Rolling Stones guitarist Mr Keith Richards once famously observed of blogs: ‘Why should I be interested in what some (so-and-so) on the other side of the world is thinking?’ So in that spirit Cranmer’s Curate offers his pen'arth from the parish pump on why the Bishop of Rochester, Dr Michael Nazir Ali, is wrong to resign:
· The point of bishops is to serve the local church. Bishops have considerable influence in appointments and a good bishop can make sure that Bible-teaching, Gospel-preaching agents of spiritual change are appointed to positions in local churches. The longer an Evangelical bishop stays at the crease, the more runs (good appointments) he can make.
· His precise role as a helper of persecuted Christians in Muslim countries is a little unclear. There are organisations such as the outstanding Barnabas Fund that are already doing that. It looks as if Dr Nazir Ali envisages some kind of itinerant ministry for himself. But cc asks how effective itinerant ministry is in any context? He can more effectively make raids on behalf of persecuted Christians in this country and abroad from his stronghold in Rochester.
· A prophetic episcopal voice is needed in the current House of Bishops and in the General Synod. It is unbecoming in a prophet to cut and run. Even if like Jeremiah he is shoved into a well, he should not desert his post. Evangelicals have not yet been thrown out of the Church of England, so he can’t say he is accompanying the godly remnant into exile (even if that Old Testament paradigm were applicable in this case, which it is not).
This Anglican Evangelical parish plodder (cc) plans by God’s grace to keep preaching the Gospel in and through the Church of England until either the Umpire's finger goes up and he is called to higher service or he gets the neo-liberal jack-boot on his back-side shoving him out the door. One day, God willing, the Church of England will be Reformed Evangelical again and will proclaim to the nation the true Lord Jesus Christ of the Bible to God's glory and the good of His elect people.
For what it's worth, cc says now is not the time to quit.
Tuesday, 31 March 2009
Monday, 30 March 2009
HOW TO COUNTER THE STONEWALL TRUMP CARD
Homosexual activists determined to silence any objection to homosexual practice think they’ve got a trump card with the racism argument.
The front of the card carries the logo of the highly politically influential gay rights group Stonewall. Here is the script on the back:
Homosexual orientation is something some people on planet earth are born with, just as some people are born with black skin or brown skin or white skin. Because you shouldn’t discriminate against people or indeed criticise them on the grounds of their skin colour, the same applies to gays.
So if you’ve got a moral objection to homosexuality, get over it. In fact, more than that - shut up or we’ll prosecute you for hate speech.
Cranmer’s Curate makes no pretension to being a moral philosopher but he offers a practical briefing for Christians or indeed anyone who holds to traditional morality faced in debate with the Stonewall trump card. This is for ordinary 'punters' (like cc) in the school playground or the pub or the office coffee break or even for a local radio interview:
• How watertight is the parallel between skin colour and human sexuality? Some gay rights activists like Peter Tatchell find the idea of a gay gene insulting and say gayness is a life-style choice. In any case, whatever the nature versus nurture argument here, skin colour is fixed from birth (unless you are Michael Jackson) but universal human experience is that sexual feelings develop during childhood and adolescence. How can a fixed human characteristic be compared with one that is subject to change?
• Society does not sanction racism towards children but it does set limits on their sexual behaviour. There is an age of consent – 16. People experience sexual desires before that age but society does not sanction under-age sex. To be consistent, Stonewall would have to argue for the removal of a legal age of consent.
• What about bestiality? It may not be a pleasant argument, but surely someone could claim that their urge to have sex with animals is something they are born with and could produce a scientific study to back their case. Aren’t they being discriminated against under current UK law?
• People of various races have a moral objection to homosexual practice and believe one man-one woman, life-long marriage is the only right context for sex. How can a morality that is truly multi-racial be racist?
• The dire consequences of the assault on the God-created institution of marriage are plain to see in society around us. We've stopped listening to Christ's teaching on marriage and look where it has got us. And now the politically-correct brigade wants to stop ordinary people speaking up for traditional morality and prosecute Christian hoteliers (amongst others) for putting their beliefs into practice on their own property.
The front of the card carries the logo of the highly politically influential gay rights group Stonewall. Here is the script on the back:
Homosexual orientation is something some people on planet earth are born with, just as some people are born with black skin or brown skin or white skin. Because you shouldn’t discriminate against people or indeed criticise them on the grounds of their skin colour, the same applies to gays.
So if you’ve got a moral objection to homosexuality, get over it. In fact, more than that - shut up or we’ll prosecute you for hate speech.
Cranmer’s Curate makes no pretension to being a moral philosopher but he offers a practical briefing for Christians or indeed anyone who holds to traditional morality faced in debate with the Stonewall trump card. This is for ordinary 'punters' (like cc) in the school playground or the pub or the office coffee break or even for a local radio interview:
• How watertight is the parallel between skin colour and human sexuality? Some gay rights activists like Peter Tatchell find the idea of a gay gene insulting and say gayness is a life-style choice. In any case, whatever the nature versus nurture argument here, skin colour is fixed from birth (unless you are Michael Jackson) but universal human experience is that sexual feelings develop during childhood and adolescence. How can a fixed human characteristic be compared with one that is subject to change?
• Society does not sanction racism towards children but it does set limits on their sexual behaviour. There is an age of consent – 16. People experience sexual desires before that age but society does not sanction under-age sex. To be consistent, Stonewall would have to argue for the removal of a legal age of consent.
• What about bestiality? It may not be a pleasant argument, but surely someone could claim that their urge to have sex with animals is something they are born with and could produce a scientific study to back their case. Aren’t they being discriminated against under current UK law?
• People of various races have a moral objection to homosexual practice and believe one man-one woman, life-long marriage is the only right context for sex. How can a morality that is truly multi-racial be racist?
• The dire consequences of the assault on the God-created institution of marriage are plain to see in society around us. We've stopped listening to Christ's teaching on marriage and look where it has got us. And now the politically-correct brigade wants to stop ordinary people speaking up for traditional morality and prosecute Christian hoteliers (amongst others) for putting their beliefs into practice on their own property.
Sunday, 29 March 2009
RECRUITING THE NEXT GENERATION OF PREACHERS
The latest newsletter from the Evangelical ministry training network 9:38 is a spirited and in many ways sizzling defence of its vision against charges of big-church, posh-university elitism.
This organisation, based at St Ebbe’s in Oxford, takes its inspiration from Christ's words in Matthew 9v38. In the light of the fact that the evangelistic task is enormous but those willing and able to undertake it few, Jesus commands his disciples: ‘Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.’
9:38 runs conferences for ministry trainees, known as apprentices, who work for a year or two in a local church as a way of testing the water for possible for full-time ministry.
Mr Matthew Morgan, 9:38’s administrator, explains the original vision behind the network in his article ‘Part of Something Big’: ‘In the western world, fewer and fewer people are going to church, and those going forward for full-time gospel ministry are few and, on average, getting older. Some sort of strategy was needed to help the local church get more and more members of their congregations to think about going into full-time gospel ministry, and to get more churches thinking “recruitment” for themselves. In the past ten years, 9:38 has been running conferences for people to think through full-time gospel ministry; to demystify what it is, who it is for, and to see what different types of gospel ministry there are and what they involve. They have been an easy way for ministers to keep recruiting on the agenda.’
He concludes: ‘So if you are a lonely apprentice in a small church in a small town, remember you are part of something big. You are part of God’s work of raising up workers for His harvest field.’
This note of speaking up for ministry in the smaller church continues to sound in another piece by Mr John Percival who did children’s ministry together with his wife Sarah in a small church in Hastings: ‘Ministry to little people in a little church’.
He wrote: ‘Hastings boasts an impressive set of vital statistics in deprivation, teen pregnancy and other such measures of society in a mess without God. It was into this challenging situation that Sarah and I were thrown in 2006 as apprentices to be involved in all areas of church life. I had been to a rather posh public school and never given a talk to anyone younger than 14. Sarah was slightly less from “another planet” (as we were affectionately described recently).'
Such honesty is refreshing and speaks of true Christian commitment.
What will decisively win the argument are of course actions and not words - when the large city-centre, university and suburban churches and their church plants currently running large-scale apprenticeship schemes begin pro-actively to encourage their best trainees to move out of the comfort zone and go to the sort of ministry situations Messrs Morgan and Percival so eloquently describe.
Otherwise, an unusually interesting and well-written Evangelical newsletter is just piddling into the wind. It's a tough world out there and it won't be won for Christ unless the next generation of Evangelical preachers follows Mr Percival and breaks out of the bourgeois public school cocoon.
This organisation, based at St Ebbe’s in Oxford, takes its inspiration from Christ's words in Matthew 9v38. In the light of the fact that the evangelistic task is enormous but those willing and able to undertake it few, Jesus commands his disciples: ‘Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.’
9:38 runs conferences for ministry trainees, known as apprentices, who work for a year or two in a local church as a way of testing the water for possible for full-time ministry.
Mr Matthew Morgan, 9:38’s administrator, explains the original vision behind the network in his article ‘Part of Something Big’: ‘In the western world, fewer and fewer people are going to church, and those going forward for full-time gospel ministry are few and, on average, getting older. Some sort of strategy was needed to help the local church get more and more members of their congregations to think about going into full-time gospel ministry, and to get more churches thinking “recruitment” for themselves. In the past ten years, 9:38 has been running conferences for people to think through full-time gospel ministry; to demystify what it is, who it is for, and to see what different types of gospel ministry there are and what they involve. They have been an easy way for ministers to keep recruiting on the agenda.’
He concludes: ‘So if you are a lonely apprentice in a small church in a small town, remember you are part of something big. You are part of God’s work of raising up workers for His harvest field.’
This note of speaking up for ministry in the smaller church continues to sound in another piece by Mr John Percival who did children’s ministry together with his wife Sarah in a small church in Hastings: ‘Ministry to little people in a little church’.
He wrote: ‘Hastings boasts an impressive set of vital statistics in deprivation, teen pregnancy and other such measures of society in a mess without God. It was into this challenging situation that Sarah and I were thrown in 2006 as apprentices to be involved in all areas of church life. I had been to a rather posh public school and never given a talk to anyone younger than 14. Sarah was slightly less from “another planet” (as we were affectionately described recently).'
Such honesty is refreshing and speaks of true Christian commitment.
What will decisively win the argument are of course actions and not words - when the large city-centre, university and suburban churches and their church plants currently running large-scale apprenticeship schemes begin pro-actively to encourage their best trainees to move out of the comfort zone and go to the sort of ministry situations Messrs Morgan and Percival so eloquently describe.
Otherwise, an unusually interesting and well-written Evangelical newsletter is just piddling into the wind. It's a tough world out there and it won't be won for Christ unless the next generation of Evangelical preachers follows Mr Percival and breaks out of the bourgeois public school cocoon.
Friday, 27 March 2009
DARK SPIRITUAL SUMMER FOR BRITAIN
On the weekend the clocks spring forward, it is clear that Britain is in for a dark summer.
That is apart from the likelihood of a summer of civil unrest in our country due to the already simmering social tensions that are being brought to boiling point by the deepening recession. The news this week that the House of Commons voted to remove the free speech clause in the sexual orientation hatred offence is a terrible blow for Christian freedom of expression in this country and therefore for the spiritual future of the British nation.
Whilst no true Christian wants to express personal hatred for anyone – we are called to bless not curse – we are called to be faithful to the Bible’s teaching that life-long, heterosexual, monogamous marriage is the fundamental building block of an ordered society where lawful freedom can flourish.
The removal of the free speech clause will make it much easier for homosexual activists to silence orthodox Christians who want to stand up for the Bible’s teaching to the glory of God and the good of humanity.
This dark news comes on the back of reports that the Christian owners of a seaside hotel, the Chymorvah Private Hotel in Marazion near Penzance, Cornwall, may be prosecuted after refusing to allow a gay couple to stay in a double room. The hotel owners, Mr Peter and Mrs Hazelmary Bull, apply the same rules to heterosexual couples who are unmarried.
Chillingly, the Daily Mail reported in its news story that last August the Bulls received a letter from Stonewall, the gay rights organisation, saying it had received a complaint and warning the hotel it was breaking the law.
Now Martyn Hall, who lives with his civil partner Steven Preddy, has lodged a county court claim for up to £5,000 in damages alleging 'direct discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation'.
Christian campaigners warned that the Sexual Orientation Regulations would lead to vexatious and unnecessary complaints against Christian hoteliers and now the floodgates are opening.
Chillingly again, a spokesman for Stonewall was quoted in the Daily Mail as saying: 'We look forward to the hotel changing its policy to reflect equality, the 21st Century and the law.'
A once Christian nation is rapidly moving towards politically correct dictatorship.
But the Stonewall thought police and their agents in the media, in Parliament and within the visible Church cannot stop Christian people praying to the living God through His victorious and soon-to-return Son Jesus Christ our Lord.
The Book of Common Prayer Collect for this coming Sunday, the beginning of Passiontide, is especially relevant:
We beseech thee, Almighty God, mercifully to look upon thy people; that by thy great goodness they may be governed and preserved evermore, both in body and soul; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
That is apart from the likelihood of a summer of civil unrest in our country due to the already simmering social tensions that are being brought to boiling point by the deepening recession. The news this week that the House of Commons voted to remove the free speech clause in the sexual orientation hatred offence is a terrible blow for Christian freedom of expression in this country and therefore for the spiritual future of the British nation.
Whilst no true Christian wants to express personal hatred for anyone – we are called to bless not curse – we are called to be faithful to the Bible’s teaching that life-long, heterosexual, monogamous marriage is the fundamental building block of an ordered society where lawful freedom can flourish.
The removal of the free speech clause will make it much easier for homosexual activists to silence orthodox Christians who want to stand up for the Bible’s teaching to the glory of God and the good of humanity.
This dark news comes on the back of reports that the Christian owners of a seaside hotel, the Chymorvah Private Hotel in Marazion near Penzance, Cornwall, may be prosecuted after refusing to allow a gay couple to stay in a double room. The hotel owners, Mr Peter and Mrs Hazelmary Bull, apply the same rules to heterosexual couples who are unmarried.
Chillingly, the Daily Mail reported in its news story that last August the Bulls received a letter from Stonewall, the gay rights organisation, saying it had received a complaint and warning the hotel it was breaking the law.
Now Martyn Hall, who lives with his civil partner Steven Preddy, has lodged a county court claim for up to £5,000 in damages alleging 'direct discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation'.
Christian campaigners warned that the Sexual Orientation Regulations would lead to vexatious and unnecessary complaints against Christian hoteliers and now the floodgates are opening.
Chillingly again, a spokesman for Stonewall was quoted in the Daily Mail as saying: 'We look forward to the hotel changing its policy to reflect equality, the 21st Century and the law.'
A once Christian nation is rapidly moving towards politically correct dictatorship.
But the Stonewall thought police and their agents in the media, in Parliament and within the visible Church cannot stop Christian people praying to the living God through His victorious and soon-to-return Son Jesus Christ our Lord.
The Book of Common Prayer Collect for this coming Sunday, the beginning of Passiontide, is especially relevant:
We beseech thee, Almighty God, mercifully to look upon thy people; that by thy great goodness they may be governed and preserved evermore, both in body and soul; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Thursday, 26 March 2009
BAPTISM, COHABITATION & CIVIL PARTNERSHIPS - WHY I CAN'T IN CONSCIENCE
Because clergy and parishes differ in their approaches to baptising the children of unmarried couples, it is difficult for orthodox clergy on the ground to form a shield-wall with others on this key theological, moral and social issue.
This is not the place for a long theological discourse on the nature of baptism. The core issue here relates to the public promises that couples who bring children for baptism make: I turn to Christ as Saviour; I submit to Christ as Lord; I come to Christ the way, the truth and the life.
In conscience Cranmer's Curate could not participate in an act of corporate worship where individuals are publicly declaring their submission to Christ as Lord when they are clearly disregarding His biblical teaching that heterosexual, monogamous, life-long marriage is the only right context for the expression of sexual love and the procreation of children. Cohabiting couples and couples in civil partnerships bringing children for baptism are by definition unable to say with integrity: I submit to Christ as Lord.
The Book of Common Prayer in the Solemnization of Matrimony states clearly that the causes for which marriage was ordained were:
1). ‘The procreation of children, to be brought up in the fear and nurture of the Lord, and to the praise of his holy Name.’
2). ‘For a remedy against sin, and to avoid fornication; that such persons as have not the gift of continency might marry, and keep themselves undefiled members of Christ’s body.’
3). ‘For the mutual society, help and comfort, that the one ought to have of the other, both in prosperity and adversity.’
Canon A5 clearly affirms that the Book of Common Prayer expresses the biblical doctrine of the Church of England and therefore to participate in the baptism of the children of cohabiting couples or of those in civil partnerships is in fact uncanonical. It is to sanction what both Holy Scripture and Anglican teaching calls ‘fornication’.
Ecumenically, such action undermines faithful Christians including those in Roman Catholic adoption agencies who, when the Sexual Orientation Regulations were being imposed, took such a courageous stand for the God-given institution of heterosexual marriage as the right context for the nurture of children.
More widely within society, it is also clear that the assault on the institution of marriage since the 1960s has unleashed a tidal wave of toxic evil on our nation, spiritually, morally and socially. The Church of the nation is called to serve the nation and upholding an institution that a loving God created for the good of humanity is a vital aspect of that service.
Like most clergy Cranmer's Curate sincerely wishes to enjoy peaceable relations with people particularly in the local community he is called to serve, and in his experience most cohabiting couples are willing to have a celebratory service of thanksgiving in which their children are blessed. In conscience cc must by God’s grace uphold the Lordship of Christ if he is to have integrity both as a Christian and as an ordained minister.
This is not the place for a long theological discourse on the nature of baptism. The core issue here relates to the public promises that couples who bring children for baptism make: I turn to Christ as Saviour; I submit to Christ as Lord; I come to Christ the way, the truth and the life.
In conscience Cranmer's Curate could not participate in an act of corporate worship where individuals are publicly declaring their submission to Christ as Lord when they are clearly disregarding His biblical teaching that heterosexual, monogamous, life-long marriage is the only right context for the expression of sexual love and the procreation of children. Cohabiting couples and couples in civil partnerships bringing children for baptism are by definition unable to say with integrity: I submit to Christ as Lord.
The Book of Common Prayer in the Solemnization of Matrimony states clearly that the causes for which marriage was ordained were:
1). ‘The procreation of children, to be brought up in the fear and nurture of the Lord, and to the praise of his holy Name.’
2). ‘For a remedy against sin, and to avoid fornication; that such persons as have not the gift of continency might marry, and keep themselves undefiled members of Christ’s body.’
3). ‘For the mutual society, help and comfort, that the one ought to have of the other, both in prosperity and adversity.’
Canon A5 clearly affirms that the Book of Common Prayer expresses the biblical doctrine of the Church of England and therefore to participate in the baptism of the children of cohabiting couples or of those in civil partnerships is in fact uncanonical. It is to sanction what both Holy Scripture and Anglican teaching calls ‘fornication’.
Ecumenically, such action undermines faithful Christians including those in Roman Catholic adoption agencies who, when the Sexual Orientation Regulations were being imposed, took such a courageous stand for the God-given institution of heterosexual marriage as the right context for the nurture of children.
More widely within society, it is also clear that the assault on the institution of marriage since the 1960s has unleashed a tidal wave of toxic evil on our nation, spiritually, morally and socially. The Church of the nation is called to serve the nation and upholding an institution that a loving God created for the good of humanity is a vital aspect of that service.
Like most clergy Cranmer's Curate sincerely wishes to enjoy peaceable relations with people particularly in the local community he is called to serve, and in his experience most cohabiting couples are willing to have a celebratory service of thanksgiving in which their children are blessed. In conscience cc must by God’s grace uphold the Lordship of Christ if he is to have integrity both as a Christian and as an ordained minister.
Wednesday, 25 March 2009
SINFUL MANKIND NEEDS A KING NOT A CUDDLE
The language of personal Christian commitment is important and highly revealing. In cc's years in student Evangelicalism, phrases such as ‘I’ve become a Christian’ or ‘I’ve committed my life to Christ’ or ‘I’ve prayed a prayer of commitment’ or ‘I’ve opened the door and let Him in’ or the reverse ‘I’ve kicked Him out’ were the common currency.
Your curate has noticed that recently ‘I fell in love with Jesus’ has become an increasingly fashionable way of describing a conversion experience. To be fair, this phrase seems to be mainly used by ladies. But no doubt men will start jumping on the bandwagon before too long.
These changing fashions in the language of conversion have caused cc to reflect on his own Christian commitment. Your curate is deeply wayward and inclined to wickedness, so what he needs from God is not a cuddle but a divine King who will rule him.
He needs a King to rebuke him for being stupid and slow to understand the Scriptures; for being of little faith; to kick him up the backside when he is spiritually slothful; to tell him to use less acid in his blog posts (thankfully his godly pal Anglican Mainstream's Canon Dr Christopher Sugden performs that ministry of moderation upon your curate). Ultimately, cc needs a King who has the divine authority to forgive his manifold sins and wickedness.
By God’s amazing grace, your curate and indeed every Christian has such a divine King in the Lord Jesus and where would any of us be without Him?
When cc wants a cuddle, he can ask his wife for one. What he needs from his King is kingly rule and no king worth his crown wants to be crooned at from the foot of his throne in the idiom of the modern pop song.
Your curate has noticed that recently ‘I fell in love with Jesus’ has become an increasingly fashionable way of describing a conversion experience. To be fair, this phrase seems to be mainly used by ladies. But no doubt men will start jumping on the bandwagon before too long.
These changing fashions in the language of conversion have caused cc to reflect on his own Christian commitment. Your curate is deeply wayward and inclined to wickedness, so what he needs from God is not a cuddle but a divine King who will rule him.
He needs a King to rebuke him for being stupid and slow to understand the Scriptures; for being of little faith; to kick him up the backside when he is spiritually slothful; to tell him to use less acid in his blog posts (thankfully his godly pal Anglican Mainstream's Canon Dr Christopher Sugden performs that ministry of moderation upon your curate). Ultimately, cc needs a King who has the divine authority to forgive his manifold sins and wickedness.
By God’s amazing grace, your curate and indeed every Christian has such a divine King in the Lord Jesus and where would any of us be without Him?
When cc wants a cuddle, he can ask his wife for one. What he needs from his King is kingly rule and no king worth his crown wants to be crooned at from the foot of his throne in the idiom of the modern pop song.
Tuesday, 24 March 2009
CAN THE NHS COPE WITH POST-CHRISTIAN BRITAIN?
Over on the Orwell Prize longlisted Heresy Corner, the hospitable Heresiarch has hosted a post from one of his houseguests (cc) asking a heretical question about the NHS. It may be of interest of the youth group.
HOW CHURCH LIBERALS GET AWAY WITH IT
It had to happen on Mothering Sunday – a prayer to God our Mother.
No prayer for mothers as such, but an androgynous prayer for those in general who provide care for others.
The suburban, quintessentially English Victorian church in which this feminisation of God took place was oh so very respectable – choral evensong with robed choir according to the Book of Common Prayer with the newly-installed vicar, a rising star in the liberal firmament, officiating.
Liberals may argue that this way of addressing God has biblical warrant because He compares Himself to a mother in the Scriptures, for example His reassurance to His chosen people in Isaiah 66v13: 'As a mother comforts her child, so will I comfort you; and you will be comforted over Jerusalem' (NIV). But God Incarnate, the Lord Jesus, also compares Himself to a thief in the Bible (see Luke 12v39-40) in the context of His Second Coming. We do not pray on Advent Sunday: 'O Lord our Burglar.'
That does not of course rule out some liberal trying it in an attempt to be poetic or to develop a 'spirituality for the criminal community', but it would be absurd.
Jesus commanded His disciples to pray to our Father who is in heaven. There is no biblical mandate for such fashionable feminisation of God and in fact to do so is to paganise prayer.
But this ascending liberal got away with it because of the trimmings of Tractarian worship combined with the traditional Prayer Book liturgy. That is the respectable ecclesiastical cloak under which they smuggle in the poisoned dagger of their false teaching.
The suburban church-going bourgeoisie collude with it by doing nothing. But apathy would not be their response if they got a vicar who sought to challenge the complacent spiritual culture of their church by expounding the Scriptures Sunday by Sunday and by himself acting on the Scriptures in his cure of souls.
Then the poisoned-pen letters would really start to fly.
No prayer for mothers as such, but an androgynous prayer for those in general who provide care for others.
The suburban, quintessentially English Victorian church in which this feminisation of God took place was oh so very respectable – choral evensong with robed choir according to the Book of Common Prayer with the newly-installed vicar, a rising star in the liberal firmament, officiating.
Liberals may argue that this way of addressing God has biblical warrant because He compares Himself to a mother in the Scriptures, for example His reassurance to His chosen people in Isaiah 66v13: 'As a mother comforts her child, so will I comfort you; and you will be comforted over Jerusalem' (NIV). But God Incarnate, the Lord Jesus, also compares Himself to a thief in the Bible (see Luke 12v39-40) in the context of His Second Coming. We do not pray on Advent Sunday: 'O Lord our Burglar.'
That does not of course rule out some liberal trying it in an attempt to be poetic or to develop a 'spirituality for the criminal community', but it would be absurd.
Jesus commanded His disciples to pray to our Father who is in heaven. There is no biblical mandate for such fashionable feminisation of God and in fact to do so is to paganise prayer.
But this ascending liberal got away with it because of the trimmings of Tractarian worship combined with the traditional Prayer Book liturgy. That is the respectable ecclesiastical cloak under which they smuggle in the poisoned dagger of their false teaching.
The suburban church-going bourgeoisie collude with it by doing nothing. But apathy would not be their response if they got a vicar who sought to challenge the complacent spiritual culture of their church by expounding the Scriptures Sunday by Sunday and by himself acting on the Scriptures in his cure of souls.
Then the poisoned-pen letters would really start to fly.
Sunday, 22 March 2009
WORD DEMOTED - CHURCHES SHORT-CHANGED
For the edification of the international youth group of loyal readers, Cranmer’s Curate asked a fine and faithful Church of England preacher, based here in South Yorkshire, to contribute a personal perspective on preaching. These wise words from Cranmer's Preacher are the fruit of wide practical experience in local parish churches:
Ministers are well aware that Word and Sacrament are meant to be combined but Cranmer’s Preacher fears that all too often in churches the Word of God is demoted to second place, if indeed it is given any place at all. Cranmer’s Preacher was once invited to cover for a minister who to his horror suggested that in order to keep the service short, whilst the two Scriptures set for the day should be read, there was no need for a sermon!
The physical need to eat food and drink water is a familiar one and we all take steps to satisfy it. Though many modern people would deny this, everyone has spiritual needs too and the Christian church is a place where spiritual needs can and should be addressed.
Cranmer’s Preacher suggests our congregations are being seriously short-changed when there is a lack of expository preaching carrying the force, when all is said and done, of divine authority. The minister who fails to expound Holy Scripture abandons his authority to lead a congregation.
Sometimes the delivery of the sermon can make churchgoers squirm because it is as dry as cornflakes without milk. If the preacher is not enthusiastic about his subject, neither will be the congregation. When the Apostle Paul encouraged his young associate Timothy to ‘preach the word’ (2 Tim 4:2) the sense is to cry out, herald, or exhort. Here is the authority to pour out the Word of God with passion and fervour.
In Cranmer's Preacher's experience, some preachers don’t properly understand their texts. Take for instance one ordained minister he knew who was honest, but foolish, to say to the congregation that he really didn’t understand his text. It was from the Gospels where Jesus says, ‘Do you think I came to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but division’ (Luke 12:51). Jesus goes on to explain that because of him (some) families will even be divided. Cranmer's Preacher was able to respond positively when later questioned about this in private by a troubled couple in the congregation. A mist in the pulpit certainly becomes a fog in the pew! To preach effectively, we must know what we are about.
Some preachers Cranmer's Preacher has known only preach a neutral homily on the basis that they do not want to upset anyone. When boiled down, the substance of what is said week after week, despite what the text is all about, is: ‘God is love, and we must love our neighbour.’ But we must preach, not only with passion, but honesty as we engage with the text. This can be uncomfortable, but the Scriptures must be expounded without dilution of the facts. Cranmer's Preacher recalls an angry looking lady once making a bee-line for him after a service: ‘I came to church for a peaceful hour. I’m leaving all churned up inside.’ For good measure she announced, ‘I don’t like what you preach and come to think of it I don’t like you either!’ As Cranmer's Preacher recalls, the Biblical text that morning was about commitment to the Lord.
It is to be feared that too many preachers today either do not know or have forgotten what the writer of Hebrews pointed out: ‘... the word of God is living and active ... it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart’ (Heb 4:12).
In his splendid 1982 book, ‘I believe in Preaching’, John Stott says: ‘I do believe in preaching and I further believe that nothing is better calculated to restore health and vitality to the Church or to lead its members into maturity in Christ than a recovery of true, biblical, contemporary preaching.’ How very true.
The Revd Jack Davis is a retired Church of England vicar now based in Barnby Dun, Doncaster. He preaches the Word of God in various churches around South Yorkshire, including the Parish Church of the Ascension, Oughtibridge.
Ministers are well aware that Word and Sacrament are meant to be combined but Cranmer’s Preacher fears that all too often in churches the Word of God is demoted to second place, if indeed it is given any place at all. Cranmer’s Preacher was once invited to cover for a minister who to his horror suggested that in order to keep the service short, whilst the two Scriptures set for the day should be read, there was no need for a sermon!
The physical need to eat food and drink water is a familiar one and we all take steps to satisfy it. Though many modern people would deny this, everyone has spiritual needs too and the Christian church is a place where spiritual needs can and should be addressed.
Cranmer’s Preacher suggests our congregations are being seriously short-changed when there is a lack of expository preaching carrying the force, when all is said and done, of divine authority. The minister who fails to expound Holy Scripture abandons his authority to lead a congregation.
Sometimes the delivery of the sermon can make churchgoers squirm because it is as dry as cornflakes without milk. If the preacher is not enthusiastic about his subject, neither will be the congregation. When the Apostle Paul encouraged his young associate Timothy to ‘preach the word’ (2 Tim 4:2) the sense is to cry out, herald, or exhort. Here is the authority to pour out the Word of God with passion and fervour.
In Cranmer's Preacher's experience, some preachers don’t properly understand their texts. Take for instance one ordained minister he knew who was honest, but foolish, to say to the congregation that he really didn’t understand his text. It was from the Gospels where Jesus says, ‘Do you think I came to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but division’ (Luke 12:51). Jesus goes on to explain that because of him (some) families will even be divided. Cranmer's Preacher was able to respond positively when later questioned about this in private by a troubled couple in the congregation. A mist in the pulpit certainly becomes a fog in the pew! To preach effectively, we must know what we are about.
Some preachers Cranmer's Preacher has known only preach a neutral homily on the basis that they do not want to upset anyone. When boiled down, the substance of what is said week after week, despite what the text is all about, is: ‘God is love, and we must love our neighbour.’ But we must preach, not only with passion, but honesty as we engage with the text. This can be uncomfortable, but the Scriptures must be expounded without dilution of the facts. Cranmer's Preacher recalls an angry looking lady once making a bee-line for him after a service: ‘I came to church for a peaceful hour. I’m leaving all churned up inside.’ For good measure she announced, ‘I don’t like what you preach and come to think of it I don’t like you either!’ As Cranmer's Preacher recalls, the Biblical text that morning was about commitment to the Lord.
It is to be feared that too many preachers today either do not know or have forgotten what the writer of Hebrews pointed out: ‘... the word of God is living and active ... it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart’ (Heb 4:12).
In his splendid 1982 book, ‘I believe in Preaching’, John Stott says: ‘I do believe in preaching and I further believe that nothing is better calculated to restore health and vitality to the Church or to lead its members into maturity in Christ than a recovery of true, biblical, contemporary preaching.’ How very true.
The Revd Jack Davis is a retired Church of England vicar now based in Barnby Dun, Doncaster. He preaches the Word of God in various churches around South Yorkshire, including the Parish Church of the Ascension, Oughtibridge.
Friday, 20 March 2009
A LIVING ENGLISH EVANGELICAL WORTH A BIOGRAPHY
Unfortunately, Cranmer's Curate is two years late on an occasion that was worth marking in English Evangelicalism - the 65th birthday of the Revd Jonathan Fletcher, the highly influential minister of Emmanuel Church, Wimbledon. Your curate thought that it fell this year and anyway the youth group was not set up then. So, here's the piece that should have been written back in 2007:
The Revd Jonathan Fletcher's reaching retirement age is arguably a non-event because God willing he won't be retiring for some time. But it is an opportunity to sketch out a rough draft of an assessment of his influence in English Evangelicalism. Perhaps this can be a soupcon for something more substantial when God willing he reaches 70.
His influence reaching back into the 1960s is undeniably considerable. Through his active involvement in the Iwerne Minster Christian holiday camps for public school boys he has been a significant influence in mentoring scores of men who are now in ordained ministry. A number of them are now incumbents of large Evangelical churches spawning new congregations and leaders in the Reform movement in the Church of England, of which Mr Fletcher is a trustee.
This is not the place for a full critique of the downsides of public school Evangelicalism. Cranmer's Curate would observe that its faults are obvious and in many ways they are a reflection of the cultural blind-spots of its leaders including Mr Fletcher. As cc has written in previous posts, the obsession with Oxbridge is one of these, coupled with the reluctance to get fully behind the non-Oxbridge theological college Oak Hill, which is the only realistic long-term hope for a consistently Reformed Evangelical training centre within the Church of England.
But what makes Jonathan Fletcher such a key influence in Evangelicalism is the fact that by God’s grace he brings a subversive, prophetic edge to his own constituency. The fact that he is the son of a Labour politician - Eric Fletcher (1903-1990), a cabinet minister in Harold Wilson's first administration - may be a factor in this.
Mr Fletcher was nurtured in Evangelical Christianity through the work of Iwerne Minster when he was a schoolboy at the Midlands public school Repton in the 1950s. He was introduced to the camps by his older brother David, who went on to lead the Iwerne work in the 1970s.
Jonathan Fletcher was a student leader for Iwerne during his time at Oxford in the 1960s, both as an undergraduate and an ordinand at Wycliffe Hall. His curacies during the 1970s at the Round Church in Cambridge and then at St Helen's Bishopsgate in London, both with incumbents who were themselves former Iwerne leaders, gave him a base for continuing involvement. Since becoming minister of Emmanuel proprietary chapel in Wimbledon in the early 1980s, he has remained actively involved in the Iwerne work both in its holiday camps and student conferences and in the ongoing term-time work in the schools and at Oxbridge.
It was Mr Fletcher’s network of ministerial protégées who formed the basis for the Proclamation Trust, which Mr Fletcher was instrumental in setting up in the mid-1980s. This movement based on preaching conferences led by the then Rector of St Helen’s, Dick Lucas, emphasises the exposition of biblical texts rather than the more old-fashioned style of Evangelical preaching which uses biblical texts as a springboard for proclaiming doctrines.
This movement has been extremely influential in Conservative Evangelicalism in the past 20 years. But as is often the case with Mr Fletcher’s initiatives he then likes to break his own rules. He appears to enjoy subverting the often forensic approach to expounding texts in this style of preaching and instead makes a point of deploying a more accessible style with many of the old-fashioned emphases on memorable clarity (alliterated three-pointers) and warm-hearted devotional applications.
He was in particularly subversive form in his 2007 address to the Reform Conference, published as a booklet: ‘Back to the Future: Reforming the Church of England – Learning from the Past’. Recently fattened sacred cows that got slain included the current emphasis on church planting as the way forward for Reformed Evangelicalism, despite the fact that Mr Fletcher was one of the prime initiators of this when his church in Wimbledon planted Emmanuel Dundonald in the late 1980s. In his address, Mr Fletcher made a point of affirming the socio-economic diversity of the Church of England and the need for Evangelicals to go to what he called ‘funny little places’.
This effective minister of Christ by God's unmerited grace is worth an accessible biography or a collection of shorter pieces on different aspects of his Christian life and ministry - with or without his co-operation. Whoever undertakes the task will be performing the journalistic equivalent of turning wine into water if he makes his subject sound boring.
The Revd Jonathan Fletcher's reaching retirement age is arguably a non-event because God willing he won't be retiring for some time. But it is an opportunity to sketch out a rough draft of an assessment of his influence in English Evangelicalism. Perhaps this can be a soupcon for something more substantial when God willing he reaches 70.
His influence reaching back into the 1960s is undeniably considerable. Through his active involvement in the Iwerne Minster Christian holiday camps for public school boys he has been a significant influence in mentoring scores of men who are now in ordained ministry. A number of them are now incumbents of large Evangelical churches spawning new congregations and leaders in the Reform movement in the Church of England, of which Mr Fletcher is a trustee.
This is not the place for a full critique of the downsides of public school Evangelicalism. Cranmer's Curate would observe that its faults are obvious and in many ways they are a reflection of the cultural blind-spots of its leaders including Mr Fletcher. As cc has written in previous posts, the obsession with Oxbridge is one of these, coupled with the reluctance to get fully behind the non-Oxbridge theological college Oak Hill, which is the only realistic long-term hope for a consistently Reformed Evangelical training centre within the Church of England.
But what makes Jonathan Fletcher such a key influence in Evangelicalism is the fact that by God’s grace he brings a subversive, prophetic edge to his own constituency. The fact that he is the son of a Labour politician - Eric Fletcher (1903-1990), a cabinet minister in Harold Wilson's first administration - may be a factor in this.
Mr Fletcher was nurtured in Evangelical Christianity through the work of Iwerne Minster when he was a schoolboy at the Midlands public school Repton in the 1950s. He was introduced to the camps by his older brother David, who went on to lead the Iwerne work in the 1970s.
Jonathan Fletcher was a student leader for Iwerne during his time at Oxford in the 1960s, both as an undergraduate and an ordinand at Wycliffe Hall. His curacies during the 1970s at the Round Church in Cambridge and then at St Helen's Bishopsgate in London, both with incumbents who were themselves former Iwerne leaders, gave him a base for continuing involvement. Since becoming minister of Emmanuel proprietary chapel in Wimbledon in the early 1980s, he has remained actively involved in the Iwerne work both in its holiday camps and student conferences and in the ongoing term-time work in the schools and at Oxbridge.
It was Mr Fletcher’s network of ministerial protégées who formed the basis for the Proclamation Trust, which Mr Fletcher was instrumental in setting up in the mid-1980s. This movement based on preaching conferences led by the then Rector of St Helen’s, Dick Lucas, emphasises the exposition of biblical texts rather than the more old-fashioned style of Evangelical preaching which uses biblical texts as a springboard for proclaiming doctrines.
This movement has been extremely influential in Conservative Evangelicalism in the past 20 years. But as is often the case with Mr Fletcher’s initiatives he then likes to break his own rules. He appears to enjoy subverting the often forensic approach to expounding texts in this style of preaching and instead makes a point of deploying a more accessible style with many of the old-fashioned emphases on memorable clarity (alliterated three-pointers) and warm-hearted devotional applications.
He was in particularly subversive form in his 2007 address to the Reform Conference, published as a booklet: ‘Back to the Future: Reforming the Church of England – Learning from the Past’. Recently fattened sacred cows that got slain included the current emphasis on church planting as the way forward for Reformed Evangelicalism, despite the fact that Mr Fletcher was one of the prime initiators of this when his church in Wimbledon planted Emmanuel Dundonald in the late 1980s. In his address, Mr Fletcher made a point of affirming the socio-economic diversity of the Church of England and the need for Evangelicals to go to what he called ‘funny little places’.
This effective minister of Christ by God's unmerited grace is worth an accessible biography or a collection of shorter pieces on different aspects of his Christian life and ministry - with or without his co-operation. Whoever undertakes the task will be performing the journalistic equivalent of turning wine into water if he makes his subject sound boring.
Tuesday, 17 March 2009
BRITAIN'S SOCIAL REVOLUTION NO CABARET
Two films just given out as free offers by The Telegraph show the disturbing extent of the social revolution Britain has undergone in the past 44 years.
The Ipcress File, made in 1965 with the unforgettable petty criminal turned spy, Harry Palmer, showed Britain as a well-ordered society in which when people broke the rules they did so with respect, restraint and good manners.
'Elf 'n safe'de did not feature particularly prominently in this society. Cranmer's Curate has a boyhood memory of visiting a school friend's house and being shot in the backside with an air-gun at close range in the kitchen. The marksman's mother, a Shire County Councillor, scarcely batted an eyelid. She certainly would have batted more than an eyelid if cc had forgotten his please and thank you.
Cabaret, made in 1972, shows the extent to which the Bohemian freak-show sub-culture of Weimar Germany presented by the film has now become mainstream in British society. In 1972 the sins this profoundly depressing film portrays – fornication, homosexuality, abortion, cross-dressing, and un-policed violence on the streets – were matters of sub-cultural freak interest to cinema goers. Thirty-seven years later these activities are now so mainstream that public criticism of those who practise them is getting to the point of illegality in the United Kingdom.
‘Life is a cabaret’ sang Liza Minnelli at the end of the film after the character she played, Sally Bowles, sacrificed her unborn child for her acting career. If you’re one of the millions of unborn children slaughtered since 1972, you weren’t even given a chance to find out that life is actually about the joy of sins forgiven through God's gracious gift of faith in Jesus Christ, whether you've grown up in a well-ordered society or not.
The Ipcress File, made in 1965 with the unforgettable petty criminal turned spy, Harry Palmer, showed Britain as a well-ordered society in which when people broke the rules they did so with respect, restraint and good manners.
'Elf 'n safe'de did not feature particularly prominently in this society. Cranmer's Curate has a boyhood memory of visiting a school friend's house and being shot in the backside with an air-gun at close range in the kitchen. The marksman's mother, a Shire County Councillor, scarcely batted an eyelid. She certainly would have batted more than an eyelid if cc had forgotten his please and thank you.
Cabaret, made in 1972, shows the extent to which the Bohemian freak-show sub-culture of Weimar Germany presented by the film has now become mainstream in British society. In 1972 the sins this profoundly depressing film portrays – fornication, homosexuality, abortion, cross-dressing, and un-policed violence on the streets – were matters of sub-cultural freak interest to cinema goers. Thirty-seven years later these activities are now so mainstream that public criticism of those who practise them is getting to the point of illegality in the United Kingdom.
‘Life is a cabaret’ sang Liza Minnelli at the end of the film after the character she played, Sally Bowles, sacrificed her unborn child for her acting career. If you’re one of the millions of unborn children slaughtered since 1972, you weren’t even given a chance to find out that life is actually about the joy of sins forgiven through God's gracious gift of faith in Jesus Christ, whether you've grown up in a well-ordered society or not.
Monday, 16 March 2009
ANSWERED PRAYERS FOR ORTHODOX ANGLICANS
In his latest newsletter following the General Synod, Reform chairman the Revd Rod Thomas has some encouraging news of answered prayers for orthodox Anglicans:
There were real answers to prayer at last month’s General Synod. Thank you to all who made it a matter for prayer. First, there was a Christ-honouring debate on the uniqueness of Christ. The motion itself was fairly mild:
“That this Synod request the House of Bishops to report to the Synod on their understanding of the uniqueness of Christ in Britain’s multi-faith society, and offer examples and commendations of good practice in sharing the gospel of salvation through Christ alone with people of other faiths and of none.”
However, what brought the debate alive were the contributions from members who told their stories of how they had been converted from their previous beliefs to faith in Jesus. You can read Chik Kaw Tan’s speech on the Reform web site. It was good to see other Reform members contributing as well. As a result, most attempts to amend the motion were roundly defeated. The only amendment to succeed simply commended the background paper which Martin Davie had prepared for the House of Bishops on this subject. This paper is a thrilling historical exploration of how the doctrine of Christ’s uniqueness has been expressed by Christians through the ages. Unfortunately it is spoiled towards the end by implying that God could have chosen to save people other than through Christ if He had wished. Nevertheless, overall the motion is very helpful; it will hopefully generate useful material to aid our witness in multi-faith environments, and it was passed overwhelmingly.
Women Bishops
The second debate where our prayers were wonderfully answered concerned the legislative proposals for women bishops. In one sense it was a strange debate in that it was never going to decide anything. All that it was designed to do was to send the legislative package off to the Revision Committee to be worked on. So even if you were opposed to women bishops, you might still vote in favour of sending the proposals to the Revision Committee since it is only there that any changes can be introduced. What mattered in the debate was that lots of people should register their disquiet with the proposals and ask for better provision for those who were opposed to this innovation. That was precisely what we got.
As you may recall from previous newsletters, there were two major problems with the legislative proposals:
Where a parish has theological difficulties with the oversight of a woman bishop, the provision of alternative oversight through a ‘complementary bishop’ would only be through a Code of Practice. It would not be written in to the Measure itself.
A decision about whether to delegate oversight – and if so, in what areas – would be left to the diocesan bishop.
In other words, the legislative provision for opponents was very uncertain. In the debate, speaker after speaker said that these legislative provisions were inadequate. The Archdeacon of Berkshire pointed out that the House of Lords had itself said that the legal status of Codes was uncertain. In my speech, I made the point that the proposals left opponents feeling that their ministries were merely being tolerated by the wider church, rather than encouraged to flourish. At the end of the debate, the Bishop of Winchester asked whether the Revision Committee would be able to consider major changes to the legislation and not feel bound by the vote which took place at the previous meeting of the General Synod. In replying to the debate, the Bishop of Manchester said he could give that assurance. The vote to send the proposals to the Revision Committee was 281:113 in favour. The size of the dissenting vote was a clear indication of the unease felt by Synod.
Reform Evidence to the Revision Committee
The next stage of proceedings is that the Revision Committee will take evidence (which has to be in by 16th March) and, guided by a Steering Group, will start the process of changing the legislative proposals. This will take them at least a year, so the first report to Synod will not be before next February, and may not be until July 2010. I submitted evidence on behalf of Reform on Tuesday 3rd March, following a discussion at the Reform Council on 25th February. This re-stated our view that it was inappropriate to change the church’s position on this subject, but since General Synod had asked for proposals to be formulated, there were a number of areas where provision would have to be made if we were to feel that our ministries had a future in the Church of England. In particular, alternative oversight would need to be guaranteed for parishes in the areas of confirmation services, pastoral care, discipline, appointments, clergy review procedures, and pastoral reorganisation.
Our evidence made it clear that such oversight could only be guaranteed if it were provided in statute and did not depend on the discretion of a diocesan bishop. We further argued for making statutory provision for individuals where their views differed from those of their parishes.
As a result of the debate, the future now looks more hopeful than it did. Two other developments have bolstered this view. The first was the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Presidential address to the General Synod where he said that the different views on this issue were ‘not going to go away’ and that we needed to find structural solutions. The second was the news that proposals are being developed for the House of Bishops which promote the idea of ‘networks’ or ‘communities’ which could then come under the oversight of ‘Episcopal visitors’. There are some similarities here to the way religious communities already operate in the Church of England. In our evidence to the Revision Committee, we did not propose any particular structural solution but simply noted the Archbishop’s view that structural solutions were necessary and that different proposals for special dioceses or religious communities could provide a way forward.
There were real answers to prayer at last month’s General Synod. Thank you to all who made it a matter for prayer. First, there was a Christ-honouring debate on the uniqueness of Christ. The motion itself was fairly mild:
“That this Synod request the House of Bishops to report to the Synod on their understanding of the uniqueness of Christ in Britain’s multi-faith society, and offer examples and commendations of good practice in sharing the gospel of salvation through Christ alone with people of other faiths and of none.”
However, what brought the debate alive were the contributions from members who told their stories of how they had been converted from their previous beliefs to faith in Jesus. You can read Chik Kaw Tan’s speech on the Reform web site. It was good to see other Reform members contributing as well. As a result, most attempts to amend the motion were roundly defeated. The only amendment to succeed simply commended the background paper which Martin Davie had prepared for the House of Bishops on this subject. This paper is a thrilling historical exploration of how the doctrine of Christ’s uniqueness has been expressed by Christians through the ages. Unfortunately it is spoiled towards the end by implying that God could have chosen to save people other than through Christ if He had wished. Nevertheless, overall the motion is very helpful; it will hopefully generate useful material to aid our witness in multi-faith environments, and it was passed overwhelmingly.
Women Bishops
The second debate where our prayers were wonderfully answered concerned the legislative proposals for women bishops. In one sense it was a strange debate in that it was never going to decide anything. All that it was designed to do was to send the legislative package off to the Revision Committee to be worked on. So even if you were opposed to women bishops, you might still vote in favour of sending the proposals to the Revision Committee since it is only there that any changes can be introduced. What mattered in the debate was that lots of people should register their disquiet with the proposals and ask for better provision for those who were opposed to this innovation. That was precisely what we got.
As you may recall from previous newsletters, there were two major problems with the legislative proposals:
Where a parish has theological difficulties with the oversight of a woman bishop, the provision of alternative oversight through a ‘complementary bishop’ would only be through a Code of Practice. It would not be written in to the Measure itself.
A decision about whether to delegate oversight – and if so, in what areas – would be left to the diocesan bishop.
In other words, the legislative provision for opponents was very uncertain. In the debate, speaker after speaker said that these legislative provisions were inadequate. The Archdeacon of Berkshire pointed out that the House of Lords had itself said that the legal status of Codes was uncertain. In my speech, I made the point that the proposals left opponents feeling that their ministries were merely being tolerated by the wider church, rather than encouraged to flourish. At the end of the debate, the Bishop of Winchester asked whether the Revision Committee would be able to consider major changes to the legislation and not feel bound by the vote which took place at the previous meeting of the General Synod. In replying to the debate, the Bishop of Manchester said he could give that assurance. The vote to send the proposals to the Revision Committee was 281:113 in favour. The size of the dissenting vote was a clear indication of the unease felt by Synod.
Reform Evidence to the Revision Committee
The next stage of proceedings is that the Revision Committee will take evidence (which has to be in by 16th March) and, guided by a Steering Group, will start the process of changing the legislative proposals. This will take them at least a year, so the first report to Synod will not be before next February, and may not be until July 2010. I submitted evidence on behalf of Reform on Tuesday 3rd March, following a discussion at the Reform Council on 25th February. This re-stated our view that it was inappropriate to change the church’s position on this subject, but since General Synod had asked for proposals to be formulated, there were a number of areas where provision would have to be made if we were to feel that our ministries had a future in the Church of England. In particular, alternative oversight would need to be guaranteed for parishes in the areas of confirmation services, pastoral care, discipline, appointments, clergy review procedures, and pastoral reorganisation.
Our evidence made it clear that such oversight could only be guaranteed if it were provided in statute and did not depend on the discretion of a diocesan bishop. We further argued for making statutory provision for individuals where their views differed from those of their parishes.
As a result of the debate, the future now looks more hopeful than it did. Two other developments have bolstered this view. The first was the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Presidential address to the General Synod where he said that the different views on this issue were ‘not going to go away’ and that we needed to find structural solutions. The second was the news that proposals are being developed for the House of Bishops which promote the idea of ‘networks’ or ‘communities’ which could then come under the oversight of ‘Episcopal visitors’. There are some similarities here to the way religious communities already operate in the Church of England. In our evidence to the Revision Committee, we did not propose any particular structural solution but simply noted the Archbishop’s view that structural solutions were necessary and that different proposals for special dioceses or religious communities could provide a way forward.
Thursday, 12 March 2009
ENGLISH CHRISTIANS CAN’T SAY WE WEREN’T WARNED
Whatever the historical arguments over the accuracy of the 1851 religious census of England and Wales, there were a lot more people in church in Victoria’s reign than there are now in Elizabeth II’s.
As Victorian retrospection becomes fashionable through the TV programmes of the likes of Mr Jeremy Paxman, it is worth reflecting on the precise nature of the Christianity which, at the very highest, 50 per cent of the English and Welsh population was receiving every Sunday in established and non-conformist churches.
It was overwhelmingly biblically orthodox in theology and Protestant in style. The two-headed monster of liberalism and ritualism, which so devastated particularly the Church of England as the 20th century unfolded, was gestating in its egg as the census returns were coming in.
So in 1851 English and Welsh churches were full to bursting with biblical Christianity sounding out from the pulpits and low-church Protestantism practised in the pews. The South Yorkshire parish church Cranmer’s Curate serves was built just before the 1851 census and the ministry it initially received was clearly Evangelical Protestant. You only have to look at the design of the building to work that out.
In 1851 the newly-built church required an upstairs gallery to accommodate the congregation and its Sunday Schools (plural because there were so many children they couldn’t all meet at once). But by 2000 the gallery was redundant (apart from providing storage space for dust-gathering choir music) because the congregation had dwindled to around 40 mainly elderly adults and there were no children in the parish church on Christmas Day in 1999.
What went wrong?
By the end of the 19th century the church had visibly gone ‘up the candle’ under the ministry of a Tractarian-influenced incumbent. That didn’t initially impact on numbers because the culture still favoured church-going at the end of the Victorian era.
But, make no mistake, the loss of Evangelical edge certainly impacted on attendance as the War Memorial gathered names during the 20th century. A complacent religious shrine, used by its devotees to project a sense of transcendence onto their social respectability, was simply unable to cope with the storm clouds of scepticism gathering over wider society, which unleashed their hailstones in the 1960s.
Something that looked so good in 1851 within a generation had sowed the seeds of its own decline.
The Anglican Evangelical J.C. Ryle (1816-1900) saw through the spiritual fragility of mid-19th century churches full to bursting.
In his Expository Thoughts on Matthew’s Gospel, published in 1856, he wrote this on Matthew 6v16-24: ‘Let us learn from our Lord’s caution about worldliness what immense need we all have to watch and pray against an earthly spirit. What are the vast majority of professing Christians round us doing? They are “laying up treasure on earth.” There can be no mistake about it. Their tastes, their ways, their habits tell a fearful tale. They are not “laying up treasure in heaven.” Oh! let us all beware that we do not sink into hell by paying excessive attention to lawful things. Open transgression of God’s law slays its thousands, but worldliness its tens of thousands.’
So we can’t say we weren’t warned.
As Victorian retrospection becomes fashionable through the TV programmes of the likes of Mr Jeremy Paxman, it is worth reflecting on the precise nature of the Christianity which, at the very highest, 50 per cent of the English and Welsh population was receiving every Sunday in established and non-conformist churches.
It was overwhelmingly biblically orthodox in theology and Protestant in style. The two-headed monster of liberalism and ritualism, which so devastated particularly the Church of England as the 20th century unfolded, was gestating in its egg as the census returns were coming in.
So in 1851 English and Welsh churches were full to bursting with biblical Christianity sounding out from the pulpits and low-church Protestantism practised in the pews. The South Yorkshire parish church Cranmer’s Curate serves was built just before the 1851 census and the ministry it initially received was clearly Evangelical Protestant. You only have to look at the design of the building to work that out.
In 1851 the newly-built church required an upstairs gallery to accommodate the congregation and its Sunday Schools (plural because there were so many children they couldn’t all meet at once). But by 2000 the gallery was redundant (apart from providing storage space for dust-gathering choir music) because the congregation had dwindled to around 40 mainly elderly adults and there were no children in the parish church on Christmas Day in 1999.
What went wrong?
By the end of the 19th century the church had visibly gone ‘up the candle’ under the ministry of a Tractarian-influenced incumbent. That didn’t initially impact on numbers because the culture still favoured church-going at the end of the Victorian era.
But, make no mistake, the loss of Evangelical edge certainly impacted on attendance as the War Memorial gathered names during the 20th century. A complacent religious shrine, used by its devotees to project a sense of transcendence onto their social respectability, was simply unable to cope with the storm clouds of scepticism gathering over wider society, which unleashed their hailstones in the 1960s.
Something that looked so good in 1851 within a generation had sowed the seeds of its own decline.
The Anglican Evangelical J.C. Ryle (1816-1900) saw through the spiritual fragility of mid-19th century churches full to bursting.
In his Expository Thoughts on Matthew’s Gospel, published in 1856, he wrote this on Matthew 6v16-24: ‘Let us learn from our Lord’s caution about worldliness what immense need we all have to watch and pray against an earthly spirit. What are the vast majority of professing Christians round us doing? They are “laying up treasure on earth.” There can be no mistake about it. Their tastes, their ways, their habits tell a fearful tale. They are not “laying up treasure in heaven.” Oh! let us all beware that we do not sink into hell by paying excessive attention to lawful things. Open transgression of God’s law slays its thousands, but worldliness its tens of thousands.’
So we can’t say we weren’t warned.
Wednesday, 11 March 2009
FLAWED RATIONALE FOR EVANGELICAL DIVERSITY
The rat has popped its head from the under the skirting board. The rodent in question is the argument that always rears its head when anyone takes a stand for Classic Evangelicalism:
Evangelicals disagreed in the past; therefore Evangelicalism is intrinsically diverse; therefore no one, least of all a Reform man like Cranmer’s Curate, can make a claim that there is such a thing as authentic Evangelicalism.
This argument was articulated by a gentleman called ‘Michael’ on the Fulcrum website in response to cc’s post about the ‘Spirituality of Unity’ conference and Fulcrum’s need for a rebuke (http://www.fulcrum-anglican.org.uk/forum/thread.cfm?thread=10189):
“Julian Mann was trying to insist on a golden age of Classic Evangelicalism which never ever existed. There has always been diversity.
A good example was when the more conservative Record refused to publish an article against slavery in 1833 just before the successful bill. It was promptly published by the Christian Observor and one notes the glee of the editor S C Wilks.”
Of course, Evangelicals disagreed in the past. That is a matter of historical fact. Of course, they will go on disagreeing until the Lord Jesus returns. That is a matter of fallen human nature.
But the reality of disagreement does not mean Evangelicals should be disagreeing in areas where they shouldn’t be, for such ‘diversity’ dishonours our Lord and is unloving both to God's Church and a lost world.
Cranmer’s Curate identifies four contemporary issues on which Evangelicals should not be disagreed:
• The exclusive supremacy of our Lord Jesus Christ. Men and women the world over, irrespective of their religion, culture or ethnicity, need to put their personal trust in Him for their eternal salvation (cf Acts 4v12, Romans 10v14-17).
• Jesus Christ died in our place, taking the divine punishment our sins deserve (cf Isaiah 53v5, 2 Corinthians 5v12, 1 Peter 3v18).
• God’s ordering of male headship for the leadership of His Church and the family (cf Ephesians 5v22-33, 1 Timothy 2v8-15).
• The fact that the God-created institution of life-long, one-man-one-woman marriage is the only right context for the expression of sexual love (cf Mark 10v6-9, 1 Corinthians 6v9-11).
Evangelicals who appeal to the principle of ‘theological nuance’ to buttress diversity in these areas must honestly ask themselves whether they are wanting to wriggle out of what God’s Word is clearly saying.
Evangelicals disagreed in the past; therefore Evangelicalism is intrinsically diverse; therefore no one, least of all a Reform man like Cranmer’s Curate, can make a claim that there is such a thing as authentic Evangelicalism.
This argument was articulated by a gentleman called ‘Michael’ on the Fulcrum website in response to cc’s post about the ‘Spirituality of Unity’ conference and Fulcrum’s need for a rebuke (http://www.fulcrum-anglican.org.uk/forum/thread.cfm?thread=10189):
“Julian Mann was trying to insist on a golden age of Classic Evangelicalism which never ever existed. There has always been diversity.
A good example was when the more conservative Record refused to publish an article against slavery in 1833 just before the successful bill. It was promptly published by the Christian Observor and one notes the glee of the editor S C Wilks.”
Of course, Evangelicals disagreed in the past. That is a matter of historical fact. Of course, they will go on disagreeing until the Lord Jesus returns. That is a matter of fallen human nature.
But the reality of disagreement does not mean Evangelicals should be disagreeing in areas where they shouldn’t be, for such ‘diversity’ dishonours our Lord and is unloving both to God's Church and a lost world.
Cranmer’s Curate identifies four contemporary issues on which Evangelicals should not be disagreed:
• The exclusive supremacy of our Lord Jesus Christ. Men and women the world over, irrespective of their religion, culture or ethnicity, need to put their personal trust in Him for their eternal salvation (cf Acts 4v12, Romans 10v14-17).
• Jesus Christ died in our place, taking the divine punishment our sins deserve (cf Isaiah 53v5, 2 Corinthians 5v12, 1 Peter 3v18).
• God’s ordering of male headship for the leadership of His Church and the family (cf Ephesians 5v22-33, 1 Timothy 2v8-15).
• The fact that the God-created institution of life-long, one-man-one-woman marriage is the only right context for the expression of sexual love (cf Mark 10v6-9, 1 Corinthians 6v9-11).
Evangelicals who appeal to the principle of ‘theological nuance’ to buttress diversity in these areas must honestly ask themselves whether they are wanting to wriggle out of what God’s Word is clearly saying.
Tuesday, 10 March 2009
'SPIRITUALITY OF UNITY' MUST INCLUDE REBUKE FOR FULCRUM
For the sake of the Gospel, the liberal-leaning Evangelical Anglican group Fulcrum must be publicly rebuked at its upcoming ‘Spirituality of Unity’ conference in London.
This task falls to the one Conservative Evangelical platform speaker, Canon Hugh Palmer, Rector of All Souls’ Langham Place, the large gathered church in central London, which has been a bastion of faithful, Classic Evangelicalism for more than half a century.
Fulcrum should be publicly rebuked for the following:
• Its public behaviour at the time of the 2003 National Evangelical Anglican Congress in Blackpool. It was Fulcrum who disrupted Evangelical unity at NEAC4, not those who wanted to make a clear stand against false teaching.
• Its refusal to get behind the Jerusalem Declaration at NEAC5 at All Souls’ Langham Place last November (and that is putting it politely). Canon Palmer is a supporter of the Jerusalem Declaration, which as cc argued in the earlier post is a rallying point for all authentic, Bible-believing, Gospel-proclaiming Anglicans the world over, affirming as it does the biblical doctrine of the 39 Articles, the Ordinal and the Book of Common Prayer.
• The recent and unconscionable attack on the expertise of the Barnabas Fund's founder and director Dr Patrick Sookhdeo in a main article on its web-site. Dr Sookhdeo's credibility is borne out not only by his extensive knowledge of Islam in many different cultures but also by the fact that the charity he heads is providing practical support for some of the most vulnerable Christians on God’s earth, who are victims of vicious and violent Muslim persecution. The Barnabas Fund has been faithfully serving those imprisoned, impoverished servants of our Lord Jesus Christ with whom he personally identified in Matthew 25 – ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to the least of these my brethren, you did it to me’ (Matthew 25v40 - RSV).
Cc is not one to commend the cultural influence of the Rolling Stones. But it is vitally important that ‘Spirituality of Unity’ does not turn out to be an album of smoochy tunes such as ‘Angie’ (in the Fulcrum version 'Elaine') or ‘Wild Horses Wouldn’t Tear Me Away From You’.
In the cause of real Christian love, ‘Spirituality of Unity’ needs a robust rebuking belter along the lines of ‘Hey You Get Off My Cloud’ or ‘I Can’t Get No Satisfaction’.
Canon Palmer would be advised to get practising his best Evangelical Mick Jagger in front of the mirror in time for the Fulcrum gig in May.
This task falls to the one Conservative Evangelical platform speaker, Canon Hugh Palmer, Rector of All Souls’ Langham Place, the large gathered church in central London, which has been a bastion of faithful, Classic Evangelicalism for more than half a century.
Fulcrum should be publicly rebuked for the following:
• Its public behaviour at the time of the 2003 National Evangelical Anglican Congress in Blackpool. It was Fulcrum who disrupted Evangelical unity at NEAC4, not those who wanted to make a clear stand against false teaching.
• Its refusal to get behind the Jerusalem Declaration at NEAC5 at All Souls’ Langham Place last November (and that is putting it politely). Canon Palmer is a supporter of the Jerusalem Declaration, which as cc argued in the earlier post is a rallying point for all authentic, Bible-believing, Gospel-proclaiming Anglicans the world over, affirming as it does the biblical doctrine of the 39 Articles, the Ordinal and the Book of Common Prayer.
• The recent and unconscionable attack on the expertise of the Barnabas Fund's founder and director Dr Patrick Sookhdeo in a main article on its web-site. Dr Sookhdeo's credibility is borne out not only by his extensive knowledge of Islam in many different cultures but also by the fact that the charity he heads is providing practical support for some of the most vulnerable Christians on God’s earth, who are victims of vicious and violent Muslim persecution. The Barnabas Fund has been faithfully serving those imprisoned, impoverished servants of our Lord Jesus Christ with whom he personally identified in Matthew 25 – ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to the least of these my brethren, you did it to me’ (Matthew 25v40 - RSV).
Cc is not one to commend the cultural influence of the Rolling Stones. But it is vitally important that ‘Spirituality of Unity’ does not turn out to be an album of smoochy tunes such as ‘Angie’ (in the Fulcrum version 'Elaine') or ‘Wild Horses Wouldn’t Tear Me Away From You’.
In the cause of real Christian love, ‘Spirituality of Unity’ needs a robust rebuking belter along the lines of ‘Hey You Get Off My Cloud’ or ‘I Can’t Get No Satisfaction’.
Canon Palmer would be advised to get practising his best Evangelical Mick Jagger in front of the mirror in time for the Fulcrum gig in May.
Sunday, 8 March 2009
REASONS FOR BACKING THE NOT POSH THEOLOGICAL COLLEGE
As he hangs up his theological tomes and rests his two brains on his pillow for the night, Oak Hill principal Dr Michael Ovey must sometimes wonder who his friends are.
Respected incumbents with impeccable Classic Evangelical credentials continue to steer their ordinands towards ‘Evangelical’ theological colleges with liberal leanings in old universities and won’t get solidly behind the end-of-Piccadilly-line Oak Hill.
Here are some reasons from a parish plodder why Dr Ovey deserves to sleep soundly at night:
· Classic Evangelicalism needs its own theological college. We need to nourish our constituency with the best possible theological water supply and enable it to have a real positive influence for the Gospel in the Church of England and more widely in post-Christian Britain. Dr Ovey’s predecessor Dr David Peterson, who became principal in 1996, did to Oak Hill what Brian Clough did to Nottingham Forest in the 1970s. He turned it into a centre of excellence – albeit it took him ten years to do it. But then theological colleges are not football clubs. The positivity has continued under the new manager (principal), the evidence of this being the outstanding apologia for the biblical doctrine of penal substitution, 'Pierced for our Transgressions' (IVP, 2007), written by Dr Ovey and two of his students. If the Classic Evangelical constituency doesn't get behind Oak Hill, then the liberal establishment can say we don't want our own theological college. And they would be right.
· Oak Hill is the only dog on the track for a distinctively Classic Evangelical ministerial training centre in the Church of England. The influence of the independent Kingham Hill Trust allows for Evangelical succession in Oak Hill's principal. Of course, Richard Turnbull is doing a fantastic job as principal of Wycliffe Hall in Oxford. But without the safeguard of an independent trust Wycliffe will be the victim of ecclesiastical Buggins' turn. Cranmer’s Curate respectfully questions what planet you are on if you think Wycliffe won’t go to a Fulcrum ‘Evangelical’ when Dr Turnbull goes.
· You’re a Christian, justified by faith in our Lord Jesus Christ and in His 'full, perfect and sufficient sacrifice, oblation and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world', including yours. So you are free from the bourgeois English obsession with Oxbridge. The Gospel comes first – unless you have another agenda as an Oxbridge wannabe. Are you wanting a half-blue in tiddly-winks?
If you're worried that you would have to sign up for limited atonement if you go to Oak Hill, then the quotation above from the Book of Common Prayer should set your mind at rest.
Respected incumbents with impeccable Classic Evangelical credentials continue to steer their ordinands towards ‘Evangelical’ theological colleges with liberal leanings in old universities and won’t get solidly behind the end-of-Piccadilly-line Oak Hill.
Here are some reasons from a parish plodder why Dr Ovey deserves to sleep soundly at night:
· Classic Evangelicalism needs its own theological college. We need to nourish our constituency with the best possible theological water supply and enable it to have a real positive influence for the Gospel in the Church of England and more widely in post-Christian Britain. Dr Ovey’s predecessor Dr David Peterson, who became principal in 1996, did to Oak Hill what Brian Clough did to Nottingham Forest in the 1970s. He turned it into a centre of excellence – albeit it took him ten years to do it. But then theological colleges are not football clubs. The positivity has continued under the new manager (principal), the evidence of this being the outstanding apologia for the biblical doctrine of penal substitution, 'Pierced for our Transgressions' (IVP, 2007), written by Dr Ovey and two of his students. If the Classic Evangelical constituency doesn't get behind Oak Hill, then the liberal establishment can say we don't want our own theological college. And they would be right.
· Oak Hill is the only dog on the track for a distinctively Classic Evangelical ministerial training centre in the Church of England. The influence of the independent Kingham Hill Trust allows for Evangelical succession in Oak Hill's principal. Of course, Richard Turnbull is doing a fantastic job as principal of Wycliffe Hall in Oxford. But without the safeguard of an independent trust Wycliffe will be the victim of ecclesiastical Buggins' turn. Cranmer’s Curate respectfully questions what planet you are on if you think Wycliffe won’t go to a Fulcrum ‘Evangelical’ when Dr Turnbull goes.
· You’re a Christian, justified by faith in our Lord Jesus Christ and in His 'full, perfect and sufficient sacrifice, oblation and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world', including yours. So you are free from the bourgeois English obsession with Oxbridge. The Gospel comes first – unless you have another agenda as an Oxbridge wannabe. Are you wanting a half-blue in tiddly-winks?
If you're worried that you would have to sign up for limited atonement if you go to Oak Hill, then the quotation above from the Book of Common Prayer should set your mind at rest.
Tuesday, 3 March 2009
OXBRIDGE OBSESSION HINDERS REFORM
Oxbridge produced the pro-active Evangelical Reformers of the early 16th century. In Cambridge in the 1520's, the spread of Evangelicalism seems to have been lubricated by ale as young undergraduates and fellows discussed Evangelical ideas emanating from Germany in the White Horse Inn.
But that was in the vigorous adolescence of English civilisation. Now Oxbridge is a frighteningly complacent institution saturated with post-modernism, liberalism, and a spirit of secular self-congratulation.
Wonderfully, when a person is converted to Christ, that enables them to transcend their upbringing and education. By God’s grace people do get converted to Christ despite the toxic spiritual atmosphere of Oxbridge through the ministry of the Christian Unions and the Evangelical churches.
But conversion does not enable a person to escape from their human formation entirely. Inevitably, the influences remain and the problem with Oxbridge influences is that they now run profoundly counter to producing church reformers.
Oxbridge is in fact a busted flush in terms of producing people capable of instigating counter-establishment change in other walks of life. Privilege and contacts of course enable entree into the liberal-dominated, opinion-forming institutions of our country, such as mainstream politics, academia, the legal profession, the arts, the liberal press and the BBC, but the scions of Oxbridge lack the hunger, the restlessness, the counter-cultural edge necessary for those capable of challenging the status quo.
That is why Reform, as a movement working for the Evangelical transformation of a liberal-dominated institution such as the Church of England, desperately needs to escape from its obsession with Oxbridge.
This obsession manifests itself in a number of ways. The large Reform churches remain dominated by Oxbridge-educated clergy and seem reluctant when vacancies become available to depart from that pattern, even though there are outstanding non-Oxbridge candidates available, who would in fact be capable of shaking these churches up. Perhaps that is why they are not appointed.
The excellently Evangelical theological college Oak Hill in north London still seems to struggle to attract Conservative Evangelical ordinands away from the Oxbridge colleges. Yes, Wycliffe Hall in Oxford has hugely improved under its rigorously Evangelical Principal Richard Turnbull, but what is the excuse for a Reform-supporting ordinand passing over Oak Hill for Ridley Hall in Cambridge?
This is not about justifying a theology of envy. ‘Chippiness’ is as bad for the Gospel and the cause of Reform as snobbery.
But the painful reality is that the liberal establishment of the Church of England will continue to sleep snugly at night in its episcopal palaces whilst Reform continues to wrap itself around with its Oxbridge scarf.
But that was in the vigorous adolescence of English civilisation. Now Oxbridge is a frighteningly complacent institution saturated with post-modernism, liberalism, and a spirit of secular self-congratulation.
Wonderfully, when a person is converted to Christ, that enables them to transcend their upbringing and education. By God’s grace people do get converted to Christ despite the toxic spiritual atmosphere of Oxbridge through the ministry of the Christian Unions and the Evangelical churches.
But conversion does not enable a person to escape from their human formation entirely. Inevitably, the influences remain and the problem with Oxbridge influences is that they now run profoundly counter to producing church reformers.
Oxbridge is in fact a busted flush in terms of producing people capable of instigating counter-establishment change in other walks of life. Privilege and contacts of course enable entree into the liberal-dominated, opinion-forming institutions of our country, such as mainstream politics, academia, the legal profession, the arts, the liberal press and the BBC, but the scions of Oxbridge lack the hunger, the restlessness, the counter-cultural edge necessary for those capable of challenging the status quo.
That is why Reform, as a movement working for the Evangelical transformation of a liberal-dominated institution such as the Church of England, desperately needs to escape from its obsession with Oxbridge.
This obsession manifests itself in a number of ways. The large Reform churches remain dominated by Oxbridge-educated clergy and seem reluctant when vacancies become available to depart from that pattern, even though there are outstanding non-Oxbridge candidates available, who would in fact be capable of shaking these churches up. Perhaps that is why they are not appointed.
The excellently Evangelical theological college Oak Hill in north London still seems to struggle to attract Conservative Evangelical ordinands away from the Oxbridge colleges. Yes, Wycliffe Hall in Oxford has hugely improved under its rigorously Evangelical Principal Richard Turnbull, but what is the excuse for a Reform-supporting ordinand passing over Oak Hill for Ridley Hall in Cambridge?
This is not about justifying a theology of envy. ‘Chippiness’ is as bad for the Gospel and the cause of Reform as snobbery.
But the painful reality is that the liberal establishment of the Church of England will continue to sleep snugly at night in its episcopal palaces whilst Reform continues to wrap itself around with its Oxbridge scarf.
Monday, 2 March 2009
IDOL WARNING ON CHURCH GROWTH
Church growth is a wonderful gift of God, but not when it is made into an idol. Then it becomes profoundly toxic.
The northern parish church your curate is privileged to serve is showing distinct signs of growth in a number of departments including numerical, and this has been noticed by both the congregation and the wider community.
For this Cranmer’s Curate gives God all the glory and wishes as a matter of theological principle to take no credit for himself. Growth is what happens when God’s Gospel is proclaimed and when churches get transformed by God’s Gospel. Growth is what God’s Gospel does.
But your curate’s spiritual anti-virus software has registered an urgent ‘idol warning’ in response to all this talk of our ‘growing church’.
The Apostle John in his first epistle makes it absolutely clear that professing Christians can fall into the sin of idolatry. ‘Little children’, he writes to his Christian readers, ‘keep yourselves from idols’ (1 John 5v21 – RSV).
The idols John has in mind are the false, non-apostolic ideas of Christ, his person and his work, that the false teachers, against whom he wrote his epistle, were trying to foist on the Christian community. These false theological views of Christ are ‘idols’, for they are man-made constructions in the image of the surrounding religious and philosophical culture.
The history of God’s people in the Old Testament underlies John’s warning about idolatry. The pre-exilic Israelites living in the land under unfaithful kings happily combined worship of the true and living God, the invisible Yahweh, with devotion to various pagan deities with physical and visible manifestations.
That can be a danger for Christians – we can worship the invisible Creator, who is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, at the same time as worshipping visible created things, including church growth.
After all, you can see church growth. You can see more bodies in the pews or detachable chairs on Sundays; more children and young people trooping out for their groups; more people participating in the church’s mid-week activities; more people coming along to the church’s outreach activities. It’s visible and speaks of the success of 'our brand', hence the danger of idolatry.
Surely a ‘thriving’ church is, yes, growing numerically, but is peopled by a growing number of Christian Calebs, the hero of Numbers 13 who wanted to go up and possess the land of Canaan whilst his peers shrank back. These godly Calebs, like Luke in his account of the Jerusalem church (cf Acts 2v41-47), will register the fact that God is growing his church numerically, but they are too busy fisking through the wilderness of this world on their way to the Promised Land, which they are desperate to enter in order to see the Lord Christ face to face, to bang on about their attendance figures at church growth conferences.
Certainly, churches that are worshipping their numerical growth should not be describing themselves as ‘thriving’ in an Evangelical press recruitment ad.
The northern parish church your curate is privileged to serve is showing distinct signs of growth in a number of departments including numerical, and this has been noticed by both the congregation and the wider community.
For this Cranmer’s Curate gives God all the glory and wishes as a matter of theological principle to take no credit for himself. Growth is what happens when God’s Gospel is proclaimed and when churches get transformed by God’s Gospel. Growth is what God’s Gospel does.
But your curate’s spiritual anti-virus software has registered an urgent ‘idol warning’ in response to all this talk of our ‘growing church’.
The Apostle John in his first epistle makes it absolutely clear that professing Christians can fall into the sin of idolatry. ‘Little children’, he writes to his Christian readers, ‘keep yourselves from idols’ (1 John 5v21 – RSV).
The idols John has in mind are the false, non-apostolic ideas of Christ, his person and his work, that the false teachers, against whom he wrote his epistle, were trying to foist on the Christian community. These false theological views of Christ are ‘idols’, for they are man-made constructions in the image of the surrounding religious and philosophical culture.
The history of God’s people in the Old Testament underlies John’s warning about idolatry. The pre-exilic Israelites living in the land under unfaithful kings happily combined worship of the true and living God, the invisible Yahweh, with devotion to various pagan deities with physical and visible manifestations.
That can be a danger for Christians – we can worship the invisible Creator, who is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, at the same time as worshipping visible created things, including church growth.
After all, you can see church growth. You can see more bodies in the pews or detachable chairs on Sundays; more children and young people trooping out for their groups; more people participating in the church’s mid-week activities; more people coming along to the church’s outreach activities. It’s visible and speaks of the success of 'our brand', hence the danger of idolatry.
Surely a ‘thriving’ church is, yes, growing numerically, but is peopled by a growing number of Christian Calebs, the hero of Numbers 13 who wanted to go up and possess the land of Canaan whilst his peers shrank back. These godly Calebs, like Luke in his account of the Jerusalem church (cf Acts 2v41-47), will register the fact that God is growing his church numerically, but they are too busy fisking through the wilderness of this world on their way to the Promised Land, which they are desperate to enter in order to see the Lord Christ face to face, to bang on about their attendance figures at church growth conferences.
Certainly, churches that are worshipping their numerical growth should not be describing themselves as ‘thriving’ in an Evangelical press recruitment ad.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
