We want again Luthers, Calvins, Bunyans, Whitfields, men fit to mark eras, whose names breathe terror in our foemen's ears. We have a dire need of such. Whence will they come to us?
Well, sunshine, could the finger be pointing at you?
Greatly gifted individuals have been and are a great gift to the Church. But what the cause of the Gospel needs in post-Christian Britain is not so much the stadium rockstars of the pulpit but the equivalent of your small-time pub act who is prepared to endure the rotten tomatoes for Christ in an ordinary parish over a long ministry - preachers who will keep plugging away at biblical teaching in the obscurity of ordinary communities.
That of course is true in any era of the Church but the cultural pressure now on our future preachers is the strong pull of postmodern primadonna-ism and the celebrity cult away from the unglamour of the regular parish.
Your curate has detected amongst some graduate ministry apprentices a tendency to think that parochial Church of England ministry is not quite 'cool' enough for an aspiring 21st century Whitfield. It's much cooler to hang out with a conference brochure dude who deploys the right demotic Top Gear turn of phrase to a congregation of university students and young urban professionals.
Spurgeon's summons, impacting on a postmodern university graduate mindset, may not be helping the cause of Christ's Kingdom in the Britain that has emerged since the 1960s.
Yes, I too am supportive of the aims of 9:38, Reform, etc but agree with your reservations. What we need is not more big name preachers doing headline work in large churches (the C of E's equivalent of megachurches) but a whole army of people who will never become Christian celebrities but nevertheless faithfully preach the word up and down the country and make a real impact.
ReplyDeleteSadly organisations like 9:38 and Reform -- like many modern day evangelical movements -- tend to be all too insular. They attract a certain type of person, teach them a certain "model" of ministry and then once they have finished theological training recruit them back to work as staff in churches that employ that model of ministry. Too many people who go to churches like St Helen's Bishopsgate or St Ebbe's (to name a couple) and seek ordination end up ministering their entire lives in churches just like that. WHY? Where is the vision to preach the gospel to all sorts and conditions of men?
We need to encourage people to leave these churches (and this style of church) and minister in completely different contexts. Get out of the Reform and 9:38 "ghetto" and get about preaching the word in different contexts. The majority of C of E parishes are not like (say) St Helen's, Bishopsgate or St Ebbe's, Oxford. And yet these parishes are crying out for faithful gospel witness as well. Where are the young men with gospel convictions who are willing to step out of their comfort zone, robe up (What? Robes? I thought I only ever had to wear them at my ordination!), and preach the word in parishes nothing like the (Anglican) megachurches they came from? Sadly this vision is all too lacking.