From the Dean | 26th February 2010

Did Dr Spock change his mind?  This is not the fictional Spock of Star Trek but the most famous Paediatrician of the twentieth century: Dr Benjamin Spock of “Baby and Child Care” fame.

Dr Spock has been blamed for the 60’s sexual revolution.  These were the children brought up on the permissive child raising advice that he gave to the baby boomers’ parents.  But did he change his mind?

In one sense you would hope that he did.  He studied medicine in the 1920’s at Yale (when, incidentally, he won an Olympic Gold medal for rowing).  He was still giving advice in the 1990’s.  If he did not change his mind during that period of huge advances in medical knowledge, he would have displayed incompetence, verging on culpable negligence.  What we want from our medical practitioners is evidence-based decisions.  As new evidence arrives, changes of opinion, advice and decision are mandatory.

Yet not all evidence is conclusive or unambiguous, nor are all professions backed up by such scientific research as medicine.  Even the science of medicine, such as Dr Spock’s education in psychoanalysis, is not as objective and evidence-based as the community would commonly believe.  There is a great art in good medical practice.

So what is meant when social scientists, and especially politicians, speak of evidence-based decisions?  It sounds right and sensible, as indeed it is.  It is one of those phrases that seems impossible to object to.  What would it mean to make decisions contrary to evidence?  Who, other than one’s opponents, would ever want to do such a foolish thing?  But what does ‘evidence-based decisions’ mean?

The phrase has many uses.  One chief use is to procrastinate on difficult decisions, while sounding reasonable and decisive.  “We are still waiting for the evidence to come in.”  Or, more particularly, “We are waiting for the conclusive evidence to arrive”.  Or “We are commissioning another report or study” - and so avoid make a decision.

In many of life’s decisions the evidence is unavailable to us.  There are often too many variables and complexities for us to evaluate.  There is a certain hubris in imagining that we will be able to know, of a certainty, the best path forward.

Sometimes we cannot know the results of our decision till after the event, and even then, the evidence will be uncertain and inconclusive.  At what point in social experiments do we conclude that we have ‘the results’?  In the first flush of experimental enthusiasm many trials prove a success that is hard to sustain in the long run.  In some areas, like education, it can be the enthusiasm of the experiment that succeeds rather than the new approach that is being tested.  Sometimes the precise point of the experiment shows success but only later does the collateral damage demonstrate that the change was for the worse not the better.  The introduction of asbestos into our buildings was an evidence-based insulation decision that proved to have dreadful health consequences.  In cases like these, later evidence should change our previous decisions.  We should not be afraid of change or of evidence-based decision-making.  But we cannot be sure that our changes will necessarily be any more beneficial than our previous decisions, for we are not in control of the world or the future.

In fact some of our decisions so change the future that we are no longer able to reverse the damage and start again.  We cannot replant the ancient rainforests nor return to a society where pornography was censored.  It will be difficult for a generation of teachers, who were educated without grammar, to fulfil Ms Gillard’s new curriculum, which requires the explicit teaching of grammar in every year from K to 12.  How can we ever unravel the mess we have made of marriage and family life in the last fifty years?

Some issues are beyond measurement.  The Utilitarians’ desire to ‘maximise the happiness of society’ was always dogged by the impossibility of measuring the intangible quality called ‘happiness’.  So deeply committed are some people to the happiness of their personal freedom that no amount of evidence would ever persuade them to return to a happier social structure if it limited their own liberty in any way.  Their freedom to smoke pot, get drunk, gamble recklessly, eat gluttonously, acquire insatiably, watch porn, commit adultery, and generally sleaze around must not be questioned in the calculation of maximising human happiness.

Here is the problem when politicians and other social engineers talk of ‘evidence based decisions’.  It is critical that we understand the context, viewpoint and bias in which we gather and evaluate evidence.  ‘Utilitarianism’, ‘harm minimisation’ and ‘outcome’ philosophies are grander in rhetoric than in close analysis or the delivery of a better world.  They have the hubris of taking our God given human responsibility for the world, without remembering our dependence upon our Creator, the sinfulness of humanity, or God’s present judgement upon this world.  We do not make decisions rationally because we are sinfully disposed.  We are not able to rule the world for we live outside of the paradise of creation, in the hostility of a world under God’s judgement.

God’s word teaches us to use the minds He has given to us in creation to look for evidence upon which to base our decisions.  It teaches us to expect new evidence that will change our mind, repent of our actions, and seek better ways forward.  It also teaches us to respect the wisdom handed down to us by those who experienced life before us.  But we must do this with the fear of the Lord in our hearts, for only then will our decisions be based in the wisdom of humility.  We must trust in the Lord and not lean on our own understanding.  His ways of righteousness are to be our guide.  And we must look to Jesus, for only in him do we see the man to whom the creation is in submission.

From the Dean | 19th February 2010

Organising congregational life is one of the difficulties of modern churches.

The first problem is that congregations become wed to their existing pattern as ‘the right way’ for church to gather.  Thus we become committed to patterns inherited from previous generations.  Anglicans even appeal to the 17th century Book of Common Prayer as their blueprint for church.  However, the pattern envisaged in the 17th century has undergone considerable change since then.

In the first half of the 20th century a fairly common pattern developed across most of Sydney’s parishes.  Most Sundays would commence with an early morning Communion.  Then, as late as 11am, there would be the main church gathering.  This was usually Morning Prayer but would sometimes involve the Lord’s Supper either once a month or after Morning Prayer for those who wanted to stay.  In the evening there would be Evening Prayer, which again, in some parishes, would have Communion once a month.

Around these formal liturgies there were other ministries such as Sunday School, and from the middle of the century, youth fellowships.  Sunday School used to be in the mid-afternoon but as the century wore on it was almost universally conducted in the morning, while youth fellowships were in the late afternoon and became associated with the evening congregation.

Over the second half of the twentieth century large changes happened both in society and church.  The suburbs of Sydney expanded in post-war reconstruction leading to building programmes and parish re-organisation across the diocese.  The coming of television, the proliferation of the car and the introduction of organised and professional sport on Sunday meant the demise of the ‘twicers’ (those who came morning and evening) and the nominals (who attended occasionally and regularly sent their children to Sunday School).

So by the end of the century the pattern of an early morning communion remained – mainly attended by senior members who live locally.  The main morning meeting changed to a mid-morning family gathering, with concurrent children’s programme for the children of the congregation.  The evening congregation became a youth oriented gathering, which loosened the pattern of prayer book liturgy and 19th century hymnody.  So came the homogenous congregation, mainly developed along age and stage of life – elderly at communion, families mid-morning and youth at evening.

This acceptance of special focussed congregations opened up the possibility of other specialised churches.  So congregations for students or particular ethnic groups or particular interest groups came into existence.  The effectiveness of this strategy added fuel to the planting of new churches.  Some of these were split from already existing churches; some of them were mission churches starting with not much more than a couple of people with a vision.  Some were adding congregations to the parish organisation, utilising school or other community facilities, or the parish buildings on a different day or time slot to the existing congregations.  Instead of three congregations some parishes started to run five, ten or fifteen.  This enabled resources to be put into ministers and ministries rather than into increasing the size of church buildings.

However, some people have rightly seen the advantage of a single large congregation over a number of smaller congregations.  Larger churches can afford to provide more specialised quality ministries, especially larger and better-organised children and youth ministries.  The size of a congregation has a distinct and decided effect on how church is organised and conducted.  A simple illustration is the quality of acceptable music, reading or even preaching of a church of fifty people compared to a congregation of five hundred.  The little church rightly glories in the intimacy and personal care of all its members and rejoices in the stumbling attempts of any of its sons or daughters trying to use the gifts God has given them for the benefit of the whole.  Whereas a larger congregation needs to be run with a degree of efficiency in order to help the many and varied people who attend.  A little congregation can afford to wait for its members to turn up before starting whereas the bigger church has to start on time whether or not some of its members are running late.

So at least two models of church growth are at work in Sydney now: the large congregation model and the congregational planting model.  Both have advantages and disadvantages, though sometimes writers and consultants promote one in opposition to the other.

The large church model is good when there is a large central building and a staff of specialists (senior pastor, children’s or youth worker, families pastor, singles pastor, music director etc).  Its weaknesses are that it can be a ‘consumer’ and ‘professional’ church with staff instead of members ministering.  It can also fail to recruit and train others for ministry as it provides everything for people and does not even train its staff with a sufficiently broad experience of ministry.  These are not inevitable outcomes, they can be overcome by intentional planning.

The congregational planting model is good when it is impossible to build large facilities, or there is a great diversity of people groups to reach, and a staff of generalists who can each take responsibility for a congregation and its outreach.  But it has the disadvantages of small congregations, struggling to gain critical mass to survive and grow.  These are often congregations with tired members and seemingly unnecessary and inefficient duplications of activities.  It is inefficient to have five men preparing sermons for five small congregations, instead of four of them freeing up one man to preach a better sermon to a larger congregation.  But there’s the rub – how do we get better preachers for the future if we do not have young preachers being forced into the regular pattern of preparing and delivering sermons.

The Bible tells us very little about how to organize our church, for the heart of the gospel is not organizational but spiritual.  There is no right way – neither the traditional nor the contemporary; the single congregation or the multi congregation; the large church or the church-planting model.  Each has its advantages and disadvantages for the particular situation.  For the sake of Christ’s church and the benefit of his people, we must be prepared to make the changes necessary to minimise the disadvantages and maximise the advantages of our congregational organization.

From the Dean | 12th February 2010

Inside the Northern or Town Hall door of the Cathedral is a large monument recounting the many ways God used Samuel Marsden for the benefit of others.  It does not call him the “flogging parson” but the “Apostle to New Zealand”.  It is a tribute not an exhaustive history, but reading it is generally exhausting - for few men achieved so much in their lifetime.

As the second chaplain of the prison colony he not only consistently taught God’s word and led His people but also conducted marriages and burials for the whole community.  At the same time he was engaged in the civil matters of the colony, bringing him into the position of a magistrate with all the unfortunate consequences of his reputation.  He was also engaged in the economic construction of the community being a farmer and ship owner.  In many ways he was the father of the sheep industry of Australia and the grape industry of New Zealand.  Furthermore, he took a leading and active role in caring for the children of the colony, establishing and governing schools and orphanages, and with frustratingly little success, he tried to help the Aborigines.

Samuel Marsden was a convinced evangelical and so was committed to world evangelism and the missionary cause.  He was deeply involved with missionary activity in the Pacific islands, and personally took a leading part in reaching the Maoris.  While Marsden struggled to find a way forward with the indigenous peoples of Australia he found progress in New Zealand.  He was the first man to preach Christ there and set up a mission, which required him to cross the Tasman many times.

In his period of history this concern for the salvation of mankind was often confused with improving and civilising society and especially the ‘savages’ of the world.  The war on slavery was still in full swing and the horrors of human abuse touched the evangelical conscience.  Adding to the complexity of these issues, the missionary movement was also inextricably bound up with the development of the European empires and their financial interests.

All this has led to very confused verdicts of later generations.  Samuel Marsden’s motives and actions have often been questioned.  The good that he did has often been discounted by the associated evils that he was engaged with.  Late last century the Australian academic A. T. Yarwood published a full and interesting biography: “Samuel Marsden; The Great Survivor”.  But dispute and controversy continues to reign over the work and life of this colourful character of colonial times.

Though I knew all this, nothing quite prepared me for a recent reading of a New Zealand travel guide.  In it the author recounted the state of New Zealand in the time of Marsden.  There was a toxic combination of Maori culture - practising cannibalism, slavery and fierce inter-tribal warfare - with the off scouring of European adventurers, profiteers, escaped convicts and “all manner of miscreants”.  Alcohol and tobacco abuse, European diseases and gun-running led to the collapse of tribal structures.  “Maori women were prostituted to the Pakeha sailors”.  One settlement was described as “the Hellhole of the Pacific” and Darwin in 1835, found it as a lawless place, the home of “the very refuse of Society”.

And Marsden?  The travel guide had this to say of him: “Into this scene stepped the missionaries in 1814, the brutal New South Wales magistrate, Samuel Marsden, arriving in the Bay of Islands a transformed man with a mission to bring Christianity and ‘civilization’ to Maori, and to save the souls of the sealers and whalers.”  In our terms, Marsden may have been brutal, but in the day in which he lived and compared to the people he was seeking to serve, his brutality is hardly the most striking feature.  And yes, he served as a magistrate in Parramatta, but he was first and foremost a minister of the gospel and came as a missionary not a magistrate.  In the guide book he, and the other subsequent missionaries, are further attacked for ruining the Maori culture even for demanding that they “abandon cannibalism and slavery”!
What we have here is the later generations’ judgement on the sovereignty and sanctity of all cultures.  Today’s European (Western) culture claims there are no moral certainties or absolutes, and nobody should impose their ideas upon anybody else; even by persuasion and prayer.  We now are being taught that no culture is superior to another and the only immorality is to spread your culture to others.  People should have been left in their own culture, whatever it was, without the arrogant intervention of Europeans.

Indeed Christians can agree that the European cultures with their rapacious exploitative greed were far from righteous.  But travelling alongside those cultures, and deeply critical of them, was the Christian view of humanity, which sought to preserve the sanctity of human life, while bringing the enlightenment of God’s word on how to live it.  That meant opposing slavery and cannibalism and other appalling practices such as polygamy, prostitution and (in India) suttee.  Missionaries brought education and medicine, and intervened to stop the endless round of tribal warfare.  They frequently helped those invaded by the commercial interests of Europe to adapt to a new world order that could not be avoided.

Those who do not believe in spiritual realities have little sympathy for the work of liberating those who have lived all their life under the fear and terror of the occult forces administered by witchdoctors.  Those who were liberated rejoiced in receiving the great news of salvation.  For them the images and idols were not fascinating collectables of indigenous art but the instruments of the torturous darkness of evil spirits.

The imposition of Western culture is as great today as ever – both the commercial interests and the social cultural norms.  The critics of cultural imperialism often unwittingly impose the intellectual norms of Western ethical and religious relativism on others.  Christians must remain as committed to world mission as ever, for as Paul told the philosophers of his day: “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).

From the Dean | 5th February 2010

It was nearly thirty years ago, so I cannot remember the details accurately but the local primary school P&C meeting ran something along the following lines.

“There is no agreement amongst the community as to which football code to follow.  Some want Soccer others League or Union and still others want Aussie Rules.  So we, the staff, have decided that the school will not play any football this winter.”

“But all the boys like League, surely we can have one team for them.”

“Some of the parents think it’s too rough and are worried about injuries.”

“What about we change to soccer?”

“There are injuries in soccer too.”

“But this school has always played League and nobody was injured last year.”

“Well, we have a couple of families who have moved from Victoria and they want to have Aussie Rules, and we can’t provide everything.”

“So why not provide for the majority and keep going like we always have?”

“That wouldn’t be fair to the ones who want Aussie Rules.  So it is better to have no football at all.  That is fair for everybody.”

“It’s not fair, it’s stupid!”

“That’s the only way we can treat everybody the same.  We don’t have any football - so nobody misses out.”

“You mean everybody misses out!  My boys and their mates will miss having football for sport.  They’re all mad keen on footie.”

“Studies have shown that in sporting development the girls are the same as boys in primary school and so we have to offer sports that both boys and girls can participate in together.”

“I don’t want my girl playing football.”

“No, we won’t be offering it, so your girl won’t have to.”

“But my boys want to play footie.  They’ll be so disappointed.  They enjoyed it last year.  Do we have to integrate the sports?  Can’t the boys have football and the girls play something else, they like?”

“Girls can play football just as well as boys.”

“I don’t believe that, but if it is true then why not have football for all who want to play?”

“Football is not really suitable for children.  It is too violent and it encourages violence in the playground.  The staff think there are more suitable games for boys and girls to play together.”

“You mean the staff do not like football.  How many of them have ever played it?”

“That’s an irrelevance.  The staff are all professional teachers and will coach whatever sport is considered appropriate for the age and development of the children.”

“Has this decision got anything to do with the last male staff member leaving?  Now that Mr X has left the school, does that mean there are no men left to coach the boys in footie?”

“No, it has nothing to do with that at all!  Our staff are all professional educationalists and could coach football if needed, but they feel that we have to reduce the level of violence in the playground and teach the children how to play quieter, less anti-social games together.”

“You mean games for girls.”

“Not just for the girls, the boys can be taught to enjoy them, also.” 

“So there is no place for what boys like in school?”

“No, that’s not true.  Studies have shown that boys and girls can have the same interests, if the environment in which they are raised encourages cooperation and removes anti-social behaviour fed by competitiveness and physical violence.  Furthermore, there are some boys who are very good students but do not like football.  They feel alienated and left out by the social status of football in the playground.  School is an educational institution and it is a shame when some of the best scholars feel they have no place in the school.”

“You just don’t like football!”

“No, it’s just that there is no agreement on which football the community wants, and we cannot offer them all, so it is better to have none.”

“When did you last go to a footie game?”

“My personal preference has nothing to do with it.  It is purely a professional educational issue.  Football has no real place in an educational institution.”

Strangely, it was almost the same argument that I was experiencing about the place of religion in the university, where as a chaplain I saw Christians and Christianity being continually marginalised.  “There are too many religions, and so nobody can be catered for lest others are disadvantaged.”  For many, religion was deemed to be anti-social and anti-feminist, the staff had no competence in it, people in powerful positions did not like it, and felt that it was not what a university is about - so “better to have none than any”.  Of course this had nothing to do with personal opinions or private prejudices!  It also flew in the face of students’ widespread interest in religion and the place of religion in history, literature, music, culture and society.

It is much the same today in the media, politics and public debate and wherever secularists are given sufficient power to censor others’ opinions in a “free and open society”.

From the Dean | 29th January 2010

What are we to make of Mary MacKillop’s miracle cure?

En route to declaring Mary MacKillop as Australia’s first Saint, the Pope’s advisors have thoroughly tested the medical evidence of the cure of a cancer patient.  It has been investigated very carefully to make sure that the doctors saw no hope of cure and that the cure has been complete.  No doubt, the people involved are sincere and are not making financial gain from their testimony.

Recently, on the Sydney Anglican website, Mark Gilbert wrote a helpful article on how to talk to our Roman Catholic friends about this miracle.  But what are we to make of it ourselves?

Should we rejoice in answered prayer?  Should we doubt the evidence before us?  Should we learn from this to pray to the Saints for their assistance in prayer to God?  Should we see this as evidence that Mary MacKillop is a ‘Saint’, who has already been accepted by God into his presence?  Should we pray to, or even for, the dead?
Secularist commentators have been deeply offended by the suggestion that prayer changes anything or that God ever cures people.  Their view of the world does not allow the possibility of God’s intervention into the physical reality of disease.  So in order to attack the supernatural, they ask: “Why should God cure one person when thousands are dying of hunger or disaster, like in Haiti?”  Or they point to the number of people who have automatic remission of their cancer without prayer, or the number of people who pray and are not cured.

But Christians believe that God answers our prayers as he determines is best for us.  That as the sovereign ruler of the universe there is nothing impossible for him (Luke 1.37, 18.27).  So God curing somebody of an apparently incurable cancer, while extraordinary, is not unbelievable for us.  We may not know why God answers the prayer of one person and not another, but we always pray for everything and rejoice with thanksgiving whenever we see God giving us the things we have prayed for.

But what about asking Mary MacKillop to pray to God for us - will God hear the prayers offered in her name, or offered by her on behalf of other people?  Was the woman healed because God listened to Mary MacKillop?  And what is the wisdom of praying to somebody who has not yet been declared a Saint? Can a non-Saint, or someone who has been declared a Saint for that matter, hear and assist in our prayers?

At this point there is a conflict between experience and the Bible – a conflict that is increased by the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church.  It poses for us the choice of whether our belief, about prayer and life after death will be determined by the Bible or by our experience.  In this case the experience is being interpreted by Roman Catholic teaching.

The controversy between Bible believers and Rome over prayers for the dead, or prayers to the saints is a well worn track that I do not wish to follow in this article.  Anglicanism is Protestant in its doctrines.  Therefore on this matter, the Book of Common Prayer does not pray to, or for, the dead but studiously avoids such practice.  You may remember in the Lord’s Supper that we pray for the whole state of Christ’s church “militant here in earth”.  And Article 22, of the 39 Articles describes praying to the Saints as “a fond thing vainly invented, and grounded upon no warranty of Scripture, but rather repugnant to the Word of God.”

However, the argument from experience is very common amongst Christians today and needs to be seriously questioned.  For miracles are not self-explanatory.  Neither do they authenticate the godliness of their workers.  The Old Testament talks of false prophets doing miracles (Deuteronomy 13:1-3).  Jesus warned of false Christs and false prophets who would “perform signs and wonders to lead astray, if possible, the elect.” (Mark 13:22).  We are also warned of the coming of the lawless one “by the activity of Satan with all power and false signs and wonders and with all wicked deception for those who are perishing” (2 Thessalonians 2:9-11).

The question of the miracle then is not whether it happened (though of course it is important to avoid rogues and charlatans by checking the facts carefully) but what is its significance or meaning.  This question is not answered by the miracle itself but the belief system in which it occurs and the purpose to which it is put.

A miracle that is made in response to prayers to a dead person is contrary to the Bible’s view of the centrality, uniqueness and resurrection of Christ as well as the nature of death and the significance of ‘Saints’.  Consequently, Bible believers may well believe the testimony that the miracle happened, but will quite significantly disagree with the Roman Catholic interpretation of its meaning or significance.

That a woman, who prayed to Mary MacKillop, was cured of her cancer is quite possible and believable.  That Mary MacKillop heard her prayer and prayed to God on her behalf or that God answered the prayer of Mary MacKillop is an entirely different matter.  Biblical understanding would firmly deny that such things happened.  The Bible warns us not to draw such conclusions from such an experience. 

However, drawing false conclusions from experience is not limited to Roman Catholicism.  Many Protestants today also draw false conclusions from their experiences.  Strange and ‘miraculous’ experiences like ‘slaying in the Spirit’ or the ‘Toronto blessing’ or ‘words of prophecy’ or ‘power encounters’ – are not self-interpreting and do not authenticate ministries as being from God.

While truth needs to be weighed and evaluated in the light of experience, experience itself is a very poor guide to truth.  Experience needs to be understood and interpreted in the light of the truth, taught to us in God’s word.

From the Dean | 22nd January 2010

This year is the bicentenary of the birth of the first Australian-born clergyman, and the first Dean of our Cathedral: William Macquarie Cowper.  His father, for many years the rector of St Philip’s York Street, arrived in 1809 as the third chaplain to the penal colony.  William was born the next year, and as his middle name indicates, had the newly arrived governor as his godfather.

I hated Australian history at school.  We seemed to be taught it every year and it never interested me.  Mind you, not much did interest me at school.  If it weren’t for the extra-curricular activities I would have died of boredom.  It wasn’t till my third year at university when I took a course in historical geography that I discovered any interest in our own history.

As an adult I am very appreciative of those wonderful schoolteachers who so nobly fought the indolence of my youth and drummed some information into me.  It was most likely, as unpleasant an experience for them, as it was for me.  But they gave me some rudimentary idea of who we are, why we are here, how my family’s migration fits into a bigger picture and why our nation operates as it does. 

The history of Australia explains why we speak in English, have a constitutional monarchy, a democratic government, a British system of justice, where our wealth came from, and why we play cricket.  It also explains our modern multicultural society and our guilt over our treatment of the indigenous peoples of Australia.  History is one of the keys that each generation is given to find its bearings in life. 

It is shared public information that all children are taught.  There may be disagreements about the interpretation of our history.  Some see the story line from a right wing perspective others from the left. Some are concerned about the issues of the Irish or the Aborigines or the convicts while others are more interested in the advance of society leaders, government officials or the squattocracy.  But there is a canon of historical events that happened and can be taught as explanatory of our nation’s formation.

This enables our community to discuss together the way forward from here.  History does not bind us to remain in the past but it does bind us together.  And it explains why things are the way they are and what we are losing and gaining by making changes.  Generally people do something for a reason – sometimes the reasons are good and sometimes bad.  Before making changes it is always wise to discover the reasons why people acted as they did previously.  It is unlikely that our own generation is the repository of all good ideas.

However, recent conversations have made me wonder whether we still share knowledge of historical events.  I am not talking of shared interpretation of the events but any knowledge that the events happened at all.  I have experienced an apparent disappearance of the basic canon of Australia’s historical events.

In teaching about William Cowper to groups of people under the age of 30, I have tried to place him in his historical context.  To my amazement, I have discovered an almost complete lack of knowledge of colonial history.  The names and events of governors Arthur, Bligh or Macquarie, or issues like emancipation, or the exploration of the continent - the crossing of the Blue Mountains, the inland explorers or the journeys of Matthew Flinders - or even the gold rushes, were basically unknown.

I am not for a moment suggesting that today’s education is not as good as ‘the old days’, or that the next generation of adults are anything but great.  It is not that they are poorly educated so much as differently educated.  My sample of about fifty people is small and not scientifically based.  Yet they are highly educated and intelligent - nearly all have at least one university degree.

I hope that I am completely wrong in all this – that I have met only the strangest sample of Australians – completely uncharacteristic of their generation.  But if my experience of difficulty in talking of William Cowper is indicative of the historical education of our community, there are some real concerns for Australia and especially Christian Australia.

Common understanding of our origins is a basic peaceful mode of uniting a community.  Losing your past, or censoring it, is one of the ways to destabilise a society.  It makes us the victims of the present fads and fashions and worse still – victims of today’s power brokers.  The past may not be our vision for the future but it is powerfully explanatory of who we are, where we have come so far and what we need to do to implement our vision for the future.  To have no common canon of historical events is to have no common understanding of ourselves.

A nation is much more than its government, and its government’s legitimacy rests on much more than its election.  A nation, even one with a democratically elected government, is much more than the current opinion of the majority of its citizens.  Otherwise, we are dominated by the transitory, live under the tyranny of the majority and risk the terror of popularism.  The protection of minorities in a democracy resides in systems of justice and government that go beyond parliament and its present office bearers.  The acceptance of Government power resides in the culture of the community.  That culture comes from the community’s history.

What makes Australia’s culture is the history of white settlement.  Modern Australia was founded by Christians from a Christian nation, along basic Christian principles and culture.  Some of their actions, like some of ours, are a terrible blot on the name of Christ e.g. indigenous exploitation.  Others have had the great benefit of His gracious wisdom – e.g. no slavery or polygamy.  However, we were not founded as a Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim or Atheist nation.  If we had been, our culture, society and form of government would be very different today.  Ignorance of white settlement, censors Christianity out of our culture.  Australia Day is a good time to recapture who we are by remembering how we were founded.

From the Dean | 15th January 2010

Like everybody I have a problem with temptation.  But the problem is not just the difficulty of facing temptation: the problem is of understanding what is meant by the word ‘temptation’.

Dictionaries describe for us how the word is being used today.  Some words have entered or been popularised in English by their Biblical usage.  But over time words change their meaning.  This is especially worrying when the word is a key Biblical term such as ‘temptation’.  So it becomes important for the Bible to be retranslated into modern English if we are to understand what the original author meant.  Modern translations have frequently, though not completely or consistently, replaced the word to ‘tempt’ by the word to ‘test’. 

It is interesting to compare the Oxford and Macquarie dictionaries in their entries on ‘tempt’.

Oxford:
1 (archaic) Make trial of, try the resolution of, (God did tempt Abraham). 
2. Provoke, defy, (shalt not tempt the Lord; would be tempting Providence or fate to try it). 
3. Entice, incite esp. to sin (to do, to action esp. evil one) I am tempted (strongly disposed) to question this
4. Allure, attract

Macquarie
1. to induce or persuade by enticement or allurement
2. to allure, appeal strongly to, or invite: the offer tempts me
3. to render strongly disposed (to do something)
4. to do or try to incite; assail with enticements, esp to evil
5. to put to the test in a venturesome way; to risk provoking; provoke: to tempt one’s fate
6 (Obsolete) to try or test

Both dictionaries go on to explain that the word is derived from the Latin ‘temprare’ meaning ‘handle, touch, try or test’.  And both mention that this meaning is now obsolete or archaic in modern English. 

In general, the common usage of the word today is ‘to entice or persuade to do something, especially something sinful’ (Oxford meanings 3,4 and Macquarie 1,2,3,4).  However in the Bible, the word means either ‘to test or to try’ or ‘to provoke and defy’ (Oxford 1,2 and Macquarie 5,6). 

The modern English word ‘temptation’ has two emphases that significantly narrow and shift the meaning of the Biblical word.  Firstly, temptation is now about testing in the negative sense of testing with evil intent. And so it is difficult to understand God testing Abraham or Jesus being sent by the Holy Spirit to be tempted, or why we need to pray that God would “lead us not into temptation”.  Secondly, it is now about the internal seduction by our own sinful desires (Mark 7:15-23, James 1:12-15), rather than the external pressures of the devil, circumstances or suffering.  So ‘temptation’ today means ‘seduction, enticement and allurement’.  In this sense the Bible is clear that God cannot be tempted, nor does he tempt anybody (James 1:13), for God is without sinful desires and does not wish the death of a sinner but that all may repent and live (Ezekiel 18:32).  Furthermore, when the word is narrowed like this, it is difficult to see how the sinless Jesus could be tempted at all, let alone “in every respect” as we are (Hebrews 4:15, Titus 1:15).

Here then is a problem for the modern Bible reader.  The Bible’s meaning is now the archaic/obsolete meaning and the modern meaning is very rare, if present at all, in the Bible.  So a word that has come into the language from the Bible is now used primarily to mean something akin to but significantly different from the Bible.

Once this shift in meaning is understood, the Bible’s old (archaic/obsolete) way of speaking makes sense of verses about God testing Abraham (Genesis 22:1, Hebrews 11:17) and Israel (Deuteronomy 8:3) and our need to “examine” and “test” ourselves (2 Corinthians 13:5).  He tests us (i.e. tries, proves, even refines) not with evil intent but for our good.  Similarly we can understand more clearly what is meant by not putting God to the “test” (Psalm 95, Deuteronomy 6:16, Luke 4:12).  That is, we are not to provoke him or to insist that he prove himself. We are to trust him rather than test him. 

Often in life, tests and examinations are conducted for the good purposes of discovery, teaching, strengthening and proving the character, quality and resolve of people (Deuteronomy 8:1-3).  A good teacher will use tests to assist students’ education, in hope that through the testing all will grow in their knowledge and show their increased understanding by passing their exams.   

But sometimes tests are conducted with evil intent to catch out, trick or find fault (Mark 8:11, 12:15).  Here is the Tempter’s work – the liar and deceiver, Satan our adversary and accuser.  He is not interested in the welfare of the people he is testing but rather in defeating them and bringing them under his power and control.  A bad examination is one that has no educational value but is set to catch people out and make them fail especially by trick questions.

God undoubtedly does test us for our good.  And within God’s tests, Satan attempts, by lies, to seduce us to do evil and to test God’s patience and faithfulness to his word.  This seduction works upon the sinful soul, for it invites us to enter into our own desires (Ephesians 2:1-3). 

It is not surprising that sinful people are more aware of the enticing allure of Satan to do evil than of the blessing of God’s testing.  Over several centuries even our language of temptation has been restricted to this internal desire to do evil.  It is now astonishing to read the King James Version of the Bible “count it all joy when ye fall into diverse temptations” (James 1:2-4).  It sounds more like Mae West or Jerry Seinfeld than the Bible.

From the Dean | 8th January 2010

“A Calvinist on your knees and an Arminian in the pulpit” has been the counsel to young ministers for many years.  It is the thoughtless advice of pragmatism, declaring theology to be irrelevant to the work of ministry.

The short hand terms ‘Calvinist’ and ‘Arminian’ refer to the interplay of God’s will and the human will.  To grossly oversimplify for the sake of this article - in the matter of our salvation and in preaching, the Calvinist emphasises the sovereignty of God whilst the Arminian emphasises the ultimate responsibility of the human.

I am not talking here of one sermon but generalising (with all the strengths and weaknesses of arguing this way) about the preaching agenda and pattern of two theological systems.  In any one sermon it may be impossible to determine if the preacher is Arminian or Calvinist, though the theologically discerning can usually pick it.  But over time the real theology of the regular preacher is demonstrated – even sometimes against his own profession.  For many a preacher has not worked out how to practice his own theology – but rather follows the pattern of the day.

The “Calvinist on knees and Arminian in pulpit” saying appears to take the best from both theological systems.  Unfortunately, instead of complimenting the two systems on their strengths, the saying insults both.  It is an insult to say that Arminians do not depend upon God in prayer or that Calvinists do not preach challenging sermons.

The saying also tries to combine two incompatible theological systems.  Both systems hold to certain truths of the Bible but you cannot cherry-pick the bits of a theological system you like without creating a new – and in this case, illogical and unbiblical alternative.

It is never the aim of a preacher to bore the congregation.  How appalling to make the person of Jesus and the word of God boring.  There are bigger insults e.g. ‘your sermon is false or unbiblical’, but to be called boring is one of the biggest insults that can be delivered.  If the accusation is true, the boring preacher needs a serious spiritual reconsideration of his ministry.  Sometimes, however, the ‘boring’ verdict tells more about the hearer’s willingness to listen to God’s word than the preacher’s ability to teach it.  It is important not only for ministers but also for congregation members to understand the aims and goals of preaching and preachers.

Calvinists must never be seduced into Arminian style preaching in response to the ‘boring’ criticism.  For the style of preaching expresses the theology that lies behind it and Arminian theology is significantly different to Calvinist theology.  The Arminian concentration on human responsibility has an immediacy and relevance to the hearer.  It is always interesting to hear a sermon about yourself.  There is no topic more interesting to the human heart than ‘me’.

However, in an attempt to be relevant, lively, challenging, interesting and exciting, Calvinists must not ignore the profound weaknesses in Arminian preaching.  For the difference has deep pastoral consequences – even deeper and more important than boredom.

The subject of the Calvinist preacher is not the hearer but God in his glorious majesty.  His sermons are less about what we have to do and more about the wonder of what God has already done for us.  To make the mighty work of God boring is a great tragedy.  To overcome our incompetence as preachers by turning our attention to the audience and their felt needs is to change theology.

This difference in subject matter has enormous pastoral implications.  For Arminianism always underestimates how sinful we are as well as overestimating the significance of our actions in reconciling us to God and God to us.  Such sermons paradoxically lighten our sinfulness while adding to our guilt.  They tickle the ear in saying how good, wonderful, moral and spiritual we are while burdening us with legalistic rules and regulations or spiritual exercises to perform and experiences to have.  Sermons on “Ten steps to improve your prayer life” or “Six ways to a perfect marriage” or “to raise your children to be Christian” or “Steps to inner peace” etc. create in us an unrealistic evaluation of our successes and ourselves while increasing our guilt in our failures and burdening us with more rules, regulations and techniques for spiritual growth.

People do not need the lie that they are fundamentally good (with a little sin problem).  Nor do we need more teaching that puts us, instead of Jesus, at the centre of God’s world and plans.  “God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life” maybe true but places us at the centre of God’s existence instead of God at the centre of ours.  Christian preaching must be more than spiritualised self-help.  Such sermons promise help but effectively lock us into our failures and increase our guilt without relief.

What we must proclaim and hear is of our Creator and his wonderful grace and love shown in his Son Jesus.  What the church and world must hear is of the victory of Christ in his death, resurrection, ascension and heavenly rule.  What we need to know is the love of God in the forgiveness of sins and the transforming power of His Spirit bringing new birth.  We need to know the grace of God that takes our sin seriously by paying for it while extending the acceptance of forgiveness.  The Gospel truths relieve and revive but more morality and legalism are but the burden of death to us.

And this is the end point of Arminian preaching.  It appears more interesting for it addresses our perceived problems with concrete action steps to follow.  Yet at best it addresses the felt symptoms of our dissatisfactions.  In reality it fails to listen to God’s diagnosis of our problems and the remedy of His glorious plan of salvation.  It turns the centre of our attention onto us instead of onto God and Christ Jesus – and that is more a symbol of sinful natural religion than of the Gospel’s spiritually revealed salvation.

The Briefing | 23rd July 1998

Fred was an old man when he told me the story of his miracle. He had not told many people over the years, because of his fear of appearing stupid and facing disbelief and ridicule. But it was as real to him in old age as it was on the day it happened many years before as a young apprentice mechanic.

Young was the right word. His mother had lied about his age to get him the job, but his mother was widowed with several younger children and somebody had to bring some money into the house.

Fred was intelligent, responsible and diligent, and his boss was sufficiently impressed with him to leave him alone in the garage occasionally to do extra work. Fred used to enjoy these times alone. He got to use all the tools and fiddle with machines, his inquiring mind leading him into all kinds of discoveries that can only come from getting ‘hands on’.

On the day of his miracle, Fred had been tinkering with an expensive car. The boss would probably not have let him touch it, but Fred’s theory was that if you don’t ask permission you can’t be forbidden. Late in the afternoon, alone in the workshop, he started to take the expensive car apart. He knew he had an hour or so to play with it.

As he came to put back together what he had dismantled, he did not line up one of the nuts correctly, and it became very difficult to screw in. As with many a young boy, his impetuosity led him to solve the problem by simply applying more force, and he kept screwing harder and harder, until it completely jammed. It wouldn’t budge; nor would it unscrew, for the thread was by now badly burred.

He was stuck. The nut would neither tighten nor loosen. The minutes ticked away. The panic increased. He tried first one way then the other in a kind of wild frenzy. Any movement seemed only to make it worse. He was sweating and terrified. Not just fearful of having wrecked the engine but of losing his job. The apprenticeship was his big chance in life. His mother relied upon his income.

As the minutes passed before the boss would return to close up for the day, Fred turned to prayer. He was a Sunday School pupil. He had never doubted God, but then again he had not thought much about him either. But now he felt he needed divine help like never before. He was in danger beyond his ability to cope. So he prayed, right out loud, asking God to help him.

The prayer of the youthful Fred raises many of the concerns that all of us have who believe in and pray to God. What can we pray for? What could we expect God to do, and what should we expect him to do? Does prayer only change the person who prays, or does it also change the circumstance of life? Does belief in miracles commit us to claim health, wealth and justice now? Is the age of miracles over? Are miracles limited to the works of apostles? In brief, is God willing to help and is God able to help?

In this particular case, will God be interested in such a minor matter as Fred and his nut, when the world is torn by suffering and torment? Does God hear and respond to the prayers of naughty apprentices? Is God able to reverse the damage of a cross-threaded nut? Can God intervene in the laws of nature so as to change what happens? Can he do it without creating chaos in the whole universe?

The world seems to lurch between the materialistic skeptics who would not believe even if they were bowled over by a miracle, and new age gullibles who would believe anything provided it was unbelievable. Does prayer make any difference to life?

William Barclay’s argument in the introduction of his book The Plain Man’s Book of Prayers is an example of those who teach God’s inability to help. Professor Barclay writes:

Prayer moves within the natural laws which govern life. When we think of it, this is a necessity. The characteristic of this world is that it is a dependable world; if the laws which govern it were erratically suspended, it would cease to be an order and become a chaos. Suppose a man was accidentally to fall from the fortieth floor of a New York skyscraper; suppose him to be a good and devout man and a firm believer in prayer; suppose him, as he passes the twentieth floor in his downward descent, to pray, “O God, stop me falling”. That is a prayer which cannot be answered, because in that moment that man is in the grip of the law of gravity, and to suspend the law of gravity would be to put an end, not to his fall, but to the world in general.

A very important conclusion follows from this. Prayer does not normally promise or achieve release from some situation; it brings power and endurance to meet and to overcome that situation.

Everybody has their off day, and I presume that this was Professor Barclay’s. The illustration fails dismally. It is hard to understand how praying while passing the twentieth floor could possibly give the unfortunate man “power and endurance to meet and to overcome” his situation.

Furthermore, even if it were true that God cannot “suspend the law of gravity”, that would not limit his ability to use other parts of the so called “laws which govern” the world to answer the man’s prayer. He could send a great wind to save him, or direct a passing albatross to bump him in a window on the nineteenth floor! Bizarre situations may require unusual methods, but they do not require suspending the “laws which govern” the world.

Yet it is not true that laws do “govern” the world. It is God who governs the world, not laws. The Bible is theistic not deistic. The world is not a machine that God cannot interfere with but the creation of the God who upholds it and governs it in every detail. No blade of grass grows, no hair of the head falls out, nor any sparrow dies without God. His Son upholds the universe by his word of power; all things are held together by him (see Matthew 10:29-30; Hebrews 1:3; Colossians 1:15-17).

The fact that God, by his word and wisdom, created the world as an orderly and habitable place may mean that the world displays a uniform and regular pattern of operation. The fact that he created humans in his image to govern this world under him, may mean that we are able to discern many of the methods by which he ultimately governs his world. But we must not mistake our knowledge of these regularities for his sovereignty in ruling the world. We must not replace the Creator with Nature, or God with Mother Nature.

It is more than the person praying that is affected by God hearing our prayers. In the letter of James we read:

What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? You want something but don’t get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight. You do not have, because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures. (James 4:1-3)

The reason they do not have is their failure to pray. This passage does not make sense if prayer makes no difference, if it only changes the person who prays.

It is true, of course, that prayer changes and strengthens the person who prays. It also brings glory to God. But these truths do not in any way conflict with the other truth—that God is listening to our prayers and may respond in ways that change our circumstances and our world in accordance with our requests.

So would God listen to someone like Fred? Is God willing to help people in such seemingly trivial difficulties?

We must never presume upon God’s willingness to grant our requests. Our Lord Jesus himself had to submit his own will to that of his Father.

We only know of God’s will in advance when God has revealed it to us. We know of his will to forgive all who ask in the name of his Son (1 John 1:8-2:2). We know his willingness to grant wisdom to those of his children who ask in faith (James 1:5). We know these things because he has revealed them to us in his Scriptures. But what is his will concerning cross-threaded nuts and bolts?

We know of God’s general goodwill to the fatherless. He is called the helper and father of the fatherless (Psalm 10:14; 68:5). Fred was caring for his widowed mother, and for his fatherless siblings. Surely he was one to whom God would listen. Yet this does not prove that God would do everything for which Fred ever asked. God is not committed to obey the voice of every orphan. God does not obey humans. He sovereignly responds to our requests, as he chooses.

Fred had made a dreadful mistake. God could choose to teach him an important lesson by allowing his error to be found out by the boss. Or God could rescue Fred by providing the help he so desperately sought. But of this one thing we can be sure: whatever God chose would be in Fred’s best interests. Which it would be on this occasion we cannot determine in advance because we are not God. We do not see all the factors involved. We cannot determine all or even any of the outcomes. We cannot see if he would lose his job or learn lessons either by receiving his request or by having his request denied. We are not God, and without a clear word from God we cannot anticipate the outcomes.

When Fred told me the story many many years after the event, he still did not know what it meant, anymore than I did. He was still embarrassed and reticent to tell it. The only other time he had ever told somebody, they had laughed at him. For some time he had continued to struggle with the nut. He had used all the strength he could muster and all the techniques he had learnt in his short career. But nothing moved. And the boss was soon to return.

When Fred prayed to God, he did not know what would happen. All the same, he did not ask to be given “the power and endurance to meet and to overcome that situation”. He wanted the nut fixed.

Having finished praying, he tried once more with the spanner. The nut glided into place just as it should have all along. It was effortless, smooth, easy. Everything was perfect. His prayer had been answered.

Those who do not believe in God immediately cast around for a naturalistic explanation for what happened. We recall the times when we couldn’t loosen a lid and asked someone to help who then found it very easy because we had already loosened it and with weakened fingers could not finish the job.

A naturalistic explanation removes any need for belief in God to those who do not want to believe anyway. For them, God is the filler of gaps in our knowledge. Fill the gap with knowledge and God disappears. But belief in “the God of the Gaps” is not Christian belief. God is not an hypothesis to cover our ignorance.

Miracles are not “phenomena whose mechanisms we cannot explain”. We know that God divided the Red Sea by using a great wind (Exodus 14:21). Knowing how God did it does not remove it from the category of miracle. Nor does it mean that we can dispense with God from any discussion of the crossing of the Red Sea.

All who pray believe in miracles. We believe that God can materially change the world and consequently the situation we are now in. That is why we ask him for help. Without his help things will not change, and without our asking he may not change them.

Whether we know how he changes things is not relevant to those who ask. Whether he uses the normal processes by which he rules the world or brings into play other processes unique to the situation, is not relevant to those who pray. We do not pray in order to see, understand or analyse miracles, but in order to find help in our hour of need.

Fred could not fix the car. He thought it could not be fixed without major work being done to it. But when the nut slipped smoothly into place, he was overwhelmingly convinced that it was God answering his prayer for help. He did not understand how it could happen. Even years later, having been a mechanic all his adult life, he still could not understand how God fixed it.

Nor did Fred know why God had fixed it. He just knew that it was God acting on his behalf—not because he deserved it, but because God was being kind to him and saving him. From that time, Fred knew that God was a mighty Saviour and could be trusted for all things in life.

And yet Fred still did not know what Jesus had done for him on the cross, or how Christ’s resurrection could bring him new life. The difference between faith in the God of miracles and crass superstition is not very great. It was many years later that Fred came to understand and accept the gospel which saves. He knew that he was not saved by the miracle, but by the death of his Lord. And then he knew that it was the God and Father of his Lord Jesus Christ who had rescued him that day.

From the Dean | 18th December 2009

Most Christians find a degree of contradiction in the celebration of Christmas.  It can be seen in our attempts to ‘put Christ back into Christmas’ or in our critique of turning the generosity of gift giving into the materialistic cash cow of the retail industry.  But lying behind these issues is a far more profound contradiction between natural and revealed religion.

Humans are almost universally religious, although it is notoriously difficult to define religion.  The range of activities and ideas that come under the word ‘religion’ seem almost infinite.  Humans want to be connected to something larger or ‘other’ than themselves which leads to all manner of religious expressions.

While the variety of these religious expressions is great, their similarity is also noticeable.  There is the creation of mood by music or dance, by candles or lighting, by incense or joss sticks, and by artwork and architecture.  There is the sense of authority in the ancient and traditional, in processions and in unusual clothing and costumes.  There is the sense of otherness in the elevation of the mystical, magical or miraculous and in the downplaying of the rational, sensible or normal.  There is the diminution of the human in obeisance, homage, physical discomfort or even self inflicted pain and suffering.  There are usually dietary rules about what can and cannot be eaten and about fasting and feasting.  There is the effect of being in isolation, quietness and silence or the opposite method of losing one’s own identity in a large crowd of worshippers all concentrating on a single concern.

These are all external expressions of what can be called ‘natural religion’.  They are the expression of the religious instinct that requires humans to act in ways that align them with or please the supernatural being(s) or force(s) that impact lives.  It is ‘natural religion’ because it is what humans naturally can understand and participate in.  It is what is done when people think of ‘religion’.  It is what is expected at a religious observance.  The individual custom may vary – from drums to organs, from incense to candles or to joss sticks – but the basic idea that these are ‘religious’ is the same.  It may be the otherness of a medieval chant or the overwhelming power of modern electronic percussion or just the rhythmic drumming of tribal dance but it moves the participants beyond the normality of life into a religious experience.

These religious expressions have an ethereal impact on aesthetic sensibilities giving some sense of ‘otherness’.  They are all attempts and activities of humans to get in touch with the spiritual side of reality.  And as such are quite different to revealed religion.

For what may be known about God, He has made plain to us in his creation (Romans 1:19f). 

And in many and various ways He spoke by His prophets to His people of old.  And in the last days He has spoken to us by His Son – the Lord Jesus Christ (Hebrews 1:1-4). 

He is the perfect expression of all that is God, for in Him the whole fullness of God was pleased to dwell (Colossians 1:19). 

He was the Word of God become flesh.  And when we beheld His glory we beheld the glory of God (John 1:1,14)

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Revealed religion is not about how humans please God but how God saved humans.  It is not about how we come to know God but about how God has made Himself known to us.  It is not about how we perform the rituals that will bring us into the spiritual realm but how God entered into our realm to bring us to Himself.  And behind revealed religion is the personal God as opposed to the spiritual force or reality or even the many gods interacting with each other.  For revealed religion is about relationship with the personal God issuing in changed behaviour rather than the experience of supernatural otherness (James 1:27).

This very thing is what makes Christmas celebrations so contradictory for Christians.  For if ever there was a time to celebrate the revelation of God to humanity it is at Christmas when we remember the moment in history when God became man.  Yet each year the Christmas celebrations appear to be increasingly conformed to the practice of natural religion.  There are the funny costumes, the large crowds, singing (often meaningless) traditional songs about mythical characters in a far away land and time.  It is about food and gifts and community celebration.  It is ‘seasons greetings’, ‘merry xmas’ and ‘happy holidays’.

And into this heady and enjoyable mix of natural religion, Christians try to inject revealed religion.  We wish to proclaim God become man, the baby who comes to be crucified and sinful humanity’s need for a saviour.  Our message is about relationship with God not ceremonies to get in touch with Him – but we declare this message in the midst of ceremonies where people are once more feeling touched by the supernatural or the nostalgia of their natural religion.

Richard Dawkins is the leader of today’s active atheists.  He makes no bones about seeking to undermine Christianity.  But in 2007, calling himself a cultural Christian, he confessed that he had no intention of undermining Christian tradition - “I like singing carols along with everybody else.”  Natural religion is of no threat to atheism and can be joined in with enthusiasm by all and sundry even the most extreme anti-Christian atheist.

Many years ago I recall rejoicing to hear my child sing ‘Jesus loves me this I know’ and then recoiling in horror as she segued into ‘I feel like a Tooheys’.  It is the undiscriminating jump from ‘I saw mummy kissing Santa Claus’ and ‘Rudolph the red nosed reindeer’ to ‘God of God, Light of Light, Lo he abhors not the virgin’s womb’ or ‘veiled in flesh the Godhead see; hail the incarnate deity’ that makes Christians cringe over the contradiction in Christmas celebrations.

The Briefing | 24th September 1997

One could almost feel sorry for the commentators as they struggled to fill in the minutes and hours of the late Princess of Wales’s horse-drawn funeral procession through the streets of London. What more was there to be said that hadn’t been said a hundred times over? What further platitudes could be uttered about the tragedy of Diana’s death, the sympathy we all felt for her sons, the rift with the Royal family, the role of the paparazzi (great word that), and the massive show of public affection and grief.

It was a tough day for commentators. And it still is, at least for the Christian commentator. As the weeks pass, and the wave of public emotion subsides, what perspective can we bring to it all that reflects God’s wisdom?

Superficial observations spring quickly to mind—the tragedy of a life cut short, and two young boys left motherless; the hypocrisy of the media in funding and supporting the paparazzi who had some role in her death, and then indulging in a frenzy of tasteless adulation and wall-to wall emotion in its aftermath; the extraordinary canonization of Diana that has already occurred, in which her positive attributes and good works have been magnified (along with her sufferings), so as to place her above criticism.

In one sense, there is little to be gained by analysing the Princess herself. It matters not what you or I or any human court decides. Her appointed time has come to stand before the Judge of all, who gives to each person according to what he or she has done. In that court, only one opinion matters, and it is not Elton John’s. We can mourn Diana’s passing—and who cannot feel sorrow at her ugly death, and compassion for her sons—but we cannot pass judgement on her life, not least because we actually know very little about her.

We would do well to remember that the ‘Diana’ we all feel we know, and who formed such a part of so many people’s lives, was largely a fiction. Her life was a fairytale in more ways than one—a shimmering image of style, beauty, gossip and myth, constructed for us by the tabloid media for its own commercial purposes, and in which the Princess herself was sometimes an accomplice and sometimes a victim. Who knows what she was really like? Who knows whether she really was passionately interested in the land-mines issue, or whether it was simply the perfect public relations exercise to revive her flagging public profile? Or was it both?

It’s a reminder of what a strange world we occupy. Through our continuous consumption of the popular media, we live in an unreal virtual world, created by the image-makers and spin-doctors. We are heartbroken at the death of a woman on the other side of the world, whom we do not know, have never met, and who has nothing to do with our lives. Yet we do not know the name of our next door neighbour, awkwardly nod to him as we park our car, and would neither know nor care if he died tomorrow. In the modern world, it is possible to live an almost disembodied existence, and feel more affinity with the semi-fictional personalities of media-land than with the real people who live all around us, and who are as lonely as we are.

This cannot but strike us as another example of how out of touch our world is with reality. Having abandoned God, the source of all reality, we really haven’t much clue any more about what matters and what doesn’t, who is virtuous and who isn’t, and what is tragic and what isn’t.

As we bring the wisdom of God to bear on the whole messy tale of Diana’s brief life, the tragedy is in fact even more stark. Beyond the tragedy of the early death of a young mother lies the tragedy of human sinfulness and its consequences—and I am speaking not so much of Diana’s sinfulness as the world in which her life was formed: the world of the British aristocracy and the jetset. The Book of Proverbs warns repeatedly of the disaster which follows when God’s ways are abandoned in favour of adultery, drunkenness and selfish indulgence. Diana’s short life was a case in point. Her own family was divided and ruined by unfaithfulness and divorce. Her marriage into the house of Windsor brought little improvement. Her husband failed miserably to keep his marriage vows—to love, honour and cherish. Her own broken marriage followed the sad pattern of all the other broken marriages in the current generation of royals.

This is not to say that Diana was an innocent victim. By her own confession, she behaved foolishly and immorally. And we will never know to what extent she charted her own course through the life that led inexorably to the Ritz Hotel on that fateful night.

Nor is it to say that the decadence we see in high society is anything more than our own sinfulness writ large. Theirs is the glamorous lifestyle to which most of the world aspires—which is why we buy so many magazines with Diana on the cover. It is not that their hearts are any more sinful. Perhaps it is simply that in their wealth and social mobility their sin has more opportunity for blatant public expression.

All the same, it is hard to escape the conclusion that the decadent world of high society is not a healthy place to be. Faithlessness, adultery, opulence and privilege make a dangerous cocktail. It is a tragic world, where ruin, despair and death follow inevitably from the sinfulness of human folly. Never was any part of our world more in need of the repentance and forgiveness of sins that comes through Jesus Christ.

This whole perspective was of course entirely missing from the blanket media coverage, and this hardly surprises us. However, what should surprise and appal us—although it may not—is that this perspective was also sadly missing from the sermon-less, gospel-less, content-less funeral at Westminster Abbey.

The Briefing | 9th July 1997

Some time ago, I went to a conference with forty medical students. I commenced proceedings by asking this question: “What are the important decisions that you will face in the next couple of years?” The answers were relatively predictable: marriage, which hospital to work in, what specialisation to follow, what to do with all the money they would earn, how to cope with moral dilemmas such as abortion and euthanasia, if and when to go to the mission field, and so on.

These sorts of decisions seem to preoccupy young Christians (and not-so-young Christians as well!). We want to find God’s plan for us in these important decisions, so we look to the Scriptures for guidance. However, the Bible doesn’t seem to be of much help. It only seems to speak in a general sense. It doesn’t help me to decide whether to be a mechanic or a brain surgeon, or whether to marry Druscilla or Mary-Lou.

The traditional approach to this problem has been to distinguish between God’s general and special wills. God is said to have a general will, applicable to all mankind and revealed in the Bible, and also a special will for each one of us, that is not found in the Bible. God’s general will tells us, for instance, not to commit adultery and not to be ‘unequally yoked’, but in order to choose between Druscilla and Mary-Lou we have to discern his special will for us.

How do we discover God’s special will? The proponents of this approach usually recommend a combination of various methods: consulting older Christians, praying, seeking God’s peace, putting out a fleece, waiting on God, looking for signs, hoping for open doors, and soon. More recently, there has been an upsurge of interest in ‘hearing God’s voice’ speak to us directly through impressions, voices in our heads, dreams, visions and such like.

This approach is wide of the mark for a number of reasons, and to explain why let us return to my encounter with the medical students.

I asked them another question: “What colour is the equator?”. They refused to answer. I asked them again. They still wouldn’t answer. In fact, they told me that they couldn’t answer and that the question was stupid.

This would have been very frustrating for me had I been an honest seeker wanting to know the colour of the equator. What if I really thought that the equator was coloured? If my friends continued to stonewall, I would have to turn to other sources of information to find an answer.

The point is this: if we ask the wrong question, we either get the wrong answer or no answer at all. And if we get no answer, we are tempted to turn elsewhere to find an answer. Many of our problems with guidance stem from precisely this: we ask the wrong questions, and then wonder why we cannot find answers. We flounder around in great anxiety trying to discover the colour of the equator.

How do we know if we are asking wrong or irrelevant questions? From what we know about the sufficiency of God’s revealed word, it would seem simple. We should ask the questions that God thinks are important, and these are the questions he has answered in the Bible.

God does not have two plans, one general and one special. He has only one plan, and it is both general and special. He wants all people, and each of us individually, to be under Christ (Eph 1:3-10). He has a plan for each Christian to make us like Jesus by guiding us along a path of good works until we reach perfection on that Last Day (Rom 8:28-30; Eph 2:8-10).

This is God’s priority for us all. This is at the top of his agenda. Unfortunately, it is not always at the top of our agenda. We are terribly concerned about choosing between Druscilla and Mary-Lou. We think the success of our whole married life will depend on the right choice, and we agonize over it. However, God’s priority is for us to be godly, whether we are single or married, and whether we marry Druscilla or Mary-Lou. After all, that is the journey we are on—to become like Christ.

What is more, God has given us all we need to know to complete this journey. If something is important and we need to know it in order to fulfil God’s plan, then it is there for us in the Bible:

His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness.1 Peter 1:3

All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. 2 Timothy 3:16-17

God has not left us in the dark, or in the twilight. He has not left out anything that is important for us to know on our journey with him.

Decision making
When we come to apply this to the nitty-gritty of daily life, God has also provided something to help us: the biblical idea of wisdom.

Wisdom is a broad and rich concept in the Bible and we haven’t room here to do it justice. Put simply, wisdom is the art of living successfully in God’s world.(1)  The wise person understands that the world works in a certain way, because God has created it to. God’s world is an orderly and rational place. It is marred by the Fall, to be sure, but it is still God’s good, habitable, predictable Creation. What is more, he has created humanity in his image to be the rulers of this creation, to name it and work it and subdue it, and to multiply ourselves within it. The wise person understands this, and makes his or her way through the world skilfully and successfully on this basis.

Wisdom is firstly and essentially known through the revelation of God’s mind. “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding” (Prov 9:10). Because this world is God’s creation, we can only really understand how it fits together, and where it is heading, by knowing God and his plans. Only by having a right relationship with the Creator and Ruler of the world can we begin to understand the world, and be free to live rightly in it. God’s way of living will always be best, because he made the world and knows the best way to live in it.

The ultimate expression of God’s wisdom is Christ “in whom all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden” (Col 2:3). In knowing Christ, we come to know the mind of God. We not only see what God is like, we relate to him personally. We are shown and taught the way of life that pleases God, and his ultimate purposes for all creation.

However, although wisdom can only ultimately be known by knowing God, something of wisdom is available to the human mind because we are made in God’s image. The world has been made according to God’s wisdom, and functions properly when wise principles are applied. Even the non-Christian, therefore, can perceive something of wisdom by observing what works (or doesn’t work) in the world. Anyone with an ounce of sense can see, for example, that laziness leads to poverty, or that talking too much gets you into trouble, or that hard work and good management lead to prosperity. This is simply the way the world works, because God has made it to work this way. By observation and experience, and by applying the mind God has given us, we can work something of this out. We start to see patterns, and causes and effects. We begin to accumulate ‘wisdom’.

However, even though some of this sort of ‘wisdom’ is available to everyone, the Bible also teaches that if we do not fear the Lord, our ‘wisdom’ will be misshapen and faulty. The world in its wisdom did not recognize God’s Messiah—if they had, they would not have crucified him. Worldly wisdom, because it has a different starting point and different aims, opposes God’s wisdom in Christ at many points. Although there is some overlap—at the level of agreeing that certain things achieve good results in our world—there are also major and numerous differences. Worldly wisdom ultimately fails to be wisdom, because in not acknowledging God as the Creator and source of all true wisdom, it keeps making faulty judgements. At many points, worldly wisdom simply won’t work.

With this brief sketch of what ‘wisdom’ means, we can very helpfully divide the decisions that we face day by day into three categories. These categories aren’t absolutely watertight, and some decisions will contain elements of each (more on this below). The categories are:

1. Matters of righteousness
2. Matters of good judgement
3. Matters of trivia

1. Matters of righteousness
Whenever God’s word tells us explicitly and precisely what to do and what not to do, the decision is simple: we should joyfully and gladly obey.

The Bible sees certain things as always right and others as always wrong. God’s guidance, for example, is for us not to steal or commit adultery or deny Jesus. He wants us to love our neighbour as ourselves, to rejoice in the hope of salvation, to clothe ourselves with humility, and so on.

We often have to make decisions at this straightforward level of obedience to God. We are faced with the choice of acting righteously or unrighteously, and as those who fear the Lord, Christians should choose to do what is righteous and holy and pleasing in his sight. And this obedience is not a burden. Our response to God’s word should be a firm trust and a willing repentance. We are God’s adopted sons in Christ, and we have his Spirit dwelling within us, leading us to obey the law and put to death the misdeeds of the body. Obeying God (or choosing to act righteously) is a joyous privilege, and as the wise person rightly perceives, it is also the best way to live.

An important clarification is needed at this point. Sometimes, it is not just the act itself which is right or wrong. Sometimes, the context or situation will determine whether it is right or wrong. Killing, for example, may sometimes be right (Ex 21:14-17) and sometimes be wrong (Ex 20:13), and God tells us how to distinguish between the two. Similarly, although all foods are clean, Paul warns the Romans that it is not always right to exercise our freedom to eat them:

Do not destroy the work of God for the sake of food. All food is clean, but it is wrong for a man to eat anything that causes someone else to stumble .It is better not to eat meat or drink wine or to do anything else that will cause your brother to fall.  Romans 14:20-21

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In much the same way, our motivation for doing something can be righteous or unrighteous, even though the action itself is neither here nor there. Decisions about where to live, for example, are not in themselves questions of obedience. However, our motivations for moving to one place rather than another might be quite wrong (e.g. status, pride, greed), and we would need to repent of this. Having done so, the suburb or town itself is a matter of relative indifference, and we would use other means to make the decision (more on this below).

Sometimes, then, there will be some aspects of our decisions that are matters of righteousness, and some others that are not. We need to give first priority to the matters of righteousness, for they are the things that matter most to God.

2. Matters of good judgement
Even though there are many decisions in life which are straightforward matters of righteousness, there are many others which are not. Sometimes we are faced with two options that both seem ‘right’, and we still have to choose.

Marriage is an example of this is, in 1 Corinthians 7. Paul is careful not to impose celibacy on people as a matter of righteousness or obedience. It is right to marry, and it is right to remain single and celibate. It is a choice between two ‘rights’. So how do I choose? Paul gives some practical advice on the benefits of marriage and singleness. If your sexual appetites are strong and lead you to burn with passion, then you’re much better off married. That is the best course for you. If you do have the gift of remaining single and staying sane, then that would be a better thing for you, because in a fallen world so much can be achieved for the Lord by a single person.

In other words, making wise decisions is not only about acting righteously. Having listened to God in the Scriptures, and viewing the world from his perspective, good decision-making also involves using observation, experience and good judgement to work out what is the best course of action in a particular case. This is part of wisdom, as we saw above. Some situations or courses of action just work out better in this world, because of the way God has created it. Proverbs is full of these sorts of observations about life:

Better a meal of vegetables where there is love than a fattened calf with hatred. (Proverbs 15:17)

He who walks with the wise grows wise, but a companion of fools suffers harm. (Proverbs 13:20)

A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger. (Proverbs 15:1)

Finish your outdoor work and get your fields ready; after that, build your house. (Proverbs 24:27)

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These are astute assessments of what life is like in God’s world. But in one sense, they do not stem from a special divine revelation. Anyone can see that if you spend time building your house before you have first provided a source of income or food, you will starve—and then your beautiful house will not be much use. Anyone who observed life, and thought about it, could come to this conclusion.

In other words, even where God doesn’t give us direct guidance, he still graciously provides for us. He puts us in a good and habitable world which is not chaotic or unpredictable. He gives us the ability (and the mandate) to make enough sense of the world to live in it, and to rule it, however imperfectly. He doesn’t leave us totally lost and incompetent in an utterly hostile environment. Despite the disorder and suffering that we encounter (as a result of sin and the Fall), we are capable of thinking about life and making decisions. Despite the frustration and absurdity that is part of our fallen world, we are capable of some wisdom.

Christians often get confused about ‘righteousness’ decisions and ‘good judgement’ decisions. If something is a matter of righteousness, then there is no need to search for further guidance or discussion—we should do what the Bible says is right and flee from what is wrong. However, if a decision is not a matter of righteousness, but simply of good judgement, then we should seek the counsel of the Scriptures (to see what principles or perspectives they might give), weigh up the factors involved, and then make our choice—without feeling guilty that we might be making the ‘wrong’ choice. If it’s not in the right/wrong category, then we can’t make the ‘wrong’ choice. Choosing either course is perfectly right and pleasing to God.

To return to our example of choosing a place to live, we do not need to worry that God has a particular suburb picked out for us and that we will be acting disobediently in choosing the ‘wrong’ one. There is no word from God in the Bible indicating that one area is more righteous to live in than another. Provided we have dealt with our motivations, and repented of greed, ambition and pride, then the choice of suburb is simply a matter of good judgement. All sorts of factors might influence our decision. For example, we may move to a particular location in order to avoid being in debt, or to move our family closer to a biblical church, or to reach a particular community with the gospel, or to reduce traveling time to and from work and thus have more time with the family, or for a host of other reasons which reflect a wise, God-centred way of thinking—and which would therefore be a better, rather than a worse, decision to make.

Any of our decisions in life, from the things we buy, to the politicians we vote for, to the way we spend our leisure time, can be influenced by this sort of wisdom.

This means that different Christians will make different decisions according to their differing circumstances and perspectives. For godly motives, one family might decide to live in the country, and another in the city. In one situation, we will answer a fool according to his folly; in another circumstance we will choose not to (see Prov 26:4-5). This is quite possible with matters of judgement. One man, in the wisdom of God, will choose to marry Druscilla; and another, also in the wisdom of God, will opt for Mary-Lou.

At this point, some Christians baulk. It sounds as if too much responsibility is being landed back in our court. What if we make the ‘wrong’ choice and step outside God’s will for our lives? This is a knee-jerk reaction from our old, habitual thinking. If both courses of action are ‘right’, then either course represents God’s will for us. And we can’t step ‘outside God’s will’—his plans can never be thwarted (Job 42:2).

What if something is a ‘matter of judgement’ and we make a poor judgement (that is, a choice that has nothing unrighteous about it but is just not terribly clever)? Will I have to suffer the consequences? Most likely, yes. God wants us to learn wisdom, and very few people learn wisdom if their folly is continually rewarded.

However, God does protect his people—we do not need to be anxious about it. He won’t allow us to be lost because of our own folly or to be tempted beyond our strength (1 Cor10:13). He will pick up the pieces and make sure that we survive and grow through the experience. If it is in our best interests to suffer the consequences of our folly, then God will bring them to us, but if it isn’t, then God will spare us. We can trust his generosity and power to do so.

3. Matters of trivia
Wisdom will also tell us that some decisions are of such little consequence, that they are not worth wasting time and energy on. They are not matters of righteousness; nor would one course or other be particularly better or worse. An example might be choosing between two similarly priced, similar quality items that we were about to purchase. In these instances, we should just make a decision and do it, without much thought.

In fact, the wise person will see that it can be a mistake to invest too much importance in decisions that really are trivial. By giving more energy and time to a decision than is warranted, we can end up overlooking things that are important, either as matters of righteousness or of good judgement. We can find ourselves straining out a gnat, but swallowing a camel.

Having outlined these three categories of decisions, we can begin to see that quite a few of the decisions we face are multi-faceted—that is, they contain elements of righteousness, elements of good judgement, and elements of trivial unimportance. Of course, part of wisdom is being able to tell the difference.

(1). For more on this, see Graeme
Goldsworthy’s excellent book, Gospel and
Wisdom, (Carlisle: Paternoster, 1995).

The Briefing | 21st May 1997

Perhaps it is because whenever we read the verse, we think of claims to papal power and the need to prove that Peter was not the first pope. Whatever the reason, we often forget the other more positive side of Matthew 16:18.

“I will build my church.”

This is a momentous statement, for it describes Jesus’ program for the future. At this point in Matthew’s Gospel, the storm clouds are gathering. In the very next paragraph Jesus tells his disciples for the first time about the violent death that awaits him. But Jesus’ vision for the future goes beyond his death. The big plan is to build his church—to gather his people from all over the world to himself.

In the rest of the New Testament, we see this grand purpose begin to be realised. As the disciples scatter throughout the Roman Empire, they take the gospel of Jesus with them. They preach it, and churches are planted (to which the apostles return in due course to appoint elders, as in Acts 14).

We aren’t told about any special program of church planting. It just seems to happen as the gospel is preached and people respond to the message in each place. The believers gather together and a church is born. And each of these gatherings (or ‘churches’) is part of the one great gathering of all Christ’s people.

Evangelism will always lead to church, and church is Jesus’ program. It must be our program too. In particular, given the situation that we find ourselves in, the challenge before us is to plant new churches.

Any discussion of church planting must assume three things.

Firstly, true Christian churches are planted only where the pure gospel of Christ is preached. We must not vary from the gospel of Jesus Christ and him crucified, with its accompanying call to faith and repentance. This is the foundation for building Christ’s church. This is the seed for planting. And we must not think that the church of Christ can be planted by any other method. If we are not preaching the gospel and seeing people come to faith through the power of the Spirit, then we are not planting churches. We may simply be transferring existing believers from one place to another.(This may be a good thing in some cases—especially if they are being ‘transferred’ from churches which are not teaching the Bible. But it is not planting so much as transplanting.)

Secondly, we cannot preach this gospel of Christ without carrying the cross, as he did. This is not optional. We cannot preach Christ and expect to avoid suffering. We cannot preach Christ and be popular. We cannot preach Christ without being willing to lay down our lives for the salvation of others. Very often, the suffering will come in the form of persecution. And most painful of all, it will often be from other Christians. Just as for Christ it was his co-religionists who persecuted him most, so for us it will be members of other Christian churches and denominations who are most hostile towards church planting. Most Christians are all for evangelism and church planting, so long as it doesn’t affect them—the NIMBY syndrome (Not In My Backyard). But in a country like Australia, it is almost impossible to plant a church without affecting someone else. And when it does, tension and disagreement inevitably occurs. We cannot discuss church planting, and get involved in it, without being prepared to suffer for it.

Thirdly, any discussion of church planting assumes a passion for the lost. Millions of Australians will be born, grow old and die without ever hearing, in a meaningful way, about what Christ has done for them. The Bible may still be a top seller, but there is little evidence of it being high on the list of what people actually read. The lost are all around us. There are many areas, communities and sub-groups in our society which have little or no Christian witness within them. How can we reach them? We cannot expect them to come to us. We must go to them, and plant churches in their midst.

Given these three assumptions, what can we say about church planting? Before we say anything else, we must first clear up the confusion that continues to surround the word‘church’.

Confusion about ‘church’
It is a truism these days to say that ‘church is people’, or that ‘the heart of church is the congregation’. This is an important and right perspective, and one which reflects the biblical emphasis. In the New Testament, ‘churches’ are fundamentally gatherings of Christians. Whenever, wherever or however they met was a matter of some flexibility, but that they met was the key thing.

However, even though this view of church is now held by many people, we are still influenced by other connotations of ‘church’ much more than we realise or care to admit. We need to think and speak carefully about ‘church’, for if we are confused at this point, our efforts at church planting will almost surely fail—or more likely, will never even get started.

We all know, for example, that the ‘church’ is not the building. The building is the convenient rain shelter that the ‘church’ meets in. Even so, the ‘church building’ dominates our thinking more than we acknowledge. It has a habit of setting our vision for us.

For instance, if our church building holds 200 and we pack it three times a Sunday, it is tempting to think that we are doing quite well. We are filling the building after all. However, in most areas, 600 people would still be a tiny proportion of the population—in the average suburb of30,000 it is 2%. We would need five churches, each of 600, just to be getting towards 10%. We must not let ‘church’ as ‘building’ affect our consciousness of the task before us.

Denominations are the same. As evangelicals, we are more committed to the gospel than we are to any human association or tradition, and yet we continue to fall into the trap of thinking that the denomination is important, and must be maintained and grow. Even though we know that the denomination is not even a ‘church’, it is still easy to allow the expectations and demands of the denomination to dominate our thinking and set the parameters of our activity. For example, we will not consider planting a church where the denomination already exists, even if the area is crying out for a new Bible teaching church.

Of course, both church buildings and denominations are useful things. Life is very difficult without a church building—it is possible but awkward. The same is true for relations between congregations. It is entirely right and appropriate for us to set up associations, to maintain fellowship and to pool our resources. Indeed, the New Testament assumes that there will be some sort of relationship between churches, not only in terms of mutual collaboration but also with regard to standards of doctrine and behaviour (“If anyone wants to be contentious about this, we have no other practice—nor do the churches of God” [1 Cor 11:16]). However, both the building and the denomination can loom too large in our minds when it comes to church planting, and nip our efforts in the bud.

Another common confusion is to confuse the ‘church’ with the ‘parish’. Parishes are basically geographical zones of rights and responsibilities. Within this area on the map, a particular congregation has the responsibility for the spiritual welfare of the people. The nature of parishes varies from denomination to denomination, and even where the system is well established (such as in Anglicanism) their legal status is hard to determine.

However, even though we know that the ‘church’ does not equal the ‘parish’, we have a habit of allowing our sense of ‘parish’ to dominate our idea of ‘church’. Instead of seeing ourselves as having a duty or responsibility to an area, we begin to nurture a sense of ownership about our particular part of the vineyard. This is our patch, and if anyone has the temerity to come and start to work in our patch we will be suspicious and hostile. We may only be reaching 2% of the parish (which would make us a very successful church by today’s standards), but we still feel that the other 98% is ours!

Finally, it is also most helpful not to confuse ‘church’ with the ‘church complex’. Most of us have a host of associated bits and pieces which are usually lumped together and called ‘the church’—there is the minister and his residence, the various Sunday services, the youth group (and its youth worker), the parish council or committee of management, and so on.

It would be more accurate (and helpful to our thinking) if we did not speak of this whole complex of things as ‘the church’, if for no other reason than to recognize that there are usually a number of quite separate ‘churches’ who are part of the whole. Remember, the essence of ‘church’ is the congregation. Most ‘churches’ have several congregations within them who have very little to do with each other. The 8 o’clockers don’t know the 11 o’clockers who in turn wouldn’t know the 7:15ersfrom Adam. Speaking biblically, we should probably say that there are three churches here, sharing a common pastor and property.

This is important to recognize, because it means that we can plant new churches without going anywhere. We can start a new congregation meeting on a Friday night or Sunday afternoon or whenever. There are many ‘church complexes’ who need to do some church planting in their own backyard, so to speak, by starting new congregations.

Why we must plant
Let us turn to our current situation, and why it cries out for church planting.

There has been some focus over the last 15 years or so on ‘church growth’. The church growth movement has its pluses and minuses, and here is not the place to enumerate them. However, it is fair to say that the overall result of ‘church growth’ strategies has been fewer but larger churches. There has been little appreciable change in the net number of Christians in our community. The spread of them has been altered. The deck chairs have been re-arranged. But the 3% or so of Australians who are recognizable as born again, Bible-believing Christians has not changed for some time. We remain a tiny proportion of the population. Even though there is a multiplicity of Christian churches throughout Australia, in every town, suburb and village, we are making very little real progress in winning Australians for Christ.

How did we get to this position?
As Australia was settled during the 19th century, the churches followed the settlement routes. In each town and village, churches formed, although the methods of their formation varied from denomination to denomination. By 1900, the area of settlement was basically full, and from that point began to contract. Country towns diminished in size or disappeared altogether. Urban consolidation gathered pace. The country town of 15,000 now contained only 3,000, but the churches still lined the main street—the Anglican, Methodist, Roman Catholic, Presbyterian, Baptist, Congregationalist and so on. They all had their buildings but their congregations were tiny.

The village churches surrounding the cities became suburban churches. As the city expanded into a new area, there was already a village church waiting to greet them. Some of these churches adapted well to their new suburban environment; others not so well. But across the board there was very little drive to plant new churches. The consequence is depressing.

To take Anglicanism in Sydney as an example, the number of parishes has remained largely unchanged since World War II, and the number of churches within those parishes has decreased (as branch churches have closed). Attendances within the congregations have not grown—if anything they have shrunk. And during this time, the city has trebled in size! We have been pushed to the margins of the community. As the city grew, we did not plant churches, either within our church complex or in new areas. The same story could be told (if not worse) in every capital city in Australia.

Some might respond: Why don’t we start by building up the many churches that are dwindling and struggling, rather than starting new ones? To which the answer is: it is easier to bring to birth than to resurrect the dead. It is almost always easier to start from scratch and plant anew congregation, than to work with a church that has real problems.

Why we don’t plant
It is little wonder, in some ways, that we avoid church planting. It is a hard task. There is the pain and sweat of doing the evangelism, and the discomfort and insecurity of starting something from scratch.

However, even more difficult is the opposition and hostility which greets all efforts at church planting. There will be opposition within our own congregations if we decide to plant another church. Even if the new congregation is within our own church complex, tension will be unavoidable. If we decide, for example, to take 40 people out of the Sunday evening congregation to form a new Friday night church, those left behind will feel hurt that their friends are no longer with them in church. There will be jealousy over the ‘new baby’ getting attention and resources.

It is even worse if we take these40 key members and send them down the road to start something entirely new. It will not only attract all the negative feelings above, but there will be the added burden of losing 40 committed givers. It will stretch the budget. It will cause strain. It will inevitably be accompanied by a loud chorus of “Why don’t we just leave things as they are?”

Moreover, if we decide that we can live with these tensions, and we go ahead and plant a new church in another area, the other churches in that area can be guaranteed to object. “Why are you planting a church here?” they will ask. “Are you saying we’re not doing our job properly?”

One must ask however: Is anyone really doing the job properly? Our country is crawling with unbelievers. They outnumber us more than 30 to1. There is more evangelism to be done and more new churches to be planted than we can even begin to describe. And yet in our petty jealousy and defensiveness we resist new initiatives in church planting.

It is as if we have turned Christ’s great statement on its head, and made it an expression of our self-centred insecurity: “I will build my church—so don’t go planting your church”.

The Briefing | 1st April 1993

You could be forgiven for thinking it strange that a pluralist, secular society such as 1990s Australia has a national holiday to celebrate Easter. It isn’t really strange at all—we are still the land of the long weekend. Australians still love public holidays, whatever the occasion. In fact, pluralism in religion lends itself to the Aussie way of life—the more accepted religions, the more public holidays!

What is strange is the manner in which we celebrate the Easter public holiday. Everything about it seems bizarre. Fertility myths and Spring rituals are the order of the day, even though we celebrate during Autumn (a telling demonstration of our independence from the north). We exalt the Rabbit as our symbol of fertility, notwithstanding that our country has, for centuries, been devastated by these pests.

Easter has become the ideal religious holiday for Western pluralist relativists. We can no longer (if we ever could) hold the nation together in an exclusively Christian celebration, but our desire for national unity is still strong. We need a reason for a national holiday, so we opt for something so unbelievable that it couldn’t offend anybody. We all attend the Feast of the Chocolate-laying Bunny.

Facts won’t do
Christians can thoroughly spoil a good religious holiday. They are always so concerned with history and facts and realism. The first Easter, we are reminded, had nothing to do with Spring, chocolate, rabbits or the Sydney Showground. It was about a Jewish itinerant preacher who, in the first century, was executed by crucifixion. The documentary evidence that this happened is overwhelming. There is so little doubt that in the first century a man called Jesus was crucified that those who refuse to acknowledge it are drawn into intellectual perversity or cynical nihilism.

But facts won’t do. To agree to the facts of Easter is not to say that you are a Christian. The documentation of Christ’s death goes far beyond incident reporting. That Christ died tells us nothing about why the history of this particular Jew should so radically transform the history of the world. Millions of Jews have died in horrendous circumstances; why is the whole course of history divided into BC and AD by this one man? The fact of Jesus’ death doesn’t explain why today’s Australians are taking a holiday. Nor does it explain why many of them have given their lives to the service of this man and his cause. It is not enough just to know that Jesus died.

It is the interpretation of Jesus’ death, which we find in the Scriptures, that has transformed Judaism, undermined the Roman empire, changed the course of Europe and rewritten the lives of millions of people. The historical veracity of the crucifixion is essential—a mythical reading of the gospels will not do—but it is only the beginning of the Christian message. The death gives the interpretation value; the interpretation gives the death meaning. ThatJesus died is important, but why he died is what we Christians are keen to tell the world.

His dying words
People are fascinated by last words. We record and remember a person’s dying utterances, as if we hope to somehow find a clue to the hidden truths of life and death as the person crosses from one to the other. We tend to imbue them with a special meaning and understand them to summarize that person’s life.

Jesus’ final words as he died on the cross are recorded in the New Testament in the language in which they were spoken:

And at the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?”—which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Mark 15:34

Jesus dies feeling godforsaken. ‘Godforsaken’ is a term of derogation, as we use it today, to describe something that seems barren and abandoned by all that is good. It evokes a mood of desolation and loneliness. And it is the worst type of loneliness—the loneliness of a lost relationship. Anyone who has had a good relationship with someone and then lost it knows how crippling it can be. The irrational sense of a tangible void, eating away at your livelihood can drive you to despair. Some psychologists call the first two years after a divorce the ‘normal crazies’, as they observe people who were bonded most intimately rage recklessly about in an attempt to cope with the loss—the forsakenness.

As Jesus dies, he perceives himself losing his relationship with God. Gradually, all his friends have left him. His nation has disowned him, the law wouldn’t acknowledge his innocence, his disciples—even the stalwart Peter—have deserted him. Now he is losing God. This hurts most of all, for Jesus’ relationship with God was so close and intimate that the Jews called it blasphemous. “I and the father are one”, Jesus claimed, and now that unity isbeing torn apart.

Perhaps, as some people have suggested, Jesus was simply suffering a loss of ‘God-consciousness’. His idea of the divine was being buried in the nothingness of death. His sense of transcendence was failing him at the last minute. A closer examination of what Jesus says demonstrates that, if anything, at this moment of death, the Christ is most conscious of God and God’s plans.

Psalm 22
As he cries out, Jesus is making a literary allusion. He is quoting the first line of Psalm22. It was normal practice amongst the Jews to refer to a psalm by saying the opening line. Jesus is saying, in verbal shorthand, “Look at this psalm. Interpret my death according to what it says. That is the true meaning of what is here taking place.”

In Psalm 22 we meet a man who is suffering persecution and death. He is being attacked by his enemies, who gather round him and gloat over their victory. The suffering man is aware of his innocence, aware that he deserves no punishment and acutely aware that God is not protecting him. Jesus’ predicament seems to closely parallel this scene.

But the mood of the psalm changes as he appeals to God for help:

But you, O LORD, be not far off;
O my Strength, come quickly to help me.

Finally, the suffering man starts to express confidence that God will vindicate him and justice will be done:

You who fear the LORD, praise him!
All you descendants of Jacob, honour him!
Revere him, all you descendants of Israel!
For he has not despised or disdained the suffering of the afflicted one;
he has not hidden his face from him but has listened to his cry for help.

A psalm that starts with a moan of oppression and dereliction, which we hear from the mouth of Jesus, transforms into a tremendous statement of faith that God will save him and he will live on to declare God’s praise, telling people what God has done and leading the whole world into praising God for this act of salvation.

What we read in Psalm 22 expands our understanding of the meaning of Jesus’ dying words. He is not only conscious of being forsaken by God, but he is also confident of vindication. His cry is not the outcome of losing faith in God, nor an insensitivity to God’s existence. It is, rather, an indication of a deeper knowledge that this death he is dying is not the end. These words he is shouting are not the last word on his relationship with God.

Is Jesus’ death absurd?
Death is normal, but it is dreadfully unnatural. It takes a good deal of time and/or personal pain to acknowledge that death has anything to do with me. It is that foreign horror, a devastation that happens all around me but feels a million miles off. When death does come close, as it does for every single person who has ever lived, its unnaturalness bears down upon you. It turns your life inside out and laughs at it. All you have done and seen and said and thought seems to be worth nothing. Death makes your life absurd and obscene. You spend your time struggling to live and yet you won’t win the battle. You can’t win.

If death has drawn close to you, or those you love, you will know that it generates the bewildering question: “Why? Why is death inevitable?”

The short and comprehensive answer is that God, the author and source of life, chooses that we will die. God chooses to cut us off from himself.

But this hardly satisfies us in our suffering. We cannot imagine why a good God would do such a thing. The simple and most profound answer to that question is that we ask him to cut us off.

When we choose to live as if God did not exist or did not care, God ‘rewards’ us by withdrawing from us, as we desire. It seems to us best to live our own way: we have to lie sometimes, we are justified in harbouring malicious thoughts about our bosses, we have to look after number one. God allows us to do this, ‘honouring’ our choices, and he grants us the fullness of our request. The author and source of life gives us our heads. God has already partially withdrawn from the world, and that is what he will do at your death, at my death and at the end of the world. He withdraws to let us carry on in our self-rulership and self-centredness. Mercifully, God is slow to withdraw and there are still signs of his goodness here; this world is not totally godforsaken. But when we leave the world, we are totally godforsaken and, in time, God will totally withdraw.

But Jesus was not like us. In stark contrast to us, he did not oppose nor resist nor reject God. He did not turn his back upon the life-giver and live for himself. He claimed that he had come to do the Father’s will and that he was one with the Father. If death is a consequence of our rejection of God, then there seems to be no reason why Jesus should die? Is his death absurd?

The apparent absurdity is resolved in the meaning of Jesus’ death. Jesus was not dying his own death, but ours. Jesus was not forsaken by God because of what he had done, but because of what we had done and what we are doing. Mark figures Jesus’ death to be a ransom, a payment to redeem rebellious people who were getting their just deserts. Some years later, the Scripture says to the church in Corinth:

God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.2 Cor 5:21

Jesus was not a mere martyr. That would not explain how his death has directed history and branded the lives of people today. Nor is it simply an example of self-effacing love in which one man lays down his life for others. Jesus was a sacrifice. Killed at the time of the Jewish Passover, when the nation of Israel celebrates the Exodus, the sacrificial symbolism of Jesus’ death is both straightforward and profound. Just as a Passover lamb was killed in place of condemned people, so Jesus, the Lamb of God is killed to acquit the guilty and set them free. In this event, on the cross at Calvary, we discover an interpretation of the whole of Scripture.

The godforsaken God
Christians occasionally face the charge that the death of Jesus was unjust. How could God allow Jesus to be killed instead of those who deserved death? Surely God cannot punish an innocent man and let the guilty go free?

At this point, the interpretation of Jesus’ death is world-shattering. God was not punishing a third party; God was in Jesus, reconciling the world to himself (2 Cor 5:19). Jesus’ claims about his intimate relationship with God here come to the fore. Jesus and the Father are one. Jesus was not just a man, but God become man. On the cross, therefore, God is forsaking God; the author of life is dying. The perfectunity of God is being torn apart, in order to save us. This is how seriously God takes our sin; this is how seriously he takes our salvation from death.

The crucifixion then makes sense—and yet it doesn’t. The inconceivable has happened, God forsaking God, and the world has been divided by it ever since. A Christian is someone who grasps the truth of this Easter story. Someone who is amazed at how very valuable we are to God, that he might demonstrate hislove for us through such a terrific act of liberation. Someone who is relieved that, amidst the persistent sufferings of this world, God is in control. Someone who, in the here and now, praises God and wants the world to know of his glorious salvation.

Where is God in this world? He is in the crucifixion of Jesus. God lets people shut him out of their lives, but he has not left altogether and he will not tolerate ongoing rebellion. Our appeal this Easter must be this: be reconciled to God for, if you are not, sin and death will claim you.

Adapted by Greg Clarke from an address by Phillip Jensen

The Briefing | 4th February 1993

Yoga is to Hinduism what Billy Graham is to Christianity. The way we practice our religion will depend very much upon our theology. If God is ‘the force’, then we will attune ourselves to that force; if God is personal, then we will enter into personal relationship with him; and if God speaks, we will live by listening to what he says.

And God said
At the very outset of the Bible, at creation, we begin to see the importance of the word of God. Throughout the Genesis account, we read the recurring phrase, “and God said”. Everything was made in accordance with the mind of God and at God’s expressed direction. The Psalmist tells us that the whole world was created by the Word of God (Ps 33:6). From the beginning of the Bible, we learn that God speaks and that his speech is creative and powerful and working in the universe.

There are more implications from this understanding of God’s nature than just his power and creativity. As God speaks to that part of his creation that is made in his image, it is clear that his words must be listened to, understood and obeyed. Thus humanity hears and responds to the Word of God and God speaks to his people. As the epistle of Hebrews puts it, in many and various ways, God spoke of old to our fathers through the prophets (Heb 1:1). One of the chief glories of the people of Israel is that they have the very oracles of God. And it is one of Israel’s greatest fears that there should be a famine of God’s words (Amos 8:11). In fact, God goes to great length to teach the people of Israel that they do not live except by his Word. We read in Deuteronomy 8:3:

He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your fathers had known, to teach you that man does not live by bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD.

In this way, God’s word is active and powerful, achieving its goals and intentions (Is 55:11;Heb 4:12). When God reveals himself in the person of his Son, Jesus is described as the Word of God (Jn 1:1-18). Just as God has spoken in the past by the prophets, he now speaks by his Son (Heb 1:1-4). Jesus, therefore, comes to us as an evangelist, a prophet and a teacher (Mk1:14; Mt 21:11; Jn 3:2). His work is carried out through the preaching of the Gospel, the word of God that goes out into all the world. To this end, Christ gives to people gifts for the ministry of his Word and some people are appointed apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers for the ongoing work of building the body of Christ. Because of these responsibilities, as Peter says, “If anyone speaks, he should do it as one speaking the very words of God” (1 Pet 4:11). Paul instructs Timothy to devote himself to “the public reading of Scripture, to preaching and to teaching” (1Tim 4:11), for Scripture is “able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus ”and is “useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness” in order that “the man of God be thoroughly equipped for every good work” (2 Tim 3:15-17).

Our agenda
In the ministry of the gospel, it is important that our agenda is established by the gospel itself, rather than by the world. When we spend all our time alleviating human suffering, or caring for the sick and widows, or in maintaining historical buildings, then the world will be pleased with us. But the last thing the world wants us to talk about is Christ and the last thing it wants to hear is Christian preaching. The preaching and teaching of the Word of God is always unpopular with those who are rebelling against God. It should not, therefore, surprise us that people ridicule sermonizing, pulpiteering, preaching and Bible-bashing.

But we have an important example to follow as we see Christ and the apostles consistently preaching and teaching God’s Word and making hard decisions about their priorities in favour of that ministry. We should pay attention to Paul’s injunction to Timothy to devote ourselves to the public reading, teaching and preaching of the Scriptures. On another occasion, in another context, we might consider the subtle differences between reading, teaching and preaching. However, suffice it to say that the ministry of the gospel is about the prominence of the Word of God.

But what is the aim of teaching the Bible? Much of secular learning today aims at becoming qualified for acceptance in society or acquiring knowledge as an end in itself. However, neither of these is a sufficient aim for teaching and learning from the Scriptures. The Scriptures are given for practical purposes, not as an end in themselves. Knowledge puffs up (1 Cor 8:1). The foolish man hears the words of Christ but does not obey them, whereas the wise man does (Mt 7:24-27). For only the man who does the word of God really understands the Word of God (Jas 1:22-25). It is the Word of God, implanted in our hearts by the Holy Spirit, which brings us new birth and works within us (Jas 1:18, 21; Heb 4:12).Therefore, we must not be using the Word of God in order to acquire academic credit, nor in order to gain knowledge alone. However, the aim of the Word of God is to make us wise unto salvation, to complete and equip us for every good work. As we understand God and his ways, purposes and plans, so we discover how to live in order to please him.

Teaching how to read
Just as it is inadequate to acquire information merely for titillation, so it is inadequate to turn to Scripture simply for rules and regulations about how to live. The Bible itself speaks against such legalism and yet Bible teaching can easily degenerate into a pursuit of moral guidance from the lives of the prophets, kings, apostles and early Christians. But the Bible gives us a library of books with different applications: history, prophecy, wisdom, poetry and law. The whole breadth of biblical understanding must be taught for somebody to be obedient to God.

In order to grasp the overall theme and thrust of the Bible, we need to be careful to read and understand it on its own terms, in its own context. Much has been written in recent years about understanding words in their sentences, sentences in paragraphs, paragraphs in chapters, chapters in books. The principles and procedures for understanding the written text are rightly being emphasized and taught today.

However, we must look not only at grammatical context, but also at historical and theological contexts. The historical context includes our background knowledge of the language, literature and events of the period in which the verse, chapter or book was written. Much of this historical knowledge comes from the Bible itself. It is important for Christians to understand something of the history of Israel and the early church as an aid to understanding the biblical message.

It is even more important to understand the theology of the Bible as a whole. Theology can be understood systematically under certain topics such as God, man, sin, the person of Jesus, the work of Jesus and so on. Or it can be understood within the unfolding pattern of the Bible itself (for example, the covenant of Abraham, Moses and David finding fulfillment in the new covenant brought in by Jesus).

At one level, this theological understanding of context makes Bible reading a very much longer and more difficult task to undertake. Each of the verses we read adds to a mosaic which helps us to comprehend the larger picture. However, at another level, our theological background simplifies Bible reading. When we understand that the central message of the Bible is the person and work of Jesus, which is expressed in the gospel of Jesus, our minds can comprehend the Scriptures both as a whole and in its component books, chapters and verses. In Luke 24:45-49, Jesus opens the minds of the disciples to understand the Scriptures. The key which did the opening was the knowledge that the Christ would suffer and rise from the dead, and repentance and forgiveness would be proclaimed to the nations through him.

So how should the Bible be taught? In one sense, little has been said about the methods of Bible teaching since great flexibility in this area is to be encouraged. However, there are some important points to notice.

1. The Word of God is to be declared rather than debated. Certainly, we may use debate, discussion, dialogue and group dynamics in order to understand more clearly what the Bible is saying. But the Bible’s message is to be heard, received and obeyed rather than queried, questioned and altered.

2. The aim of Bible teaching will always be to preach Christ as Lord, with the preacher being the servant of the people for Christ’s sake (2 Cor 4:5). For Christ is the key element to understanding the whole Word of God and it is he, not the preacher, who must be promoted.

3. The preacher’s place must be one of thorough submission, not only to Christ but also to the congregation. The preacher’s authority is Christ himself. That is also the preacher’s message. Therefore, people are called to obey the Word of God, not the preacher. Even with prophetic preaching, such as is referred to in Deuteronomy 13:18 and 1 Corinthians 14, the hearers are to listen with discernment. The aim of hearing the Word of God will be to grow in our understanding so that we might be mature in our thinking, filled with spiritual wisdom and understanding and not easily swayed by the current winds of doctrine. The preacher’s role is one of submission and his authority over the people of God rests in his teaching, in order that they be ruled by the Word of God.

4. The preacher must exemplify the message that is being preached. Paul constantly points to himself as the model of the message that he speaks (e.g. 1 Thess 2). In the appointment of elders, he directs both Timothy (1Tim 3) and Titus (Tit 1) to look for people who exemplify the godliness that should come from hearing and obeying the Word of God.

5. Paul demonstrates for us the way we should relate to the people of God. He is not only their servant, but their loving servant. His concern for Christians is shown in his prayers, in his anxieties and in his letters. Jesus is also moved with compassion at the shepherdless sheep that he sees in front of him. We do not teach the Word of God in a vacuum, but to the people whom we are serving. The proper motivations of an elder are spelt out in 1 Peter 5:4. Church leaders will do well to test themselves against these verses.

6. The Bible must be taught with immense care, knowing that teachers are judged with great strictness (Jas 3:1ff).

7. We must continue, patiently enduring the consequences of teaching God’s Word. We mustn’t grow weary in well doing, for in due time we will reap as we have sown. However, ministry of the Word of God is fraught with difficulties and opposition. Frequently, the outcome of our scattering of seed is, in the short term, poor. But in the long term, to the glory of God, it is plentiful.

The Briefing | 1st February 1994

What are the risks that a gospel preacher has to take? Whether you are a pulpiteering preacher, a lounge-room evangelist or a pew-bound sermon-hearer, in Phillip’s answer to that question, you’ll learn a lot about the dangerous nature of the gospel of Christ.

Preaching is more than conveying information. Although it must involve the communication of ideas, it is not the same thing as a lecture. It is also more than pulpiteering. It can occur just as well in a letter or a conversation as from behind a lectern. In fact, we struggle to define exactly what it is that a preacher does.

Here is an attempt at a definition: “Preaching is declaring the mind of God, seeking a response”.

The two parts of the definition are both crucial if we are to be true to the gospel. We must provide information for people’s minds, that they might know God, for God’s mind is revealed to us in the Scriptures. This is something that few evangelicals would contest, either in theory or practice.

However, the second half of the definition is equally important. People will never hear the word of God without responding to it in some way. His word digs deeply into the hearers’ inner beings, judging their hearts (Heb 4:12). It is not something that can be received with impartial neutrality, nor is it something that can be preached in abstract terms. God’s word can be rejected or ignored or superficially accepted or wholeheartedly embraced, but precisely because it is God’s word, it calls forth a response, and we must preach it this way—that is, calling for the right response. As James reminds us, to treat God’s word otherwise is about as clever as looking into a mirror and then immediately forgetting what you look like. God exhorts us to be doers who act, not hearers who forget (Jas 1:22-25). The preacher must preach for a response from each of his hearers.

For this reason, preaching is inherently dangerous. In attempting to gain a response to his call, the preacher can become manipulative, histrionic or inappropriately charming. Preachers are not requesting minor alterations in behaviour, like an advertiser trying to persuade someone to change their deodorant. We are calling people to entirely reconstruct their lives under God’s rulership. We set out to capture their minds and hearts for Christ. Because of the weight of our message, we can be tempted to skew our preaching in order to reach our goal. This emphasis upon response can also lead to a creeping Arminianism which distrusts the power of God in the gospel and distorts the very message that is being preached.

As an exercise in balancing declaration with application and information with challenge, preaching is fraught with risks. Here are seven reasons why preachers should be paid danger money.

1. We are absolutists in an age of relativism

The worst offence in today’s society is being seen to impose your views upon others. Ours is an ‘I’m OK, you’re OK’ age where evangelism is considered bad form. Relativism is seen as a way of creating peace. You can detect this in popular jargon. Terms like ‘one world’, ‘tolerance’, ‘New World Order’ and ‘global village’ have one thing in common—a sense of unity. The modern world cannot stand division.

But this isn’t an exclusively modern emphasis. Pilate is the great Relativist King. He could see no difference between releasing from prison Barabbas, a convicted murderer, or Jesus, an innocent. As long as the people were happy, Pilate was happy. He stands for a relativistic view of peace.

Christian preaching has always been unpopular, therefore, because it insists that there are right and wrong ideas about life. When we suggest that it is universally true that God can only be known through Jesus Christ, we put every religious relativist offside. This a risk that a preacher must take.

2. We call for repentance

Not only do we declare what we believe to be universally true, but we also claim that our listeners need to change. We get personal. We call for sinners to change their lives; to turn towards God and away from what is wrong.

It is hard to call for repentance in a genteel fashion. Suggesting to someone that his or her life is odious to God is hardly the stuff of after-dinner conversation. Preaching the gospel can mean social death. However, we must approach our task of exhortation to repentance with humility and discernment, knowing that we are also speaking to ourselves. It is not the preacher who has the power to condemn, but the message he preaches.

Even so, calling people to repentance, and accepting the consequences, is another risk that a preacher takes.

3. We risk offending the powerful

We tend to take our power as preachers for granted—until it is taken away from us. When a visiting preacher attacks our views on infant baptism while we sit helplessly in the pews, smiling nervously, then we become aware of the power of the platform. We tend to become frustrated with the limitations of our power rather than noticing its strength.

As preachers, we are going to put powerful noses out of joint. People who are powerful, but don’t appreciate that power, cannot accept challenges levelled at their lives. Unrecognized power is like a set of blinkers which makes true self-understanding very difficult. When powerful people are attacked by our preaching, and they sense their power waning, they may go to any lengths to regain it.

4. Popular prophets are either dead or foreigners

After a dud sermon, many a desperate preacher finds solace in Jesus’ words in Luke 4:24: “I tell you the truth, no prophet is accepted in his home town”. Everyone loves a prophet, as long as he is either well dead and therefore idealized to the point of fantasy, or a foreign ‘treasure’ whom no-one really understands anyway.

Jesus’ words in Matthew 23:29-32 tell us more about people’s attitudes towards prophets:

Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You build tombs for the prophets and decorate the graves of the righteous. And you say, “If we had lived in the days of our forefathers, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets”. So you testify against yourselves that you are the descendants of those who murdered the prophets. Fill up, then, the measure of the sin of your forefathers!

Although they would not align themselves with the message of the prophets, the Jewish leaders still venerated them, happily calling them ‘forefathers’.

Religious authorities have a history of persecuting prophets. In 1660, the Anglican authorities sent John Bunyan to prison for 12 years; now, he’s a saint. The story is similar for Wesley, Simeon and Whitefield. All are praised today as great leaders and visionaries, but in their time they were persecuted by the established church. That is a preacher’s lot. All preachers risk unpopularity and persecution, from the pagans as well as from the religious authorities.

Strangely enough, the reverse situation is also true. It is somewhat trendy to talk about a leader as a ‘prophetic voice’. But if the gurus of current religious fashion consider us ‘prophetic’, chances are we aren’t saying anything other than what they want to hear. If you earn that epithet, ask yourself whether you are bowing to the pressures of current fads and compromising the eternal gospel.

5. People want to catch us out

Jesus experienced the hypocrisy of the Pharisees (in Mk 12:13ff.) when they tried to trap him over a question of financial loyalty. Jesus’ reply was brilliant. Without surrendering the power of rhetoric, he turned the tables on his accusers and amazed them with the truth.

In the twentieth century, hypocrites who are opposed to God’s word are still trying to catch preachers in their words. These days, they are assisted in their task by the recorded media—tapes, videos, magazines—which enables them to pore over our words in search of dirt.

Such people are hypocrites because they appear to be listening, but they are not. They are not listening to what we are saying for its own value; rather, they intend to dredge up material by which to condemn us. They may quote us out of context, or focus upon trivial issues in order to tarnish our reputations, or pose loaded questions to catch us out. All this goes with the preacher’s territory.

6. We risk being misunderstood

People tend to have extreme reactions to anything a preacher states which is against the norm. If we are challenging careerism, they will hear us denying that work has any value. If we are challenging the Western pattern of romance, they will hear us saying that you choose your marriage partner out of a hat. If we are challenging British imperialism, they will hear that we are against missionary work. If we are challenging unbiblical uses of ecclesiastical power, they will hear that we are disloyal to our denominations.

If we are being misunderstood, it is our responsibility to become better communicators. However, every preacher lives with the knowledge that he cannot reach all of his listeners all of the time. The flexibility and ambiguity of language, along with the inflexibility and fixed mindset of some hearers, means that preachers are bound to be misunderstood. You may find your name used to support ideas which are distortions of what you really think. And the bigger your audience and the more remote your relationship with them, the more chance you have of being misrepresented.

7. We avoid balance

It may seem strange to suggest that preachers should strive for anything other than balanced preaching, but we must. Balanced preaching is impossible, boring, unmotivating and ultimately unbalanced!

It is impossible because we can never say everything in a sermon. Our message is always slanted to a certain extent by what we have left unsaid. There is a time and place for balanced statements and careful constructions of Christian beliefs, but it is not preaching. However, we will still be able to speak the truth, since each part of the truth is still true.

Balanced preaching is boring and unmotivating because it lacks the vigour to challenge people’s presuppositions. People need to be taken step-by-step into the gospel, and suffer the disturbing and motivating experience of having their pagan presuppositions dismantled. Balanced preaching tends to proceed too quickly to the rounded, balanced, finished product, leaving the hearer with a sense of neatness and familiarity rather than challenge.

Balanced preaching ends up being unbalanced itself, for it teaches a moderate, safe, half-hearted Christianity. The Bible doesn’t call us to a ‘balanced Christian life’. God calls us to have a ‘madness’ for God (‘zeal’ is the religiously acceptable word)—a madness which makes us challenge people to abandon their careers, leave their families and give up their lives to follow Christ.

The necessity of unbalanced preaching

Preachers are compelled, therefore, to be unbalanced. We have to so confront pagan apathy and conservatism with the gospel that lives will be changed. In doing so, we run the risk of being offensive, unpopular, persecuted and misunderstood. Yet we must do so. We cannot change people’s lifelong presuppositions by merely mentioning them in passing. A penitent heart is one that has been battered by the truth. We are better off attacking one important point with vigour, humour and repetition than presenting a balanced and comprehensive message which causes no wounds.

We are required to take a stand against religious relativism, denying the alternatives to the truth that we want to hammer home. We may, at times, have to come down on one side of a paradox. We may have to employ rhetorical hyperbole, shocking people’s minds in order to reach their hearts. Jesus’ outrageous remark in Luke 14:25 that his disciples must hate their families was not flippant and should not be blunted. It smashes our most treasured preconceptions in order to make room for the truth. That’s what a gospel preacher does.

Preachers shine strong light into the darkest corners of people’s hearts and chase out their excuses for ignoring God. We reveal their hiding places, demanding a response to what we say. We simplify the issues for people, clearing the foggy areas in which people hide from God so that they can see the decisions before them. We are called to run the risk of laying bare a heart that is blocked up with sin. It’s the risk of being unbalanced. If we are committed to balanced preaching, we are denying the depth and resilience of that sin. But if we commit ourselves to the dangerous declaration of a gospel that demands response, we will see at work our zealous, attention-demanding God.

From the Dean | 16th December 2009

(From the Resource Library)

Perhaps it is because whenever we read the verse, we think of claims to papal power and the need to prove that Peter was not the first pope. Whatever the reason, we often forget the other more positive side of Matthew 16:18.

“I will build my church.”

This is a momentous statement, for it describes Jesus’ program for the future. At this point in Matthew’s Gospel, the storm clouds are gathering. In the very next paragraph Jesus tells his disciples for the first time about the violent death that awaits him. But Jesus’ vision for the future goes beyond his death. The big plan is to build his church—to gather his people from all over the world to himself.

In the rest of the New Testament, we see this grand purpose begin to be realised. As the disciples scatter throughout the Roman Empire, they take the gospel of Jesus with them. They preach it, and churches are planted (to which the apostles return in due course to appoint elders, as in Acts 14).

We aren’t told about any special program of church planting. It just seems to happen as the gospel is preached and people respond to the message in each place. The believers gather together and a church is born. And each of these gatherings (or ‘churches’) is part of the one great gathering of all Christ’s people.

Evangelism will always lead to church, and church is Jesus’ program. It must be our program too. In particular, given the situation that we find ourselves in, the challenge before us is to plant new churches.

Any discussion of church planting must assume three things.

Firstly, true Christian churches are planted only where the pure gospel of Christ is preached. We must not vary from the gospel of Jesus Christ and him crucified, with its accompanying call to faith and repentance. This is the foundation for building Christ’s church. This is the seed for planting. And we must not think that the church of Christ can be planted by any other method. If we are not preaching the gospel and seeing people come to faith through the power of the Spirit, then we are not planting churches. We may simply be transferring existing believers from one place to another.(This may be a good thing in some cases—especially if they are being ‘transferred’ from churches which are not teaching the Bible. But it is not planting so much as transplanting.)

Secondly, we cannot preach this gospel of Christ without carrying the cross, as he did. This is not optional. We cannot preach Christ and expect to avoid suffering. We cannot preach Christ and be popular. We cannot preach Christ without being willing to lay down our lives for the salvation of others. Very often, the suffering will come in the form of persecution. And most painful of all, it will often be from other Christians. Just as for Christ it was his co-religionists who persecuted him most, so for us it will be members of other Christian churches and denominations who are most hostile towards church planting. Most Christians are all for evangelism and church planting, so long as it doesn’t affect them—the NIMBY syndrome (Not In My Backyard). But in a country like Australia, it is almost impossible to plant a church without affecting someone else. And when it does, tension and disagreement inevitably occurs. We cannot discuss church planting, and get involved in it, without being prepared to suffer for it.

Thirdly, any discussion of church planting assumes a passion for the lost. Millions of Australians will be born, grow old and die without ever hearing, in a meaningful way, about what Christ has done for them. The Bible may still be a top seller, but there is little evidence of it being high on the list of what people actually read. The lost are all around us. There are many areas, communities and sub-groups in our society which have little or no Christian witness within them. How can we reach them? We cannot expect them to come to us. We must go to them, and plant churches in their midst.

Given these three assumptions, what can we say about church planting? Before we say anything else, we must first clear up the confusion that continues to surround the word‘church’.

Confusion about ‘church’
It is a truism these days to say that ‘church is people’, or that ‘the heart of church is the congregation’. This is an important and right perspective, and one which reflects the biblical emphasis. In the New Testament, ‘churches’ are fundamentally gatherings of Christians. Whenever, wherever or however they met was a matter of some flexibility, but that they met was the key thing.

However, even though this view of church is now held by many people, we are still influenced by other connotations of ‘church’ much more than we realise or care to admit. We need to think and speak carefully about ‘church’, for if we are confused at this point, our efforts at church planting will almost surely fail—or more likely, will never even get started.

We all know, for example, that the ‘church’ is not the building. The building is the convenient rain shelter that the ‘church’ meets in. Even so, the ‘church building’ dominates our thinking more than we acknowledge. It has a habit of setting our vision for us.

For instance, if our church building holds 200 and we pack it three times a Sunday, it is tempting to think that we are doing quite well. We are filling the building after all. However, in most areas, 600 people would still be a tiny proportion of the population—in the average suburb of30,000 it is 2%. We would need five churches, each of 600, just to be getting towards 10%. We must not let ‘church’ as ‘building’ affect our consciousness of the task before us.

Denominations are the same. As evangelicals, we are more committed to the gospel than we are to any human association or tradition, and yet we continue to fall into the trap of thinking that the denomination is important, and must be maintained and grow. Even though we know that the denomination is not even a ‘church’, it is still easy to allow the expectations and demands of the denomination to dominate our thinking and set the parameters of our activity. For example, we will not consider planting a church where the denomination already exists, even if the area is crying out for a new Bible teaching church.

Of course, both church buildings and denominations are useful things. Life is very difficult without a church building—it is possible but awkward. The same is true for relations between congregations. It is entirely right and appropriate for us to set up associations, to maintain fellowship and to pool our resources. Indeed, the New Testament assumes that there will be some sort of relationship between churches, not only in terms of mutual collaboration but also with regard to standards of doctrine and behaviour (“If anyone wants to be contentious about this, we have no other practice—nor do the churches of God” [1 Cor 11:16]). However, both the building and the denomination can loom too large in our minds when it comes to church planting, and nip our efforts in the bud.

Another common confusion is to confuse the ‘church’ with the ‘parish’. Parishes are basically geographical zones of rights and responsibilities. Within this area on the map, a particular congregation has the responsibility for the spiritual welfare of the people. The nature of parishes varies from denomination to denomination, and even where the system is well established (such as in Anglicanism) their legal status is hard to determine.

However, even though we know that the ‘church’ does not equal the ‘parish’, we have a habit of allowing our sense of ‘parish’ to dominate our idea of ‘church’. Instead of seeing ourselves as having a duty or responsibility to an area, we begin to nurture a sense of ownership about our particular part of the vineyard. This is our patch, and if anyone has the temerity to come and start to work in our patch we will be suspicious and hostile. We may only be reaching 2%of the parish (which would make us a very successful church by today’s standards), but we still feel that the other 98% is ours!

Finally, it is also most helpful not to confuse ‘church’ with the ‘church complex’. Most of us have a host of associated bits and pieces which are usually lumped together and called ‘the church’—there is the minister and his residence, the various Sunday services, the youth group (and its youth worker), the parish council or committee of management, and so on.

It would be more accurate (and helpful to our thinking) if we did not speak of this whole complex of things as ‘the church’, if for no other reason than to recognize that there are usually a number of quite separate ‘churches’ who are part of the whole. Remember, the essence of ‘church’ is the congregation. Most ‘churches’ have several congregations within them who have very little to do with each other. The 8 o’clockers don’t know the 11 o’clockers who in turn wouldn’t know the 7:15ersfrom Adam. Speaking biblically, we should probably say that there are three churches here, sharing a common pastor and property.

This is important to recognize, because it means that we can plant new churches without going anywhere. We can start a new congregation meeting on a Friday night or Sunday afternoon or whenever. There are many ‘church complexes’ who need to do some church planting in their own backyard, so to speak, by starting new congregations.

Why we must plant
Let us turn to our current situation, and why it cries out for church planting.

There has been some focus over the last 15 years or so on ‘church growth’. The church growth movement has its pluses and minuses, and here is not the place to enumerate them. However, it is fair to say that the overall result of ‘church growth’ strategies has been fewer but larger churches. There has been little appreciable change in the net number of Christians in our community. The spread of them has been altered. The deck chairs have been re-arranged. But the 3% or so of Australians who are recognizable as born again, Bible-believing Christians has not changed for some time. We remain a tiny proportion of the population. Even though there is a multiplicity of Christian churches throughout Australia, in every town, suburb and village, we are making very little real progress in winning Australians for Christ.

How did we get to this position?
As Australia was settled during the 19th century, the churches followed the settlement routes. In each town and village, churches formed, although the methods of their formation varied from denomination to denomination. By 1900, the area of settlement was basically full, and from that point began to contract. Country towns diminished in size or disappeared altogether. Urban consolidation gathered pace. The country town of 15,000 now contained only 3,000, but the churches still lined the main street—the Anglican, Methodist, Roman Catholic, Presbyterian, Baptist, Congregationalist and so on. They all had their buildings but their congregations were tiny.

The village churches surrounding the cities became suburban churches. As the city expanded into a new area, there was already a village church waiting to greet them. Some of these churches adapted well to their new suburban environment; others not so well. But across the board there was very little drive to plant new churches. The consequence is depressing.

To take Anglicanism in Sydney as an example, the number of parishes has remained largely unchanged since World War II, and the number of churches within those parishes has decreased (as branch churches have closed). Attendances within the congregations have not grown—if anything they have shrunk. And during this time, the city has trebled in size! We have been pushed to the margins of the community. As the city grew, we did not plant churches, either within our church complex or in new areas. The same story could be told (if not worse) in every capital city in Australia.

Some might respond: Why don’t we start by building up the many churches that are dwindling and struggling, rather than starting new ones? To which the answer is: it is easier to bring to birth than to resurrect the dead. It is almost always easier to start from scratch and plant anew congregation, than to work with a church that has real problems.

Why we don’t plant
It is little wonder, in some ways, that we avoid church planting. It is a hard task. There is the pain and sweat of doing the evangelism, and the discomfort and insecurity of starting something from scratch.

However, even more difficult is the opposition and hostility which greets all efforts at church planting. There will be opposition within our own congregations if we decide to plant another church. Even if the new congregation is within our own church complex, tension will be unavoidable. If we decide, for example, to take 40 people out of the Sunday evening congregation to form a new Friday night church, those left behind will feel hurt that their friends are no longer with them in church. There will be jealousy over the ‘new baby’ getting attention and resources.

It is even worse if we take these 40 key members and send them down the road to start something entirely new. It will not only attract all the negative feelings above, but there will be the added burden of losing 40 committed givers. It will stretch the budget. It will cause strain. It will inevitably be accompanied by a loud chorus of “Why don’t we just leave things as they are?”

Moreover, if we decide that we can live with these tensions, and we go ahead and plant a new church in another area, the other churches in that area can be guaranteed to object. “Why are you planting a church here?” they will ask. “Are you saying we’re not doing our job properly?”

One must ask however: Is anyone really doing the job properly? Our country is crawling with unbelievers. They outnumber us more than 30 to1. There is more evangelism to be done and more new churches to be planted than we can even begin to describe. And yet in our petty jealousy and defensiveness we resist new initiatives in church planting.

It is as if we have turned Christ’s great statement on its head, and made it an expression of our self-centred insecurity: “I will build my church—so don’t go planting your church”.

The Briefing | 1st July 2008

Many years ago, I was trained to teach and preach by expounding the Scriptures. I am very thankful to those who taught me this (Broughton Knox chief among them). So from the outset in ministry, I set about just working my way through the Scriptures, expounding each passage as it came up. After a time, I found myself in 1 Corinthians 8-10, and the more I prepared it, the more my heart sank. I thought to myself, “What am I supposed to do with this? Food offered to idols? Nobody offers food to idols in Australia, other than the idol of our own belly—to which we offer food reverently, often and in huge quantities. Just how am I supposed to preach on this?” It was a subject I would never have thought of preaching on, nor one that I thought was even remotely relevant to my congregation.

All the same, I did what I had been trained to do, and kept preaching through 1 Corinthians 8-10. As I did so, I became conscious of the fact that about a quarter of the congregation were Chinese and that most of them had come from families who offer food to idols constantly—in little shrines in the corner of the lounge room. For them, it was not an abstract or irrelevant issue, it was a pressing dilemma. Now that I am Christian, do I bow to the ancestors or not? How do I relate to my family, and how do I relate to my Christian brothers and sisters in this? 1 Corinthians 8-10 spoke powerfully to their situation.

However, it did more than that. As I kept preaching and working away at Paul’s approach to these matters, the whole doctrine of Christian liberty tumbled out, which is so essential to maintaining justification by faith alone. And as that became clearer, it revolutionized my approach to personal counselling. The fashion of the time was ‘indirect counselling’, in which the counsellor never said anything to anyone about anything apart from, ’Mmm, really? Yes, I see what you mean. Mmm. Yes.” It was a very attractive method. Even I could do it because you never actually had to say to anyone, “I think you should” or “I think that’s foolish” or “I think that’s wise”, let alone “I think that’s right” or “I think that’s wrong”.

But with a thorough doctrine of Christian liberty, you are free to say to people, “Well, I think you should do X in these circumstances, but if you do the opposite, I’ll support you thoroughly because it’s a matter of freedom. If you want my ideas, I think this is the wisest way to go. But it’s your choice, not mine, and I’ll back you either way.” This is very important, because it also allows you to say, “No, that is wrong” on some occasions, without being heard to say that on every occasion when you offer advice.

This all came out of 1 Corinthians 8-10 and food offered to idols, a subject I would never have thought of preaching on in a million years. 1 Corinthians 8-10 also began to show me the difference between strategy and tactics in evangelism (and in ministry generally), and it is this topic I want to particularly address in this article. The key section is 1 Corinthians 10:31-11:1:

So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. Give no offense to Jews or to Greeks or to the church of God, just as I try to please everyone in everything I do, not seeking my own advantage, but that of many, that they may be saved.
Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ.

I think it is this passage, more than any other in the New Testament, that places a great imperative upon us (i.e. every Christian) to evangelize. If we are to grow like Christ, and be imitators of Christ like the Apostle Paul, then we should try to please everyone in everything we do in order that they may be saved.

The Lord Jesus Christ lived (and died) to the glory of his Father, and we should do whatever we do to the glory of God—especially and including evangelism. The chief end and purpose of evangelism is the chief end and purpose of all humans: to glorify God and enjoy him forever. We don’t evangelize to save souls but to glorify God. That’s the primary thing; the saving of souls is secondary.

This is one of those important Arminian/Calvinist distinctions. If I forget that glorifying God is primary, and have as my primary aim the saving of souls, my temptation will be to do anything I can, and change whatever needs changing, in order to save more souls. Furthermore, if I succeed, I will puff myself up, and if I fail, I will depress myself.

But if the aim is to glorify God by preaching his gospel, I know that it will be a sweet smell of salvation for some, but a stench of death in the nostrils of others. And I don’t have to take responsibility for that decision, or that effect; I place the gospel in front of people, and it is God’s Spirit who brings them salvation or the hardening of their hearts. My aim is only ever this: to glorify God in my speaking of the gospel. This means that faithfulness is the test of true evangelism, not success (as Paul makes very clear earlier in 1 Corinthians 4).

But notice what glorifying God in faithful evangelism also involves here in 1 Corinthians 10: it means offering no unnecessary offence. We don’t want to put anything in anyone’s way except the gospel. And so Paul, who so adamantly insists in other places that he is not a man-pleaser, here is proud to be a man-pleaser —not for his own benefit or to make his life easier or to have more friends, but for their salvation. He will change his eating and drinking habits freely in order to glorify God by presenting the gospel to them.

So the Lord seems to be saying two things to us through the Apostle Paul:

1. We must glorify God by faithfully and invariably sticking to the task God has given us: to preach the unchanging gospel of Christ.
2. We must be prepared to be flexible and to use our Christian liberty to change our approach from moment to moment, and person to person, as the circumstances require.

In modern terms, Paul is talking about the difference between strategy and tactics. I’m sure, like me, you have endured strategic planning sessions where nearly the entire time is consumed in a debate over the differences between words like ‘mission’ and ‘vision’ and ‘purpose’ and ‘strategy’ and ‘tactics’! I am using the words as the Macquarie Dictionary defines them:

strategy: noun. generalship; the science or art of combining and employing the means of war in planning and directing large military movements and operations.

tactics: plural noun. the art or science of disposing military or naval forces for battle and manoeuvring them in battle.(1)

Strategy is the big thinking—the overall plan and the means for getting there. Strategy is done by Prime Ministers and generals who say, “If we’re going to win World War II, we’ll have to land an invasion force in France, backed up by air support”. Tactics is more immediate thinking: it’s manoeuvring the pieces on the chessboard to achieve the smaller milestones that go together to make up the strategy. Tactics is done by colonels and captains who say, “We’ll need to land this many troops at this time and in this place, depending on the tides and the weather, in order to secure a beachhead, with this many planes running these missions in support”.

If the strategy is to win the war by invading France, then there may be a number of legitimate tactical approaches to getting that done. But these options wouldn’t include sending flowers, or running up the white flag, or deciding to land an invasion force in Greenland instead. Tactics sit under strategy, and are circumscribed by strategy.

In Christian ministry, as in war and business, we must not only have a clear understanding of what our strategy is, but how it relates to the day-to-day tactics. This is particularly important for Christians, because our strategy is not something we have to come up with at a vision-planning day. Our strategy is understood by revelation. It is God’s strategy—his cosmic plan—and his way of getting it done.

Let’s look first at God’s strategy, and how it involves us, before returning to the question of tactics.

The strategy of God

We can describe the strategy of God in trinitarian fashion by starting with the big plan of God the Father, as Paul expresses it in Ephesians 1. These are well-known words, but look at them again closely. What is the Father’s goal and how does he plan to achieve it?

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.
In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will, so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory. In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory. (Eph 1:3-14)

We might summarize Paul’s summary like this: God’s ultimate goal is to unite all things under Christ, and he is sovereignly working to achieve this by sealing people (both Jews and Gentiles) with the Holy Spirit as they hear the word of truth, the gospel of Christ. The plan of God, right from the very beginning, was to include both Jews and Gentiles in one people, and central to this plan was the redemption that was won through Christ’s blood, and the preaching of that gospel to all the nations.

Jesus says much the same thing in Luke 24 after his death and resurrection. He tells his gobsmacked disciples that everything written about him in the Law and the Prophets must be fulfilled, and then he elaborates: “Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.” (Luke 24:46-7). This is the strategy of God for gathering his elect people from all over the world: that the Christ should suffer and rise, and that the gospel of repentance and forgiveness should be preached to all nations.

It is not just the Father’s strategy, it is the work of Christ himself: “I will build my church” says Jesus in Matthew 16:18. Christ’s work is the gathering together of his own people into his own assembly—his church. He is the builder of the congregation, and you and I are only subcontractors. He may choose to use you and me in his building work, but it is his work and his activity. 1 Corinthians 3 expresses this delightfully:

What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. He who plants and he who waters are one, and each will receive his wages according to his labor. For we are God’s fellow workers. You are God’s field, God’s building. (1 Cor 3:5-9)

We have a job to do, and we must do it faithfully—whether it be planting or watering, and so on. But it is God’s job to grow the congregation, not your job or my job. It is his growth, not our growth, because Christ is building his assembly. He is the builder; we are the fellow workers—a title and role of high honour which also makes it very clear who is the builder and who is not.

Christ is building his congregation according to the eternal plan of the Father by the preaching of the gospel to all the nations. Who does this preaching? 1 Peter 1 has a surprising answer for us:

Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired carefully, inquiring what person or time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories. It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you, in the things that have now been announced to you through those who preached the good news to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things into which angels long to look. (1 Pet 1:10-12)

This passage contains a sentence of such length and complexity to rival Paul’s in Ephesians 1! But look closely. Who is the evangelist?

It is the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit has been sent from heaven to proclaim the fulfillment of those things that he had previously indicated through the prophets— that is, the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories. These are realities into which angels long to look. But you have it all over the angels, says Peter, because these things have now been announced to you through those who preached the gospel by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven.

It’s a complicated little passage, but its logic is thoroughly in line with what we have already seen about the strategy of God: Christ is building his church, and he is doing it through us. The Holy Spirit is preaching the gospel, and he is doing it through us. And this is all according to the eternal plan of the Father to sum up all things in Christ Jesus, to the praise of his glory.

Our part in God’s strategy

God has a strategy, a big plan of action that is heading towards a goal. But as we have already begun to see, his strategy involves our actions. It is his work and his strategy, but in his incredible grace, he puts it into effect through us.

What are the actions God gives us to do as part of his strategy? Here are the three absolutely essential ones:

    1. Prayer

When Paul first preached the gospel to the Thessalonians, he knew that they were among Christ’s chosen people because “our gospel came to you not only in word, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction” (1 Thess 1:5). Their wholehearted, Spirit-empowered response showed them to be among those that Christ was building into his congregation.

In other words, the Holy Spirit was not only the evangelist (speaking through Paul) he was also at work in the hearers—in the Thessalonians—so that they were completely convinced about the truth of the message. Later Paul says that they embraced his gospel “not as the word of men but as what it really is, the word of God” (1 Thess 2:13). And when he writes to them again, Paul urges them to pray for him—that “the word of the Lord may speed ahead and be honored, as happened among you” (2 Thess 3:1).

It is precisely because the growth of the gospel is God’s work by his Spirit (both in the preaching and in the response that people make) that our first and primary action is prayer. We need to keep asking God to glorify himself by preaching his message by the Holy Spirit throughout the world. We need to beg him to send the gospel out, and through its preaching, to save people and build Christ’s congregation. And we pray this because we know it is his plan.

Christians are not fatalists. We know what God’s will and plan is—that his kingdom would come, that his will would be done on earth, that his name would be hallowed—but we don’t just sit back and say, “Well, it’s going to happen anyway, so … whatever”. No, we pray (as our Lord taught us) that God would fulfill his plan for the world, and soon. We pray, “Please, Lord, bring it on!”

I love the way Paul also asks for prayer from the Ephesians. He asks them to pray for him “that words may be given to me in opening my mouth boldly to proclaim the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains, that I may declare it boldly, as I ought to speak” (Eph 6:19-20). Most of us who have been Christians for a long time are used to thinking of Paul as one of the valiant men of the faith—a fearless champion of the gospel, ready to speak up for Christ in all circumstances. But you don’t pray for what you already have, so it must have been the case that Paul lacked boldness, like the rest of us. Other people always look bold when they’re speaking about Christ (whether in public or in conversation), but it’s rarely like that behind their eyeballs; they are usually just as terrified as we are.

Prayer, then, is the first and primary task God has graciously given to us as his fellow workers. He uses our prayers in his purposes, and so we must pray—really pray. Set aside time to pray. Drop something else so you can pray—like the apostles had to in Acts 6 where they said,

“It is not right that we should give up preaching the word of God to serve tables. Therefore, brothers, pick out from among you seven men of good repute, full of the Spirit and of wisdom, whom we will appoint to this duty. But we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word.” (Acts 6:2b-4)

    2. Proclamation

This brings us to the second necessity: proclamation. I will not dwell long on the central and crucial place of proclamation—or preaching or announcing or telling or speaking or whatever similar verb you wish to use. Of the many, many New Testament passages we could look at to establish the vital place proclaiming God’s word has in God’s strategy, it’s hard to go past the simple truth of Romans 10:17: “faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ”. The strategy of God is for his Spirit to preach the Word through us, and so to elicit faith from those who hear.

We could look at Paul’s solemn charge to Timothy: “preach the word; be ready in season and out of season” (2 Tim 4:2), or his marvellous little summary of his ministry in 2 Corinthians 4, which consists of the plain open statement of the truth of the gospel that Jesus Christ is Lord. I rather suspect that the central place of proclamation in the strategy of God is not something most of us need convincing about—at least theoretically. However, like Timothy, we may need a solemn and scary charge to get on with it—especially given how easy it is to give up on proclamation, to be distracted from it, to be discouraged by how plain and unexciting it seems, to be tempted to try some other method, and so on.

I well remember a highly intelligent young man who came to see me on campus years ago. He had read BF Skinner and other atheists, and had himself become a convinced, thoroughgoing atheist. As a result, he was suicidal. He was intelligent enough to see that consistent Atheism drained life of any meaning, purpose or joy. His existence was just an accident, as was everything else. He had tried all the joys that Solomon tried in Ecclesiastes, and had come to the same conclusion: it was all absurd and pointless. He wanted some way out of the prison of despair that he found himself in, but didn’t know how to find it
. I proceeded to discuss the philosophy of Atheism with him over several weeks. I presented a great many clever arguments (well, at least I thought they were clever), but got absolutely nowhere. Then my good friend and colleague Col Marshall said to the young man, “Look, faith comes from hearing the word of God. So why don’t you just come along to church and listen for a while?”

You can guess what happened. That young man came along to church and listened, and was converted. It had nothing to do with clever apologetics because, in the end, you can’t argue someone into the kingdom. Faith comes from hearing the word of God.

That’s our task in the strategy of God: to keep proclaiming the word of God so that the Holy Spirit, who preaches it through me and who also works in the hearts of the hearers, will bring people to faith.

    3. People

The third task that God has given us is implicit in the first two, but needs to be stated on its own: the third part of our work is people. When Jesus looks out upon the crowds, he is filled with compassion because they are like sheep without a shepherd (Matt 9:36). It’s the same compassion that God has for the world—a compassion which causes him to send his only Son for its salvation (John 3:16). But what is the ‘world’ that God loves? It is people opposed to God.

We saw this in our look at 1 Corinthians 8-10 earlier in this article. “I put myself out for other people”, says Paul. “I will gladly inconvenience myself, and put aside my own likes and dislikes, because I want to win people”.

The work God has given us to do is focused on and directed towards people, not institutions or organizations or programmes. All our structures and programmes must serve people. This is so obvious, it seems facile to repeat it. But judging by what we see in Christian ministry, it needs to be repeated. We get this back to front all the time, and end up with institutions and programmes and structures that seem to exist for their own sake. In fact, it often feels like the people are there to serve them (i.e. the programmes), not vice versa.

We must never lose sight of people work—of labouring and striving, as Paul did, on behalf of every individual, “warning every man and teaching every man with all wisdom, that we may present every man mature in Christ” (Col 1:28 literally; ESV has ‘everyone’). (For more on how this ‘people’ principle plays out in our churches and ministries, see Col Marshall’s article ‘Ministry mind shifts’ elsewhere in the Briefing.)

The tactics of man

God’s strategy—including our part in it—is a given. It’s not up to us to figure out what Christian ministry is really about; the big plan and the strategy for getting there is revealed to us by God, and as with all revelation, our response must be to believe it and act upon it.

The strategy for our action is set for us: we need to be praying, we need to be proclaiming and we need to be focusing on people. These three key strategies should determine the activity of every church and Christian ministry. When we meet to think about how we are going, and to plan what we will do next, our discussion should not centre on devising a strategy, it should centre on considering how well and faithfully we are implementing God’s strategy.

Remember, strategy is the higher level thinking: it’s laying down the key directions and activities we are going to undertake to achieve the objective. And it is given by God. Tactics are short-term, immediate actions to do with how the strategy will play out in the next five minutes, the next five days or the next five months.

Tactical thinking is important and valuable, but secondary. Tactics sit under strategy, and support strategy. In fact, one of the big problems in any business enterprise is making sure that the day-to-day actions and activities of the business actually relate to the strategy—or are ‘aligned’, as the jargon goes. What often happens in the real world is that tactical decisions tend to take on a life of their own, and end up hiving off in a different direction to the strategy, or even undermining the strategy. Or sometimes we end up with ‘orphan’ activities that once had some connection with the company strategy, but which have long since ceased to make any contribution to it.

It hardly needs to be said that this happens in churches all the time. A particular ministry is set up—let’s say a Kids’ Club—as a tactic to proclaim the gospel to the kids of the suburb prayerfully. It all goes well, and makes a useful contribution to the overall prayer-proclamation-people strategy for some years. But in time, the suburb changes. Young families are squeezed out by higher real estate prices. The demographic profile changes, and the tactical usefulness of this particular way of proclaiming the gospel evaporates. But any suggestion that perhaps we should shut down the Kids’ Club will usually be met with vigorous protest—not from the kids (there aren’t any), but from people in the church who have been working in and supporting this ministry for years.

Tactics are provisional and change constantly. They can vary from moment to moment. I meet a Jew, and so I become a Jew to reach this Jew. The strategy hasn’t changed; I will need to be praying for him, and proclaiming to him, and loving him as a person, but my particular approach and behaviour will change because he is a Jew. And likewise, when I meet a Gentile five minutes later, the immediate tactics will change. In a big multicultural city like Sydney (where I live), I can experience minute-by-minute tactical variations as I meet Chinese people, Africans, Indians, old-fashioned Anglo-Saxons, Roman Catholics, Buddhists, atheists, agnostics, young people, old people, and so on.

Tactics are secondary, provisional, and almost always break down and fail eventually. Even a superb bit of tactical thinking about how to reach out to a particular group will almost certainly be rendered inappropriate or unsuccessful over time.

Our problem is that we think too highly of our tactics, and even confuse them with the strategy. We think that if only we come up with the right tactical moves, then success will be ours, and God’s kingdom will explode everywhere. And if we do achieve some success, we are only all the more emboldened to think that we have ‘cracked it’, and so we write a book and become a church growth expert.

Most ‘church growth’ literature is really short-term, localized tactical thinking, but it often masquerades as something far more grand. It often oversells itself as ‘strategy’, and as the new secret to ministry success.

Understanding the difference between God’s strategy and our tactics is also important in liberating us to try different things, and to let other people try different things (back to Christian liberty again). For example, some churches seek to proclaim the gospel prayerfully to the people in their community by putting on really attractive well-run church meetings, and drawing in outsiders to hear the Word. These ‘attractional’ churches often have excellent kids’ programmes, good car parks, polished music, effective marketing and highly gifted preachers. Given that they are driven by God’s strategy and they really do give their time to prayer, proclamation and people, these sorts of churches can do wonderful work under God’s strategy and see many people saved. They are an excellent example of a group that is willing to put themselves out and do whatever they can, tactically speaking, to seek the salvation of people, as Christ did.

However, other churches take a different tactical approach. For example, some operate in small, highly committed teams, living in closer Christian community and proclaiming the gospel prayerfully through small group meetings, household gatherings, and personal community contacts and networks. (The Total Church approach we discussed in our last Briefing would be a good example.) Yet other groups might try a blend of these tactical approaches, or some other approach altogether.

Our problem comes when we absolutize our tactics, and raise them to the level of strategy—as if all ministries and churches must adopt the same tactics to be ‘successful’ or, indeed, to be faithful. We must remember: God is the one with the plan and the strategy, and he is putting his strategy into effect through us. The success and the results are not up to us, because it is only as God gives the growth through his Holy Spirit that God achieves his own purposes. We are subcontractors —agents—fellow workers. It’s not up to us to figure it all out and make it work; our job is faithful adherence to the strategy of God.

(Adapted by Tony Payne from an address by Phillip Jensen at the 2007 Matthias Media USA ‘Gospel growth vs. church growth’ Conference, Washington DC.)

(1) The Macquarie Dictionary Online © 2008 Macquarie Dictionary Publishers Pty Ltd.

From the Dean | 13th November 2009

Joe Hockey has followed his old sparring partner Kevin Rudd by going public about religion while serving as a member of the shadow cabinet.

For Mr Rudd this was an important attempt to regain the Christian credibility of the Labor movement.  He argued against the assumption that the conservative side of politics owned the religious vote.  He aimed to show the Christian foundations of Labor and the existence of a Christian within the party.

Mr Rudd startled those commentators who had so wrongly assumed “the religious right” of America had traction in Australia, or that conservative theology meant conservative politics.  It had been a long time since a Labor politician had so openly expressed their Christianity.

Now Mr Hockey has played the same card.  He has carefully articulated the place of faith in the secular politics of a multicultural society by confirming his own personal faith.  He has positioned himself as a defender of the faith.  Or to be more accurate, like Prince Charles, he positioned himself as a defender of faith.

His explanation of faith has all the appeal of motherhood and apple pie.  His god is full of sugar and spice and all things nice.  It is the religion of those who have no religion.  Warm positive values that he admits do not have religion as “an essential prerequisite”.  He admits that his own political values were shaped in part by the agnostic or atheist John Stuart Mill.

Mr Hockey’s faith is the religion of the middle ground – the voters of Australia.  His speech explored the religious statistics of the electorate noting the widespread belief in God and the smaller adherence to organised religion.

With inclusive grandeur he insists that Australia “must continue without fear to embrace the diversity of faith”.  But then, with nothing other than fear, he qualifies which religions are acceptable “provided that those Gods (sic) are loving, compassionate and just”.

He marginalises the extremists: the fundamentalists and the aggressive atheists.  His defence of faith from the attacks of the atheists (Hitchens and Dawkins) is twofold.  Firstly to attack religious literalists for teaching their outmoded texts instead of the values that everybody agrees upon.  Secondly he exposes the atheists’ use of a political debating technique.  They define their opponent in terms that suit themselves “usually selecting the extremes, and then send in the wrecking ball”.

This twofold ‘defence’ enables Mr Hockey to demonstrate his own mastery of this political debating technique.  For he defines religious literalists by the Scopes trial of the 1920’s, a fictional example drawn from West Wing and, of course, Islamic terrorists.  He rightly says we must not judge a religion by the misguided actions of some extremists but then lumps all who take the text of their various scriptures seriously as just such extremists. 

Mr Hockey says his own faith is inspired “by the teaching and example of Jesus Christ”.  And indeed some of Jesus’ attitudes can be seen in his views.  Jesus critiqued his contemporaries for their concern over minutiae while “neglecting the weightier matters of the law; justice and mercy and faithfulness.” (Matthew 23:23)  Jesus portrayed it as “straining out a gnat while swallowing a camel”.

But Mr Hockey’s expression of values, with or without belief in any particular god, scarcely defends faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus - the man who is God.  Christianity, void of Jesus’ divinity or sin bearing crucifixion - is hardly Christianity.  Such a statement is not extremist literalism.  The cross, not the golden rule, is at the very centre of Christianity.  All religions do not teach the same truth when the death of Jesus is central to Christianity and denied by the Koran.

He noticed that the Opera House is usually playing music inspired by faith.  But his kind of faith did not and will not inspire such music.  He noticed that members of religious organisations are nearly twice as likely to be community volunteers.  But his faith has not and will not lead to more community volunteers.  He noticed the decline in religious observance in Australia.  But he fails to notice that it is those who take their scriptures seriously that are retaining adherents and growing.

From the outset of his speech Mr Hockey wants to “use God as an analogy of faith in all its forms”.  Of course it is his privilege to talk this way in a free country.  But this hardly counts as a robust defence of faith.  It is post-modern religion that talks of “my” god, not out of politeness to other’s who believe in a different god, but out of a denial that there is only one God who can be known by the humans whom he created in his image.

It is great that leaders like Joe Hockey are raising the issues of faith in the public arena.  Let’s keep the conversation going.

The Briefing | 3rd November 1992

The Good Drover or the Good Shepherd? Contextualization: it’s a buzzword in evangelism these days, but is it as important as it sounds? How important are cultural factors in evangelism and to what extent should we let them influence and shape the gospel we preach? Does it make any difference to the word of God if we call Christ ‘the Good Seal-keeper’ when preaching to Eskimos, or ‘the Good Drover’ in the land of Oz?

The Scriptures are not as preoccupied with these multi-cultural concerns as we perhaps are. However, there are some texts which give us principles for thinking about the gospel as it relates to human culture

Liberty requires understanding
In Galatians 2, for example, we find a rare incident of conflict between the apostles. Paul confronts Peter in Antioch, and the issue of tension seems to be what food to eat, when to eat it and with whom. However, Paul recognizes that there is more than sweet and sour pork at stake here. The issue behind Paul’s reprimand is the “truth of the gospel” (Gal 2:14). He understands that Peter’s action jeopardizes the salvation of the Gentiles. While Peter was now free to eat whatever he wished, he was acting as if food laws were an essential aspect of our relationship in Christ.

By his actions, he was denying the liberty that is ours in the gospel. In much the same way, 1 Corinthians 10:31-11:1 talks about the gospel, liberty and food. But here it is not the Jew/Gentile question that is causing confusion; the problem Paul addresses is what to do with food which has been offered to idols. This time, Paul is in a primarily Gentile context. He comes to three conclusions:

  1. Do everything for the glory of God. Any action which is not for the glory of God is inappropriate (10:31).

  2. Do nothing that will cause anyone else to stumble (10:32).

  3. Please everybody in every way (10:33).

This third recommendation seems rather hard to implement, but it is still Paul’s aim. Paul is willing, in all circumstances, to put himself out for the other person, for the sake of Christ. Paul knew that the doctrine of Christian liberty is essential for the preservation of the gospel. Anyone who enforces secondary issues upon Christian consciences is in danger of denying the gospel’s truth. To take a secondary issue—the food you eat, for example—and make it primary in Christian fellowship is to compromise that truth.

The doctrine of Christian liberty, then, means that we must put ourselves out for other people’s salvation. We have to reject our own personal sub-culture in order to become like the people we seek to serve with the gospel. We must demonstrate our commitment to the unchanging truths of the gospel by our willingness to change anything and everything else. In doing this we are like Christ, who did not suit himself but died for the salvation of others (1 Cor 11:1). Paul’s position is radical: “I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means, I might save some” (1 Cor 9:22b). Christian liberty is not an optional extra. We must remove any and every ‘non-gospel’ stumbling block between us and our audience.

Difficult in practice
Before we chide Peter for his short-sightedness in Antioch, consider how difficult it can be to separate the gospel from culture in practice. We are, by and large, more like Peter than Paul, because most of us love the word of God (as both Peter and Paul did), but have been converted within our own Christianized culture. Australian culture still bears the marks of its Christian past. Its social and religious structures are derived from the Bible and, like Peter, we find it a little hard to see clearly where the truth of the gospel ends and where secondary, cultural elements begin. We seek to be ‘all things to all men’ (we even know to replace ‘men’ with ‘people’) because we wish to keep in step with the Scriptures, but we have only ever had to understand this within our own cultural context.

Paul, on the other hand, was converted by the total dismantling of his culture (Phil 3).His fiercely held beliefs were knocked down and, amidst the rubble, he came to clearly seethe foundation of the gospel. The nature of his conversion radically changed his approach to his own culture, and he wouldn’t carry his’ Hebrew of Hebrews’ cultural baggage into his mission to the Gentiles.

It is easy to blame Peter and applaud Paul, but we often find ourselves in the shoes of the fisherman. Let us take some examples. If you were conducting university evangelism, how much would you encourage, support or participate in a team of students taking part in a pub-crawl, in order to reach the unbelieving participants? Or what would you make of the beach mission team that goes to the local bingo night with the campers, in order to build relationships by which they can share the gospel? These are complex questions.

All would acknowledge that to spread the gospel, we must declare it in a language that our hearers can understand. To this end, we print out Bibles in English and preach in English to our contemporaries. But do we really speak the language of our contemporaries? And how much should we? Ephesians 5 tells us that our speech should be distinct from the coarse talk of the world—but most Australians swear. We are told to adapt, to be like our audience, but where will we draw the line?

It’s all very well to proclaim our pledge, ‘all things to all men’, but in the nitty-gritty of social situations, there are many difficulties to be worked out. At what point do we say, “I can’t be like this” or “I can’t do that”?

Understanding the Australian context
To make this task even more difficult, our own Australian context is changing rapidly. With the diversity of background amongst immigrants in the past forty years, there has also been a huge shift away from the Christianized, mono-cultural society. We live now in a multi-cultural society, where Christian influence has diversified with the arrival of the Eastern Orthodox as well as Roman Catholics from non-Irish backgrounds. We are also experiencing new influences from Muslims and Buddhists, as well as a growing number of people who profess no religious background at all. Australia has become so diverse that there is no real single culture to speak of, but hundreds of cultures existing side-by-side and intermingled.

It seems that the more we think about reaching twenty-first century cosmopolitan Australia, the harder the task becomes. Do we need to be cultural chameleons, able to adapt to any and every cultural context? How can we possibly do this? Where can we get the information we need about the multitude of different contexts and cultural value systems to which we want to preach?

For many of us, the whole process is fairly instinctive or intuitive. We observe our audience and follow hunches about the kinds of people who are present. We talk to them, we listen to them and begin to understand them. That is why most of us are best as evangelists in our own street, our own suburb, or in our own social class or group. We already have some insight into what our audience is like.

However, as the perceived complexity of reaching multi-cultural Australia has grown, there has also been an increasing pressure for churches and ministries to employ statisticians, pollsters, sociologists, psychologists, historians, media-watchers and (especially) computers in order to understand the context in which we are preaching. Through these experts, we supposedly come to know about human nature and human culture, and can then express the gospel in those terms.

These methodologies are fraught with danger. They are dangerous because of the very nature of the disciplines. Anthropology, for example, consistently misreads human nature, because it has no place in its theoretical framework for God, and thus no place for sin (which is one of the few truly universal characteristics of mankind). Alternatively, if we depend on psychology, we wind up understanding people in terms of fulfilment and personal significance. It is true that fulfillment and significance are found in Jesus, but that is not the gospel. We end up with a diluted, piecemeal gospel of ‘pop psychology’ that has been badly Christianized. It has great appeal to our comprehensively-surveyed audience and it really scratches people where they itch—but it doesn’t convert them. We can end up changing the gospel but not the hearers.

The challenge to think biblically
The growing influence of this kind of ‘contextualization’ can affect us in numerous ways. It invades our evangelism, and we start to view people according to the survey results, rather than according to the Bible. For example, the university campus is supposed to be infested by atheists. However, Romans 1:18 assures us that what can be known about God is plain to all people. They turn to other religions and to various forms of idolatry as a way of escaping the knowledge that they already have about God. Psalms 14 and 53 tell us that atheism is not an intellectual position, but a moral one. People reject God because of their immorality. Ecclesiastes teaches that people cannot know God by human wisdom, because God in his wisdom has chosen not to be known that way.

However, despite knowing this from the Bible, we are still tempted to feel that everybody is an atheist and that we must use clever arguments for God’s existence. But the Bible tells us to assume that they all know that God is there and not to waste time at that end of the apologetic spectrum. Rather, speak about what God requires of us and trust that those who are denying him are doing so to avoid the moral implications.

Arguing about the resurrection is another example of the challenge to turn first to God’s word. In Luke 16, Jesus assures us that people who do not listen to Moses and the prophets will not believe, even if someone rises from the dead. Yet we keep trying to use the resurrection of the dead as proof of the existence of God. The Word of God tells us that people will not be persuaded this way.

There is no need to be opposed to apologetics or to apologetic evangelism, nor to resist reasoning, discussing, arguing, and answering questions from history or from evidence. We are not compelled to be fideists who just say ‘Believe!’. Paul clearly used reason and argument in his evangelism in Acts. However, our arguing should be carried out biblically. The nature of our approach to the whole subject should come out of our biblical understanding of human nature. If we want to understand people, we must start with what the Bible says about people.

When we do so, we will discover that, in spiritual terms, the cultural differences between people are quite small. The gospel addresses the fundamentals of human nature, not the peripherals. What are these fundamentals?

All we need to know
The Bible tells me all I really need to know about Australians and how to be an effective evangelist in Australia. The Bible tells me that Australians know that God exists, that they do not want to acknowledge him and are running away from him (Rom 1, 3). It tells me that they are religious, but that their religion is an excuse, and that they are not really seeking God that way.

It tells me that they are sinful and that the guilt of that sin will lead them to deny God, to avoid the truth, to hate both the light and the preachers of the light (Jn 3). It tells me to expect persecution, if I desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus (2 Tim 3). It tells me to expect that people will choose the broad road which is easy and leads to damnation (Matt 7).

The Bible tells me that Australians are captives of the ruler of the air, that they are dead in their sins and have the spirit of evil working in them. By nature, they will do things which are in opposition to God (Eph 2). They have a conscience that testifies to them of right and wrong and they have a feeling that the world makes sense, but they can’t make sense of the world (Rom 2). They long for relationship, because they can’t live alone, but they adopt lifestyles which militate against satisfactory relationships. They love family life, but they just don’t know how to run it. The Bible also tells me that God’s Spirit can bring Australians to new life, even those who are thoroughly dead in sin. It tells me of the value God has placed on people. It tells me that he sent his son Jesus to die on the cross for Australians.

We must study our Bibles to understand our context properly. That is the key to effective mission. The Bible is concerned with the fundamental issues that convert people. The peripherals are not going to keep them out or bring them in. To spend our time studying the peripherals in great detail is evangelistically useless. More and more books and conferences on evangelism are pushing us in this direction, and it is a mistake.

The paradox
This leads us finally to something of a paradox. We have seen from 1 Corinthians 10-11 (and elsewhere) that to preach the gospel accurately, we have to free ourselves from cultural baggage— our own and that of our audience. To do this, we will need to have a clear understanding of what is cultural baggage and what is the unchanging gospel.

On the other hand, to preach the gospel accurately, we shouldn’t be overly distracted by detailed cultural analysis, because the Bible is our trustworthy guide to human nature. By dedicating ourselves to pursuing God’s mind in Scripture, we come to a profound understanding of the true nature of humanity. We will always learn most about our audience by listening carefully to their Maker.