The Payneful Truth: Recent Episodes
Tony Payne
This is the audio version of a regular weekly email journal from Tony Payne, that seeks to apply the liberating truth of Christ crucified to every aspect of life and ministry.
www.thepaynefultruth.online
Dear friends,
Body image today often refers to our perception of our own physical bodies. But Paul used the image of the body 2000 years ago when he spoke of the Body of Christ, and that’s what we need to explore when looking at 1 Corinthians chapter 12. It is particularly important in today’s controversies that we understand the image of the body.
Yours,
Phillip
Freely available, supported by generosity.
If you enjoy Two Ways News, why not lend us a hand? Consider joining our Supporters Club—friends who make it possible for us to keep producing this article/podcast.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends,
We are glad to bring this episode to you free of charge by the generosity of our friends. If you'd like to be a friend and give generously, there are details on how to do so at the bottom of the transcript.
In 1 Corinthians 12-14, we come to a passage that has dominated Christian discussion for the last 60 years. It is one that Peter and I have been thinking and preaching on for most of our public ministries. But I hope that you find this fresh take on the passage to be a helpful way of understanding Paul’s letter.
Yours,
Phillip
Freely available, supported by generosity.
If you enjoy Two Ways News, why not lend us a hand? Consider joining our Supporters Club—friends who make it possible for us to keep producing this article/podcast.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends,
One of the longest standing debates amongst Christians is, strangely, about one of our strongest illustrations of unity. For the Lord’s Supper is meant to be an expression of our unity in the death of the Lord Jesus Christ as we proclaim his resurrection. Yet as long ago as 1 Corinthians was first written, we find Christians divided at this event to such an extent that Paul declared that what they did was not the Lord’s Supper.
So what is the Lord’s Supper about, and what were they doing that so disqualified them from celebrating it?
It is an interesting and defining passage on this important activity which is so central to church life.
Yours,
Phillip
Freely available, supported by generosity.
If you enjoy Two Ways News, why not lend us a hand? Consider joining our Supporters Club—friends who make it possible for us to keep producing this article/podcast.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends,
This episode of Two Ways News brings us to one of the most controversial passages of the Bible. Since the Sexual Revolution and feminist movement of the late 20th century, the roles of men and women have been fiercely debated in our society. Within the church, this topic has been contested with the main focus being on the various ministries of men and women.
So when we come to 1 Corinthians 11 and read of women praying and prophesying, our debaters are alerted to possible data for discussion. But when it turns to the head covering of women, the issues brought up are very complicated. I doubt that our discussion here will be the last word or even a significant turning point in the debate. But I hope that, irrespective of the debate, we may make 1 Corinthians 11 a little clearer.
By the way, I recently spoke on Prophecy Today at the Kings Birthday Conference. You can listen to the recordings of that conference at phillipjensen.com.
Yours,
Phillip
Freely available, supported by generosity.
If you enjoy Two Ways News, why not lend us a hand? Consider joining our Supporters Club—friends who make it possible for us to keep producing this article/podcast.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends,
We come at last to what appears to be the end of the discussion, which started in chapter 8 of 1 Corinthians on food offered to idols. Here, with the background of thinking about the existence of idols in chapter 8, the priority of other people’s salvation in chapter 9, and then the prophetic warning against all idolatry in the first half of chapter 10, we finally reach the concluding discussion on food offered to idols. Whether in the idol temple at the time of offering, buying meat already so offered, or eating the meat in somebody’s home, the question of our participation is critical.
I hope you profit from this discussion on Christian freedom and responsibility.
Yours,
Phillip
Freely available, supported by generosity.
If you enjoy Two Ways News, why not lend us a hand? Consider joining our Supporters Club—friends who make it possible for us to keep producing this article/podcast.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends,
Idolatry is as ancient and universal as slavery. Paul moves in his discussion of food offered to idols (chapter 8) to his enslaving himself for others’ salvation (chapter 9) to now address idolatry itself (chapter 10). Here we have the clear command, “flee from idolatry”, with the terrifying examples of God’s anger poured out on Israel whenever they engaged in idolatry.
This passage not only gives us clear Bible teachings on the sin of idolatry, but in the process it raises the issue of the Old Testament’s importance for Christians.
Two Ways News is provided free of charge by other people’s generosity. If you are not yet one of those kindly providing Two Ways News for others, can I encourage you to do so? You can find out more here.
Yours,
Phillip
Freely available, supported by generosity.
If you enjoy Two Ways News, why not lend us a hand? Consider joining our Supporters Club—friends who make it possible for us to keep producing this article/podcast.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends,
Slavery is one of the ancient world’s most common practices. The notion that chattel slavery would be banned around the world was unthinkable until relatively recent times; yet today in our society, it is chattel slavery itself that is unthinkable.
All slavery is a restriction of freedom, and so our title ‘Freedom of Slavery’ is intentionally paradoxical. But then, Paul’s attitude to slavery in 1 Corinthians 9 is something of a paradox. For in this freedom, he chooses to enslave himself for others that they may enjoy the freedom of the gospel. It is in this context that we have one of the great passages on cross-cultural evangelism.
I hope you enjoy this episode of Two Ways News. If you want to contact us with a comment or question, please email us at respond@twm.email.
Yours,
Phillip
Freely available, supported by generosity.
If you enjoy Two Ways News, why not lend us a hand? Consider joining our Supporters Club—friends who make it possible for us to keep producing this article/podcast.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends,
Welcome again to Two Ways News. We do appreciate your fellowship in recommending this podcast to friends and colleagues.
Today we are looking at freedom from slavery in the beginning of 1 Corinthians 9, but we decided to call this episode ‘My Rights’, for the way the passage has been translated raises the question of ‘rights’. The passage is really about the authority of the Apostle—an authority he does not use in his concern for other people’s salvation.
It is an extraordinary explanation of the nature of Christ’s work of salvation, preached in the apostolic gospel and lived out by the Apostle Paul.
Yours,
Phillip
Freely available, supported by generosity.
If you enjoy Two Ways News, why not lend us a hand? Consider joining our Supporters Club—friends who make it possible for us to keep producing this article/podcast.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends,
“Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up”. What a challenge Paul gives to us in the first verse of his answer to the Corinthians’ question about food offered to idols.
As we continue our discussion of this part of 1 Corinthians, I hope you will share with us the wonder of thinking lovingly about knowledge. For knowledge, especially the knowledge of God and his ways, is very important. But knowledge, like many good things, can be used for evil as well as for good. Without love, our knowledge will be used for our benefit instead of the benefit of others. And so we will fall under the condemnation of being puffed up instead of building others up.
It is just so fascinating how Paul’s discussions of particular problems in 1st century Corinth open up for us such permanently important topics.
Yours,
Phillip
Freely available, supported by generosity.
If you enjoy Two Ways News, why not lend us a hand? Consider joining our Supporters Club—friends who make it possible for us to keep producing this article/podcast.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends,
This week, we come to a new section in the writing of Paul to the Corinthians. In chapters 8–11 he is dealing with an issue that the Corinthians have raised with him: namely, food offered to idols. I confess that when I first preached on this passage, I wondered about its relevance to our congregation. How wrong I was! God’s word is always relevant, and this passage turned out to be one of the most foundational passages for our congregation. For apart from the many overseas students who grew up with food offered to idols, the treatment of this issue by Paul raises the great questions of freedom, knowledge, and love.
This week, we look at knowledge.
Yours,
Phillip
Freely available, supported by generosity.
If you enjoy Two Ways News, why not lend us a hand? Consider joining our Supporters Club—friends who make it possible for us to keep producing this article/podcast.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends,
For many years, Christians have been teaching on marriage and family life. But recently, the focus has moved somewhat towards singleness. This is in part because of our society’s movement away from marriage towards singleness, which is itself somewhat due to an attempt to correct an overemphasis on marriage.
This week in Two Ways News, we are discussing the issue of singleness not for either of those reasons, but because of Paul’s dealing with the subject in 1 Corinthians 7:25-40. So, following on from Paul’s discussion of contentment, we address the issues around whether we should marry and the consequences that flow from it.
Thank you for providing feedback. We are glad to hear how much you are enjoying our discussions, and are encouraged to think further by your questions and comments to us at respond@twm.email.
Yours,
Phillip
Freely available, supported by generosity.
If you enjoy Two Ways News, why not lend us a hand? Consider joining our Supporters Club—friends who make it possible for us to keep producing this article/podcast.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends,
As we work through 1 Corinthians 7, we come to a paragraph that seems to have nothing to do with glorifying God with your body in love, sex, or marriage. Suddenly, there is a paragraph about slavery and circumcision. But this is the most important passage in the chapter, for it is simply using these topics to discuss contentment, which is the key to love, sex, and marriage.
I hope you enjoy this discussion. Please remember that Two Ways News is provided free of charge by the generosity of friends. If you would like to become one of our generous friends, at the end of the transcript are details regarding how you could contribute.
Yours,
Phillip
Freely available, supported by generosity.
If you enjoy Two Ways News, why not lend us a hand? Consider joining our Supporters Club—friends who make it possible for us to keep producing this article/podcast.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends,
A mission church has many basic Christian morality issues to resolve. The old culture, not built on the gospel, will have practices inconsistent with the gospel. But as with most cultures, these practices are assumed rather than thought out. The gospel revolutionises all cultures, and Paul the Apostle is dealing with the marriage cultures of Corinth in 1 Corinthians 7. This episode of Two Ways News is a difficult unravelling of Paul’s advice on several complex issues.
Yours,
Phillip
Freely available, supported by generosity.
If you enjoy Two Ways News, why not lend us a hand? Consider joining our Supporters Club—friends who make it possible for us to keep producing this article/podcast.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends,
When Paul wrote to the Corinthians, he had to deal with many issues, some of which were raised by the Corinthians themselves. Several of the issues related to the subject of sexual morality. Chapters 5 and 6 of 1 Corinthians conclude with the importance of serving God with our bodies, and chapter 7 opens with the issue of how to serve God with your body in the face of sexual immoralities. The answer is not in celibacy, but a right understanding of sex in marriage. Peter and I are going to take several weeks to discuss the many issues raised in 1 Corinthians 7. This week, it’s sex in marriage, verses 1-6.
Yours,
Phillip
Freely available, supported by generosity.
If you enjoy Two Ways News, why not lend us a hand? Consider joining our Supporters Club—friends who make it possible for us to keep producing this article/podcast.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends,
The commandments of 1 Corinthians 6:15-20 are obvious: flee sexual immorality and glorify God in your body. However, Paul does not simply give commandments; he gives the rationale behind them. The rationale has to do with the meaning of the body in his thinking in terms of our creation, our resurrection, and our marital union with Christ. This densely argued paragraph provides for us a Christian understanding of ourselves as well as our motivation to live Christianly. I hope you enjoy hearing Peter and I struggling to grasp Paul’s reasoning.
Yours,
Phillip
Freely available, supported by generosity.
If you enjoy Two Ways News, why not lend us a hand? Consider joining our Supporters Club—friends who make it possible for us to keep producing this article/podcast.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends,
Hard passages of the Bible are great passages. The reason that they are hard is because we are not thinking biblically. Wrestling with these hard passages gives us the opportunity to change our thinking in order to be aligned with biblical thinking. 1 Corinthians 6:12-20 is notoriously difficult, and over the next two weeks, Peter and I are going to try to unravel some of its complexities. We start today by looking at the context.
Yours,
Phillip
Freely available, supported by generosity.
If you enjoy Two Ways News, why not lend us a hand? Consider joining our Supporters Club—friends who make it possible for us to keep producing this article/podcast.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends,
If ever there is a passage of the Bible that has caused controversy and division today, it is 1 Corinthians 6:9—11. There is not much doubt as to what the passage says or means, yet the application of this passage in the church and in society has led to great conflict. In today’s episode, Peter outlines something of the background of the conflict within the Anglican Communion over the last two decades, before we turn to the real pastoral importance of this passage in the lives of the leaders.
Yours,
Phillip
Freely available, supported by generosity.
If you enjoy Two Ways News, why not lend us a hand? Consider joining our Supporters Club—friends who make it possible for us to keep producing this article/podcast.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends,
1 Corinthians 6 opens with a very challenging issue of disputes within the congregation. The Corinthians seem to have blown up these minor disputes into lawsuits against each other. This raises for us a plethora of issues about resolving disputes inside the church and when it is appropriate and right to take issues beyond the church into public law courts. I’m sure you will find this issue as complex as Peter and I discovered in our conversation.
Yours,
Phillip
Freely available, supported by generosity.
If you enjoy Two Ways News, why not lend us a hand? Consider joining our Supporters Club—friends who make it possible for us to keep producing this article/podcast.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends,
Christians in Western society have had a large say in public morality. When appointed the Dean at our cathedral, I was told by several people that my role was to be the moral conscience of society. I thought I was supposed to preach the gospel, but what is the relationship of the gospel to public morality and of the church to the rest of society? 1 Corinthians 5 raises these issues for us; I hope you enjoy our discussion.
Yours,
Phillip
Freely available, supported by generosity.
If you enjoy Two Ways News, why not lend us a hand? Consider joining our Supporters Club—friends who make it possible for us to keep producing this article/podcast.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends,
Because of sin, immorality is universal. Sometimes it is so blatant that everybody can see it. But what happens if everybody can see it except for the church? In 1 Corinthians 5, Paul is dealing not only with immorality, but also with arrogance.
Yours,
Phillip
Freely available, supported by generosity.
If you enjoy Two Ways News, why not lend us a hand? Consider joining our Supporters Club—friends who make it possible for us to keep producing this article/podcast.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends,
Just as Western society is confused over the subject of identity, so we are confused over the issue of judgementalism. The modern push is to be a non-judgemental, inclusive society, but the reality is one of high condemnation and exclusion of people whose views or lifestyle differ from those in power.
Christians believe in the judgement of God, but what do these judgements involve? And what are the differences between discernment and condemnation? I hope you enjoy our consideration of 1 Corinthians chapter 4.
I remind you again of our point of contact, namely respond@twm.email.
Yours,
Phillip
Freely available, supported by generosity.
If you enjoy Two Ways News, why not lend us a hand? Consider joining our Supporters Club—friends who make it possible for us to keep producing this article/podcast.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends,
We do love to receive your questions and comments. The way to reach us is through respond@twm.email. We don’t promise to respond privately or publicly, but we do promise to read and consider your viewpoints and enquiries.
Today as we proceed through 1 Corinthians 3, we think of the pressing problem for modern Western culture: that of identity. Apparently, many people struggle with the questions, “Who am I?” or “What am I?”. This chapter answers these questions for Christians.
Yours,
Phillip
Freely available, supported by generosity.
If you enjoy Two Ways News, why not lend us a hand? Consider joining our Supporters Club—friends who make it possible for us to keep producing this article/podcast.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends,
We do appreciate comments and feedback, and even questions from our many subscribers. Sadly, we haven’t got the time or resources to be able to answer each question; however, two of the comments that came in to us on the Acts 17 passage we thought would be very helpful to air in this episode of Two Ways News, before we look at the two wisdoms contrasted in 1 Corinthians chapter 2.
Yours,
Phillip
Freely available, supported by generosity.
If you enjoy Two Ways News, why not lend us a hand? Consider joining our Supporters Club—friends who make it possible for us to keep producing this article/podcast.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends,
We do appreciate comments and feedback, and even questions from our many subscribers. Sadly, we haven’t got the time or resources to be able to answer each question, however two of the comments that came in to us on the Acts 17 passage we thought would be very helpful to air in this episode of Two Ways News, before we look at the two wisdoms contrasted in 1 Corinthians chapter 2.
Yours,
Phillip
Freely available, supported by generosity.
If you enjoy Two Ways News, why not lend us a hand? Consider joining our Supporters Club—friends who make it possible for us to keep producing this article/podcast.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends,
Is pride a virtue or a vice? Is it right or even wise to boast of oneself? Traditionally, modesty has long been commended and pride decried. But today, we encourage the young to be proud of themselves, and we hear celebrities of all kinds proclaiming pride in themselves and their achievements. What place, then, does pride have in the Christian life? Should we be proud to be Christians?
The ancient world, as with the modern, places great emphasis on learning, education and wisdom. The human ability to think deeply is one of the great distinctive characteristics of our species. But does God set limits on human wisdom? Can we judge God or even know him by our wisdom?
The gospel always undermines human pride in ways we never expect, and so I hope you enjoy our discussion in this episode. Thank you to those who have inspired conversations by contacting us and providing feedback; if you want to do the same, please write to us at respond@twm.email.
Yours,
Phillip
Scripture quotations are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Freely available, supported by generosity.
If you enjoy Two Ways News, why not lend us a hand? Consider joining our Supporters Club—friends who make it possible for us to keep producing this article/podcast.
To join the Supporters Club, follow the link to the ‘subscribe’ page. You’ll see that there’s:
-
a number of ‘paid options’. To join the Supporters Club take out one of the paid ‘subscription plans’ and know we are deeply grateful for your support!
-
also the free option (on the far right hand side)
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends,
Church division dishonours our Lord and creates great pain amongst his people. Sadly, it is all too frequent in our experience. But what is the nature of church unity, and what level of priority should we give to it? Clarity of thought and expression is very important when painful disagreements are being addressed; this is particularly true when we discuss the nature of unity and the church.
In Corinth was the disunited church of God. This is the issue that Paul discusses in his first letter to the Corinthians. However, we must remember that he not only addresses the particular situation of the Corinthian church, but also “all those who in every place call upon the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.”
Yours,
Phillip
Links & Recommendations
For more on this topic, listen to this talk…
Freely available, supported by generosity.
If you enjoy Two Ways News, why not lend us a hand? Consider joining our Supporters Club—friends who make it possible for us to keep producing this article/podcast.
To join the Supporters Club, follow the link to the ‘subscribe’ page. You’ll see that there’s:
-
a number of ‘paid options’. To join the Supporters Club take out one of the paid ‘subscription plans’ and know we are deeply grateful for your support!
-
also the free option (on the far right hand side)
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends,
Today we start our year’s work by looking at the opening of 1 Corinthians. It’s such an exciting letter covering so many topics that we look forward to God using this podcast to challenge us all.
Yours,
Phillip
Freely available, supported by generosity.
If you enjoy Two Ways News, why not lend us a hand? Consider joining our Supporters Club—friends who make it possible for us to keep producing this article/podcast.
To join the Supporters Club, follow the link to the ‘subscribe’ page. You’ll see that there’s:
-
a number of ‘paid options’. To join the Supporters Club take out one of the paid ‘subscription plans’ and know we are deeply grateful for your support!
-
also the free option (on the far right hand side)
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends,
Before we start our 2026 Two Ways News series on 1 Corinthians, we need to have an important discussion on Bondi and antisemitism. This is something that neither of us imagined would happen. Not all our listeners will agree with our views, but we hope the thinking and discussion is helpful grist to the mill.
Yours,
Phillip
Freely available, supported by generosity.
If you enjoy Two Ways News, why not lend us a hand? Consider joining our Supporters Club—friends who make it possible for us to keep producing this article/podcast.
To join the Supporters Club, click this link to the ‘subscribe’ page. You’ll see that there’s:
-
a number of ‘paid options’. To join the Supporters Club take out one of the paid ‘subscription plans’ and know we are deeply grateful for your support!
-
also the free option (on the far right hand side)
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends,
The climax of Paul’s great Athenian sermon is the call of God for all people to repent. But there are some strange elements in this call. One important element is its timing. Another is in the judgement “by a man”. Let’s listen afresh to Paul’s great gospel statement.
Yours,
Phillip
Freely available, supported by generosity.
If you enjoy Two Ways News, why not lend us a hand? Consider joining our Supporters Club—friends who make it possible for us to keep producing this article/podcast.
To join the Supporters Club, follow the link to the ‘subscribe’ page. You’ll see that there’s:
-
a number of ‘paid options’. To join the Supporters Club take out one of the paid ‘subscription plans’ and know we are deeply grateful for your support!
-
also the free option (on the far right hand side)
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends,
Fathers are so important in life, even in this anti-patriarchal age. For fatherhood is derived from God the Father. He is the provider and protector of us all, who knows our needs before we even ask. He is not far from us, and he is open to our prayers.
This is an important point in Paul’s logic as he attacks the inconsistency and incoherence of Athenian idolatry.
Yours,
Phillip
Freely available, supported by generosity.
If you enjoy Two Ways News, why not lend us a hand? Consider joining our Supporters Club—friends who make it possible for us to keep producing this article/podcast.
To join the Supporters Club, follow the link to the ‘subscribe’ page. You’ll see that there’s:
-
a number of ‘paid options’. To join the Supporters Club take out one of the paid ‘subscription plans’ and know we are deeply grateful for your support!
-
also the free option (on the far right hand side)
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends,
As we start off another year, we are still conscious of how troubled our world is. Wars and rumours of wars continue to fill our news media. When will mankind ever come to peace? … not until the Lord returns! It may look as if God has lost control of the world as nations war against each other, but that is a failure to understand God’s purpose in creating and appointing the nations. Paul, in his speech in Athens, speaks of God’s ongoing rule of the world through his rule of the nations.
Yours,
Phillip
Freely available, supported by generosity.
If you enjoy Two Ways News, why not lend us a hand? Consider joining our Supporters Club—friends who make it possible for us to keep producing this article/podcast.
To join the Supporters Club, follow the link to the ‘subscribe’ page. You’ll see that there’s:
-
a number of ‘paid options’. To join the Supporters Club take out one of the paid ‘subscription plans’ and know we are deeply grateful for your support!
-
also the free option (on the far right hand side)
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends,
Our second episode of our summer series on Paul’s evangelism in Athens points to the enormously important doctrine of God’s sufficiency and our dependence. I hope during this holiday time, for our Southern Hemisphere subscribers, you are having a great time to reflect on God’s goodness. For our Northern Hemisphere subscribers, we wish you well as you lurch into winter.
Yours,
Phillip
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends,
Welcome to a New Year. We are commencing Two Ways News’ summer series today, looking at evangelism through the study of Paul’s famous sermon on the Areopagus of Athens in Acts 17.
Yours,
Phillip
If you enjoy Two Ways News, why not lend us a hand? Consider gifting someone you know a subscription to our Supporters Club—friends who make it possible for us to keep producing this article/podcast.
To gift a subscription to the Supporters Club, follow the link to the ‘subscribe’ page. You’ll see that there’s:
-
a number of ‘paid options’. To join the Supporters Club take out one of the paid ‘subscription plans’ and know we are deeply grateful for your support!
-
a Gift option
-
also the free option (on the far right hand side)
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends,
There are many Christmas traditions that I happily do not practise, from sentimental Christmas songs to reindeer, trees, and Santa Claus. However, I would never forgo the glory of eating a great feast at Christmas time, for eating food together is the God-given expression of fellowship, and Christian fellowship is derived from God sending his Son into the world to save sinners. Read on to see how Peter and I remember our Christmas festivities and have come to understand the importance of food at this season.
Yours,
Phillip
🎁 Support us by giving a Gift Subscription
If you enjoy Two Ways News, why not lend us a hand? Consider gifting someone you know a subscription to our Supporters Club—friends who make it possible for us to keep producing this article/podcast.
To gift a subscription to the Supporters Club, follow the link below to the ‘subscribe’ page. You’ll see that there’s:
-
a number of ‘paid options’. To join the Supporters Club take out one of the paid ‘subscription plans’ and know we are deeply grateful for your support!
-
a Gift option
-
also the free option (on the far right hand side)
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends,
Christmas is a great time for gifts, and Two Ways News comes to you free of charge and provided by generosity. If you would like to share in this generosity, please see the details of how to give at the end of this transcript. In the meantime, we hope you enjoy this Christmas special.
Yours,
Phillip
🎁 Support us by giving a Gift Subscription
If you enjoy Two Ways News, why not lend us a hand? Consider gifting someone you know a subscription to our Supporters Club—friends who make it possible for us to keep producing this article/podcast.
To gift a subscription to the Supporters Club, follow the link to the ‘subscribe’ page. You’ll see that there’s:
-
a number of ‘paid options’. To join the Supporters Club take out one of the paid ‘subscription plans’ and know we are deeply grateful for your support!
-
a Gift option
-
also the free option (on the far right hand side)
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends,
Christmas is a great time for gifts, and Two Ways News comes to you free of charge and provided by generosity. If you would like to share in this generosity, please see the details of how to give at the end of this transcript. In the meantime, we hope you enjoy this Christmas special.
Yours,
Phillip
🎁 Support us by giving a Gift Subscription
If you enjoy Two Ways News, why not lend us a hand? Consider gifting someone you know a subscription to our Supporters Club—friends who make it possible for us to keep producing this article/podcast.
To gift a subscription to the Supporters Club, follow the link to the ‘subscribe’ page. You’ll see that there’s:
-
a number of ‘paid options’. To join the Supporters Club take out one of the paid ‘subscription plans’ and know we are deeply grateful for your support!
-
a Gift option
-
also the free option (on the far right hand side)
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends,
We come to the last of our series in the opening chapters of Genesis. We have certainly enjoyed rethinking the great themes that these chapters contain and hope that you have similarly enjoyed our discussions. As we’re coming towards the end of the year, we are thinking about next year’s programmes. We would love to hear of any part of the Bible you would want us to work through, or any particular issues you would like us to address. Simply drop your suggestions to respond@twm.email.
Yours,
Phillip
🎁 Support us by giving a Gift Subscription
If you enjoy Two Ways News, why not lend us a hand? Consider gifting someone you know a subscription to our Supporters Club—friends who make it possible for us to keep producing this article/podcast.
To gift a subscription to the Supporters Club, follow the link to the ‘subscribe’ page. You’ll see that there’s:
-
a number of ‘paid options’. To join the Supporters Club take out one of the paid ‘subscription plans’ and know we are deeply grateful for your support!
-
a Gift option
-
also the free option (on the far right hand side)
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends,
The Australian government glories in the development of multiculturalism. However, Australian society is now straining to maintain social harmony. Consequently, the government is trying to regulate freedom of speech, freedom of association, and freedom of religion. For while migration can enrich a country, the concept of a nation celebrating and encouraging many cultures is a recipe for failure. In the Bible, the creation of multiculturalism was God’s judgement at the Tower of Babel. In this episode of Two Ways News, we turn back to that great event recorded in Genesis 11.
Yours,
Phillip
🎁 Support us by giving a Gift Subscription
If you enjoy Two Ways News, why not lend us a hand? Consider gifting someone you know a subscription to our Supporters Club—friends who make it possible for us to keep producing this article/podcast.
To gift a subscription to the Supporters Club, follow the link to the ‘subscribe’ page. You’ll see that there’s:
-
a number of ‘paid options’. To join the Supporters Club take out one of the paid ‘subscription plans’ and know we are deeply grateful for your support!
-
a Gift option
-
also the free option (on the far right hand side)
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends,
Last week’s episode of Two Ways News was very dark and gloomy. This week, we are looking at the same passage, but turning our attention to the light of salvation that is caught in the rainbow covenant of God as we read of the saving of Noah and his family.
Yours,
Phillip
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends,
After the genealogy of Genesis 5, we have finally left Adam and Eve. But then as we merge into chapter 6, we find Adam’s baleful influence dominating the landscape. This week’s episode of Two Ways News does not seek to answer the many questions people ask about the flood, but to pay attention to the central message of sin and judgement. Your temptation may now be to skip this episode, but that is because of sin and judgement! So as the old hymn has it, “yield not to temptation”.
Yours,
Phillip
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends,
This week in Two Ways News, we continue the theme of family. Having dealt with the family of Cain in chapter 4, we turn to the new family of Adam. In this family, God’s word enables us to see the Lord’s plans for salvation, hinted at in Genesis 3:15 and worked out in Noah. We don’t often have sermons on genealogies, but hopefully this episode will help us see their importance.
Yours,
Phillip
Phillip Jensen: Welcome again to Two Ways News.
Peter Jensen: Phillip, you never wore glasses growing up, but I can remember getting my first pair of glasses and realising that most people could see things that had, for me, only been a blurred vision.
Phillip: Spectacles are a very important part of life. The reformers, Tyndale and Calvin, saw glasses as a way of understanding the Bible. Here’s an excerpt from Calvin’s Institutes
For just as eyes, when dimmed with age or weakness or by some other defect, unless aided by spectacles, discern nothing distinctly; so, such is our feebleness, unless scripture guides us in seeking God.[1]
Without the scriptures, we may know there is a God, but we are confused about who he is. But with the glasses of the scriptures, we can see that which before was only a matter of confusion.
Peter: In last week’s episode, when we were talking about chapter 4 of Genesis and the family of Cain, you said something like this: that in the midst of the gloom of a fallen world, the grace of God was still discernible. How does chapter 5 throw any light on that? It is odd because when you read it, it seems to consist of a list of names and strangely long lifespans.
Phillip: The chapter is a genealogy, but why don’t we read it? Friends, this is part of God’s word. God has chosen to reveal himself in not just one genealogy, but in several. Genesis 4:25-5:32
And Adam knew his wife again, and she bore a son and called his name Seth, for she said, “God has appointedfor me another offspring instead of Abel, for Cain killed him.” To Seth also a son was born, and he called his name Enosh. At that time people began to call upon the name of the LORD.
This is the book of the generations of Adam. When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God. Male and female he created them, and he blessed them and named them Man when they were created. When Adam had lived 130 years, he fathered a son in his own likeness, after his image, and named him Seth. The days of Adam after he fathered Seth were 800 years; and he had other sons and daughters. Thus all the days that Adam lived were 930 years, and he died.
When Seth had lived 105 years, he fathered Enosh. Seth lived after he fathered Enosh 807 years and had other sons and daughters. Thus all the days of Seth were 912 years, and he died.
When Enosh had lived 90 years, he fathered Kenan. Enosh lived after he fathered Kenan 815 years and had other sons and daughters. Thus all the days of Enosh were 905 years, and he died.
When Kenan had lived 70 years, he fathered Mahalalel. Kenan lived after he fathered Mahalalel 840 years and had other sons and daughters. Thus all the days of Kenan were 910 years, and he died.
When Mahalalel had lived 65 years, he fathered Jared. Mahalalel lived after he fathered Jared 830 years and had other sons and daughters. Thus all the days of Mahalalel were 895 years, and he died.
When Jared had lived 162 years, he fathered Enoch. Jared lived after he fathered Enoch 800 years and had other sons and daughters. Thus all the days of Jared were 962 years, and he died.
When Enoch had lived 65 years, he fathered Methuselah. Enoch walked with God after he fathered Methuselah 300 years and had other sons and daughters. Thus all the days of Enoch were 365 years. Enoch walked with God, and he was not,for God took him.
When Methuselah had lived 187 years, he fathered Lamech. Methuselah lived after he fathered Lamech 782 years and had other sons and daughters. Thus all the days of Methuselah were 969 years, and he died.
When Lamech had lived 182 years, he fathered a son and called his name Noah, saying, “Out of the ground that the LORD has cursed, this one shall bring us relief from our work and from the painful toil of our hands.” Lamech lived after he fathered Noah 595 years and had other sons and daughters. Thus all the days of Lamech were 777 years, and he died.
After Noah was 500 years old, Noah fathered Shem, Ham, and Japheth.
Certain things stand out. Sons and daughters are mentioned each time. It’s not just the sons mentioned, nor all the sons; only the first-born sons are named. There’s also an incredible sense of life, that they live so long even before they have children, but then they go on living a long life. But there’s still that chorus that keeps coming, ‘And he died…and he died…and he died.’ Life is still within the family of Adam, yet the death sentence is still there. There are two particularly important characters mentioned: Enoch and Noah. There’s a prophecy about Noah: “Out of the ground that the LORD has cursed, this one shall bring us relief from our work and from the painful toil of our hands.” There’s a hope for Noah that is different from all the others; there’s something special about to happen. What about Enoch?
Peter: What we see in Enoch is grace at work. God has been revealed as the great creator. Now, the other name we give him, ‘Saviour’, comes into play. The word is not there, but you can see the saviour at play, perhaps with the advent of Seth, who takes the place of Abel. Abel is the man of faith who, even in his death, foreshadows Christ. It is by the family of Seth that men begin to call on the name of the Lord. Presumably, the name of the Lord there is the name ‘Yahweh’, the name that people of faith call God as time goes on. Moses has his experience of hearing about the name of God at the burning bush. So, calling on the name of the Lord, perhaps even preaching the name of the Lord, occurs then. It’s a signal to us that something significant is happening, that God’s grace, his saving power, is at work. He’s not going to leave the family of Adam and Eve to perish.
Phillip: It’s interesting that having had the introduction at the end of chapter 4 about the firstborn son and then the grandson Seth, we have at the beginning of chapter 5 a recap of the story, so to speak, about man being created in the image. The image that man is created in, that Adam has, then passes on to his child Seth. There’s a sense in which the dominion to rule the world is passed on, particularly within this family rather than in the family of Cain. There’s a godly family here that is then outlined for us.
But those long ages testify to life that they have, in all its strength and vigour. Genesis is not telling us everything; it could refer to houses or dynasties. God in his power could have someone live this long, but it’s recorded because it is extraordinarily long. People are not going to continue to live that long. When Moses is writing this, he knows that that’s not how long people normally live. It may be like Sumerian kings who reigned over this period of time.
Peter: They were said to reign for a thousand years, meaning their house, their dynasty, their family, reigned for a thousand years.
Phillip: We’re not really sure, but it doesn’t matter how long they lived, because they died. In this way Enoch is so unique because he walked with God; he was not like the others. God chooses to take him.
“Calling on the name of God” is an interesting phrase about God at work in grace. It sounds like it’s referring to when people started praying. The phrase is used that way sometimes. The name of the Lord is important to pick up because it’s printed in upper case; they were calling on the name ‘Yahweh’. That means that they had personal knowledge of him. When I call God ‘God’, I’m talking about what he is, but when I call God ‘Yahweh’, I’m talking about who he is; it’s a personal relationship. But the phrase ‘calling on’ can mean ‘proclaiming’, so in Exodus 34, where God proclaims his name to Moses
Yahweh descended in the cloud and stood with him there and proclaimed the name of Yahweh. Yahweh passed before him and proclaimed, “Yahweh, Yahweh, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness”
God proclaimed the name of Yahweh, and so back in Genesis 4, the time of Enosh was the time when people began to proclaim the name ‘Yahweh’.
Peter: This fits with what we read about Enoch. We read that he walked with God, exactly what Adam and Eve used to do before they sinned in the garden. It displays the intimacy of faith, which you understand if you’re a Christian believer, where you walk with God.
Then this extraordinary phrase, in a chapter that says, ‘And then he died’, and we come to Enoch, “And he was not, for God took him.” The same happened later on with Elijah, which presumably means that God took him home to be with him. Hebrews 11:5
By faith Enoch was taken up so that he should not see death, and he was not found, because God had taken him. Now before he was taken he was commended as having pleased God.
In other words, Elijah was walking with God. He had pleased God and so was taken up. So there was something extraordinary about this man, Enoch. The wonderful Matthew Henry, an 18th century commentator on these things, said
Enoch was the brightest star of the patriarchal age, distinguished by true religion and eminent religion. He did not only walk after God, as all good men do, but he walked with God, as if he were in heaven already. To walk with God was the business of Enoch’s life. It was the joy and support of his life. Whenever a good man dies, God takes him, fetches him hence, and receives him to himself. Those whose walk in the world is truly holy shall find their removal out of it truly happy.[2]
I’ll never forget John Newton, the writer of Amazing Grace whom you mentioned last time, saying as he neared the end of his life, “I am a great sinner, and Christ is a great saviour.” Our trust in God, shown by our faith and our behaviour of the way in which we live for him, is what saves us.
Phillip: Within the genealogy, though, is the narrative of salvation being worked out.
Peter: When I looked at our genealogies in the DNA test that I did recently, I was checking up on our ancestry to give me a sense of who we are and where we’ve come from. It was to satisfy my curiosity about things. But this genealogy is different.
Phillip: This is telling us a story and showing us God’s grace at work. In the world of Cain and his great-great-grandson Lamech, where things are going so badly, we go back to Adam, and then we find some who are proclaiming the name of Yahweh. In chapter 3, we were told that the seed of the woman would actually crush the serpent. We’ve been looking for the serpent crusher ever since chapter 3. It wasn’t Cain. It couldn’t be Abel. It’s Seth’s son, Enosh. That’s when they start proclaiming the name of Yahweh. So we think, ‘Here it’s coming,’ and then it’s just another person who’s dead. There’s a long wait. God is very patient in his salvation.
Peter: But the genealogy is pointing forward; there’s someone coming.
Phillip: Enoch is someone who’s come, and Enoch is saved, but he doesn’t save anybody else. Then there’s Noah, and he’s coming as ‘the one that’s going to reverse the curse’. Now we have the name of the serpent crusher, Noah, and the salvation of the world is going to come with this man. I hope we all know something of the events of Noah’s life, which we’ll look at next time in terms of the flood, but we also know that Noah didn’t turn out to be the saviour of the world either.
In 2 Peter chapter 2 we read
If he did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a herald of righteousness, with seven others, when he brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly… then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgment.
It’s a great passage that refers to Noah, and the fact that it’s not Noah who is the saviour, but that God is the saviour through Noah. It’s unfortunate because the Greek is actually saying something differently here, which I think is important to understand our genealogy. It talks about Noah as “a herald of righteousness with seven others.” Who are the seven? Most people will tell you who the seven are: Noah’s wife, their three sons, Ham, Shem and Japheth, and their three daughters-in-law who go nameless; that equals eight people. The trouble is, the Greek doesn’t even say eight; it says ‘eighth’. God preserved Noah, the eighth herald of righteousness. I can understand why our translators make it simple with the solution, he and seven others, but it’s not eight; it’s eighth.
What’s more, he’s a herald of righteousness, but when you read the events of Noah, he doesn’t say anything to anybody; he never preaches. But the word ‘herald’ means ‘to preach’. So here’s a man who doesn’t preach and is called ‘the eighth preacher of righteousness’. The answer is found in Genesis 5, because one of the characteristics of the New Testament quoting and alluding to the Old Testament is the accuracy and care with which they treat the Old Testament, and this is a good example. Back in Genesis 4, we’re told, ‘This is the time from which they proclaim the name of Yahweh.’ It started with Enosh. You then look at the numbers of people who were there: Enosh, then Kenan, Mahallalel, Jared, Enoch, Methuselah, Lamech and number eight, Noah. He’s the eighth proclaimer of the name of the Lord. So Peter is referring to that, not to the family numbers that were saved.
Peter: We’ve put on our spectacles, namely the word of God, and we’ve looked out at the world. We’ve come across a passage which seems so remote, so different from the way we think, talking about people who are just beyond imagining. But we see the wickedness and corruption of the world, of human culture, to this day: filled with wonderful achievements, but corrupted by human sin always. We’ve now seen God at work, that in and through human history, invisible to all but those who put on the spectacles of the Bible, God is there, and he’s showing his grace to them. But he’s also preparing for the ultimate hero of this genealogy, Jesus. Thus, we should have no fear, but every day, even in the midst of the difficulties of living in a world such as the one we’ve inherited, we should be filled with faith and hope.
[1] John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 1535
[2] Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary, 1706
Scripture quotations are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Links & Recommendations
For more on this topic, listen to Phillip’s 1997 Campus Bible Study Talk on Genesis 5-11 entitled The Impossible Subject.
Freely available, supported by generosity.
If you enjoy Two Ways News, why not lend us a hand? Consider joining our Supporters Club—friends who make it possible for us to keep producing this article/podcast.
To join the Supporters Club, follow the link below to the ‘subscribe’ page. You’ll see that there’s:
-
a number of ‘paid options’. To join the Supporters Club take out one of the paid ‘subscription plans’ and know we are deeply grateful for your support!
-
also the free option (on the far right hand side)
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends,
Welcome again to Two Ways News. Working with my brother makes it a bit of a family concern. The last episode of the older brother killing the younger reminds us of the mixed blessing of family life. In this episode, we follow through the family of Cain. It’s not a pleasant story, though in the midst of evil there are great achievements. Don’t forget to tell others of Two Ways News.
Yours,
Phillip
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends,
We return this week to Genesis and chapter 4. It’s a passage that Peter and I should be able to empathetically deal with: Cain and Abel, brothers at war!
Thank you to those who have sent messages of encouragement to us and questions to push our thinking. Please continue to encourage others to subscribe to Two Ways News.
Yours,
Phillip
Freely available, supported by generosity.
If you enjoy Two Ways News, why not lend us a hand? Consider joining our Supporters Club—friends who make it possible for us to keep producing this article/podcast.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends,
One of the great themes of the early chapters of Genesis is the judgement of God. In our discussions of the New Testament use of the themes of Genesis, we come today to talk of judgement in the New Testament. While it sounds, and is in fact, an unpleasant topic, we will see that it brings us into the heart of the wonderful topic of God’s mercy and love. So I hope you enjoy our discussion on judgement in the New Testament.
Yours,
Phillip
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends,
We come back today to the subject of men and women, though this time not from Genesis, but looking at how the New Testament looks at this topic.
Yours,
Phillip
Freely available, supported by generosity.
If you enjoy Two Ways News, why not lend us a hand? Consider joining our Supporters Club—friends who make it possible for us to keep producing this article/podcast.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends,
Once again, we are looking at the New Testament’s treatment of Genesis 1-3; this time, on the subject of marriage. We had several episodes on this topic, but it is so central to the New Testament understanding that we thought it worth spending an episode thinking on it.
Yours,
Phillip
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends,
We come back today to the subject of men and women, though this time not from Genesis, but looking at how the New Testament looks at this topic.
Yours,
Phillip
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends,
One of the great statements of the Bible that is most often quoted or alluded to in public Christian debate is the ‘image of God’. But what does it refer to, and to whom does it refer? In this episode we continue to look at the New Testament understanding of the early chapters of Genesis. And here we find there are more references to the image of God than in the Old Testament. For there is a great surprise in store for those who read Genesis 1.
Yours,
Phillip
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends,
As you have no doubt noticed, Peter and I have had a great time pondering the early chapters of Genesis. But the best commentary and authentic understanding of Genesis is found in the New Testament. So for the next few weeks, we are turning there to see what the New Testament makes of the early chapters of Genesis.
Yours,
Phillip
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends,
As we come to the end of Genesis 3, we see the judgement of death brought upon the serpent, the woman, and the man. It is surprising in many ways, for it outlines the character of death while we, apparently, are alive. We have so limited death to that point of the end of life that we are not understanding our present life under the sentence of death.
Yours,
Phillip
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends,
Thank you, friends, for subscribing and for your emails giving advice or asking questions.
As we come to Genesis 3, we come to one of the most distinctive and controversial teachings of the Bible: namely, sin. It is surprising how deeply our society misunderstands and/or rejects the doctrine of sin. Surprising because we see sin all around us. I would like to say I hope you enjoy this episode, but the necessity of sin is not enjoyable, even though the Bible speaks of it’s fleeting pleasures.
Yours,
Phillip
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends,
Two Ways News is freely available and supported by generosity. We hope you freely enjoy this and every episode, and that you will recommend it to others. If in your generosity you wish to support this ministry, the details of how to do this are at the end of this transcript.
This particular episode is opening our eyes to what Adam and Eve saw when their eyes were opened through eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Yours,
Phillip
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends,
Two words commonly misunderstood today are ‘faith’ and ‘Satan’. In this week’s episode, Peter and I pursue our understanding of faith and Satan’s contribution in undermining it.
Once again, can we encourage you to mention the weekly podcast to friends, colleagues, and neighbours? I hope you will enjoy this episode.
Yours,
Phillip
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends,
One of the doctrines of the Bible that is easy to demonstrate and widely rejected is the universality of sin. Sin is not an optional extra choice of some degenerate people. Sin is the inbuilt character of humanity. But what is sin? How did sin come into the world? What temptation did Satan use? How do moralists sin, and why are they amongst the most sinful of people? In this episode of Two Ways News, Peter and I discuss the temptation that came to Eve and its implications for our temptation to sin.
Please remember to subscribe and encourage others to subscribe to this podcast, and if you want to respond, our email address is respond@twm.email.
Yours,
Phillip
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends,
Strangely, some people find it easier to believe in Satan than to believe in God. But what they think of Satan can be so different to the Bible as to not be recognisable. Moving to Genesis 3 has given us an opportunity to pause and think about Satan: his character, his nature, and his ways of operation. I don’t want you to enjoy a discussion on Satan, but I do hope you find it stimulating and informative.
Yours,
Phillip
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends,
One of the great points of conflict between Christians and the world is the topic of marriage. Though it is part of God’s creation of the world, seen in Genesis 1 and 2, the effect of sin makes it strangely foreign to today’s society. There’s nothing new in this, as Christians were called to be different or holy in this area of life in the New Testament itself. However, today’s discussion is about how different Christians are to be in an area of life where even non-Christian commentators are beginning to see the failure of Western civilisation.
Yours,
Phillip
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends,
As we continue to think about the creation of the man and the woman in the garden, we find marriage being introduced as the outcome of our sexual polarity. The woman is created to the joy of the man. Consequently, the man is to leave his parents to ‘cleave’ to his wife. The old-fashioned verb to cleave has been changed in most modern translations. But the concept of sex inside the marriage cannot be changed. So Peter and I wander into a discussion about sexual intimacy in and out of marriage.
Yours,
Phillip
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends,
In Australia, the birth rate has dropped to below 1.5 children per woman. This is the lowest birth rate we have ever had and is clearly below the 2.1 children per mother necessary to maintain the population. How important is it to have children? Does marriage necessitate children? Is marriage itself necessary? In the special creation of woman in Chapter 2 of Genesis, the subject of parenthood is immediately raised. Peter and I are canvassing some of the issues of parenthood in this episode of Two Ways News.
Yours,
Phillip
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends,
As we come to the end of Genesis Chapter 2, we open up some of the biggest topics for debate, happiness and unhappiness in humanity today. Re-thinking marriage has been part of our social dialogue since the Sexual Revolution of the 1960s. Re-thinking the reality and role of men and women, their sexual differences and similarities has caused great turmoil in society. I’m sure you will find our discussion in this episode as more food for thought and ammunition for debate.
Yours,
Phillip
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends,
Humans have always enjoyed living with the animals of God’s creation. But what is our relationship with the animals, and how should we care for them? Today we move from the abuse of animals to the worship of animals as we think about the Bible’s teaching on animals.
Yours,
Phillip
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends,
Apart from sleeping, we spend more of our life working than anything else we do. But what is God’s plan for our work? Indeed, what is work? And how does it differ from doing good works, or does it? After responding to a letter from one of our subscribers, Peter and I explore what Genesis means by our gardening. At the end of our transcript are details of a talk on the subject of work.
Yours,
Phillip
https://phillipjensen.com/resources/work-for-the-lord-2/
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends,
In the middle of the garden, full of beautiful trees, there are 2 trees in particular. What is the importance of the tree of life? What is it telling us about God’s plans for humanity? Why is it singled out for special mention?
The other, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, seems to be even more important in establishing the drama of life in the Garden of Eden and subsequently the storyline of the rest of the Bible. But what does it mean to eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil?
I hope our discussion prompts more discussion among you and your friends.
Yours,
Phillip
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends,
Peter and I love gardens but hate gardening. However, all the good things about the garden are set out in Genesis 2. In today’s podcast, we explore God’s generous provision symbolised in the Garden of Eden. To what extent was the garden paradise that we need to regain? To what extent is the paradise promised to the thief on the cross something greater than the Garden of Eden?
Don’t forget to encourage your friends to subscribe.
Yours,
Phillip
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends,
One of the high points, if not the high point, of Genesis 1 is the creation of man, both male and female, in the image of God. There we are told of our responsibility to govern the earth, to multiply and to fill it. When we turn to chapter 2 of Genesis we are again told of the creation of man. This time it is in much more detail, and yet it still gives the same prominence and importance of man in God’s creation. Today’s podcast is a discussion of the movement of Genesis 1 to Gen 2 where we look at man in the garden.
If you want to respond you can email us at respond@twm.email. Please encourage friends to subscribe to Two Ways News.
Yours,
Phillip
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends,
The creation account of Genesis finishes in a most unexpected place – rest. The idea of God resting on the seventh day is so familiar to us that we sometimes miss how extraordinary it is. That God should rest and bless the seventh day, inviting us to share it with him is one of the wonders of the Bible. In a society dominated by and priding itself in ‘busyness’ and confused and conflicted over ‘work/life balance’, God’s teaching on the Sabbath day is a welcome relief for Christians. Yet it is not simply an individual issue, for the Sabbath is to be celebrated by all of creation.
Yours,
Phillip
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear Friends
You knew that we couldn’t undertake a series on Genesis 1-11 without dealing with science – and so here it is. Mind you, it may be different to what you are expecting as we explore the background to the warfare between science and religion (aka Christianity). We do not want to hold the Bible to ransom from the captivity of science, but science from the captivity of history. Where has science come from and how has it been derailed or helped by an understanding of the sinfulness of humanity? Neither Peter or I claim any expertise in the practice of science, but both of us have serious questions about the history of science, the understanding of Genesis in the light of science and the understanding of science in the light of Genesis. I hope you find it informative.
Yours,
Phillip
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends,
Motherhood and apple pie is no longer the foundation of Western civilisation. Apple pie is still pretty important, but motherhood has now been challenged. Peter and I had the privilege of the same mother, whom we loved and admire, and remember with great fondness. Yet the kind of family life in which we were raised has undergone considerable change during our lifetime. Mother’s Day brings us to reconsider family life.
Yours,
Phillip
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends,
For Australians, Anzac Day is the great national day. But what is it we’re remembering? And should we celebrate Anzac Day? In particular, should Christians be remembering or celebrating a military battle of the First World War? Does Anzac Day glorify war? Is it an alternative religion for Australians? I hope you will enjoy our discussion as Peter and I try and grapple with the history and purpose of Anzac Day observances.
Yours,
Phillip
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends,
In this episode of Two Ways News, we’re looking at the resurrection both from a historical and a theological point of view. History and argumentation have great merit, and yet a defective presupposition that leaves us unsatisfied. Yet prophetic history not only satisfies our knowledge of historical events but also explains their meaning and purpose. Jesus said that without Moses and the prophets, people will not believe even if someone rises from the dead. This has been demonstrated over the centuries and in our age today. I hope you enjoy this episode. You can email us at respond@twm.email and one of our team will get back to you.
Yours,
Phillip
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends,
I hope you enjoyed a great Easter break. Holidays are always marvellous opportunities to relax and catch up with friends, but the Easter holiday is even better because it gives us time to think about the greatest weekend in human history: when our Lord and Saviour died and rose again. The death of Jesus was so great that I would call Friday not just good, but the best Friday.
Yours,
Phillip
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear Friends,
One of the most profound and widely quoted verses of the Bible is the creation of Man in the image of God. So, this week Peter and I went exploring some of its implications. It is such a fruitful concept by which to understand humanity, not the least because in the New Testament we find Jesus is “the image of the invisible God”. But before we get there, we need to understand how we are as individuals, male and female, in the image of God as well as how humanity, as a whole, is in his image. There’s so much fruitful discussion to be had on this passage, we hope our conversation will stimulate yours.
Yours,
Phillip
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear Friends,
Thanks again for your feedback and encouragement. It’s great to hear that you are enjoying receiving the Two Ways News podcasts as much as we are in producing them.
As we look at Genesis 1, we come to a great climax in the creation of humans in God’s Image. More bottles of ink have been spilled over this phrase than possibly any phrase in the Bible. What is the image of God? In what way are we in the image of God? What are humans and who are we? The questions go on and on. Yet this teaching of Genesis 1 has stood the test of time in identifying God’s universal identity and value of humans.
Yours,
Phillip
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear Friends,
‘Good’ is such a strange word. We all know what we mean by it, but it is so difficult to define. So when God declares his creation to be ‘good, very good’ what is he saying? Is the world itself good or simply pleasing? And if it is good, what is it good for?
In this week’s Two Ways News, Peter and I venture into the meaning of God calling the world good and the implications that has for living in this world and the next.
Yours,
Phillip
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear Friends,
On Peter’s recovery, I thought it would be good to hear his views on the topic of words and power that Genesis 1 so importantly illustrates. So, we return to the topic of words and see how they create and operate in relationships. This brings us to how they are distorted and politicised by suspicious people. I’m sure you will appreciate coming back to the two voice podcast as Peter and I struggle through this important and highly contemporary issue of words.
Yours,
Phillip
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends,
Sadly Peter was sick when we recorded this episode of Two Ways News, so it is a solo effort for today’s topic. Thankfully, Peter has now recovered. From Genesis 1 we see the power of God’s word, which is part of God’s wisdom by which he created the world. Thus, the power of words is one of the joys and problems of life. The devil’s power is in his lying words. Yet it is God’s word that never returns to him empty but always achieves his purposes. Understandably but wrongly, this leads people in authority to censorship.
Yours,
Phillip
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Hello again, thanks for the feedback and encouragement. Peter and I are enjoying chatting over the great themes of the Creator and creation in Genesis 1.
So far, we have been struck by the opening words ‘In the beginning God created’, which take us to the idea of one God and one universe. But yet when we come to John chapter 1 we find that the word by which God created all became flesh in the person of Jesus. Furthermore, in Colossians 1, the world was created not only through God’s son but also for him.
So, in this week’s TwoWaysNews we are exploring the place of Christ in creation. I hope you enjoy it as much as we did in making it.
Phillip
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear Friends,
Citizenship is a wonderful thing. To be part of something larger than yourself gives meaning purpose and identity. Peter and I grew up in the British Empire having been born before the granting of Australian citizenship. It was for the Empire that our parents and grandparents generation went to the world wars. Today that is almost unimaginable, for now people find their identity in being Australians.
However, when we read Genesis 1 we are confronted with a ruler who is over and above every empire and nation because he is the Creator of all things. In this episode of Two Ways News we look at the meaning and implications of the opening words of Genesis 1.
Yours,
Phillip
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
In this second episode for the year, Peter and Phillip discuss literature and reading. Genesis 1-11 is a distinct form of literature; it requires a distinct form of reading. How are we to read this part of God’s word?
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends,
Welcome to Two Ways News for 2025. We have a great deal planned for this year which we hope you will find useful and encouraging for continuing to speak the truth in love to the world around you (see our About page for a reminder of why Two Ways News came into existence, in the beginning). Welcome also to Phillip‘s new co-host, his brother Peter. Welcome, finally, to the start of our series on Genesis.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends,
We recorded this final episode for the year on November 5—a momentous day in world affairs, the day when Australia stopped for a horse race, and when the USA settled a presidential race.
We now know who won both races, but in this episode, Phillip and I discuss the nature of words and truth, especially in our politics and public discourse—because if the US election campaign exhibited anything, it was the seeming inability of both candidates to tell the unvarnished, straightforward truth. And it’s not as if Australian politics is much different.
Our political life is full of half truths, false promises, broken oaths and outright lies. The kingdom of God promises (and fulfils!) a very different way of speaking.
We hope you enjoy the discussion. But there’s one more thing to mention before we get into it.
Sadly, this is the final episode in which I will be co-hosting Two Ways News with Phillip. The Yes that I gave to joining the faculty at Moore College unfortunately entails a number of No’s—and being able to drive this weekly podcast with Phillip is one of them.
I will miss it! It’s been an enjoyable privilege to interact not just with Phillip but with you, our readers and listeners, over the past 100+ episodes (and more for many of you, who go back to the days of The Payneful Truth). But God has something new for me to do at Moore, including taking up the directorship of The Centre for Christian Living once again (so I will not be entirely done with podcasting).
My faithful assistant Jess Sutandar is also finishing up at the end of this year, and I would like to publicly thank her for all her hard and skilful work in producing the podcast and transcript.
The good news is that our replacements have already been found! Stay tuned for more on that when Two Ways News resumes in the new year.
Your brother
Tony
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends,
Can I humbly submit that it would be worth us talking about submission?
And before you say, ‘Oh no, not another go-around about men and women and church roles’, that’s not what I mean, nor is it what this episode is about. ‘Submission’ is a much bigger concept—and bigger problem—than that.
In fact, thinking about ‘submission’ and why we tend to recoil from it in most of its forms, takes our conversation in this episode to some massive subjects: to power, authority, politics, Marxism, capitalism, equality and singing. Yes, singing.
I hope you find it useful.
Your brother
Tony
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends,
We love getting your emails and questions, and recently one of our regular listeners, Hannah, wrote in with a follow-up question to our episode on ‘spiritual discipline’. She asked:
I've been wondering whether you might consider using a podcast episode to speak to the current trend towards formation as a major strand in Christian discipleship. I understand that it’s particularly prevalent among students and in the United States. But I’m also aware that there are more and more people in the UK and Australia reading and identifying with some of the big names in this new movement, of whom John Mark Comer and his ‘practicing the way’ is a prominent one. People seem especially enthusiastic about the idea of adopting a Rule of Life to guide discipleship.
As it turns out, about a week before Hannah’s email arrived I had spotted Comer’s book in my local Christian bookshop, and picked it up. As to why I couldn’t resist buying it, and what I made of it, and what it all means for Hannah’s question, read on.
Your brother
Tony
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends,
Our long journey through the book of Romans is coming to an end. And after the theological glories of chapter 3 and chapter 5 and chapter 8—well, of all the chapters between 1 and 15 really—chapter 16 often feels like an anti-climax. We are tempted to read it as a hurried postscript with some personal greetings, and other bibs and bobs.
But if we take a closer look, the final chapter of Romans is extremely important. It helps explain why the whole letter was in fact written, and rounds off Paul’s whole argument in a manner that is both personal and deeply theological.
We hope you enjoy this final Romans instalment!
Your brother
Tony
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends,
As we near the end of the extraordinary letter to the Romans, we find the apostle returning to the purpose for which he was writing to them—which he had broached in chapter 1 but now comes back to, after explaining in such majestic terms the gospel that is the foundation of his missionary enterprise.
As Paul does so, he reiterates why the gospel he preaches is for all of humanity and brings hope to every culture, regardless of the differences and distinctive features that different human cultures have. There is hope for every different human culture, but (paradoxically) only by realising that there is in fact only one way to live in God’s world.
So in typically roundabout fashion—starting with hope, and then moving onto colonialism, anthroplogy and counselling—we dig into the hope-filled message of Romans 15.
Hope you enjoy it.
Your brother
Tony
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends,
While Tony is away at Evangelize 2024 in Denver, Colorado, USA, Phillip is joined by his brother Peter Jensen as they take a deep dive into Romans 14.
It seems that regardless of the century we live in, people always find something to fight about, unable to extract ourselves from the sinful temptations of pride and passing judgment on others. It is no different in this passage as food becomes the object of quarrel.
But it raises the question, how are certain foods clean to some believers and unclean to others? Are conscience and faith the same thing? What does it truly look like to honour the Lord and act in love?
We hope you find this episode encouraging.
Blessings,
Jessica (Two Ways News editor)
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends,
We are a nation in deep debt, both corporately and personally. But despite how much we owe, the debt of ‘love’ doesn’t figure on our balance sheets.
Romans 13 says that it should, and that ‘love’ is in fact the fulfilment of the Old Testament law.
How can this be? And what is ‘love’ anyway?
That’s our topic on this week’s episode of Two Ways News.
Your brother
Tony
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends,
I’m writing this introduction in an Airbnb in Denver, Colorado, with a ‘HARRIS-WALZ’ sign in the front yard. I’m not sure (nor am I going to say) whether I’d be happier with a TRUMP-VANCE sign. I think no sign at all would probably suit me best, and I imagine that there are many Americans who feel the same.
But it makes me think: is a studied non-involvement in politics, government and the affairs of state what the Bible calls us to? It’s certainly how many secularists would like Christians to respond—that is, to keep their religion well out of the public square.
In this week’s episode, we talk about church and state and government and secularism, through the clear and revealing lens of Romans 13.
Your brother
Tony
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends,
As we turn to the next part of Romans 12 this week (verses 3-13), we confront two ideas that our society finds it hard to hold together: individualism and communalism.
What’s the basic truth about us? Is it that we are unique, sovereign individuals who should have the right to pursue life, liberty and happiness in our own particular way? Or are necessarily and primarily herd animals, who can only exist and flourish when the needs of the community as a whole are prioritised?
And do we have to choose?
Romans 12 teaches us to think rightly about ourselves—as individuals and as members of a new community. Read (or listen) on to find out how.
Your brother
Tony
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends,
Well after several weeks bouncing from subject to subject, and answering your questions, it’s back to Romans!
This week, we come to a turning point in Paul’s monumental letter. At the beginning Romans 12, he turns from the deeply theological discussion of the nature of the gospel that has dominated the first eleven chapters to its practical outworking in Christian life and community.
Romans 12:1-2 are very well-known verses—about ‘living sacrifices’ and the ‘renewal of the mind’—but we hope you find something fresh and stimulating and encouraging in our discussion of them.
Your brother
Tony
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends,
Debates about real nature of ‘church’ have been around even longer than Phillip’s and my combined age. It’s a complicated and perennial topic, but we thought it was worth another outing in this week’s edition because it’s also very practical.
It’s practical not just because what you think a ‘church’ is will shape what you do in church. What you think about ‘church’ will also have big implications for all those other Christian activities or gatherings that aren’t‘church’ (according to your definition).
If that sounds intriguing, read (or listen) on.
Your brother
Tony
PS
If you have been finding Two Ways News beneficial and encouraging, we would love for you to consider joining our Supporters Club—the people who make it possible for us to keep producing this newsletter/podcast—if you haven’t already.
To subscribe for free or join the Supporters Club, follow the link below to the ‘subscribe’ page. You’ll see that there’s:
-
the free option (on the far right hand side)
-
but also a number ‘paid options’. To join the Supporters Club you take out one of the paid ‘subscription plans’, and as a thank you, we send out bonus episodes and other material to Supporters Club members from time to time.
Sign up for free or join the Supporters Club.
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends
We continue to be enormously grateful for your fellowship, which (I suppose if we’re honest) largely consists in us talking and you listening!
But it’s especially nice when you speak back, which a very encouraging number of you do—either in person when we bump into you round the place, or by email as you comment and raise questions. Quite a few of you have said how much you’ve been enjoying our meanderings through Romans, and we’ll be back to Romans again in the near future.
But this week we’re catching up with three of the questions you’ve written in to ask:
-
From Matt about whether it’s right to say that Jesus ‘raised himself from the dead’;
-
From Barry about Sabbath-keeping in the New Testament, and whether Jesus really approved of it or not;
-
From Ethan about the steps and motivations and factors that play into the decision to go into ‘full-time ministry’.
Hope you find the discussion stimulating!
Your brother
Tony
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends
Today we belatedly answer a question that regular reader/listener Richard sent in some time ago, but which got lost in the bilge of my inbox—which is a shame, because it is an excellent question!
Richard asks about those voices today that are calling for a recovery of the ‘spiritual disciplines’—things such as contemplative prayer, solitude, fasting, sabbath-keeping, and so on. He writes:
What is the history of ‘spiritual discipline’ and, we could add, ascetic practices, within Christianity and evangelicalism? How do we integrate the different strands of biblical teaching and biblical examples on this topic (e.g. Mat 5:16-18; Luke 6:12; Col 2:15-23; Acts 14:23)?
Phillip and I had (as usual) a wide-ranging talk about this question, an edited summary of which appears below.
Your brother
Tony
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends,
There was a time, not all that long ago, when the Ten Commandments were a central part not just of church culture and Christian living, but of the cultural landscape of our community.
This no longer seems to be the case—certainly not in our very secularized society, but also not in our churches either.
A recent and somewhat surprising Sydney Morning Herald article got us talking about the Ten Commandments, how they are regarded by the non-Christian world, and indeed how they are seen by Christians these days.
I hope you enjoy the conversation.
Your brother
Tony
(For various reasons, this week’s transcript is even more truncated than usual—it’s a short summary of the main points of our conversation.)
PS
If you have been finding Two Ways News beneficial and encouraging, we would love for you to consider joining our Supporters Club—the people who make it possible for us to keep producing this newsletter/podcast—if you haven’t already.
To subscribe for free or join the Supporters Club, follow the link below to the ‘subscribe’ page. You’ll see that there’s:
-
the free option (on the far right hand side)
-
but also a number ‘paid options’. To join the Supporters Club you take out one of the paid ‘subscription plans’, and as a thank you, we send out bonus episodes and other material to Supporters Club members from time to time.
Sign up for free or join the Supporters Club.
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends
As the Paris Olympics slip down into the long feed of events below the screen horizon of our consciousness, what will stay with us? The hilarious, kangaroo-hopping breakdance of RayGun? The golden triumphs of the Fox sisters? The controversial tableau of the opening ceremony? What will we still remember and talk about in 12 months time?
Not much probably.
In fact, how long will it be before most of us forget that the Olympics of 2024 were even held in Paris? Tell me quickly—where were the Olympics held in 2004? In 1964? In 1924?
Well, I can tell you where they were in 1924—Paris!—because of an incident that took place at those games that was scandalous at the time, and which was immortalized in the award-winning movie, Chariots of Fire.
Chariots of Fire was a fascinating and enjoyable film—fascinating because of its largely sympathetic portrayal of a Christian man standing on a point of theological principle. Eric Liddell would not run on the Sabbath.
Was he right about the Sabbath?
We’ve been talking a bit about the ‘law’ and the Christian life recently—and that continues in this week’s Olympics-themed episode.
Your brother
Tony
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends
Time for another Q&A episode, but with a twist this time. Regular Two Ways News contributor Marty Sweeney joins us from Ohio to pitch me a number of questions about the Bible, theology and ministry—questions that have come from his regular conversations and seminars with pastors and ministry people in the US.
The questions revolve around the Bible, theology, ministry and evangelism—all the good stuff. Questions like:
-
Is the Bible the only tool we need for ministry and evangelism?
-
What place should topical or systematic preaching or Bible study have?
-
Can our theology end up hampering our Bible reading?
-
What about courses or other study programs—do we really need them?
Hope you enjoy the to-and-fro!
Your brother
Tony
PS
If you have been finding Two Ways News beneficial and encouraging, we would love for you to consider joining our Supporters Club—the people who make it possible for us to keep producing this newsletter/podcast—if you haven’t already.
To subscribe for free or join the Supporters Club, follow the link below to the ‘subscribe’ page. You’ll see that there’s:
-
the free option (on the far right hand side)
-
but also a number ‘paid options’. To join the Supporters Club you take out one of the paid ‘subscription plans’, and as a thank you, we send out bonus episodes and other material to Supporters Club members from time to time.
Sign up for free or join the Supporters Club.
Links
Evangelize 2024
Always two there are
by Tony Payne (when this podcast was called The Payneful Truth)
An article that discusses the way the Bible is full of pairs of ideas that you have to hold together.
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends,
Time to take a break from Romans for a few weeks, and deal with some other issues that have been on our minds.
This week we turn our attention to a moral question: How should we respond when our workplace or school wants us to take a stand about some social issue that we think differently about? What should we do, for example, when ‘Wear it Purple Day’ comes around in support of LGBTQ+ rights? Quietly wear a purple tie and keep our head down? Or just as quietly ‘forget’ to? Or make a more visible protest? And what biblical principles should inform our decision?
We hope you find our exploration of the ins-and-outs of this question illuminating not just for situations like this one, but as a model for thinking about moral questions generally.
Your brother
Tony
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends
Well once again, I have to open with an apology for the lateness of this week’s edition, again due to sickness in the team. (Please bear with us as we try to get back on track and on schedule over the next couple of weeks.)
There are deep waters in Romans 9-11, which we’ve been discussing over the past couple of episodes. And today, we get to the deepest mysteries of all—how God’s plans for Israel and the nations involve the hardening of Israel, the grafting in of the Gentiles, and the salvation of Israel through jealousy.
It’s a passage that leaves us exclaiming with Paul, “Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!”
We hope you find it enriching and humbling.
Your brother
Tony
Sermons by Phillip on Romans 11
-
Israel’s Future (Romans 11:1-32)
-
The Mind of God (Romans 11:33-12:2)
PS
If you have been finding Two Ways News beneficial and encouraging, we would love for you to consider joining our Supporters Club—the people who make it possible for us to keep producing this newsletter/podcast—if you haven’t already.
To subscribe for free or join the Supporters Club, follow the link below to the ‘subscribe’ page. You’ll see that there’s:
-
the free option (on the far right hand side)
-
but also a number ‘paid options’. To join the Supporters Club you take out one of the paid ‘subscription plans’, and as a thank you, we send out bonus episodes and other material to Supporters Club members from time to time.
Sign up for free or join the Supporters Club.
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends,
Apologies for this week’s episode being a couple of days late — some unavoidable delays due to sickness in the team. And sincere apologies too that (for the same reason) we’re not able to bring you a transcript of the conversation this week.
For those of who you are readers rather than listeners, we’ve provided a few choice quotes below that might tempt you, just this once, to listen to the conversation rather than read it. (And we won’t blame you at all if do so at 1.25x speed!)
And let me encourage you that this week’s episode is full of fascinating stuff, including:
-
answering a reader question about the difference between our human ‘spirit’ and the Holy Spirit;
-
whether all cultures are equally valuable;
-
the cultural arrogance of evangelism; and
-
what happens to those who’ve never heard the gospel?
Your brother
Tony
Links to Talks
Phillip Jensen’s talk on Romans 10
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends
It’s been a history making few weeks—a presidential debate in the US that seems likely to change the course of the election, elections in France and the UK that seem likely to change the direction of both countries, and so on.
But why do we choose some events and declare them to be the stuff of ‘history’ (as opposed to other events)? And is there any point or direction to history? Or is it just wave after wave of people and events, crashing upon the shore and then disappearing again?
Romans 9 brings us to the subject of history and God’s control over it—in particular, his control over the destiny of his people Israel.
It’s one of those humbling passages that challenges us to get back in our box and let God be God. I hope you find it both challenging and encouraging.
Your brother,
Tony
PS. At the beginning of our conversation, Phillip and I had quite a long chat about the nature of ‘history’, about how we view history in the West, and what it all has to do with Christianity. It was a bit long and a bit much to transcribe, but it’s very close to the beginning of the audio version above if you’d like to listen.
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends
As we continue our meander through the riches of Romans, we begin this week’s episode by thinking again about mind and heart and emotion (following our episode a couple of weeks ago). Why does the Bible see our emotion as located in our ‘guts’?
And then it’s on into the majestic second half of Romans 8, one of the richest passages in the entire Bible.
It’s all to much, of course, for a 30-minute conversation, but we hope that you are stirred and encouraged all the same.
Your brother,
Tony
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends,
I’m currently deep in the drafting of my next book, which is all about the ‘one-another word’—what the Bible says about the mutual word ministry of Christians, and how that should play out in practice in our churches.
A question I keep coming back to is how the gospel-based conversation of Christians with each another relates to their conversations with outsiders or unbelievers. The two must surely be connected, but how exactly?
Marty Sweeney and I dig into this topic in today’s episode of Two Ways News.
Your brother
Tony
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends,
Just me this week, with Phillip away on holidays. And I’ve found myself thinking quite a lot in the past few days about … thinking.
In reading Romans 7 and 8 in recent weeks, I’ve been struck by how much Paul talks about the ‘mind’. The contrast in Romans 7 is between what we know with our mind to be good and true, and what the ‘fleshly’ part of us just goes ahead and does anyway. And in Romans 8, there’s a very clear dichotomy—between the new mind that is set on the Spirit (bringing life and peace) and the old mind which was set on the flesh (bringing death).
But all this talk of ‘mind’ is a bit counter-cultural for us. We tend to favour the importance of ‘hearts’ over minds. In fact, I think if I was paraphrasing Romans 8 for a modern person, I’d instinctively say that the ‘heart’ set on the Spirit is life and peace, not the mind.
So how should we think about the mind? Or feel about the mind for that matter?
That’s our topic for this week.
Your brother
Tony
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends,
Reading the book of Romans is like hiking in the mountains. You come to a high point, and think that it couldn’t get more grand or majestic than this, only to discover that there’s another glorious mountain peak to come. Romans 8 is one of those mountains, coming after the valley of Romans 7.
It’s a very ‘spiritual’ chapter—Paul has mentioned the Holy Spirit only three times so far in Romans, but there are more than 20 references in this chapter. But in speaking so much about the Spirit, and especially in contrast with the ‘flesh’, Paul lays out a vision of being a Spirit-person—being ‘spiritual’—that is vastly different and vastly better than the spirituality our world offers.
Your brother
Tony
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends
One of the first resources I was given as a keen but confused young Christian in the early 1980s was a little book called The Fight. I can’t find my copy any more, and don’t remember a great deal about the book’s argument—apart from its main metaphor and message, which was pretty much summarized in the title. The Christian life is wonderful, joyous, liberating and ruled by the peace of God—but it is also a fight; a lifelong conflict with the world, the flesh and the devil.
In today’s discussion, we think about the nature of this ‘fight’ by looking closely at Paul’s argument in the seventh chapter of Romans. I hope it strengthens your arm for the battle.
Your brother
Tony
The Fight
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends,
Would you say that the modern Western world we live is a very open, permissive culture in which people are free to do whatever they want, without being judged for it? Or would you say that we’re a quite intolerant culture that scolds and criticises and cancels each another without mercy?
The strange thing is that we seem to be both. Perhaps it’s a case of mercy for me, but judgement for thee. But we can’t seem to cope with the need for law and justice on the one hand, and grace and forgiveness on the other.
In today’s episode, we begin to see how Paul’s argument in Romans holds together the important place of law and justice, alongside the necessity for forgiveness and a fresh start.
Your brother
Tony
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends,
On holidays recently I watched a harrowing but uplifting film called The Sound of Freedom.
It’s about child sex trafficking in Latin America, and the extraordinary efforts of one particular American agent to free some of these children. At one point in the movie, there are some scenes of rescued children starting to behave like kids again—talking, singing, laughing, playing games. One of the characters says, ‘You hear that? That’s the sound of freedom.’
It was the sound of kids doing what kids are meant to do.
And I thought of that film again as we prepared to talk about our passage today, on Romans 6. It’s also about being set free from slavery and what our new freedom is really like. Strangely, it’s the glorious freedom to be slaves to a new master.
I hope you find it … liberating!
Your brother
Tony
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends,
Every week or two the pattern seems to repeat itself. Some terrible thing happens in our world. Outraged or grieving victims cry out that something must be done, that the system has failed, that there’s a need for change, that enough is enough, that the government must do something.
What the government is supposed to do exactly isn’t always clear, but because being seen not to care about the issue would be politically fatal, they usually do promise to be fully focused on the issue, to be committed to it, to set up an enquiry, to fund some new programs, and in general to be ready to undertake whatever is necessary to ensure that the appropriate resources are devoted … and so on and so forth.
And around we go until the next calamity-driven campaign swings into action.
The world is full of tragedy, evil and heartbreak, and it touches all of our lives. We want the evil to change. We want ourselves to change.
But how can change ever really happen?
That’s our subject in this week’s episode as we ponder the first half of Romans 6.
Your brother
Tony
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends,
This week, Marty Sweeney (from the US branch of Matthias Media) joins Tony as they discuss the challenges of evangelism in our churches today–both in Australia and the US–as well as suggesting some ways to overcome these challenges. They also discuss what is truly at the heart of evangelism, and how doing it as a body is more crucial than we might realize.
We hope this conversation is edifying and encouraging for you to take into your own churches and communities. We would love to hear your thoughts, questions and comments, which you can share with us by emailing tonyjpayne@me.com or by hitting ‘reply’ to this email.
Blessings,
Jessica
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends,
In light of Anzac Day last week, Phillip and Tony converse about how our current lives are not as far removed from our forefathers and those who have gone before us as we might think.
Through the lens of Romans 5:12-21, we see how all the more true this is in our spiritual lives, and how much more powerful is the one whose sacrifice can change the entire course of our lives.
We hope this conversation is edifying and encouraging as we remember the sacrifices of the people who has made our modern life possible.
We would love to hear your thoughts, comments and questions, which you can email to tonyjpayne@me.com or by hitting reply to this email.
Blessings,
Jessica
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends,
It has been marvelous to keep receiving your emails and bumping into people who have been listening to the podcast and say thank you for the encouraging discussions that Tony and I have had.
However I do find there are also a lot of people who say to me they don’t know about the podcast yet. So if you like this podcast, please do get the word out as word of mouth is the most powerful way of spreading it.
And the second thing is, if you like this podcast, please consider supporting financially as it costs money to produce this podcast. You can do so through this link to subscribe and join the supporter’s club for a certain amount each month.
Yours
Phillip
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends
Tony is away on leave for the next few weeks, so I—Jessica Sutandar from the Two Ways News production team—will be introducing the episodes in his stead. The following weeks will feature some episodes that Tony and Phillip recorded before Tony went on leave.
Today, in this long-awaited letterbox episode, Tony has recorded his response to some of the questions that you have sent over the past few weeks, dear listeners.
Below is an edited transcript of select answers (in response to Paul Grimmond’s comment on theological application and to Sam’s question on how we interact with our homosexual friends.) If you would like to listen to the full episode, you can click the audio player above.
We hope this helps as you continue to consider the various aspects and challenges of living for the gospel.
Blessings,
Jessica
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends
Easter is now in the rear-view mirror—and we hope you had a joyful and spiritually refreshing celebration.
For many Christian traditions, and indeed for many Christians, the centre of gravity of Easter is Good Friday, the day of death and atonement. Easter Day with its resurrection is a nice, happy ending to the story, but it’s not the main event.
But in a way that is deeply puzzling to many us, the preaching of the apostles in Acts is kind of the other way around—it focuses much more on the resurrection of Jesus than on the atonement. For them, the resurrection was a massively significant event, anchored in the Old Testament’s understanding of who the Christ would be and what he would do.
In this post-Easter episode, we talk about what the resurrection of Jesus really means, and why it can’t be an afterthought in our gospel.
Your brother
Tony
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends
It’s hard to know how to introduce a discussion of ‘faith’. We speak about it all the time as Christians, often without really stopping to think about what we mean by the word. And when we hear it spoken of in by politicians (‘we value the contribution of faith communities’) or by secular critics (‘faith is a cop out for thinking’), we instinctively feel that they don’t understand ‘faith’ or those of us who ‘have’ it.
So in today’s episode, as we come to one of the Bible’s classic discussions of ‘faith’ in Romans 4, we have a bit of baggage handling to do—some clearing up of what we (and our society) really mean by the word. But what Romans then teaches us about this fundamental concept is life-changing and world-changing.
Your brother
Tony
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends
Martin Luther described it as “the chief point, and the very central place of the Epistle, and of the whole Bible”. Australian biblical scholar Leon Morris went even further and called it “possibly the most important single paragraph ever written”.
It’s the paragraph we locate in our Bibles as Romans 3:21-26, and it’s where we’re up to in our podcast series walking through the opening chapters of this extraordinary book.
In Romans so far, Paul has been slowly building up to this point. He started by saying that his gospel is the ‘power of God for salvation’, and that it reveals the righteousness of God. But the only righteousness of God we have seen so far is his completely righteous and justified judgement against the universal rottenness of humanity. So if all of us—Jew, Greek, everybody—is under the power of sin, how can God be a righteous God and yet bring salvation to people like us?
It’s the age-old and very pressing question of how perfect justice can co-exist with grace and free forgiveness. And this world-changing paragraph has the answer.
I hope you find our discussion of these momentous ideas as encouraging as we did in the conversation that follows.
Your brother
Tony
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends
This week in our journey through the book of Romans, we come to a summary of the argument thus far. Having introduced the idea that his gospel reveals a righteousness from God for both Jews and Greeks (back in ch 1:17), Paul has been unfolding why this ‘righteousness from God’ is needed—in fact, why it can only come from God in the way that he will soon explain.
And that’s because of the comprehensive and universal unrighteousness of humanity—of Jews, Greeks, barbarians, all of us.
In today’s passage (Rom 3:1-20), he dispatches any final excuses or objections to this idea, and draws this part of the argument to its conclusion. In doing so, he takes us to the very depths of the human predicament, and to the reality of evil.
It’s a sombre, sobering passage. But the night is darkest before the dawn.
Your brother,
Tony
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends
Thanks for the positive feedback a number of you have sent in about our new series chatting our way through the book of Romans. It’s a slightly different way of driving a podcast conversation, and of exploring a Bible passage—so please keep letting us know how you think it’s working.
Today, we come to Romans 2, and its discussion of moralistic hypocrisy. This is something that Christians have often been accused of—of proclaiming great moral standards in public but grossly transgressing them in private. But in this passage, Paul attacks the failure of the superior, judgmental moralists of his day—the Greeks and the Jews—and holds out the possibility that true morality is indeed possible, if God writes his law on the heart.
Your brother,
Tony
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends
We’re back with the our second excursion into the book of Romans, this time on the second half of chapter 1, with its very bracing discussion of human wickedness and God’s angry response to it.
When we were recording this episode, the internet was awash with people discussing the Super Bowl ad that featured foot-washing Christians accepting and loving the marginalized groups of our society, with punchline ‘He gets us’. I started our discussion by asking Phillip what he thought of it.
I hope you enjoying the conversation that followed.
Your brother
Tony
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends,
Quite often on Two Ways News, we start with some issue that’s current or that Phillip or I are particularly exercised by, and think through what the gospel and the Bible as a whole say about it.
But it’s important to go in the other direction as well—to start with the Bible, and see what God is saying there, and let that set our agenda. In this week’s episode, we begin a little series where we’ll be doing just that, with the book of Romans as our point of departure, starting with Romans 1:1-16.
It won’t be an exposition of all the verses, more of a discussion of the key ideas of the chapter and their implications.
I hope you find this new series encouraging, and very shareable with others.
Your brother
Tony
Links:
- A sermon by Phillip on Rom 1:1-17.
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends
One of the most widely viewed editions ever of Two Ways News was our discussion of the morality of voting Yes or No in last year’s ‘Voice’ referendum here in Australia.
That episode touched only very briefly on the problem that, for many people, was a key issue in the referendum—and that is the historical alienation, prejudice and disadvantage that Aboriginal and Torres St Islander people have suffered at the hands of white Australians over the past 200 years.
The recent death of Aboriginal leader Lowitja O’Donoghue provides an occasion for us to revisit this issue, and in particular—for us as Christians—the uncomfortable reality that Christian churches and denominations played their own role in the sad history of the Stolen Generations.
In today’s episode, Phillip and I talk about why and how Christians became involved in taking Aboriginal children from their parents, and what we can learn as we look back on it—not just in relation to that particular issue but more broadly.
Your brother
Tony
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends,
With Phillip away this week, I’ve taken the opportunity of chatting to our regular North American correspondent—Marty Sweeney, director of Matthias Media USA.
We talked in particular about a debate that’s broken out in recent months in the US over the ‘gospel-centred’ label—and we could even have a squabble about the spelling of ‘centred’ if we wanted to!
To be ‘gospel-centred’ is a kind of motherhood statement and aspiration, but some are questioning whether it has become a cover for having a minimalist view of Christian involvement in anything other than church and evangelism.
What’s the debate really about, and is it possible to be too ‘gospel-centred’?
Hope you enjoy our discussion.
Your brother
Tony
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends
This week I’m hoping that you can help me prepare for a major talk that I’m giving in a few weeks time at the Nexus Conference (on March 11 here in Sydney).
Nexus is an annual ministry conference for the evangelicals of greater Sydney to get together in person for the day, to encourage each other, and to stretch and challenge each other. (If you’re in Sydney and haven’t signed up yet, here’s where you can do that!)
This year the conference is about how to move from theology to practice—because I think this is one of our weaknesses. As Reformed evangelicals, we tend to be very united on classic biblical doctrine, and very good at expounding the Scriptures. But we’re not as good, and certainly not as united, about how our theology filters down into the practical and moral issues of our ministries.
Sometimes our differences will simply be differences in context, history and circumstance. We should expect practices to work themselves out differently in different places. But very often our differences reveal not so much that we read different passages differently, or even that we have different theological principles, but that we have different methods or approaches for applying theology to our practice. Or perhaps, we don’t really know how to apply our theology to our practice, and so we just kind of wing it.
And so in today’s episode, Phillip and I have a chat about one of the angles I’m reading and thinking about in preparation for my talk at Nexus—the historical angle. We’ve faced these kinds of battles before, in the historic debates that took place between Protestant evangelicals, during and after the Reformation, about what their new Reformed doctrine should mean for practice. Those debates gave rise to two contrasting approaches to applying the Bible to our practice, often called the ‘Regulative Principle’ and the ‘Normative Principle’. In this week’s Two Ways News we explore these historic debates, and begin to suggest a better way forward.
I hope you find it stimulating, and that you’ll get in touch and help me improve my thinking in advance of the conference!
Your brother
Tony
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends
It’s nice to be back for 2024 and chatting with Phillip again, although I can’t say I expected death and grieving to be our first conversation topic for the year.
But that’s the nature of suffering, sorrow and grief. You can’t plan around it, or avoid it when it comes. But we can be prepared to respond Christianly to it, which means bringing the gospel to bear.
That’s the nature of the Christian life, and the tagline of this podcast—‘Gospel thinking for today’—and that’s certainly true when ‘today’ is a day of grief.
I hope you find our conversation encouraging.
Your brother
Tony
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends
Welcome back to a new year of Two Ways News.
Tony is not quite back yet—he’ll be with us on next week’s episode—but in the meantime I hope you enjoy this conversation with Talar about ‘first order’ and ‘second order’ issues in ministry.
It’s a common way of talking about things we disagree about in ministry or in the Christian life—that there are ‘first order’ questions of prime importance that we must resolve and be unified about, and then there are ‘second order’ issues that we can afford to put to one side and agree to disagree about.
But is that the best way to think about the various issues we have conflict or disagreement about?
That’s what my conversation with Talar is about this week. I hope you find it encouraging.
Phillip
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends,
In today’s episode we will be talking about different Bible translations and the various factors that we must consider when reading and choosing different translations.
We hope it is an edifying conversation.
Yours,
Phillip
PS. This will be our last episode of the year. Thank you for your partnership with Two Ways News and we will be back again in January. In the meantime, look out for reposts of some top favourite episodes on the Two Ways Ministries Instagram and Facebook.
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends,
Christmas is a great time to see how our society responds to the gospel, and how we can use the opportunities of Christmas to proclaim Jesus to the world.
I am once again joined by Talar Khatchoyan while Tony is away on long service leave.
Yours,
Phillip
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Education and schooling is such an easy way to divide Christian congregations. But what truly is at the root of Christian education? Why is it such a divisive topic? And what can our history tell us about the problems we now face in regards to our education system in Australia?
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends
A few episodes ago we broached the subject of work, and put forward an alternative view (which I’ll summarise briefly below). And we suggested that there were various implications of this view that we needed to return to.
Well, your numerous questions and comments on the topic have provided the perfect opportunity and framework to do just that. In today’s episode, we—or should I say ‘I’, because it’s just me this week—tease out a number of important implications and applications of the biblical view of work.
I hope it ‘works’.
Your brother
Tony
PS.
This is the last episode I’ll be part of for 2023—I’m off on some long-service leave and holidays. Thanks so much for your partnership and kindness this year! I’m looking forward to chatting with you again in January.
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends
This week I am joined by a good mate and a lecturer in ethics at Moore College, Chase Kuhn. As we usually do whenever we get together, Chase and I end up chatting about ethics, but the main focus of our conversation is Chase’s new Advent-focused book, Waiting for the Christ, which is due out any day now.
I hope you find our conversation edifying.
Your brother
Tony
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Summer draws near here in Sydney, and so do the Christian camps and conferences that fill up our calendars.
As we engage in the excitement and fun of these camps, how can we ensure that we're not just doing it for the sake of having them? And what are some dangers and risks of camps that we need to be mindful of and actively avoiding?
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Welcome to another edition of Two Ways News. This week, our subject is work.
It’s an important subject for everyone, including Christians, and there are many questions that arise. The classic question, and especially if you're a younger, keen Christian is about ministry and work: Is full-time ministry for me, or should I go into the ‘workforce’, and what are the implications of that choice? Is one sort of work more meaningful than the other?
But there are lots of questions surrounding ‘career’ and jobs. Which job should I choose? Should I take this promotion? How do I think about advancement and ambition? And of course, there are questions about juggling family and work as well as the general issue of just how to be a Christian at work, and how to think about the significance of our work Christianly.
We hope this episode helps give you a framework of work that you can take and use to tackle some of these tricky questions.
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Last week, Phillip talked about war and the horrors of war, and one of those wars is in Armenia or a part of Armenia. Today we have with us Talar who is Armenian and has come to share about the history of Armenia and her own journey in living for Christ.
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear Friends
Tony is down sick and so this week’s edition is me interviewing myself.
However, this is not a week for jokes and humour as we are confronted once more with the horror of war. The news out of the Israel/Hamas conflict is quite frankly appalling. The frightful cruelty and savagery of the incursion of Hamas into Israel villages on 7 October has opened up a new chapter in the protracted conflict. At the time of writing, we await with trepidation Israel’s invasion of the Gaza Strip. What are we to make of the ghastliness of human conflict and the inhumanity of war crimes?
God’s word speaks to every situation of life, not the least our sinfulness issuing forth in humanity’s inhumanity in warfare. So, in this edition we address the Bible’s horror verse – Psalm 137:9.
Blessed shall he be who takes your little ones
and dashes them against the rock!
It certainly isn’t our most light-hearted edition but given the seriousness of the present situation it is one of the most important to think, discuss and pray about. We need answers for ourselves as well as for our discussion with other Christians and non-Christians.
Yours
Phillip
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends
This week’s edition touches on a subject that we’ve talked about before—or at least that I’ve talked about before in the old days when this site had a different name. Should we think of church mainly as a family which exists for its own sake and the building up of its members in Jesus Christ? Or is church more like a voluntary society with a mission—to reach the world with the gospel of Jesus Christ? And what are the consequences of emphasizing one of these options more than the other?
We were prompted to have another crack at this subject by a recent speech by Simon Flinders, and in particular by a paragraph from that speech that kicks off our conversation (see below).
I hope you find it stimulating!
Your brother
Tony
(PS. Apologies for the late arrival of this week’s edition—a bit of sickness in our small team slowed us down.)
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends
This week we welcome back Marty Sweeney to the podcast to talk about an old topic and that needs talking about afresh: ministry apprenticeship.
It’s fascinating—Marty and I have been running ‘Trellis and Vine’ workshops around the US for the past 15 years, talking to pastors and church leaders about the various ministry principles and practical issues that arise from The Trellis and the Vine. But in all that time, I could count on one hand the number of people who have wanted to know more about the subject that takes up the entire last third of the book: ministry apprenticeship.
For Col Marshall and I, it was a natural way to round off the book, as the logical endpoint to an emphasis on training every Christian as a disciple-maker. But it doesn’t seem like it works that way for many churches, judging by the relative lack of interest over the past 15 years. Why is that? And where do ministry apprenticeships (or traineeships) fit into a biblical philosophy of ministry?
That’s our topic in this week’s Two Ways News.
Your brother
Tony
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends
In last week’s episode about modernization, we touched briefly on the constantly changing nature of language. Words often shift, drift or drop out of use. New words are invented, or new meanings attach themselves to old words. This is not right or wrong—it is just how language inevitably works.
Sometimes, this is just a bit funny, such as when we use the wrong word, or use an older word not realising that it has shifted in meaning. But sometimes it can be confusing and lead to problems—especially in reading important historical texts like the Book of Common Prayer (which we spoke about last week), or the Bible itself.
So this week, a bit more about words, and how being curious and diligent in figuring out what words mean can help our Bible reading and communication enormously.
Your brother
Tony
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends
It’s been a pretty constant message for most of my lifetime—this call for the Christianity to ‘modernize’ or die—but a couple of recent instances have been notable.
In late August, The Times of London had a story about a survey of Anglican ministers, in which nearly half were in favour of same-sex weddings, and almost two thirds said that the Church should no longer teach that sex belonged only in marriage. It was a strange and probably misrepresentative survey, it must be said, but it led to the predictable refrain, along the lines of “If the Church doesn’t modernize its views on women and sexuality, it will continue to shrink into irrelevance”.
And then just a couple of weeks ago, Julia Baird hosted a discussion on the ABC (followed by an article in The Sydney Morning Herald), tearing into the familiar target of the outdated, misogynistic Sydney Diocese, with a similar kind of punch line—the Angicans need to change their appalling attitudes or be left behind.
In this week’s episode, we look at why modernization is good, necessary, unavoidable, dangerous and entirely the wrong way to think about it.
Hope that eventually makes sense!
Your brother
Tony
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends
Over the past few months, I seem to have had a higher than usual number of conversations with friends about their feelings of unhappiness in the various churches they belong to—including email feedback from some of you.
So in today’s episode, we thought it was time to explore this unhappy topic: what’s the best way to think about and respond to feelings of unhappiness and dissatisfaction in church?
Hope you find it useful, and shareable with struggling friends.
Your brother
Tony
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends
After catching up on some overdue Q&A about pastoring and singing in church (what else?), this week’s episode asks us stop and think about the way we use technology.
And we don’t mean just the usual sort of discussion about how our lives are becoming ruled by our phones. This week’s topic goes deeper, and talks about the powerful modern marriage of convenience between our technologically driven economy and our equally strong impulse towards individualism.
How can Christians adopt and adapt (or even reject) the technological advances that seem to spring upon us daily, given that what should matter most to us is not the satisfaction of individual wants but the building of loving relationships?
That’s our topic on this week’s edition of Two Ways News.
Your brother
Tony
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends
If we don’t tell our stories, we lose our history. And if we lose our history, we lose part of who we are.
In this week’s episode, we look back on an aspect of our recent history—or rather on a person of our recent history, who in his day was one of the most famous Christians in Australia. His name was Brian Booth. We’re glad to welcome his grandson, Nathan Anderson, to our conversation this week to tell us about Brian Booth’s life and ministry, and to reflect on the lessons that can be learned.
Your brother
Tony
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends
Australia will soon be voting in a referendum to change our constitution.
(Background for inattentive Aussies or overseas readers: the proposed change involves recognizing the place of Indigenous Australians in our nation’s history, as the original inhabitants of the land, and creating a new mechanism for the participation of Indigenous Australian in our nation’s government—a constitutionally guaranteed Voice to the federal parliament and executive government.)
As might be expected, the proposed constitutional change has generated lively debate, and Yes and No camps have quickly formed.
One of the fascinating features of the debate is how the moral dimension of the question has come to the fore. A prominent Jewish leader recently said that he’d be voting Yes because “I know it’s the right thing to do. The moral thing to do.”
If he’s right, then the argument is over. And Christians, like everyone else, should vote Yes.
But is he right? What place does morality have in deciding questions like this? And how should Christians engage with the debate as citizens?
That’s our topic in this edition of Two Ways News.
Your brother
Tony
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends
Following our episode on the ‘Atmospheric Church’ a few weeks ago, quite a few of you have gotten in touch with questions and comments about the nature of our church gatherings, about singing and music, and about how we should think biblically and theologically about these things.
In response, this week’s episode has another crack at these issues, by means of a quirky proposal: “Speaking as an Anglican, I’d like to bring back the church choir”.
To listen to me try to persuade Phillip of this crackpot idea, just click on the player above. To read the finished piece which I wrote after our conversation, read on below.
I hope you find it encouraging and stimulating.
Your brother
Tony
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends
One of the most enjoyable aspects of doing Two Ways News is interacting regularly with so many of you—through emails and casual conversations as we bump into each other.
This week, I thought it was time to pause and deal with a couple of the interesting questions that have come in recently, both of them about gospel ministry in its different aspects:
-
One is about what makes gospel ministry grow, and whether we can learn from the success of other churches or ministries, or whether everything is too contextual;
-
The other is in response to our recent discussion about pastors and pastoring, and asks (quite reasonably) whether we have anything positive to say about the ‘office’ or ‘position’ of elder or pastor?
I hope you find the answers stimulating. (As usual, the text below is an edited summary of the longer ramblier audio conversation.)
Your brother
Tony
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends
This episode Phillip and I chat about how the ‘gospel’ that we proclaim (such as in this new book, or via the Two Ways to Live framework) relates to the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. The former declares some news, along with its background and implications; the latter tells a story and introduces you to the person of Jesus. Many questions arise:
-
If there is only one ‘gospel’, how come the way the gospel is preached in Acts seems very different from the lengthy, story-filled narratives that we call ‘the Gospels’?
-
Is one approach better than the other, or more ‘gospelly’ than the other?
-
What of how the gospel is summarized and expounded in the Epistles, which is different again in style?
-
And what does it all mean for our everyday practice of evangelism?
I hope you enjoy the conversation, and that it spurs you on to share the gospel of Jesus with those around you.
Your brother
Tony
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Hello again everyone
We received so much positive feedback about my conversation with Marty Sweeney (a few episodes ago) that I thought we should talk again.
This time around I wanted to talk to Marty about a subject that we have discussed often over the past decade, especially during the ‘Trellis and Vine’ workshops we often run in across the States. The question is simple enough: if we want to have a church with ‘disciple-making’ as its heartbeat—and we’re aware that our current church culture isn’t really like that—where do we start?
In this episode (as he has done many times in our workshops) Marty tells the simple but very encouraging story of how he went about this task at his church in Canfield, Ohio.
I hope you enjoy hearing the story for the first time. I still enjoyed discussing it for the umpteenth time!
Your brother
Tony
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends
It’s increasingly common these days to hear scholars and intellectuals acknowledge the benefits and even the necessity of the values of Christianity for our culture—people like Tom Holland, Louise Perry and Jordan Peterson. But it’s interesting how these kinds of commentators still resist the claims of Christianity itself for their own lives. And quite often, what they say they’re rejecting is ‘organized religion’.
Have you had friends say something like that to you? “Look I’m not against spirituality, and I think Jesus was a really impressive man, but of course I don’t want anything to do with organized religion.”
What is it about ‘organized religion’ that is so odious to people? And would they be happier with religion if it was disorganized?
That’s our topic for this week. Hope you find it useful.
Your brother
Tony
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends
In a world wracked by wars and rumours of wars, by strife and conflict and international crises, you can trust your faithful correspondents at Two Ways News to tackle the truly weighty issues—like the stumping of Jonny Bairstow.
Perhaps it’s a symptom of just how comfortable and prosperous we really are that the populations of England and Australia should be so outraged and obsessed about one incident in a five-day cricket match.
For US and other listeners outside the Commonwealth who have not seen the blanket coverage associated with this incident, up to and including comments by our nations’ leaders, it is a little difficult to explain in a brief space what all the fuss was about. Let us just say that one of the batters was declared ‘out’ in controversial circumstances—that is, the Australians did something that was perfectly legal and within the laws of the game to get the batter out, but the English considered it to be a sneaky and unsportsmanlike crime against the spirit of the cricket. (And it turned out to have a decisive effect on the outcome of the game, which made the emotions run even higher.)
And so this week’s edition is about cricket—partly because we find it hard to pass up any opportunity to talk about cricket, but mainly because the whole incident was a fascinating case study in the idea of ‘law’ versus ‘spirit’, a subject that the Bible says a great deal about.
Your brother
Tony
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Hello again everyone
In this week’s edition, we talk about the confusing words of Christian leadership: ‘pastor’, ‘minister’, ‘elder’, ‘overseer’ and ‘deacon’. Christians often mean different things by them (in different denominations) and the world often attaches different meanings again.
How can we make sense of what the Bible says about these roles?
As always, we will no doubt provoke as many questions as we answer. Please get in touch by emailing tonyjpayne@me.com with your questions and comments.
Your brother
Tony
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Hi everyone
Phillip and I are back together again this week, and tackling a curly but very important question. It’s the one that I promised we’d get back to, from Craig in the US, who wrote to ask about the creation of ‘atmosphere’ in church.
No doubt our answer will provoke even more questions, but we hope it’s a help to Craig, and to all of you, as you think through emotions, affections and ‘atmosphere’ in our church gatherings.
Your brother
Tony
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Hello again.
It’s Tony’s turn to be sick this week, so you’ll have to put up with just me speaking to you—about the subject of statues and heroes.
Phillip
If you have been finding Two Ways News beneficial and encouraging, we would love for you to consider joining our Supporters Club—the people who make it possible for us to keep producing this newsletter/podcast—if you haven’t already.
To subscribe for free or join the Supporters Club, follow the link below to the ‘subscribe’ page. You’ll see that there’s:
-
the free option (on the far right hand side)
-
but also a number ‘paid options’. To join the Supporters Club you take out one of the paid ‘subscription plans’, and as a thank you, we send out bonus episodes and other material to Supporters Club members from time to time.
Sign up for free or join the Supporters Club.
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Hi everyone
Great to see some of you at the King’s Birthday Conference this week in Sydney.
In the week leading up to the conference (with Phillip preparing his talk and struggling with a bout of covid), I had a chat with Ken Noakes about the subject of Christian maturity and its essential nature. Ken has written a unique and helpful book on the subject, and I started by asking him the basic question that I think all authors want to be asked.
TP
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends
A wide-ranging episode this week that starts with an appreciation of the gospel generosity of Tim Keller and moves from there to the blessings of positive disagreement, the problem we have in keeping personal attacks out of our debates, why Donald Robinson and John (Chappo) Chapman were so good at having productive arguments, how we should vote on the Voice referendum, and (just to cap things off) a discussion of the increasingly forgotten concept of providence and what it has to do with God’s guidance.
All in a bracing 33 minutes of conversation. Click on the player above to listen to the whole thing, or read an edited transcript below.
Your brother
Tony
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends
I seem to be having trouble tracking Phillip down at the moment. As I write this, he’s travelling up to the UNSW Mid-Year Conference (I’ll be heading up there this week as well), so it’s me again in this week’s edition.
And the subject of this week’s edition comes courtesy of an email from one of our subscribers. Craig from the US writes about two important and related issues he’d like us to address, and as I started to rough out some answers I realised that it was going to take a whole edition just to deal with the first of them.
Both of Craig’s questions are about theology, but in different ways. The first is about theological understanding (or lack of it) among the members of his church, and I'll be addressing the problem and suggesting some solutions to it in this episode.
We hope you find it encouraging.
Your brother
Tony
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends
A special guest for this week’s edition—freshly minted Moore College lecturer, Tom Habib.
Tom’s post-graduate study was in John’s Gospel, and in particular the themes of belief and unbelief that are so central to John’s message.
He joins us in this episode for a stimulating conversation about why and how people believe—or don’t believe—in Jesus.
Your brother
Tony
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends
Just me this week, and therefore a shorter, punchier edition of Two Ways News in which I ponder one of the ongoing problems of the Christian life—other Christians.
I hope you find it encouraging.
Your brother
Tony
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Dear friends
As I write this, we are now looking back on the pomp and circumstance of King Charles’s coronation.
The media did their usual thing, mixing extraordinary images of pageantry and patriotism with a soundtrack of celebrity gossip, fashion notes and inane commentary.
However, in this week’s episode (recorded in the days just before coronation), Phillip and I talk about why we have public events like coronations at all, why they are like weddings, and why the content and symbolism of this particular coronation reveals a lot about the Bible’s distinctive view of human government.
Read on for an edited transcript, or click on play (above) to listen to the whole thing.
Your brother
Tony
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
This week’s episode comes at the end of Tony's trip to the US, during which he and Marty Sweeney spent a couple of weeks travelling around and running workshops about the ministry ideas of The Trellis and the Vine. As they look over the many conversations they had with pastors and congregations, Tony and Marty discuss:
-
Which aspects of the T&V approach to ministry still resonated most sharply with pastors and with Christians generally?
-
What differences might there exist between how US and Australian churches are struggling to do more ‘vinework’?
-
And if they were going to change anything about the book, what would it be?
Resources referred to:
The Course of Your Life
The Thing Is
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
With Tony away on holiday, Phillip has brought in his brother Peter Jensen for a special conversation on Easter, their new books The Coming of the Holy Spirit and The Life of Faith: An Introduction to Christian Doctrine, as well as the upcoming King’s Coronation.
Below are some snippets of the conversation. Listen to the full episode to glean more from the depth of their insights of our world today and to enjoy some good ol’ brotherly banter in between.
(We’ll be taking a break from Two Ways News next week. God willing, we’ll be back with our next episode in the first week of May.)
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Hello everyone
It’s been great to receive so many feedback and emails from you, and in this episode we thought it would be great to answer some of these questions that you raised. We’ll catch up on a whole bunch of interesting questions about evangelism, about culture, about ministry, and the call to ministry.
We hope you enjoy this discussion.
Your brother
Tony
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
In this week’s Two Ways News I’m flying solo, my regular co-pilot (Phillip Jensen) having been grounded with a nasty bug.
My subject connects with a number of themes we’ve been discussing over the past several episodes. Given the increasing marginalization of Christianity in our culture, is it going to get more difficult to preach the gospel? Or perhaps easier?
If God’s gospel is going to run free—unchained and powerful and changing people’s lives—how is that going to happen if we are increasingly being silenced?
PS
Thanks to those who’ve been sending in questions and comments, particularly about our recent discussion of the place of ‘desire’ in evangelism. To listen to an answer to a particularly thoughtful question on this subject, have a listen to the podcast audio above, starting at 14:45.
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Thanks for all the emails that have been rolling in. We’ll do a special mailbag kind of thing in the next episode (or so) to catch up on some of your insights and questions.
In the meantime, this week’s edition bounces off last week’s Nexus discussion about our recent history. Why is history important? And how can we make sense of it, especially when there are always competing claims and interpretations of what ‘history’ means?
The answer (as always) is deeply theological, and therefore lost on most people today.
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Last Monday, Phillip and I were at the Nexus Conference here in Sydney—a one-day gathering that aims to stretch and encourage ministry workers and leaders in the task of reaching Sydney (and beyond) with the gospel. It was a very stimulating and encouraging day, built around the Isaianic theme of trembling at the word of God:
Thus says the LORD: “Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool; what is the house that you would build for me, and what is the place of my rest?
All these things my hand has made, and so all these things came to be, declares the LORD. But this is the one to whom I will look: he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word. (Isa 66:1-2)
In the afternoon session, I interviewed Phillip about some of the ways that ‘trembling at the word of God’ had played out in his own ministry, particularly about how a determination to be driven by the Word had brought him into conflict—with his own sinfulness, with the world, and with other Christians.
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
In this week’s rather packed episode, we talk about:
-
Off-colour jokes about Jesus, and how Christians should respond;
-
Why ‘community standards’ is a fiction used to silence the community;
-
How you can only flourish in the public square as a Christian by pretending to be someone else; and
-
Whether our God-given desires are a good basis for evangelism.
Enjoy.
Links:
~ Same same but different - by Tony Payne - Two Ways News
~ Seven types of 'apologetics' - by Tony Payne (twoways.news)
~ Seven types of 'apologetics': Part 2 - by Tony Payne (twoways.news)
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
‘Bowdlerise’ is a word that’s fallen out of usage and fashion because the practice of it has (until recently) been laughed off the stage of culture. It means to snip out offensive language, characters or episodes from it. It was named after a 19th century doctor who we’ll talk about in the episode, and it seems like it’s making a comeback.
In these strange, upside times, it’s not Victorian moralists who are demanding that books be sanitised, but secular-progressive moralists. Roald Dahl, Enid Blyton, Ian Fleming’s James Bond—they have all recently felt the pain of the bowdleriser’s scalpel.
What are we to make of this? More importantly, what does the return of bowdlerising tell us about the nature of modern morality, and how to preach the gospel to a culture that seems deeply sensitive to offence?
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
We’ve spoken quite often here at Two Ways News (and before that in ‘The Payneful Truth’ years) about how the gospel is a particular thing. You can express it using different words and in your own style, but it’s not infinitely malleable. It has a definite content that we can know from the New Testament, and which we can explain to other people. The same is true with the Bible generally.
These days, both of these claims are controversial, and the common form of the pushback goes something like this: “How can you be so sure? We all bring our own preconceived ideas and contexts to our reading, after all. And nobody seems to be able to agree about what the Bible says. So when you so confidently declare that an outline like Two Ways to Live is a true and good summary of the one true biblical gospel … well, isn’t that just your interpretation?”
I put this objection to Phillip to kick off a lively conversation about interpretation, the gospel and how to read the Bible.
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
This week’s edition features a piece from Tony about the strange and elusive phenomenon of the ‘public square’. What is it exactly? Should Christians be concerned that we are excluded from it? And what should we do if we are?
In this podcast version, Tony and Phillip chat through a first draft of the piece, and try to improve it.
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Gambling has always been a social problem in our culture. In our part of the world, there is intense debate at present about how to reduce people’s access to poker machines (or gaming or slot machines as they are called elsewhere).
How should we think about all this as gospel people? Do Christians have something unique and important to say about gambling?
(We’ll also answer one of your questions about the place and importance of historic Creeds and Confessions at the beginning of the conversation.)
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
With Phillip away this week, I’ve gone to the substitute’s bench and hauled in Mark Thompson for a chat. Good to be able to get the Principal of Moore College as a fill in!
Mark also lectures and writes in theology, and just last year, he published a more general book for Christians called The Doctrine of Scripture: An Introduction (through Crossway) which is not the most funtastic title in the world but does tell you exactly what the book is about. In this conversation, we'll be hearing from Mark how this book can help Christians build their understanding of what the Bible really is, and their confidence in its truth and clarity and power.
The details of Mark’s book:
The Doctrine of Scripture: An Introduction, by Mark D. Thompson, (Short studies in systematic theology series), Crossway, 2022.
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
As we send our kids back to school (as parents in Australia are doing this week), a question many of us might face is 'What are we actually doing?' With the government running schools for the most part, it isn't strange when parents wonder whose role it is to teach our children.
As we discuss this topic, we hope to shed some light on some of the challenges that we face as Christian parents, and equip you with some encouragements as you seek to educate your children in the ways of the Lord in such a complex world.
-
If you’d like to catch up with Phillip and Tony in person, they’ll both be at the Nexus Conference in Sydney on Monday, March 13. (Tony will be interviewing Phillip as part of the program.) Nexus is aimed mainly at pastors, gospel workers, ministry trainees, and so on, but it’s open to all. The venue is Village Church, Annandale. Find all the details here.
-
Matthias Media (Aus) is having a big January sale that ends TODAY(if you’re reading this on Tues, Jan 31). Get in quick!
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Everyone has an opinion, it seems, about the significance of the late Cardinal George Pell—about his culpability (or otherwise) in the Roman Catholic response to child sexual abuse, about his own guilt or innocence on sexual abuse charges, and about his role within Roman Catholicism itself (in the struggle between conservative and liberal factions).
But what should we say when the topic comes up in conversation? As evangelical Protestants, what contribution can we make to the assessment of a Catholic cardinal's legacy? And what opportunities does the conversation present for speaking about the gospel of Jesus?
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
In our first episode for 2023, Tony takes a typically roundabout trip through New Year's resolutions, repentance, self-denial and John Calvin, and ends up blaspheming a modern god.
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
In our end of year episode, we talk about the positives and negatives of Christmas and ministry.
Plus some book recommendations for summer reading:
The Case Against the Sexual Revolution, by Louise Perry.
The Gospel of the Kingdom, by David Seccombe.
The Coming of the Holy Spirit, by Philip Jensen.
Busy: Tackling the Problem of an Overloaded Christian Life, by Ian Carmichael.
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
What are the fundamentals that we share as evangelical Christians—the beliefs that bind us together as partners in the gospel, and which enable us to work together? And correspondingly, how much difference and disagreement is too much? When and how can we still work together despite our differences?
And what has all this got to do with the Federalist Society?
Listen to the full conversation, or read Tony's summarising article at twoways.news.
Resources referred to:
Student Witness and Christian Truth, by Robert M. Horn
The Limits of Fellowship, by Phillip Jensen (article with link to audio).
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Religion causes wars.
It’s a common accusation flung at religion generally but at Christianity in particular. And figuring out how to answer this kind of attack is a helpful case study in how to approach apologetic conversations generally.
That’s our subject in this episode’s wide ranging conversation.
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
When Peter asks Jesus "How many times should I forgive my brother?", it's another example of Peter being sort of perceptive but also missing the point by a wide margin.
In this week's edition, we talk about forgiveness: what it means, how it is at the heart of the kingdom that Jesus brings, and why the spirit of forgiveness and mercy must permeate our lives.
Plus we deal with some of your questions, including a curly one about tribalism and Sydney Anglicans.
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
In this week's conversation, Phillip and I talk about the value and dangers of academic scholarship -- particularly the kind of biblical and theological scholarship that is done in mainstream universities. How can we appreciate and benefit from the work of scholars, but not be gullible about the motives and assumptions from which many of them work?
To chase up our reference to Helen Pluckrose and what has become known as 'The Grievance Studies Hoax', this article on Wikipedia gives a decent summary.
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Phillip is away this week, so Tony flies solo as he interacts with Al Stewart's fascinating and impressive new book The Manual: Getting masculinity right.
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Sometimes evangelicals are accused of making such a big deal of full-time Christian work that it sends an implicit (or even explicit) signal that people who don’t go into full-time ministry are second class. At other times, we panic about the ‘minister drought’ and bemoan the fact that no-one is being challenged to go into full-time ministry any more.
Is it possible to avoid these problems? What’s the right way to challenge people to consider full-time Christian work without devaluing those who don’t pursue that path?
A conversation with Tony Payne and Phillip Jensen.
Links:
Ray Galea's new book on this very topic is now available to pre-order. Eager to Serve: Facing our fears, counting the cost, and stepping up in gospel ministry
Tony's little book for every Christian on seeing yourself as a disciple-making disciple is also worth a look: The Thing Is: God, you and your purpose in life.
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
In last week's episode, we touched briefly on 'postmodern progressive tribalism' -- a description that sounds mostly negative, especially about tribalism.
But is tribalism necessarily bad? Is individualism (which is its most frequent alternative) any better?
And is there a gospel way of thinking about tribalism and individualism that saves us from the pitfalls of both?
Join Tony Payne and Phillip Jensen for a lively discussion of these questions.
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
The first edition of Two Ways News, a new podcast and newsletter collaboration between Tony Payne and Phillip Jensen.
Find out more, subscribe, and read or listen to past editions of Tony's newsletter 'The Payneful Truth', at the Two Ways News website.
To get in touch, make comments or ask questions, send an email to tonyjpayne@me.com.
And if you’d like to listen to the whole clip of Stephane Grappelli’s swing version of Bach’s Double Concerto, you can find it here!
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe
Some significant changes are coming up for The Payneful Truth. I’ll talk about those changes below, but first (and more importantly) to this week’s topic and guest.
A conversation on evangelism with John Lavender
One of the things I’ve loved most about doing The Payneful Truth over the past couple of years is the interaction with readers and listeners. Of all those who’ve sent in encouraging comments and questions, the prize for quantity with quality easily goes to John Lavender. John is a church planter and minister here in Sydney, who has been working over the last couple of years with Evangelism and New Churches (an organization within the Sydney Anglican diocese that promotes and resources evangelism). His main job over the past couple of years has been to visit churches and work with them to encourage and improve evangelism, and for a while now I’ve been wanting to talk with him about what he’s learned doing this. What’s the state of play around Sydney evangelistically?
Here’s an edited version of the conversation John and I recently had.
TP: John, in your work with ENC, you get quite a picture of what’s happening evangelistically in churches around Sydney. We keep being told in the media that Christianity is declining (as the Census data apparently tells us) and that all is doom and gloom. But where do you see good things happening?
JL: I hear so many good news stories. Little things like a guy who meets a new neighbour, strikes up a conversation and boldly asks him to read the Bible with him. And the neighbour says yes, and so he works through the Bible with him, and invites him to church.
Or a group of ladies who meet new people who move into their street, provide meals for them, and then invite them to church.
I see lots of little things like that where people take the initiative to invite, to read the Bible—that’s wonderful.
In terms of the bigger picture, some of the churches I’ve visited are just so committed to helping people come to know Jesus. They have a really good structure: there’s good training, the church is welcoming, you arrive and are followed up, the vibe is good, people show interest in you, the sermon is engaging, and you’re invited into a follow-up course. It’s really good!
There are churches where there are only one or two converted every now and then, but I’ve been in other contexts that are having 10 or 20 or 30 new people coming each week, where there are significant numbers of people hearing, responding, and wanting to hear more. It’s very encouraging.
TP: What about where it’s not working so well. What weaknesses have you seen?
JL: This can be a bit sad, because you see people who aren’t gripped by who Jesus is, or they don’t see they have a role to play in speaking about Jesus. There are churches that just haven’t connected at all with their suburb or the community around them, and that’s really sad. Some churches aren’t really sure how to actively reach the people around them. The people are reluctant or afraid or not sure how to bring Jesus into an everyday conversation.
But I’m encouraged because the ministers will say me to me, “John, can you help us? How can we raise the evangelistic temperature at our church? How can the congregation be better equipped? How can we connect with people, and follow them up?” It’s encouraging that they see the problems, and want to give it a crack.
TP: What do you think is the main problem?
JL: Before I point at others I want to think about myself. Two passages I’m passionate about are 2 Cor 4 and 2 Cor 5.
In 2 Cor 4, the contrast is between the temporary things of this world and eternity, and I’m just so conscious how often I’ve got my eyes set on the things of this world rather than on eternity.
In 2 Cor 5, Paul talks about being compelled or convinced of Christ’s love—I want to be convinced and compelled by that every day! He talks about the urgency. As I think about myself and our churches, I’m conscious that we’re lured into chasing the things of this world. We’re not fully convinced of the need to be Christ’s ambassadors (as 2 Cor 5 says); we’re not gripped by the urgency of the whole thing. I want to work hard to change the focus; to help people see that eternity is at stake; to be convinced and compelled by what Christ has done for us. That’s what I want to encourage people and churches to be on about.
I think the other issue is love. I’ve been reading Before you Share your Faith by Matt Smethurst, and reckons that one of the major reasons is simply that we don’t love people. What a slap in the face that is! If we loved people we’d be ready to talk to them about Jesus and about their future and about why Jesus is so good.
TP: How do you address this? How do you raise the temperature of evangelism and love and conviction?
JL: Well, one way would be by working through chapters like 2 Cor 4 and 5! Another one is Matt 9, where Jesus sees the people harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. It’s encouraging them to look out, and to seek to have Jesus’ vision of the world.
To go back to 2 Cor 4—I’ve heard Rico Tice talk about how Satan has blinded the minds of unbelievers so that they cannot see the glory of Christ. He has this line, “We preach Christ, and God opens blind eyes”. I want to help people see that we’re involved in this kind of spiritual battle. Will we pray for the people that God brings across our path, that we’d be bold enough to speak to them about Jesus? And to pray that as we speak to them, God would open their blind eyes, and unblock their deaf ears, and soften their hard hearts so that they would be able to see the glory of Christ.
That’s what I talk about with people. Will you be bold? Will you pray? Will you ‘cross the pain line’, as Rico Tice says, to bring Jesus into the conversation? And whether you get hostility or hunger, keep talking to people about Jesus.
TP: What about practical ideas? What sort of approaches do you recommend?
JL: Jesus calls people to ‘fish for people’. These days, we do a lot of our fishing on our own—we sit in a boat on our own, or go down to the rock ledge on our own. But a lot of 1st century fishing was done together.
I want to encourage churches to do more fishing together—to set up groups of 2, 5, or 10 people, to work together in evangelism. It means that as a group they are praying for connections and contacts; they can share their frustrations and disappointments; they can pray for people they’re having conversations with; they can do things together, like lunches and dinners to invite people to. To have groups and structures like that in place is really helpful I think. Fishing alone can be discouraging, but fishing in a group is a very helpful structure and strategy.
Over the years, I’ve also been a real fan of Christianity Explained. We adapted it into something that was done over four weeks. You bring a friend along to sit in with you. (We found it hard to get people to commit to longer than four weeks.)
Those sorts of evangelistic courses can be really helpful. But I’ve also become more aware recently of the power of the simple question: ‘Would you like to read the Bible with me?’. There are some excellent resources for this, like The Word One to One. I know of churches that get people together for wine and cheese, and then everyone sits down one-to-one and works through the Gospel of John. I’ve heard terrific stories of people using The Word One to One to read the Bible with friends and workmates.
TP: As a variation on that, one of the structures a number of campus ministries are using these days is evangelistic Bible-reading triplets. So the question you ask is not ‘Would you like to read the Bible with me?’ but ‘I’m going to be reading the Bible with my friend, Geoff. Would you like to join us?’ Sometimes this is an easier invitation. And having a third person in the conversation can often help.
JL: Yes, there are so many good resources and approaches. All the work you’ve done on reworking the Two ways to live material, for example, is really useful. It helps people to have clarity about what the gospel really is, and what the different aspects of the gospel mean. It’s a framework to guide the conversation.
I also encourage people to develop their own 20-30 second testimony about the difference that Jesus has made to them, so that they can explain in just 30 seconds who Jesus is, what he’s done, and the difference he has made in my life.
In my observation, churches that are doing well have a good mix of ‘Go and tell’ and ‘Come and see’. They’re equipping their people to go out in the world and talk about Jesus, but also have good structures and opportunities for inviting people to events and courses and church and so on.
TP: John, all this has been your own life over many decades. You’ve planted and grown an evangelistically vibrant church in Sydney’s West. Looking back over all that work, what would you do differently?
JL: I’ve recently been reading the book of Acts. There were things that came up for the early church that could easily have distracted them—persecution from outside; opposition from within; problems with leadership. Those distractions could have distracted them from proclaiming Jesus.
I think this is what happens in real life. Looking back, I’d want to be more alert to the fact that distractions will come and derail things. They just do. I would have liked to be more conscious and aware of these, and to stay focused; to be like the apostles in Acts 6, who address the issue and remain devoted to their main ministry.
As a church grows, it’s also very easy to move from mission mode to maintenance mode. Maintaining the trellis takes a lot of time. So I’d say that one of the things I learned over time is the importance of maintaining the discipline to stay in mission mode; to not let distractions divert me.
Some exciting changes for The Payneful Truth
Over the past couple of months I’ve been thinking about this newsletter/podcast, and where to take it from here. I’ve had two main thoughts:
I’d like to keep doing it! In God’s kindness, I think it’s been worthwhile.
I’d like to find a partner in crime—someone to work with regularly, not just to share the load, but so that mine is not the only voice that you hear.
Well, it turns out that I’ve found a partner in crime—an old crim that I’ve done many jobs with in the past: Phillip Jensen.
Phillip has recently started a podcast and has been looking for ways to improve and grow it. It seemed a logical step for the two of us to join forces again, and see what we could do together. And given that Phillip has a nice, gospel-sounding name for his ministry (Two Ways Ministries), it also gave me a chance to change the name (I’ve never been totally happy with The Payneful Truth).
So, in few weeks time, The Payneful Truth will relaunch as Two Ways News. (The new site address will be twoways.news)
I’ll still be editing and driving the weekly newsletter, and will write the main article every second week. On the alternative week, Phillip will generate the main content. And each week we’ll have a podcast conversation together, in which we will talk through whatever the week’s topic happens to be.
We’re also planning to bring in other voices, and we have ideas for additional podcasts and content down the track. But all that will develop as we go along.
What will it mean for you?
Things will stay mostly the same. You don’t have to re-subscribe or change anything. I’ll basically just be changing the name of the newsletter/podcast and joining up with Phillip as a regular partner.
But there will be two practical changes:
- Every edition of Two Ways News will be available free, every week
We’ve decided to change things up a bit regarding who gets what, and how the paid subscription side of things will work. The weekly newsletter and podcast will be available free for anyone who wants it—either by signing up to receive the weekly email newsletter or by subscribing to the podcast in your app of choice.
Those who are currently paid subscribers will become members of a new Supporters Club. Supporters Club members will get some special benefits (like bonus content), but the main reason to become a Supporter is … that you want to support me in doing the work! It will be less of a paywall and more of a gospel partnership.
So if you’re currently a free subscriber or free podcast listener—you don’t need to do anything. When we relaunch, you’ll just be getting more content from us than before. And if you’d like to join the Supporters Club at some point, you’ll be able to do so at whatever amount you can afford.
- Separate newsletter and podcast emails
We’re going to send out the newsletter and podcast as two separate emails (for a range of reasons I won’t bore you with). By default you’ll be subscribed to both emails—feel free to ‘unsubscribe’ to one or the other as you prefer. (If you currently receive the podcast in your podcast app, I don’t think anything will change except the name.)
The timeline
There’s still a bit of work to do in getting the new thing together, and I’m also due to be away on holidays for a couple of weeks in late September and early October. So the plan over the next few weeks is as follows:
This will be the final edition of the newsletter/podcast under the ‘Payneful Truth’ name. I’ll be pressing pause while I do the work needed for the changeover and go on holidays for a couple of weeks.
The first edition of Two Ways News will drop on Thursday, October 13.
I hope all that makes sense. Please get in touch if you have any questions.
Thanks again for reading and listening. I’m really looking forward to whatever God has in store for us next.
TP
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit twowaysnews.substack.com/subscribe
I wrote about being a ‘conservative’ a few weeks ago, and now the evil Anglican conservatives are at it again.
Forming breakaway ‘churches’. Causing material harm and distress to LGBT people by blatantly refusing to agree with them. Engaging in schismatic actions that miscellaneous bishops sadly shake their heads at, and purport not to really understand (which would be hilarious if it weren’t so disingenuous). And so on.
When friends and family ask me what’s the story with this new ‘Diocese of the Southern Cross’, I tell them that they’ve got to understand the background. The Anglican denomination has been home to two different and incompatible belief systems for decades now.
Some people limp between these two opinions; others try to find a way to live and let live. But allowing for all the variations of individual circumstances, and all the ways in which the world is a complex place, when it comes down to it, there are still two fundamentally opposed religions at work within Anglicanism, and the current disputes are just the latest manifestation of this fact.
JI Packer once summarized these two belief systems as ‘objectivist’ and ‘subjectivist’ like this:
[The objectivist position] is the historic Christian belief that through the prophets, the incarnate Son, the apostles, and the writers of canonical Scripture as a body, God has used human language to tell us definitively and transculturally about his ways, his works, his will, and his worship. Furthermore, this revealed truth is grasped by letting the Bible interpret itself to us from within, in the knowledge that the way into God’s mind is through that of the writers. Through them, the Holy Spirit who inspired them teaches the church.…
The second view applies to Christianity the Enlightenment’s trust in human reason, along with the fashionable evolutionary assumption that the present is wiser than the past. It concludes that the world has the wisdom, and the church must play intellectual catch-up in each generation in order to survive. From this standpoint, everything in the Bible becomes relative to the church’s evolving insights, which themselves are relative to society’s continuing development (nothing stands still), and the Holy Spirit’s teaching ministry is to help the faithful see where Bible doctrine shows the cultural limitations of the ancient world and needs adjustment in light of latter-day experience (encounters, interactions, perplexities, states of mind and emotion, and so on). Same-sex unions are one example. This view is scarcely 50 years old, though its antecedents go back much further. I call it the subjectivist position. (Briefing 204, March 2003, p. 17; reprinted from Christianity Today)
This is typical Packer. Thoughtful, careful, comprehensive, and crystal clear in highlighting the issues. But it’s very English and polite all the same.
I wonder if we could express it a bit more … vividly. If I were one of those old-time, African-American preachers, who liked to use the same rhythm and structure for an escalating series of comparisons, I might flesh out the differences between these two belief systems more like this:
There’s one religion based on an objective revelation;
There’s another religion based on a subjective implication;
And that’s why Anglicanism is divided.
There’s one religion in which the Bible changes human culture;
There’s another religion in which human culture changes the Bible;
And that’s why Anglicanism is divided.
There’s one religion that is inflexible about truth but flexible about human traditions;
There’s another religion that is flexible about truth but clings to human traditions tenaciously;
And that’s why Anglicanism is divided.
There’s one religion that puts the highest value on listening to God’s word;
There’s another religion that puts the highest value on listening to each other;
And that’s why Anglicanism is divided.
There’s one religion about God seeking the lost;
There’s another religion about the lost seeking God;
And that’s why Anglicanism is divided.
There’s one religion that calls me to repent from my sin;
There’s another religion that tells me I can stay as I am;
And that’s why Anglicanism is divided.
There’s one religion that believes that God knows the truth about men, women and marriage because he created all three;
There’s another religion that believes that there’s no solid truth about men, women and marriage because all three can mean what we say they mean;
And that’s why Anglicanism is divided.
There’s one religion that the mainstream media loathe and oppose;
And there’s one religion that the mainstream media tolerate and occasionally support;
And that’s why Anglicanism is divided.
There’s one religion that looks plain and unimpressive but trusts the power of God;
There’s another religion that has the gawdy appearance of godliness but denies its power;
And that’s why Anglicanism is divided.
There’s one religion that is seeing churches grow and lives transformed;
There’s another religion that is seeing churches die and lives unchanged;
And that’s why Anglicanism is divided.
Some of these comparisons are admittedly a bit fruity—but then again, that’s how preachers preach!
There are two religions within Anglicanism, although not everyone recognizes it. In fact, there are many good people, sitting in dying churches all around Australia run by proponents of the subjectivist version of Anglicanism, who don’t really know what’s going on or how much they are being misled.
But there are certainly subjectivist leaders who do know exactly what is going on, who occupy positions of power in various dioceses around Australia.
That’s the other piece of background to understand. Within Australian Anglicanism, there are 27 dioceses (each of which is a geographically based group of churches). Each one is independent in its governance, with representatives from the various dioceses getting together occasionally in a national synod. (The national body has very little decision making power.)
So if you’re an objectivist church or pastor in a largely subjectivist diocese, with subjectivist leadership, things can be tricky—and sometimes vice versa, although that is typically less of an issue.
This is why the new ‘Diocese of the Southern Cross’ has been formed. It’s like a virtual diocese for objectivist Anglicans who are finding it increasingly impossible to minister with integrity in dioceses run by subjectivists—especially given the determination of some of those dioceses to go their own way on issues of same-sex unions and human sexuality.
It’s not creating a split. The division has been there and operative for many decades, and this is but the latest expression of it.
In the end, we can’t avoid the reality that there will be alternative views and false teaching in these last days. But we can and should avoid fellowship with them (as 2 Tim 3:5 says). The two ultimately cannot mix or compromise. In fact, if they do, it ends up as a victory for subjectivism.
Hence, this new safe-haven diocese for objectivist Anglican churches. Like most central, denominational kind of things, this new diocese is unlikely to do much to grow the gospel or see real change in churches. But in providing support and encouragement for sometimes beleaguered ‘objectivist’ churches to persevere, it’s doing a good thing.
We should support it.
PS
I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I was about to announce some imminent changes to The Payneful Truth. I’m nearly ready to do that. Hopefully next week!
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit twowaysnews.substack.com/subscribe
There is a time for every matter under heaven, Ecclesiastes 3 reminds us. But is there a time for Ecclesiastes itself?
We’ve been studying and preaching our way through Ecclesiastes recently at church, and that old question has arisen more than once. Is its pessimistic view of the world limited in some way to its pre-Christian time? Or is its sobering message about the vacuousness of life just as relevant for us today, this side of the redeeming, revealing work of Christ?
The answer makes quite a bit of difference.
If the vanity of life under the sun is really a kind of pre-Christian despair that Christ comes to solve, then Ecclesiastes tells us more about what the Christian life is not than what it is. That would still make it a useful and challenging part of Scripture, but in a particular way. It would function as a kind of kategoria or critique of humanity's doomed attempt to find wisdom and meaning on our terms and by our own lights. And it would be a warning to the Christian not to fall into proud or worldly attitudes towards riches, work and pleasure.
But would Ecclesiastes then actually provide positive wisdom for our lives? Or not so much?
To take the most striking example, should we eat, drink and be merry, or not?
In 1 Corinthians 15:32, Paul says that this hedonistic, live-for-the-moment approach is the attitude of people who deny the resurrection. “If Christ is not raised, then what’s the point?” says Paul. We might as well live it up and enjoy each passing moment, because that’s all there is. Or, as James Taylor says, “The secret of life is enjoying the passage of time … Nobody knows how we got to the top of the hill; but since we’re on our way down, we might as well enjoy the ride”.
However, when we turn to Ecclesiastes, we find the Preacher giving his readers this James Taylor kind of advice—and often. For example, after describing the capriciousness, injustice and vanity of man’s constant striving for wealth and advantage, he says:
Behold, what I have seen to be good and fitting is to eat and drink and find enjoyment in all the toil with which one toils under the sun the few days of his life that God has given him, for this is his lot. Everyone also to whom God has given wealth and possessions and power to enjoy them, and to accept his lot and rejoice in his toil—this is the gift of God. For he will not much remember the days of his life because God keeps him occupied with joy in his heart. (Eccl 5:18-20)
You might as well enjoy the moment, because that’s the best we can hope for in this confusing, confounding world. He says the same thing in 2:24-26, 3:9-13, 8:15-17, and in this classic from chapter 9, which I like to write out in nice cursive handwriting on a beautiful card and give to my wife on our anniversary:
Enjoy life with the wife whom you love, all the days of your vain life that he has given you under the sun, because that is your portion in life and in your toil at which you toil under the sun. Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might, for there is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol, to which you are going. (Eccl 9:9-10)
The constant conclusion of the Preacher is that life is an opaque mess. Not only do bad and unjust things happen, but we can never grasp why. We can’t see through our circumstances to decipher their meaning or end—apart from the fact that we’re all going to die. As he says in the famous chapter 3 verse 11:
He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put the vast continuum of time into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.
God has put into our hearts an awareness that we have come from somewhere and are going somewhere; that we exist at one point on vast time continuum stretching back and forward. We sense that life should therefore mean something, and indeed we constantly experience the beauty or fittingness of individual events and times. And yet, the larger picture is hidden from us. We can neither see what is coming next, nor comprehend the significance of what has just happened. Just when we think we understand what’s going on, and have things sorted and planned out, it all slips through our fingers. Life is hebel—vanity, absurdity, an airy nothing that we desperately try to pin down with a local habitation and a name, but fail to.
These God-given limitations are meant to humble us, says the Preacher. God did it this way to cut us down to size, and to help us realize that everything we work at and achieve and obtain is really a gift from him, to be enjoyed as it comes to us.
This is why the Preacher’s over-arching advice is to fear God, to do good and keep his commandments, and to enjoy whatever gifts come to you from his hand (including eating and drinking and enjoying the satisfaction and fruit of your work). God will bring everything into judgement, not us.
Looked at it this light, perhaps the Preacher’s teaching is not so different from Paul’s after all. The person who denies the resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15 is denying the reality of God’s judgement—that God will raise all, and judge all—as well as the reality of forgiveness of sins in that judgement. He plunges desperately into hedonism because that’s all there is.
The Christian knows that there is judgement coming, through the risen Christ. That’s why he is bold to face life’s struggles and disappointments—as Paul points out in the previous verses in 1 Corinthians 15. Why do we trust God in the face of danger, conflict, persecution and death? Because we stand fast in the gospel of Christ’s death for our sins and his resurrection from the dead.
Christians have an understanding of God’s eternal purposes in judgement and salvation that the authors of the Old Covenant could only dream of. Our gospel labour in the Lord is not in vain, because of the resurrection of Christ (1 Cor 15:58).
However, our life here and now continues to be opaque to us, in just the way that Ecclesiastes describes. The groaning frustration and futility of life in the fallen world remains our lot, as we wait patiently and in hope for the redemption of our bodies (Rom 8:18-25). We are still confounded by the unpredictability and injustice of life under the sun. Our life is still an elusive vapour that appears for a little while and vanishes, and in which all our plans are in the Lord’s hands and not our own (Jas 4:13-16).
All of which means that there is still a very Christian way to enjoy the moment, Ecclesiastes style.
We should by all means be prudent and plan for the future. But we shouldn’t for a moment think that the future is in our grasp—either in the plans we have for our lives and families, or in the ministry strategies that we organise ourselves around. Our eternal future is certain. But next week’s future is not.
Our response to this uncertainty should certainly be to pray, and to lay all our plans and anxieties before him.
However, Ecclesiastes reminds us that the godly response is also to enjoy the moment when we can. We should revel in all the good things that do come to us from God’s hand—whether food or drink or the fruits of our earthly labours or the fruits of our ministry labours.
When God gives us that kind of moment, let’s enjoy it.
PS
If you’d like to go for a bracing swim in Ecclesiastes yourself, let me recommend The Search for Meaning in the Matthias Media Interactive Bible Studies series. It’s great stuff (for personal or group study).
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thepaynefultruth.online/subscribe
Rummaging around through my digital files last week, I discovered this paragraph:
The very experience of 21st century living, with its utterly bewildering array of nearly limitless choice—in knowledge, information, entertainment, commodities, interests, lifestyles, and so on—has the psychological effect of fragmenting our lives, and destroying any illusion that there might be one overarching truth or ‘big story’. There is no fixed truth, no unifying story, no galvanizing purpose. There is nothing that explains me, or locates me in the world as part of a fixed tradition or community. Everything is difference, diversity, plasticity, fluidity. It is up to the individual to try to fashion some satisfactory ‘self’, some thing that is uniquely and authentically ‘me’, by selecting from the google-sized cultural menu.
It’s from an article I wrote 15 years ago reviewing David Wells’s book Above all Earthly Pow’rs: Christ in a Postmodern World, which I suspect many of you will never have heard of, but which was quite the thing in 2007. Books are like sermons in this regard. Even the best of them get forgotten; it just takes a little longer.
I came across this article because I was searching for background reading on truth and lies, in preparation for the CCL event on ‘Deception’ that’s coming up next week. (It’s not too late to register!) And Wells’s book casts a fascinating perspective on that subject. He charts the collapse of the modernist confidence of the Enlightenment, that humanity could find its own way to the truth about life and the universe.
The Enlightenment project failed, he suggests, for a number of reasons. At one level, it simply failed to deliver. The modernist dream was that humanity would craft its own destiny, and that science and education would lead us all into a unified bright new tomorrow. We were promised progress, enlightenment, knowledge and an inspiring humanist quest for truth. Instead we got the holocaust, propaganda, a nuclear arms race and environmental degradation.
But it also failed, he argues, because of the very structure of its thought, and all that followed from it. The Enlightenment ideal is profoundly individualistic. Human reason and experience is sovereign, which means that my reason and experience is sovereign—so who are you to tell me what to do? Or to tell me what constitutes ‘progress’? Or what ‘truth’ is?
In the end, Wells argues, the Enlightenment dream buckled, sagged and collapsed under the massive variety and weight of the consumer options that have opened before 21st century Westerners. We didn’t become ‘postmodern’ because we all started reading Derrida and Foucault but because contemporary culture is built on ‘you doing you’ and ‘me doing me’ (as we now say it), and we now have the financial and technological resources for us to try to do just that. Postmodern culture is an individualistic consumer culture in which I define meaning for myself by what I buy and choose and experience; by how I thus create the unique thing that is ‘me’.
So what does this mean for how we think about lying and deception in a postmodern world?
Disappointingly for my preparation, Wells doesn’t explore this angle, nor (therefore) did my review.
His interest lies elsewhere, in how the postmodern crisis of ‘truth’ relates to how Christians preach the gospel.
And so, as is so often the case when you rummage around in old books and articles, I found myself going down a completely different rabbit hole. But it was also one that very much relates to current events and issues.
The big issue for Wells—and it is still very much ours 15 years later—is how secular, postmodern people deal with the fracturing of truth and meaning, and how churches deal with it, as they reach out with the gospel in this environment.
He notes that while church-going and general trust in Christianity has declined in the West, interest in ‘spirituality’ and ‘spiritual experience’ has not. He cites a survey showing how in the same period in which church attendance in Britain fell from 28% to 8% of the population, the number of people who described themselves as ‘spiritual’ or having had ‘spiritual experiences’ rose from 48% to 76%.
There is a spiritual yearning there. Can Christians bring the gospel to that spiritual yearning?
Here is where Wells asks a crucial question that many others in the early 21st century weren’t asking, and are still not asking: Just what kind of spiritual yearning does the postmodern person typically have?
Here’s my summary and reflection on his answer (from the 2007 review):
As Wells describes it—and his analysis rings very true—the current spiritual quest is intensely personalized, individualized and eclectic. It is part of the postmodern person’s project to make their life happy, satisfying, fulfilled and meaningful. It is about finding something real and meaningful in my life, given that I have lost confidence in a big Answer coming from an outside God. It’s like another panel on my Facebook page: my spirituality. And I may draw on tidbits of whatever spiritual knowledge or technique will help with that search and that process.
Here Wells comes to one of the key insights of this very insightful book. He argues that while the postmodern spiritual yearning has unique features thrown up by the particular cultural forces of our time, in its core structure and nature it bears a striking resemblance to a kind of spirituality that Christians have done battle with long before in the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD—the ancient form of primal spirituality that took the form of gnosticism. It too was a spirituality intensely distrustful of dogma and external revelation. It too was a deeply privatised spirituality where the sacred was approached through the self. And it too was a spirituality that reached from man to God, attempting to find salvation and blessing apart from the grace of Christ.
In other words, gnosticism was not a close cousin to Christian spirituality, a kind of fellow-traveller or precursor to Christian understanding. It was its diametric opposite and enemy. And when such a rival is on the field, adaptation, dialogue and tactical engagement are not viable strategies. The only appropriate response, argues Wells, is confrontation—otherwise known as “speaking the truth in love” (Eph 4:15).
The early church perceived this, vigorously opposed gnosticism, and was granted in God’s kindness a history-making victory.
The church at the end of the 20th century, on the other hand, has seen the self-focused, anti-revelational, lifestyle-oriented spirituality of our time as a phenomenon not to be confronted but to be accommodated. By seeing merely the surface attitude of ‘seeking’, and not the deep antipathy between the two kinds of spirituality, modern evangelicals have filled megachurches with people who don’t trust revelation, filter their experience of God through the self and its desires, and come along because the breezy, interactive, virtually contentless meetings make them feel good, and contribute to the project that is their lifestyle.
This is a vital point as we think about reaching our culture with the gospel. The desires, wants and spiritual yearnings of postmodernity are not a variation on Christian spirituality. They are as starkly opposite and as deadly to Christian thought and practice as was gnosticism …
Wells sharply criticises the ‘seeker-service’ movement for not perceiving this, and for offering a revelation-less, repentance-lite, therapeutic spirituality which gives unchurched baby boomers exactly the spiritual package they want—one that helps them to sustain relationships, handle stress, improve their life, and all without relinquishing their fundamental autonomy over their lives…
… This is the danger for evangelicals as we think about how Christ can be preached to a postmodern world … We see a particular demographic group before us—Generation X or Y or Z, or seniors or juniors or whoever it might be—and we begin to feel that if only we could find the key to their heart, the cultural pheromones that would attract them to us, then we would surely be able to win them over to Christ. If we can only craft our package in such a way as to show them Christ is the answer to their spiritual yearnings—for meaning, for relationships, for community—then to Christ they will turn.
So I started reading this old article thinking it might help me think about truth and lies. But instead it got me juiced up again about the gospel and truth and evangelistic strategy—which has also been much on my mind recently. The new Learn the Gospel resource is now officially launched and available, and just last Friday I submitted the final manuscript of an evangelistic book based on Two ways to live.
For both of those resources, one of the key convictions is that the gospel—in our knowledge of it and preaching of it—is a truth claim. It doesn’t seek to mould itself to the desires of its hearers but to call on them to repent of those desires in light of the truth about the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It proclaims a true reality beyond myself that calls upon me to spurn my self-focus and personal gnosticism, and turn to God in Christ.
The alternative idea that ‘truth’ comes from within and is personal is not new (as Wells points out). No doubt the current, postmodern version of this has its own unique features, but it is a species of the age-old and ever-present human problem—which is to reject the real truth of God, and replace it with a ‘truth’ of our own making. And when confronted about this reality, we excuse ourselves and say, like Pilate, “What is truth?”
In reaching out to a post-truth or anti-truth culture, it’s easy to lose our nerve. I don’t know how many times in the past 15 years I’ve had someone say to me some variation of the following: “Yes, I know the gospel proclaims the truth, and I believe that. But is ‘truth’ something that resonates with people today? We’re not a ‘truth’ generation. We’re more interested in what works in our lives. We’re more likely to get evangelistic traction if we can show them that Christianity makes a difference to them personally, that it solves their deepest problems …” And so on and so forth.
This is profoundly mistaken, and sends us down the road towards the kind of pop-culture liberalism that Wells warned us about in 2007.
The gospel can’t negotiate with the individualistic, secular gnosticism of the 21st century, any more than it could in the 2nd and 3rd centuries. In proclaiming the victory and lordship of Jesus, we’re bringing news of liberation from our enslaving, self-focused desires, not the fulfilment of them.
The final sentence of my article in 2007 put it this way:
The world may seek a million ways to live, but we preach two ways to live.
PS
If you’d like to come along to the CCL event on Deception, or tune in via livestream (personally or in your small group), you’ll need to register post-haste. All the details are here.
As I mentioned above, the wait is also (finally) over for getting hold of the first of the new Two ways to liveresources. For those who haven’t caught up with this, the old Two ways to live training course has been divided in half and completely rewritten. It now comes in two parts:
Learn the Gospel: a book/course to teach Christians what the gospel is (using the 2wtl framework).
Share the Gospel: a book/course on how to share that gospel with others in everyday life and conversation.
It’s the first of those that is now available. It consists of a very nicely produced book, plus free online videos, and is designed to be very easily done in existing small groups. Check out all the details here.
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thepaynefultruth.online/subscribe
Before we get to the subject of why Christian books are so vital, a follow up from last week’s post about being a ‘conservative’. Geoff Robson, who has taken over much of the editorial work I used to do at Matthias Media, got in touch to share a great quote from Peter Jensen. Geoff writes:
You reminded me of when PFJ became Archbishop (when I’d been working at Anglican Media for just over a year), and the media picked up on the label ‘radical conservative’ that had been applied to him at some point. He said he liked the label and accepted it (I had to transcribe the press conference for work, so I still have it filed away!). PFJ said:
Only a conservative could be radical. A conservative, to my mind, is someone who takes matters through to the foundations and is convinced about the foundations. In a postmodern world, this is rare. And indeed some of the flack we get, as a Church—with complaints about the way we behave and the way we speak—are simply a misunderstanding. We are very serious people, with a serious intellectual and moral agenda in a world where these things are treated somewhat as though they don’t matter as much.
Now, we have certain base convictions which are terrifically important to us. Having those base convictions frees us to be extraordinarily flexible about things that are of secondary nature.
Precisely.
But onto this week’s post, which is about bananas and Christian books.
The road to spiritual health is paved with Christian books
As a writer arguing in favour of Christian books, I feel a bit like a banana-grower arguing in favour of bananas—like my family did when I was growing up.
My dad’s people grew bananas at Dunoon, outside Lismore. My grandfather was even the president at one time of the North Coast Banana Growers Federation (he was the Big Banana, you could say).
So it is hardly surprising that our family consumed bananas in impressive quantities and in every conceivable format. We had them mashed on bread, sliced onWeet-Bix and baked in the Queen of All Cakes (banana cake with lemon icing). We ate them raw, frittered and barbecued. They were our morning tea, our afternoon tea and our sneaky late-night snack.
We were banana people, and had the banana key rings and other banana-themed merchandise to prove it. This poster was on the wall on the back verandah:
It always struck me that having a road paved with banana peels was also quite possibly dangerous to health. But perhaps the banana lobby could be forgiven for overlooking this. What else would you expect them to be but blindly and joyously pro-banana?
I feel rather like this in arguing that the road to spiritual health is paved with Christian books. What else would I say, as a life-long Christian writer and publisher?
However, it’s a little different. I’m not sure that a conviction about the all-purpose benefits of bananas was the reason my grandfather spent his life growing and promoting them. Perhaps it was—maybe the banana passion came first, and then the desire to grow them. But it has certainly been that way with me. It’s precisely because of a strong conviction about the value of Christian books that I’ve spent my ministry life writing, editing and publishing them.
That conviction has three pillars.
The first is a theological belief in the power of the word. It’s a cliché to say that we live in a visual age where people prefer to watch rather than to read. This is true, but only in so far as it is a description of every age. People have always preferred the immediacy of the visual. This is why that little thing called idolatry—the worship of a visual representation of the divine—is condemned so widely and vigorously in the Bible. It has always been humanity’s besetting sin.
The ‘humiliation of the word’ (as Jacques Ellul described it) is a feature not just of modernity but of history. Our rejection of God is a rebellion against him who cannot be seen, and a turning to the worship of created things that can be seen. Rather than seeing in the creation evidence for the invisible God, and honouring and thanking and listening to him, we turn away and suppress that truth. We turn to what can be immediately seen and worship it instead.
The visual is immediate and uninterpreted. It has no words. It is ‘dumb’, as Isaiah describes the idol that we make out of a piece of wood. Five minutes ago we were barbecuing bananas over it; now we’ve fashioned it into a shape and are thinking that it provides the meaning for our lives. The visual suits us very well, because we simply experience it and decide for ourselves what it means.
A preference for seeing and watching over listening and reading is more than a difference in learning styles or personal taste (although of course it is partly that). It is also deeply rooted in our human unwillingness to learn the truth about ourselves and God by humbling listening to his word. The Christian, by contrast, lives by faith not by sight, and our faith is in the word of Christ that we hear (2 Cor 5:7; Rom 10:17).
However, if it is God’s powerful word that we should turn to and believe, why are Christian books important? Why is the Bible not the only book to be published and read?
This brings us to the second foundation for the importance of Christian books and reading, and it is also theological. The word of God is authoritatively revealed and inscripturated in the Bible, and the Bible remains the supreme and only source-book for our knowledge of him. But his word is communicated and does its powerful work as his people speak it. Whether in the teaching-preaching speech of pastor-teachers, or in the one-another speech of his people in multiple ways, God’s word is spoken and heard and grasped and understood through the mediation of human speech.
Christian books are vital because Christian speech is vital. We receive God’s word in Scripture, and then by his Spirit we preach it so that it can be heard and believed. We preach it and teach it, and explain and expound and admonish and encourage and exhort it. And we write and read it.
But this raises the third pillar of Christian reading. Why reading? Why not just hearing? Why bother with books if we have sermons and podcasts?
The answer is obvious to anyone who has enjoyed the benefits of not just listening to biblical sermons but of reading the Bible for yourself. Something different happens when we read the Bible ourselves, because reading is a different mode of receiving and hearing and engaging with words. Reading is more flexible, and offers different opportunities for learning. When we read, we can speed up or slow down. We can skim and gain an impression of the whole, and then go back and pore over words and sentences, and milk them for meaning. We can pause and ask mental questions, and then re-read for possible answers. When we read a particularly striking sentence or phrase or metaphor, we can stop to appreciate it and allow its power to penetrate our minds. This is why the Bible itself recommends reading and re-reading and meditating over the word so that its sweetness enters our soul (as in Joshua 1:8 and most of Psalm 119).
Reading, in other words, is deep and interactive. We are not simply receiving the words at the pace and direction of the speaker; we can engage with the words, and draw more from them.
This is why a book or an extended essay can mount a significant argument, or take us deep into the truth of some aspect of God’s word, in a way that a sermon or talk or conversation cannot. Reading helps us to think and to change our minds—again, in a different way from what hearing or listening can achieve.
If Christian growth includes the renewal of the mind, then the road to spiritual health is indeed paved with biblically faithful Christian books. In God’s providence, he has given us this powerful means of learning and growing in our knowledge of him. Why would we not take advantage of this blessing that God has provided? When our hearts and minds are so prone to spiritual ill-health, why would we turn up our nose at the rich nutrition that a diet of Christian reading supplies?
I guess because we’re human. We’re lazy and inattentive, even to our own detriment. We prefer things on our own terms.
Sometimes, in the end, we’d rather just eat bananas.
PS
So much else comes to mind on this topic, especially as a I look back over the past several decades. We promote books and reading in church far less than we did. We might say that this is because ‘people don’t read any more’, but this is a consequence of our inaction more than a cause. It was no different in the 1980s and 90s. Everyone then said that reading was dead because of television, just as everyone today blames the internet. But in the past, churches that promoted and sold and discussed books regularly unsurprisingly fostered a healthy culture of Christian reading. We could easily do so again.
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thepaynefultruth.online/subscribe
Before we get into today’s topic, some exciting news. Learn the Gospel (part one of the new Two ways to live training framework) has finally arrived, and is available for purchase. (In Australia, that is. It will be a few more weeks before the books find their way through the US ports and land in our American warehouse.)
I know many of you have been wondering and waiting for it to be available, and are keen to think how this resource could be used to teach the fundamentals of the gospel in your churches.
To this end, Matthias Media is encouraging churches to run a pilot program in Term 4 (say in two or three small groups) to see how Learn the Gospel fits and works in your context—and offering a friendly bulk price to help you have a go at this. If you’re in Australia, and would like to participate in this pilot, and test the waters for how your church could utilize Learn the Gospel, send an email to Gavin Shume (gshume@matthiasmedia.com.au).
(This is an invitation only pilot—just for Payneful Truth subscribers and a few other churches we’re asking.)
But onto this week’s subject …
Who wants to be a conservative?
I’ve lost count how many times over the course of my life that ‘conservatives’ and ‘progressives’ have fought over different issues in my (Anglican) denomination.
Through the fog of time, different figures and controversies rise up and recede in my memory. I see Archbishop Peter Carnley (at that time the Primate of Australia), arguing that the resurrection was a spiritual experience rather than a physical event, and that Christ was not the only path to salvation—and then the godly, gracious Archbishop of Sydney, Harry Goodhew, copping a pounding in the secular press for daring to object (that was in around 2000 I think). I see the radically revisionist Bishop John Spong emerging from the mist, visiting Australia not long afterwards at the invitation of Carnley and the ‘Progressive Christian Network’. And once again the nasty ‘conservatives’ were the ones who criticised Spong’s denial of pretty much every tenet of orthodox Christian doctrine.
Then I think of the long-running skirmishes (starting back in the 80s) over multiple issues—women’s ordination, gay ordination, the blessing of same-sex unions, and more. In each case, the ‘progressives’ or ‘liberals’ sought to change or update the doctrine and morality of Christianity, and in the opposing corner were the ‘conservatives’. And given that on all these issues I found myself barracking for the conservatives, I guess that makes me one. And you too, quite possibly.
So how do you feel about being a ‘conservative’?
I can’t say that the label thrills me to the core.
What’s a ‘conservative’ after all? When we think ‘conservative’, we think of a stick in the mud; a reactionary; a stuffy, buttoned-down member of the establishment who wants things to stay the same. Conservatives are risk averse, change averse, and very likely excitement averse. They wear cream blazers over blue chinos. With their thin, cold and (invariably) white hands, they cling to the dogmas and traditions of the past, in a desperate and doomed attempt to forestall the new and better future that everyone else is longing for.
Just what I always wanted to be—a conservative.
Of course, like many such words in our culture, ‘conservative’ and ‘progressive’ are dependent on their predicate (or should be). It’s like being ‘narrow’ as opposed to ‘broad’. It entirely depends what you’re talking about. I would prefer my waist to be more narrow and my shoulders more broad. I’d like my fridge to be conservative of the food inside it, and my five-irons very progressive and if possible in the right direction.
It all depends on what you’re conserving.
Interestingly, this is also true in politics.
British and European political ‘conservatism’ is quite different from American ‘conservatism’, because they seek to conserve different things. I’ve recently been reading George F. Will’s book, The Conservative Sensibility, and he describes the difference like this:
[The European tradition of throne-and-altar conservatism] has generally sought to conserve institutions and practices, such as social hierarchies and established churches, that were produced by the slow working of historical processes spanning many centuries. American conservatism seeks, as Alexander Hamilton did in the Republic’s infancy, to conserve or establish institutions and practices conducive to a social dynamism that dissolves impediments to social mobility and fluency. So American conservatism is not only different from, it is at bottom antagonistic to British and continental European conservatism. The latter emphasizes the traditional and dutiful, with duties defined by obligations to a settled collectivity, the community. Because American conservatism is about individual liberty, it cultivates spontaneous social order and hence encourages novelty.[1]
American political conservatism wants to preserve the norms and principles of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution—which are documents largely designed to protect the freedom of the individual from the tyranny of a monarchical government. European conservatism (on the other hand) is much happier for the king to remain in place and to benevolently rule his subjects for their good, according to the ancient traditions. One of the ironies of history is that today, the enemies of American conservatism are not British monarchs but political progressives, whose ambition is to have the government exercise a greater more monarchical power over the individual and society.
(As for where Australian political conservatism fits into this schema, I’m not sure I can say. It hardly exists as an intellectual force. There’s no throne-and-altar tradition to protect, nor is there a libertarian Constitution to conserve. I suspect Australian political conservatism ends up being a more cautious and practical progressivism. Australians seem increasingly to believe that the government is the most important actor in society, that it is largely to blame for our problems and could solve them if only it had more power and money to spend. The ‘conservative’ side of Australian politics seems content to largely go along with these assumptions, offering an alternative that is supposed to be more cautious and sensible than the other guys.)
But I digress.
The point is: it all depends on what you’re conserving. And on the other side, what is it that you want to change or ‘progress’?
To come back to Christian debates, Anglican ‘progressives’ generally want to improve our doctrine to make it more attractive to the world, while keeping and conserving many of the cultural practices and traditions of historic Anglicanism. And so we have the strange spectacle of modernist Anglican Bishops, spouting ultra-progressive theology, while still clothed in the robes, liturgical practices and church buildings of a centuries-old tradition. Progressive content, conservative style.
The Anglican ‘conservatives’, at least in my part of the world, are the opposite. They have long since ditched robes, ancient liturgies, archaic language and ‘churchy’ architecture, while arguing vigorously for the unchanging, ancient truths of the Bible. Progressive style, conservative content.
To put it another way, Anglican progressives want to change the church’s doctrine to be more like the world. True Anglican conservatives want to change the world.
That’s why ‘conservative’ is never enough for me, as a label. It’s a bit like the American Constitution. It seeks to secure the rights of the citizenry for ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’; and so to ‘conserve’ this Constitution is to promote the personal freedom to experiment and change. As George Will argues, American conservatism encourages novelty.
In a similar way, the biblical truth I want to conserve and pass on to the next generation is a charter for transformation. It proclaims a truth that is revolutionary; that transforms lives and cultures, and that is not bound by times or places or traditions. The ancient, unchanging biblical gospel speaks to every culture and language and tradition, because it speaks of the Christ who is Lord of every person and time and culture, and who calls on all people, everywhere, to turn back to him. It looks forward to the time that John saw in his vision, when “the kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ” (Rev 11:7).
This is why true theological conservatives should be methodological and cultural progressives. The unchanging biblical truth we preserve and proclaim drives us constantly to change—to change our lives, to change our practices—because we want to change the world through the preaching of the gospel in the power of God’s Spirit. We want to see lives transformed through Jesus Christ, who is the same yesterday, today and forever. We want to see our churches transformed, and to grow in love and faith and urgency for gospel mission.
So I guess I’m willing to be a conservative—just not in gospel ambition. Let’s not, for example, conserve ministry traditions and practices that are no longer fit for purpose, simply because we’ve always done them. If the trellis needs changing, let’s get to work with hammer and nail so that the vine has room to flourish. Let’s be constantly progressive in the way we proclaim the unchanging gospel truth that we conserve.
Maybe I’m not an unvarnished, unmodified conservative after all.
Perhaps I’m a conservative revolutionary.
Who wants to join me?
PS
George Will’s book is fascinating. If you’re interested in politics and political history (and especially US politics) it’s worth a read, even (or perhaps especially) if your political leanings are more progressive. For me, one of the more fascinating aspects of his argument was his attempt to find a rational basis for ‘natural rights’ that did not rely on their God-given nature. He argues (pretty persuasively) that the US Constitution is about securing and promoting existing natural rights—rights that we self-evidently have by virtue of simply being human. As the Declaration of Independence puts it: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
However, Will wants to argue that belief in the God who created all men equal and endowed them with these rights is entirely optional. If God is there, well and good; he also created us with the rational capacity to figure out what our natural rights are using our reason. But if God is not there (as Will himself believes), then we can still derive our self-evident natural rights purely from reason, using a version of what Will calls ‘rule utilitarianism’.
It’s all pretty tortuous and unconvincing (especially if you know anything about utilitarianism and its question-begging approach to the ‘good’). And sadly (for Will’s hopes at least) I think it explains why American conservatism as an intellectual movement is in decline, why its political influence is unlikely to grow, and why classical American republicanism is in real trouble. Our postmodern secular world has moved on from the Enlightenment confidence that we could establish morality and rights purely on the basis of reason. Nothing is self-evident any more in a society that does not share in basic Christian assumptions. The capital from a previously more Christian culture has been spent, and the (most Christian) moral virtues and assumptions that undergird American conservatism (individual responsibility, self-restraint, an acceptance of the hardness and unpredictability of life, and so on) are in major decline. And so the system is showing real cracks. The Congress has mostly given up writing laws. The Presidency is gathering more power to itself. There is genuine disagreement over the basic function of the Supreme Court. Both sides are increasingly declaring the other side illegitimate and evil. Populism is on the rise.
When you erode the foundations, eventually the structure starts to crumble.
Interestingly, the American figures today who are arguing for a return to Constitution-based freedom-loving conservatism (or ‘classical liberalism’) are nearly all Christians or Jews of some stripe or other, or at least fellow-travellers with those traditions. I suspect they are fighting a losing battle.
The Centre for Christian Living event on ‘Deception’ is coming up fast on August 24. Here’s a little video of me explaining what’s it about.
[1] George F. Will, The Conservative Sensibility (New York: Hachete, 2019), xxvii-xxix.
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thepaynefultruth.online/subscribe
I was doing some teaching on apologetics recently on Campus, and as we milled around outside afterwards, one of the students asked a thoughtful question.
Why is it that contemporary apologetics mostly focuses on the two approaches that enjoy the least biblical support and have the most risks attached?
To understand the question, some background.
My presentation had been based on the ‘Seven types of apologetics’ essay that I rolled out on The Payneful Truth last year (pt 1, pt 2). As a refresher (or to save you reading from scratch), I argued that in the varied world of contemporary apologetics and evangelistic persuasion, the word ‘apologetics’ gets thrown around pretty loosely—so much so that it’s possible to identify seven different kinds of persuasion or argument that might have the label ‘apologetics’ slapped on them these days. They were:
Gospel persuasion: the arguments and evidence and reasoning that we employ when actually explaining the gospel of Jesus’ death and resurrection (e.g. evidence that Jesus did indeed rise from the dead).
Gospel objections: having explained the gospel, we answer the various questions and objections that people raise against it (e.g. “Did Jesus really rise from the dead?”; “I don’t believe that we are all sinners and rebels”; and so on).
Pre-emptive objections: before we get to talking about the gospel itself, we might address the general objections people have to God and Christianity (e.g. “Why does God allow suffering?”; “Hasn’t science disproved Christianity?”; “Why is Christianity so anti-women and anti-gay?” etc.)
Building Christian confidence: one function or type of apologetics is bolstering the confidence of Christians by providing answers and reasons for their doubts, and for the common objections that society throws at us.
God talk and life: way back at the ‘engage’ or pre-evangelistic end of the spectrum, the way we talk and behave in everyday life can open up and commend the subject of the gospel, in a Colossians 4:5-6 kind of way.
Positive reasons: These are positive arguments we put forward for the truth or attractiveness of the Christian faith. They might be some version of the classic proofs of the existence of God; they might be arguments that start with the people’s inherent desires and aspirations and show that Christianity fulfills them; they might seek to present the positive goodness of Christianity in the most reasonable and attractive way, to get some traction with the modern, secular person.
Critique (kategoria): Rather than provide a defense or ‘apologia’, this form of persuasion points out the inconsistencies and dysfunctions in the non-Christian worldview. It critiques the world, rather than answering the critiques of the world. (Paul’s speech in Acts 17 is a classic case in point.)
I argued that we find types 1, 2, 4, 5, and 7 in the example and instructions of the apostles, and suggested that these were the ones we should also focus on in our own evangelism and persuasion. Types 3 and 6—‘Pre-emptive objections’ and ‘Positive reasons’—are not only difficult to find in the New Testament but have considerable risks attached. The ‘pre-emptive objections’ approach puts us on the backfoot, and often gives too much credence to the validity or genuineness of the objection; the ‘positive reasons’ strategy often seeks to frame Christianity in terms that are attractive to the prevailing secular mind, thereby risking a distortion of the counter-intuitive, offensive nature of the gospel.
Unfortunately, it is precisely these two latter types (3 and 6) that tend to dominate the field of contemporary apologetics and persuasion.
Hence the question I was asked: How has this come to be the case? Why do we end up focusing on the two apologetic approaches that have least to commend them?
In answer, I made a few vague, stuttering remarks about the trends of modern thought, and our temptation to give the world too much credit, and our lack of belief in the power of the gospel itself, and how everything had gone to pot since the Enlightenment, and so on. All no doubt true, but a bit incoherent.
But then a few days later, in the slow process of moving some books around at home—slow because I keep stopping to browse through old favourites—I came across Graeme Goldsworthy’s underappreciated Gospel-centred Hermeneutics. Not a light read but full of gold. And I remembered and found again this section on page 60:
Sinful thinking is ‘snake-think’, the kind of noetic rebellion proposed by the serpent in Eden. It is diametrically opposed to the mind renewed by the gospel … At this point we can say that the godless presuppositions underlying the temptation and fall in Genesis 3 include the following:
If God is there, he does not communicate the truth.
We do not need God to reveal the rational framework for understanding reality;
Human reason is autonomous, and the ultimate arbiter of truth and falsity, right and wrong.
In essence, these presuppositions are those of the secular mind that were given such sophisticated expression in the philosophies of the Enlightenment.
‘Noetic rebellion’—there’s a phrase you would only hear spoken in the halls of academe. ‘Noetic’ means ‘to do with the mind’ (from the Greek word nous, ‘mind’, ‘understanding’, ‘intellectual perception’). Why we can’t just say ‘mental rebellion’ I’m not sure, but I digress.
At one level, Goldsworthy’s point is one that you’ve heard in a thousand sermons on Genesis 3—that the fall involved a false set of assumptions and beliefs about God: that even if he is there, we can’t trust him and don’t need him; that we can gain wisdom and truth on our own terms; that we can become like God ourselves, as self-legislating judges of what is true and good.
Goldsworthy’s insight, however, is that this primal ‘snake-think’ is precisely the program of the Enlightenment, and the foundation of modern thought. The Enlightenment was the humanistic project beginning in the late 17th century that sought to cast off the dark, dim understanding of our forebears, who relied on God and his revelation to understand the world. The Enlightenment thinkers wanted to see if we could figure it all out for ourselves, without an answer coming to us ‘from outside’. Could knowledge and truth and morality be found by following our own reason and instincts and experience? Surely yes, said the Enlightenment, and tried to do so.
Fast forward to today, and we are the inheritors of several centuries of what amounts to very sophisticated snake-think. The progress of the Enlightenment has been anything but smooth. In fact, the ‘post-modern’ movement was basically the realization that the assumptions of the Enlightenment were overly optimistic and self-defeating.
All the same, even if post-modern thinkers are a tad less confident about our ability to figure it all out ourselves, the basic serpentine assumption remains. It’s as old as Adam. If there is any rationality or truth or goodness or morality to be found, it will only be discovered or created by us, on our own terms, through our own reason and experience.
Any proposal, therefore, that is put forward—whether Christian or otherwise—needs to accept these ground rules. The truth or falsity of something, its rightness or wrongness, its goodness or badness, its usefulness or otherwise, can only be established on terms decided by us.
In our noetically rebellious world, human reason and experience occupy the bench as Judge. If Christianity wishes to argue for itself, it needs to take its place in the dock, like everything else, and defend itself. It needs to answer the Judge’s objections and questions. It needs to show itself good and reasonable according to our current, autonomous standards of reason and experience.
This is where Goldsworthy’s insight helps answer my student’s question about the focus of much contemporary apologetics.
We find it very easy to focus on apologetic strategy number 3 (pre-emptive objections) and number 6 (positive reasons) because they fit within the dominant thought-patterns of our whole culture, the gravitational pull of which is hard to escape. We’ve grown up with snake-think. It’s the air we breathe. We find it almost impossible to imagine a scenario in which human reason and experience are not the judge and arbiter of everything. By long habit, we assume that Christianity’s normal place is in the dock, cap in hand, seeking to fend off the secular world’s objections and allegations, and hoping to provide attractive, compelling reasons that might satisfy the Judge, or at least make him regard us less negatively.
But you can see the problem. By adopting these apologetic strategies, we choose to work within the framework of the noetic rebellion of our culture. We implicitly accept the ground rules of snake-think, and hope that we can somehow persuade the Judge to think better of us and the gospel, or even to accept the truth of our claim.
This has two real downsides.
Firstly, it doesn’t and can’t work. The Judge of human reason will never be satisfied by the arguments and claims of the genuine gospel, because to do so would require a total reversal of positions. To accept the gospel claim would require the Judge to lay down his gavel, take off his robe, humbly enter the dock, and plead guilty to rebelling against the true creator, lord and judge of the world. What human judge is going to do that?
Secondly, it leads us to change the message. We craft our arguments and persuasion to appeal to snake-think; that is, to a set of human standards, rationalities, aspirations and tastes that are shot-through with rebellion against God. The gospel is the opposite of this—it shames worldly wisdom and refuses to be known by it (see 1 Cor 1-2). It’s hard to see how we could dabble in approaches 3 and 6 at any depth, without it changing our gospel proclamation for the worse.
The great news, though, is that the gospel provides a profound critique of snake-think and a wonderful redemption from it. The simple old gospel is powerfully effective because it addresses the simple old problem—which also happens to be the simple modern problem: rebellion against God. Gospel persuasion is accusatory and liberating rather than defensive or apologetic, because it calls on all people everywhere to leave behind their noetic rebellion and turn back to the only wise God.
That’s how Paul approached the Athenian sophisticates in Acts 17. Rather than adopting a defensive stance—as if he and his message were on trial, and needing to be justified—he gives a quite devastating critique of their foolish idolatry and ignorance, and puts them in the dock before the God and judge of the world. “The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead” (Acts 17:30-31).
Surely it can’t be as simple as that? Won’t people laugh at such a message?
Some will, as they did in Athens.
But by the grace and power of God, others will say “We will hear you again about this” (Acts 17:32).
PS
Goldsworthy’s point (in the passage quoted above) has relevance for so much else. He makes it in the context of how we read, interpret and apply the Bible today (‘hermeneutics’), arguing that Christ as the centre and key of the Scriptures is thus the centre and key for all human knowledge and interpretation.
This is in fact why his argument has relevance for how we think about nearly everything, because it diagnoses the problem that besets all human knowledge in every human culture of every age. The Christ-centred message of the Bible explains us to ourselves, no matter who we are or when or where we live. We don’t need sophisticated cultural analysis to understand the truly important problems of humanity and their solution. In fact, our cultural analysis is so compromised by snake-think that it always misunderstands the true nature of ourselves and the world (because it is predicated on a rejection of the God who created the world).
As I said, Gospel-centred Hermeneuticsis no light read, but it’s very much worth it.
A reminder about The Centre for Christian Living event on ‘Deception’ that I’m speaking at on August 24. These events are great for small groups to take a week’s break from their normal Bible study and consider a topic—you can attend as a group in person, or watch it together on livestream. All the details are at the CCL website.
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thepaynefultruth.online/subscribe
Hi everyone
Before getting onto this week’s topic, another ‘uncommonly good’ prayer to share with you from The Book of Common Prayer. James wrote in to mention two of his favourites:
I do quite like the collect for peace, and especially the phrase ‘whose service is perfect freedom’. It’s a refreshing reminder of how God’s call to freedom and our world’s modern conception of freedom aren’t the same thing. Another favourite is the Collect for the Twelfth Sunday after Trinity, and especially the line: ‘… God, who art always more ready to hear than we to pray’. What a wonderful reminder, and rebuke, about our heavenly Father’s willingness to hear from his children!
Here’s the full prayer of which that line is part:
Almighty and everlasting God, who art always more ready to hear than we are to pray, and art wont to give more than either we desire or deserve: Pour down upon us the abundance of thy mercy; forgiving us those things whereof our conscience is afraid, and giving us those good things which we are not worthy to ask, but through the merits and mediation of Jesus Christ, thy Son, our Lord. Amen
Wonderful stuff.
Gospel clarity
There are many possible reasons for a lack of vitality in a church, which of course gives plenty of scope for experts to provide solutions. It could be your structures or programs or staffing mix or welcoming or preaching or lack of discipline or prayerlessness or who knows what combination of these things and many others. Plus there’s the small matter of God’s sovereign hand.
But being a so-called expert myself—on the basis of having helped Col Marshall write a little book about trellises and vines a few years ago—I’ve got another factor to throw into the mix.
It may sound ridiculous, but one simple reason that churches and ministries languish is that they don’t teach the gospel with clarity.
‘Well of course,’ I hear you say, ‘those liberal and heretical and other sub-orthodox kind of places don’t teach the gospel. That’s why most of them are declining and dying.’
True enough, but I’m talking about good solid Bible-teaching evangelical churches. Quite possibly your church.
‘Really?’ you respond. ‘That’s hard to believe. Every second sermon at our church mentions that Jesus died for our sins, that justification is by faith alone, and that salvation comes from God’s free grace not our works. We sing about it; we remember it in the Lord’s Supper. Surely if there’s one thing we all know back to front, it’s that!’
Like I said, a lack of gospel clarity.
It’s certainly true and of prime importance that Jesus died a substitutionary death for our sins, and that forgiveness and salvation and justification flow directly from that fount of every blessing. But to know these truths is not yet to know the gospel with clarity. Not the New Testament gospel anyway.
The big newsflash announcement (or ‘gospel’) of the New Testament is not that Jesus died on the cross for your sins. It’s that the Jesus who died on the cross for sins rose again as the Lord and Christ of the world, and now offers forgiveness and salvation and eternal life to all those who repent and submit to his rule in faith.
That’s what the apostles went around proclaiming. (Have a read of Acts and see for yourself.)
Their big announcement was that the crucified Jesus had been raised by God and thus proven and declared to be the ‘Christ’—God’s promised worldwide ruler and judge in the line of David, whom death could not defeat and who would reign forever over God’s kingdom. When we see the title ‘Christ’ given to Jesus, this is what is being claimed about him.
The gospel, then, is not ‘Jesus crucified’, but ‘Jesus Christ and him crucified’ (1 Cor 2:2). The One who was crucified has now risen as God’s worldwide-king-and-judge (‘Christ’). He now calls on everyone in the world to turn back to him in repentance and to receive forgiveness of sins on the basis of his atoning death.
Would you say that the members of your church have this understanding of the gospel clearly in their heads? That they could explain to you without hesitation how the death of Jesus for sins and the resurrection of Jesus as the Lord Christ fit together, and how this ‘gospel’ calls not just for faith but for repentance leading to obedience?
In my fairly long and wide experience of church life and ministry in evangelical churches in Australia and the US, I would say that disturbingly few everyday Christians grasp these truths with clarity. Whenever I run Two Ways to Live training or workshops, and ask people at the beginning to trot out their existing nutshell gospel, it hardly ever mentions the resurrection—and if it does, it’s with very little understanding of its significance in establishing Jesus as the living Lord and Christ of the world.
We need to teach our people this gospel, and clearly. We need to teach it and remind them of it because, as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:1-5, this Scripture-fulfilling message about the atoning death and resurrection of the Christ is the word of first importance; it’s the word in which we stand and by which we are being saved. It’s the basis of everything.
When we grasp this gospel clearly, and it penetrates our hearts and wills and lives, the effects are life-changing. This gospel has a power to save and to transform, because it speaks not just of a forgiven past through an atoning death, but also of a new, joyous, constantly repentant future, lived under the lordship of the living Christ.
This gospel drives us to pursue holiness—we now live a completely new life under the lordship of the risen Christ. We are now raised with him, and so put off everything that belongs to our old earthly selves and put on the new life of the resurrection age (Col 3:1-17).
This gospel gives assurance and hope, because we know that the one who died to justify us by his blood now lives and reigns as God’s Christ, and will surely save us from God’s wrath on that last day (Rom 5:6-11).
This gospel motivates evangelism—because if the risen Christ is the lord and judge of every person in the world (Acts 17:30-31), then every person in the world needs to hear his offer of salvation and turn back to him in repentance and faith to live under his lordship.
This gospel changes our hearts to serve one another gladly in love. It brings us into fellowship and communion with all those others who have been saved by the living Christ and now serve and obey him. Our new life in him is one that follows his example—that lays down its life for others, knowing that this is the path to glory.
The gospel of the crucified Christ lights a fire under the Christian life. It ignites and fans into flame the various marks of a flourishing Christian disciple and of a healthy church—that we grow in godliness and holiness, that we persevere in joy and assurance, that we are driven to reach out to the world in mission and evangelism, and that we love and serve one another and all people, as God has served us in his Son.
Could it be true? Could the significant factor in the lack of spiritual heat in our lives and churches be a lack of clarity about this gospel?
I strongly suspect so.
It seems beyond obvious to me that we should be clearly and intentionally teaching this New Testament gospel to everyone in our churches.
I’m not saying this, I should add, because I’ve recently written a resource to help churches do just that. It’s the other way round—I wrote Learn the Gospel (and am excited about its potential) becauseI’m convinced of the power of gospel in all its clarity to penetrate and change and save human hearts.
But in whatever way we do it—through sermons, seminars, weekend conferences, books, small group material, training material, and so on—we need to teach the powerful New Testament gospel—with clarity.
PS
Like me, I know a number of you have been waiting patiently for the release of the new Two ways to live training material that I’ve mentioned often over the past eighteen months or so. The first part of it—Learn the Gospel—is now tantalizingly close. The books have been printed and are currently being shipped back to Matthias Media; the videos are undergoing final checks; as of this moment the official release date is August 1, but stock may be available sooner than that. I’ll let you know soon as I know! (You can pre-order here.)
I’m excited to see it finally coming to fruition, not just for the natural reasons (of seeing a long-running project approaching the finish line), but because of the topic explored in this week’s post. The more clearly and deeply the gospel is lodged in our hearts, the healthier and more productive is our discipleship and our church life. I’m praying that God will use this new resource to help with that!
As many of you know, I used to work at The Centre for Christian Living at Moore College, and I am still a keen supporter of their work. In fact, I’m speaking at the CCL event on August 24 on the topic of ‘Deception’. Come along to Moore College in person, or tune in to the livestream. Click here for all the details and to register online.
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thepaynefultruth.online/subscribe
I suppose I should have expected it, but quite a few of you got in touch after my recent brief comments about singing and music, and some foolishly asked for more on this subject. There’s certainly plenty to discuss, but I’ve been pondering what I could say in this brief space that would be encouraging, constructive, non-ranty and generally sensitive to the fact that if there’s a subject that otherwise united people tend to disagree about it is this one.
Here are three thoughts that I hope meet these requirements.
- A reason to sing
Much of our discussion about church-singing in recent decades has revolved around the subjects of ‘praise’ and ‘worship’. It’s almost a cliché now to insist that worship and praise are much bigger categories than ‘singing’ (as all-of-life responses to God), and that ‘singing’ is much more than ‘praise’ and ‘worship’ (it’s a form of mutual encouragement as well).
These debates have been helpful in some ways and frustrating in others. Let’s not rehash them here.
It occurs to me, however, that there’s a prominent theological category for talking about singing that we rarely discuss, and which might help us think more clearly about it.
It’s very striking how often the Bible links singing with joy. The famous opening of Psalm 95 is one good example among many. Here it is in the Book of Common Prayer version I’ve been using recently:
O come let us sing unto the Lord: let us heartily rejoice in the rock of our salvation;
Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving: and show ourselves glad in him with psalms.
In the Hebrew poetry of these verses, singing is paralleled with rejoicing. Singing is how we demonstrate and express our gladness, our thanksgiving, our joy in the Lord who is the rock of our salvation (also see Ps 5:1; 9:2; 27:6; 47:1; 63:7; 65:13; 67:4; 71:23; 81:1; 84:2; 92:4; 100:2; and many others.)
One of the very few references to singing in the New Testament also makes this connection:
Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray. Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing. (Jas 5:13).
Now, it’s not as if joy is the only mode of singing that exists, in the world or in the Bible. There are love songs and laments and ballads that tell a story.
But if we want to rejoice—and we are commanded to rejoice again and again, in all circumstances—one of the most significant ways to do it is to sing. When we sing, we ‘show ourselves glad’. We employ our whole body and soul not just to declare our gladness and joy, but to demonstrate and enact and celebrate it.
Joy is an affection—a sense of delight and gladness and happiness in what is good—but rejoicing is an action that springs from, expresses and stirs that affection.
Sometimes we feel very much like rejoicing, such as when the Swans come from behind to defeat the Magpies with a last-minute goal. (For me, the best part of winning is joining 30,000 other fans in the stadium belting out, “Cheer, cheer, the red and the white!”) Sometimes we only start to feel the joy as we rejoice—perhaps as we stand together and sing a stirring song with our brothers and sisters. And at other times, we rejoice and show ourselves glad in the Lord even though our hearts are heavy with the troubles and hardships—because we know that we can and should give thanks and rejoice in him in all circumstances.
If we are looking for a biblical category to describe the ‘affective’ nature of singing in church, ‘rejoicing’ is an excellent biblical candidate. It’s our heartfelt response to what the ‘rock of our salvation’ has done for us. It’s something we actively do (by singing heartily together) that expresses our glad response to God’s grace.
And if we are looking for ways to diagnose what is lacking in church when the whole vibe of our meeting is stiff or listless or flat, the simplest biblical conclusion might be that we are not rejoicing as we could and should. This is a diagnosis I could get behind.
In other words, the thing that is sometimes missing is not an experience of God’s presence, or an exalted state of consciousness that brings me closer to him, or any of the other quasi-mystical foundations for the ‘praise-and-worship experience’ that the charismatic movement has pioneered and exported to so many of our churches.
Perhaps the ‘affect’ we’re missing is all-in, foot-stamping, fist-pumping joy.
- Rejoicing is a spiritual response
Like all fruits of the Spirit, joy is both a divine and a human action. It can only come as the Spirit brings life. And yet we are called to keep in step with the Spirit, and commanded to rejoice. It’s something we do, as God works in us by his Spirit through his word.
We can’t artificially create or manufacture real joy—say, with a driving bass line or a key change. But we can grow in joy, and grow in our obedience to the command to rejoice. We do this in the usual way—that is, in the way that all spiritual growth happens:
By preaching and teaching the gospel of God’s grace; by holding up Jesus before people’s eyes, and praying that the wonders of who he is and what he has done for us will ignite love and peace and joy and all the fruits of the Spirit in their hearts;
By prayerfully teaching and reminding people about this particular subject (as the apostles often did)—teaching and urging them to rejoice and give thanks always, and how singing together is an important means of doing this;
By the mature in the congregation exemplifying this joy (such as in their singing);
By creating contexts and opportunities within which singing-for-joy can be practised, and can flourish.
This last point brings us to the practicalities of how thinking about singing as rejoicing might change the practice of singing in our churches. There is much to be said here, and of all the points I want to make in this brief article, this is the most contextual, the most subject to wisdom and genuine difference, and therefore the one most likely to get up your nose, dear reader! So with those caveats, let me suggest …
- Don’t crowd out genuine rejoicing with too much sound
Rejoicing in song—to state the obvious—is verbal. It’s joyful speech, set to music. It expresses in words how glad we are; and it recounts what we’re so glad about. It communicates to God our joy in him and his works, and it communicates the same to each other. This is why our singing is simultaneously an act of responsive joy, a declaration of all the ways that God is great and for which we rejoice (i.e. ‘praise’), and an exercise in mutual teaching and encouragement.
The usual conclusion we draw from this is that our songs must have ‘good words’. This is certainly true, but three other equally important conclusions also follow.
The first is that the words of our songs must be heard on each others’ lips. The predominant sound we should hear is the sound of joyful voices—of God’s people singing out their joy in all God is and has done, and teaching each other as we do so.
This is where I fear that the rise of the ‘worship band’ has done us no favours, and I speak as one who has enjoyed playing in such bands for years. I’m not quite sure how we got here, but it’s now pretty standard in our churches for a congregation of (say) 150 or 200 to be led by a music team consisting of keys, drums, bass, acoustic guitar, electric guitar, and three singers, all amplified. This seems vastly more than is necessary to accompany that size group in song. In fact, the effect of the sheer scale and volume of this sort of band is that the ‘accompaniment’ is reversed. The dominant sound in the room is the sound of the band, with the congregation accompanying them—like the faint echo in a live rock concert, where you can just hear the crowd singing along in the chorus.
Is this enjoyable and great to listen to and sing along with? If it’s done well, yes! But is it the sound of the congregation rejoicing? Well … I don’t think so, because the congregation can’t be heard. I can hear a few voices near me perhaps, but I can’t hear and be stirred by the wonderful sound of God’s people shouting for joy. The high-volume band that dominates the room makes the sound of voices secondary.
We need to create a singing culture in which the accompaniment is just that—a secondary, supportive sound that exists to enable the singing, and nothing more. Likewise, we need a song-leader (and perhaps just one) who shows us when to come in, and exemplifies what we’re all doing together (singing with joy), but whose voice isn’t dominant in the room. In fact, apart perhaps from the first words of each verse, I don’t really see why the song-leader’s voice should be amplified at all. The voices we want to hear are each others’.
Ah, you say, but we need to hear the leader loudly so that we can follow the tune.
This leads to a second point—we need songs that big groups of people can sing easily together. This is a genre issue. Many of the songs our ‘worship bands’ play are remarkably similar in genre to the songs that popular bands generally play in our culture (perhaps not surprisingly). These are songs designed more for performance and listening than for mass-group singing, because (for better or worse) that’s modern Western musical culture. We mainly listen to music; we don’t sing.
But this means that the songs we instinctively write (and play in our worship bands) are often poorly adapted for singing in unison—and so we need drums to establish the rhythm because otherwise it doesn’t hold together, and we need amplified singers because otherwise we can’t follow the complex, syncopated tune. This seems backwards. We’ve created a musical culture built on the performative genre of rock bands, and then feel that we need rock bands in order for our church musical culture to work.
I strongly suspect we need to do something very counter-cultural at this point—write and sing songs as people who love to sing together in large groups. This may mean developing our own genre, since community singing is no longer much of a thing in Western culture.
The third and final point is simply that all of this takes time.Building a culture of joyful singing dominated by voices will take patience, because it is very likely a shift from what we are currently doing. We’ll need to teach and preach and pray about it. We’ll need to model and practise it. We’ll need to create the audio-space for it to happen (in many cases by drastically reducing the scale and volume of the accompaniment). And we’ll need to prioritize songs that a big group of people can latch onto and sing heartily and joyfully together.
If those last paragraphs were starting to stray close to the rant-zone, please forgive me. And (as I know you will!), please send in your own thoughts and experiences about creating this kind of authentic, joyful culture of the word in song.
PS
There’s much else to say, but here’s one point that didn’t quite fit in anywhere above. As I visit different churches, and I do so reasonably often, I’m struck by how the architecture of the room and the space communicates culture, and expresses underlying assumptions. Our Reformed forebears knew this of course, and deliberately designed (or re-designed) buildings and spaces for a ‘word-centred church’—as opposed to the architecture of medieval Roman Catholicism and all that it stood for.
I sometimes think that if we were wanting to communicate to the congregation that they were attending a rock concert as listeners and consumers, we would design our church spaces exactly like a lot of churches I enter. Everything is centred around a raised stage, which is covered in musical instruments, amplifiers, a drum kit, leads, mic stands, and all the normal paraphernalia. The stage might be lit with banks of coloured spotlights, perhaps also with video screens to further convey all that’s happening. There may or may not be an unobtrusive lectern centre stage. Sometimes the house lights are dimmed (especially during the singing).
I don’t think any of this is intentional, or signifies a sinister drift towards mystical doctrine. All the same, as an architectural statement, it does seem very un-evangelical—almost as if we’re trying to create a modern cathedral in which all the colour and movement and theatre happens up the front in the special zone, where the mediators of God’s presence do their thing.
If we were designing a space in which the Scriptural word of Jesus was at the centre, and we were gathered around the word to hear him, and to respond to him and each other (including rejoicing together in song), would it look like this?
I’m sure you’ll get in touch and let me know!
Want to get every edition of The Payneful Truth every week, and support me in the writing work that I do? Then you can become a partner or subscriber. Here’s something to click…
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thepaynefultruth.online/subscribe
“I think you are a purist”, a friend said to me after I’d just given a presentation on ‘community and belonging’ at last week’s Reach Australia conference.
“Who me?” I lamely chuckled, but then immediately wished I’d said something more witty, like: “What would you prefer? An impurist?”
My talk at Reach was an expanded version of last week’s post, and majored on the same point—that Christian ‘community’ and ‘membership’ and ‘belonging’ is created and built by one thing only: the presence of Jesus Christ in our midst through his word.
It was a fun seminar, filled out very ably by Tim Clemens’s practical wisdom on what those theological themes mean for how churches can welcome and integrate new members, and disciple them to be part of a rich Christ-centred community.
When my friend expanded on his ‘purist’ comment, it was really to explore a question that had been raised in the seminar, as follows: granted that Jesus is the centre of our community, and the head of the body of which we’re members; granted also that this makes the word of Christ ‘dwelling richly amongst us’ the vital factor—how then do we think about the place of our actions in building Christian community? What about just going out to dinner with people, or playing board games, or painting the front room together? Don’t these sorts of things do anything for our ‘sense of community’? Would it be okay with the purist if we just hung out?
The first thing the purist would say is that human friendship, togetherness and relationship are good things in themselves. They don’t need any further justification or purpose. There’s no need to question our consciences about whether ‘hanging out’ is really okay if there are no Bible verses present.
This is especially so because many people today, sadly, are starved of the joys of human friendship and togetherness, particularly in the dislocated, isolating life of the modern city. To provide those simple pleasures (by hosting that dinner party or games night) is an act of real kindness—on the same level as helping an elderly neighbour with their lawns. In itself, it doesn’t create Christian community as such or build the body of Christ (as we’ve defined it), but it’s still an act of goodness and love.
However secondly, hanging out together in smaller informal settings creates a context in which Christian community can flourish. Tim Clemens fleshed this out very helpfully during our seminar. He pointed us to research that showed how people relate differently (and gain different things) in groupings of different size:
In ‘public’ contexts (100+) we normally gather to engage together with something outside ourselves, like at a sports game or a concert or a church meeting;
In ‘social’ contexts (20-70), we interact with an affinity group of some kind, sharing snapshots of ourselves—like at a party or at morning tea after church;
In ‘personal’ contexts (4-12), we reveal more of ourselves, and likewise get to know others at a deeper level—as at a dinner party or a small Bible study group;
In ‘transparent’ contexts (2-4), we can be open and vulnerable, and share our innermost thoughts and experiences—usually with our marriage partner or a close friend.
We can build the community of Jesus Christ in different ways in each of these contexts or social spaces, because we can share his word in various ways with different benefits at each level—from the sermon that challenges us all, to the series of conversations afterwards which teases it out, to the more personal conversations where we grapple with our own personal weaknesses.
So it’s not that hanging out with ten people automatically creates Christian community, and we shouldn’t confuse the joys of just being with other people with the unique thing that is Christian community. But unless we hang out with ten people, and create the trusting social space in which we can talk to each other, how can we have the opportunity to fellowship around the word of Jesus Christ at that more personal level? How can we have all the different kinds of conversations we need to have about understanding and believing the word, and living it out?
As I mentioned in last week’s post, we can facilitate community-in-Christ by creating “the optimum number and variety of contexts where people can be together as those who share Jesus Christ”.
Including just hanging out.
This leads to a second insightful question that was asked at the seminar about our actions in community: What are the benefits of people actually serving each other for building Christian community?Surely loving service and action for the sake of others is a genuine expression of our ‘community’ and ‘membership’, and increases our personal experience of it?
Hard to argue with that. In fact, on this basis, many churches work hard at getting as many people as possible involved in serving each other. The more people start to exercise the muscles of practical service, and take an active part in community life, the more they tend to experience a genuine sense of being part of that community. And this includes newcomers who are seeking to join that community.
However, there’s an important caveat. If my practical service is not framed, motivated and directed towards the word of Jesus Christ—if it is just doing a job that needs to be done, and which makes me feel good because I’m useful—then it won’t express or build genuine Christian community. In fact, it might even lead to false or ‘fleshly’ community (to use Bonhoeffer’s term), which is based on my longing to be needed and recognized.
Bonhoeffer explains this well in Life Together. He is very sharp about the poisonous possibilities of those who long for community but don’t long for Jesus Christ, including those who act from the need for self-justification rather than from the freedom of justification by faith.
However, he also says that while the mutual ministry of the word is the ‘highest’ form of Christian service, and the one to which the others lead and are directed, it is not the only form of mutual love in a Christian community. He identifies three other forms of service: ‘listening’ to each other, ‘forbearing’ with each other, and what he calls ‘active helpfulness’. This last form is what we are usually speaking of when we talk about ‘practical service’.
We mustn’t despise this form of service, he says, as if it is beneath us, or in some ways less worthy:
Nobody is too good for the lowest service. Those who worry about the loss of time entailed by such small, external acts of helpfulness are usually taking their own work too seriously. We must be ready to allow ourselves to be interrupted by God, who will thwart our plans and frustrate our ways time and again, even daily, by sending people across our path with their demands and requests. We can, then, pass them by, preoccupied with our more important daily tasks, just as the priest—perhaps reading the Bible—passed by the man who had fallen among robbers.
The one who is focused on the ministry of the word shouldn’t despise the opportunity to help others practically. Nor should the one who feels comfortable in practical service rest content in doing something ‘useful’, and leave the sharing of the word to others.
All Christian practical service is motivated by the word, directed by the word and has the speaking of the word in prospect. As the morning tea team serves coffee and washes dishes, those involved are not only motivated by the gospel, but are helping to create one of those social contexts in which the congregation can speak with each other. It’s a word-motivated and word-directed service, even though it is hands-on and menial in nature.
This leads to a final point. How can we ensure that this ‘practical service’ is indeed motivated by and directed towards the word of Jesus Christ?
By teaching and training. This was my mantra in answer to many of the questions that were raised during the seminar.
If we want our people to understand what Christian community and membership really is, and to live it and practise it, we need to teach them about it, just as the apostles themselves did on numerous occasions to their hearers in the New Testament (such as in Rom 12 and 1 Cor 12-14 and Eph 4-5).
This is a statement of the bleedin’ obvious if ever there was one, but I am often struck by how meagrely and haphazardly we teach about such subjects in our churches. We do the essential work of expounding the Scriptures week by week, and we also study Bible passages in our small groups (often the same ones). But the integrative work of applied theology—that is, the task of drawing the Bible’s teaching on a subject together, and showing what it means for our lives … this is something we do much less often, and less effectively.
How could we do it better?
I have thoughts. But given that this post is already quite long enough already, I’ll return to those thoughts next time.
PS
As always, please get in touch with your thoughts, observations and questions. Just hit reply to this email, or make a comment on the website.
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thepaynefultruth.online/subscribe
Do you want your church to be a place where people feel like they belong? Where there is a close sense of mutual dependence and love, and where there is a genuine experience of Christian community?
Who doesn’t?
(Well, there are times when I don’t, and wish that everyone on the planet would just leave me alone, but let’s not get into my problems.)
How could we pursue or promote this kind of community?
The small contribution I want to make in this week’s post is to pause and ponder what we mean by ‘belonging’, ‘membership’ and ‘community’.
Like me, you probably have a range of different memberships. There are overlapping families I belong to (immediate and extended, on my side and Ali’s side). I belong to the Christian communities at St Paul’s Carlingford and at Campus Bible Study. But I’d also say that some part of my heart will always belong to Matthias Media, and the team that still pursues that vision. I’m a member of Concord Golf Club and of the Qantas Frequent Flyer program—one of them of far more importance than the other. I guess I’d also say that I’m part of the little community in my street here in West Ryde, and of the broader communities of Sydney, New South Wales and Australia.
So far I’ve been using the words ‘belong’ and ‘member’ and ‘community’ pretty much interchangeably, and in everyday speech we often do.
But these three words are also subtly different. They describe the same kind of thing from different angles, with different metaphors. It’s worth teasing out their nuances, even if we have room to do so only briefly.
Member
To be a ‘member’ of something is to be a part of a body; to be an arm or a nose or a spleen that derives its identity and function from the interconnected organism of which it is a part. As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 12, being baptized into Christ means becoming one of his body parts, which should put an end to all arrogance, divisions, jealousy, partiality and selfishness in general. You make no sense and you’re of no use as a member of this body unless you realise that you’re part of an interconnected whole, with Christ as the head. Being a ‘member’ is about seeking the well-being and benefit of the whole body, according to the direction and rule of its head. The body strengthens and builds itself as all the individual parts speak the truth of Christ to one another in love (Eph 4:14-16).
I guess being a member of the body of Christ looks kind of like this …
Community
To be in a ‘community’ is a different metaphor. A community is a group of people who love or participate in a common object or person. A community is not one organic whole, like a body. It’s a group of people who share something, who are united by their ‘fellowship’ or ‘partnership’ in something. As Oliver O’Donovan puts it, a community has a “common object of love”. (He gets this from Augustine, who distinguished the City of God from the Earthly City by their different objects of love.)
Now for Christians, that centre or common object of love is Jesus Christ. Our fellowship or communion is with God through Jesus Christ (1 John 1:1-4). Because we know him and love him and have him in common, we are a community or fellowship of Christ. This means that whatever else we might share—common demographics, language, interests, or even just a common desire for friendship and mutuality—Christian community is not about any of these. It is fellowship in Jesus Christ. He is what we have in common, and through him we love one another. To build our community, therefore, we need to encounter each other more often and more deeply through him (that is, through his word, which is how he is present with us).
We might picture it like this …
Belonging
What about ‘belonging’? To belong to something means that we fit there, most often because some person or organization has a claim on us. My iPhone belongs in my pocket because I own it and it is mine—although I often absent-mindedly leave it on the kitchen counter on silent (so good luck trying to get through to me).
In saying I belong to a family, I mean that I have responsibilities and ties of blood and affection that bind me to that group of people. It’s not just that they are mine; I am theirs. I can’t ever stop belonging to them.
I belong to something because I am of it—in the sense of it being my source or origin or master or place. My belonging is defined not by me but by that Other person or group who identifies me and claims me as theirs.
We see this in our English Bibles where they speak of us belonging to God or to Jesus Christ. There isn’t actually a word ‘belong’ in the Greek text. Instead, there’s a kind of relation set up in the grammar that is ‘of’ or ‘from’ or ‘unto’ God or Christ. For example, here are two verses that are often translated with ‘belong’, rendered very literally:
And those who are of Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. Galatians 5:24)
For if we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. So then, whether we live or whether we die, we are of the Lord. (Romans 14:8)
We belong to God in Christ because he claims us as our creator and redeemer. We are the people of his pasture and the sheep of his hand. I can’t really choose to belong to him any more than my iPhone can choose to belong to me.
I’m not sure if the New Testament ever says that we belong to each other. We are certainly members of one another (Rom 12:5; Eph 4:25), and we are in communion or fellowship with one another (1 John 1:7). Perhaps it is better to say that we belong to Jesus Christ, and therefore we belong with each other in that space where he keeps his belongings—that is, in the congregation of people that he purchased for himself with his own blood (Acts 20:28).
Perhaps we could visualise it like this …
Some conclusions
It needs saying that in each of the three metaphors—member, community, belonging—God is the initiator by his grace through the gospel. He grafts us into Christ to be members of his body; he calls us into fellowship and communion with himself through Christ, and thus with each other; he claims us as his own, and thus gives us a place where we profoundly belong because we belong to him.
In each case, it is something that we gratefully receive, and joyfully participate in by faith. We need to recognize that these realities can’t be manufactured or massaged into existence through any human initiative or technique. Belonging and membership and community are spiritual joys, created by God through his Son by his Spirit.
All the same, God’s action incorporates our action—both as we preach the gospel and as the Spirit calls forth our response. As we hear the gospel, and the Spirit works, we leave behind our old master in the dominion of darkness to begin a new life belonging to our Lord; we repent of the inwardly-curved independence that shuts us off from others and joyfully become members of a new body in Christ; we blaspheme and reject the false gods and powers that we used to love and unite around, and instead share together in our love for the Christ who first loved us.
What does all this mean for our experience of belonging and membership and community in our congregations? If belonging-membership-community is something God creates by the gospel, what we can do to participate in it? To experience it and help others experience it?
First, some things we can do as a congregation:
We can clearly and regularly teach and urge one another on (through sermons and other congregational teaching) in what it means to belong together, to fellowship together, to be members of one another.
We can follow Paul’s advice in 1 Corinthians 12 and honour all parts of the body, not just the strongest or most spectacular. We should keep celebrating and honouring the weakest members—all are needed and valuable—because this is how God has composed and ordered the body. This also means teaching and training and helping everyone to become active in making their own contribution to the body.
We can create the optimum number and variety of contexts where people can be together as those who share, belong to and are members together of Jesus Christ. These ‘contexts’ are different opportunities or spaces (large, medium, small and personal) where we can build each other as members according to the different parts of the body that we are, or where we can meet in community around Jesus himself (as we speak his word to each other).
And as individuals who want to contribute to this community-belonging-membership, and experience it more ourselves, what should we do?
We should make sure we keep turning up to those gatherings where the people who belong to Jesus get together.
We should take every opportunity we can (formal or informal) to love others through Jesus Christ: to serve them, speak to them, encourage them, suffer with them, comfort them, rejoice with them, pray for them, practically care for them. This is what it means to be a ‘fellowship’ of Jesus Christ—to share a love of him together, and to love each other through him and by his word.
Likewise, we should take every opportunity open to us to make our particular contribution to the body, whether as an arm, a nose or a spleen.
In other words, when we feel a lack of community-membership-belonging—perhaps as someone who feels a bit on the outer at church—there are things that the congregation as a whole can do to facilitate our inclusion, but it will also unavoidably depend on how we ourselves respond and keep in step with the Spirit’s work within us.
We can only experience what it is like to really be a member of a body when we are active as contributing members of that body. We can only experience the ‘community’ of Christ when we put into practice the only thing that truly matters in our fellowship: faith in Jesus Christ that is active in love.
PS
As always, I’m keen to hear from you and your thoughts about all of this. You can just reply to the email you’re received, or leave a comment on the website.
Also feel very free to …
… this post with others, and have a conversation with them about it.
And while you’re at it, you could encourage them to …
… so that they can receive these free posts for themselves, or even sign up as a paying partner.
And for today’s mystery image, anyone know who these two are and what it has to do with this week’s post?
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thepaynefultruth.online/subscribe
The small group leadership debate swings back and forward
This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at www.thepaynefultruth.online/subscribe
What does Paul mean when he says that we should bring 'revelations' with us to share at church?
This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at www.thepaynefultruth.online/subscribe
The death of Jesus
This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at www.thepaynefultruth.online/subscribe
As small groups get started for another year I thought it might be useful to write something on ‘How to be a small group member’. But then I thought better of it.
This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at www.thepaynefultruth.online/subscribe
The life and death of Jesus
This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at www.thepaynefultruth.online/subscribe
A Q&A chat with Phillip Jensen.
This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at www.thepaynefultruth.online/subscribe
Some bittersweet reflections on the joys and sorrows of Christmas.
This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at www.thepaynefultruth.online/subscribe
Getting started on the 2wtl book project
This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at www.thepaynefultruth.online/subscribe
A first draft of the intro to a new evangelistic book
This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at www.thepaynefultruth.online/subscribe
More of an invitation than an article this week. (And if you’ve already read this invitation on the Matthias Media enews earlier this week, and signed up to The Payneful Truth, you don’t need to read this again!) I often catch myself when I come across a book with my name on the cover. I pick it up and read a paragraph and think, “Did I write this? Surely it was someone else. Me, write books? Ridiculous.”
This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at www.thepaynefultruth.online/subscribe
A broad-ranging and stimulating chat about the opportunities and threats that we face, about being proud of the gospel, about the two books everyone should read, and more.
This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at www.thepaynefultruth.online/subscribe
In which those sharp verses in Romans 9 about the potter and the clay highlight how our cultural Vibe has excluded God as creator.
This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at www.thepaynefultruth.online/subscribe
It's nearly here
This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at www.thepaynefultruth.online/subscribe
I wasn't planning to add to all that's been said about covid. But I haven't heard much said about the important subject of fear.
This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at www.thepaynefultruth.online/subscribe
A chat about new books, the place of reading in ministry, and how to build a 'disciple-making' culture over time in your church.
This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at www.thepaynefultruth.online/subscribe
Faith as the foundation of Christian living
This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at www.thepaynefultruth.online/subscribe
A summary of the Christian life
This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at www.thepaynefultruth.online/subscribe
All ministry (including pastoral leadership) means looking out for people.
This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at www.thepaynefultruth.online/subscribe
The key moment in Christian growth
This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at www.thepaynefultruth.online/subscribe
I’ve been wanting to write a significant piece about politics and the Christian citizen for some time, but I very much doubt that this week’s Payneful Truth will be it.
It will be a step or two down that road, but it’s unlikely I’ll get all the way to the destination in this short piece. All the same, I hope that it edges your own thinking along the path a little.
We find ourselves at this point because I first observed that expressing opinions (especially in the way that many people do today on social media) can be a foolish and sinful thing to do (‘The Sin of Opinion’, Apr 28); and then I did my best to be more positive and lay some foundations about the nature of justice and judging and political authority (‘Doing Justice’, May 5). I’ll assume you’ve read those pieces. (include links)
However, given that the role of political authority is to make judgements, do we have any role in respect to those judgements? When a dispute does break in aisle 12, and we find ourselves onlookers—when and how should we get involved? What are our positive obligations and opportunities as Christian citizens?
Romans 13 is a good place to start, since it addresses this very question. It begins like this:
1 Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. 2 Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment.
The key idea in these verses is conveyed in the recurring Greek word tassō, which means to bring about an order to things, to arrange or fix or institute things in a certain relation to one another.
God has tassōed or instituted ‘authorities’, and these authorities are part of a larger order or arrangement of things that God has established. He has created a world in which there is right and wrong, and good and evil. It’s a morally ordered world in which there is such a thing called ‘justice’ (because of the existence of those standards of right and wrong), and in which there are ordered structures within human communities whereby justice can be done. God has ordered and established all this in place, including the authorities who administer that justice (ESV translates the tassō word in v. 1 as ‘instituted’; ‘established’ says NIV).
Our right response is to submit or sit under this ordered structure of authority—to hupo-tassō ourselves to the authorities that God has established (v. 1). The wrong response is to anti-tassō (v. 2)—to fight against or resist the authority that God has set in place.
In other words, to obey or submit to political authority is not just knuckling under to the big guy with the sword. It is humbly understanding ourselves and our actions within the whole order of rightness and justice that God has established.
(There is a massive side-bar we could explore here regarding a foundational question of all political theory—namely, who gives the state its authority? Is it seized by the strong or the noble? Is it granted by divine right? Or is authority given by the people, and if so, how? In the absence of a God who created the world and us, with standards of righteousness and ordered structures of justice, and who delegates authority to human judges, these questions are difficult to anchor and to answer. But all this is too complicated for here and now.)
So our first response is to submit or sit under political authority. This hardly sits well with us. We don’t like submitting to anyone or anything, and the internet gives us the illusion that perhaps we don’t have to. We can click our way to some snippets of knowledge, argue back and forth with intensity, and then declare judgement on our leaders’ policies or actions—thinking that we have done something significant. But (as I’ve already said perhaps too many times), this online simulation of doing justice is shallow and ineffective. And it expresses a posture not of submission to the structures and agents of justice, but a kind of vacuous, superior independence that derides and dismisses them.
It’s almost a national sport to sneer at our political leaders, to ridicule them, to sit in judgement of them, and to do all we can to avoid paying them tax—all of which is the complete opposite of what Rom 13:7 commands us to do. It tells us to hupo-tasso to what God has tassōed, which means giving to those in authority what is theirs: taxes, revenue, respect and honour.
But (you might say) do we not sit in judgement of our political rulers? Don’t we elect them, and then kick them out next time?
Well, yes. But we elect them to be our representatives, to make judgements on our behalf as a society. Submitting to this arrangement certainly means seeking to make good elective choices, or even possibly seeking to become a representative ourselves. But it also means that we should recognize that it is our representatives’ job to get on with the judgement-making, and we should honour and submit to them in this complicated task.
This leads to a second obligation or response in our particular context—to seek to elect representatives whose demonstrated character and actions make them likely to be good judges; who have the capacity and faithfulness to discern between right and wrong and good and evil, and to do justice (tempered with mercy) according to those standards.
We tend to be impressed by the policy announcements, economic plans and grand schemes that political parties promise in order to attract us at election time. These can be significant (especially if they promote injustice or wrong), but the fundamental thing we elect our political leaders to do is the ongoing task of making judgements—to perceive what is right or good (or wrong or evil), and to enact laws and judgements accordingly. We should focus on electing people with the knowledge, character and ability to do that consistently, in the unfolding, unpredictable flow of events and circumstances.
The further implication of this is that we should try to inform ourselves about our representatives’ actions and record, so as to make a wise assessment of their wisdom and character. This is not always easy, and takes some discernment of its own (usually involving a survey of reporting from both ‘left’ and ‘right’ to build up some kind of accurate picture of the leader and their actions).
The third response that Romans 13 commands goes beyond obeying the authorities and paying what we owe. It calls us to keep paying the never-ending social debt of love (vv. 8-14). And it’s a particular kind of love. It’s a love of neighbour that fulfils all that the law pointed forward to, and that also looks to the kingship and imminent coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. It’s a love that is wide awake to its situation—living in these last days, in which Jesus reigns but in which there is still plenty of darkness along with all its works (vv. 12-14).
It’s hardly controversial to say that Christian citizens should be agents of love in our communities, and there are countless ways this can be expressed.
One particular and often neglected way that Christians can love our neighbours in the political realm is to keep living and speaking as if Jesus is the Lord and Christ (which of course he is). We often fail at this. We partition Jesus off in the private Christian/church part of our lives, and don’t preach his saving Lordship in our public and political interactions.
And this is our distinctive contribution. We’re no better or worse than anyone else in arguing about economic policy, or debating how different courses of action might turn out. The one truly extraordinary and loving thing we can do for our political authorities is to prophesy to them. We can keep reminding them that Jesus is the Lord and Christ, to whom they will answer; to keep directing them to his righteousness, his wisdom, his goodness, as they make their judgements; to keep calling them to serve him and his gospel in all their decisions.
In this sense, public Christianity is the same as private Christianity—it’s proclaiming and living out the gospel of the crucified and risen Christ.
The authorities may not listen. Or they may. (But isn’t that the way with all gospel preaching?) They may well regard us as weird, strange or even dangerous. It has been ever thus.
But in God’s power and kindness, and as we pray constantly for our rulers, they may listen to the gospel and be changed by it. And, as Paul says elsewhere, they may indeed make judgements that enable people to “live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness” (1 Tim 2:2).
Even in aisle 12.
PS
Well, that by no means answers everything but it hopefully keeps the ball rolling. I look forward to hearing your thoughts and responses.
This is another freebie edition of the Payneful Truth. If you’d like to become a partner and receive every edition every week, here’s the button to click …
This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at www.thepaynefultruth.online/subscribe
Last week’s post on the ‘sin of opinion’ prompted a thoughtful email from Michael Payne (no relation), asking a good and obvious question. Granted that social media opinionating is often a folly, is there a wise alternative? Michael put it like this:
Surely we are called to seek Justice and Mercy, while walking humbly with our God, and that may lead to expressing opinions to influence those we relate to and our local MPs?
One example is that the PM’s Christianity seems amazingly unresponsive to the asylum seekers, Australian IS wives, however unwise they were, now stranded in Northern Syria with their children, and even the 10,000 Australians in India who are increasingly at risk yet cannot come home. I do hope my concerns are motivated by love for others as a child of God. They reveal themselves in my opinions. How then should I go ahead, with the possible sin of opinion?
Is there a good or wise way to share opinions or influence others? Or in general to contribute in a constructive way to the to-and-fro of our democracy? Or should we just pipe down, and get on with something else more useful?
This is not an easy question to answer, since it involves an understanding of ‘justice’, and of how Christians should be engaged in the political processes of our society. And sketching a theory of justice and political theology, and wise Christian involvement in these, in a breezy 1000 words … not so easy!
Let me try to lay some building blocks, and see how far we get.
A good foundation stone is the famous verse in Micah 6:8 that Michael alludes to. God tells disobedient Israel to stop seeking alternative ways to please him, and to focus on what he has already shown them is good: “to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God”.
Interestingly, the verse speaks of doing justice, and this tells us something very important about justice (and about our opinions).
Justice is an action, not a viewpoint. It is something that is done when a legitimate right is honoured—that is, when someone gives or receives what is owed according to some righteous standard or law.
Justice requires a judgement—that is, an assessment of what is ‘just’ (according to a standard or right or law) and a granting of that right to the relevant person.
This can be relatively simple: if I sell a golf club on ebay (to reduce the growing stash of useless implements in the garage), the personal doing of justice requires an accurate description, a fair price, and a smooth exchange of golf club for cash with the buyer.
But doing justice is often complicated. What if there is a dispute between the buyer and me about the sale? The facts of the situation would have to be established—and they are often contestable—and a decision must be made as to which rights or standards are relevant, and how they should be applied.
‘Doing justice’ requires investigation and thinking. It involves ‘judging’. It begins with an interrogation of reality—with the careful establishing of what really happened here. It then requires a deliberation as to which rights or standards are relevant to this particular situation, and what implementing them would involve. And it concludes with a resolution to act, and the subsequent granting of what justice requires.
And to make it even more complicated, justice doesn’t stand alone. It is to be practised, Micah 6 suggests, alongside a loving concern for others (not merely with the abstract interests of ‘right’ and ‘justice’ in mind), and with an ongoing recognition of our lowly status before God (‘to walk humbly’ with him).
So ‘doing justice’ really takes some doing.
Very importantly, it is always done by a particular person or persons—by those who have been given the responsibility or authority to do the ‘judging’ in a situation (the investigating, the deliberating, the resolving, the outcome).
When I’m with the kids in aisle 12 at Woollies and a dispute breaks out, that ‘judge’ is me. And it’s a tough gig. How on earth am I supposed to know who hit whom, who started it, what punishment or restitution is fair, and how to administer it—all while enduring the pitying and judgmental stares of the other shoppers?
But it is my responsibility. I may receive input from the other shoppers in the aisle. One of them may have seen who started it. Another may pipe in with a piece of homely or encouraging advice. But if the shoppers of aisle 12 were to gather in a circle and start a heated debate about what I could do, or should do, or haven’t done, and what these events say about the whole culture of my family—well I think I’d leave all my kids with them, and finish my shopping in peace. (And imagine if one of them filmed the whole thing and instagrammed it. Before long, ‘Aisle 12 Dad’ would be a thing, and half the world would have a view about it, and … see my previous column on the ‘sin of opinion’.)
The point is: I’m the one who has to take responsibility for the ‘judging’ in aisle 12, not only because I actually know the kids and the situation (and can predict with some certainty which one started it), but because it is my responsibility and burden to ‘do justice’, and to live with the consequences.
Doing justice is a difficult and weighty task, and is done by those with the position and authority to do so—whether domestically or communally or within a whole society. With some trepidation, and with a knowledge that they will frequently get it wrong, we set aside people within our society, and grant them authority to administer justice on our behalf—local, state and federal governments, and the various tribunals and courts that they appoint and administer.
The task of judging, or doing justice, is the primary task of political and judicial authority. In fact, as Romans 13:1-7 says, God puts rulers and authorities in place for this very reason.
This is why (to get back to Michael’s letter) Scott Morrison has the responsibility (along with the entire apparatus of government) to make judgements about asylum seekers, IS wives, and repatriating Australians from India. He (with the help of others in government) is the one who has to investigate and understand the various complex factors, deliberate as to which principles of justice and mercy apply, and make a judgement.
Very often, our opinionating about government decisions (‘judgements’) has all the value of the shoppers in aisle 12 debating how I should discipline my kids, or of the instagram crowd piling on with their intensely held views. We are mostly or wholly ignorant of the details of the situation, and of the various complexities in play. We don’t have to consider the conflicting rights and interests of different parties, or the wider or longer-term consequences of different options for the whole society. And we don’t bear the burden of having to resolve upon a course of action, and to bear the consequences.
The responsibility for judging, in other words, is not ours. And yet often we carry on as if it is. Or as if ‘doing justice’ was a simple matter that can be settled by watching a video clip or reading a newspaper article. (A low point in the commentary about the George Floyd trial was this tweet by TV host Chelsea Handler: “So pathetic that there is a trial to prove that Derek Chauvin killed George Floyd when there is video of him doing so”.)
So then.
We’ve slapped down some rough foundations about the nature of justice, judging and political authority. Justice and judging is something that is done, and to do it requires searching out the truth of what has happened, a thoughtful deliberation of what principles or standards apply, and a resolution to act. It’s a responsibility that we undertake personally and domestically and communally with each other; but at a broader social level we elect or appoint people to fulfil this responsibility—to ‘do justice’, to make judgements. This is the key function of political authority.
But we haven’t yet answered Michael’s questions. What should be our involvement as citizens, and particularly as Christian citizens, in the judgements of the political authorities? Should we express an opinion, or seek to persuade the judge in some way? If so, how? What is our role as Christian citizens within our society?
Many of the answers are in Romans 13, and in next week’s edition I’ll tease out what they are.
But in the meantime (so as not to leave you entirely frustrated), we can certainly say this much: the extent of our appropriate involvement in any particular instance of ‘doing justice’ (to speak to it, to argue about it, to present our case to the judge), should be directly proportional to our ability to interrogate and understand the truth of the situation, and to deliberate about it thoughtfully. The further removed we are, and the less we know, the less we should say.
Which means that, in a great many instances, we should say little or nothing.
PS
This is one of the free public editions of The Payneful Truth, and normally next week’s post would be ‘partner only’. But since it would seem mean (or even unjust!) to leave you free-listers hanging, I’ll make next week’s post a freebie as well.
This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at www.thepaynefultruth.online/subscribe
Have you ever been part of a social media thread like this?
Anyone seen the latest Star Wars?
Nah. But I hear it stinks.
That’s what they’re saying.
I’ve seen the trailer. Terrible.
Whole series jumped the shark long ago.
Haha yes. Three words. Jar. Jar. Binks.
Haven’t and won’t. It will be even more cringeworthy than the last.
Whose genius idea was it to give the movie to the director of ‘Little Miss Sunshine’?
I don’t understand how anyone in good conscience can even go to a Star Wars movie anymore. The way the Ewoks were exploited in the making of VI was disgusting. And no-one has ever apologised. And the racist way in which Darth Vader is dressed in ‘black’ is just one … (read more)
I can’t even. #dontseeit
Since they sold out to Disney, it’s been sell out all the way down.
Yeah, they are no longer interested in the story arc. It’s only about one thing—profits. #dontseeit
Hey does anyone think we should wait until we see it?
You are disgusting.
Social media parodies are not hard to write. We’ve seen this kind of conversation play itself out multiple times, over multiple subjects, on facebook or twitter or wherever.
In fact, we could change the subject of the conversation to almost anything and the level of analysis and passion would be approximately the same.
For example, the news stories that we discuss are as carefully manufactured as any Star Wars movie, and we debate them with about as much real knowledge and insight. It typically starts with a compressed, constructed narrative being presented to us in some form (as a news item or video clip), like this:
X was promised to happen by the government,
But (says earnest reporter) some people say it’s not working, or has disadvantaged them;
Queue Jim the Battler with tragic story to tell;
Cut to reporter with ten seconds of selective factoids;
Cut to two-sentence grab from government spokesman looking awkward, saying that everything is on track;
Back to reporter saying, “But try telling that to Jim the Battler”;
Solemn-looking news anchor sums it up with rueful comment.
The moral of the story, and what we’re supposed to think, is clear enough: the government is incompetent (as usual) and/or doesn’t care about the battlers (as usual).
All this is as stylised and crafted as any fiction. It may or may not represent the truth of the situation—we have so little to go on that it’s impossible to tell. What exactly did the government promise and in what context? Does Jim the Battler represent a broad trend or an anomaly? Are there other complexities that help explain both the plight of Jim and the broader situation? What alternative forms of action were available for the government? Is this the best that could be retrieved from difficult circumstances?
None of this can be conveyed in a short news story, nor is that the intention. What we get instead is a brief impressionistic narrative, usually based around the available footage, and presented to us as entertainment.
And then we share it on social media and opinionate profusely about it, making value judgements, impugning motives, and generally joking and quipping and sniding with a kind of cool, gestural indignation.
Most online discussion of contemporary issues is like this—whether it’s about George Floyd, the European Super League, climate change, the vaccine roll-out, or the latest political scandal. None of us knows much of anything; but this doesn’t stop us responding with our opinion.
And frequently that response is an aesthetic judgement (of what we favour or like), or a tribal reflex (based on what other people like me believe and think). Only in the rarest of instances do we penetrate to a level of knowledge or insight that might lead to real understanding or responsible action.
All of which is to say that while this kind of opinionating passes the time divertingly, and may even raise our cache among friends, it has about as much connection with reality as a bunch of Star Wars fans discussing a movie they haven’t seen.
But is this really such a problem, you might ask?
What’s wrong with friends occasionally shooting the breeze about trivia?
Well, perhaps not much, if it is indeed ‘trivia’ (my cat’s diarrhoea) and it is ‘occasional’ (as opposed to the 2 ¼ hours that the average user now spends on social media channels every day).
But social media discussion of current issues goes well beyond trivial and occasional. It enables and supercharges a problem that we might call the sin of opinion.
Loving real people is hard. To do it well, we have to confront the reality of the fallen, complicated person standing before us, to prayerfully ponder what faith and love and wisdom require of us in the actual circumstances they are experiencing, and then to take the costly step of doing something, saying something, sharing something.
This kind of gospel wisdom asks a lot of me. It draws me out of myself. It demands my time and attention. It calls on me to see the problems of the world through the lens of the gospel rather than the lens of the news. It requires me to trust the knowledge of the world that God gives me, and to love others and speak the truth to them on that basis.
It goes against every sinful instinct I’ve got.
Much easier to say, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled” than to take responsibility to provide peace and warmth and filling for the suffering person before me (Jas 2:16).
Much easier to exhaust my moral energies on doomscrolling through endless posts and articles and youtube clips, pausing only to make ill-informed judgements about the confected narratives that are presented to me there.
All of it much easier than turning to the task at hand—which is to engage in the prayerful, costly action of being Christ’s ambassador in the real world I live in.
Feeling yourself distracted and exhausted by the opinion-machine that has been constructed by big tech for your diversion (and their profit)? Take a break. Use the time to think about something worthwhile and in depth, or to do something loving for a real person.
And as you sign off from your platform of choice, post Proverbs 18:2 into your feed:
“A fool takes no pleasure in understanding, but only in expressing his opinion”.
PS
Today’s blast of opinion on the subject of opinion was stimulated in large part by a passage from Oliver O’Donovan’s Finding and Seeking (pp. 84-88), in which he speaks about the ways in which we fail to engage with the created world in wisdom. He speaks of the folly of inconsiderateness (where we don’t think or interrogate reality, but only watch, feel and react) and the folly of opinion (where we replace reflection and action with an anxious social participation in shallow, reactive opinion-sharing). I’ve concentrated above on ‘opinion’, but social media is an equally good platform for fostering ‘inconsiderateness’—a vacuous, thoughtless trawling through multiple images and clips, calling forth likes, emojis and brief quips, but never leading us to learn or understand anything.
Here’s a good OO’D quote about ‘the folly of opinion’:
Led by the Pied Pipers of the media we plunge into the caverns of imagination, framing our views on how the world may be put to rights and never giving thought to the fact that the world we are shown is a carefully constructed representation which demands interrogation … Sharpening our arrows of opinion and firing them off at actors they will never reach, pronouncing judgments that involve us in no actual responsibility, we go through the motions of playing a part in the great communicative drama and so work off surplus active impulses before turning to the tasks that actually lie before us. (p. 87)
There are other follies that are frequently at work in the online discussions we have about contemporary events or issues. I mention them here in passing, but they are probably worth a discussion of their own:
the folly of confirmation bias—selecting and arranging the facts before me in such a way as to confirm what I already know to be true;
the folly of monocausality—assuming that there is one, and only one, factor that explains a certain phenomenon (usually an -ism like racism or sexism or socialism or capitalism or whatever ideology we happen to be possessed by);
the folly of hasty generalization—taking one often symbolic incident and extrapolating it to a general conclusion—so, on one side, “a cold snap; see I told you global warming was rubbish”; or on the other, “a bushfire; see I told you that climate catastrophe is upon us”.
No doubt there are others.
This is a partner-only email, although I will open the web-article version to everyone tomorrow (so that you can share it with people if you’d like to).
And today’s image, a self-portrait …
This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at www.thepaynefultruth.online/subscribe
In the tradition of what we had to do in school when I was growing up, here’s my composition exercise on the first day back from holidays.
(Plus some bonus thoughts on preaching at the end from Phil Wheeler and David Jackman.)
Holidays are hardly the time for deep thought.
A bit of quiet musing perhaps, as the miles drift by down the highway, with a favourites compilation playing on the car stereo, and your beloved snoozing in the seat next to you.
But nothing too mentally taxing. No writing of Payneful Truths on the back of napkins.
However, now that I’m back from two refreshing weeks, I’ve been reflecting on why holidays are so good and so important.
Perhaps I’m feeling bullish about holidays because this one was so good. Unlike every previous attempt to take a break over the past two years, this one actually worked. No flood, fire or plague prevented us. The weather was glorious. The mountain trails we tramped were spectacular. The novels I read were diverting and profound. (I’ll share some of them below.)
It was a special time. That’s what a holiday is I suppose. It’s a ‘holy-day’; a special or distinctive day (which is what the word ‘holy’ means). Originally, these were days for celebrating one of the special ‘holy’ days in the Christian calendar.
But even more originally, the idea of setting apart certain special days to stop working goes back to the very beginning. God did it at the creation of the world, and he commanded Israel to do likewise—to have a special ‘stop’ day when no work was done (the word ‘sabbath’ means to cease or stop or rest from doing something).
Interestingly, in the two versions of the Ten Commandments (in Exod 20 and Deut 5), a different rationale is given for observing the day of ‘stopping’.
In Exodus 20, the reason is that “in six days, the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested (or ‘stopped’) the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath and made it holy.”
Stop working, says the commandment, and remember that everything comes to you from the hand of the mighty Creator. Every single thing you do and work towards, and everything you experience and enjoy as the result of your labours—all of these things come from the God who made everything and then stopped; who completed the entire creation, so that “without him was not any thing made that was made”, as John 1 very precisely puts it.
We can only work and enjoy anything because God made everything. Don’t think for a minute (says the commandment) that you’re self-sufficient; don’t let a week go by without stopping and enacting truth that the majestic Creator made you and everything, and then stopped.
It’s certainly true that pausing to enjoy the fruit of our work is good for us, and refreshing. But the main reason to stop is because God stopped. There’s nothing we can add to his creation, in that sense. It’s all from him. We’re always working gratefully and trustingly with his raw materials. We are inescapably finite andcontingent beings. We need rest. And we are utterly dependent on our Creator for life and breath and everything. Resting from work is a recognition of that, and a celebration of it.
Exodus looks back to God’s finished work in creation, but Deuteronomy looks back to God’s powerful work in redeeming Israel from the slavery of Egypt. The rationale for keeping the ‘stopping day’ in Deuteronomy 5 is this: “You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the LORD your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore the LORD your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day.”
Don’t forget (says the commandment) that everything you are enjoying here in the land of milk and honey is an act of pure grace. It’s God alone who strong-armed you here (so to speak), despite all your weakness and rebelliousness.
In other words, it’s important to stop the relentless round of working and achieving to remember that we don’t deserve any of it. On the contrary, we deserve something entirely different from God, and the fact that we enjoy so much goodness from his hand is because of his generosity and mercy, not our merit.
I’d like to say that these profound theological underpinnings to the importance of ‘holidays’ were at the absolute forefront of my mind over the past two weeks. But to claim that would be to infringe another of the commandments.
All the same, on this first day back at work, I can seeing why ceasing from work is so important—not just to respect my created limitations but to rely on and rejoice in the goodness of my Creator.
So what I did on my holiday was to enjoy the blessing of God, creator and redeemer—the God who made a world so full of beauty and goodness to enjoy; who made us with the ability to create beautiful and good artefacts (like movies and novels); and who blesses us with these things, and gives us the ability to enjoy them, not because of our works but in spite of them.
PS
For me, a good holiday involves not only leaving my own home and temporarily inhabiting another, but also taking a rest from my own mind and reality, and inhabiting another. Reading good novels, in other words.
The best novels take you to a different world, seen through the mind of its creator (the novelist). And if that world is compellingly drawn, and the action that takes place within it artfully managed, you not only receive the pleasure of experiencing a story well told but of perceiving something true or insightful about the real world; or of having a question raised that leaves you pondering.
The two novels I enjoyed most this time were:
Silence by Shusaku Endo, an extraordinary and beautifully written story about the persecution suffered by Christian missionaries in 17th century Japan. Where or how does God speak in the midst of unimaginable suffering and persecution? And if you were given the choice to trample (literally) on the face of Christ in order to save other believers from a slow, agonizing death by torture, what would you do?
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro (an English author of Japanese heritage); a haunting story set in a world in which human clones are created and raised for organ donation. The key questions: What does it mean be human, or to have a soul? Who is the more human: the clones who try to come to terms with their purpose and destiny (a death in their late 20s or 30s after multiple donations), or the society that has created them for this chilling purpose?
In the rush to get things finished before hols, I forgot to pass on a recommendation to listen to Champ Thornton’s great little podcast, In the Word, On the Go. Aimed at individuals and families, each ten-minute episode looks at a single Bible verse, with a different guest each time talking about what this verse means and why it is important to them. And if you listen to this particular episode, you might hear a familiar voice talking about a very unusual favourite verse …
One more thing to catch up on as I get back in groove—a couple of excellent responses came in to my piece on a ‘newish definition of preaching’. They are too good not to share.
First from Phil Wheeler, who runs Evangelism and New Churches here in Sydney, and is also connected with WordPartners (formerly LRI), an organization that trains preachers around the world:
I think the movement from exegesis (what is this passage about, what does it teach?) to the preached word (what does this mean for us, what is the transforming, compelling truth for today?) is exactly where many of our sermons fall down.
That is where I like the language and questions used by WordPartners (link) (formally Leadership Resources International). Questions like:
So what? Move your descriptive content into a preached contention—prosecute a case; explain to me why this matters.
What is the transformational intent of passage/author? This is similar to ‘what is God doing?’. But transformation captures more as it can be a renewed mind, circumcised heart, re-oriented will, or Christ-like behaviours. It’s broader. Since the goal of preaching ought be transformation, this is a great question to ask.
I also like to ask: After reading this passage what would you pray for? This often unpacks the real heart of the passage and response to it. I have often heard preaching or even preached myself and was not especially clear on the main idea and application until the prayer at the end. Turning our mind towards God and asking him to help us sharpens the thinking—sometimes I’ve wished I preached the prayer point instead of the sermon!
I also think asking and appreciating the tone and mood of the passage are helpful in getting transformation and appropriate application right. Encouraging warm pastoral passages ought be just that in application; challenging/warning passages ought have such a tone as well. So a sermon on Eph 1 ought not be an arid treatise on predestination!
David Jackman wrote in along quite similar lines. David was for many years the head of the Proclamation Trust in the UK:
I am very interested in your ‘newish’ definition of preaching, with which I very much agree.
I think the strength of the definition is that it takes us beyond simply explaining the surface meaning of the passage to its transformational intention, which may be pastoral, ethical, evangelistic etc. And I think this is where good preachers often get stuck. They know (rightly) that they need to work hard at their exegesis, relate the text to its literary, historical and whole Bible contexts, reflect on the biblical theology and systematics issues which the text raises or clarifies, but they don't build the bridge to the lives their hearers live 24/7.
Instead of doing for their hearers what God is doing in the passage (we could call it the transformational purpose), they tend to leave them on the Bible side of the bridge, but never land their sermon or their hearers at the other end in contemporary application. I think that's why they often cast around to create some ‘action step’, which then becomes a ‘bolt-on’ application and therefore lacks grip and penetration. Often it is selected from the ‘ought to’ that most preachers carry—we ought to pray, witness, study the Bible etc more.
And it is very easy for me listening in the congregation to shrug that off, because it doesn’t come with the authority of the preaching doing what God was doing when he inspired this word. As Dick Lucas used to say, “It doesn't go for the jugular”! I agree that this definition also helps us to uphold but clarify the Reformers' expectation that faithful biblical preaching is the Word of God. What this establishes is that this faithfulness is not just propositional, but transformational.
These are excellent thoughts. After 50 years of preaching, and teaching others to preach, David has two books coming out later this year on the subject: a short book especially aimed at beginner preachers called From Text to Teaching, to be published by Matthias Media; and a more comprehensive collection of his reflections Transforming Preaching, to be published by Christian Focus. Look out for them.
This is one of the occasional freebie editions of the Payneful Truth that goes out to the whole list. But if you’re a free-lister and thinking about possibly subscribing—don’t! Wait a couple of weeks: a special offer is coming …
And for today’s graphic, here’s one of the many lousy spots where we ate a picnic lunch on holidays. Looking down over Blue Lake in the Kosciusko National Park.
This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at www.thepaynefultruth.online/subscribe
As foreshadowed in last week’s edition, I want to come back to a question that has been niggling away at me over the past few months, and that a number of you have asked about.
The question goes like this:
let us agree that there is only one gospel (not many gospels);
and let us also agree that each person we tell the gospel to will have different questions, and come to the gospel with different cultural presuppositions; any particular conversation or presentation might start at a different ‘entry point’, touch on different presenting issues or questions, and utilise different language or metaphors along the way;
how, then, can each gospel conversation or presentation be the same and yet different? How can the gospel be one thing, and yet many things?
This is a very important question, because it affects not only how we preach the gospel (in evangelistic talks or courses) but how we train everyday Christians to understand the gospel and chat about it with their friends. (I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently, as we revise and rewrite the Two ways to live training material.)
It’s too big a question, in fact, to answer completely and satisfactorily in this little newsletter. But I do have an insight to offer that I hope might move the discussion forward.
Let us imagine that our gospel conversation (or sermon) starts by talking about something good in the world that our friends want more of (like beauty or love or justice) or something bad in the world that our friends want less of (like suffering or injustice or the fact that I’m lonely and my job stinks and I feel desperate).
One increasingly common approach to evangelism suggests that we should frame our presentation of the gospel around these common culturally-framed desires or frustrations in our hearers, by:
affirming what we can affirm that is good about these desires;
challenging the dysfunctional way that we (and our culture) understand them and seek to meet them; showing that our way of pursuing these things doesn’t work;
and then offering the gospel news that there is an answer or fulfilment of these desires, and it is found in what God has done through Jesus.
This is sometimes called the Resonance-Dissonance-Gospel approach.
There’s much to like about it—particularly in how it listens carefully to each person (or culture) and seeks to have a gracious, salty conversation that bounces off the questions and issues of everyday life (in a Colossians 4 kind of way).
But there’s a significant weakness here as well—or at least there often is, depending on how the conversation unfolds.
In Two ways to live terms, the problem happens when we glide too quickly from the second half of Point 2 to the second half of Point 5.
Let me explain what I mean.
For non-2wtl aficionados, Point 2 says:
We all reject God as our ruler by running our own lives our own way.
But by rebelling against God’s way, we damage ourselves, each other and the world.
Coming as it does after Point 1 (God as creator and ruler), Point 2 presents a picture of a good world gone wrong because of our rebellion against the Creator. And so there is plenty of scope to open a conversation of the Resonance-Dissonance variety. God has made a good world—and so beauty and justice and meaning and freedom and a satisfying job are indeed good things that we want and experience. But our ability to experience them is drastically compromised because of our disconnection with the Creator and his ways. So far so good.
But what frequently happens next is that Point 2 is not fully enough explored, and then Points 3-4 are skimmed over too quickly—if I can put it that way—in order to get to the happy ending of Point 5.
Point 5 says:
God raised Jesus to life again as the ruler and judge of the world.
Jesus has conquered death, now brings forgiveness and new life, and will return in glory.
The blessings of forgiveness and new life that Jesus brings are the answer to our frustrated desires and aspirations. In Jesus, the freedom or beauty or justice we’ve been longing for can actually be found. By having a right relationship with God through Jesus, a new life can be ours, both now and forever—the life we were kind of looking for without even knowing it.
However, this too-easy move from Point 2 to Point 5 can be very misleading—because Point 2 not only describes a world gone wrong, and our lives gone wrong, but the fundamental disease of which our negative experience is the symptom. The underlying problem is the wilful fracturing of our relationship with God as Creator and Ruler. Call that ‘rebellion’ or ‘rejection’ or ‘turning away’ or ‘hostility’ or ‘suppressing the truth and embracing the lie’ or ‘sin’, or whatever phraseology is most suitable. But the key move in Point 2 is establishing the larger problem we have with God, of which our current experience is the byproduct—and the larger judgement of God against us, of which our current negative experiences are but a foretaste (Point 3).
Only by getting to Point 3 (as it were) and the reality of ‘death and judgement’ as God’s punishment for our rebellion against him can we coherently talk about why someone dying on our behalf is such good news (Point 4).
And only by establishing God as ruler (in Point 1) whose rule we reject (Point 2), can we coherently explain how the resurrected Jesus has been established as God’s ruler over all.
This can be the problem with the Resonance-Dissonance-Gospel approach. Because the presenting issue (the resonance and dissonance) is often set up in terms of the frustration or dysfunction of our culturally-framed aspirations, then how Jesus’ death is the solution to that frustration becomes difficult to explain—let alone how and why Jesus’ resurrection is so important. Unless we zoom out from our desires and aspirations to the fundamental problem (sinful rejection of God’s rule) and its fundamental consequence (death and judgement), then we will find ourselves struggling to explain the significance of the death and resurrection of Jesus.
And these are the two central, unchanging truths of the gospel: the substitutionary death of Jesus, and his resurrection to be the glorious Lord of all (the ‘Christ’). Or as Paul summarizes it so beautifully, ‘Jesus Christ and him crucified’ (1 Cor 2:2). Our framing of the human ‘problem’ or situation must prepare us to present these twin truths clearly. The way we talk about our current experience (with all its problems and aspirations), must lead us to the point where:
Jesus’ substitutionary death for sins is God’s gracious answer to our predicament; and
the culmination of the message is the resurrected Christ, under whose rule we now gladly and repentantly live.
Our conversations about the gospel will indeed start in a thousand different ways, and our friends will come to those conversations with a thousand different issues, questions, problems, aspirations and attitudes. This does mean that gospel conversations and presentations will differ from each other in all sorts of ways. There is no one form of words that we can take out of our pocket and deposit in the lap of everyone we speak to.
Ironically, Two ways to live has sometimes been seen as just this—a one-size fits all form of words to blurt out onto anyone we speak to. But this was never its intended use. Quite the opposite. It was designed to equip Christians to have a thousand different conversations, starting at different points or with different topics, depending on their hearers—but all of them resolving in one direction, eventually.
The one gospel will always have the same stubborn shape or form. It will always lead to an explanation of Jesus’ substitutionary death for sins and his glorious resurrection as Lord and Ruler of all—along with the response that these two truths call for (faith and repentance).
Might this be a way for us to conceive of gospel preaching and gospel conversation as always ‘same same but different’?
PS
Various further questions and caveats come to mind.
For example, must every conversation or presentation or sermon contain the whole thing every time? Must there always be cross AND resurrection in equal quantities? See last week’s edition for thoughts on this.
I’m not sure who first came up with the Resonance-Dissonance-Gospel framework. Tim Keller has recommended it, as has Sam Chan, and Chatraw and Allen in their very comprehensive book Apologetics at the Cross. Like Two ways to live, I’m quite sure that R-D-G can be utilised well or poorly. Done in a certain way, it would not be so different from Two ways to live and other good gospel frameworks—it all depends on how the ‘dissonance’ and ‘gospel’ is done (i.e., whether or not it zooms out to the more fundamental problem of sin and God’s judgement, thus making the gospel explanation of substitutionary death and resurrection coherent). But having seen R-D-G often used in the manner described at the beginning of this post, I thought it was a good foil for discussing the issue.
This whole discussion also raises the interesting question of which aspects of the conversation (or presentation) are actually ‘gospel’, and which bits are ‘preparation or background’ and ‘response’. Regular reader Jack wrote in with a perceptive question on this earlier this week:
Is the call to repentance and faith part of the content of the gospel, or is it a consequence/implication of the gospel?
In favour of the latter (consequence), would be the impetus to restrict the content of the gospel to just the announcement of Christ and his work, independent of any response demanded (though such a demand is clearly still the necessary implication, e.g. in Acts 2:38)—noting summaries like Rom 1:1-4, 1 Cor 15:1-4, 2 Tim 2:8 and their focus purely on Christ.
In favour of the former (content), I've been pondering what kind of news/message/speech-act the gospel is—noting that it is a message that can be disobeyed (2 Thess 1:8, 1 Pet 4:17; cf. Rom 10:16). The ‘obedience of faith’ in Rom 1:5, given its proximity to 1:1-4, I think is also instructive. That a message can be obeyed or disobeyed suggests to me something about what kind of message it is—not just a disinterested announcement, but a summons. A command. And therefore the call to respond is something intrinsic to and constitutive of the message itself, not merely an implication thereof.
Alternatively, is this just somehow a false dichotomy? Splitting hairs? Separating things that ought only be distinguished?
Although it might feel like hair splitting, bringing this distinction into the open is valuable in my view. On the one hand, we don’t want to find ourselves preaching the fruit of the gospel (our response and what it does in our lives) as the gospel itself. But neither do we want to find ourselves preaching a gospel that does not call for and require response—as Jack points out.
Perhaps speech-act theory does help us a little here. The force of the gospel is to announce that certain things have happened, but also to promise that certain things are now true and will happen on that basis (that Jesus is Lord, and now grants forgiveness and new life, and will return to judge). And this same speech-act looks for an expected and appropriate response from its hearer (faith or obedience or repentance, or however we want to describe it).
So yes, Jack—the content and the response are distinguishable, and it’s helpful to be aware of that distinction. But (as you say) they are not separable. I think they are part of the same speech-act.
This is one of the free public Payneful Truths that goes out to everyone on the list every three weeks or so. Hope you enjoyed it (and please feel free to pass it around to your friends). But to get next week’s post, which of course will be an unmissable and life-changing piece of work, you have to rise to the next level …
(Thanks again to all those of you who have become partners, and help keep food on the Payneful table.)
This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at www.thepaynefultruth.online/subscribe
Time to pause from the regular rhythm of Payneful episodes, and discuss some of the many excellent questions and comments that you keep sending in.
About the gospel
The various Two ways to live related posts about the nature of the gospel (and our preaching of it) have prompted numerous insightful comments and questions.
John, for example, posed this fascinating one:
With regard to preaching the cross/preaching the resurrection—obviously Christ crucified is a BIG deal (e.g., 1 Corinthians 1:18-2:2). So it’s got to be there in our preaching. But in Acts there is so much on the resurrection and preaching the resurrection. It is the resurrection that gets Paul into trouble with the religious leaders and it is the resurrection that he preaches in Acts 17, especially 17:32. The questions that arise (at least for me) are how do we know when and where to focus on one or the other? And why the shift/change/difference in focus (in Paul’s preaching)?
Interestingly, when Paul summarizes the gospel that he received and which he faithfully delivered to the Corinthians in 1 Cor 15, he straightforwardly includes both cross and resurrection. In fact, he also throws in the fact of the burial and the witnesses to the resurrection, just to make sure we appreciate that this was a real, historical death and resurrection:
For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. (1 Cor 15:3-6)
Cross and resurrection are inseparable. In one context, you might lean harder on the cross (as Paul does when beginning to address the problems of the Corinthian church in 1 Cor 1-2), but the resurrection is never far away. In that passage, the clue is in the word ‘Christ’. The resurrected, ruling Lord of all (the Christ) is the one who was crucified.
And indeed—as Paul gets towards the end of the letter, he turns to the resurrection and thumps that pretty hard (in chapter 15).
In Acts 17, he leads with the resurrection—but again, it’s a resurrection from the dead. I’ve no doubt that in discussing things further with Dionysius and Damaris and the others who ended up believing, the meaning of that death was fully explained!
I think the different emphases at different points in the NT’s recording of how the gospel was preached show that every gospel presentation isn’t exactly the same. But if we don’t ‘deliver’ the full message of both cross and resurrection to our hearers (whether all at once, or over extended interaction with them), then I don’t think we’ve been faithful gospel couriers.
In my observation of evangelical proclamation (over the past 30 years), by far the most common problem is a failure to integrate the resurrection into our message. It’s either not mentioned, or tacked on as an afterthought. The result is that while we often fully explore what it means for Jesus to offer forgiveness and salvation on the basis of his atoning death, we regularly fail to proclaim Jesus as the risen Christ, the Lord of all, before whom we must repent, and whom we joyfully obey and serve.
Bad things follow.
The second main gospel-related question that has been asked in various forms over the past few months has been in response to my piece about ‘one gospel, many forms’. I argued that although the people we meet and talk to will have a range of issues, questions and backgrounds—and so every conversation will be different, and often will start in a different place—nevertheless, the gospel we end up explaining should be the same gospel, the one gospel. It’s not a different gospel for each person, adapted to what is most likely to connect with their particular desires or cultural narratives.
I’ve had a number of fascinating conversations about this, and a new thought that I’d like to share—but it’s worth a discussion all of its own, rather than a brief comment here. I will save it for next week’s edition.
About livestreaming
My post a couple of weeks ago about the ongoing usefulness of livestreaming our church meetings, and the theological issues involved, sparked lots of helpful comments.
Warwick spoke for quite a few when he commented:
We find that increasingly that folk check us out online before they come in person. It used to be that they simply looked at our website. Now it is joining with online church.
We only had 10 weeks of meeting in person before we were closed again. In those 10 weeks we had so many people come who'd never been to a physical church meeting with us before.
It seems that the new ‘front door’ for many churches (over the past 12 months) has become the livestream—and if we have the resources to maintain that over time (and keep up the quality), then it seems like an opportunity worth taking up.
Peter wrote with a more searching question about the nature of ‘gathering’:
The one hour zoom gathering has many features of a physical gathering—we greet each other, we have lots of organised and more informal participation of participants during the meeting (including praying out loud, Bible readings, testimonies, and gathering in small groups to keep in touch and pray for each other). The youtube sermon is not unlike listening to the Pastor preach—although perhaps it is far easier to make comments out loud about the content and style than one would do in the presence of other church members.
Obviously in a 'touchy feely' culture, people miss the physical aspect of greeting and farewelling.
My reflection on that is that it is worth reflecting more carefully on what is the nature of ‘gathering’. By Zoom we gather, we talk to each other, we edify each other. I've no doubt Jesus is ‘in our midst’, whatever that means in a virtual environment.
So I'm interested to hear more on what constitutes ‘gathering’ as a theological concept.
The ‘Zoom gathering’ is certainly a Christian meeting or encounter, and provides for many excellent and edifying things to happen. Like all genuine expressions of Christian fellowship, it contributes to the building of Christ’s ‘heavenly church’ through the word and prayer.
All the same, theologically speaking, I don’t think we can escape the embodied nature of our creatureliness, and thus the inescapably embodied nature of ‘gathering’ or ‘assembling’ (or ‘churching’). In a thousand different ways, being together bodily shapes what we experience—how we listen, how we preach, how we speak to each other, how we pray and sing and rejoice and cry, how we eat and drink together (in the Lord’s Supper and in other ways), and so on.
This mode of actually being together—and encouraging each other as we do so—is the gathering that Hebrews 10 is telling us not to neglect, even though the author knows and affirms that we are ‘virtually together’ at all times (in the heavenly gathering of chapter 12).
This doesn’t, of course, mean pressing for a return to physical gathering if it’s unsafe or unwise to do so. But it does mean prioritizing the (physical) gathering.
About preaching as ‘doing’
In last week’s edition, I put forward a newish definition of preaching to think about: that our goal when we preach is to do for our hearers what God was doing in the passage of Scripture we are expounding. (For non-partner readers who are curious, I’ll open up access to that post so you can check it out.)
Angus and Simon got in touch with variations of the same question. Angus put it like this:
Is it reductionistic to think the words on the page only had one ‘act’ (that’s your implicit/explicit statement, I think)? How does Israel respond to hearing and how do we respond to hearing? Does the cross reduce the text to having one major ‘act’? Does our eschatological position mean God’s word ‘acts’ differently?
If I can summarize Angus’s four questions in one: if I focus on what God is doing in this passage (and try to do the same in my sermon), won’t I be at risk of flattening out the Bible, and missing its unfolding Christ-centred shape (i.e. ‘biblical theology’)? Will I fail to preach Christ?
My short answer to this excellent question is as follows: What God is doing in this particular passage can't be isolated from what he is doing in the whole Scriptural revelation, which focuses on Christ. We can’t preach what God is doing in any particular OT passage, without having in our minds the meta-level NT explanation of God’s overall purpose in the OT—of making promises that point to Christ (2 Cor 1:20) and providing examples and encouragement for his people (1 Cor 10:11).
And likewise, we can’t preach any NT passage without some awareness (and in some passages it will need to be a keen awareness) of how what this passage is ‘doing’ only makes sense in light of what God has been doing for ages past.
I think this is also where the action or force of a passage, and its expected or implied response are worth distinguishing. The response of Israel will be different in various ways from our response as readers this side of Christ. But what God is doing as he speaks through this particular text still needs to shape the particular action and emphasis of the exposition of the passage.
As part of the training work at CBS, I’ve developed a little methodology for preparing to preach a passage using this What-God-is-doing framework. It teases the idea out a little more, and shows what it means in practice.
I’ll send it round as a bonus article later this week.
PS
This week’s post is one of the free public ones I send out every three weeks or so (although I think I will make next week’s edition a freebie as well—given that it’s a kind of continuation of this week’s). If you want to get every edition, every week, and provide some valuable support for the broader writing ministry I do, you can click this button and become a ‘partner’ for a few dollars a month:
What better image for this week’s post than the poster for the 1990 movie Q&A? The tagline for the movie: When the questions are dangerous, the answers can be deadly.
This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at www.thepaynefultruth.online/subscribe
I’ve been chatting with the trainees at CBS about preaching recently, and have come up with a slightly different way to describe the preaching task. See what you think …
I have a newish definition of preaching to run past you.
Or at least, a newish angle from which to view what we’re trying to do when we preach. (And by ‘preach’ I mean what we normally mean in our circles—the public exposition of a passage of Scripture.)
I ended up thinking about preaching more than I expected to while working on the PhD, between 2015 and 2018. My actual topic was all the other word ministry that happens in a Christian community apart from preaching—the ‘one-another edifying speech’ that we engage in as Christians, to edify, encourage, exhort, admonish and exhort one another.
But this required me to think about preaching as well, in order to understand and differentiate these two broad kinds of speech—the one-to-many communication that teaches and applies the word to the congregation, and the one-another communication that spreads and applies and generally ministers that word to each other in multiple ways.
In the course of all this, I found myself dabbling in ‘speech-act theory’. If you’re not familiar with it, ‘speech-act theory’ is a currently popular way of thinking about how language works. It rests on the insight that all language is a form of action. When we ‘say’ something we’re never just ‘saying’. We’re always doing something through the words that come out of our mouths. We might be explaining, answering, promising, commanding, warning, entertaining, exclaiming, interjecting, declaring, exhorting, comforting, and so on.
Speech-act theory goes into some detail to analyse and describe this process. Putting it a bit simplistically, speech-act theory differentiates three main aspects of any utterance:
the action of the speech (the kind of thing you’re doing as you speak: promising, telling, asking, explaining, exhorting, and so on);
the propositional content of the speech (what it is you’re promising or explaining or asking); and
the hoped-for outcome of the speech (what you’re expecting to happen as a result of your speech-action: for your hearers to trust the promise, to understand the explanation, to heed the exhortation, and so on).
A number of biblical scholars have picked up on this idea and applied it to Scripture. Perhaps most prominently, Kevin Vanhoozer has argued that the Bible is God’s communicative action. When God speaks in the text of Scripture, he is always doing something—declaring, explaining, teaching, urging, commanding, and so on—to fulfil his covenant purposes through the words of the human author. And like all speech, this speech-action that God is ‘doing’ has certain content, and certain expected outcomes. God’s speech is living and active and purposive.
Now, the biblically alert among you might have already figured this out, even without the geniuses of speech-act theory to help you. You might have read and believed these famous verses, for example:
For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it. (Isa 55:10-11)
God is intentionally doing something whenever he speaks. Speech-act theory highlights this, and in a basically helpful way it seems to me.
What has this got to do with preaching?
Well some other clever chaps (most notably the British evangelical scholar, Timothy Ward), have argued that if God’s word is an action, then what we are doing when we preach is re-enacting the word for our congregation. A sermon is a bit like re-performing a classic stage play in a new context, with updated language, and a different set, but with the same content and purpose as the original.
This brings us to the newish definition of preaching I want to run past you: our goal when we preach is to do for our hearers what God was doing in the passage of Scripture we are expounding.
I say ‘newish’, because this is just me summarizing the clever insights of others—but also newish because it is only a bit different from definitions you might already have in your mind. Take for example, this classic paragraph from Simeon:
My endeavour is to bring out of Scripture what is there, and not to thrust in what I think might be there. I have a great jealousy on this head: never to speak more or less than I believe to be the mind of the Spirit in the passage I am expounding.
Or to put this in terms we’re familiar with (thanks to Haddon Robinson): our goal when we preach is to let the Big Idea of the passage be the Big Idea of the sermon.
All the same, the differences in my newish definition have some advantages, particularly over the ‘Big Idea’ approach.
Perhaps it’s just me, but when I look for the Big Idea in a passage, I tend to focus on the propositional content of the passage (on its key ideas and theological truths and how they fit together). I then draw these ideas together into a main truth or proposition that the passage is teaching (the Big Idea). Then I figure out a good structure for explaining this Big Idea compellingly to the congregation. And then, I cast around (often with difficulty and a sense that I’m being arbitrary) for a Big-Idea-related application that is relevant to my hearers.
My newish definition frames the process a bit differently. The goal is not just to identify the main truths or ideas of the passage, but what the speaker is doing with those truths or ideas in the context of the passage, and for what expected outcome or response in the hearers or readers.
In other words, what divine transformative action is taking place in the passage itself? And how can I re-enact or re-perform that action in my own context this Sunday?
I find this a useful thought process, especially for tackling the ‘application’.
Rather than feeling like I need to construct some ‘action step’ for the congregation to take in response to the passage, I look for what God was doing in the passage in its original context, and the implied or explicit response that he was seeking. I frame the purpose and ‘landing point’ of my own sermon accordingly.
Our goal when we preach is to do for our hearers what God was doing in the passage of Scripture we are expounding.
What do you think? Is that a definition of the kind of preaching you want to practise, train others in, and listen to?
PS
There are some big questions lurking here.
For example, it was the contention of the Reformers that when God’s word was faithfully and truly preached, then the word of God itself was being spoken by the preacher. (‘The preaching of the word of God is the word of God’, as Bullinger put it.) Perhaps we can rephrase this in light of the above discussion: when God does again through us in our sermon what he was doing in the text of Scripture, then he truly is speaking his word through us to his people. Does that work?
Another big issue, which my PhD spent some time thinking about: If this is indeed the nature of preaching—a re-presentation or re-enactment of what the text itself is doing—then is the same also true whenever we re-enact or re-do what God was doing in the text of Scripture? If by reading and discussion in a group of three or four, we do for each other in our speech what the text is doing, then is the word of God being spoken truly and powerfully? Is it as true and powerful in the lounge-room as in the pulpit? Hard to see why not.
This is a partner post, but please feel free to share it around, especially among your preacher friends.
This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at www.thepaynefultruth.online/subscribe
This is the second in a little three-part series thinking about different aspects of our church meetings—now that many of us are back and almost approaching normal church again.
This is also one of the free public editions of The Payneful Truth that comes out every three weeks or so—which means that if you’re on the free list, you will have missed the first post in the series (last week) on leading better church meetings (as well as a bonus post of ‘meeting templates’ that I sent out over the weekend). Don’t mean to rub it in or anything, but there is a way you can get every post every week if you’d like to … Just hit this button and sign up. (And by so doing you’ll also help me raise support for the writing work I do.)
(And if you’d like to sign up to the every-week ‘partner’s list’, but aren’t in a position to chip in financially, just send me an email at tonyjpayne@me.com saying “Please put me on the every-week list”, and I’ll take care of it. I don’t want anyone to miss out for financial reasons.)
This week we turn to the subject of singing and making God bigger.
Making God bigger
Is it possible for singing to make God bigger?
The answer to that question begins back in the mists of time, when dudes with Sony Walkmen roamed the earth and I was at theological college.
As part of my Old Testament studies in 1994, I was set the task of assessing the ‘content and function of “praise” in the Book of Psalms’.
This was much more than an academic exercise for me.
My years in the charismatic movement were only a bit more than decade in the rear-view mirror. And as with many aspects of my neo-pentecostal youth, I had a sneaking feeling that I might have some unlearning and re-learning to do about ‘praise’.
And so it proved to be.
I’d always thought of ‘praise’ as a personal (or corporate) expression of adoration or devotion to God. ‘I praise you, O God’ was a way of saying “I am in awe of you; I want to express just how much I love you” and so on.
So when we all sang, “I will praise you, O God” (or “We praise your holy name”) then that’s what we were doing. We were ‘praising’. To sing it was to do it. And the more we did it, the more God was praised—hence the 40 minutes of pretty repetitive ‘I will praise you’ type songs that kicked off of the charismatic church meetings I went to in the 70s and early 80s.
But my Moore College essay got me looking afresh at ‘praise’ in the Psalms—at what the word itself meant, and what its content and functions were. I found that it had a quite different meaning and purpose. I discovered that this definition by Mark Harding was completely accurate:
… praise and commendation result from human assessment of another’s qualities, attributes, excellences or deeds. What is seen is advertised. It is the advertisement—the public acknowledgment and acclamation—of the attributes and excellences and deeds of another which is praise.
This is what ‘praise’ is in the psalms (and in the Bible more generally). Praise is not an expression of our gratitude or awe or adoration in response to God’s mighty deeds; it’s the advertising of those deeds to others. When the psalmist says “I will praise you”, he is announcing what is about to come next, which is the actual ‘praise’—that is, a description or narrative or declaration of some aspect of God’s great character or his saving action in the life of the psalmist. This is what ‘praise’ is: it’s letting everyone know just how excellent and ‘praiseworthy’ God is by telling forth his mighty acts.
And because God is indeed very, very praiseworthy, we’ll tend to advertise his greatness with everything we’ve got—with the lyre and the cymbals and all the other joyful-noise-makers we can throw at the situation. We’ll advertise with joy and celebration and to maximum effect. And we’ll feel gladness and appreciation and love in our hearts as we do so. But what we’re really doing when we praise God is advertising the details of his greatness to others.
What has this got to do with making God bigger?
I’ve recently been thinking about the other words that populate our Christian singing. Words like ‘magnify’, ‘exalt’ and ‘glorify’.
Have you ever wondered what we are actually doing when we ‘magnify’ God? Or ‘exalt’ him? Or ‘glorify’ him?
What was Mary doing when her soul ‘magnified the Lord’?
What was Moses doing when when he led the Israelites to sing, “… and I will exalt him!”
I think most of us think about these words largely how I used to think about ‘praise’. They are self-fulfilling words. When I say ‘I magnify you, O God’, then I’ve just ‘magnified’ him (especially if it’s set to music). Ditto with ‘I glorify you’ or ‘I exalt you’. They are words of Godward devotion, where we turn our attention and our souls towards him, and express our love for him. To say it (or sing it) is to do it.
Except—as with ‘praise’—this is not what these words mean, either in English or in the Bible.
Let’s take ‘magnify’. To magnify something is to increase it; to cause it to become bigger or greater or larger. In English, we might magnify an image so that it’s larger in our sight, or we might magnify a mistake by adding other mistakes to it.
This is also what the words in the Bible mean (the Hebrew and Greek ones that we translate ‘magnify’). They mean to cause something to become greater or bigger in some way.
But how can we ‘magnify’ God?! How can anything we do make God bigger?
We don’t really use ‘magnify’ this way in English any more, but the biblical ‘magnify’ words can be used of people. You can ‘magnify’ someone or make them bigger by increasing their honour or reputation; by causing them ‘to be held in greater esteem’.
This is what Mary is doing when her soul ‘magnifies the Lord’. She recounts all the exceedingly great things that God has done for her (and for Israel), so that all generations will know just how blessed she was by God. She wants God ‘to be held in greater esteem’ by vast numbers of people, as they hear about his extraordinary deeds for her and for Israel.
It’s the same with ‘exaltation’. To ‘exalt’ something is to make it higher; to lift it up. (I received the sad news recently that my cholesterol is a bit exalted, so it’s time to ease off the bacon and eggs.)
When I exalt a person, I raise him in your estimation by recounting to you the various high level things he has done. And the more I raise him up in your eyes, and the more people think highly of him, the more I have ‘exalted’ him. As with magnification so with exaltation—it means to cause God’s name to be ‘lifted up’, by telling other people of his lofty deeds and character.
Ditto with ‘glorify’—I glorify someone by increasing the shininess of their reputation. When your public profile goes through the roof thanks to me telling everyone just how brilliant you really are, then I have ‘glorified’ you. We ‘glorify’ God by raising his public profile, by burnishing his reputation—that is, by telling everyone how brilliant he is.
This is why praise, magnify, exalt and glorify often crop up in the same vicinity in biblical texts (especially in the Psalms). They all mean the same kind of thing: to advertise to other people how great God is in his character and works, and so to make his fame and honour larger, his reputation higher, his splendour and brilliance all the shinier in people’s eyes.
To be perfectly clear, we do all these things—praising and magnifying and so on—with hearts and minds full of thankfulness and love for God. We really do believe (like Mary and all the Psalmists) that God is the greatest and highest and most splendid, and that thrills us. We may even muster up an emotion or two, and start banging a cymbal. But neither emotional connection nor musical accompaniment are what ‘magnification’ is about.
Praising or magnifying or exalting God is not fundamentally a personal transaction between me and God. Its purpose is not to stir my affections, nor to express them, although both of those things may well occur. The purpose of praise and magnification and exaltation is to increase God’s honour and fame by pointing others towards him; by shouting from the rooftops all that he has done for us.
Corporate singing is not the only way to do this—but it is an excellent way, for at least two reasons.
First, singing is a form of speech directed to other people, and all praise, magnification and glorification requires this. Magnification needs words and an audience. Its aim is to increase the esteem and honour in which God is held by others, and that happens as people hear words describing or declaring his greatness in some way. In the Psalms, this is true even when the praise or glorification is addressed to God himself. The praiser acknowledges to God how great his deeds and character are, but does so in the presence of ‘the great congregation’, so that they may come to acknowledge this too, thereby increasing the glory of God’s reputation.
When we sing together, we’re telling and reminding and declaring to each other, in psalms, hymns and spiritual songs, how great is the God we serve in Jesus Christ. And in so doing, we not only praise and glorify and exalt and magnify God, but we encourage and edify each other as well (cf. Eph 5:19-20; Col 3:16).
Secondly, singing is an excellent vehicle for magnifying God’s reputation because singing is more than just speech. It’s emotionally-charged speech. It’s a heightened form of communication that is ideal not just for explaining but for shouting how great God is. When I sing, I put my whole body and soul into it. When I hand my passport to the immigration agent, it’s a way of declaring that I am Australian. But when I stand in a crowd at the cricket and belt out the national anthem, that’s a very different way of declaring that I’m Australian.
When you stand next to me at church and sing with me about the mighty deeds and glorious character of God, it’s a powerful testimony. It says to me not just that you think these things are true of God, but that you’re sufficiently convinced and energised by these truths to stand up and belt them out in song. You remind me all over again how great God is, as seen in his marvellous saving works, and God grows larger in my mind and heart.
Perhaps this is why we have missed singing together in church so much over the past 12 months. And perhaps, as we start singing again (God-willing soon!), we can do so with a fresh appreciation of what, in fact, we’re doing together.
When we praise or glorify God in song, we’re declaring the greatness of God to each other in words. We’re advertising the splendid character and works of God in Jesus Christ to everyone present, so that his people are edified and his name is magnified.
PS
There’s much more to say on all this. For example, I wonder how all this relates to the way the Bible thinks more generally about honour and glory and reputation (and shame and infamy). I suspect we don’t always appreciate how significant your name and reputation is in the biblical world, which is perhaps also why we don’t appreciate the true nature of praise, magnification and glory. But that’s a discussion for another time.
I’ve also pondered whether the strange biblical theme of ‘boasting’ is connected with this. It’s strange to us, because ‘boasting’ is almost always a negative idea in our minds. But ‘boasting in the Lord’ seems to be another way of praising or magnifying him—that is, bragging to others about how great he is.
And if you want to think further about the idea that this post started with—that ‘praise’ in the Bible is like advertising—I’m going to send round a bonus article from the archives later this week on precisely that subject. You can chase through the biblical references in more detail in that piece.
Please share this post with anyone you’d like to! Just forward on the email, or use this button to share on social media.
This week’s random image caught my eye (as I was browsing through ‘praise’ images online) because it kind of captures the cliche of what most people think ‘praising’ God is, while being almost the exact opposite of what praising God is in the Bible. And it was nice image.
This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at www.thepaynefultruth.online/subscribe
After nearly a year of somewhat dissatisfying, best-we-could-do substitutes, we’re getting back to the real churchiness of church, at least in my part of the world—by which I mean the actual gathering of God’s people around his saving word. It’s marvellous.
All the same, whenever you return to something familiar after a break, you do see it with new eyes. It’s an excellent opportunity to pause and re-assess why and how we’re doing things as we do.
In that spirit, over the next three Payneful editions, I’m going to offer some miscellaneous ideas about:
leading better church meetings;
why praise makes God bigger (sounds heretical!); and
the theology of livestreaming.
This week: seven thoughts on leading better church meetings.
Leading better church meetings
The following ideas are by no means all that could be said about leading better church meetings. In fact, I wrote a meatier essay about this in The Briefing back in 2012 that you’re welcome to check out. In that longer piece, I dug more into the theology of the gathering, and why (also theologically) it’s important to be wise in how we construct them and lead them. But for now, here are seven punchy principles to provoke your thinking, and to use in discussion with your meeting leaders.
- Be clear on what your role is as a meeting leader
The leader of a church gathering should be more than a peripheral MC or a warm-up act; but neither should they be the centre of attention.
The role and purpose of a meeting leader relates to the purpose of the church gathering as a whole. Let’s stipulate (rather than debate at this point!) that the purpose of the Sunday gathering is to meet with God in Jesus Christ as his people, and to edify one another by his Spirit, as we speak God’s word and respond to him together.
If that (or something very like it) is the case, then the role of the meeting leader is a bit like being the head of the household at a family dinner. He welcomes everyone, and oversees and facilitates all that happens, in order that the family gathering might function well and meet its goals. He doesn’t cook and serve every dish, or even the main course. But he is the one who takes responsibility to see that the whole thing goes well.
You could summarise the purpose of a meeting leader as leading the household of God in God-ward edification by the word and prayer.
This means that the role of the leader may not quite be an exercise in teaching, but that it is certainly a very important role requiring theologically discerning leadership.
- Aim for a conceptual flow that suits the purpose of the gathering
1 Cor 14 suggests that a meeting leader should marshal the various contributions from different members of the church household into a decent, orderly edifying whole. Those contributions will usually be some form of word ministry (Bible reading, preaching, testimony, singing) or some form of response to the word (prayer, thanksgiving, singing, confession, and so on).
Just as a family dinner has a certain logic to it—nibblies then main course then dessert—so in a church meeting (or any meeting for that matter), there is a conceptual flow that makes sense of what the meeting is trying to achieve. This might be a general gospel-shaped conceptual trajectory (e.g. one that leads towards a repentant, faith-filled, listening to God’s word and then responds to that word in various ways). It also might be shaped by the particular message or theme of that particular meeting.
Every church meeting will have a conceptual trajectory of some kind—it’s really a case of whether you take the time to think about what that flow is, whether it makes sense, and whether it contributes towards the goals of the gathering.
Simply taking the time to think about how the different components of the meeting fit together, and which arrangement of them would flow best conceptually, would be a step forward for many meeting leaders.
- Consider the emotional temperature or flow
Everything that happens in a meeting will have an emotional or affective impact on those present. There will be a fluctuation of emotional temperature as the meeting goes on. We can’t avoid this (nor would we want to).
Part of the meeting leader’s role is to reflect on this fluctuation, to respect it, and where possible to nudge it along in the most helpful way. For example, don’t program a rip-roaring song immediately before you want everyone to sit quietly and attentively to listen to a sermon. Don’t segue straight from a jaunty and hilarious announcement video into a prayer of confession. Don’t leave people sitting quietly for 30 continuous minutes and then expect them to sit quietly for another 30 minutes for the sermon. Don’t be afraid of either levity or gravity—both are beautiful in their season.
- Pay attention to the transitions
It might actually be possible to segue from a jaunty video announcement to a time of prayer, if you allow for the appropriate transition—in this case, perhaps taking up the theme or event from the announcement, reflecting on how important it is to pray for these matters, giving people a few moments to absorb that we’re changing gears, and getting ready to approach God together in prayer, inviting the pray-er to come forward, and so on. By the time you’ve done this—it might only have taken 60 seconds—the congregation might be ready for the emotional and conceptual pivot from announcement to prayer.
Think about every transition between elements in the meeting. Think about them logistically, conceptually and emotionally. Is some kind of thread needed to stitch one piece to the next?
- Be gracious to household guests
After you’ve prepared the run sheet for your meeting, and thought about how it all flows and fits together, and considered the transitions, and figured out what you’re going to say at various points—go back to the beginning and think through the whole thing again from the perspective of the guest or the outsider. Would it make sense to them? What aspects would be gobbledygook to them? Would they feel welcomed and included as guests at our household gathering?
- Train your contributors
This seems like a statement of the bleedin’ obvious, but since it is so rarely done, the obvious needs to be said: if we were to offer appropriate training to those who are going to serve during the meeting, not only would they be encouraged, supported and boosted in their confidence, they would be more likely to do a good and edifying job!
To take just one example: it astonishes me just a touch that so few churches offer any guidelines or training for those who are going to read the Bible aloud during the church meeting. It is surely one of the high points of the whole gathering—to sit and listen together to God’s word being read—but most churches don’t seem to treat as such. They don’t look for people who are gifted in reading aloud (some of us are, some aren’t), and they provide no training in how to do it more effectively.
(If you’re looking for a solution here, the best—in fact only one—I know of is this short two-session training program from Matthias Media: Reading the Bible Aloud. See some further details below in the PS.)
- Lead in real time
No battle plan, they say, survives first contact with the enemy. Thoughtful preparation is important, but leading a meeting also means leading in real time, as events unfold.
When it becomes apparent, for example, that things are running over time, and you won’t be able to fit everything in, it’s your job to assess the situation and make the call to drop the last song, or to run past your normal finish time, or whatever it might be.
When some tragic news is shared, and it’s obvious that people are upset and need some time to recover, it’s your job to pause the meeting, lead in prayer, and take a three minute break.
Like any good host, a meeting leader is attentive.
He notices, he cares, and he steps in to do whatever would be best for the household of God and their guests.
PS
What’s the standard of meeting leading like in your part of the world? Do you have any good ideas or tips to share? Make a comment, or send me an email (and I’ll share your wisdom around).
By the way, it seems that the training program I recommend above on Reading the Bible Aloud is on sale at 50% off at the moment at Matthias Media. Not sure how long this will last, but get in quick if you can! There’s a booklet and a DVD (remember those?).
I’ve developed a number of ‘church meeting templates’ over the years that reflect the principles above. Later this week, I’ll send them around as a ‘Payneful Extra’.
This is a partner only post, but (as always) feel free to make good use of it in your ministries—but you’ll have to do it old school. You can forward the email (with the text in it), print it out, cut-and-paste it … whatever. But if you just send someone the web link, or share the link on social media, they won’t be able to view the post online.
This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at www.thepaynefultruth.online/subscribe
I’m not sure I’ve ever heard or used the word ‘restriction’ so many times in a calendar year.
What are the latest restrictions?
When are restrictions going to be eased?
How are we going to do X at the moment, given the restrictions?
These have been our constant questions.
(In fact, as I write this, I believe the premier of Western Australia has just imposed Apocalypse Level 10 Restrictions in his state because someone in Perth has a runny nose. Or something like that; I might have missed the details.)
And if it hasn’t been ‘restrictions’, it’s been ‘lock-down’, which in one of those strange quirks of the English language means something slightly different from ‘locked up’—although why one is ‘down’ and the other is ‘up’ is hard to say.
In any case, I’m sure I’m not the only one in this season of constant restriction, whose mind has been drawn to 2 Timothy 2:9.
But God’s word is not restricted!
(Or ‘bound’ as most translations very reasonably put it).
The apostle writes these feisty words as he sits in prison, chained like a criminal. His circumstances certainly restrict his ministry, but he is supremely confident in the free-ranging power of God’s word. The word of God cannot be locked up (or down), because it is the speech of God himself. And you can’t restrict God.
All this is a great comfort and encouragement, not to mention an apt description of so much that has happened over the past year. Despite our ministries suffering restrictions of all kinds, God’s word has continued to do its powerful work in people’s lives. This has certainly been the case in the ministries I’ve been involved in—and I’d be surprised if most of you didn’t have your own wonderful stories of how God has continued to work through his word to transform lives.
This sends our mind to other places in Scripture, like Romans 8—if God is for us, who can restrict us? Or to those passages in Acts, where the word of God increases and multiplies, despite the persecution of the apostles. It’s as if God’s word possesses a life and power and dynamism of its own (because it does!). It can’t be defeated or suppressed, because it is the word of the King of kings, who continues to spread his gospel by his Spirit, from Jerusalem to Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth.
As I pondered all this, and read 2 Timothy 2 again during this past week, it occurred to me that Paul has a particular reason for being so confident in the unrestrictable effectiveness of God’s word.
In 2 Timothy, Paul knows that the end of his life and ministry is near. His race is run. He urgently wants Timothy to step up and stay strong and carry the ball forward. 2 Timothy is really about all the ways in which Timothy can and should and must do this.
And in chapter 2, with its famous verse 2, we see that a crucial facet of Timothy’s task is not just to receive and protect and proclaim the apostolic gospel, but to recruit other people to do the same:
And what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men, who will be able to teach others also.
The gospel deposit is protected and spread through multiple nodes of transmission. The gospel race is not just Paul’s to run, or Timothy’s. It’s a relay, with the baton being passed from faithful person to person to person, each of them receiving the word and teaching it to others, who receive the word and teach it to others, and so on.
Amazingly, this is how the all-powerful, ruling Jesus Christ spreads his word and his reign.
And I think that this is why Paul is so confident that God’s word will never be locked up or down. Paul might be chained up, but Timothy isn’t—and neither are the faithful men, nor the ones they will teach, nor the ones they will teach. The risen Jesus Christ uses a constantly growing, unstoppable network of gospel speakers to spread his word, each of whom receive the word and faithfully pass it on to others.
The authorities may impose all sorts of restrictions on the ministry of the gospel (for good reasons and bad), but they will never be able to lock up the speech of God, because the risen Jesus will always keep recruiting his people to spread his saving word.
This is one of the interesting lessons of the past 12 months, as I think about it.
In my observation, the ministries that have most successfully adapted to restrictions, and saw God’s word continue to increase, were those that had already developed ‘multiple nodes of transmission’—that is, where the gospel word had already been passed on to multiple people within the congregation, who were trained and equipped to pass it on to others (whether individually or in groups).
I remember writing something along these lines way back in March, 2020. (I’ve just rummaged back through the Payneful archives and found it):
It does seem to me that the current circumstances will provide a stress-test for the quality of the ‘one-another’ culture in our churches. When our normal opportunities for public preaching and teaching ministries are curtailed (as is already happening in many places), the degree to which we have taught, equipped and encouraged our congregations to speak the word to one another will become apparent.
Has that become apparent (for better or worse) in your particular church or ministry? I’d be interested in your reflections, now that we’re nearly 12 months down the track.
It does seem that the worst of the covid restrictions might be behind us, at least here in Australia. But it won’t be long before something or someone else comes along that threatens to restrict the word of God.
But God’s word cannot and will not be bound, because it is the powerful speech of the risen Jesus Christ, speaking through the mouths of his people.
Our challenge is much the same as Paul’s challenge to Timothy—to take our place in the great gospel relay; to pass on the word of God to faithful people, who are in turn equipped and enabled to teach it to others.
PS
Thinking of forming a Christian band? I’ve got the name for you: Nodes of Transmission.
This is one of my ‘partner posts’, but feel free to forward the email on to friends, or otherwise use it to encourage others (it would be ironic if I didn’t want that to happen!). That’s what these posts are for—to encourage you, and to give you ammunition to encourage others!
And if you’ve come across this post and are not yet a subscriber to The Payneful Truth, just hit the button below. It will give you the option to sign up for free and receive every third post or so, or to become a partner for a few dollars per month, and get every post, every week.
This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at www.thepaynefultruth.online/subscribe
Perhaps I’m perverse, but I really quite enjoy the first week back at work after holidays.
I don’t have super high expectations of myself. I know it will take a while to get the brain working, and to remember what it is that I am being paid to do.
And it’s one of those times of year when you have the excuse (in fact, the obligation) to pause and think about what you should be doing. To strategize a little. To plan and prioritize.
This is excellent, and definitely more fun than actually working.
So I’ve pulled open the digital equivalent of the musty manilla folder with all my writing ideas in it, and started to rifle through it. What should I write about this year in The Payneful Truth?
There are digital notes and scraps and half-written ideas on a whole range of subjects:
on the wisdom and folly of crowds;
on the common impulse (including in my own breast) to soft-pedal on fraught moral issues so as not to be hated;
on the nature of Christian maturity as growth in faith, love and hope;
on the cult of environmentalism, in which everyone educated in the last 20 years has been enlisted as a devotee;
on the relationship between preaching and the Bible (amazingly, I have something fresh to say about that);
on why Christians can appreciate the good impulses in both progressive and conservative politics, while also seeing the fundamental shortcomings of both;
on what Titus teaches us about the imperatives of ministry;
on whether or why we should keep the livestream going once we’re fully back in church together (if that ever happens!);
and much, much more.
It’s a pretty disparate list.
There are practical ministry ideas, theological issues and discussions about discipleship; but there are also issues that would normally be classified as personal or social ethics.
Having such a broad range of possible topics is generally a no-no in the world of newsletters and podcasting. Pick your lane and build your audience. That’s the standard advice. Write about ministry or theology or ethics, but don’t try to do all of them at the same time.
I’ve thought about this more than once over the past 12 months. Should The Payneful Truth be mainly for ‘trellis and vine’ types who want to discuss ministry? Or should it also delve into the ethical complications of living as a Christian in the world?
Which lane should I pick?
It seems to me that the road we’re called to walk down as Christian believers has more than one lane, and the dotted line between them isn’t so clear.
Take the division between ‘ministry’ and ‘ethics’. It’s true that most people tend to be more interested in one or the other, as revealed basically by what they talk about all the time (and the articles or links they share online). It will be about the latest issues in evangelism or preaching or discipleship (on the one hand), or about climate change or US politics or transgenderism (on the other).
In my own life, there’s some history and heritage here. The evangelical movement I grew up in, swirling around St Matthias and Campus Bible Study, had a reputation for giving a high priority to gospel ministry, to the point where not much else got a look in.
It was a caricature—the reality on the ground was much more nuanced—but most caricatures possess a kernel of truth. In fact, back in the 90s, there was a joke going around that made fun of the differences between well-known churches in Sydney:
How many people does it take to change a lightbulb at Barnies Broadway? “Well, there are two views about that …”
How many people does it take to change a lightbulb at Christ Church, St Ives? “We’re not sure; we have people who do that.”
How many people does it take to change a lightbulb at St Matthias? “We don’t change lightbulbs; it’s not a gospel issue.”
Of course, how we live in the world is very much a gospel issue, because the grace of God teaches and trains us to live a new life (a lesson those of us who were at St Matthias in the 80s and 90s knew by heart). And the imperative to disciple others with the gospel of Christ, and how we do that, are very much ethical issues. They are questions of love and truth.
We can’t talk about gospel ministry without also talking about what it means to preach the gospel to people whose hearts are captured by, say, environmentalism. And we can’t talk about environmentalism without talking about the resurrected Jesus Christ who rules the world, and the hope of a new creation. In fact, we can’t know what it is about environmentalism (if anything) that is significant or worth talking about without the re-orienting wisdom of Christ, which teaches us to make judgements about all things (1 Cor 2:15-16).
In other words, gospel ministry is really a form of ethical thinking and action. It proceeds from a biblical understanding of what is good and true (in Christ), and seeks to speak and act in love on the basis of that truth.
And (on the other hand) ethics is a form of theological reflection and action. Ethics makes no sense for Christians unless it is driven and shaped by the biblical truth of Christ crucified. We approach every issue, every thought, every word and every deed in the name of Jesus.
We shouldn’t compartmentalize the two, or dichotomize them, although it is common to do so. I learned this while I was doing my PhD.
My project was to bring the framework of theological ethics to bear on a ‘ministry’ practice. I wanted to investigate the ‘one-another word ministry’ of Christians, and understand it theologically. But I was exploring an action with moral significance—one that we are urged or commanded to do, that takes place under the banner of love, that can be done well or poorly, and so on. The field in which you explore the theological nature of moral actions is ‘ethics’.
But very few people in ‘ethics-world’ are much interested in what we call ‘ministry’; nor for that matter do many people in ‘ministry-world’ bring the intellectual tools and frameworks of theological ethics to bear to understand what they are doing. In Stephen Jay Gould’s expression, ‘ministry’ and ‘ethics’ often function as ‘non-overlapping magisteria’.
This made the whole PhD project both delightfully interesting—I was exploring an open field which no-one had bothered to map before—but also rather tricky, in terms of satisfying the expectations of the academic guild.
I managed to navigate my way through, which was a relief to all concerned.
That’s what I plan to keep doing here as well—to keep mining that wacky ideas file of mine for Payneful Truth posts, without worrying too much about which lane I am in, or whether I have a ‘ministry’ or ‘ethics’ hat on. In the end, the two hats sit on the same head, which should be striving to understand and speak about all things from the perspective of Jesus Christ.
There’s a challenge in this for me, and for all us.
The test of whether something is worth thinking and speaking and writing about is not which category it fits in, nor whether you or I find it interesting, nor whether it’s the thing currently dominating the news or being plastered across social media. (As I write, it’s whether Australia Day should be moved from January 26 or not.)
The test is this: Will speaking the truth in love on this subject (such truth being grounded in the biblical revelation of Christ) serve to build the body of Christ—to move people towards knowing him, and to fortify and encourage them towards maturity in him?
There’s a reason to get back to work.
PS
As we get a new year underway, I’m wondering if I can ask a favour. Could you copy the following paragraph, paste it into an email and send it to ten Christian friends? (One of the things that is occurring to me as I start this new year is that I haven’t done enough to tell people about The Payneful Truth.)
Hey, I’ve been really enjoying this newsletter/podcast thing from Tony Payne, and I think you’d like it. There’s a free subscription as well as a paid level. You can sign up at thepaynefultruth.online.
Or your own words to that effect.
And if you haven’t gotten around to subscribing yet yourself …
I’ve got a decent list of subjects to think and write about, but I’m always looking for more—and especially those that are particularly exercising your minds and hearts. Please send in your questions and ideas so that I can slot them into the program. You can email me at tonyjpayne@me.com.
This week’s photo was taken on the Hay plain in western NSW—one of the longest, straightest and most boring drives I can remember doing (with five children in the car).
This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at www.thepaynefultruth.online/subscribe
Here’s the third and final little piece in our summer holiday series of spiritual golf lessons.
Picture the scene.
I’ve smashed a soaring 230m drive down the middle. I’ve laced a piercing 3-iron that comes to rest just a few feet from the green. And there I stand, having taken two shots to be just short of the green on a par 5.
I look significantly at my playing partners, and they give an appreciative nod. Well, well, well. Who would have thought?
Anyway, here I am. I just have to chip the ball up onto the green, and then it’s a rare putt for birdie. Worst case: two putts for five, and an easy par.
Unless …
Anxiety starts to nibble at the edges of my mind. What if I totally mess this up, like I did last time?
It wasn’t that long ago. I was in much the same rare position. Just off the green for two. Feeling heroic. Then I stubbed the chip and advanced the ball a pathetic three feet. Then caught the next one thin and sent it scudding across the green into the bunker. Then took two to get out of the bunker. Three-putted. Fumed off the green with 10.
The one thing I absolutely must not do is repeat that fiasco. Just forget about it. It’s history. Don’t even think about your playing partners’ reaction were you to do it again. Just relax. This is easy. Only an idiot would mess up this opportunity …
The result is inevitable. The weight of the past is too heavy. And the more you dwell on it, and even try to convince yourself not to repeat it, the more inexorably the anxiety and the memories bear down, and paralyse you.
Τhis is one of the elusive skills of golf—the ability to forget the last shot. To play good golf you have to obliterate from your mind the failures and frustrations of the past, and focus just on this shot, the one in front of you, with a free and untroubled confidence.
Very few golfers can do this consistently. They are the ones at the top of leaderboards.
But it’s not just golf.
Can you imagine how good life would be if we could truly escape the burden of the past? If we could erase the humiliations, hurts and damage of the past? There are lovely platitudes that suggest we can. Live in the moment. Leave your past in the past. Yesterday’s gone, yesterday’s gone.
But it’s as difficult in life as it is in golf. Guilt and hurt have a way of taking up residence. They linger in our lives like unwelcome houseguests. There are memories and feelings and consequences that we find almost impossible to escape. They boil over in the present and we mess up all over again. We do even more damage, and lay down new scar tissue, and so the cycle of hurt, anxiety and failure continues.
Imagine being free of it all.
Imagine being able to begin each day with a completely satisfied and untroubled mind—of being able to look back on all your yesterdays without guilt or anxiety or hurt, with nothing to condemn you, and no bitterness or anger towards those who have done you wrong.
This is the stunning and unique possibility that the Christian gospel offers—a fresh start, every day.
All the sins of yesterday, and all the days before, are washed away by the blood of Jesus. They are all paid for in full. No condemnation remains. I’m freely and completely justified—just-if-I’d never done them.
I am not only forgiven in full; I am also set free to forgive others. Forgiving others is part of the same liberating work that the gospel does in our lives. The gospel moves us, and requires us, to extend to other people the same forgiveness that God has granted to us. Malice, bitterness and revenge belong to our former lives that were crucified with Jesus on the cross.
This is freedom—to start again, each day, with a clean slate; to have no regrets or recriminations; to be at peace with God, with myself and with others. And all of it because of the cleansing blood of Christ.
I can face up to being a golfer that can’t forget the last shot.
But I know I can only face up to myself and to other people because of the liberating, cleansing, forgiving love that God has poured into my heart by the Holy Spirit.
PS
I hope you’ve enjoyed this little series of holiday golf lessons. Back to more normal Payneful Truthing next week. This week’s pic was taken at a desert golf course in Phoenix Arizona, and the shot was one that I have certainly not forgotten—see the tiny white dot near the pin?
This is a free public edition of The Payneful Truth. To sign up as a partner and receive every edition every week, just hit the subscribe button below. (And to find out why I have this partner scheme, see this explanation.)
This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at www.thepaynefultruth.online/subscribe
This is the second in a little series of holiday reflections about golf and the Christian life. Feel free to share them with your friends.
When Fijian golfer Vijay Singh stepped onto the first tee for the final round of the 1998 USPGA, he was setting out on the most important 18 holes of his life. He was tied for the lead with Steve Stricker. They were both trying to win their first Major.
Earlier that morning, Singh’s young son had farewelled him with a simple message, which Vijay wrote on a piece of paper and pinned to his golf bag.
“Papa,” it said, “trust your swing.”
Vijay did exactly that, and won his first Major.
It's one of the paradoxes of golf. The more you think about the shot in front of you, the more you worry about what might happen, the harder you try to avoid all the disasters that might befall you, the more likely you are to send the ball scuttling off at 45 degrees into the bushes. Anxiety, tension, thinking too much, fear of failure—these are all fatal to good golf.
The good golfer practises until he has a swing that he can repeat with a fair degree of reliability. And then, when he stands over the ball, he goes into his regular routine and repeats that swing, trusting that it will work for him, as it has countless times before.
But trusting your swing requires mental courage.
You stand over the ball and look up at your target. The flag is 170 metres away, into a stiff breeze, across a lake, with bunkers everywhere. At that moment, it seems hard to believe that a smooth, relaxed, back-and-through swing will give you the best chance of hitting the green. Anxiety starts whispering in your ear. Your hands grip the club a little tighter. You struggle to stay calm as you take the club back. And then at the top of the backswing, some part of your lizard brain initiates a violent downward thrashing motion, as if you are trying to kill a snake.
The result is a predictable piece of self-sabotage.
Didn’t trust the swing.
Staying calm and trusting the swing is the rational thing to do. It yields the best results. But it's still hard to do when the heat is on, and your playing partners are watching, and all the memories of previous disasters are flooding into your mind.
In the Bible, ‘faith’ in God is trusting your swing.
It’s relying on what we know to be true about the supremely good, supremely powerful God who has loved us in Jesus Christ. We know that God is reliable and good and generous. We know it from how he has acted, not only in the history of Israel and supremely in Christ, but also in our own lives. We know that trusting God always turns out for the best, because he has promised that he will always work for our good—and we know that he always keeps his promises.
But trusting God is also an act of mental courage.
We know that God is supremely trustworthy. But it’s amazing how often we find ourselves standing over the ball, paralysed by the obstacles in front us, gripped by anxiety, and worried about what others will think of us. Some irrational part of our sinful brain screams at us to trust our instincts, or what everyone else is saying, rather than to stay calm and trust God. And so against all sense, we self-sabotage our way to another disaster.
Trusting God is not some mystical quality or some non-rational leap into the dark. Trusting God’s word is always the most rational, the most sensible, the most effective thing to do. It always turns out best, not only because God’s ways are so good, but because God’s promise is unshakeable.
All we have to do is trust.
If only I could remember that on the first tee.
PS
This is a free public edition of The Payneful Truth. To sign up as a partner and receive every edition every week, just hit the subscribe button below. (And to find out why I have this partner scheme, see this explanation.)
And this week’s image is one of me at Barnbougle Dunes, one of the top-rated golf courses in the world, located just outside the little town of Bridport in north-east Tasmania. Definitely a course where you need to trust your swing!
This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at www.thepaynefultruth.online/subscribe
Listen now | For some light-hearted but encouraging holiday reading, here is the first in a series of three short lessons from the most frustrating, challenging and beautiful game of all.
This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at www.thepaynefultruth.online/subscribe
A final festive Payneful reflection at the end of a disconcerting year. (See below for what to expect over the Christmas holidays.)
Just when we thought we were mooching towards a passably standard Christmas, we find ourselves once more (in my part of the world) in a state of covid anxiety. Will we be allowed to gather for Christmas services? Will Christmas lunch go ahead? Will we ever see our relatives again?
There is some cause for hope. For example, will we ever see our relatives again?
But the general mood of weariness and dislocation sends Christmas preachers and commentators off to rummage through their kitbag of cliches. Everything is ‘unprecedented’; plans have been ‘thrown into disarray’; ‘things fall apart; the centre cannot hold’.
That final over-used phrase has been wheeled out more than once during this crazy, disconcerting 2020. It comes from one of the most rummaged-through poems of the 20th century, The Second Coming by William Butler Yeats.
Written in the aftermath of the First World War and the Bolshevik revolution, it speaks of a disintegrating world, where innocence has been drowned in blood and anarchy, and where any pretence that Western culture has an authoritative voice to guide it is now abandoned.
Here is the famous first stanza.
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Like a wheeling falcon now out of reach of its falconer’s voice, the world seems to have lost connection with its authoritative centre, and everything is falling apart. The best know that there is nothing any more to be sure of; the worst gleam with a fierce-eyed intensity to impose their will on the chaos.
Rarely has a year felt more like this than 2020.
The less well-known second stanza looks with dread on what might be coming to fill the void—a Second Coming, not of Christ, but of a nameless beast, stepping out of the apocalyptic visions of the Old Testament:
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
What dread future did Yeats see coming? Was it the rise of National Socialism, or of Communism, or of the juggernaut of modern hi-tech capitalism? We tend to read our own worst nightmares into the figure of that pitiless beast, making its inexorable, slouching way towards the centre of our culture—the place that Bethlehem once had.
Like all really great poems, The Second Coming names something that is true in our experience in words that somehow say more than they say.
It captures the emptiness at the centre of modern life and politics and culture. We no longer hear an authoritative voice. The best of us wearily resign ourselves to making what we can of a world without a central guiding truth. The worst of us rush to occupy the void for our own exploitative ends.
In some ways, the sentimental, consumerist emptiness of the modern Christmas only reminds us of what has been lost. Instead of celebrating the birth of a king, sent from outside to save and to rule, we celebrate ourselves and our families and our insatiable capacity for getting and spending.
Interestingly, though, the sense of loss in Yeats’s poem is very passive.
It hardly seems the falcon’s fault that its ever-widening spirals take it beyond the reach of its master’s voice. No-one seems to be culpable for the breakdown of the centre. Things just fall apart. Anarchy and the blood-dimmed tide ‘are loosed’; innocence ‘is drowned’. The voice of the verbs is as passive as the falconer, standing and calling, impotent to reach the falcon.
In common with many other modern and post-modern observers who wistfully notice the loss of a Christian centre in Western culture, Yeats is unwilling to admit culpability. He glides past the conscious and relentless rejection of the Christian revelation by Western society over the previous two centuries.
It is not that the falconer’s voice has become distant and dim, left behind by the glorious progress of the falcon. It’s that we have closed our ears to his voice, and flatly refused to acknowledge that the lion of Judah has already come, and is seated on his throne.
For Yeats, there seems to be no going back.
But going back—or repentance, as it is otherwise known—is the only valid response, if the Son of God has indeed come, and lived and died and risen, and been appointed as Lord and Saviour of all.
Frustratingly for those of us who have put our trust in this Lord, turning back to Christ is a door that Western culture now considers closed.
Yet he knocks at the door, and will come in some time soon to judge and to save. And when the Lion of Judah does come again, he will come looking like a lamb that was slain (Rev 5:5-6). He gaze will not be blank and pitiless, but piercing and merciful, full of justice and forgiveness.
And if that seems like an impossibly strange image of our future—a fierce and regal lion coming with the look of a lamb that was slain—it is no more incongruous than the stunning contrast we remember at this time of year.
Born of a woman. Born as a man. God in a manger.
PS
As a good Anglican, I am full of ‘most humble and hearty thanks’ for God’s goodness and kindness in this past year, and in particular for all that he has done through your kindness and support for The Payneful Truth. I am very grateful for everyone who has signed up to the list, everyone who has emailed and commented, and particularly everyone who has become a ‘Payneful partner’ and supported the whole venture financially.
(And if you’d like to start doing that, it’s not very hard! Just click on the button and follow the options.)
I think we all deserve a break for a couple of weeks—me from writing, and you from my writing. So, here’s what to expect over the next little while:
Later this week, before I clock off for the year, I’ll send around to the partner list a very-close-to-final draft of the revised Two ways to live outline that I’ve been working on. Many of you have already given very useful feedback—any final comments or thoughts will be gratefully received.
Then, after a short break, I’ll start rolling out a little series of light-hearted holiday-reading articles on the first Tuesday in January (taken from some dusty old pieces I found lying in the vault). They may or may not have something to do with golf, but I’m sure you’ll enjoy them nevertheless. (These will go out free to everyone on the list—it’s Christmas time after all.)
And then I’ll be back in earnest on January 26 with the first proper edition of 2021.
Until then, may God bless you with rest and rejoicing as we remember the coming of his Son.
This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at www.thepaynefultruth.online/subscribe
What does it mean to say that the gospel is one, and yet is communicated in many forms?
This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at www.thepaynefultruth.online/subscribe
Why does Christian theology so often consist of two truths that must be held together at the same time?
This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at www.thepaynefultruth.online/subscribe
If you're sceptical about strategic planning, you might just be the person to do it.
This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at www.thepaynefultruth.online/subscribe
Among all the kinds of pastors that you can find these days, there's one sort you hardly ever meet.
This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at www.thepaynefultruth.online/subscribe
How to respond to the conspicuous sins of famous pastors.
This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at www.thepaynefultruth.online/subscribe
Something different this week—the first in what I hope will be an occasional series of ‘book talks’ on The Payneful Truth. This first one is a fascinating conversation with John Woodhouse about Tom Holland's extraordinary book, 'Dominion'.
This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at www.thepaynefultruth.online/subscribe
Some early lessons learned from going back to campus ministry.
This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at www.thepaynefultruth.online/subscribe
Another reason that some churches often raise up people for full-time gospel ministry is that they have a congregation-wide culture of training.
This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at www.thepaynefultruth.online/subscribe
This is not another post about the 'minister drought', but a theological reflection about how the gospel recruits all of us to ministry.
This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at www.thepaynefultruth.online/subscribe
Welcome to another a partners-only edition of The Payneful Truth. Today’s ruminations concern little subjects like the nature of the gospel, evangelism and the importance of catechism.
This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at www.thepaynefultruth.online/subscribe
If apostolic ministry is our task, and that task is basically ‘devote yourselves to the word and prayer’, what about when that doesn’t work?
This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at www.thepaynefultruth.online/subscribe
Feminism is the furniture in the room of every discussion we have about men and women. Is it possible to summarize and critique its core ideas in 900 words? Here’s my attempt.
This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at www.thepaynefultruth.online/subscribe
A final post in this mini-series about church and apostolic ministry, looking at how ‘congregational’ we should be in our ministries.
This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at www.thepaynefultruth.online/subscribe
So far we’ve talked about the big why of Christ’s heavenly church, and the local, earthly purposes that this generates. But what about the actual physical church meetings that many of us are keen to get back to?
This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at www.thepaynefultruth.online/subscribe
Exactly how does the reality of Christ's heavenly church direct us to what is essential in our church life now? Let's learn from how Paul makes that move in Ephesians.
This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at www.thepaynefultruth.online/subscribe
If the corona-crisis has taught us anything, it is the value of the essential. As our churches start to head back in the direction of normality, what essential principles should guide us?
This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at www.thepaynefultruth.online/subscribe
Some things are best done quickly. But others (like reading the Bible) become richer the more you slow down.
This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at www.thepaynefultruth.online/subscribe
As churches consider what to restart, discontinue or create from scratch post-coronavirus, how pragmatic should we be in our decisions? [Click play to listen, or read on. Up to you!] My mate Phil has a nickname that we love to tease him with. ‘Pragmatic Phil’ we call him.
This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at www.thepaynefultruth.online/subscribe
[Click to listen, or read the text version below … up to you!]
George Floyd and the Problem of Goodness
Since last week’s ‘worthless cockroach’ post, I’ve been thinking more about goodness and evil, and what a problem they are for our world.
The Problem of Evil we know very well. He often pops up and starts making a noise after a particularly catastrophic event: “How can you believe in a so-called good and powerful God”, he asks accusingly, “when this kind of thing happens?” (where ‘this’ can be a global pandemic, or a child’s cancer, or the senseless, unjust death of George Floyd).
Sometimes the Problem of Evil has a smug, self-satisfied demeanour about him—as if he is the clever and righteous person for having noticed how bad evil is, whereas Christians are dumb and monstrous for perpetuating their belief in a good creator God.
Exhibit A in this respect is Stephen Fry (once described by Julie Birchill as “a stupid person’s idea of a clever person”). In a 2015 television interview, Fry famously excoriated God for being “a capricious, mean-minded, stupid” deity, for having created a world with so much suffering and injustice. “It’s perfectly apparent that he is monstrous. Utterly monstrous and deserves no respect whatsoever. The moment you banish him, life becomes simpler, purer, cleaner, more worth living in my opinion.”
However, what Fry and most mouthpieces for the Problem of Evil don’t seem to realise is that whenever the Problem of Evil comes trip-trapping over the bridge, his bigger and more difficult elder brother, the Problem of Goodness, is not far behind. And the Problem of Goodness is not one that we think about very often. In some ways, that’s what my post last week was about—the fact that even as Christians we sometimes struggle with the idea of goodness within our world, or within ourselves.
Goodness is particular problem for the modern God-banishing world, of which Stephen Fry is just one particularly articulate example.
Evil can only be said to exist (and thus be a problem) if it describes the absence or destruction of some ‘good’. That’s what evil is. It’s when the good thing that is the life of George Floyd is cruelly and senselessly snuffed out. Floyd’s death is only really evil (and surely it is) if Floyd’s continued life is something really good that should not have been cut off. The ‘should not’ in that last sentence is very important. It demonstrates something that we, and all the protesters in their outrage, know to be true—that the goodness of George Floyd being alive is something real that imposes an obligation on those around him.
But if the goodness of people and things in our world is real, that presents a huge problem for Stephen Fry, and every modern God-banishing person.
The English ethicist Oliver O’Donovan put his finger on this issue when he wryly observed that everyone who starts to think about morality and goodness and evil finds themselves pretty early on with a momentous decision to make. Is moral goodness and evil an objective thing that exists in the world—or not? When we sense or experience anything good or evil in the world, are we perceiving something real that is ‘out there’, beyond ourselves? Or are we merely projecting a set of personal preferences or feelings onto the blank screen of the world—preferences or feelings that we choose to call ‘good’ or ‘evil’, but which are only expressions of our minds?
If we say the latter, we find ourselves on a path to nihilism, banality and despair. There is no objective good that we can rejoice in together, nor evil that we can protest together. There are only my sensations and preferences, which I arbitrarily label ‘good’ or ‘evil’.
But if someone wishes to acknowledge that moral goodness and evil has a reality beyond our perceptions and thoughts—that it actually exists and is worth having or arguing about—then that person has stepped “despite himself, on to theological ground”, says O’Donovan.
This is the Problem of Goodness. If goodness doesn’t really exist, then neither does evil, and our outrage against injustice or suffering is a vacuous tantrum. But if goodness does actually exist, where on earth did it come from—if not from the hand of a good Creator? And if you banish that Creator, then you have also banished the possibility of anything being actually, really, objectively good.
And so the third, and biggest, billy goat gruff comes tramping over the bridge. The Problem of Evil is followed by its elder brother, the Problem of Goodness, who is followed in turn by the biggest brother of all, the Doctrine of the Good Creator.
For all the density and complexity of his writing, this is the simple truth that O’Donovan has been worrying away at in most of his work—that the world we inhabit really does have a moral order to it, a good-though-fallen order of kinds and purposes woven into its fabric and history by its Creator; an order that is misunderstood and misconstrued by humanity in our sinful rejection of the Creator; an order that Christ came to fulfil and redeem and renew by his death and resurrection. O’Donovan insists, quite rightly, that if you deny the reality of a good created order, nothing of moral importance makes much sense, including the gospel.
Which brings me, via the unlikely trio of George Floyd, Stephen Fry and Oliver O’Donovan, to Two ways to live (2wtl)—which is the main writing project I am working on at the moment (a fairly thorough review and revision of the whole 2wtl suite of resources).
I’ve been struck afresh over the past two weeks by how important it is to anchor the gospel in the doctrine of creation (as 2wtl does). Because what the death and resurrection of Christ means and achieves rests on the goodness of God as creator—in his loving good creation of us and all the world, on our sinful rebellion against him as the good creator and Lord of all, and on all the consequences that follow under God’s judgement, for us and the whole creation.
In some of my circles, 2wtl is not really flavour of the month any more. Which in one sense is fine—even the best resources might have a shelf life. But the reason that I’m keen to refresh and relaunch 2wtl is that it starts at the vital place where no other gospel outline that I know of starts—with the foundational doctrine of creation that explains the goodness and evil of the world, and of us. And in so doing, it explains why the death and resurrection of Jesus is such thoroughly good news.
PS.
Expect more in the coming weeks and months about Two ways to live! Working on it is forcing me to think afresh not only about the nature of the gospel itself and how we proclaim it (still a contested question, as it always has been), but also about the kind of equipping and training that Christians today need.
The O’Donovan reference is from Resurrection and Moral Order: An outline for evangelical ethics (Leicester: Apollos, 1994), p. 35.
I mentioned last week that I’d be launching a paid version of The Payneful Truth in the near future. You don’t have to do anything about it just yet, but when the time comes (I’ll be announcing the launch date soon), you’ll need to choose whether to become a ‘paying partner’ of The Payneful Truth, or stay on the free list. ‘Paying partners’ will get the journal every week (as both text and podcast/audio), as well as regular ‘Payneful extras’ (interviews, extra articles, advance excerpts from things I’m working on, and so on). And they will have the joy (and I’m not being ironic for once) of supporting my broader writing and training ministry. I’m thinking that the perfect Christian number for a ‘paying partnership’ might be $7 per month. What do you think?
If you’re not up for partnership, don’t worry. I’ll still be putting out a free post for everyone every three weeks or so—i.e. every third Payneful Truth will be for everyone; the rest for partners. Anyway, I’ll say more about all this in the coming weeks. (And in the meantime, if you haven’t yet signed up …)
So many images to choose from this week—but having gotten stuck into Stephen Fry, perhaps it is only fair to reference him at his brilliant and hilarious best. This snap is from one of my favourite ‘Fry and Laurie’ sketches on the ‘flexibility of language’.
This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at www.thepaynefultruth.online/subscribe
Dear Worthless Cockroach I hope you don’t mind me following up our conversation with an open letter like this, but I’m sure you’re not the only one who feels like you do. Let me see if I’m capturing your question. I think what you’re saying is this:
This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at www.thepaynefultruth.online/subscribe
One of the central claims of The Trellis and the Vine was that Christian ministry is founded not only on preaching and teaching, but also on training. In fact, the chapter in which that argument was advanced most forcefully has always been the most controversial part of the book (Ch 8: ‘Why Sunday Sermons are necessary but not sufficient’).
Col Marshall and I have often been asked about what we mean by ‘training’, and how it works out in practice. Does training essentially mean ‘running more training courses’ like Two ways to live? And if that’s too simplistic a picture (and of course it is), then what is ‘training’ exactly? How is ‘training’ different from ‘teaching’ anyway?
This week’s Payneful Truth presents a fresh take on this topic, in two parts: via a recent interview with Marty Sweeney (Marty is the ministry director of Matthias Media USA); and then with some additional thoughts to round off.
First, here’s an edited excerpt of my interview with Marty.
Marty and Tony talk about teaching and training
Marty: Today, I want to talk to you about what I’ve colloquially said is teaching versus training. Let me set this up for you.
Tony: Yep. What do you mean by that?
Marty: I’ve been reflecting on my now 15-plus years doing ministry, specifically teaching ministry, in front of a classroom or in a small group, and I realized that often, I just default to content dissemination and I shorthand that as ‘teaching’.
Tony: Okay.
Marty: Now, I know that’s probably not fair to the word ‘teaching’, but what I mean by that is this—I’ve got all this content in my head, I’ve worked hard at developing a structure to deliver it, and I download it, so I’m teaching people. But what I realized is that I’m giving them content, but I’m not training them to be disciple-makers or to get that content out for others. That’s what I mean by ‘training’ them.
It’s one thing to just give people content. It’s another thing to teach them and train them in a certain way that they are applying that to themselves, but also thinking about their neighbours, their friends, their coworkers. I think I’ve been a content disseminator but not a trainer.
Tony: Yeah.
Marty: Do you see that difference or maybe do you have any better words to describe it?
Tony: Well, I’ll outline some of the things that I’ve been digging into over the last couple of years regarding the ‘one-another’ word ministry of Christians, because it’s the same issue. What’s the relationship between that kind of more practically oriented, everyday Christian speech, and the preaching or teaching that we receive in church or in a Sunday school class? (Hint: I think it’s much the same as the relationship between ‘training’ and ‘teaching’.)
First, I don't think we have to denigrate teaching by calling it ‘content dissemination’ as if it doesn't do anything powerful, because it does.
Marty: Right. Yeah.
Tony: If you teach well—and I’ve been in some of your classes, Marty, and you do teach well—you’re not just blurting out material that washes over people; you’re actually forming and changing their minds. You’re providing them week by week with a new way to think about the world and themselves and God and everything. You’re forming their mind and heart, as that content you’ve disseminated seeps in. It restructures the way that your hearers think about everything and understand everything. How does Paul put it in 2 Corinthians 5? When I’m in Christ, it’s a new creation and I no longer regard anything from the standpoint of the flesh. I now regard everything from the standpoint of Christ. That’s the wonderful thing that preaching and teaching does. That’s why it’s so powerful, and that’s why we need to keep listening to it!
But nearly all knowledge has two dimensions or axes to it. There’s a kind of knowledge that changes your whole mind and way of thinking about the world—but there’s also a kind of practically immediate knowledge, the knowledge of how to actually do things.
If we can come to my second favourite topic after God-Jesus-and-the-Bible, which is golf—you can read as many golf magazines as you like, and I read plenty and watch interminable YouTube videos. But there comes a point where you need the practical immediacy of actually doing it, and having someone alongside you to help; someone to say, “No, no, don't do that!”
And I think that’s what we're talking about when we talk about ‘training’. It’s not just the mind of my hearer that is being changed; it’s their behaviour and action being changed. If it just stops with their mind and their understanding, and doesn’t lead to a new way of speaking and living, then something’s missing; it hasn’t gotten the whole way.
And this is where ‘training’ (as we’re calling it) comes in. Training is that kind of instruction and learning that takes place in the ‘practical immediacy’ zone—where you’re learning, for example, not to be angry, or not to let the sun go down on your anger, or what it means in practice to love others. You need someone alongside you at that point who is not so much trying to shape your whole understanding (like a teacher), but is bringing that understanding to your particular moment and helping you see what it means; someone who is advising and reminding and encouraging and urging you to do it, and admonishing you when you don’t do it.
That’s the zone that ‘training’ belongs in, in my mind. It’s helping people translate their understanding into life and action and speech. And it’s usually a different mode of education. It’s more a matter of being alongside you, helping you to learn what it means, sharing wisdom, and encouraging and exhorting and helping you to grow.
Now, I think it’s the same, Marty, whether you’re talking about training someone to share the gospel or training someone to pray, or to love their wives and children, or to learn not to be so envious. In all the different ways that our life is changed and sanctified as we come to know Christ and his Spirit works within us—in all those ways, there’s another mode of instruction and encouragement. Let’s call it training if you wish.
Marty: How can we make this shift—from just teaching, to also training? To ‘transformative learning’, to put it that way?
Tony: It starts with listening. Helping someone to shift from where they are starts with seeing where they are. It starts with listening, with having a sufficiently close level of interaction with them, so that you can see where this person is at and where they’re up to, and what encouragement and help they need to change.
One of the differences between the teaching-preaching mode of mind formation and the more practically immediate mode of training is simply in size and level of interaction. You can teach and form the minds of 500 people at a time if you’re a gifted teacher and preacher. But, if I’m going to help each one of those people actually implement something in their lives—to learn how to share or learn how to speak—well, they’re all at different points and different places. They all will need different sorts of help. It requires a more micro level of interaction.
And, sometimes the problem is simply that we haven’t set up structures or contexts for this to happen. We’ve set up structures to teach, which are larger contexts where one person is teaching 50 people at a time in a 40 minute timeframe or something. But in those structures, you’re fairly limited with what you can do at the practically immediate level. You need time and a smaller context—where you can listen, where you can interact, where you can find out where people are up to, where they can try something and then report back.
We need opportunities for digging into the particular issues that people have, whether it’s in their prayer life or in their sharing the gospel, or whatever it is in their lives that they’re seeking to change. At a practical level, it can be that we don’t create the contexts within our ministries where that kind of ‘training’ can take place. And (tragically) when we do form some of those structures, which are classically what we call ‘small groups’, we tend to use them as another teaching time …
Marty: Yeah.
Tony: … rather than as an opportunity to do that other necessary thing that has to happen in order for the teaching to become lived and practised—which is more interaction, more personal encouragement and exhortation, more wisdom and confession and discussion. More ‘training’.
Marty: Yeah. That's a good point. I remember when you and I worked on a course (The Small Group and the Vine) for training small group leaders, and it was very much a course to get new leaders trained—something you said stuck with me. You said, “As small group leaders, we’re not just leading people to the Word, we’re helping them lead each other to the Word”.
We’re trying to train them to help each other, so that on their discussions on the way out, and their text exchange throughout the week, as they see each other at a picnic, they’re still doing that work when you’re not around. You’re not the necessary mediator for that. I found that a really helpful mind shift. It’s not just me leading them to the Word; it’s all of us coming together under the Word, moving towards maturity in Christ.
Well, I think there’s a lot more to be said, but I think there’s some helpful ways to start and we’ll keep thinking about this as we work in our own small groups. Thanks for your time, Tony.
Tony: Lovely to talk, Marty.
Why we need both
Reflecting further on ‘training’, I think I’d add the following to that conversation:
We need a way of talking about the ongoing process of learning how our convictions are lived out in daily Christ-like action—whether that is in learning to pray, to love our families, to share the gospel with our neighbours, to encourage a new believer, to be patient, or any other aspect of the renewed life. One good English word that encapsulates this is ‘training’—a word that has a more practical edge; that connotes practice, discipline and correction; that contains a mix of instruction, repetition, character-building, practical advice, encouragement and time.
When I think of this kind of ‘training’ in the New Testament, the classic vignette that comes to mind is of the older women teaching and training the younger women in Titus 2. In accordance with the healthy doctrine of the gospel (Titus 2:1), the older women are to “teach what is good, and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled” (Titus 2:3b-5). It’s one complete package: true gospel doctrine, resulting in a godly character, along with practical instruction and outworkings in daily life. Training is that aspect of ‘learning Christ’ that brings the sound doctrine of the gospel to the lived experiences of everyday discipleship.
In this sense, Christian ‘training’ is a bit like medical training. At the end of it, the student has not only gained medical skills, but has ‘become a doctor’. They have mastered an array of knowledge, and a set of mental models and frameworks to use in whatever situation presents itself. They have imbibed the culture of what it means to ‘be a doctor’—a set of values and practices and traditions that is more than textbook knowledge, and also more than a set of practical skills. And they have practised and refined and improved their ability to put this knowledge into practice day by day, with colleagues and superiors watching and encouraging and instructing, with hard-won lessons from failure and blessed encouragements from success. I think Christian training is like this.
Training in this sense is for every Christian, not just for leaders, or prospective leaders. It’s not just a skill-acquisition phase for people who are about to undertake a particular ministry. It’s training in the Christian life, one aspect of which is ministry to others. Many churches are already doing at least some of this every-Christian ‘training’ if their small groups are running well—but that is by no means always the case (see my earlier post about this).
Here’s a final sharp point for many of us: Is learning to minister the word of God to others—to speak the truth in love to others in various ways—a basic aspect of the Christian life? If so, then it too needs to be the subject of training, just like all facets of Christian living. Are we doing this? Are we training people to be speakers and sharers and conversationalists of the Word: in their homes, in their small groups, at work, in their one-to-one relationships with others, in their conversations after church on Sunday, at their children's bedside? My sense is that we are doing considerably less of this sort of training than we were 20 years ago.
Do you agree?
PS. If you haven't gotten around to subscribing to The Payneful Truth yet, now would be the perfect time. Just drop your email address in the box below and press the button!
PPS. If you’d like to hear more from Marty Sweeney, you can sign up for his regular emails at Matthias Media USA, and check out his Youtube channel for more of his interviews with me and others (including the video version of the conversation above).
PPPS. This week's tenuously connected image is a snap of my copy of Bob Dylan's classic Slow Train Coming album.
This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at www.thepaynefultruth.online/subscribe
In last week’s edition, we discussed the advantages of thinking about Christian disciples as ‘apprentices’—that is, as the kind of learners who devote themselves to learn a new knowledge-based practice from their Master, the Lord Jesus Christ.
In this week’s edition, we’re going to bring the idea of ‘apprenticeship’ to bear on the question of how to read and apply the Bible to our lives. And (eventually) we will cycle back briefly to the issue of church and ‘worship’ that started this train of thought running.
Two things, though, before we go further. Firstly, I do recognize that the ‘worship’ issue is not the most pressing question in the world, especially at this moment. And to be truthful, it doesn’t quite get my juices flowing as it once did. But it does serve as a convenient illustration for a larger and more important point that is the real subject of this week’s post.
And secondly, the larger issue (of how to apply the Bible) is indeed a very large issue, and I have struggled to keep the length of this week’s edition down, without really succeeding. It’s a longer than usual Payneful Truth this time around. Happily, though, I am on holiday next week, and won’t be posting anything next Monday—so you have two weeks to chew your way through the exciting adventure that is …
Apprenticeship to Scripture
Being ‘biblical’ in our thinking and action is a bit like ‘healthy eating’. Most Christians would like to think that they are at least trying, but it’s not always clear what qualifies.
For example, is a practice or concept ‘biblical’ if it fits within the bounds of what the Bible permits, or is at least silent about—or is that too low a bar? Is something only ‘biblical’ if the Bible explicitly commands or positively endorses it in some way? Or is acting in a biblical way more about the theological vibe that you get from putting together the various teachings and themes of Scripture? Or is it some combination of all of these?
How does one start with all the various things that the Bible asserts, teaches, describes or exemplifies, and then conclude (in any particular situation) what would be the good or right or ‘biblical’ thing to do? It’s not always straightforward.
With regard to church and worship—as an illustration—is it perfectly reasonable and biblical to use the category of ‘worship’ as a primary way of describing our gatherings, and in particular the singing we do in our gatherings, as many churches do? (As in, ‘welcome to our service of worship this morning’; or ‘please join us now as we worship our God together in song’.) Or would it be more helpful to avoid ‘worship’ as a primary category for understanding our church gatherings and/or singing, on the basis that the New Testament doesn’t command us to, and in fact hardly ever does so itself? How does the Bible direct us towards an answer on this, or for that matter any, contemporary issue?
Now, in thinking about this question we are about to traverse some deep and complicated waters, in which theologians and ethicists much smarter than me have been thrashing about for centuries. To name-check just three historically massive debates for those who are up on such things: we are in the same waters as the regulative-versus-normative principle discussion at the time of the Reformation; and the hermeneutical debate that has been raging for most of the past hundred years about whether and how ancient texts can speak to modern cultures; and the contemporary controversy within Christian ethics about the place of the Bible as a source of authority in ethical thought.
I have been swimming in these waters quite a lot over the past several years, but I don’t intend to take you with me on a deep academic dive. We will be sticking fairly close to the surface, and I apologise in advance for the various things I will no doubt miss out or treat simplistically in what follows. (For those who do wish to think deeper and further, I’ll mention some things to read below.)
I want to outline two good but inadequate approaches to ‘being biblical’ about our circumstances and decisions, and then suggest a third approach that is very useful, and that (unsurprisingly) has something to do with apprenticeship.
Focus on commands
The first common approach to applying the Bible to our lives is to focus on the Bible’s explicit commands. And this is of course a great and godly thing to do because, after all, to be a disciple (or apprentice!) of Jesus is to learn to keep all his commands (Matt 28:20). Not only are God’s commands as sweet as the honey comb, they are jolly useful in lots of circumstances, especially for people like us. Very often, we don’t have the need, the time or the ability for a complicated thought process about what to do. We need a short, sharp, simple word that simply says, ‘Be angry but do not sin’, ‘Don’t commit adultery’ or ’Flee from idols’.
But as useful as commands are, they have some inadequacies, especially if they are the sum total of our biblical thinking. The first problem is that we still have to figure out whether the command applies in this situation in front of me, and that is not always clear. ‘Flee from idols’ is pretty straightforward if you are faced with an actual statue in a pagan temple, but what if you’re spending too much time obsessing about golf (hard for some of you to imagine I know, but this is an issue that a ‘friend of mine’ struggles with). Is golf becoming an idol to be fled from? How would we know when it has acquired this status? Or is another command more applicable—like ‘do not love the world or things of the world’ or perhaps (more positively), ‘everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving’?
The commands themselves don’t help us with this. We still have some thinking and discernment in front of us, and on what basis are we to do this? What if you quote ‘flee from idols’ to me in my golf obsession, but I counter with ‘Whatever is noble and good and excellent, think about these things’? How can we avoid a proof-texting stalemate?
There’s another problem with commands on their own—and that is simply that not every situation is covered by a command specific enough to be useful. Our issue about church and worship is in this category. There is no specific scriptural command to describe our church gatherings as ‘worship services’, nor one forbidding it. In fact, there is no command to call our church services anything. We might conclude that we could therefore describe our church gatherings in any way that we like, but that also doesn’t seem right. If Pastor Jim welcomed the congregation on Sunday to ‘our full-tilt, foot-washing, fashion show of spiritual inspiration’, we might reasonably object that something about the nature and purpose of the gathering is not really being expressed. (Mind you, it would not take too much creativity to proof-text every single expression in Pastor Jim’s description if we wanted to.)
How we describe and frame our church gatherings would seem to be important, but there is no simple biblical command to help us out.
Focus on theology
Here’s where the second common approach comes in. It quite rightly recognizes that the Bible isn’t just commands—among other things, it is also full of theological truths and principles that are the basis for those commands. And so rather than just looking at the end point (the command), we can also soak up the Bible’s theology, its teaching about God and everything, its grand narrative about God’s purposes, and then bring that to bear on the issues in front of us. We can draw out various biblical doctrines and principles, organize them into some kind of coherent order or argument, and thus reason our way to a ‘biblical’ conclusion.
Like the focus on commands, a focus on the themes and categories of theology is excellent, necessary and a great gift from God. It is part of the renewal and transformation of our minds, so that we might discern and live out the good, pleasing and perfect will of our heavenly Father.
And so, with respect to the question of how we should label or frame our church gatherings, we could draw together a number of key biblical themes or doctrines, and draw some conclusions. However, as soon as we start to do this, we come across an often unacknowledged difficulty. There are lots of theological truths or principles to choose from in the Bible, and it’s not only difficult to know exactly which principles are relevant and should be focused on, but what order or priority they should be arranged in. For example, here is a list of various theological truths (each of them perfectly valid), and what we might conclude from them about the nature of the church gathering (in fact, what various people in Christian history have concluded about church):
God is infinitely holy and good, and a consuming fire—therefore the emphasis in our church gatherings should be on transcendence, reverence, worship and awe.
God is love, and love is the chief Christian virtue—therefore church is primarily a ‘love feast’, in which mutual service and affection is paramount.
God is building his church in Jesus Christ—therefore church is mainly about building people up (or edification).
God is a missionary God who welcomes the stranger and the alien—therefore church is actually about the people outside the church, not our own in-house club.
God’s nature and excellence is spiritual, and far beyond our human understanding—therefore church is not so much about intellectual knowledge but is an experience of God’s presence and power.
God is a trinity of eternal relationships — therefore church is really about community and relationship above anything else.
And we could go on.
Which of these excellent theological themes should we employ to understand and frame our church gatherings (not to mention a bunch of others we haven’t mentioned)? And what order or priority should we place them in, with what emphasis? What conclusions should we draw? And how can we avoid doing all this arbitrarily or lopsidedly, particularly to justify whatever it is we want to do anyway?
Thinking theologically about what to do is completely necessary. But it’s not easy. In fact, it exposes our limitations.
And here’s where the idea of ‘apprenticeship’ becomes very useful.
Apprentices to the Bible
As disciples to Jesus Christ, we should approach the word of Christ in Scripture with a posture of apprenticeship—that is, humbly seeking to learn from Christ’s word how to read and apply Christ’s word.
This idea—that Scripture helps us to interpret Scripture—is hardly new. It has long been a Protestant principle that more difficult or obscure passages should be read in light of clearer ones. However, as David Starling notes in his excellent recent book on this subject, the ‘Scripture principle’ does not only operate as a kind of tie-breaker in difficult cases, but is an important Reformed principle of interpretation. He quotes Luther: “I do not want to be boasted of as more learned than all, but Scripture alone to rule: nor for it to be interpreted by my spirit or by any human spirit, but understood through itself and by its own spirit” (cited by Starling, 9-10, emphasis mine).
Starling goes on to build on this idea—that Scripture itself should guide us as we read Scripture; that it teaches us not only what is there but how to read and hold together what is there. Whenever we practice ‘biblical theology’, we are doing this—learning from how the Bible itself reveals Jesus Christ to be the centre and key to understanding the sprawling, unfolding complex set of books that is Scripture.
However, we can take this ‘apprenticeship’ idea further. Scripture also teaches us—if we are humble enough to sit at its feet—how to think from theological principle to practical application. Scripture constantly does the very thing that we often struggle to do—to reason its way from some significant doctrinal truth to some moral imperative or situational command. We can learn, then, not only from the moral conclusions of Scripture (e.g., its commands), and not only from its doctrinal truths and themes (i.e., its theological principles), but from the way that the biblical authors connect the two. We can learn from how they choose and order theological truths in order to address different kinds of situations and issues. Like an apprentice carpenter, we can learn not only the truth about hammers, but (pretty crucially) when to use a hammer and when a screwdriver might be more useful.
For example, from all the ways in which Paul could have addressed the mess that was the Corinthian church, we can learn from how he did so—how he constantly draws on the wisdom of Christ crucified to address the undisciplined, self-focused arrogance of the Corinthians. A good apprentice would take on board not just Paul’s theological teaching about Christ crucified, nor only his commands to the Corinthians, but learn from how he chooses the cross as his theological lamp, and then navigates his way through the various Corinthian problems by its light.
If all this sounds pretty unobjectionable and non-controversial, well I guess it should. What we have seen and heard in the apostles—including in their faith and theological reasoning—we should follow and imitate. As Paul himself says, “What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me—practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you” (Phil 4:9; cf. 2 Tim 3:10-14).
But apprenticing ourselves to Scripture in this way has a number of very significant and challenging implications for how we apply the Bible’s theology to our issues. I will mention two.
The first is that it helps us know where to start and where to look. Apprenticing ourselves to Scripture disciplines us to begin our theological thought process where the biblical authors do and to focus on what they focus on. So, for example, if we were trying to think biblically about the nature and significance of our everyday secular work, a good apprentice would go to those places where his Master actually teaches on this subject (e.g., many places in Proverbs, Eph 4:28; Col 3:22-25; 1 Thess 4:9-12; 2 Thess 3:6-12, and so on). And then place we would place those significant passages within the wider context of the whole Bible’s Christ-centred teaching. We would learn from this process what theological themes the Bible itself thought were most significant for thinking about work, rather than what themes or passages we find most interesting or striking.
Secondly, and relatedly, apprenticing ourselves to Scripture helps us to get our emphasis right. It’s almost impossible to over-emphasize how important emphasis is. Many heresies arise from taking something that is good or true in itself and then giving it too central or important a place, so that the structure of our thinking gets lopsided, wobbly and ultimately dysfunctional (one thinks of the Roman Catholic heresy of Mary). Likewise, many mistaken or foolish applications of Scripture to our lives arise from not learning to keep things in a Scriptural proportion and order—to major on what the biblical authors major on, to recognize as secondary or peripheral those truths or principles that lie on the margins, and to observe how the Bible’s teaching on a certain subject unfolds throughout the canon, and is fulfilled in the teaching of Christ and the apostles.
Emphasis is important not only in considering particular issues or problems, but in putting all issues and circumstances in their right context or frame. The overall emphasis of the New Testament is on God’s plan to bring eternal glory to the crucified and risen Jesus Christ by gathering a redeemed people for himself (who are eager for good works) through the prayerful speaking of the gospel Word by his people. No doubt you could improve this little summary in multiple ways, but the point is this—apprenticing ourselves to Scripture means learning what is central and of first importance, and keeping it there in our own thinking and practice.
Conclusion
None of all this means that every issue will now be easily solved, or that we won’t disagree with each other about what following the biblical thought-process means for us in particular circumstances. It could be that our circumstances are different enough to warrant different conclusions. And it’s certainly the case that we are all flawed, fallible and kind of stupid, each in our own way. We need each other for mutual sharpening, correcting and encouragement.
But if we can agree that ‘apprenticeship to Scripture’ is the right posture in which to approach the issue—any issue—then perhaps we can help each other learn how to bring the mind of Christ to all things (1 Cor 2:15-16). We can begin the process of thinking biblically and theologically about any issue or circumstance not only with an agreed authority (the Bible), but with a shared starting point and criteria (to seek to think about this issue the way the Bible itself thinks about it, with its starting points, key principles, emphasis and trains of thought). And perhaps in this way we can avoid a battle of flying proof-texts (when we only focus on the Bible’s commands or conclusions), or a struggle between competing theological constructions that begin with valid premises but finish with wildly different conclusions.
And what about the church gathering and ‘worship’?
I will say only this. If we were to start with those passages where the apostles themselves draw various conclusions about the church gathering based on theological principles (e.g. 1 Cor 3:10f; 5:3-4; 11:17-14:40; Heb 10:19-25); and if as good apprentices, we disciplined ourselves to emphasize what they emphasized, and to employ the main theological categories and ideas that they employed—would we conclude that ‘worship’ was a primary or even significant theological category within which to understand and describe our regular church gatherings, and in particular the singing we engage in together?
If not, then let us as good apprentices think and act likewise.
PS.
For those who want to dig deeper into these ideas about how we read and apply the Bible, here are three books worth exploring.
David Starling’s book (mentioned above) is Hermeneutics as Apprenticeship: How the Bible Shapes our Interpretive Habits and Practices (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2016). Starling suggests that good reading and interpretation of Scripture ‘is like a craft or trade that must be learned if we are to draw the right connections, make the right intuitive leaps, and bring to bear on the task the right dispositions, affections, and virtues. Among the various exemplars from which we might learn the habits and practices that are necessary for wise and faithful interpretation, Scripture itself is supreme and uniquely authoritative’ (p. 17). He then proceeds to take 14 soundings from across Scripture (from Deuteronomy to Revelation) and to show how each part builds on the others to teach us how to read Scripture. It really is a fine piece of work.
Starling writes primarily as a biblical scholar. From the standpoint of ethics, Oliver O’Donovan writes very insightfully about the importance of tracing the relationship between the Bible, its theological narrative and principles, and the ethical thought process we must all undertake when we encounter situations in the world. The book to read is Self, World and Time (Ethics as Theology Vol 1; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2013), particularly chapter 4. Like all O’Donovan’s work, it’s a stretching read, but very much worth the effort.
From the side of systematic theology, Kevin Vanhoozer also recommends a stance of apprenticeship towards the Bible: ‘Good theological judgement is largely, though not exclusively, a matter of being apprenticed to the canon: of having one’s capacity for judging (a capacity that involves imagination, reason, emotion, and volition alike) formed and transformed by the ensemble of canonical practices that constitute Scripture’. This is from the very stimulating chapter 10 of The Drama of Doctrine: A Canonical-Linguistic Approach to Christian Theology (Louisville, Ky: Westminster John Knox, 2005), p 331.
And this week’s tenuously connected image is … a starling.
This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at www.thepaynefultruth.online/subscribe
I received a number of requests after last week’s post on the ‘Yeah-But defence’ to say more about the little hobbyhorse I mentioned in the PS—regarding how we think and talk about church and worship. I’ve already written quite a bit about these issues over the years (see some references below in the PS), and am not super-keen to trawl through that material again here (much to the relief of some, I am sure).
However, there is something important and (I think) fresh to say that relates not only to that hobbyhorse topic, but to nearly every other topic we grapple with in biblical interpretation and application.
It’s a subject I’ve been thinking about a lot over the past three years or so, not only in relation to discipleship and disciple-making (in various ‘Trellis and Vine’ seminars and conversations), but in the methodological phase of the PhD work I’ve recently completed. It comes in two parts (this week’s post and next week’s), and those of you keen to think further about church and worship will have to wait patiently for the end of next week’s post before we get back to that topic.
The subject is apprenticeship.
The apprentice
It’s funny how words shift and slip.
‘Myself’, for example, now apparently means the same thing as ‘me’—as in ‘If you’d like to know more, please come and see myself after the meeting’.
And my kids were aghast when they discovered recently that I didn’t know that ‘beard’ means ‘a woman who marries or accompanies a gay man, in order to conceal his homosexuality’—although I may have just discovered this word-meaning in time for it to become redundant (because no-one seems very interested in concealing their homosexuality these days).
There’s nothing wrong with the constantly morphing nature of words and language. It’s how language does its thing.
But it does occasionally mislead us, or get in the way of clear communication. We know this well enough when we’re trying to communicate some aspect of the gospel to completely unchurched people, and discover to our frustration that what we mean by words like ‘sin’ or ‘faith’ or ‘God’ bears little relation to what our hearers think these words signify.
Imagine how annoying, then, it must be for the Bible—because the Bible is mostly a simple, plain-speaking communicator. It enjoys using normal everyday words that, in their original context, were as about as religious or technical as words like ‘dog’ or ‘rock’ or ‘washing machine’.
But over time, words shift and slip. They gather connotations and associations. And so to the Bible’s frustration (well it would annoy me, if I was the Bible), many of its everyday words have become specialized, inhouse religious words with a raft of extra meanings and associations. The ordinary Bible-words that mean ‘ask-for-something’, ‘assembly’ and ‘honour-or-serve-someone’ are for us the rich, tradition-laden, Christian words ‘pray’, ‘church’ and ‘worship’.
The English word ‘disciple’ is a fascinating case in point. Along with its related forms ‘discipling’, ‘disciple-making’ and ‘discipleship’, this word has become a specialized Christian word with a large range of connotations: ‘a follower of Jesus’, ‘to mentor a younger believer’, ‘evangelism, especially on an individual level’, ‘one-to-one Bible reading’, ‘the daily practical side of Christian belief’, ‘a kind of pastor or department in large churches’, and so on.
However, in the Bible, the word we translate as ‘disciple’ or ‘to make disciples’ is one of those ordinary, straightforward words (Gk mathetes or matheteuo). It pops up a couple of hundred times in the Gospels and Acts, and according to the standard Greek dictionary (known in the trade as ‘BDAG’), the word refers to someone who:
‘engages in learning through instruction from another’
‘is rather constantly associated with someone who has a pedagogical reputation or a particular set of views’ (BDAG, 3rd Edn, 609-610).
If we were using corresponding English words, we would call that sort of person a ‘student’ or a ‘learner’ or a ‘pupil’ or, even better, an ‘apprentice’—because an apprentice is a particular kind of learner. Apprentices associate themselves with a specific teacher over a period of time (often a master craftsman) in order to be instructed by them and to learn from them. An apprentice carpenter binds himself to a master tradesman for a period of some years, and learns from him not only the key knowledge that he requires but the practical wisdom that puts that knowledge to effective use in different circumstances. He learns not only what a hammer is and does in theory, but how to use one, and when to use one.
This is the kind of student a mathetes (or ‘disciple’) was in the NT. They were not so much classroom students seeking to master a body of knowledge, as people who left their nets to be devoted to a particular Teacher, and to learn the knowledge-based practice that the Master knew and taught and exemplified.
The Christian life is this kind of apprenticeship.
We commit ourselves in faith to the one who is now Lord and Master of heaven and earth, repenting of our sinful former allegiances, and beginning a whole new life as his forgiven, redeemed apprentices. What follows after that is a lifetime of learning his words, and learning to obey those words in every facet of our lives. This (as you may have spotted) is a restatement of Jesus’ great commission to make ‘apprentices’ of the nations by initiating them into a new life under his lordship (in baptism) and teaching them to keep all his commandments until the end of the age (Matt 28:18-20).
This idea of the Christian life as an apprenticeship has many rich overtones and implications, and in next week’s post I will explore one in particular—how we read and apply the Bible as apprentices.
But at this point it’s worth noting how helpful the concept of ‘apprenticeship’ is for clarifying some of the confusing connotations that have arisen around the English word ‘disciple’. To take just three examples:
An apprenticeship is more than an intellectual education but it is never less. We tend to think of ‘discipling’ and ‘discipleship’ as more practical kinds of things, but apprenticeship to Jesus is as much about knowledge, theology and conviction as it is about everyday life. ‘Apprenticeship’ nicely holds together what we often separate—a deep knowledge of the truth of God’s revelation in Christ in all its multifaceted brilliance, and the life and action that this truth points us to, schools us in, and equips us for. In this sense, Christian theology is always directive (as Kevin Vanhoozer argues at length in The Drama of Doctrine). Biblical knowledge always drives us towards a new life of faith and obedience as God’s people. And correspondingly, Christian action is always principled; it always draws upon a theological understanding of the world that is learned at the feet of Christ. Apprenticeship is a great word in English for this kind of transformative learning.
If Christian ‘apprenticeship’ (or ‘discipleship’) is basically about a kind of learning, then its location or focus cannot be confined to personal mentoring, one-to-one Bible reading or small groups (as it often is in our thinking). Our regular Sunday gatherings are in fact the central, flagship time in which we are apprenticed to Christ as a community of his people—where we hear his word, and lovingly serve one another in multiple ways. In this sense, all Christian ministry is an exercise in making apprentices of Christ, and every pastor (and especially the senior pastor) is an ‘apprenticeship pastor’—they are all seeking to teach Christian apprentices to know the commands of Christ and to keep them.
And finally, the meaning of the English word ‘apprentice’ nicely captures the imitative nature of the Christian life. Apprentices learn, in part, by watching and imitating—not only imitatinng Christ himself as we meet him in the Gospels, but those more mature Christian apprentices who model his ways to us. As Paul puts it: “Brothers, join in imitating me, and keep your eyes on those who walk according to the example you have in us” (Phil 3:17; cf. 1 Cor 11:1; Phil 4:9; 1 Thess 1:6; 2 Thess 3:9; 2 Tim 3:10-11).
Apprenticeship is cognitive, transformative and relational—three aspects of Christian existence that we frequently struggle to hold together.
All that remains, I guess, is to persuade our Bible translators how much clearer it would be for all of us if the Gospels began by Jesus calling the 12 apprentices, and concluded with him sending out his apprentices to make apprentices of all nations.
PS. For those who want to chase up some of my earlier writing on the subject of church and worship, the best place to find it is probably in The Tony Payne Collection, the embarrassingly but descriptively named anthology of essays and articles from The Briefing—available from Matthias Media, 10ofThose, or on Kindle.
PPS. I was very tempted to throw in a Trumpy photo for this week’s random image (The Apprentice!), but that would have been far too distracting and click-baity. And so here instead is a picture of our dog (‘dog’ being one of those very ordinary English words).
This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at www.thepaynefultruth.online/subscribe
When someone challenges me to change the way I think or act, they can expect to meet a well-organized resistance.
They will have to punch through a layer of conceit that doesn’t want to admit that I may have just possibly been slightly, but very understandably, mistaken in this one instance.
Then they will have to overcome a quivering blob of inertia that is designed to keep things just as they are, because I like it that way.
After that, they will have to hose down a fire of social fear that springs to life whenever I am faced with making a change that my friends might think weird or mistaken.
So good luck with that.
But somewhere among all those defences to changing my mind about anything, there is a layer of resistance that I have come to call the Yeah-But defence.
I have seen it occasionally in myself (in rare moments of self-awareness, possibly in relation to my wife being right about something). And of course, I notice it all the time in other people—because other people are mostly wrong, and for some reason use these kinds of dodges to avoid coming around to my way of thinking.
The secret of the Yeah-But defence is to start by acknowledging with a weary nod of the head the very strong, even overwhelming, nature of the argument someone is presenting to you. Yeah I hear what you’re saying. Yeah I’m aware of that. Yeah I’ve read those verses. Yeah we all know that.
And then to introduce the But.
But it’s not quite that simple, is it?
But there is an interesting verse that might be an exception to what you’re arguing.
But surely the evidence you’re presenting isn’t the only thing to say about this subject.
But I’ve heard that some scholars take a quite different view.
But I’ve seen a documentary on Netflix.
But I’m not sure that the consequences of your argument would be easy to put into practice.
But if we accept your argument, won’t that lead to (insert alarming consequence here) down the track?
But I feel like what you’re saying owes too much to (insert modernism/postmodernism/individualism/Western-guilt-culture or some complex cultural movement that neither of you really understand here).
But surely there are more important things for us to be addressing right now.
The genius of the Yeah-But defence is that most of these ‘Buts’ are in themselves perfectly reasonable things to say. Nothing is ever that simple. There are always exceptions. Every view is always challenged by some scholar somewhere. We all have mixed motives. We are all influenced by cultural trends. And there are always other important things to be talking about.
It’s just that none of these ‘Buts’ actually respond to the evidence or argument that has been presented, nor give due weight to its volume and strength. In fact, the purpose of the Yeah-But is to deflect the force of strong arguments or powerful evidence, and (if possible) to avoid actually having to interact with them.
A well-executed Yeah-But, and especially the very powerful Combination-Yeah-But, can neatly sidestep even the strongest challenge to our thinking or behaviour.
To take one example. When theologians or preachers aren’t comfortable with putting the substitutionary atonement of Christ for the forgiveness of sins right at the essential centre of their thinking and gospel, they are faced with the awkward fact that the New Testament does precisely that, at point after point. How do they respond?
Yeah, but surely the salvation of individual sinners through the atonement is not the only thing that the Bible says about Jesus death or the gospel?
Yeah, but that’s a naive approach to evangelism these days. We need to use categories and ideas that resonate with the cultural narratives of modern people.
Yeah, but isn’t your obsession with sin and atonement just an expression of individualistic, guilt-centric Western thinking?
Yeah, but we don’t want to end up in some kind of life-denying fundamentalist sect that has nothing to say to the modern world.
Yeah, but there are many reputable NT scholars who think that the traditional understanding of the cross is simplistic and outdated.
And so on and so forth. Let’s divert attention from the elephantine quantity of evidence in the room by pointing to some interesting features of the wallpaper.
How can we respond to the Yeah-But?
At one level, we could always counter with a Yeah-But of our own. “Yeah, those caveats you’re raising are worth addressing, and we should look at them. But let’s start by looking at the mountain of evidence that’s in front of us, and assessing its validity. And let’s commit together to obedience in light of the weight of the evidence as we find it.”
Might that work? Perhaps. But only if a spirit of humility and repentance is wafting through the conversation—and that leads to the second and more significant response: to pray for our conversation partners (and ourselves), that God would grant us both repentance in light of a clear understanding of his truth.
The Yeah-But is not simply an annoying rhetorical strategy that frustrates us when we’re trying to persuade someone of something (although it is). It’s a symptom of something deeper—the profound spiritual pride that afflicts us all.
Pride is very close to the heart of sin (as Augustine and many others have observed). Pride is perhaps the primal sin, the unwillingness to give God his rightful place as the highest good and supreme ruler, and to place ourselves there instead. It is the insistence that I am at the centre of the universe, that I need to be acknowledged and deferred to, and that the rest of reality needs to organize itself into an orderly orbit around my interests.
Pride is deeply resistant to any form of challenge, but particularly to that challenge that tells me the truth about myself, and thus dethrones me from the centre of my world. The Yeah-But is one of the weapons that our pride deploys to protect us from the truth.
It doesn’t matter, for example, that creation is pouring forth speech, and that the truth about God, the world and ourselves is plainly displayed there. We will avert our eyes, suppress the truth, and find any rhetorical fig-leaf that falls to hand to cover our nakedness.
It doesn’t matter that the light of the world is shining brilliantly before our eyes. We will hide in the darkness, because our deeds are evil.
The Yeah-But defence turns out to be a pretty good description of the state of my own heart, and all our hearts, when we are confronted by God.
Yeah, I know that you are the loving, ruling, generous God, and that I am your beloved creature and child. But did you really say I shouldn’t eat from that tree?
PS. While I was writing this column I saw one of my hobbyhorses trotting by, and I was deeply tempted to jump on its back for a ride. I am talking about the New Testament’s overwhelming usage of the word ‘church’ to refer to a gathered, local assembly, and the correspondingly deafening absence of the language or categories of ‘worship’ to describe what happens in that assembly. I have been in many Yeah-But conversations about this inconvenient but weighty evidence over the years. In the interests of not boring anyone with another go-around on this topic, I managed to relegate it to this PS!
PPS. This week’s random image, tenuously connected to our subject by being a mountain (as in a mountain of evidence), is a shot of Cradle Mountain in Tasmania, taken while we were there on holidays a few years ago.
This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at www.thepaynefultruth.online/subscribe
After living in Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians an awful lot over the last three years, I have realized two things—first, I’ve been living in Corinth for most of my life; and second, with God’s help, I hope to live a Corinthian life till I die.
I’ve lived so long in Sydney now I can hardly remember what a shock it was to arrive here as an uncomplicated country boy in my late teens. Brash, beautiful, vibrant Sydney, with its abundance of natural gifts, its melting pot of cultures, its love of money and real estate, its status anxiety, and its rampant, polyvalent sexuality—a city as much like ancient Corinth as I suppose any modern city is likely to be.
And just as churches in Sydney cannot help but be corrupted by the characteristic sins of its city—perhaps materialism and status-seeking would be on the list—so the church of God in Corinth struggled to escape the gravitational corruption of its own civic culture.
To that church, the Apostle writes the masterpiece of Christian instruction that we call 1 Corinthians. In this extraordinary letter, he skewers the sins and pretensions of Corinthian culture, especially its arrogant pride and obsession with status. And at the same time, he describes and commends the radical alternative culture that the immature Corinthian Christians should have grasped by now, and should be living out.
The Corinthian church should have understood and embraced the new culture of Christ, because it is simply the daily outworking of the most important thing the Apostle ever told them—the message that he passed onto them as of first importance: “that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures” (15:3-4). Or as he puts it in the two word summary of his entire preaching: “Christ crucified” (1:23; cf. 2:2).
What the Corinthians had not yet really grasped was that this twin event—the death and resurrection of Christ—was not only the stupendous truth that brought them righteousness, sanctification and redemption (1:30); it also laid out the entire shape and course of their lives. It was their wisdom, a wisdom from God that proud, worldly Corinth could only regard as foolish and weak.
Part of the genius of 1 Corinthians is that the letter teaches this wisdom in its very structure. The shape of the Christian life is the shape of 1 Corinthians—starting with the foundation of the cross and its stunning reversal of their previous cultural values and narratives (ch 1-4), proceeding through all the different issues the church faces in its context (ch 5-14), and concluding with the resurrection of Christ, which guarantees the Corinthians’ own resurrection on the last day (ch 15).
As each issue is dealt with—whether factionalism or sexual immorality or marriage or how they are to behave their gatherings—the answer is always the wisdom of the cross, awaiting resurrection. The confounding, counter-intuitive wisdom of the cross, which turns upside down the worldly values and cultural narratives of Corinth (and Sydney and every city), is the wisdom that now teaches them to make judgements about all things (ch 2).
For example, if God chose to save us by the seemingly weak and stupid message of the cross, so that there could no boasting except in the Lord, how could we be so juvenile as to boast in impressive individual teachers or leaders, and factionalize around them (ch 3-4)? And if God has cleansed, redeemed and justified us for himself at the cross, how could we think of reintroducing into our midst the ‘old leaven’ of sexual immorality and greed and all the other sins of our former Corinthian selves (ch 5-6)? And if Christ laid down his life in sacrifice for others, how could we do anything but sacrifice our own preferences and lives so that we might save some (1 Cor 9-10)? And if the heartbeat of the cross is self-denying, other-person-oriented love, how could we use our gifts for arrogant self-expression and personal status rather than for the advantage and edification of others (ch 12-14)?
This is the new Corinthian life—a life lived in the wisdom of the cross awaiting resurrection, the life I hope to keep living in the particular Corinth in which God has placed me.
I have been writing this week’s post in the midst of the strange, post-apocalyptic Easter that we’ve all been experiencing, with its deserted streets and parks and churches.
It occurs to me that the new life Paul is describing in 1 Corinthians is like a life lived on Easter Eve—which is what the Saturday between Good Friday and Easter Day is properly called (Easter Saturday is the Saturday after Easter). Easter Eve, which is a bit of a nothing day for most of us, is the day that looks back to the cross and forward to the resurrection.
That is the day in which we now live, whether we’re in Corinth or Sydney or anywhere else—a life lived by the wisdom of the cross; a life that runs counter to the narratives and ‘wisdom’ of our city; a life that looks eagerly forward to the next Day that is coming, when the trumpet shall sound, and the perishable shall take on the imperishable.
PS. As I was writing this week’s post, I was tempted to explore how the particular sins of Sydney penetrate and weaken our Sydney churches—but thought better of it. Making generalisations about ‘what is wrong with our churches’ is a popular armchair sport, but like most armchair sports it has a tenuous connection with the action. We shout at the screen, but usually have little idea what is really happening on the field, what pressures and difficulties the players are under, and what solutions would actually help them. Every church has its own sub-culture (influenced no doubt by the sub-culture of its suburb and network), its own besetting sins, and its own challenge to live out the wisdom of the cross. Best I think to leave each of us (as individuals and churches) to reflect on how the wisdom of the cross challenges our Corinthian immaturity.
PPS. If you haven’t yet signed up to get The Payneful Truth emailed to you each week, take a second to do so!
PPPS. This week’s image is self-explanatory—taken on my iPhone from a water taxi headed for Watson’s Bay.
This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at www.thepaynefultruth.online/subscribe
It’s an ad that Aussies of my generation grew up with. Jack Thompson, in his ruggedly good-looking larrikin phase, says to the barman, “Claytons thanks, Brian”.
A dumbfounded onlooker responds, “On the wagon, Jack?”
“Nah” drawls Jack. “When I don’t feel like alcohol, I have Claytons.”
(Voice-over): “Claytons: the drink you have when you’re not having a drink”.
And so an expression entered Australian vernacular. When you can’t have the real thing, but you have to make do with a less than adequate substitute, it’s a Claytons. This is often derogatory, of course (in typical Aussie fashion). You really don’t want to end up with a Claytons car or work for a Claytons boss or (worst of all) be described as a Claytons husband.
But it doesn’t have to be negative. Sometimes, because of the situation you find yourself in, you just have to say, “I’ll have Claytons, thanks”.
I think that’s where many of us are at with church, in this surreal coronavirus moment.
We’re genuinely thankful for the technology that allows us to connect with our church communities online in the various kinds of simulated Sunday things that many churches are doing. And yet we also can’t help feeling the Claytons nature of it all—in the lack of physical presence with one another, the diminished communicative power of the preaching, the absence of communal singing and the Lord’s Supper, and so much more.
We miss the real thing, but we’re grateful in the meantime for the ‘church you have when you’re not having church’.
I think both of these impulses are healthy—the sadness at no longer having the real thing, and the gratitude for the Claytons substitute. In fact, I think embracing both of these attitudes will be important over the coming difficult months.
On one hand, the benefits of gratitude are obvious, and I won’t dwell too long on them. Thanksgiving in all circumstances is one of the basic characteristics of the redeemed life. And now, in these particularly difficult circumstances, there is much that we should thank God for—for the opportunities some of us have to spend more time with our families; for the undoubted gospel opportunities that are opening up as we interact with friends and neighbours whose secure worlds have been rattled; and for our pastors, who are all working long hours under stress, scrambling to minister to the flock when most of their normal tools for doing so have been suddenly withdrawn. Let’s be thankful and positive about the extraordinary technology that is allowing us to stay in touch online, to hear each other’s voices and to see each other’s faces, even if in a mirror darkly (when the webcam is positioned facing the window).
On the other hand, it will also do us good to openly embrace the fact that what we’re doing online is not the real thing—that it’s Claytons church—for at least two reasons.
Firstly, I think it’s spiritually healthy for us grieve the loss of our local church gatherings. It’s good to miss meeting together as a congregation, to long for its return, and to realise (perhaps for the first time for some of us) just how precious, unique and important the weekly gathering of a local congregation is. I wonder if this will be a Hebrews 12 moment for us, in which God disciplines us as his children to appreciate afresh something that we frequently take for granted. (And I don’t think we want to convey the opposite theological lesson over the next several months—namely, that church-without-actually-gathering is still pretty much church, so long as you catch up with an online sermon and sing along with some Christian music in your lounge room.)
Secondly, if we embrace the Claytons nature of what we’re doing online on Sundays, it may actually help us do a better job. I don’t just mean that it will motivate us to lean harder on the ‘one-another’ aspect of ministry during the week (as I suggested in an earlier Payneful Truth)—although it will. I mean that if we embrace the fact that it’s not possible to re-create the reality of our Sunday gatherings in an online space, it may liberate us to use the technology at our disposal more flexibly and effectively. In Claytons mode, we can experiment with various ways to achieve as much as possible online with each other, without feeling like we have to re-create ‘Sunday’ for people—something that the circumstances and the medium make impossible.
Let me give just one example: I strongly suspect that online ‘sermons’ will be more effective if they stop trying to be a real sermon (of the live-audience, preached kind) and embrace the character and limitations of the online video medium.
Live, preached sermons are a form of ‘hot’ media (to use Marshall McLuhan’s term). They require the full engagement of the listener in the communicative event—to follow the argument being laid out, to imagine the story the preacher is telling, to picture the imagery he is referring to, and so on. This is partly why physical presence is so important for a sermon. What a sermon requires of its listener—which is a high level of engagement—is made possible by the physical nature of the experience: sitting quietly together with others who are also listening, the physical presence of the preacher, his eye contact, mannerisms, gestures, variations in pitch and tone, and so on.
Trying to translate this form of communication to online video, straight to camera with no audience, is a media mismatch. It’s a tough ask, both for speaker and hearer. This is partly because video is a ‘cool’ medium, that functions by showing rather than telling, by creating feelings rather than arguments, by tellings stories rather than expounding texts—all of which is why you never see anyone on TV talking directly to camera to explain something for more than about 30 seconds. But it’s also because preaching is crowd communication—it has a voice and rhetorical character that assumes a largish bunch of people in front of you. An online straight-to-camera talk, on the other hand, is directed just to the one or two people who are watching. It’s like preaching a sermon in someone’s lounge-room to two people—to do it well requires a personal, conversational voice that most of us aren’t used to employing.
In practical terms, I suspect that for straight-to-camera Bible teaching to be effective over the next 3-6 months (and it could be that long!), we will need to keep adapting its form. If we want our people to stay tuned in and engaged, Bible teaching may need to be delivered in significantly shorter chunks—perhaps in two or three bites of 8 minutes each, rather than in one continuous 30 minute exposition.
Will these adapted forms achieve all that a good quality sermon achieves? Almost certainly not. It will be a Claytons, and a temporary one at that. But it will likely be a more effective way to teach the Word in this current weird situation.
As I round off this week’s edition, the Queen has just delivered a short message to the British people, encouraging them to show the good-natured fortitude that the Brits were known for during the Second World War. She concluded with an allusion to the famous Vera Lynn song of that era: “We will meet again”, she said.
We will indeed meet again. And as we long and pray for that day to come, let’s embrace the Claytons nature of our current experience—with sadness and hope, with thankfulness and grace, and with some creative flexibility to make the most of what God has given us.
PS. Thanks for the comments and feedback on last week’s edition about one-another evangelism. Two different people—John Lavender and Dave Pitt—got in touch to point out that in the Gospels we see a version of this one-another evangelism in the testimony of people who can’t help telling others what Jesus has done for them. They both gave the same two examples: the Samaritan woman in Jn 4:39, through whom many of her fellow Samaritans believe; and the leper who is told to say nothing to anyone about his healing but ends up “talking freely (Gk. kerussein)” and spreading “the news (Gk. logos). Nicely spotted.
PPS. Something else worth checking out this week: The Centre for Christian Living at Moore College (my former esteemed employers) have just put out their 2019 Annual. It contains essays, podcast transcripts and student articles—all the best content from 2019. And it’s free (or very nearly free).
PPS. And this week’s image is not as random and tenuous as usual.
This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at www.thepaynefultruth.online/subscribe
In this week’s edition, I want to answer an insightful question that Dave Pitt posed after reading my piece about small groups and one-another edifying speech.
Hi Tony,
Thanks for this great article. It provides some really helpful language around the difference between the preached word and the one-anothering the NT speaks of. You’re focussing on the way the word grows Christians.
I’m wondering if the same idea applies to the way the word saves people—i.e. the difference between the proclamation of the gospel at an event vs. inviting an unbeliever to read the Bible with you.
I guess the question is: Is there an equivalent language to the one-anothering for what the Christian does with an unbeliever, in the NT?
Well spotted, Dave.
And in our current strange circumstances, this is perhaps an even more pressing question. In a context where many of our normal, event-based opportunities for gospel proclamation are denied to us, what is the role of smaller-scale, one-another-style gospel interactions?
My PhD research focused on one-another speech within the Christian community, but there are good reasons to think that this way of thinking about different kinds of speech could provide some fresh thoughts about Christian speech outside the Christian community as well. (Who knows, we might even be able to cut through some of those old arguments we’ve had about evangelism and the everyday Christian.)
While there are lots of passages in the New Testament that speak about one-another speech within the Christian community (25 of them by my count), we have fewer passages that touch on the spiritually significant speech of everyday Christians to outsiders. There’s Acts 4:31, 1 Cor 14:24-25, Phil 1:14 (I think), Col 4:5-6, 1 Pet 2:9-10 (perhaps), and 1 Pet 3:15-16.
Let’s look really quickly at three of them that touch on the issue that Dave raises. In Acts 4:31, the apostles Peter and John had been boldly proclaiming the gospel, and facing opposition in doing so. And as the whole company of believers prays for ‘your servants to continue to speak your word with all boldness’, God answers their prayer in a surprising way. The whole place is shaken, and “they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and continued to speak the word of God with boldness”.
This is like Pentecost all over again. The Spirit is poured out, and the believers pour out speech. All the same, did the believers in Acts 4 go out and do exactly what Peter and John had been doing in bold public proclamation? Possibly, but very possibly not. Was the context in which all the believers ‘spoke the word of God with boldness’ as varied as their different circumstances and opportunities allowed—such as in their households, or in their regular interactions with outsiders? I suspect so, but we don’t know. However, whatever the context, what the speech of Peter, John and all the believers had in common was its enabling power (the Holy Spirit), its essential content (the apostolic word of God) and its motive and character (boldness in the face of threats).
We see a similar commonality in Col 4:2-6, where Paul asks for prayer for his speaking of the word (the logos, in v. 3), and then urges the Colossians themselves to let their word with outsiders (their logos, v. 6) be always gracious and seasoned with salt. The essential content is shared (the speaking of the logos), but the context or mode of the speech seems to be different. Paul is an itinerant proclaimer, now imprisoned for his preaching; the Colossians are having regular daily interactions with outsiders, and making the most of opportunities to converse graciously and ‘saltily’ in those contexts.
Likewise (and very briefly), we observe a similar pattern in 1 Peter. Peter’s readers have received and set their minds on a ‘living hope’ of salvation, through the evangelistic preaching of the living and abiding word of God (1 Pet 1:3, 10-13, 23-25). This is the hope that they are to explain and defend in their gentle, respectful conversations with outsiders (in 1 Pet 3:15-16). Same content; different mode of interaction.
What we see in each of these examples is the preached (or ‘evangelised’) word of the gospel having its counterpart in the speech of believers more generally with outsiders—in a way that is obviously closely related, but also different.
But different how?
Here’s where the parallel work I’ve been doing on ‘one-another edifying speech’ (OES) within the Christian community might be useful.
As I looked at all the passages regarding OES, what became apparent was that the best and clearest way to differentiate OES from the ‘preaching-teaching speech’ of pastor-teachers was not in their essential content (both were centred on the apostolic gospel), nor in their motivation (both were driven by love for others in light of God’s purposes), nor in their overall purpose (both sought to see others grow to maturity in Christ), nor in their sense of obligation or commission (both sorts of speakers are urged or commanded to engage in such speech).
The significant difference lay in the function that different forms of speech have in bringing understanding and change. Proclamatory ‘teaching-preaching’ speech teaches, guards and applies the whole framework of gospel truth to its hearers. ‘One-another edifying speech’ takes aspects of that same word and brings it to bear on the particular contextual challenges and circumstances of particular people—reminding, clarifying, encouraging, correcting and exhorting the hearer to respond.
It wouldn’t be surprising if gospel speech to outsiders had a similar shape, and the relatively few NT references we have (like those above) suggest that it does. In other words, there is outsider-directed gospel speech that teaches, proclaims and explains the truth of Christ in all its facets, and there is outsider-directed gospel speech that brings the word of Christ to bear on the particular questions and life-circumstances of individual people. Both are part of the overall evangelistic effort, and both are vital.
Consider this scenario:
Through the teaching, example and training he has received, Fred is motivated to see his friend Bill come to know Christ, and feels confident to broach the subject with him; he doesn’t just wait for Bill to raise it or ask questions — he spends time with Bill, and actively prays for and looks for opportunities to talk about Jesus in some way.
They have various conversations over time, in which Fred touches on different aspects of the gospel (because he knows the gospel well, and has had some training in how to articulate it). Fred tries to answer some of Bill’s specific questions, and prays for his responsiveness.
Fred then invites Bill to a Christianity Explored course as a next step; Fred’s pastor explains the gospel clearly week by week, and in the table-discussion after each talk, Fred has the chance to discuss specific questions and issues with Bill.
After the course, Bill is interested but still not sure; Fred offers to meet up one-to-one and work through You, Me and the Bible with him—a resource that features some gospel explanation (on video) as well as the opportunity to talk through the implications. Fred has the opportunity to talk honestly with Bill about the importance of responding to the claims of Christ.
When Bill decides to become a Christian, Fred is right there with him, ready to guide him in how to do that, and in what the next steps might be.
Throughout this process, the two kinds of speech overlap and intermingle, and each performs a vital function in bringing Bill to the point of clear understanding and repentance. My contention is that there are two overlapping, complementary zones of outsider-focused gospel speech, just as there are within the Christian community.
This week’s Payneful Truth is already painfully long, and so I will conclude with two brief practical implications.
First, if I am right, we should view group-based, event-evangelism and individual one-to-one gospel conversation not as alternatives but as complementary partners. They perform different, vital roles in bringing the word of Christ to outsiders. Why make them competitors?
Second, both kinds of speech require intentional focus, teaching, preparation and training. High quality gospel events (like courses) don’t happen without good planning and preparation. Likewise, individual Christians won’t take up the important complementary task of applying the gospel to the particular circumstances of their friends unless they are taught, encouraged and equipped to do so.
My observation is that, in the circles I move in, we have largely given up this latter task—that is, teaching, encouraging and equipping individual Christians for one-another gospel interaction with outsiders. As in all circumstances when our vision of church or ministry fails to reflect the thinking and emphasis of the NT, we are and will be the poorer for it.
PS. If you haven’t yet subscribed, take a moment to do so. It’s the best way to get both the text and audio versions delivered to you each week—and usually on a Monday. (The coronavirus craziness has made me run a little late this week!)
PPS. As I half suspected, even as I hit ‘send this email to everyone’ last Monday, the further tightening of restrictions over the past week has put paid for the time being to my suggestion about physically gathering in groups of three (at least in my part of the world). The principle, however, remains very important. We’re going to have to lean more on our smaller ‘trellises’ over the next few months—on small, regular groups of 3-6 people, even if they are online. One prominent church I know of has already divided their small groups in half (from 10-12 down to 5-6), in the recognition that running an online meeting of 10-12 is impractical—not just in the dynamics of the meeting, but in what it demands of leaders.
PPPS. This week’s very tenuously connected image is the album artwork from Firewind, a Christian ‘contemporary dramatic musical’ from the era when such things were popular (i.e. the 70s), and which our youth group staged at St Andrew’s, Lismore in 1979.
This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at www.thepaynefultruth.online/subscribe
Perhaps predictably, last week’s post about ‘ministry in the year of covid19’ generated quite a bit of interest. This week’s edition is a follow-up about the power and possibilities of ‘one-another ministry’ in these difficult times, with one practical suggestion to think about next.
In my part of the world, the churchly response to covid19 has been swift, responsible and admirable. Many Sunday gatherings have been cancelled, with church staff moving quickly to put together online versions. In many places, small groups have also been put on ice, although churches are making different decisions about that. I suspect that it won’t be long before most small groups in most churches have ceased to function. Again, the suggestion is that we move our small groups online as best we can.
No doubt virtual church gatherings and virtual small groups will help—and no doubt we will learn to make the most of them over time. But the reason that many of us are worried about the spiritual consequences of these (right and responsible) decisions is that virtual church and virtual small groups are virtual in one sense, but not the other.
The word ‘virtual’ has two main meanings:
‘pretty much the same’ — as in ‘I was virtually exhausted’ or ‘I was virtually dependent on her for everything’;
‘the simulation or extension of something through software’ — as in a ‘virtual disk’ or ‘virtual meeting’.
The problem is that virtual church is not virtually church, and ditto for small groups. I think we all believe this—or we would have gone online years ago. (It would certainly be cheaper, easier and more efficient!)
But apart from theological issues, when we try to express what exactly is missing in a virtual church or small group, it can be hard to put into words. We might still share the word together and pray together; even sing (awkwardly) together. But there is a power in physical presence and physical gathering that we can’t replace—of experiencing other people as embodied persons (for that is what we are); of seeing them, and listening to them, and speaking face to face; of being one of multiple voices raised together in confession or prayer or song. Of being together.
It’s the kind of thing Paul means as he prays “most earnestly night and day that we may see you face to face and supply what is lacking in your faith” (1 Thess 3:10). It’s what John is referring to in that lovely little verse that I’m thinking of adding to my email signature: “Though I have much to write to you, I would rather not use paper and ink. Instead I hope to come to you and talk face to face, so that our joy may be complete” (3 Jn 14).
There’s an encouraging, exhortatory, joyful power in personal presence that a letter or podcast or virtual meeting can’t replace. And this is why we are understandably concerned about the spiritual effects of prolonged periods without it—where we are not meeting together, face to face, for what could be six months, or even longer.
In last week’s Payneful Truth I talked about the importance of ‘one-another ministry’ in this context, and how the lack of one-another culture in our churches can often be exposed at times like this.
But (speaking more positively) can anything be done about that? What could we do to promote and build a ‘one-anothering’ culture in the new disconcerting reality of covid19?
With some caution, I’d like to offer a simple practical suggestion. I’m cautious to do so, because things are still changing pretty rapidly (as I write), and something that is confidently asserted today will very possibly be outdated tomorrow, if not next week. I’m also cautious because we’re all still getting our bearings, and calibrating what loving, reasonable, responsible behaviour looks like in this new landscape. And I’m cautious because I know that different Christians and churches face different distinct challenges, and will quite rightly come to different conclusions about how to act.
But with those caveats in place, I’d like to open a conversation about the benefits of face-to-face groups of three people. You might call them trios or triads or troikas or even triumvirates—for convenience, I’ll call them ‘Bible triplets’.
What might it look like, and what would be the advantages, if we encouraged and helped people in our congregations to gather in regular, face-to-face Bible triplets?
Here are some initial thoughts.
If it was the same three people meeting regularly, and appropriate precautions were enforced (hand-washing, 1.5m distancing, staying away when sick, and so on) the risk of viral transmission would be very low—certainly below any current advice from the health authorities about the kinds of gatherings that can responsibly continue. (As of this morning—March 23—the official advice here in Australia is that while religious services should not take place, small groups can continue to meet with appropriate care. This may change, of course, but that is no reason not to be begin this conversation, and to do some planning.)
A cluster of three in this context has a number of advantages. It is significantly safer virus-wise than a group of ten, but is more robust and stable than a one-to-one. It is also less relationally intense than a one-to-one, especially for those who are not used to meeting this way, and yet it provides a nice level of interpersonal interaction.
Triplets like these could be formed out of existing small groups. This is not only organisationally sensible, but provides a level of pastoral control or oversight. Pastors could work with small group leaders to put together triplets that each contained at least one mature Christian—to hold it together, to prevent it going ‘toxic’ (it can happen) and to report back to the small group leader if there are particular issues to address. Triplets could work well in conjunction with regular online growth groups—perhaps triplets could meet weekly for an hour, and the whole group catchup and pray together once a fortnight.
The basic function of Bible triplets would be to keep people connected with God and each other, around his word. Multiple possibilities exist for helping and resourcing people to do this:
They could read the Bible together and then pray, using the Swedish method or the COMA approach (my preference), or something similar. Here’s a link to a nice little Tim Challies piece, explaining the ‘Swedish method’ of Bible study. You can find the COMA method outlined in David Helm’s book, One-to-One Bible Reading, with a summary of the Swedish method as well (see details below).
Triplets could utilise purpose-written material put together by the church staff as the basis of their discussion (perhaps connected to the sermon series, perhaps in video form).
They could avail themselves of the cornucopia of Bible study resources from my favourite publisher, Matthias Media. For this context, the Daily Reading Bibleseries and the Pathway Bible Guide series would be particularly suitable.
They could read together David Helm’s excellent little book, One-to-One Bible Reading, which not only explains the benefits of interpersonal Bible reading, but provides simple, helpful guidelines for getting started (including a good section on how to utilise the COMA method).
With many churches now broadcasting or livestreaming their Sunday services, triplets could be a very helpful way to improve the effectiveness of these times. Perhaps rather than ‘church’ and ‘small groups’ being different structures in the week, we might end up with one meeting time in the week—where the pastor broadcasts some teaching and encouragement, and where triplets listen together, read and interact over the passages together, and respond in prayer together.
There are many creative possibilities, including various combinations of the above.
I’m under no illusion that this ‘Bible triplet’ idea is the solution to all our problems.
For one thing, there will be some church members (and leaders) who conscientiously think differently about the wisdom of conducting even this minimal level of face-to-face meeting. We need to allow each other the freedom to make different decisions, as churches and as individuals within our churches. If we were to start using these small clusters in some way, even allowing time to think and talk it through carefully, there would doubtless be congregation members who felt uncomfortable to participate.
All the same, in the understandable scramble to take all our gatherings and activities online, I’m keen that we not overlook the power and importance of actually meeting regularly together in the name of Jesus—even in a number as small as two or three.
I’d love your thoughts on this one. Do you think Bible triplets are a good idea in this current climate? How would it potentially work where you are? Would it be better to link two couples or households together, rather than three individuals? Do you have any further ideas or resources to help it work? Or does it spark off other quite different ideas for mutual edification and encouragement in the era of covid19?
Send me an email, or contribute to make a comment below.
Thanks to everyone who has signed up—and if you haven’t already subscribed, please do so. It’s the only reliable way to keep getting The Payneful Truth.
PS. This week’s random image is one of my favourite family snaps (from about 20 years ago)—a triplet of my kids fishing at sunset.
This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at www.thepaynefultruth.online/subscribe
One of my hopes for The Payneful Truth is that it will be an opportunity for the very thing I discussed in last week’s edition: for us to speak the truth in love with one another, for mutual instruction and encouragement.
So far so good! Thanks for the many emails and comments that have done just this. And in the coming weeks, I’ll be touching on some of the specific questions you’ve asked, including these two:
Does this view of overlapping ‘zones’ of speech in the Christian community also help us think about Christian speech to outsiders? Do we also have ‘preaching-teaching’ style evangelism and ‘one-another’ evangelism?
Small groups are a good opportunity for ‘one-another speech’ but what about the main Sunday gathering? Shouldn’t it also be a place where we encourage and exhort each other? If so, how?
Stay tuned for more on both of these questions. But in the meantime …
Neither a prophet nor a prophet’s son
As a number of Payneful Truth readers have pointed out, last week’s post on the importance of ‘one-another edifying speech’ takes on a particular relevance in the era of COVID19.
In fact (as some others also reminded me), the final paragraphs of The Trellis and the Vinerather spookily made this connection. The following words were written in 2009, not long after the swine flu epidemic:
Try this mental experiment. Imagine that a swine flu pandemic swept through your part of the world, and that all public assemblies of more than three people were banned. And let’s say that, due to some catastrophic combination of local circumstances, this ban had to remain in place for 12 months.
How would your congregation of 120 members continue to function—with no regular church gatherings of any kind, and no small home groups (except for groups the size of three)?
If you were the pastor what would you do?
I guess you could send your people regular letters and emails. You could make phone calls, and maybe even do a podcast. [The idea of livestreaming services didn’t cross my mind in 2009! TP] But how would the regular work of teaching and preaching and pastoring take place? How would you encourage your congregation to persevere in love and good deeds, especially in such trying circumstances? And what about evangelism? How would new people be reached, contacted and followed up? There could be no men’s breakfasts, no coffee mornings, no evangelistic courses or outreach meetings. Nothing.
You could, of course, revert to the ancient practice of visiting your congregation house-to-house, and doorknocking the local area to contact new people. But how, as a pastor, could you possibly meet with and teach all 120 adults in your congregation, let alone their children, let alone doorknocking the entire suburb, let alone follow up the contacts that were made?
No, if it was to be done, you would need help. You would need to start with ten of your most mature Christian men, and meet intensively with them two at a time for the first two months (while keeping in touch with everyone else by phone and email). You would train these ten in how to read the Bible and pray with one or two other people, and with children. Their job would then be twofold: to ‘pastor’ their wives and families through regular Bible reading and prayer, and to each meet with four other men to train and encourage them to do the same. Assuming 80 per cent of your congregation is married, that would be all or most of the married adults involved in regular Bible-based encouragement.
While that was getting going (with you offering phone and email support along the way), you might choose another bunch to train personally—people who could meet with singles, or people who had potential in doorknocking and evangelism, or people who would be good at following up new contacts.
It would mean a lot of personal contact, and a lot of one-to-one meetings to fit in. But remember: there would be no services to run, no committees, no parish council, no seminars, no small groups, no working bees—in fact, no group activities or events of any kind to organize, administer, drum up support for or attend. There would be just personal discipling, and training your people, in turn, to be disciple-makers.
Now here’s the question: after 12 months, when the ban was lifted and you were able to recommence Sunday gatherings, and all the rest of the meetings and activities of church life, what would you do differently?
(Colin Marshall and Tony Payne, The Trellis and the Vine, pp. 165-167).
Now, I am neither a prophet nor a prophet’s son (Amos 7:14); nor do I know anything about viral outbreak management, flattening the curve, or any of the other subjects about which people on Facebook suddenly seem to be experts; nor is this little parable meant to prescribe what should be done in 2020.
But it does seem to me that the current circumstances will provide a stress-test for the quality of the ‘one-another’ culture in our churches. When our normal opportunities for public preaching and teaching ministries are curtailed (as is already happening in many places), the degree to which we have taught, equipped and encouraged our congregations to speak the word to one another will become apparent.
No doubt many of us will find ourselves underprepared. However (and this was the point of the ‘swine flu thought experiment’), sometimes being forced to think outside our standard modes of operating can be helpful. As stressful and difficult as the current situation is for many pastors and congregations, the changed circumstances also provide fresh opportunities—not only for giving comfort, prayer and hope to those whose secure world has been upended by the pandemic, but for supporting, encouraging and equipping our people to minister the word prayerfully to each other in multiple different ways.
As we figure out how to see gospel ministry continue and grow in the year of COVID19, let’s not only make plans for livestreaming sermons—as important and necessary as that is; let’s also think creatively about how to teach and equip our congregations to “exhort one every day as long as it called ‘today’, that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin” (Heb 3:13).
PS. And for this week’s random pic: I am not a prophet’s son, but I am the son of a wonderful Christian mother (Helen Payne). Here we are about four years ago with her first great-grandchild, (and my first grand-daughter) Ruby.
This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at www.thepaynefultruth.online/subscribe
(Welcome to the second edition of The Payneful Truth. Feel free to forward this email to your friends or use the ‘share’ button at the end to spread the word.)
It’s early March (as I write this) and all across this burning, flooded, toilet-paper deprived land, churches are launching their small Bible groups for the year—or ‘missional disciple-making gospel community growth teams’ as I am suggesting we call ours, just to cover all bases.
It’s a time to reconnect with members from last year, make newbies feel welcome, and get back into the rhythm.
But the rhythm of what exactly? What are these MDMGCGTs that are now such a fixture of church life?
In practice, there is wide range of answers to this question—all the way from ‘a relaxed care-share-and-prayer evening with light touch facilitation’ at one end, through to ‘a full-on church in miniature with responsible pastoral leadership’ at the other. And obviously enough, where you land on that spectrum will have serious implications not only for group expectations and norms, but for what sort of leader is trained and appointed, and what kind of activities the group focuses on.
I suspect that not many Payneful Truth readers are at the extreme ends of that spectrum. Not many of us want our small groups just to be loosely organized friendly Christian catch-ups. But I also doubt that many of us think that our small groups are a viable replacement for ‘church’ (in the sense of a local congregation). Good small groups share some of the qualities and nature of ‘church’—they are opportunities for Christians to gather around the word of Christ together, in the fellowship of the Spirit. But we also sense that they are not equivalent; that the community that is defined and constituted by the larger Sunday gathering (the local ‘church’) is a different thing in key ways from the small Wednesday night gathering (the ‘small group’).
But different how exactly?
There are various ways to answer that question, but the PhD research I’ve been doing over the past few years (now blessedly completed!) has pointed me towards a fresh approach. And it has to do with how Christians grow through the word.
Broadly speaking (and I mean as broad as Bob Katter’s hat), in the New Testament the ministry of the word within Christian communities operates in two overlapping zones. In one zone, the Christian mind of the whole congregation is formed, developed and guarded through the faithful, consistent teaching of the Christ-centred truth of the Scriptures by qualified, recognized pastor-teachers (e.g. 1 Tim 5:17; Tit 1:5-9; Heb 13:7). In our churches today, this routinely happens through faithful, expositional Sunday-by-Sunday preaching. Let’s label this kind of word ministry ‘congregational teaching-and-preaching’.
But there is another zone of Christian word ministry in the NT—one that is the responsibility of all Christians (not just pastor-teachers or elders). This form of speech focuses on exhorting, encouraging, instructing and admonishing one another to make the preached word a reality in our daily lives (e.g. Col 3:16; Heb 3:12-13; 1 Thes 5:11, 14). Let’s call this ‘one-another edifying speech’.
These two kinds of speech are both vital for Christian growth and maturity. And they do overlap. ‘Congregational teaching-and-preaching’ does contain exhortation, admonition and encouragement—applied to the congregation as a whole. And ‘one-another edifying speech’ does contain, and is based upon, the true teaching of the Scriptures. But the focus and function of the two ‘zones’ of word ministry are different.
'Congregational teaching-and-preaching’ expounds, explains and guards the whole truth of the gospel, and shows its application to all of life; ‘one-another edifying speech’ takes that truth, and brings it to the particular contexts of individual people and situations. The former trains my heart to approach every circumstance with the mind of Christ; the latter meets me in that circumstance and provides the help and encouragement I need to express that mind of Christ in godly action.
To put it simply, ‘congregational teaching-and-preaching’ is the zone of word ministry at the centre of our Sunday church gatherings; small groups provide an ideal opportunity for the other vital kind of word ministry to come to the fore and flourish—the ‘one-another edifying speech’ in which we help one another as individuals to understand, remember and apply the word to the granular complexity of our lives.
Thinking about small groups through this lens helps to calibrate our expectations for what small groups should achieve, and what role small group leaders play in that.
It pushes us away from the loosy-goosy end of the spectrum, because the subject of our mutual sharing and exhortation is not ourselves and our problems but the word of Christ, which is supposed to dwell richly among us as we speak to each other in all manner of ways. This in turn means that small group leaders need to understand this priority, and be trained in how to lead their group into the word, and to keep them there as long as possible—so that our personal, practical, exhortatory conversation is word-shaped rather than us-shaped.
But it also warns us against the more rigorist end of the spectrum, in which the discussion is more like an interactive sermon, and the leader is expected to deliver a ‘teaching’ of the kind that the pastors and elders are responsible for. It’s not as if some Bible study leaders aren’t gifted enough to do this—mature, well-trained Christian leaders often are. But this approach not only crowds out the opportunity for the other kind of vital Christian word ministry—the one-another kind—it also places burdens and expectations on small group leadership that the majority of leaders (and churches) really struggle to meet.
There is much more to say on all this—not only on the nature of small group ministry, but about the commonalities and differences between pastoral teaching-and-preaching and the one-another word ministry of Christian believers (and I will return to these matters in future editions).
But lest this short column itself turn into a sermon, rather than a brief shot of instruction and encouragement, I’ll stop.
PS. Thanks for all the messages of encouragement after the first edition last week, and thanks also to those who pointed out that the photo of the Nissan Cedric failed to show up. My fault entirely (still learning the ropes on this new platform). This week’s random photo has to be … Bob Katter’s hat. (For overseas readers, Bob Katter is a colourful Australian politician.)
PPS. Speaking of hats, one of my other hats is helping to organise the Nexus Conference each year. It’s now only two weeks away (on March 23). Check out the Nexus Conference website for why this one-day ministry conference is well worth your time (whether coming in person in Sydney, or via Livestream).
This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at www.thepaynefultruth.online/subscribe
(Welcome to this first edition of The Payneful Truth. For the audio version click on the play button above, or for the text version, just read on … )
Naming anything is difficult. Babies, sporting teams, cars.
Especially cars it seems. Some genius from marketing must have argued for the Kia Pro_cee’d, and the Subaru Brat, and (my very favourite) the Nissan Cedric.
My irreverent son came up with The Payneful Truth for this new weekly journal, and it has grown on me, I have to say.
It has a touch of Australian self-mockery about it, and it rolls of the tongue easily enough. And the more I have thought about it, the more The Payneful Truth captures what I’m hoping to achieve in this weekly journal.
For a start, it names the essential nature of every kind of Christian ministry, including this one, which is to speak the saving, judging, life-changing truth of Christ. This is the truth that convicts us, critiques us, corrects us, trains us, and sets us free. It redeems our minds and hearts to know and live in reality—like the proverbial fish stranded on a sandy shore that has now been set free to swim in the ocean.
This is the truth that Paul urges all us of to speak in love—not only to stabilise us when the buffeting winds of false doctrine blow, but to nourish and grow the body of Christ (Eph 4:14-16). And that really is the main and simple reason that I’ve launched this new journal—to speak the truth about every aspect of Christian life and ministry, so that those who read (or listen) will be encouraged and equipped to do the same.
Νοw, this truth is ‘in Jesus’, as Paul puts it (Eph 4:20). It is certainly not ‘in Payne’! It is only available through the Word that has come to us from outside—from the God who is the truth, and who has supremely and finally revealed the truth of reality in the person, teaching and work of his Son.
But this truth of Christ is only made available to us through human speech—through the authoritative speech of the Scriptural authors first of all, but also through each one of us as we convey the Scriptural truth to others, in whatever form, context, length, mode or vibe in which we speak it. The fulness of God is in Christ, and that fulness is made known as each one of us brings the word of Christ to others, each in our own unique way, with our own unique contexts and opportunities.
In that sense the truth of Christ is always Smith-ful and Lee-ful and Patel-ful—and even Payne-ful.
Which also means that I am hoping and praying that all you Smiths, Lees and Patels out there will also be speaking the truth—not only to all those around you, but back to me, and to other readers. (Fee free to hit ‘reply’ and send me a message, or make a comment in the comments section.)
Of course, speaking the truth is usually ‘payneful’ in the other sense as well. It often hurts to speak the truth, because it exposes us to the criticism of others. And it hurts to hear the truth, because it exposes the lie that we’ve been living—whether the primary cancerous lie of being a rebel against God’s truth, or all the little lies that metastasise from that, and spread through our lives and personalities, and continue to afflict us as Christians.
The truth undercuts and rewrites the false narratives that the world continually whispers in our ears, and which we come to cherish. And because those narratives are so pervasive and so easily and widely accepted (the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction), Christian truth is very often painfully contrarian. In fact, when an opinion or view is widely and commonly held by the world, my immediate (and I think right) instinct is to suspect that something somewhere is wrong.
In our current climate, where moralistic secularism seems to be getting more censoriously aggressive with each passing social media outrage, we need to speak and hear this truth of Christ more than ever.
That’s the big aim of this little journal, The Payneful Truth. Thanks for being with me at the beginning. Please let me know how it’s going (as I get into the rhythm), and if there’s a pressing question or issue you’d like me to address, don’t hesitate to get in touch.
And as for whether The Payneful Truth is a good name—or another Nissan Cedric in the making—only time, and the ridicule of future generations, will tell.
PS. If you’re not already a subscriber, jump on board. It’s free, and it’s the only way to get The Payneful Truth regularly.
PPS. I’m planning to finish each edition with a fairly random or tenuously connected image (so that the post archive has a bit of visual interest). And today it has to be the venerable Nissan Cedric.
This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at www.thepaynefultruth.online/subscribe