pursuing faithfulness to the Word of God and fullness of the Spirit of God
Archive for February, 2006
The Dullest Party Ever?
Feb 26th
I’m going to be 30 this week, and so I thought I really ought to make the effort to do something to celebrate my birthday this time. So I decided to have a “Puritan Party”:
If you are reading this and I haven’t given you an invitation in person, then you are of course still welcome to come (unless you are a spammer). If you have any suggestions of what would be suitable games and activities at a Puritan party, please add them in the comments.
Book Review – The Message of Jeremiah (Derek Kidner)
Feb 25th
The introduction sets the historical scene for us, and throughout the book, Kidner does a good job of keeping us up to date with where we are in the overall timeline. This is especially important for the book of Jeremiah, as it does not follow a straightforward chronological sequence. He then gives an overview of Jeremiah’s message. Occasionally he makes some very brief comments on how the prophetic words of warning apply to our own generation, but there is perhaps less of this than might be expected in an expository commentary series like BST.
If found helpful his setting of chapter 11 into its context of Josiah’s reading of the law. Similarly chapter 22 with its messages to different kings benefits from additional historical information. Kidner understands the passages speaking judgement on the nations as having an end times as well as historical fulfilment, although does not speculate on how this may occur. In chapter 51 he finds parallels with the sections in Revelation on the judgement of Babylon.
There are of course a number of places in Jeremiah, where the new covenant is in view. For example, chapter 30 looks forward to this time and even ahead to the new Jerusalem. I did feel however that some of the key passages (such as Jer 31:31-34) could have been dealt with in a bit more depth. As in his excellent commentary on Hosea, Kidner provides some useful appendices to help us fit the prophecies into the historical scene a bit better.
Overall, this volume of the BST will serve well as a devotional guide for those reading through the book of Jeremiah a chapter a day, especially if you struggle to make sense of the flow of the book. It might also provide some useful pointers to those preparing Bible studies, but its brevity means that other commentaries as well are likely to be needed.
Piper on Church Planting
Feb 19th
John Piper’s short message on church planting is worth reading. He gives four reasons why we should be involved in church planting. Justin Taylor summarises them as follows:
1. We do not have too many churches today. We have too few.
2. Experience has shown, and the Bible would support, that new churches are one of the most effective means of evangelism.
3. New churches awaken and engage much of the under-used leadership potential of the saints in the older, larger churches.
4. Breaking free from the risk-free comfort of long-standing patterns of church life is a good thing. It’s good for your faith to be tested. It is good to take risks.
John Piper is not just looking for greater numbers of churches. The type of church is vitally important. They must be “God-centered, Christ-exalting, Bible-saturated, missions-mobilizing, justice-pursuing churches”. (Perhaps as a charismatic I would want to sneak in “Spirit-filled” as well!)
It is great to see people like Piper lend their support to church planting initiatives. Another interesting article is this one by Tim Keller. Despite increasing numbers of leaders lending their support to the idea of church planting, there still seems to be in many people’s minds the concept that it is only to be done in exceptional circumstances, if absolutely no other way can be found to accomodate growth.
But existing churches should not feel threatened by the idea of church planting, even if it is to be resourced by key members of their own congregations. There are more than enough unsaved people to go round, as Dan points out with this thought-provoking quote from Bryn Jones: “It is tragic to hear Christians self-congratulatingly referring to their church as numbering over 200 or 300 people without mentioning the fact that this is still one thousandth of the population of their city!”.
May God stir many of his people up to be involved in church planting initiatives throughout the world. And may our existing churches fight to ensure that they remain God-centered, Christ-exalting, Spirit-filled, Bible-saturated, missions-mobilizing, and justice-pursuing.
Book Review – Healthy Christians make a Healthy Church (John Oak)
Feb 13th
This book is essentially a call for pastors to set up discipleship training programs in their churches. But before we consider the message of the book, there are some issues with its format. First, despite the slick graphic design on the front cover of this book, once you open the cover you notice that the type setting is far from professional with unevenly spaced letters. Secondly, despite managing to secure Rick Warren to write the preface, the book appears to be lacking a good editor. John Oak is Korean, and although is quite competent in English, there are a number of awkward sentences and odd turns of phrase. What’s more, at 350 pages, the book becomes quite repetitive after a while, and would probably have been better trimmed down to about 200 or less pages.
John Oak’s credentials are impressive. He has built a church of over 30,000 members in Korea, from just a handful of members. His passion is to see the laity equipped for service and growing to maturity though discipleship training. It is in his view the first and most important task of the pastor, and the key to a church growing, not just numerically, but in quality as well. He cautions that churches that focus only on witness will not be able to grow as fast or produce mature converts as their own laity are ineffective and immature. Similarly, churches that focus on Sunday worship can actually obstruct the creation of true worshippers. He argues that the passion in the New Testament is for creating disciples, and that the task of witness and calling of worship will flow naturally out of this. He sees Jesus as the ultimate example of someone who performed discipleship training.
So what does he mean by discipleship training? It is not Bible studies, or theological college. Nor is it simply small groups. Basically the pastor takes applications from up to 10 people who want to seriously commit themselves for a period of time (about a year). They meet on a weekly basis for prayer, studying the word and being accountable to one another. The regime is quite intense, and calls for great openness, willingness to be corrected and serious commitment to attendance. It is no wonder that he notes that some people drop out of the program and even find it oppressive, although they are in the minority. After completing discipleship training, they become lay leaders, and there are further similar programs for them to attend. No one in his church may serve if they are not willing to humble themselves to take this training, a fact which has kept many “business class” types away. The program is given high profile in the church, with special enrollment and graduation ceremonies as part of the Sunday meetings.
Despite the size of his church, John Oak sees the primary burden of this training as falling upon himself as the pastor. He spends a good deal of time setting out how a program of discipleship training should be introduced, starting with the leaders, and then openning it wider. The church as a whole should realise that this is vital to who they are. In the groups themselves, they use an “inductive” method of study, teaching people to learn for themselves and teach each other, rather than the trainer doing all the teaching. Through a discipleship training program, his church are at the place of having 10 percent as lay leaders. He says that though other churches may have a similar percentage of lay leaders, in most churches, those 10 percent have not all had much training.
He mentions almost in passing that those who are trained are able to step right into ministry opportunities waiting for them. They can do this, because they know how many people will be trained, and find the contexts in which they can serve. This is perhaps lesson worth learning for churches. I myself have been on a number of training programs lasting many months that culminated merely in a certificate of attendance, with no opportunity whatsoever to put the training into action.
If you have a bit of time to spare and are interested in how we can effectively bring more members of the church to maturity, this is a book worth a read. It is a little quirky in places, such as the candidates for training solemnly swearing not to get ill or die during their training! In many ways, churches that have embraced a “cell” model are already experiencing some of the benefits of his program. But reading it did make me ask whether there should be more avenues for a more intensive program of discipleship, where those who desire to become more spiritually mature devote themselves over a period of time to seeing real growth and progress. I dare say that if churches were to offer such a discipleship training program, they would find a good number of people wanting to do it.
12 Biblical Values (Part 3)
Feb 12th
OK, here is very briefly, my thoughts on John Hosier’s choice of 12 biblical values (see part 1 and part 2).
The 12 biblical values list is not meant to be exhaustive, and Dan pointed out that his book does indeed include quite a few more. John Hosier himself acknowledged from the outset that grace was not included in the list, not because it wasn’t an important biblical value, but rather that it permeated all the other values. Another notable missing newfrontiers emphasis was church planting, and as Ger pointed out in the comments, restoration was not there either. Despite including the controversial subjects of baptism in the Holy Spirit, and modern day apostleship, other potentially explosive issues such as women elders or preachers and eschatology were left out. Other pervasive Biblical themes such as holiness, mission, prayer, suffering and healing were not included either.
Despite these omissions, I am pleased to see churches in newfrontiers taking the time to communicate their biblical values in a structured way. We can too easily assume that sharing a common vision is enough. However, two people may have the same vision (e.g. to build a church of 1000 people), but if their values are different, what and how they build will be very different. As newfrontiers seeks God for more churches, and increased growth in existing churches, I pray that we will truly see these 12 biblical values (and more) at the foundation of all that is built, that the church would truly be “Christ’s Radiant Church” bringing glory to God alone.
12 Biblical Values (Part 2)
Feb 11th
Continuing from my previous post on 12 biblical values, here are the second six from John Hosier.
7. The ministries of apostles and prophets
The church has never had an issue with the ongoing ministries of evangelists, pastors and teachers, butapostles and prophets are a different matter. He cautioned against the use of the phrase “Ephesians 4 ministries” and especially labelling someone as an “Ephesians 4 teacher” (I have always felt that sounded like a description of someone who always preaches on the same chapter of the Bible).
The main thrust of the argument is that Eph 4:11 speaks of gifts that the ascended Christ gave. But the 12 were appointed before the ascension, so who does Paul have in mind? Just himself? John Hosier then argues for four categories of apostles:
1) The Apostle – Jesus, sent by the Father
2) The 12 apostles, chosen by Jesus to be with him. They saw the risen Christ and were uniquely placed to be witnesses to the resurrection. Matthias was chosen according to the same criteria – he had been with Christ and witnessed the resurrection.
3) Paul – a unique “transitional” apostle. He could say that he too had seen the risen Christ, but he was appointed by the “ascended Christ”. Placing Paul in a category by himself is I think a diplomatic move to appease those who think it intollerably arrogant to consider anyone as sharing his minsitry. I think his uniqueness came more from his place in church history as the first apostle to the Gentiles and his being used to write Scripture, rather than his role as apostle.
4) All other apostles, appointed by the ascended Christ, including Timothy and Barnabas. There have been many through church history, even if they have not been known as “apostles” – Hosier suggests Wesley, Carey and Booth as examples. The point being, newfrontiers does not consider the gift of apostleship to have died out and only come back recently with Terry Virgo. These apostles may lead churches, but will typically do so only for a short time – their gifting leads them to regions beyond (c.f. Paul in Ephesus).
8. The government of the local church is to be exercised by elders
The church is not to be a democracy, where everyone has a vote. He argues that people who want democracy really just want their own way – they will still complain if they are out-voted. Having said that, a wise eldership will not be a dictatorship – it will seek to keep in touch with the views of the whole church.
9. A comittment to pastoral care
Seeking to bring individual believers to maturity.
10. Training of leadership from within the local church
Leaders may sometimes be “imported”, but the normal pattern should be training them up locally. If the newfrontiers vision of 1000 churches in the UK is to be realised, a significant comittment to training is necessary.
11. Recognising we are only part of the body of Christ
“We recognise we are only part of the body of Christ and seek real fellowship with all true believers”. Here John Hosier sought to address criticism of an aloof or separatist attitude within newfrontiers. He pointed out that the speakers and newfrontiers conferences have always included a number from other groups. He also mentioned small steps at the local level towards a greater working unity with other churches.
12. Avoid inflexible church structures and traditions
Newfrontiers has reacted against some of the legalism that was developing in traditional evangelical churches. However, he warned that there is a danger of “reverse legalism”, where (for example) those who are teetotal or dress smartly for church are treated as second class citizens. There may also need to be greater flexibility in the future with regards to issues such as
meeting times.
I’ll add a few thoughts of my own in a third post soon, about what has been left out of this list.
12 Biblical Values (Part 1)
Feb 10th
Thanks to a recent post by Dan, I stumbled across some MP3s on the Bridge Community Church Bristol website. Their sermons page features two talks by John Hosier (the unofficial newfrontiers theologian), from Church of Christ the King (the unofficial newfrontiers HQ). They are entitled “12 biblical values held by newfrontiers”.
I was eager to listen to these, as I have not yet had the chance to read John Hosier’s latest book, “Christ’s Radiant Church”. I don’t think the 12 points exactly follows the book, as the book has about 20 chapters, but it was clear that there was a fair amount of overlap. It seems as though these were training seminars rather than Sunday morning sermons.
As I downloaded them, I thought to myself that he dare not miss out “Grace” as one of the points. But actually, he starts by saying that it wasn’t one of his points, because it was so fundamental and ran right through the others.
There are no real surprises here for those who know the newfrontiers group of churches, but I’ll list the points he made and perhaps make a few comments of my own. He offered one Bible reference for each point, though making it clear that more could be offered for each one. I’ve broken this post into two parts, as it was getting a bit long.
1. The place of the word of God
There is a strong commitment to preaching the word in gatherings, and teaching it in small group and discipleship settings. The Bible is God’s revealed truth and preachers especially must remember the importance of soaking themselves in the word of God.
2. Baptism in water is for all believers
He didn’t really use this point to talk about credo baptism versus paedo baptism, but spoke of the symbolism of death and resurrection. He also cautioned about overemphasising the evangelistic opportunity at the expense of realising it is a special occasion for the candidate themselves.
3. Baptism in the Spirit
Which “brings a definite sense of assurance and a real experience of the power of God in the life of a believer”. This is the subject of the longest chapter in his book, and he believes it needs to be defended theologically. He laments the fact tat charismatic theologians such as Grudem do not appear to have understood their position. I can agree that most arguments I have read seem to be arguing against something quite different from the position laid out so well by David Pawson in his book Jesus baptises in one Holy Spirit. He reiterated the basic position that “it may take place at conversion, but it is a distinct experience of the power of God”
4. Church membership involves taking an active serving role in the church
“We’re not trying to gather a crowd, we’re trying to build a church”. He underlined also that nobody should feel they don’t belong because everyone has something to contribute.
5. Participation of believers in meetings is encouraged and expected
There is of course a problem if you have a moderately large church, that not all can contribute in a single meeting, but all should have a desire to contribute. He also briefly mentioned that the interpretation of a tongue should be Godward, and noted that the charismatic contributions included a “teaching” as well as prophecy and tongues, and that these could be brought by men or women. This form of “teaching” is understood as a short spontaneous biblical exhortation rather than being in the form of a fully prepared sermon, and is therefore not seen as contradictory to restricting the preaching ministry to men only.
6. All the spiritual gifts listed in the New Testament are available today
… and these gifts should be eagerly expected and eagerly sought. Interestingly he made the same excellent point here that Don Carson raises in Showing the Spirit – the command to eagerly desire that you prophesy is in the plural, indicating that churches should seek to manifest all the gifts rather than individuals trying to collect the full set. The “what’s my gift?” mentality can be unhelpful as it is individualistic in outlook.
Part 2 to follow soon…
Book Review – Acts (I Howard Marshall)
Feb 18th
Posted by Mark Heath in Book Reviews
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One of Marshall’s chief interests is to defend the historicity of the book of Acts against what he views as unjustified skepticism, particularly from Haenchen. Hardly an episode goes by where he doesn’t note the criticisms that have been levelled at it, and attempts to provide a response. He resists the temptation to provide overly neat solutions to all problems though, preferring often to simply demonstrate that the events as described are not as unlikely as some have found them.
Despite his concern with historicity, the commentary does not get bogged down in incidental historical and geographical details as some more technical commentaries on Acts can tend to do. Marshall is concerned also to comment on theological matters, but he sticks strictly to what is directly discussed, rather than considering some of the extrapolated doctrines and practises that Christians have found in the book.
Each section is given a brief overview where Marshall retells the story of what happens in his own words, and indicates any particular issues that will be dealt with in the commentary. Then it is examined verse by verse (or couple of verses) with each of these subsections occupying a paragraph or two. His writing style is good, and the issues he chooses to raise are generally ones that are of interest to evangelical readers, so he maintains the reader’s interest throughout.
One theological issue that will be of interest to many readers early on in the book is how he handles the issue of baptism in the Spirit. He unflinchingly sees the baptism as always taking place at conversion, and thus sees extraordinary circumstances where it happens otherwise (e.g. Samaritans in Acts 8 to show solidarity; Ephesians in Acts 15 are not Christians in the first place). He does not interact at all with the view that says these are distinct but normally coincident experiences.
He argues that Acts 11 (rather than 15) and Galatians 2 describe the same incident. As the focus of Acts shifts more to Paul, Marshall notes how Luke demonstrates parallels between the lives of Jesus and Paul, although he is quick to dismiss any claims that Luke fabricated incidents and details to create this similarity. The many speeches in Acts are not to be understood as quotes verbatim, but rather Luke’s faithful retelling of the essence of what was or would have been said in the situation. At the end of the book, Marshall lists all the options for why we are not told what happens next, but prefers not to make a judgement on which is to be preferred.
Despite being written back in 1980, this commentary is still one of the most frequently recommended commentaries on Acts, and deservedly so. Its straightforward approach will help anyone preparing Bible studies or sermons to get clear in their minds what was happening, as well as seeing Luke’s purposes behind the way the story is told. The purpose of the Tyndale series is not to focus on application, and Marshall does not do so. At 430 pages with very few footnotes, it is just about a manageable length to read cover to cover, but any longer would push it into the realm of a reference book. Those who are not interested in hearing Acts defended historically might save themselves some time by reading a commentary with a more devotional outlook, but this remains a valuable tool to all students of the Word who want to understand it better so that they may apply it better.