about the long term, think about the sinful human nature. And try to implement a form of church leadership that minimises temptations and opportunities for ungodliness and helps keep you honest before God and men.

Some people might like to read more about these issues! I'll try and comeup with a post on good things to read in this area soon.

A small worry about church plants... (part 1)

2012-01-10T05:00:00.000-08:00

I'm a bit worried about the UK church planting scene.

Not a lot worried - because there are some brilliant young (and older!) men and women planting exciting, dynamic, faithful churches all over the place. There's a lot more to do. But there's lots that's good.

I'm just a bit worried about what seems to be a 'default' for church plant leadership as church plants start and as they become more stable local churches.

It seems to me that quite a number of church leaders and planters talk favourably about a system that has the leader/planter (or leaders/planters where there are two of them) in charge without either a superstructure (a bishop or presbytery) or accountability to the congregation (proper church membership or genuinely plural elder governance).

In quite a lot of contemporary church plants (perhaps especially, but by no means exclusively, those started by people from Anglican churches but operating outside traditional Anglican structures) the full-time paid leader(s) or leaders are the only elder(s) the church has and there is no formal mechanism in the church for removing them for either heresy or 'moral failure.'

Given everything that we know, not only from Scripture but also from church history, it ought to be patently obvious that a church where one person, or two people whose livelihoods are in some sense mutually dependent, is in charge makes a powerful recipe for pride or manipulation. But it seems that the pragmatic case that "I can get things done quicker where there are few constraints to my leadership" is being used in conservative evangelical churches in just the same kind of way that the "Holy Spirit anointed leader" case is used in different theological circles. Whilst no system of church governance is incapable of being circumvented by those determined to do wrong there is no doubt that concentration of decision making power into a the hands of one or two people makes things worse - remember the Nine O'Clock Service anyone?

So what are the particular problems of the "church planter leads" model and what would be better? I'll consider the first of those questions in this post and some better alternatives in a second post.

It's worth saying at this stage that lots of churches with these (in my view) poor leadership structures do great work and are being mightily used by God for the kingdom and I praise Him for them. The brutal truth, though, is that almost any system of church governance is OK when things are going well; the differences are only exposed when things aren't going so well.

So then, three problems with the "church planter's in charge' model...

1. It fails to recognise the change from church plant to church.

When a new church is planted it is undoubtedly true that a ruthlessly uncompromising vision is needed to get things off the ground. Having lots of checks and balances in your process may hinder the church from coming to life. Whilst I still don't think that a single leader is really ideal in these circumstances there are arguments to be made for a much more individually led ministry at this stage.

But, unless they fail, church plants become churches. At this point the range of things the church exists to do widens. It is no longer just about gathering a group of people and seeing them converted or about gathering a group of Christians under God's word (not that church plants are ever solely about that but it's definitely the main thrust to start with). It is now also about meeting the pastoral needs of the church family as well as carrying on with the business of evangelism. This demands different skills from the 'planter' and the involvement of more people. As time passes the people who have been involved in the church for a while, quite rightly, feel some ownership of the church. Whilst the church is always God's not "mine" allowing the congregation a say in the vision and mission of the church doesn't undermine its divine ownership any more than having one or two guys in charge does!

Many church leaders seem not to trust their congregations with meaningful input to decision making and vision. Inevitably some people in any church, no matter how rigorous its approach to membership, are not very godly. But if the majority of people in a church you have planted and led can't be trusted on the doctrine, vision and mission of the church perhaps it's time for the church planter to look for another job?

2. It fails to see the seductive power of money.

There is no doubt that money functions as an idol, at least some of the time, for most of us. Churches where power is concentrated in the hands of those who make their living from preaching the gospel are in a dangerous place. The world recognises this - so the Charity Commission will not allow you to set up a charity where more than 50% of the trustees are employed by the charity and none of the trustees may be paid for their work as trustees.

It seems to me, however, that quite a lot of church plants think that this is just a silly legal requirement. So they set up systems where the trustees live miles and miles away, meet just a few times a year and don't really have much day-to-day say in the pastoral care, teaching programme or vision of the church.

In practice the power is left in the hands of those paid to run the church, with all the possible temptations that ensue.

It's not only money though - this model fails to really consider the future. What if the lead planter dies suddenly or is seriously ill? In the first couple of years this might simply result in the closure of the church. But if the church is in any way established the believers there might want somebody else to come in - and a proper mechanism for the appointment of that person needs to be in place?

3. It creates a group of people who have responsibility without authority.

I was talking to another minister recently who said, in all seriousness, "but the other elders at Christ Church couldn't stop you doing X if you really wanted to." He was, I think, simply baffled when I replied that of course they could. The non-staff elders at Christ Church could prevent or alter anything I wanted to do - change the teaching programme, the meeting times, the pastoral input to a particular church member, the strategy for evangelism, children's work or discipleship. And, by not appointing or reappointing elders, the members of the church could do those things too.

We have this system because the elders (who are also the charity's legal trustees) are ultimately responsible before the Lord, and the law, for the running of the church and they are the people whom the members of the church expect to hold accountable for the teaching and care they receive.

Alternative systems, either where the pastor is simply the hired hand of a board of deacons or (the situation I see more commonly in church plants) where a planter appoints 'elders' but where they are not the legal custodians of the church with power to fire the planter if need be, mean that people are given responsibility for things the church does but without real power to change what it does. Eventually this means that the only people in the church willing to take on such roles are "yes" men or those willing to live with the constant frustration of not being able to change things even though people will think you are responsible for them.

I think any one of these problems ought to be enough to make us look for an alternative model; the combination of all three is a powerful reason for finding a better way to organise our church plants...

Freedom of Speech - opportunity

2012-01-09T07:12:00.000-08:00

The government has announced a consultation on whether to change the wording of Section 5 of the Public Order Act so that it will no longer be an offence to use "insulting" language.

Whilst no Christian should ever set out to insult people the range of things people may find to be insulting is highly subjective and open to abuse by those wishing to close down freedom of speech. All sorts of civil liberties groups support change.

I've written before about cases in which Christians can get a bit carried away with a persecution complex (see, for example, this post) but protecting freedom of speech is, I think, by far the most important political campaign that Christians can be involved in: without freedom of speech there won't be any space in our society for the gospel or, perhaps, for anything else Christians want to talk about but ruling elites don't.

The Christian Institute provides a helpful guide on what you can do on this issue, here.

A Reflection for Epiphany

2012-01-06T01:00:00.000-08:00

If you know anything about Christ Church Liverpool you'll know we don't go big on the liturgical calendar!

But the tradition of setting aside particular times to remember different aspects of the richness of the Christian faith can have great value.

For centuries January 6th, Epiphany, has not just been the day it's tradition to take down Christmas decorations but, much more importantly, the day when that many churches have particularly thought about the visitation to Christ by the Magi or wise men. They were wise, of course, because, unlike King Herod and his advisers who could not even be bothered to journey a few miles to Bethlehem, they crossed the their world because they saw that in this tiny baby the Lord of heaven and earth had sent a king unlike any other.

In this rare recording T S Eliot reads his poem "Journey of the Magi." Well worth a listen.

Assisted Dying in a 'Christian Country'?

2012-01-05T02:21:00.000-08:00

Lord Falconer, Chairman of the Commission on Assisted Dying

This morning a "Commission on Assisted Dying,"chaired by Lord Falconer (pictured), and funded entirely by people who believe that the state ought to permit people to be aided to take their own life, has reported today, perhaps unsurprisingly given that a number of bodies opposed to assisted dying (and the BMA!) refused to take part because of the way the commission was put together, that the law ought to be changed to allow people over 18 who have been judged by two doctors to have less than 12 months to live and are capable of taking the medicines themselves to be aided in their desire to end their own lives.

The main reason for their conclusions, as it has been reported, is that the current legal position is "inadequate, incoherent and should not continue." This seems to me a remarkable conclusion because in fact the law is very clear - the 1961 Suicide Act provides that assisting a suicide is illegal. However last year the Director of Public Prosecutions issued guidance that in some circumstances people would not be prosecuted for helping someone to die even though what they had done remained technically illegal (i.e. the law would not be repealed, it simply wouldn't be enforced). If this guidance was revoked so that the law was enforced the commission's problem of an "incoherent" law would disappear.

So why people be opposed to assisted dying? Here are just a a few brief reasons...

a) We all know that good doctors are reluctant to predict either the length of someone's remaining life with a serious illness or the quality of that life because these things are massively variable. Such legislation would put terrible pressure on them to give dates without good medical evidence other than "averages" - and who would really want people to kill themselves based on an average?

b) The legislation provides that people must be 'mentally capable' before being allowed assisted dying. Speaking for myself I'm not sure that anyone who has recently been diagnosed with a fatal illness or told their treatment has failed so they cannot be cured is really in a good place to make that decision. Many of us fear incapacity or being a burden; but many people go on to find even those last months and weeks when they need huge nursing help very precious parts of their life.

c) If significant numbers of people who have diseases which kill in particularly unpleasant ways choose assisted dying it will, inevitably, reduce investment and interest in palliative care for those illnesses. That will lead to a worse end of life for those who do not choose assisted dying and, likely, pressure on those people to just take the killing drugs as 'that's what most people do'.

d) The "safeguards" look remarkably like those provided for the Abortion Act of 1967 - signature of two doctors, limited circumstances in which abortion would be permitted. There what was envisaged as legalising perhaps a few thousand abortions a year to save lives turned into a tidal wave of over 180,000 babies a year being killed. This is not a road we ought to be travelling.

e) For me as a Christian the most powerful reason for thinking this would be bad legislation is that it gives the wrong view of freedom. To be human is not to be free to do as we like, especially not with something as precious as human life. God is quite clear in his Word that giving and taking life are his job and that, except where he has clearly revealed in the Bible that taking life is permitted, it isn't. This is not a new or 'evangelical' doctrine - it's something that almost every Christian in every denomination throughout 2,000 years of church history has agreed about.

Perhaps rightly the Ministry of Justice has responded to the Commission by saying that this is not a party political issues and that the Government has no policy on it - any change in the law would be left to individual MPs.

But if ever there was an issue on which a Prime Minister who has recently described himself as a "committed" Christian living in a "Christian country" could come out and make a statement that the vast, vast majority of Christian people would agree with it would be that assisted dying is a bad policy that will lead to bad consequences for vulnerable people and which is profoundly not Christian in any way.

You can also read Peter Saunders' excellent blog post on the flaws in the Commission's report here.

Time for a Different Approach to Aid?

2011-12-28T03:38:00.000-08:00

During 2011 I've been challenged about what I do (or rather what I don't do) for the poor - especially for the world's poorest people, who are mostly in Africa and many of whom are Christian brothers and sisters. The solution that would do the most to instantly appease my conscience would be to send some money to an evangelical aid charity and forget about it. But the more I've read about the struggles of sub-saharan Africa the more I've realised that, on the whole, people in evangelical aid charities really don't know very much about aid, its effects and its consequences.

The book that first set me thinking was Paul Theroux's novel "Dark Star Safari," where the author records his experiences on a train trip through Africa from Cairo to Cape Town retracing some of his steps as a young man. His conclusion, supported by many of the people he meet on the trip, both Europeans and Africans, is that the best thing that could happen to Africa would be if all the western aid just went away.

Far less anecdotal, but essentially making the same point is Dambisa Moyo's "Dead Aid," a brutal critique of the aid "industry" which, she argues, corrupts governments, destroys innovation and entrepreneurship and is maintained only because a) so many politically influential westerners depend on the agencies for their livelihoods and b) Western governments are scared of the obvious alternative - changing trade rules so that African economies can compete with ours in areas like agriculture. There are lots of questionable things in the book - Moyo used to work for Goldman Sachs so you may have some questions about her brand of capitalism, and some of her suggestions (such as a single African currency) look rater less credible in 2011 than in 009 when the book was published! But the essence of her argument is undoubtedly true - aid hasn't visibly helped Africa at all in six decades so why carry on like we always have?

Anyone really interested in this subject should also read the (much heavier going) "Development as Freedom" by Nobel Prize winning Economist Amartya Sen, which argues that the thing really counts as development is not so much raising people's dollar incomes but increasing their freedom - through means such as democracy, the consistent rule of law and equality before that law.

In the light of these criticisms (and it seems there are very few people in the world who think our current system of aid to African countries is really working) what should a Christian believer do? Here are my suggestions:

1 As admirable as it is that the UK Government is one of the most generous in the world when it comes to overseas development aid we should recognise that, in many cases, it would be much better if, as a country, we simply invested much of that money (£8 billion a year) in those countries helping people start and grow businesses. One of Moyo's points is that if, for example, Britain sends 100,000 mosquito nets to an African country (and things given by Western countries are almost always imported to the African country they are destined for) one of the main effects will be to put the local mosquito net manufacturers out of business, destroying hundreds of livelihoods and meaning that when our donation of nets are all torn and used there is no local supplier to enable people to get replacements. Christians should be pushing our government for overseas investment as well as overseas aid. You can find out who your MP is to write to them here.

2 The main thing that stops African countries developing is that we tax them for sending us food. Christians should spend more time campaigning on trade barriers than on debt relief (which simply treats responsible and irresponsible countries alike and prevents the countries whose debts are written off accessing capital markets in future). Find out more about how trade rules keep the poor poor here.

3 What applies nationally applies personally - it would generally be better for us to buy things made in African countries (see the Created web site for lots of options) than to simply give money into big pots.

4 Obviously this does not apply to immediate disaster relief where tents, blankets, food etc is all needed very quickly. This is an area where the UK government should be commended for giving large sums to a central global fund that can be released almost instantly to help with major disasters where delays of hours can cost thousands of lives. Christians should always be prepared to give generously to such funds. Give to the Disasters Emergency Committee here.

5 Where you do wish to give money it's important to try and establish a relational link with the people receiving the money and to be confident in your own mind and conscience that the money is going where you are told it is and that the thing it is used for will actually benefit the community it's meant to be for int he long term. One of the main problems with aid is that western governments and citizens have continued for 60 years and more to send money to good governments and bad ones, to good projects and bad ones. On the whole evangelical charities are much better than others in this regard because they tend to work with and through local churches which are far more accountable to their communities than distant governments of multinational aid agencies.

I hope that helps you make a few New Year's resolutions about your giving to the poor!

Was David Cameron right? What is a Christian country?

2011-12-20T02:35:00.000-08:00

"No doubt the Tories will have taken their core philosophy from Mark 4:25: "For he that hath, to him shall be given: and he that hath not, from him shall be taken even that which he hath." "

"Cameron claims the Bible has helped make Britain what it is today. Which events would he claim were uniquely Christian – slavery, the exploitation of children, colonialism, the Crusades, wars, torture and execution etc?"

"In view of Mr Cameron’s speech, will councils and head teachers stop banning nativity plays and Christian festivals in the pretence that they give offence?"

"Has a single bishop publicly supported Mr Cameron’s excellent speech on the importance of Christianity?"

That's just a selection of the letters published in newspapers in response to David Cameron's comments that "we are a Christian country. And we should not be afraid to say so." The Prime Minister was giving a speech to mark the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible at Christ Church, Oxford. You can read the whole speech here (if you do you will be unlike most of the journalists and letter writers who have passed comment on it!).

What's good about the speech?

Cameron makes some excellent points in his speech. He points out that the value of tolerance is a particularly Christian value whose presence in British culture makes it much easier to be a Muslim or a Jew (or, I might add, an evangelical) than it is in an avowedly secular country like France.

He also examines the profound difference Christian people and organisations have made in delivering relief to the poor and reform of the nation's laws to better reflect their understanding of the implications of the Bible's demands on Christian people.

What's wrong with the speech?

Ultimately though this is not a speech that I think Christians should celebrate. Because it encourages people to believe that Christianity is exactly the opposite of what the Bible teaches it is.

For Cameron the real essence of Christianity is a set of moral values that Christian people ought to live by.

In the Scriptures the real essence of Christianity is being united by faith in the work of Christ on the cross into a living relationship with God and his people. Strikingly Cameron's speech refers 18 times to Christianity but not once to Christ.

The "values" the Bible commends for Christians are not an abstract set of values it's good to live by. They are the personal characteristics of Jesus Christ who is not only the model for the Christian life but the saviour who empowers it.

And they are intended to be the values of the Church. This is not to say that they are universally practiced in what passes for the church - the visible structures of bishops and all that guff. But they are the values genuinely shared and shown, albeit imperfectly, by the true Church - those who have experienced the living power of God through Christ.

The gulf between David Cameron's understanding of what Christianity is and the historic Christian understanding of it is perhaps most exposed when he talks about a church in "London’s Bishopsgate in a building once destroyed by an IRA bomb." Not, as readers of this blog might imagine, Great St. Helen's, a church where thousands of people have come to know Christ in recent years, which has sent missionaries to the far corners of the globe and where many rich city men and women have been profoundly challenged about the need to give their wealth away rather than accumulate it.

No, Cameron's interest is in St Ethelbuga's "centre where people divided by conflict, culture or religion can meet and listen to each other’s perspective." On all my visits to the City I have never once seen a single soul coming in or out of St Ethelburga's. I have seen a thousand pastors gather at St Helen's, convinced of the power of Jesus Christ to change lives and determined to go and do good in their communities as a result.

If there is such a thing as a Christian country (and I am not sure one has ever existed) it would be one where the vast majority of people are believers in the risen Jesus Christ and live lives that seek to honour him. Such a country would pass laws that respect the freedom of others to worship who they please and limit people's ethical choices by law only in situations where necessary to prevent great harm from coming to the vulnerable (so homosexual activity would be legal but abortion would not be).

Most of all though it would be a country where it was made clear that the particular set of moral values we call "Christian" is nothing more than a necessary consequence of being loved by and loving Christ.

The Gospel According to John Lewis

2011-12-13T12:18:00.001-08:00

“I heard it coming before I saw it: reports reached me of people blubbing in front of their televisions, so moved were they by this simple tale of a fictional boy counting the hours until he can give his parents a gift for Christmas. Given the fuss they were making, the tears they shed, you'd think they were watching footage of shoeless orphans… But no. They were looking at an advert for a shop.

“An advert for a shop. That's all the John Lewis thing is, and anyone who cries at it… literally sobbing IQ points out of their body. Is this really what we've become?”

So wrote Charlie Brooker in The Guardian about this year’s John Lewis Christmas ad.

It has to be said, though, that Charlie Brooker seems to be in a minority. The advert has had 3.4 million You Tube views; that’s people actually choosing to watch an advert.

You can be as cynical as you like about this advert. You can point out the perfectly obvious – that it is designed to make us buy stuff. You can point out the slightly disturbing fact that it, apparently, cost £5 million (how? how?!). But you also have to admit that lots of very expensive adverts designed to get us to buy stuff don’t have that effect! So what’s different about this one?

What is it about this advert that has captured the imaginations of the British public? What does that tell us about our culture? And how does that fit with what God tells us?

John Lewis - The Long Wait from Blink on Vimeo.

The clever thing about the John Lewis advert is that it is subverts our expectations; we start off thinking that this is another child who is grumpy and impatient to unwrap his selection of toys and electronics on Christmas Day. Morrisey’s lyrics: “Please, please, please, let me get what I want” reinforce our cynicism.

But then it turns out that what he really wants, what the boy can’t wait for, is to give his parents the enormous gift he has been hiding in his wardrobe. Christmas, we are reminded, is all about giving.

That connects with something very deeply rooted in the human psyche. For all that we are very often venal and selfish, for all that as a society we have managed to turn a winter holiday designed to be about spirituality, food and family, friendship and warmth, into an orgy of debt, materialism, greed and stress, we connect profoundly with the idea that Christmas, at heart, is about giving.

That idea is at the very heart of the Christmas story of course. The event we remember at Christmas is the remarkable self-giving of the God who created all things. At the birth of Jesus God hands himself over to Mary and Joseph, two very ordinary human beings and entrusts his feeding, clothing and care into their frail hands.

But the idea that Christmas, that life itself, ought to be about giving isn’t just a reflection of the half-remembered Christmas story. This instinct to give isn’t an aspect of God’s character that is revealed by the incarnation. It’s something that has always been part of the divine nature and that God has implanted into us.

The story of creation is a story of giving. God gives a world to human beings, not for his own delight (his joy was complete in the perfect relationship if Father, Son and Spirit already), but for ours. God has always been a giver.

Adam, the first man, is made in God’s image. So it is in his nature too to give. The first thing he does is give names to all the animals. Then he gives praise to God and to his wife for the creation of Eve. It is part of who we are, part of who we were made to be, to give.

Now that giving is marred and broken by a competing instinct – to take. Taking was the essence of what went wrong when Adam and Eve fell; they wanted to take the fruit, to take the knowledge of good and evil; they wanted to take the place of God.

So each of us, born of Adam’s line, experiences both the desire to give, which reflects the image of God in us, and the desire to take, which reflects our fallen nature.

The conflict is revealed in our society again and again. We commend those who give as heroes; yet run an economy that rewards only those who take. We commend generosity and justice; yet tend to vote against any government we think might take our money and redistribute it to those with less.

The John Lewis advert appeals because it awakens in us something we all know instinctively to be true; that giving reflects God’s character. The great news of Christmas, of course, is that in Christ, God has given us the ultimate gift. A gift we can receive by faith with joy and, more than that, a gift that can transform our hearts.

Richard Dawkins and William Lane Craig

2011-10-21T08:44:00.000-07:00

In yesterday's Guardian Richard Dawkins explained why he refuses to debate Bill Craig - you can read the article here. Basically his reason boils down to Bill Craig being a nobody and the fact that Craig thinks the massacre of the Canaanites in Joshua was divine judgment.

I think one of the most interesting parts of Professor Dawkins' article is right at the beginning where he says that the philosophers he knows have never heard of William Lane Craig. Yet here is a man who regularly speaks on serious philosophical to auditoriums far fuller than those generally to be found addressed by philosophers!

Perhaps all that Professor Dawkins' friends ignorance of Bill Craig demonstrates is just how narrow and prejudiced academia is - somebody with serious points to make and recognised qualification to make them must be excluded if what he says doesn't agree with the received wisdom of the secular humanist academy.

It also seems ironic that, having make his mark (and fortune?) attacking precisely the type of Christianity espoused by Professor Craig, he should then refuse to debate one of its leading public figures, instead choosing to engage the Archbishop of Canterbury who, for all his brilliance, represents a set of beliefs much further removed from those Dawkins attacks with so much vitriol.

Finally one has to ask why, if Richard Dawkins thinks debating Craig isn't worth his time writing an article for a national newspaper on why he won't debate Craig is worth his time? Perhaps it's because in the newspaper article Craig doesn't get to answer back?!

Stadium Psalmists

2011-09-12T01:08:00.000-07:00

If, like me, you were born in the middle of the 1970s the music of U2 has probably formed snatches of the soundtrack of your life - even if you don't like their music.

Mark Meynell, one of the pastors at All Soul's Church Langham Place, has written a fascinating article on U2 as Stadium Psalmists and Prophets which I highly recommend - check it out here.

The riots and the Christian

2011-09-10T04:04:00.000-07:00

Immediately following August's riots acres of newsprint and hours of TV coverage were produced trying to work out the causes. Pretty much anything seemed to be a legitimate candidate for blame: the abolition of Education Maintenance Allowance, police racism, the greed of the bankers and absent fathers, to name just four.

I didn’t hear any reports of Christian believers being involved in the riots. I guess it’s possible that there were some involved and we just never heard about it. But, given the media’s delight in exposing anything they see as Christian hypocrisy, it seems unlikely the church involvement of young rioters would have escaped mention.

So, given that it seems Christian people were at least, less likely than average to be involved in setting fire to Miss Selfridge and stealing LCD TVs from Currys, what does that tell us?

Now of course there were many other young people – Muslims, atheists and followers of Jedi – who also didn’t go out rioting. So it’s tempting for Christian people to draw the conclusion that the reason we didn’t riot is the same as the reason those people didn’t riot - because we are somehow morally superior.

It’s tempting to believe that in certain types of people there is a stronger moral backbone that enables us to avoid going out and smashing up our own, or somebody else’s, community. We might think the group of “problem people” who are so morally deviant that they are happy to deprive an 85 year old hairdresser of his living by smashing up his shop is quite small (as Tony Blair suggested in a recent article) or we might, like David Cameron, expand the categories of people affected by this slow motion moral collapse to large swathes of the nation.

Either way, if that's how we think it’s tempting to believe that Christianity is just the best version of this moral backbone, which is offered by a number of religions and philosophies, and that there is something good about us that means we are not prone to such antisocial behaviour.

Christians know the difference between right and wrong. We have had revealed to us in God’s word, the Bible, a clear set of moral standards that we are to follow and we have the strength of character to be obedient. I am not like the rioters because I am a good person.

In reality though the reason genuine Christians reject and turn away from all sorts of sins, is both much more profound and much more disturbing than that we are “good people.”

Because the thing that makes Christians different is not a better moral character but a gift of God in Christ. For the Christian not going out rioting is not a pointer to your impressiveness as a person but to the truthfulness and power of the message about Jesus Christ. The Beatles were wrong; that love is not all you need. You (we!) need love, faith and hope and only the possession of this trinity of gifts can both transforms our lives and demonstrate that Christianity is the real deal.

The best analysis of the issues that led to our city centres being smashed up last month is that the people responsible, both those who instigated them and those who just got caught up in the moment lack three things.

They lack trust in a creator who watches over them in blessing, they lack commitment to a community of people who sacrifice themselves for one another and they lack confidence in a purpose to history that will see justice restored. People do not have faith, they do not have love and they are without hope.

Why did people who would never normally dream of walking into John Lewis and shoplifting or burgling their neighbours house take big TVs from shops? Because if you don’t belong to a community where others will give themselves for you then the logical thing to do is whatever you can get away with.

Where have people learned that lesson? From the whole of our society and culture. Because a lack of faith, hope and isn’t just confined to a few thousand rioters. It’s part of the philosophy of millions of people who have condemned the rioters including many police officers and politicians and journalists.

The truth is that these young people haven’t failed to understand the values of our culture – they understand them all too well. They believe our culture’s creed that it’s the survival of the fittest that brought us into existence not the powerful words of a loving Father God. They know hardly anyone in our society has confidence that there is a day of judgment when wrongs will be put right. They see from the way we honour the skyscrapers of the City of London as the people of Babel worshipped their tower that our culture thinks greed is good even when it exploits others.

A lack of love leads the directors of Britain’s hundred biggest companies to believe that it’s perfectly normal to earn 200 times what their employees get and have 30% an average pay rise in a year of recession. A lack of hope leads people to think it’s morally fine to steal a TV as long as you cover your face from the CCTV. A lack of faith leads employees to imagine they have to lie or sleep their way to the top.

A society without faith, hope and love, or with faith in, love of, and hope for the wrong things is always going to be a tinder box of seething jealousies, inequalities and resentments where the only lid kept on our selfishness is apathy or fear of punishment.

Such a society, the one we live in, desperately needs the Christian gospel; not to give extra moral backbone to a few good or wise people but to transform bad and foolish people, like me, through the Christ's gifts of grace.

Be careful, little eyes, what you see...

2011-09-09T23:41:00.000-07:00

So go the lines of a children's hymn. It's a sentiment that needs to be applied whenever you pick up a newspaper; because they are forever slanting information, and especially statistics, to bolster the position they have already decided to take. We all do this of course; but most of us don't have millions of readers!

This week there was a particularly good example in the Telegraph. I don't know what your view is about public sector v private sector pay. The Telegraph's is that public sector pay is too high. Here's how they are reporting on it this week:

"Millions of state workers' pay packets grew by 1.7pc in the three months to August, up from 1.3pc for the quarter to July, according to payments group Vocalink. The findings, based on 600 public sector bodies, suggest employers are continuing to pay "incremental" salary increases, to reflect length of service, regardless of the Government's freeze on basic pay.

At the same time, take-home pay growth for the whole economy fell to 2.7pc in the quarter to August, down by 0.2pc over the period, the Vocalink statistics showed. This is the second month in a row it has declined.

You can read the full article here.

A casual reading of this would make you think that public sector pay has gone up (true, though only by 1.7per cent a year - well under inflation) but that private sector pay has gone down - "declined".

But that second conclusion would be wrong. What the statistics show is that over all take home pay (public and private sector) went UP 2.7% for June, July and August 2011 compared to June, July and August 2010. Some of this increase will be due to tax changes, but since alterations to income tax and National Insurance have been relatively small this year the vast majority of that 2.7% increase will be because of pay rises.

Since public sector pay went up only 1.7% private sector must almost certainly have risen by MORE than 2.7% to bring the average up to 2.7%.

While the article wants to give the impression that public sector workers are getting a good deal the statistics show that private sector workers (right now at least) are getting a better deal.

Moral: don't casually glance at newspaper articles if you actually want to understand anything - especially when they use those slippery things, percentages.

Release the Word

2011-09-05T08:58:00.000-07:00

A new CCL thing that some of you may be interested in...

What is Release the Word?

As a church we believe that the Bible is living, active and sharper than a double edged sword, exposing false thinking and living, and revealing life-changing truth about the God we know through Jesus Christ. But when you actually READ the Bible it often doesn't feel like that - or perhaps it does in a few great passages but not for big chunks of the Bible (what IS the point of 1 Chronicles?!).

Release the Word is about helping you to change that and release the power of each part God's word into your life. Over 40 weeks we will look at the distinctive contribution of every book of the Bible. We'll find out who wrote each one, why and who for. We'll explore the different types of Bible literature and see that God has not only given us a single amazing story in the Bible but also a wonderful range of ways of developing and telling that story that engage our whole person; our thoughts, feelings, decisions and experiences.

Who's it for?

Release the Word is for anyone who wants to come to it! You don't have to be intellectual, academic or big into theology. You don't even have to be a Christian. You just need to be someone who wants the Bible to speak clearly into your life and who longs to be excited by its brilliant variety. You'll need to be committed to come most weeks, prepared to do about 1 hour a week reading the Bible outside the sessions and willing to ask questions and discuss a bit. We will also pray together each week; though there's no compulsion to pray out loud in front of others.

Release the Word is a Christ Church Liverpool initiative but it's not just for people from Christ Church - anyone is welcome, though if you are a member of another church we would ask you to check with your church leader that they are happy for you to come along.

Where, when, how much?

At 2 Blackburne Place, Liverpool, L8 7PE on Wednesdays at 7.30pm. We begin on 21st September. We will serve drinks from 7.15pm and finish by 8.45pm. Anyone who wishes to continue discussion in the local pub will be welcome to do so!

Release the Word is completely free but if you are not from CCL and you can afford it we'd appreciate a contribution of £2 a week to cover our catering and photocopying costs.

What do I do to join in?

Email andrew@christchurchliverpool.org and let me know you're coming.

The Real Hackers

2011-07-19T06:21:00.000-07:00

I have never been a fan of Rupert Murdoch or The News of the World. So their discomfort over the last weeks in the light of the reports that they had hacked into mobile phone voice mail not just of celebrities and politicians but of ordinary citizens whose lives had, through god or bad fortune, become newsworthy hasn't caused me much sadness.

It seems like it's a good thing that the merry-go-round of politicians hiring ex-newspapers journalists, newspapers hiring ex-policemen and everybody having champagne together in Chipping Norton's drawing rooms and conservatories will come to a sudden (if temporary) stop.

But I can't help feeling that the real culprits are not only likely to escape jail or losing their jobs; they are not even being told off. Because the real culprits are those millions of citizens who funded this great wickedness by paying their £1 a copy and boosting circulations so big companies wanted to advertise.

If we are going to have straight talking let's tell it like it is: the people who bought tabloid newspapers knew perfectly well that the journalists who wrote the stories engaged in underhand tactics to get those stories. Everybody in Britain who has ever watched a crime drama on TV or even the local BBC news knows that journalists camp outside the houses of the victims of crime and their families. Everybody knew that journalists go through people's rubbish looking for scandal. Everybody knew that journalists pay policemen for information.

So why are we all so suddenly shocked when somebody tells us that they hacked the phones of the 7/7 victims or Gordon Brown's children's medical records? The truth is that people aren't really shocked at all. It was a vast conspiracy of silence. The politicians, journalists, policemen AND members of the public all knew perfectly well what was happening and almost nobody was really bothered.

The Bible explains all this: John's gospel tells us that people love darkness rather than light because our deeds are evil. We're happy to see other people's deeds of darkness brought into the light - not because we want justice but because we can entertain ourselves with them and because they distract attention from our own deficiencies and moral weakness.

Of course not everybody is equally to blame for the terrible things that have been done. It's quite right that the readers of NotW won't be sent to prison. It's good that some journalists have been convicted - though it should also be said that, just like the MPs expenses scandal, it was journalists not policemen or politicians who exposed this whole scandal. But the sad truth is that no matter what laws are passed newspapers will not stop using underhand techniques to gather information of no genuine public interest for as long as people are prepared to pay to read it.

More than that, now that each of us is our own publishing house on Facebook and Twitter, everybody needs to take responsibility for the news we share about others (or ourselves). We all need to learn that the fact people might want to read or see something is not a good enough reason to make it public; in fact it might be a very good reason not to.

Andrew's Sabbatical Church Visits 9: Liverpool Anglican Cathedral

2011-07-18T06:12:00.000-07:00

I've commented before about the failure of evangelical Christians to deal with issues of aesthetics, particularly (though not exclusively) in our corporate worship. See here for more. So it was a pleasure to experience the beautiful choreography (I can't think of a better word for it) of the service at the Anglican Cathedral last week.

In The Screwtape Letters C. S. Lewis points out that although posture is not itself reverent (and may be merely formal) it still matters; there is something in our nature as creatures with bodies that makes it, for example, easier to pray in a reverent manner when we are kneeling than when we are slouching.

There is something powerful about standing for the reading of the gospel, about kneeling to pray and coming to the communion table. Potentially, of course, such actions make services less accessible to outsiders and can elevate those who lead or run them to positions where they ought not to be. But those like myself, in what a previous generation might have called a low-church tradition, also need to reflect on ways in which the gracious, joyful, astonishing good news that a mighty king has come among us in mercy not in judgment can be conveyed through and to the full range of our senses.

Dear BBC....

2011-07-15T04:34:00.000-07:00

Dear Sir,

I have been interested to watch The Life of Muhammed. Rageh Omarr and the team are to be congratulated for many aspects of the programme which has been, on the whole, very informative. I note that no pictures of the prophet have been shown - and on a Radio 4's Front Row on Monday Rageh Omarr, discussing the making of the programme, John Wilson explained that this was because Islam forbids images of the prophet being shown.

I appreciate that the agenda is respect the beliefs of Muslims but I wonder why the BBC, in its productions, does not extend similar treatment to the views of Christian people (or indeed adherents of various other faiths and sects)? Although I am aware that Jerry Springer the Opera was not a BBC Religion production it seems to me profoundly inconsistent that the same organisation is prepared to portray Jesus Christ in a nappy but not to show a picture of Muhammed in a three hour documentary about his life! Similarly, and this was a BBC Religion programme, I do not think it could be said that The Bible's Buried Secrets, showed anything like the same restraint in exploring the supposed contradictions, inconsistencies and errors in the Christian Scriptures as The Life of Muhammed has with the Islamic faith.

Personally my preference would be for the BBC to choose both to show Jerry Springer the Opera AND to include pictures of the prophet, as well as shed much more light on the negative aspects of his life, in the documentary - I do not think that it is the BBC's responsibility to kow-tow to people's religious sensibilities (even mine!). But whichever approach is taken it is surely imperative that it is consistent across religions.

I look forward to hearing that the BBC has commissioned a programme called The Koran's Buried Secrets, presented by a leading sceptic about orthodox Islam which will not be afraid to ruffle the sensitivities of major Muslim groups, in the way that many of the BBC's programmes do for orthodox Christians.

Yours faithfully

Andrew Evans

Andrew's Sabbatical Church Visits - 8: Cardiff Bay Church

2011-07-07T04:00:00.000-07:00

We've been clocking up the miles recently, this weekend past visiting The Bay Church in Cardiff, the lovely church family of our good friends Andy and Rachel. First thing to say is that their web site makes great use of paintings of the city so that's worth checking out!

In general blokes in churches are, to be honest, not that friendly. So I was really pleasantly surprised by the effort the guys at The Bay Church made to come and chat to me when I was sitting on my own looking like a visitor. One of the lessons from all these church visits is that even if you're really used to church it still feels very awkward being somewhere you don't know people on your own; I think if I'd never been to church before the welcome alone here would definitely make me want to come back.

It was great to hear Romans 8 explained clearly; it's so hard to teach that chapter in context. Most people either fall into the trap of giving about 2/3 of the sermon to explaining chapters 1-7 so that you never really get to understand what Romans 8 is about, or they ignore the first seven chapters and proceed as if Romans 8 is an encouraging message that dropped out of heaven from the Lord. Pastor Ian Parry did a great job of preaching from chapter 8 but showing, throughout the talk, how the things Paul teaches here make sense in the light of what he has already said. Lots of reflect on as I think about how to teach the longer Bible books at CCL.

As already trailed (see Church Visits 7!) the singing was excellent. The Bay Church has cleverly making the most of their small music group by recording them playing lots of the hymns and songs as MP3s. That means that when, as this week, everyone is away you can still have the sound of the music group who actually play each week. It's not quote the same - but it's innovative and a lot better than a MIDI file!

On a slightly different note Cardiff is a fantastic city so if you ever want a weekend break we'd highly recommend it!

Did God really mean it when he commanded Holy War?

2011-07-06T04:00:00.000-07:00

Last week I heard another 'revisionist' take on the whole question of how Christians should deal with the passages in the Old Testament that command the Israelites to participate in holy wars against the inhabitants of Cannan. For those who have no idea what I'm talking about I mean things like…

When the LORD your God brings you into the land that you are entering to take possession of it, and clears away many nations before you, the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations more numerous and mightier than yourselves, and when the LORD your God gives them over to you, and you defeat them, then you must devote them to complete destruction. You shall make no covenant with them and show no mercy to them. (Deuteronomy 7:1-2, ESV)

It has been fashionable for quite a long time to deal with passages like this by saying that they are not something God actually said and that the Israelites merely invented a divine command to justify their wicked genocide of the Canaanites. Alternatively some people suggest that in fact the Israelites didn't really kill all those people and that the accounts of their slaughter (especially in Joshua) are just made up; though these commentators never explain why pretending that you killed lots of people when you didn't is morally superior to actually doing it!

Liverpool Pastor Keith Hitchman is absolutely clear that Jesus would not order such a genocide (you can read his post in full here). But he also points out the obvious difficulty that Jesus Christ is unchanging (quoting Heb 13:8) so that the question arises of how the God of the OT and the NT can be the 'same' God?

Hitchman's resolution to this apparent difficulty is based on church practice. Just as in Anglo-Catholic church practice the tradition is to read from the OT and an Epistle before the Gospel so, he argues,"where the Old Testament and/or the Epistles fail to ‘measure up’ to Jesus and His teaching, the revelation contained within them has to be partial, not-fully-completed, and/or temporary. It is Jesus, his person and his teaching that completes the (hermeneutical) circle, making of the parts The Whole."

In essence what Hitchman does is adopt is an Islamic doctrine of abrogation (that later parts of Scripture trump earlier ones where there is a contradiction) with the added twist that even those epistles composed after the gospels can be abrogated by the 'higher' teaching of the gospels.

This view, however, is riddled with difficulties. Let’s consider just a few:

1 It seems that the driving force behind this argument is a conviction that genocide is always wrong. Indeed many of those who have advanced such arguments have suggested that all killing is always wrong. But the Bible’s position is different. The Bible teaches that all life belongs to God. Therefore it is wrong to take life unless God permits or commands such killing. Christians have disagreed, often passionately, about when God does or does not permit or command such killing. But, where the Bible presents the killing as commanded by God, it must at least be considered that perhaps the reason for this is that God did, in fact, command such killing.

2 Hitchman isn’t clear whether he thinks that the Israelites simply made up the command from God to kill the Canaanites (in which case it’s hard to see why we should believe any of the OT – “love the Lord your God with all your heart”?) or whether God did give that command but has since launched a morally improved version of himself (Christianity thus ethically superior to Judaism). Clearly either option has its difficulties.

3 The reality is that this ‘difficult sayings’ are not confined to the Old Testament. Consider these words of the Lord Jesus: “He [the Son of Man] will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.’” (Matt 25:41). The judgment announced here is far worse than the merely temporal judgment on the Canaanites. Some might suggest that in this judgment only the guilty are punished; but the Bible’s view is that precisely the same is true throughout history because there are no innocents in our fallen world.

4 Who gets to decide when the teaching of the OT and, especially, the Epistles ‘measures up’ to the teaching of Jesus? This is particularly problematic with the Epistles because their writers self-consciously apply the teachings of Jesus to the situations of Christian churches. In fact they do that particularly clearly in areas where people today reject the teaching of the Epistles as not in keeping with the teaching of Jesus – areas such as sexuality (note Paul’s regular appeal to the sayings of the Lord in 1 Cor 7) and gender (see Paul’s appeal, parallel to Jesus’ in Matt 19, to Adam and Eve in defending the idea of complimentary rather than identical roles for men and women in 1 Tim 2). The writers of the epistles thought they were applying the teachings of Jesus; Hitchman’s view simply says we know better than they did what Jesus really meant despite the fact that we live 2,000 years later and culturally worlds away and they did not.

5 Most of all this view of the OT is contrary to the view Jesus himself took of it. As Hitchman recognises in his post Jesus “fulfilled” the OT. But you cannot fulfil a “contradiction” – other than by rejecting one part of it and accepting another. Jesus, however, specifically said that there was no part of the OT that he rejected (‘not the least stroke of a pen’). This means that he accepted that God really did give these commands. So while the fulfilment that comes with Christ does mean that Christian ethics looks different from OT ethics (e.g. because Christians are not a nation state) it does not mean that God’s commands in the OT were immoral.

Andrew's Sabbatical Church Visits - 7: Newton Mearns Baptist Church

2011-07-05T11:57:00.000-07:00

For the last weekend in June we took a family trip to Glasgow to visit our good friends Mark and Jo and went to Newton Mearns Baptist Church with them. Newton Mearns is a modern and prosperous suburb of Glasgow and the church, started some 30 years ago, is a large church, all-age church with an obvious passion for reaching the local area.

I was particularly encouraged that the preacher was a doctor who, having taken early retirement, has chosen not to spend his considerable pension just playing golf or cruising the world, but volunteering his time and gifts to the church. Our culture encourages us o think of retirement as a rest we have earned; but in the Scriptures rest is always a gift of God. This means that retirement from paid employment is an opportunity to use our gifts in new ways in God's service, rather than to sit off and do nothing. The folk at NMBC clearly get this which was great to see.

I was impressed too by the hearty singing; having visited a church in Wales this week (Visit 8 - report coming soon!) I fear that is not just our brother and sisters from African countries who have something to teach English Christians about singing unto the Lord but our Celtic siblings too!

Excellent use was made of slightly more formal prayers which gave the meeting a feeling of solidity without a formal liturgy.

Once again, though, Christ Church Liverpool retains the number 1 spot in the quality of cakes and coffee on offer.

Why I'm not an Anglican (Hint: It's not (mostly) about baptism)

2011-06-20T00:00:00.000-07:00

Over the last few weeks I've read or been involved in several discussions where people I know, like and share core convictions with, have talked about their decision to be (or not be) a minister in the Church of England solely in terms of infant baptism.

In one discussion an ordained Anglican minister said that he decided to join the Church of England when he changed his mind about baptism. In another somebody who has decided not to become an Anglican minister said that the major issue in working in an Anglican church would be that they baptise babies.

I have to say that this strikes me as being somewhat weird.

Personally I am totally persuaded that baptism in the NT is a sign accompanying your profession of faith in Christ (it seems to me that the 'killer' argument for believers' baptism is, confirmation, a Christian ceremony paedobaptists have had to make up, with no biblical warrant at all, to cover for the fact that the profession of faith part of baptism isn't in their system!).

But this is by no means the only, or even the biggest, difference between the position held by a churches in the Fellowship of Independent Evangelical Churches (FIEC) like Christ Church Liverpool and the Church of England.

The really big issues are church government (how the local church is governed) and establishment (how the church relates to the state). I don't think that there is any warrant in the NT after the apostles and at most two other individuals (Titus and Timothy - though even their authority in local churches cannot be established with any real precision from the Scriptures) for anybody other than the members of a local church being responsible for that church's corporate life. And it definitely seems to me that there is no biblical precedent for somebody who is not a biblically qualified church leader to be appointed by heredity as the head of the church (which is not to deny that, in practice our Queen has been a good head of the C of E, though it's definitely the case that many of those who went before her were not good! It should be noted in passing that it also seems slightly odd that many of my evangelical Anglican brothers opposed to the ordination of women or their promotion to be bishops are happy to have a woman as the supreme governor of their church).

I'm quite happy to accept that many of my good friends who work in the Church of England have different views about those things to mine (though in practice I observe that many Anglican churches effectively run themselves like Independent Evangelical Churches; which is undoubtedly more biblical but definitely not quite in keeping with their ordination vows to obey their bishop in all things lawful). I'm quite happy to have a discussion about whether episcopacy is a biblical form of church government and whether a state should have one established church which is given privileges not open to other Christian churches. Those are good and important discussions.

But can we please stop pretending that the main difference between Anglicans and those of us in groupings like the FIEC is baptism? Really, it's not.

Andrew's Sabbatical Church Visits?

2011-06-16T04:00:00.000-07:00

A couple of (keen!) people have asked why no report this week. It's not because I'm slacking off on going to church :-)

I went to Maghull Chapel. It was fun - but since I was preaching I don't really feel qualified to comment!

Next week I'm preaching at Ramillies Road Church and Kew Church Southport. The Sabbatical church visit reports will return after June 26th.

What can you show on TV?

2011-06-14T11:41:00.000-07:00

Though I think Terry Pratchett is very wrong about assisted suicide his "Choosing to Die" TV programme was, on the whole, a sensitive look at the process of choosing to die.

I have two major concerns/issues though:

1. Where is the balance in the BBCs presentation of this issue? What would it be reasonable to expect given that this is an issue that divides the country, its medics and its people down the middle? Perhaps another hour long programme, giving an account of, perhaps, the profits made by the private clinics from the business of giving people lethal doses of drugs, or the fact that UK palliative care is some of the best in the world, or the people who would have had an assisted suicide but who couldn't travel to Switzerland and are now glad they didn't presented by someone eminent and well-known. Will that happen? I suspect not.

Despite the fact that the BBC is supposed to be impartial on this issue there is no evidence of impartiality in the range and angle of its coverage.

2. Pratchett's programme showed a man die in an assisted suicide. I appreciate that some people are opposed to showing such things in principle. I am not one of them; though I recognise the concern that, particularly for vulnerable people, it may normalise something they woud not otherwise consider.

So why is it that we can see an assisted suicide on TV (which is not even legal in the UK) but not an abortion (which is legal here)? The answer, of course, is that the secular media elite believe (rightly I suspect) that showing an abortion would put people off having one, whereas showing an assisted suicide may encourage people to have one. In other words we are only being shown things or not according to what the value-makers at the BBC (and other broadcasters) think we ought to do.

To be honest I wouldn't even mind that so much if these people would at least have the decency to say that's what they are doing - trying to teach morals. I would totally disagree with their morals but at least we would then be having a meaningful discussion.

Instead the BBC hides behind weasel words about impartiality and pretends that it is being neutral. Come on media secularists - it's time to stand up and be counted as people who are trying to promote a radical moral agenda where some people get to decide when they, and others, can live or die.

I'm much less afraid of losing that debate than I am of these princes of darkness slowly rolling back centuries of believing in the preciousness of life all the while pretending that they are just telling the news.

Learning what other people think about you...

2011-06-14T05:03:00.000-07:00

The Guardian ran a very positive piece about Frontline church, just down the road from us, this week. What they do is great; and is, on a somewhat larger scale, the kind of thing replicated by thousands of churches and hundreds of thousands of evangelical Christians throughout the UK every week.

What is most striking about the Guardian's coverage though is the level of cynicism, vitriol and outright hatred directed at evangelical Christians in the comments section of their web site. Check it out here.

Now obviously the kind of people who leave comments on the Guardian web site aren't representative of the nation as a whole. But evangelical Christians should know that there ain't a whole lot of love out there for churches like ours!

Oh Dear Rowan

2011-06-12T11:08:00.001-07:00

" The Archbishop of Canterbury has caused a bit of a stir this week with his comments about the UK coalition government's policies. In left-leaning magazine The New Statesman his guest editorial was used as an opportunity to make comments like: "What is happening in the Middle East and North Africa... casts some light on the bafflement and indignation that the present government is facing over its proposals for reform in health and education. With remarkable speed, we are being committed to radical, long-term policies for which no one voted. At the very least, there is an understandable anxiety about what democracy means in such a context.... The anxiety and anger have to do with the feeling that not enough has been exposed to proper public argument." You can read the whole thing here if you want.

Now I'm not one of those who think the Archbishop of Canterbury (or any other church leader) should stay out of politics or even that they shouldn't make party political comments. After all politics is the things that concern the people - and Christianity is always concerned about people.

It's also worth noting that the Archbishop's comments aren't nearly as controversial as you might have been led to think by the media coverage. In fact Dr Williams gave the labour party almost as much of a roasting as the government (e.g. "we are still waiting for a full and robust account of what the left would do differently and what a left-inspired version of localism might look like" - not exactly a ringing endorsement of Milliband Jr.'s performance!). And lots of the bits you will have seen quoted in the Telegraph and elsewhere are somewhat distorted by being lifted out of context - always remember newspapers exist to sell newspapers not to actually report news!

Nevertheless I think Dr Williams comments are both unfortunate and wrong for three reasons.

1. The specific allegation Williams makes is that the radical changes being made in health and education are "we are being committed to radical, long-term policies for which no one voted." I think he means by that that they were not in the parties' manifestos. This is technically correct. Partly that's a result of the nature of coalition government see 2 below). But almost all the NHS and higher education changes are really driven by the need to cut costs in the light of the fact that even in the boom years the previous government was spending more than in got in. All three parties flagged up that cuts would be needed on a huge scale and it was well known that changes in the light of them would affect health and education. Add to that the things Andrew Lansley, Michael Gove and David Cameron have said over the years and there's not much space to say what is being done was not predictable in advance.

2 The suggestion (and to be fair to Dr Williams it's no more than that) that the coalitions policies lack democratic legitimacy suggests a fundamental misunderstanding of how our political system works. Well over half the votes were cast for Conservative or LibDem candidates. In coalition neither can implement their manifesto in full; government policies are this drawn from one or the other party or are a compromise reworking from both. Even single party governments find, for all sorts of reasons, they cannot do exactly what they hoped and planned to. It is unrealistic to expect this of coalitions.

Essentially Williams fails to see that the nature of democratic accountability is retrospective: we can get rid of this Government in 4 years if we don't like what they do but must expect that the next government will fail to do what is hopes/says too.

It is also ironic that Dr Williams is himself a member of parliament in an unelected chamber - whatever the questions over the democratic credentials of Messrs Clegg and Cameron they are much better than the Archbishop of Canterbury's!

3. Most importantly one wonders why it is that the Archbishop of Canterbury, the only individual who can in any sense be described as a spiritual leader of our nation, should choose to use a major opportunity to communicate with people who might not normally listen to him to major on a political issue which, as important as it is, is neither of eternal consequence or a core part of his job.

The greatest tragedy of his guest editorship of New Statesman is not that he was wrong about the issues he wrote about (though he was) but that he wrote about the wrong issues.

PS: For a different, but very stimulating, Christian perspective on this see Mike Print's blog post here.

Song of Songs problems no 1: How do you spot an allusion?

2011-06-09T13:10:00.000-07:00

Quite a big chunk of my dissertation is about how you spot an allusion; an occasion when a New Testament writer echoes a bit of the Old Testament without formally quoting from it. A good and obvious example is John 1:1 - his "in the beginning" is not a formal quotation of Genesis 1:1 but is, without doubt, designed by John to make us think of that passage.

But there are plenty of allusions that are not as obvious. So how does one decide whether something that looks like it might be a deliberate echo of another part of the Bible really is that; or whether we just think we see something which is merely coincidentally similar? As the aphorism puts it "wonderful things in the Bible I see, some put there by God, some put there by me."

The tendency in academia seems to be to find ever more obscure (and tenuous) allusions. This, of course, is driven by publication bias; your thesis, book or journal article is much more likely to be published if it finds allusions than if it doesn't find them. but very many of the allusions supposedly found by academics would, I suspect, never have been spotted by the first readers of those texts in a million years. So, for example, are we really meant to believe that the two references to Mary "turning" to face Jesus in John 20:14-16 really likely to be an allusion to the fourfold call on the Shullamite woman to return in Song 6:13 as at least one commentator claims?

Some people try, wisely, to avoid such nonsense by saying that there needs to be evidence that the author intended to make an allusion to a particular OT text. The trouble is, of course, that we do not have any access to the minds of the NT writers apart from the NT text itself! So the only way you can be absolutely certain the author intended an allusion is if he tells you "as it says in the OT..." i.e. if it's a quotation. On this basis even John 1:1 wouldn't qualify as an allusion to Gen 1:1 because we can't be absolutely certain John intended the reference.

In the end this is one of those areas where we need to recognise that you can't avoid some degree of subjectivity. One of the problems is that people invent scientific sounding methods with long lists of criteria and tables for determining and validating allusions. But this doesn't guard against subjectivism. The way to do that is to recognise frankly that saying one text is an allusion to another is a matter of judgment, give your reasons and allow others to make up their mind about whether they agree with you.

Factors that will be significant in deciding whether we thing an OT allusion in the NT is important include, but are not limited to:

Do I think the NT author probably intended to refer us to a particular OT passage?
Is it likely that the first readers of this portion of the NT would have recognised the allusion (remembering that most of them knew the OT better than most of us do but not exhaustively)?
Does an OT allusion here help support the (theological) point the NT writer is making?
Has this allusion been widely or at least somewhat recognised by others in church history?

Why the slut walkers are right about rights but wrong about people

2011-06-09T01:27:00.000-07:00

I've just spend a rather depressing 10 minutes listening to the Today programme's discussion (if having two interviewees who completely agree with each other and the presenter can be called a discussion) of today's "slut walk" in London.

For those not familiar with this event the slut walks started in Toronto when a police officer told a "personal security class" at York University that "women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimised." Incensed by the way his comments appeared to blame the victims of sexual violence a thousand people marched, scantily clad, through Toronto in a "slut walk."

The message of the walks that have followed it all over the english speaking world is that sexual violence is always the fault of the perpetrator and that women ought to be able to dress however they want without fear of violence.

That, I submit, is obviously true: women (and men!) ought to have a right to go about their business peaceably, without fear of violence or intimidation and, within the limits set by society (eg you'd expect to be arrested if you walked down the street actually naked), should be able to dress how they like.

But I don't think the Toronto policeman, for all his unfortunate phrasing, was actually saying anything different!

The problem here isn't that lots of lawmakers, high flyers and philosophers are saying that there ought to be restrictions on what people can wear, or that if a woman is provocatively dressed it somehow lessens the responsibility on a man for a rape or sexual assault. Sure there are some people who believe that some men just can't help themselves but, in the western world at least they aren't (mostly) the ones who run the justice system (anybody who bring up Ken Clarke at this point clearly hasn't read what he actually said in 'that interview).

The problem isn't that the law doesn't uphold women's rights. The law is very clear. The problem is that there are some men who do not respect women's rights. Even if we had the best laws in the world, the best police forces and the best judicial system there would still be circumstances where it wasn't wise to exercise the right to dress how you like.

Let me illustrate using a different crime... If I am visiting a part of town where there is lots of street crime I certainly have the right to walk down the street at night. I can expect the police to do what they can to make it safe for me to walk down the street at night. I would be most offended if someone who attacked me got a lighter sentence because the place I walked was known to be dangerous. BUT I would be much wiser to avoid walking down that street at night if possible.

The sad truth is that in our messed up world there are some wicked men who will attack women. Often they will attack women who are provocatively dressed and in a state of drunkeness. That doesn't make their crime less awful; in fact the way they victimise the vulnerable makes the crime, if anything, worse.

I absolutely want to defend the right of women to dress how they like. But my advice to my female friends whose safety I value is that, because in our sinful and broken world there are people out there who will not respect your rights, sometimes it is simply wiser not to insist on doing what you are entitled to do.

This applies equally to those Christians who insist on doing things like wearing crosses at work, when their employers would rather they didn't. In some cases the Christian will have a genuine legal right to those things. But just because you have a right doesn't mean it's always wise to exercise it; sometimes it's best to accept that because other people don't recognise your rights the smart thing to do is back off.

I'm not proposing that women (or Christians) should be doormats. Obviously there are times when you need to fight for your rights; both Christians and feminists have a noble record of campaigning for legal and social change in lots of different areas. But there is a difference between making an argument for your rights and reminding people that you have them and unnecessarily choosing to exercise your rights in a situation that may place you in jeopardy; the former is necessary for the functioning of a free and fair society, the latter is just foolish.

New and Exciting!

2011-06-09T01:23:00.001-07:00

If you view andysstudy on your iPhone, Blackberry or other mobile device the pages should now appear configured to fit nicely on your screen - thanks blogger techie dudes.

Andrew's Sabbatical Church Visits - 6: Bank Hall Mission Church

2011-06-07T10:40:00.000-07:00

It's fascinating visiting for the first time a church where there are people you know really quite well. Bank Hall is one of a rare breed - an evangelical church in North Liverpool. In our polarised city the churches tend to hang out with the middle class people in the south of the city so it's great to see a group of Christians being missionaries to the north.

Like many churches in the FIEC Bank Hall operates with a single pastor and a team of deacons. This Sunday's sermon was part of a series looking at biblical church governance in which the pastor, Paul Kinnaird, has been commending plural eldership with a body of deacons responsible for practical ministries.

I was most encouraged by his careful exposition of 1 Tim 3, and by the way the church is being urged to reconsider its traditions in the light of the teaching of the Bible. I was particularly impressed by the way that it was recognised that church governance is neither the most thrilling or important issues on the table, but that it does matter that our churches are led well and in accordance with the Scriptures to give us the best chance of reaching the thousands of lost people all around us.

Andrew's Sabbatical Church Visits - 5: Hope City Church

2011-06-03T03:00:00.000-07:00

Two good things to learn from this Sunday's church visit.

1. Of the churches I have been to so far Hope City Church is the one where people speak publicly most positively about their church and why they believe in its vision and mission. I was struck by the thought that perhaps at Christ Church, and many other churches like it, our analytical (university educated), critical mindset leaves us always looking for things we don't like or don't agree with. I'm not sure what the difference is between constantly looking for things to improve (which they clearly are also doing at Hope City church) and doing yourself down (which I think we are prone to) but this week's church visit has left me convinced there is a difference and we need to make sure we work hard to do our best but also believe in our vision.

2. Nowhere else has made such excellent use of media. In the digital age the opportunities to engage people more effectively using video in particular is massive and Hope City Church has really cottoned on to this. The producers of their video notices and trailers clearly really understand the audience for each thing they are advertising and use appropriate tone, graphics and style.

Next week... somewhere else!

Why I'm not convinced by an allegorical reading of the Song of Songs

2011-06-01T06:00:00.000-07:00

Throughout the history of the church many godly people have said that the Song of Songs isn't really about what it seems to be about. One recent commentator says that the Song is "not to be interpreted literally at all."

Instead, they argue, the whole thing is to be understood as an allegory; the Song is about the relationship between Christ and his Church. Each of the details of the Song then relates to something about this relationship. The trouble is that most of the time people who explain it like this don't exercise any control over what different bits of the Song mean. Here's a good (bad!) example from Don Fortner, the commentator quoted above...

Obviously once you've decided that the male lover is Christ blackness can't be sin, because he's sinless. So blackness must be something else You can imagine Fortner sitting in his study: "Hmmm, blackness, what could that be? I know, how about perpetual strength and power!"

But although blackness in the Bible has a number of different symbolic meanings "perpetual strength and power" isn't exactly at the top of the list!

Fortner's radically different interpretations of these two uses of "blackness" aren't anything to do with the way the Song or the Bible uses those words; they are made up because he's determined that the lovers must be Christ and the Church not two human lovers and that every detail about them has to have spiritual significance.

In other words the danger of taking a big chunk of the Bible allegorically when it doesn't make clear that it's an allegory is that you end up making it mean whatever you want it to.

Why the Song of Songs?

2011-05-29T06:00:00.000-07:00

A number of people have asked me why I'm doing an MTh dissertation on "The Influence of the Song of Songs on the New Testament" (or something like that!). I found something out this week that sums up why I think some more people need to shout about the Song:

Number of sermons on the Gospel Coalition web site: 44,690 (as of 27/05/2011)

Number of those sermons about the Song of Songs: 0

Andrew's Sabbatical Church Visits - 4: Aigburth Community Church

2011-05-27T12:28:00.000-07:00

Obviously there's some hazard in writing a blog post about visiting a church you were involved in planting - people who go there or know about it might be inclined to read too much in to what you don't say! But I've rarely been accused of lacking confidence to offer an opinion so I guess there's not too much point in worrying about it now...

The weirdest thing about ACC is the combination of people; people I know from Christ Church who we commissioned to go and plant the church, and also people I know from the area who had nothing to do with any church until ACC was planted! Somehow the Lord has used our little team to reach people who would not have ever come to CCL - church planting really is an effective strategy.

I was impressed to be reminded just how thoroughly committed this group of people is to reaching their local community and encouraged by the visible success they are having; and by the fact that they are in no doubt just how great the challenges are and how many people in their area don't know Jesus.

The children's talk was a brilliant model of clarity in teaching the Bible - pitched right in the zone of the 7-10 year olds who make up a good proportion of the massive number of under 18s at ACC.

After some very solid but not expository sermons over the last few weeks it was immensely encouraging to hear Psalm 51 explained in a way that opened up the text in its context, pointed to Christ and made sharp and relevant application to today. Listen to it here. I particularly loved the line: "The Seriousness of sin is not determined by what you do wrong but by who you wrong."

Most of all I was struck by the ways that ACC is increasingly unlike CCL; developing its own contextual expression of the gospel the members of both churches believe with a different style, different songs and a different pattern of services for a different audience. It's good to be reminded that the Church doesn't need universal structures precisely because it has a sovereign God.

Andrew's Sabbatical Church Visits - 3: Mosaic, Leeds

2011-05-22T02:23:00.000-07:00

I had a busy day in Leeds (well the afternoon wasn't busy - I spent it browsing in Harvey Nicks and sitting in Starbucks) and after my morning at St George's went to Mosaic, part of the newfrontiers family of churches in the afternoon.

It's thrilling how many people turned up to an old warehouse on the fringe of the city centre to praise God and hear his word preached! Mosaic, like Christ Church Liverpool, is situated just a few minutes in one direction from university halls and "yuppie flats" and, in another direction, just a few minutes walk from one of the most deprived communities in the city. It was encouraging to hear from the (very friendly!) people who go there that the challenges of reaching both communities are huge and that they find they need to be constantly creative to engage people with the gospel.

I heard a very helpful talk on what it means to be "in Christ" and, particularly, the relationship between faith and baptism. Not a simple topic for a Sunday evening - good to see a church go boldly for stuff that matters not simply stuff that's easy.

Andrew's Sabbatical Church Visits - 2: St George's Leeds

2011-05-18T07:19:00.000-07:00

Every church, of course, has a liturgy - a pattern of things we do and say in our services which establish a rhythm of sorts. But at CCL it's very informal and pretty variable and certainly doesn't have much that we repeat word for word every week.

We like it like that! But it's nice to visit a church, like St George's, which, though not at all formal or stuffy has a significant part of its service devoted to the repetition of classic Christian truths; a confession of sin, the Lord's prayer and the rest of the communion liturgy. Of course such things can become a dead letter; mantras people repeat either because they think them magical or merely because they like the way they sound. But at their best liturgies join Christian people, of all ages, in saying together words that have been very carefully written to convey profound truths in a beautiful way.

Andrew's Sabbatical Church Visits - 1: Frontline

2011-05-12T04:22:00.000-07:00

During my sabbatical I'm making use of the opportunity to visit other churches to see some of the things that are happening here in Liverpool and in other major cities around the UK. It's helpful to me to reflect on the good things I find in them (so we can steal all the best ideas for use at Christ Church?!) and I hope it'll be an encouragement to others too that the Lord is at work in our country.

Inevitably every church has its faults and weaknesses and just stuff I don't personally like! But I won't be commenting on those; not because they aren't important (well whether I like stuff or not clearly isn't important!) but because that's not the purpose of these posts (and in any case most of those kinds of criticisms of other churches published on people's blogs are, frankly, not very helpful to anyone!).

This week (Sunday 7th May) I went to Frontline's 6pm service (Frontline web site). It was great to see about 120 people, almost all aged 18-30, there. The music was surprisingly familiar to me (In Christ Alone and Holy, holy amongst the 7 or so songs we sang) and really well led and executed by the band without turning things into a 'performance'.

The sermon (by John Harding) was on holiness: I was greatly encouraged by being reminded from several passages of Scripture that holiness is not a product of trying really hard to impress God but a fruit of God's grace in the gospel.

People were friendly and welcoming and it was brilliant to hear from the guy I sat next to how much he had benefitted from his 5 years in the church and how he is apprehensive about finding somewhere that will be as much of an encouragement to him in his Christian life when he moves to London in September - a great testimony to the elders and staff at Frontline.

Should Christians go to war?

2011-05-11T11:27:00.001-07:00

This post is prompted by my friend Mike Print's post on The Death of Bin Laden and the Sermon on the Mount - read it here.

This is a very complex subject which much cleverer and more godly people than me have disagreed about for centuries but I'd offer the following, very brief, reflections on it...

1. The New Testament distinguishes quite sharply between individual responses to sin and corporate ones. So, for example, individual Christians are never permitted to ignore their brothers, except in the situation where a local church has determined that a professing Christian ought to be treated as a "pagan or a tax collector" (Matthew 18:15ff; 1 Cor 5). Also although individual Christians (and groups of believers) are not enjoined to take action against their enemies (Matthew 5-7) the NT recognises that states exist to punish wrongdoing (Romans 13). It seems to me legitimate to extend this role of the state to promoting justice between states as well as within them.

2 Just War theory incorporates a large number of conditions which ought to be fulfilled before states go to war;

The war must be for a just cause.
The war must be lawfully declared by a lawful authority.
The intention behind the war must be good.
All other ways of resolving the problem should have been tried first.
There must be a reasonable chance of success.
The means used must be in proportion to the end that the war seeks to achieve.

These conditions are so stringent, that if strictly applied it is arguable that few if any of the wars fought in the last 1,000 years satisfy them. So, for example, the British declaration of war on Germany in 1939, which most would probably consider one of the least contentious wars from a moral perspective, probably didn't satisfy the Just War test of winnability (you must have a reasonable chance of success - yes I know the Allies won but it didn't look very feasible they would in 1939!).

3 God is clearly not against war in the sense of violent judgment in this world. He commanded the people of Israel to fight holy wars against the Canaanites and will, in person, return at the end of time to fight a war which will result in the eternal death of unbelievers (or at least war is the image the inspired writers of scripture thought most appropriate to describe it in Revelation 19-22). Whilst no Christian today can say they are fighting a holy war (because God's people are no longer a nation state) the teaching of Scripture means we can say that there are evils that are so great that they may require force to resist them.

4 The argument against war on the basis that we should not forcefully resist evil is, in principle, one that could be used against capital punishment, prisons, community service, fines and even our household naughty step!

5 The language often used for peace - that it is 'higher' is dangerously loaded and tends to assume the superiority of one view over another before the argument is started!

6 In the case of many wars it's not always clear what it means to do to others as we want them to do to us. So, to take an example from recent British history, when we started WWII were we doing to the French (liberating them) as we would want them to do to us? Yes! Were we doing to the Germans (getting rid of a fascist dictator) what we would (or at least should!) want them to do to us in similar circumstances? Arguably yes (though I would argue that some aspects of WWII such as firebombing German cities were both immoral and militarily ineffective).

7 None of this, of course, answers the question of whether the killing of Osama Bin Laden was either a) legal or b) moral. For what it's worth (and that's probably not much!) my own view is that his killing was almost certainly a matter of convenience rather than necessity (I am absolutely certain a team of Navy SEALS could have taken him alive had they really wanted to) and that although there were undoubtedly good political and military reasons for killing him those are insufficient to make that killing just; not because he didn't deserve to die but because between fallible humans justice ought always to have a transparent process accountable to agreed standards.

Another discrimination false alarm by Christians

2011-05-03T02:29:00.001-07:00

Some of you may have followed the case of van driver Colin Atkinson who has recently been supported in the Christian Legal Centre in a case centred around his 'right' to display an eight inch cross, woven from palm leaves, in his van.

His employer (Wakefield and District Housing) told him to remove the cross from the window of the van because they did not wish to give the impression that the company was Christian. Mr Atkinson responded that his boss was allowed to display a poster of Che Guevara in his office.

Christians involved in the case and supporting Mr Atkinson said that his employers policy was "deeply illiberal" and "shocking." There was quite a lot of Christian reporting that made it sound as if he was being picked on because he was a Christian. That, with all due respect to my brothers and sisters, is nonsence.

The company's policy was that personal items are not to be displayed in vans. Mr Atkinson could not have had a St Christopher, a small statue of Buddha or a picture of Che Guevara in his van. Presumably this is on the basis that vans are out and about and seen by lots of members of the public whereas his bosses desk is not in a 'customer facing' situation.

You could say that the company's policy is a bit silly (I would agree). You could even say that the company's policy discriminates against people on grounds of their job by giving less freedom to van drivers than to office staff. I think that's a bit tenuous; but it would at least be good ground for a Christian to fight on - protecting the less powerful, less well paid manual staff from worse treatment than their white-collar bosses.

The company's policy might not be a good one; but they were enforcing the policy they had consistently to people of all religions. The company's policy was not, on any level, discriminatory against or persecuting of Christians because they are Christians. Yet that is how Christian Institute and Christian Legal Centre chose to portray it.

This is bad for several ressons:

a) once again it looks like Christians are out to fight for their own when the gospel is all about not standing on your own rights but speaking up for others.

b) it looks like Christians think that displaying a palm cross is at the centre of what it means to be a Christian when in fact there is no permanent outward display or symbol at the heart of being a Christian; indeed it seems very deliberate in the New Testament that the only sacraments of Christianity (baptism and the Lord's Supper) are temporary and leave no visible mark. Christians are the symbols of Christ in the world not crosses, church buildings or fish badges.

c) Christians are using the language of oppression to describe these trivialities. This is a disservice to our brothers who really are persecuted for their faith around the world. And it means that people in the UK who might otherwise be sympathetic to our calls for aid for persecuted Christian in Nigeria or Saudi Arabia or India start to think their persecution is like the things we are campaigning on here and ignore us.

Having heard Bishop Ben Kwashi (from Joss in Nigeria) at New Word Alive recently I think Christians in the UK urgently need to tone down our rhetoric about being discriminated against and marginalised and get on with using the massive freedom we do have to proclaim and live for Christ.

Yes we need to guard those freedoms and there is a danger of them being slowly eroded. But overstating the danger with tabloid soundbites will not make it go away; it will reinforce the impression many people have that any ground that shouts this loudly must either be pathetically hypersensitive or have something to hide.

Carl Trueman and Evangelical Celebrity

2011-04-26T23:00:00.000-07:00

The ever thoughtful and interesting Carl Trueman has stirred up something of a controversy (especially in the US) with a recent post on evangelical celebrity and conferences. It's well worth reading if you haven't come across it: here.

If you have read it (and are in any way interested) I think Trueman is absolutely ion the right track. Here are my thoughts on why he is quite right to say that this is more of a problem in the US than in the UK...

It is certainly the case that there is some 'big personality worship' going on here as well; few societies are immune to the sins of Corinth. It's certainly the case that more people come
to pastor's conferences when (say) Keller, Piper or Carson are preaching. Of course we have many other different sins in our churches too! But, from my trips to the US and observation of the blogosphere I think Carl is right to say this is a problem which is, at least, magnified in a US context for several reasons:

Firstly the British temprament is to cut down tall poppies. We are, for all sorts of complex reasons, very much prone to pricking the bubbles of celebrity. This is not always a good thing; it's a reflection of a cynical culture and means we are not always good at celebrating success - no doubt this is both a cause and a result of our less economically successful but more economically equal society. It is, I suspect, also one of the reasons that almost all mega-churches in the UK contain a majority of people from non-British cultural backgrounds. Even when Brits like going to hear mega-church pastors at a conference they don't actually want to go to mega-churches. The US culture, by contrast, is very much about celebrating success; it's not difficult to see why that would lead to the problem Carl identifies as even the most godly of us tend to take on the sins our the culture around us.

Secondly the reformed evangelical scene in the UK is so much smaller than in the US that everybody is very much aware that even the biggest fish is swimming in a very small pond. Hugh Palmer (All Soul's Langham Place) or Rico Tice (Christianity Explored author) might pull 1,000
people to a really major conference (and then usually only in London) but it's not exactly the Superbowl is it? This is also one of the reasons US pastors are sometimes feted in the UK more than local pastors - their churches are bigger so it seems more impressive. But then we hear them speak and realise that, on the whole, they are no more gifted than many British preachers; there are often cultural and sociological reasons for their 'success' as well as exceptional gifting. In the US there are enough evangelicals to pull really big crowds and make a splash; Rob Bell might not be considered an evangelical by evangelicals but no pastor would make it onto the cover of a mainstream magazine here unless he became a serial killer or something!

It's interesting that one of those Trueman is discussing with mentions Dr Lloyd-Jones as a British Evangelical celebrity. Apart from the fact that he died before the current view of 'celebrity' really became current (say in the mid 1980s) . There is some history here that seems to me one of the reasons UK evangelicals are less concerned about celebrity than our US brothers. The Lloyd-Jones/Stott divide was disasterous for British reformed evangelicalism. This is not to say that one of them wasn't right on the issue of mixed denominations, or that they were not both godly men used greatly by the Lord in ministry. But such a public spat between the two great celebrities of UK evangelicalism at that time created decades of suspicion and a totally unnecessary lack of willingness by evangelical Anglicans and nonconformists to work together for the gospel. I think this too has made us slightly suspicious of superapostles.

As I say we have many of our own problems, and Carl's very practical suggestions would be really good to implement here as well. But they would certainly also be good for our American brothers.

The Sabbatical

2011-04-26T12:48:00.000-07:00

(with apologies to Roger McGough - see here)

I wanna have a Sabbatical
I wanna have a Sabbatical
Can I have a Sabbatical?
Can I? I can?
Promise? Promise?
Yippee I'm on Sabbatical
I'm on Sabbatical!

OK what shall I do?

North West Training Centre Frequently Asked Questions

2011-04-20T07:56:00.000-07:00

Excitingly lots of people have been asking questions about the possibility of studying with Oak Hill in Liverpool from September. Mike Ovey and Justin Mote have put together this very helpful set of answers to the most frequently asked questions about the course. It's on the North West Partnership web site (www.northwestpartnership.com) along with more information such as module descriptors...

North West Training Centre
Degree in Theological and Pastoral Studies
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

When will the course be up and running?
We are starting in September 2011! We are working in partnership with Oak Hill College – one of the world’s leading evangelical theological colleges. They have developed a new Foundation Degree, which has been accredited for full-time and part-time study through Middlesex University. We are starting the process of gaining accreditation for distance learning. However students will be able to ‘audit’ modules from this September, with the expectation that any modules taken be ‘credited’ next year.

What is the content of the course?
The content of the course is detailed in a separate document (see the NWP website). There you will find a timetable for each term and which modules are being offered.

How many modules will it require a student to pass to gain the foundation degree?
Different modules gain different amounts of ‘credit’. To complete the degree a student must accrue 240 ‘credits’.

How many of these modules will be on offer each year in the North West?
Students have the same access to modules as students doing the course part-time at Oak Hill. The part-time course has been designed so that designated modules can be taken each term and build on each other in a proper sequence that maximises learning. That means that all the modules that are designated for the first year part-time course will be on offer.

Can I take the modules as slowly as I like?
We would encourage a student to take as many modules as is realistic for them. However a student can vary the number of modules they take each year. In order to complete the Foundation Degree 240 ‘credits’ need to be completed within a 6 year period. Some modules can only be taken after certain other modules have been passed.

How will each of the modules be taught and assessed in the North West? Who will be doing the teaching?

Subject to accreditation students have the same lecture content as students studying at Oak Hill and the same hand-out material. Resources will be sent electronically for use in the NW using the opportunities that virtual learning provides. Like students at Oak Hill, NW students will have access to the online learning resources that Oak Hill lecturers are developing for students. NW staff will facilitate group learning and discussion from those resources. Because it is important for students to have access to the lecturers themselves, there will be ‘chat room’ access to a lecturer for any module once a fortnight at a designated time. This gives time for questions and an opportunity to develop particular points further. Module lecturers will visit at least once each term so that there can be face to face contact. Like students studying at Oak Hill, NW students have direct email access to lecturers.

Students also have essentially the same assessment as students studying at Oak Hill. So if an assignment is an essay or exam (and exams will be sat in the NW and regulated there), it will be sent to Oak Hill for a lecturer to mark, who will provide the same level of feedback as for an assignment done at Oak Hill. Some assessments are different but involve work in a local church and in those cases, both NW and Oak Hill-based students, will have assessment done through local supervisors who know the particular situations with which the student is working.

On which days will the modules be taught?
The modules will be delivered on Tuesdays and Wednesdays at our new Theological Centre in Liverpool. The requirement for watching a recording will be 1 hr 10 mins: that is, a 50-minute lecture plus compulsory 20-minute discussion, with questions to be supplied by the Oak Hill lecturer. The total part-time lecture load will be 6 hours in term 1, 7 in terms 2-3, with no more than 4 lectures per day. The NW Theological centre will have study and library facilities for students to use.

Can I transfer modules that I have taken in the North West to a 'full-time' course at Oak Hill?
Subject to accreditation, Yes! Any ‘credits’ can be transferred.

What is the cost of taking the course in the North West?
We are still working on this! We hope to be able to update with this information soon after Easter 2011.

If I complete the course what are my options for future courses at Oak Hill?
Subject to accreditation, if you complete the Foundation Degree you will be able to study at Oak Hill for their honours degree and then Master’s degree.

Is the course accepted as training for Anglican ordination?
At the moment we are in discussion with Bishops in the North West about this. Past Oak Hill courses have been accepted for training for Anglican ordinands. We are hoping that this will also be the case for the new Foundation Degree.

If I do the course in the North West and am later accepted for Anglican ministry, will the course be credited as part of my training?
Any prior theological education is usually taken into account by sponsoring dioceses. However this is always done on an individual basis.

Census Controversy...

2011-03-24T11:26:00.001-07:00

The 2011 Census is nearly upon us and the religion question is again controversial with the British Humanist Association (BHA) running a campaign to suggest that anybody who is not actively religious to tick the "no religion" box to prevent census data being used to justify funding, for example, more faith schools. What should Christians make of this?

Firsly a theological point. As a pastor I think it's much better if people who are not Christians don't think they are. So if the number of people who tick "Christian" were to fall to roughly the number of people who go to church (somewhat less than 10%) this would actually be a good thing in lots of ways.

But for this post I've mainly got a statistical point (dull but important)...

As a Christian I entirely agree with the BHA that previously (2001 census) the religion question couldn't be reliably used to support the faith affiliations of people because so many people of nominal religious affiliation ticked the "Christian" box.

But if the BHAs campaign is effective (which is presumably the point of the campaign) then the new data (which given that only the BHA has really campaigned on this issue should show a decline in religious affiliation) can be considered more accurate and thus could be used for policy making?

So, for example, if, following a widely publicised campaign to tick "no religion" the number of those ticking Christianity falls to, let's say, 55% and the number of those ticking "no religion" rises to 25% you could suggest that in fact there are too few (rather than too many) religiously affiliated people in public life, too few faith schools etc in proportion to the self-perception of the whole population.

Or, alternatively, if after the 2011 Census the BHA continues to trot out the line that that many of those who tick the "Christian" box are merely nominal they will also have to concede that many of those who tick the "No religion" box are only nominally secular. This means those people can be considered as averse to the fairly "fundamentalist" secularism of the BHA as the nominal Christians are to the "fundamentalist" Christianity of, say, Christian Voice.

Bottom line: the BHF needs to avoid the danger of trying to have it's cake and eat it!

2 Blackburne Place progress

2011-03-14T05:08:00.000-07:00

As some readers of this blog will know the Christ Church Liverpool office is moving in the next few weeks.

If you'd like to take a sneeky peak at our new home, a building which will also be used for lots of exciting theological training by North West Partnership and Oak Hill College, we've set up a photoblog which you can look at: http://blackburneplace.wordpress.com/

David Starkey on "a new tyrrany"

2011-03-06T01:50:00.001-08:00

I was going to do a post on David Starkey's fascinating Question Time comments about intolerance and religion - but Neil Powell already got there and I've nothing more to add to check his post out here.

'Abortion is safer than having a baby.' For who?

2011-03-01T08:52:00.000-08:00

Recently a number of newspapers (including the Telegraph) reported on the new draft (nb draft) guidance being issued by the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists to all doctors, nurses and counsellors advising women contemplating terminating their pregnancy.

The most eye catching part of their guidance is that "women should be advised that abortion is generally safer than continuing a pregnancy to term." In one sense this is nothing new. It's been known for years that an abortion, properly carried out in good clinical conditions, is much less likely to lead to you dying or being seriously ill than having a baby. What's new is that this undeniable statistial truth seems, through this guidance, to be being put to a specific new use; making people feel better about choosing a termination as they will now be able to justify it (to themselves) on 'health' grounds.

No doubt those who drafted the guidance and the supporters of the right of women to choose a ternination will say that this is unfair; that the statistic is neutral and the advice is simply to make women aware of the facts. So why am I so cynical about their motives?

Well, although it is definitely true that many women (and their partners) find the prospect of childbirth intimidating, people who are extremely concerned about something (death or illness in childbirth) tend to take proactive steps to avoid that thing (in this case contraception). Whilst some of that contraception may fail I don't believe that a genuine fear of death in childbirth is the main reason, or even a particularly important reason, for more than a very small proportion of the 150,000+ abortions performed in the UK each year. In other words seeking (or not seeking) a termination doesn't seem to be anything to do with level of risk to health for the vast majority of people.

Equally there doesn't seem to be any evidence at all that women who have valid legal reasons for termination a pregnancy are not having one because of fear it may damage their health.

The mortality rate for both terminations and childbirth is extremely low - in the case of the latter around 8 per 100,000 live births (i.e you have a 0.008% chance of dying in childbirth). That's 100 times lower than your chances of dying in a road accident. Most women, entirely rationally, see this as a very small risk and are not hugely concerned by it.

So if the information put out by the RCOG is not designed to address a real fear that leads people to choose or not choose a termination, why is it there? Well it can only be to provide a retrospective (or at an least additional) justification to people who have decided to have a termination on other grounds.

The truth is that the reason for the vast majority of abortions in this country (and probably worldwide) boils down to "I don't want to have a baby." I know that's not true of all abortions and that some people's reasons for having a termination are much better and/or more complex than this.

Of course many groups think this is fine; that a woman ought to be able to have a termination just because she wants one. The problem for these groups is that UK law does not provide that simply wanting a termination is a valid reason to have one.

You would think, therefore, that "pro-choice" groups would be campaigning for the law to be changed so that "abortion on demand" is legal. But they aren't. Or, at least, not very viciferously! Why not? Because the law as it stands, although not intended in this way by the people who passed it in 1967, is reinterpreted by the medical profession to, in practice, provide abortion on demand already.

It is precisely this "abortion is basically OK if you want it" ethos that seems to lie behind the RCOG draft advice. It fits with the dominant cultural note that having an abortion is a safe and easy way to make sure your life is what you want it to be.

The problem is, of course, that there is no good scientific, moral or ethical reason to imagine that only one person (the mother) is involved in termination. There is always one other interested party - the unborn baby. I know lots of people want to argue that the foetus is not a person until some particular, arbitrary stage of gestation or until they can 'survive'. But those same people can show only a continual development in the foetus not any clear moment when they become a person. And given that not one of us can 'survive' as babies without the care and intervention of others this argument is, and has been repeatedly shown to be, very thin.

If we accept that the unborn are people we have to conceded that such a person isn't in a position to say whether they want to live or die. But since the vast, vast majority of people who do get to be born find they like being alive it seems to be only just to give those who can't yet speak the same opportunity that everybody having this discussion has had; the opportunity to live.

Can Christians still be foster parents?

2011-02-28T09:46:00.000-08:00

We don't know exactly what Owen and Eunice John's said to social workers when asked what they would tell a foster child in their care about homosexual practice. What has been reported is that they said they "could not tell a child homosexuality was an acceptable lifestyle." (see here for the BBC version of the story). We don't know precisely what they meant by that - presumably they either meant that it's wrong to feel attracted to other men/women (in which case I would disagree) or that it's wrong to actually engage in homosexual activity (in which case I would agree). But whatever they meant there is no hint at all that they said they would throw out a foster child if they had a homosexual preference. There isn't even any suggestion that they would have gone out of their way to tell the child their views; just that they would express them honestly if asked.

What this judgment decided, entirely in line with what all sorts of religious groups have predicted for years this legislation would be used for, was that the rights of s gay person trump the rights of a religious person. Not that a gay person has a right to engage in homosexual activity (that right has been enshrined in law for many years) but that they have a right not to be told that their practice is morally wrong, at least in situations where the state is in any way involved. This could (stress on could - because much will remain at the discretion of individual social workers within the system) mean that Christians will not be allowed to foster or adopt children if they believe that homosexual practice is morally wrong and are willing to say so if asked.

It's a bad ruling because it's based on a bad law (see here for my earlier explanation of why it's a bad law!). But, unlike the recent case of the Christian hotel owners who refused a double room to a gay couple, in this case the prospective foster parents were not preventing their prospective foster children doing anything. In fact since any genital sexual practice is illegal for under 16s their opinions couldn't make any difference one way or the other!

Essentially, therefore, this ruling says that there are certain opinions which, if you hold them and are willing to be honest about them, mean that you are considered by the state to be not a suitble person to be looking after children.

That has a number of consequences:

It means that the state thinks hypocrisy is a good thing; you'd be allowed to foster if you pretended to think homosexual practice is OK even if you don't.
It means that the vast majority of evangelical Christian and Jewish and almost all Muslim parents as well as quite alot of secular parents who all also think homosexual practice is morally wrong are potentially not condidered by the state to be suitable carers for children.
It means that the law is trying to enshrine not only a legal right for people to do something (homosexual practice) but also a legal right that means everybody else is obliged to affirm you in the moral rightness of that activity. It's the ultimate in mollycoddling!

Be yourself?

2011-02-25T03:48:00.000-08:00

It's not often that all the contributors to Radio 4's Any Questions agree on the answer to a question! But, in a recent edition of the programme representative of all three major UK political parties as well as two other panelists all gave almost exactly the same answer to a question about the message they wanted to send to the pupils of the girl's school hosting the programme: be yourself.
That, it seems, is the most helpful thing the British political and media elite have to say to our young people. How depressing! The advice to be yourself doesn't help young people, or anyone else, make good decisions about how to live for two main reasons:

Firstly it doesn't tell me which "me" to be!

When I went to university my plan A was to be an obscenely highly paid commercial lawyer working in the city of London. And, although I love my job as a church pastor in Liverpool, there are occasions when I really wish I had taken the high-flying, work obsessed, Aston Martin driving, international jet-setting, six figure salary lawyer option. So by choosing what I have have I been true to myself – or have I betrayed myself? Which of those choices is more authentically me?

You see the trouble with me, and with all of us, is that I am not an entirely consistent person who only ever wants and does one thing. Some of the things I do are really dumb. But I do them anyway. And then kick myself for being such a plonker. When I act stupidly am I being myself – or am I just being a divvy?

Secondly it doesn't tell me if some things are better than others

The Beautiful South's A little time is, without doubt, one of the best break-up songs ever. The male vocalist justifies his unfaithfulness to his girlfriend as a sign that he needs "a little time" to think about the relationship. The famale vocalist She sees right through his nonsense and dumps him: “The freedom that you wanted back is your for good – I hope you're glad.”

You can't help thinking that the man's life would have been far more genuine, more "himself", if he had denied himself the space that he felt he wanted and kept his commitments to his partner.

If all we can do is look inside ourselves for what seems most "me" we have, literally, no way of deciding whether we are acting rightly or wrongly.

Almost every adulterer I have ever met would have justified their actions on the grounds that they felt an incredibly powerful sense that their extra marital relationship was right and authentic. But in the cold light of day, breaking the promises you make to a wife or husband is definitely not being true to yourself. Unless you say that the promises you make hold only as long as you feel like keeping them – in which case why bother making them at all?

The “be yourself” way of thinking makes the value of our choices ultimately dependent on the fact that they are just that – our choices. At a trivial level that means that it doesn't matter whether you choose designer label or cheap and cheerful clothing. But does it still not matter if one of your clothing brands exploits child labour to make the clothes you wear? Would it be a more "you" choice to choose the other brand then?

If the only criteria we can use to decide whether we should do this or that is how we feel about it that means that no life is any worse than any other. We like that idea; because we don't like the idea that anybody would judge our life as morally inferior. But what we don't like is the inevitable consequence of that; if no life is worse than any other, no life is better than any other either.

If being “true to yourself”, measured by how you feel about a decision is all that matters, the bank robber's life is a good as the policeman's. And the Saturday night yob who bottles someone is as authentic as the life of the paramedic who cleans up the victim.

Being yourself is only good advice if the person you are is a good person to be! And the person we are is only a good person to be if we turn from our sinful nature and put our trust in Jesus Christ. If God, by grace, makes us his child, adopts us into his family and seats us in the heavenly realms so that our destiny is perfection with Christ, then being yourself is a great thing to be; because it will lead you to strive for good and to fight selfishness, sin and evil which are no longer part of who you truly are.

The truth that Jesus brings is truth that makes it possible for us to be in right relationship with the God who made us.

The truth that Jesus brings can set us free to be true to ourselves. Not to our lowest base instincts; not even to our cultured feelings of what people we “ought” to like. But free to be the people that we were created to be. People who live in right relationship with God and understand the needs and importance of other people made in God's image.

That is a freedom worth having. A freedom that cannot be found anywhere other than in Jesus Christ.

Being yourself is, actually, a noble aim. But you cannot do it on your own. Because unless, through Jesus, we know the God who made us, and unless we seek to understand ourselves every day in the light of who he is and how he asks us to live we don't really have any idea who we are at all.

Is democracy good?

2011-02-23T03:47:00.000-08:00

As Colonel Ghadaffi tries to control Libya and popular uprisings in Bahrain, Iran and who knows where next seem likely to join those in Tunisia and Egypt which have already thrown off their authoritarian governments there seems to be a huge change going on in our world.

I'm planning to write another post about whether or not these changes will make life easier for churches and individual Christian believers in some of these countries but it also seems like a good time to pause and reflect on the nature of good government.

People who live in the west, and, no doubt, many who live in the countries concerned, have quite complex attitudes to the possible spread of democracy in the middle east. There are some, represented most visibly by American neo-conservatives, for whom democracy is just about the highest good there can be. Any government that is more democratic must, in this view, be better. Others think that democracy is a generally good idea but aren't sure if these countries will be able to "handle it" or whether, even if they can, democracy 'there' might be bad for us here (because of radical Islam, difficulties with trade and oil or whatever).

So what is democracy? And should Christians think it's a good thing?

Democracy means government by the demos, or people. The idea is that, in some way or other, the government of a country represents the wishes of it's people. Democracy has a long history and the influences that have led to it being so important in the Western world are varied; including Greek and Roman thought, the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. From a Christian perspective additional major influences on democracy have been Christian thought and the Protestant Reformation.

it a good thing? Well Winston Churchill famously (and perceptively) described it as the worst system of government - apart from all the others! The people who founded the United States of America, heavily influenced by a Christian world view, understood that human beings need leaders. But they also knew that because human beings are universally sinful power tends to corrupt them and it's vital that no one person or group is given too much power. This led them to create a system of government where the people who make the laws, execute the laws and enforce the laws are all separately appointed and accountable to one another and to the people through regular elections.

The evidence of history seems to be that the more secure people feel in their power the more likely they are to abuse and exploit the citizens they are meant to govern. Democracy is therefore a good thing in that it makes leaders permanently insecure by subjecting their power to govern to regular tests of consent by the people.

Because of these regular elections democracy also tends to drift towards the centre ground of the spectrum of political opinion in a country rather than fostering extremism (though of course what is moderate in one society may well be considered extreme in another!). There are a couple of reasons for this. One is that very extreme elements within politics (for example communists and fascists) are in principle opposed to democracy and therefore find it hard to be seen as legitimate 'candidates' in democratic elections. Another is that extreme views are usually, by definition, a minority interest, and that electability depends on getting a significant number of people to support you. It's striking, for example, that even in the USA, probably the most polarised mature democracy in the world, large swathes of the Republican party will oppose Sarah Palin as their presidential nominee not because they personally do not want her but because they perceive that she is not electable. For this reason too democracy is a good thing from a Christian perspective because although Christianity is not politically extreme. - you could present a good case for being a Christian member of the British Labour party (centre left) or the American Republican party (centre right) but not, I think, of a communist or fascist party.

This means, I think, that Christians should be supportive of the concept of democracy and pray that the people of the middle east will be given the opportunity to choose their own governments. Despite the fact that we are universally sinful it still seems that a decision made by a lot of people about their government is, usually, one better than that made by a few people and imposed on everybody else.

Of course we shouldn't see democracy as the solution to the world's problems. It can make countries better places in which to live. At it's best it reflects a Christian view of human nature as both noble and fallen, both reasonable and self-centred. But it can't save people from sin and death; so we must continue to pray for people in all nations, whether democratic or not, to have opportunities to hear about and put their faith in Jesus Christ.

Christ Church Liverpool, North West Partnership and Oak Hill College

2011-02-07T07:52:00.000-08:00

It's very exciting that over the next months Christ Church Liverpool is going to be moving into a building that will also be used by North West Partnership.

Oak Hill college are going to deliver their new foundation degree course in Liverpool so that people can train for pastoral ministry here in the North West without having to move house or leave their churches.

Read Oak Hill College and North West Partnership's statement here.

Photo: view from the roof of the new building on Liverpool's Hope Street

If your brother sins against you (part 2)...

2011-02-01T06:43:00.001-08:00

Another excellent question from Matthew 18:15-17 asked by one of our congregation:

I was wondering how everything you were saying about having a restorative type model of relationships translated to how we should treat people not in the church community (i.e. non-christians)?

That's a great question!

Essentially I think that the motivation for our response to the non-Christian is to be exactly the same as the motivation for our response to the Christian. One of the things I realised in preparing for the talk was that all the different ways in which we normally try and deal with somebody sinning against us (pretending it doesn't matter, ignoring it, gossiping about them) are essentially centred on me. They are either about making my own life easier and having a self-justifying story I can tell myself, or they are about making sure that I look like a victim and the other person look like a perpetrator in front of everybody. Jesus' strategy is different as it is focussed on care for the other person; I am to try and confront my brother's sin in a way that draws no more attention than absolutely necessary to my status as a victim and always offers him an opportunity to return to right relationship with God and with me.

I think that same motivation of other person centredness should be present whether one is dealing with a brother or a with non-Christian, since we are commanded by Christ to love all, even our enemies and those who persecute us.

Our goal in dealing with a non-Christian is the same as well: repentance. For someone who is not a believer the thing I want them to understand is that their mistreatment of me, or any other person, stems finally from their faulty theology: human beings do not treat other people rightly because we do not understnad that we are creatures accountable to God for our lifes, but instead think we are mini-gods who have the right to determine "good and evil."

It's possible that if I confront my non-christian friend about some wrong he has done he will repent of the injury he has caused to me but not see that the fundamental problem is that he has sinned against God. In a sense that is still a good thing - because it's better for people to realise that there are moral absolutes than not to see that. But it's not where we want things to end up! So in such situations it's good to ask "in what way can I discuss this with my friend such that the justice and grace of the cross will be a natural end point to the conversation?" Obviously in the real world it often doesn't work out as we hope but there's a much better chance that it will if we have gone into the conversation seeking their repentance before God, rather than to us, as the first priority.

This, I think, is slightly different to what we are seeking to achieve with a brother. There the issue is that the way they have treated me (sinning against me) is a fundamental denial of their identity as a follower of Jesus. Repentance is necessary for me to continue having confidence that they really are someone who trusts Christ (which is why the ultimate sanction for refusal to repent isn't some physical punishment but the church denying that person's right to call themselves a Christian by removing them).

With a non-Christian their sin against me is a fundamental affirmation of who they are: a person in rebellion against God who thinks they are the centre of the universe. When a non-Christian puts themselves ahead of me they are doing exactly what, theologically, I ought to expect them to do (this is not suggesting unbelievers never do anything good, but rather that we should always expect the basic self-centredness of humanity to be expressed in people's lives). So my purpose in confronting them, while still exactly the same in terms of an other-person centred desire for their repentance, is to help them see that it is this same self-centredness that lies at the heart of their alienation from God and that this is a much more serious issue than whatever they may have done to me.

In short what I always want to say to my non-Christian friend is that they are a sinner and that all the sins they commit are symptoms of their rebellion against God. Put another way my friend's problem is not that he has hit me or smandered me. His problem is that he is not a Christian. The restoration I want from him is principally between him and the Lord not between him and me.

If your brother sins against you...

2011-01-31T11:04:00.001-08:00

I preached on this text from Matthew 18 recently with particular reference to our church's value of community.

15 If your brother sins against you, go and show him his fault, just between the two of you. If he listens to you, you have won your brother over. 16 But if he will not listen, take one or two others along, so that 'every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.' 17 If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, treat him as you would a pagan or a tax collector.

You can download the sermon here. Someone emailed me this question, which I think is an excellent question and opens up an interesting but sad truth about the way local churches tend to operate in our culture. So here is the question and my attempt at an answer:

Q:
I listened to the sermon on Community the other day and was have been thinking quite a lot about it. It's really important that church is a family and therefore we need to work hard with or relationships. But, what about christians who aren't in our church? They are still our brothers and sisters. How do we respond to and tackle difficult situations with those who aren't in our churches? Is it in the same way until the last guideline?

A:
I guess that in principle the answer should be that it's exactly the same up to and including the bit about treating the offender as you would a Pharisee or a tax collector.

Let's say that someone who is a member of another church very clearly wrongs me, perhaps by slandering my person, family or business. If I confront him about that and he won't repent and I then take one or two witnesses (perhaps a leader from my church and a leader from his) and confront him again and he still won't repent what should happen next? Obviously as a congregationalist I think his local church that he is a member of is the one that ought to discipline him. But just because I am not in his church doesn't mean that his church can ignore his sin, any more than they ought to when the victim is in the same church as the perpetrator, because the issue that provokes removal from the church is not the hurt caused to the victim but the sin that suggests the perpetrator is not, in fact, a follower of Jesus. That is equally evidenced by his refusal to repent no matter what church I, the victim, am in.

Where the victim of sin is in a different church the members of the perpetrator's church, having no relationship with the victim, will quite rightly demand a high degree of clarity that the member of their church is indeed the guilty party.

Obviously in lots of real world situations this is not what happens! It is frighteningly easy for people who have dreadfully wronged another Christian and who are unrepentant simply to walk down the road to another church where there will be no questions asked.

This, it seems to me, is another argument for congregationalism; where the members of the church are the people who actually make important decisions they are much more likely to check carefully whether there is a good reason why the new person joining has moved.

One would hope, however, that if there was any degree of gospel partnership between the two churches concerned it would, at last in obviously serious cases, be possible to create some degree of clarity that such behaviour is not accepted as consistent with Christian witness anywhere.

Can't see the wood for the trees?

2011-01-27T09:49:00.000-08:00

The Government's proposals to allow private companies, trusts and individuals to buy or lease large areas of land owned by the Forestry Commission has managed to unite The Archbishop of Canterbury, The Daily Telegraph, Tracy Emin, Ken Livingstone and Judi Dench (amongst others) in a campaign headed up by Boris Johnson's sister.

I have to say I don't really know whether leasing out or selling off our forests is a good idea or not. My suspicion is that it's not the best government policy ever but that it won't be totally disastrous either.

But whenever I hear this issue talked about I can't help thinking of Tim Keller's aphorism: "The city is a place where there are more people than trees. The country is a place where there are more trees than people. God loves people more than trees. Therefore God loves the city more than the country."

Now of course Keller says this somewhat tongue in cheek. He doesn't mean to imply, and nor do I, that the countryside, and the relatively small number of people who live there don't matter. Our rural environment matters to us all; many, including me, love visiting the countryside.

But it does seem that this issue is, amongst all the things that the Government is choosing to (having to?) cut is the one that has really caught the interest of huge numbers of influential people in our society. I'm sure that the forests need a voice. But I can't help feeling that the voice is tainted with self-interest. Why are the middle-classes speaking up about this issue? Because we (I belong to this social group!) fear it might affect our ability to take our expensive mountain bikes on forest trails or canter our horses through the woods.

Some of the people campaigning against this sell off have, to be fair, given their voice to other, undoubtedly much more important campaigns, in the past. I don't want to disparage that, and I am sure they are doing what they think is right. But it does seem to me that one of the consequences of being privileged or powerful is that you really need to use your voice to speak up on issues for other people, not for yourself.

There is a danger in middle-class Britain campaigning only on middle-class interests, much as there is a danger in students campaigning only on student tuition fees. The danger is this: when that happens we are behaving in exactly the same way as the bankers who are campaigning against rules about the level and make-up of their bonuses.

It's a lesson Christians need to learn too: sometimes you do need to stand up for things that are of interest to you (see the apostle Paul in Acts 16 for an example!) but we are wise to use what influence or voice we have mostly to speak for others.

God's Sovereignty

2011-01-26T02:00:00.000-08:00

Also from last weekend a seminar on God's Sovereign in Salvation - it led to lots of questions from those who were there so feel free to listen and comment below! Click here (due to recording incompetence on my part you'll find it in two parts!)

The Day that Changed the World

2011-01-25T08:52:00.000-08:00

I spent last weekend with a group of students from City Evangelical Church in Birmingham. As well as a quality bonfire, great food and the obligatory silly games at the Quinta we spend some time thinking about the Cross of Christ, what happened there and why it matters.

I did four talks:
The Mission of the Cross
The Wrath at the Cross
The Victory of the Cross
The Example of the Cross

They were all recorded and you can download them from here if you like (should open a window with a number of different talks and stuff in - help yourself!)

Congratulate the BBC

2011-01-24T03:46:00.000-08:00

Did you see the recent BBC production ‘The Nativity’ which was screened at prime time on four evenings leading up to Christmas (20th-23rd December)? I missed it but everybody who saw it says it was a beautifully produced, fair and creative retelling of the biblical narrative of the events surrounding the birth of Christ.

If you did see it and, like my friends, thought it was excellent, can I encourage you to tell the BBC?

People often give the impression that Christians complain about the BBC all the time; and that's because we do! But wouldn't it be great if the BBC was aware not only of the things we're against but the things we love that they do.

Some people have already contacted ‘Points of View’ to thank and congratulate the BBC, and you may want to do the same. If so, the email address is pov@bbc.co.uk, and the postal address is Points of View, BBC Birmingham, Birmingham B1 1AY.

Make your view known!

Love the City - volunteering

2011-01-24T01:18:00.000-08:00

One of our church's values is "Loving the City." There are all sorts of ways people do this - through their work, bringing up families in the city and social activities. One way of contributing to the life of the city we're really keen on as a church is volunteering. Gaynor has put together this post on opportunities for volunteers in Liverpool City Centre - why not check them out? Or, if you live elsewhere, we hope this inspires you to contribute to your own community...

Volunteering in Liverpool . . .

Have you ever thought of being more involved within the city centre? Do you want to be more useful to the community you live or go to church in?

Well, you can be!

There are lots of organisations in the city centre looking for volunteers. There are lots of skills needed out there – you may just fit in brilliantly! Below are some starting points . . .

www.volunteercentreliverpool.org.uk/shorterm.htm is a great website to visit which shows volunteer positions within organisations such as Marie Curie Cancer Care, Cancer Research and Black-E Arts. Could you help clear some old buildings, drive a mini bus or help with administration? There is even a personal representative you can chat to, who will point you in the right direction.

www.liverpool.gumtree.com provides information on activity groups requiring help, such as opportunities with scouts or being a musician in a care home.

Typing ‘volunteering in charity shops Liverpool’ will keep you occupied for hours, as you delve into a never ending list of opportunities in charity shops, hospital cafes and fundraising jobs in Liverpool.

www.ageconcernliverpool.org.uk, www.refugee-action.org.uk/Liverpool, and Mildmay house (working with men needing support in the city) are always on the look out for people to join their teams and offer much needed skills.

Maybe working at KIND, based just off Hope Street – a centre working with children and school groups from the city centre – is more your thing. Visit their website www.kind.org.uk to find out how you can make a difference to the children in our city.

Or maybe your skills are more suited to working in the museums or book groups within our city. www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk and www.thereader.org.uk will give you a hand in finding out how to be involved. Putting ‘Book groups Liverpool’ into a search engine will also give you lots of ideas.

So, whatever your skills, however much time you can give and whatever your interests are, why not spend an hour with a cup of coffee looking up some of these places. They are simply a stepping stone to finding out many more opportunities to be a part of our city.

I agree with Peter Tatchell

2011-01-20T06:30:00.000-08:00

It's not often I can say this but there's not much in this article by the OutRage and Stonewall activist I disagree with.

Whatever our views on human sexuality Christians we should thank God that Tatchell, and many others we disagree with about all sorts of issues, are in favour of free speech.

For completeness it should be added that groups Peter Tatchell works for and with have supported some of the laws that are now being used to oppress Christians.

Inflation - the basics

2011-01-19T00:45:00.001-08:00

Lots of people find economics pretty tricky (including the people who run our banks it seems). And, thankfully, most of us don't really need to understand much about it. But you'd think if you run a major union a basic grasp of economics would be pretty helpful. So Dave Prentis, General Secretary of Unison, probably needs to swot up a bit after saying:

"The inflation hike comes on top of the 20% VAT rise, soaring prices of transport, petrol, gas and electricity bills and national insurance contributions."

No Dave, the increase in inflation IS the VAT rise and increase in prices of transport, petrol etc.

When was the last time you heard someone at the filling station say diesel prices have gone up again. And then there's inflation to pay as well."

Were the Christian hotel owners right? No. Was the law right? Also no.

2011-01-18T11:00:00.000-08:00

Today the Guardian and others have reported that Martin Hall and Steve Preddy have just been awarded £1,800 each by a court in Bristol.

They sued Peter and Hazelmary Bull, the owners of the Chymorvah hotel in Cornwall. As Christians they have never allowed unmarried couple to share rooms and, in keeping with this policy, refused to allow Hall and Preddy, who are civil partners, to do so. The judge ruled that this was unlawful under the Equality Act 2007, which outlaws discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation in the provision of good and services.

I guess most Christian comment on the case will focus on saying that this is a stupid law which is being used to discriminate against Christians. I broadly agree with this and I think the facts do suggest that basically the Bulls were persecuted simply because they do not believe that civil partnership is the same as marriage (see the Christian Institute's Fact Sheet here).

But I think that Christians also need to say that, as much as we might think that this couple should not have felt the force of the law punishing their position, their actions don't seem to really reflect the teaching of the Bible on how we ought to treat other people.

I'm sure that lots of my brothers and sisters will be applauding theBulls as heroes of the faith, standing up for family values in a secular society. I'm afraid I can't join them. I do think the Bulls should have been permitted by law to do what they did.

But I don't think that the Christian faith is commended to others by making them abide by your rules, even in your own home, if they don't share your convictions. If Hall and Preddy had agreed to take two single rooms it would not have made any difference to the status of their relationship. It would not have brought them to believe anything different about questions of human sexuality. Christianity is a religion of the heart; expecting people who don't share your heart convictions about God to live like you isn't just unrealistic; it also doesn't really change anything.

I've been made to reflect on this quite a lot recently reading Jerram Barrs' excellent book "Learning Evangelism from Jesus." Here's what he says about something almost exactly parallel to what happened in this case:

"Will I welcome an unmarried, cohabiting couple into my home? Of course I will - for the Lord welcomes them into this world, the world he made and the world he owns. He is not compromised by the presence in his world of those who disobey his voice; and neither am I compromised by the presence in my home of those who do not know the Lord, and who ignore his righteous directions for human life." (p31-32)

It was because this was the approach that Jesus took that he was known as a "friend of sinners"; not a term considered a compliment in the conservative religious society of his day!

Refusing the let an unmarried couple stay together in your home, or hotel, might make you feel you are doing right. It might make other people look at you and applaud your high moral standards. But there doesn't seem to be any reason to suppose that it will bring people to encounter Jesus Christ "the friend of sinners."

I don't want to pick on the Bulls. I think they should have had the right to refuse Hall and Preddy. Since the hotel website explain quite clearly that only married coupels can share rooms (http://www.chymorvah.co.uk/bookingform.html) it must be at least possible that somebody has delberately engineered this situation to get a legal ruling against Christians. I think the Bulls were courageous to stand up to a stupid law. I also acknowledge that my view is a minority one - the Bull's view on room sharing by non-Christians in your home is the one held by the majority of evangelical Christians.

In the end, though, I think that, except in the case of someone posing a real threat to another person in your home, the calling of God to those who follow Jesus is to welcome people without discrimination. Otherwise we give the impression that what really matters is not whether you trust Jesus Christ but whether you conform in some way or another (in this case heterosexual marriage) to a moral standard.

Having said all that I think the Bull's got the wrong result and that the Equality Act is a bad law.

The problem with the Equality Act is that it tries to change people's behaviour in matters that are really not the business of government to regulate. The relationship between Hall and Preddy and the hotel was a contract. The Bulls are running a private business with the aim of making a living. If they wish to turn away people on certain grounds it seems to me that there is no good reason for the law to prevent them from doing so. Lots of hotels, for example, don't let children stay. That is clearly discriminatory on grounds of age. But it's a commercial decision thoe hotels are free to take and one that I think they should be free, in law, to make.

Personally (and that is a vital word here) it seems to me that a hotel ought to be able to turn away unmarried couples, gay couples, children, stag parties or people called Jones if the owners wish to. Obviously if they don't make this clear on booking and then refuse to accommodate you you would be quite within your rights to sue them for breach of contract - as Hall and Preddy would have been able to do in this case if this had not been made clear to them and the hotel had accepted and their booking and later refused them a room.

But there is all the difference in the world between being sued for breach of contract (an entirely civil matter) and the kind of thing we have here where the state is, effectively, taking one side against the other - Hall and Preddy's legal fees were funded by the Government through the Equality and Human Rights Commission.

Should someone be able to open a hostel that is only for women? Of course. Should someone be able to have a sports club that is only for men? I think so. Should a shop be legally permitted to refuse to serve white people? Yes I think it should. I would only approve, morally, of the first of these three. I would not join a sports club that was only for men. And I would encourage my non-white friends to boycott a shop that didn't serve white people. But I don't think such discrimination should be illegal. Someone might object that if Tesco or Asda refused to serve men that would be so massively discriminatory that it ought to be illegal. For myself I reckon that the right way to deal with that situation is not through the law - because the shareholders and customers of those shops would soon force them to change their minds as profits dived and the reputation of those companies was dragged through the mud.

The judge in the Hall and Preddy case said that as soon as the home became a hotel the standards they had to apply were not ther personal standards of morality but "community standards." That is exactly the trouble with this kind of legislation - who gets to decide what "the community" thinks? Our MPs are, of course, democratically elected. But just because we voted for them shouldn't mean they get to decide everything about how we treat other people. I suspect that many people in the UK, of all sorts of religious and non-religious persuasions, thinks that hotel owners should be allowed to decide who they give a room to. Even if most people don't think that, you have to ask if this is really such a massively important issue for the existence of our nation that it requires the state to intervene?

Clearly there are some areas that are so important to national life that discrimination on grounds of, say, gender or race should be strictly forbidden. For myself I think that these areas include employment, all public sector appointments and access to key services.

But if someone wants to open a cafe down my street that won't serve Christians I think they should be allowed to refuse me. I would think they were wicked. I would think they were very sad people. I would use whatever influence I have to try and stop other people going there so the cafe goes bankrupt. But I don't think I should be able to sue them.

Damn blasphemy laws?

2011-01-10T09:14:00.000-08:00

This week Nick Cohen write an interesting piece in The Observer about blasphemy laws. You can read it here. The issue that prompted his comments was the murder of the Pakistani politician Salmaan Taseer by one of his own security detail. The man apparantly did this because Taseer has disrespected the prophet Mohammed by supporting the case of a Christian farm-worker accused of blasphemy.

Cohen thinks that all blasphemy laws ought to be repealed everywhere. His reason for this is that blasphemy "is the most pernicious of attacks on free speech because defendants can never know the nature of their offence. Who is meant to be their victim? Are they meant to have injured the feelings of believers, whose faith is so weak mockery and doubt can threaten it? Perhaps they stand accused of assaulting whatever god or gods the faithful follow. In which case, are the deities in question so feeble and thin-skinned they demand that criticism be punished with human sacrifices?"

I have to say that, as a Christian pastor, I agree with Nick!

That's not to say I think it's just fine for anybody to say whatever they want. Of course no adherent of any religion or believer of any philosophy enjoys hearing the things they believe sent up or mocked. And it is quite clear (we have seen it here in the UK over the last 10 years) that in the absence of blasphemy laws cynical media types will use their freedom to gratuitously slander the name and deeds of Jesus Christ and the truths of the Bible in order to boost their ratings or line their pockets (remember Jerry Springer the Opera anyone?).

But there are several reasons why it seems to me that blasphemy laws are a bad idea:

The first is that whether a statement is "blasphemous" is often about tone rather than content. Academics with printing presses have been making "balsphemous" statements about all religions for centuries - but since these statement are usually couched in the obscure speech of the ivory tower nobody notices. Then sompbody comes along and says the same thing on the street with some four letter words thrown in and a megaphone and suddenly people want to shout blasphemy! As a Christian I think that tone is vital - but I know from the gospel that it is the content of what people believe and say that is of ultiumate and eternal importance.

The second reason blasphemy laws are a bad idea is that unless you simply ban certain words or phrases, whether a statement is blasphemous or not is inevitably going to depend massively on the intention of the person making it. Are they simply asking a question? Repeating an allegation made by someone else? Stirring up trouble deliberately? It's often not easy to tell; and it's certainly easy to report something in a way that makes it look like one thing rather than another. Crimes which are mostly about intention are always prone to being manipulated by people with an interest in the outcome. Christians should always be wary of any kind of law which gives that kind of power to sinful policemen, prosecutors, judges and juries!

The third, and most important, reason I'm against blasphemy laws it that I think blasphemy is a an area for virtue not law.

Through most of the last 2,000 years Christian people have recognised hat there are three areas of 'regulation': law, virtue and freedom. There are some things we should be made to do (or not to do) by law under threat of punishment by the state. There are some things we ought to be free do do without any sort of impediment at all. And, in the middle, there are many things (perhaps most things) that we ought to be encouraged to do (or not) by social and moral pressures, by the discipline of our families and churches and the advice of our friends. To take a contemporary example: I think that passing laws that say overweight people can't get NHS treatment for heart disease or somkers can't get treatment for lung cancer (two things often suggested in the media) would be a terribly backward step for our country. But I also think parents, friends, doctors, churches, social groups and networks should encourage people to think that they ought to take responsibility for their own health and that taking illegal drugs, overeating and alcohol abuse should be things that society as a whole indicates that we disapprove. People should still be free to be unhealthy but those choices should put them out of sync with the values of others around them. It's not a bad thing if it feels slightly uncomfortable to be unhealthy.

Sadly our culture has lost much of its conviction about the importance of "virtue". In our heads the only categories are freedom and law - I can do whatever I like as long as it's not illegal and stuff anyone who tries to tell me it's not a good idea. That's extremely destructive for society in loads of ways.

Back to blasphemy! In a society without much concept of virtue it's easy for Christians to want laws to protect our rights and stop people viciously slandering beliefs that are precious to us. But I think that's just conceding the bigger argument. It is much better to say that we believe people shouldn't gratuitously slander Christianity and Christian beliefs, to model a life of not being rude about other people's beliefs but instead treating all people with gentleness and respect, and to accept that if people choose the path of slander and cheap laughs that the Lord who is both terrifying judge and gracious saviour is quite capable of dealing with that.

What books should I read on church planting?

2010-12-23T09:38:00.000-08:00

This is a question I seem to get asked more and more often. There's a variant question people ask too: "What books did you read before you planted Christ Church?" Answer: None. We're not proud of that. We just didn't really think of it. So although I'd definitely recommend reading at least a few good books on the subject before you start leading or being in a church plant I guess our experience shows it isn't essential!

In the 8 years since we started seriously planning CCL there's been a massive flood of literature on church planting from reformed evangelicals, most of it quite good, but mostly repeating the same basic (though important) lessons.

The good thing about that is that you don't need to read all of the books (ir you'd never do a church plant). The bad thing is that it's not easy to know which ones to read. So here's my list. I've kept it short - mostly because I don't think most of the other books add very much to these 5.

1 Multiplying Churches (Steve Timmis, Ed.)
This is the one book we did read! Basically it's lots of case studies. They won't teach you in any systematic way what to do but, whatver your church plant situation, you're bound to find some with parallels and the stories will certainly inspire you.

2 Church Planting is for Wimps (Mike McKinley)
Recently published by Mike McKinley, whose experience is of a church revitalisation rather than a "from scratch" church plant this book is really helpful in covering the core things that a church must be that can't be forgotten just because you're in a new or revitalised church. Lots of the themes are what you'd expect from someone with a background at Capitol Hill Baptist Church, but they are none the less important for that!

3 Confessions of a Reformission Rev (Mark Driscoll)
It seems quite trendy to diss Mark Driscoll right now. I think it's mostly tall poppy syndrome. This is a hilarious book that will engage anyone with the raw emitions of trying to start a new church. Your problems might not be exactly the same as Driscoll's (where to put thousands of new converts, that kind of thing) but most church planters will feel alternatly elated and dispairing and have to trust God in the middle of both. Driscoll is very helpful at modelling doing just that.

4 Planting Missional Churches (Ed Stetzer)
Although the cultureal agenda is definitely North American, Stetzer does a good job of reminding us that there's no point planting a church if it's continued focus ins't reaching the lost.

5 Church Planting Manual (Tim Keller et al)
Produced by Redeemer church this isn't freely available but it's for people who have connected in some way with ne of Redeemer's church plasnting programme (I'm not sure of the precise criteria to get it so don't hold me to anything). I reckon there are few more well thought out, gospel focussed, church planting outfits around so why wouldn't you want to get involved with them?

6 Acts 29
You will also find a whole lifetime of resources on the web site of the excellent Acts 29 network (www.acts29network.org).

Finally loads and loads of people think Organis Church by Neil Cole, which comes from a somewhat more emerging church place than the other books mentioned here is thought provoking and useful. I can't comment because I've not read it but it's on my shelf for my next vacation.

Let it snow...

2010-12-18T23:45:00.000-08:00

The great thing about snow in the UK is that once you’ve had your fill of making snowmen, throwing snowballs and creating snow angels there is the endless entertainment of people talking about how terribly our transport system copes and how they do it so much better everywhere else (usually Sacndinavia).

Mind you my sister, who lives in Southern Sweden, says that there when it snows heavily and disrupts roads, railways and airports, people spend quite a lot of time talking about how terrible it is and how much better they do it elsewhere (by which they mean Northern Sweden).

But this is meant to be a culture slot, I hear you say! There doesn’t seem to be a lot of culture going on here! And what possible lessons can a group of Christians learn from our national response to snow?

Well of course culture isn’t just galleries, the opera, the theatre and the ballet – what Steve Punt and Hugh Dennis call “the poncey stuff”. Culture is all the things around us that shape our attitudes, ideas and beliefs. So given that talking about our almost infinitely variable (and I think pretty interesting) the weather is a staple of British conversation you’d have to say it’s an important part of our culture.

I also think there’s a valuable lesson for Christians to learn from our society’s response to the current cold weather.

The Secretary of State for Transport, a chap called Philip Hammond, was doing the rounds of TV and radio interviews yesterday, answering lots of viewers and listeners text and e-mails about the number of snowploughs, gritting lorries and other “anti-snow” equipment. What are we going to do, he was asked, about the fact that every time there is heavy snow the entire country seems to struggle with travel?

His answer, I thought, was basically really sensible. If, as a country, we spend lots more money on lorries, staff, salt, de-icing liquid and other stuff we can clear the roads much better. But that means there will be other things we can’t afford to pay for. The question is; would better preparation for snow be worth the money?

So the government have asked their Chief Scientist (what a cool title that is!) to do a report on how likely this kind of snow is going to be over the next few decades and how much cost there is to the economy when it happens – how serious it is.

Is spending a few hundred million on preparing for winder really worth the money given how likely heavy snow is and how serious the consequences are if we don’t do it?

The more I’ve thought about this in the last couple of days the more I think it’s actually quite a good way of thinking about all sorts of things.

In fact it’s the way that Jesus encourages us to think, especially about the fact that he is coming back.

How certain is it that Jesus is going to come? Absolutely, 100% certain. How significant will the impact of Jesus’ return be? It will be massively and eternally significant for the whole universe and everybody in it.

So what should we do? Well Jesus says that we should put our time and energy into living in the light of his certain, universe changing return. Jesus says that all of our lives; the way we think about our family, our job, our time, our money, about church and children, about Bible study and prayer, about hobbies and houses should be lived with one eye on the fact that he is coming back.

When Jesus comes in glory, and he will, let’s not be people who look around and talk about how much better prepared other people are. Instead let’s be like the wise servant Jesus once talked about who have invested everything we have; our friendships, our cash and even our lives, preparing for his return.

Biblical Evangelism...

2010-12-15T08:11:00.000-08:00

The other weekend I had the priviliege of being asked to speak at one of UCCF's Biblical Evangelism Conferences.

These conferences are all about getting students to see how sharing the message of the Bible, and specifically the message of particular passages in the Bible, is a brilliant way to share the gospel about Jesus. Why so? Because we believe the Bible's 'spiritual words' have great power and because using the Bible in our evangelism helps us stay on track theologically and forces us to introduce people to the historical person of Jesus Christ, because the Scriptures testify about him.

There are good reasons for using gospel outlines such as John Chapman's "God, Man, God" or Phil Jensen's "Two Ways to Live." But having the confidence to explain the Scriptures God has given us to non-believers is also vital.

After the conference one of the students let us know that she had had an opportunity to talk to a complete stranger about the fact that her mum was dying of cancer and how was this fair from Luke 13:1-5; one of the passages we had been looking at over the weekend.

Thank God for the commitment of UCCF staff to invest in the students they work with. Join me in praying for more and more young people to be enthusiastic for sharing the gospel from the Scriptures God has given us in a way that genuinely answers the questions people have.

How do we decide what something is worth?

2010-12-09T12:51:00.000-08:00

I've just received an e-mail from a students' union, which includes the following:
"I would like you to ask yourself one question. Would you pay £27 000 for the course you are studying now? If you already pay more than £9 000 a year for your course do you feel you are getting value for money? If the answer is no and/or you think the trebling of fees is unfair, which combined with 40% cuts means there is no extra money to improve the student experience, please join us this week."

I guess readers of this blog will all have their own views on the coalition government's approach to fees for undergraduate education (my own being that, as much as I think it's sad that students will have to pay more, I think it's better to cut the money there rather than, say, from schools or benefits, which will hit those who never get the opportunity of a university education). But what I think is really interesting is the approach to value that the NUS, and other student leaders, are taking.

The truth is that courses students are studying for at the moment ALREADY cost £27,000; it's just that at the moment someone else is paying! If the course isn't worth that much then it's not worth that much now. The trouble is, of course, that we are all (not just students) much less good at appreciating the value of something if someone else is paying. Which might be a good argument for increasing student fees; where universities are offering a rubbish product they will suffer falling numbers and have to raise their standards.

More generally it's a problem for governments in many areas of life; in the NHS for example it's hard to value something when it doesn't directly cost us.

Even more seriously, this is also a spiritual problem. As a Christian with a wonderful, God-given, conviction that Christ has suffered for my sin I find it hard to value living a godly life; because someone else has paid for my rebellion. It's good for me to be reminded that things cost the same, whoever pays, and that the grace Christ has shown me in paying an infinite debt is worthy of endless praise and honour.

Feeling (slightly) sorry for… Pete Broadbent (and much sorrier for the Church of England)

2010-12-03T09:43:00.001-08:00

In case you’ve missed this story Pete Broadbent is an Anglican Bishop who has been asked by his boss (yes Bishops have bosses too – in this case the Bishop of London) to ‘step back from public life’ because of comments he made on his Facebook page about Prince William and Kate Middleton.

A short summary of what he said was that, as a republican, he has no interest in the wedding, finds the publicity surrounding it ‘sycophantic’, thinks that the marriage probably won’t last more than seven years and that the press will set the couple up to fail.

I only feel a bit sorry for “Bishop Pete” (as he apparently likes to be known) because:
He was really quite rude about various members of the Royal family in a way that is inappropriate for a bishop.
As an Anglican bishop he has sworn specifically allegiance to the Queen and her successors, so he has a responsibility to be even more circumspect in his comments on the Royal family than, for example, a free church minister would be (though I think it ought to be possible to be an Anglican and republican!).
Anybody who is naive enough to think that his Facebook posts aren’t public shouldn’t have a responsible job in the public gaze.

That said I think there are two really tragic things about the Bishop’s removal that thoughtful Christians should note.

The first is that most of Broadbent’s negativity was directed, not at the Royal family, but at the press; who then conspicuously failed to report those aspects! The main thing he said was that the various media (and especially the press) will give endless ‘happy’ coverage to the wedding and then exploit any possible negative angle to try and drive the couple apart at a later date if that will sell more papers.

I think it is sad that the response of the Bishop of London directly plays into the hands of the press by getting rid of someone whose main problem was not that what he had said was truly terrible but that he had become an embarrassment to the Discese of London.

More important than that though is what this episode says about what you have to do to get sacked (or at least put on gardening leave) as a Bishop. It’s fine, apparently, to call the resurrection a “conjuring trick with bones” (David Jenkins), to say that you are going to leave in a few years and join the Roman Catholic church or, as Pete Broadbent himself has done in recent years, to endorse a book that departs radically from the teaching of the articles of the church of England and the prayer book on the central doctrine of the cross (the book concerned being Steve Chalk’s “The Lost Message of Jesus”). You can be in charge of a diocese that gets itself into a financial crisis, that has rapidly dwindling congregations, that sends people into ministry who do not believe the things they are meant to teach or even the creed they recite in their services. You can, like the current Archbishop of Canterbury, take a view on ethical issues that threatens to split apart the entire Anglican church worldwide for the sake of appeasing a small number of rich, liberal American Episcopalians. But you can’t make catty remarks about Prince Charles’ ears.

Without wishing to suggest that Pete Broadbent’s comments were anything other than offensive, surely they are not the worst thing any bishop has done in the last few years? So why is he the only bishop who has been asked to step back from public life?

The Church of England, it seems, now decides which are the most important issues according to the headlines in the Mail and the Express. We are all in danger of doing exactly the same; evaluating what issues matter on the basis of what the world shouts about not what the Bible teaches about. Let us all beware!

Helpful books on suffering and evil

2010-12-01T08:10:00.000-08:00

Following our session at Christ Church's "Living Room" last Sunday night on answering people's questions about the problems of suffering and veil here's a few books I've found helpful over the years:

Don Carson, How Long O Lord, IVP - like all Carson's books this is thoroughly biblical and incredibly well thought out, but it's not too technical and his pastoral experience shines through. The last two chapters in particular are outstanding.

Nicholas Walterstorff, Lament for a Son, Eerdmans - a very different book from Carson's this is a personal reflection of the experience of a believer on the loss of his adult son in a climbing accident. Beautifully written and at times quite emotionally raw it is profoundly sad and yet full of hope. A really good book for people some time after a bereavement.

C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain, Harper Collins - people sometimes suggest that this book loses some of its validity because Lewis himself struggled so much to come to terms with the subsequent death of his wife, Joy. Actually I think that, in the end, it was the truths Lewis had learned before he was in the pit that, eventually, sustained him through grief as a believer.

John Dickson, If I were God I'd end all the pain, Matthias Media - shorter than the other books listed here Dickson gets to the heart of the issues. A bit like "Carson for the rest of us."

There are many other good books in this area but these represent a good start!

Can we be honest without grumbling?

2010-12-01T04:06:00.000-08:00

This Sunday I preached on Exodus 16 and 17, a passage which exposes the sinfulness of the people of Israel as they failed to trust the God who had just spectacularly rescued them from slavery and death to provide them with what they needed in the desert.

At Christ Church we tend to followup our Sunday morning series with a study of the same passage in our LifeGroups (note: if you don't do this in your church I really recommend that you try it - can't think why it took us over 6 years to do it consistently!). One of our LifeGroup leaders asked me this, very insightful question, on Sunday:

"We want people to be honest with what they are finding hard in their lives and share struggles. How can that be reconciled with not complaining and encouraging people to see the positives. Could it lead people to be "fake" or dismiss difficulties?"

Here's an attempt at a brief answer...

There are loads of instances in the Bible of people complaining about life without it becoming the kind of sinful grumbling we see in Exodus. Psalm 74 and the whole book of Job srping to mind as examples! So what's the difference between the two things?

I think the key difference is probably to do with what it is the people complain about. In the Exodus story the people are not simply asking God to relieve them of the suffering of being low on food and water. The people of Israel also make judgments about Moses' (and by implication God's) motivation and character (eg Ex 17:5 - "to MAKE us and our children and our livestock die of thirst"). In Job there is much anguish about the things God has done, and lots of questionning by Job about why this might happen. But he does not accuse God of being evil, of of having a wicked motivation (though he does seem to come pretty close!).

I wonder if this can help us in our own circumstances? It seems to mequite legitimate in times of trouble and distress to cry out to God for rescue from those situations, to express lack of comprehension as to why he has permitted or brought about these things and to wish that things were different (as Job at times wishes he had never been born). A boundary is crossed, however, when we start to suggest that God's motivation for what happens to us is anything other than our good and his glorification. We may not see how it can be that these dark days are adding to either of those things but he requires us to take it on trust that it is so. We, of course, are privilieged in a way that the Israelites were not in that we have seen in the cross of Christ that God too experiences pain and anguish for his glory and our good.

In practice I think this means Christians being honest with each other about the terrible reality of physical pain, heartache and perplexity; and also constantly encouraging one another not to deny that God remains both good and powerful.

As a note of caution I should add that there are plenty of times when saying to someone who is really going through the mill that "all things work together for good" or something similar is likely to result in you getting a smack in the face! Often all that is required is being present with someone in suffering and not saying anything. It is noticable that this is about the only useful thing Job's comforters did (they were totally useless as soon as they actually said anything) and that the Proverbs reminds us that even a fool is considered wise if he holds his tongue - in other words if we don't speak we won't say anything stupid!