Boxes

From Epilogue TV

Raising the next generation

The latest 9Marks ejournal has some interesting stuff on raising the next generation of pastoral workers as the church's job, including a very stimulating interview with Mark Dever. One excerpt:

9M: When you talk about the importance of a church having a 360 degree view of person's life, you are relying on a certain philosophy of ministry. What assumptions are you making about how ministry and Christian growth work? Why not just train me in Greek and homiletics and put me behind a pulpit, like a seminary can do?

Dever: That's a great question. I'm assuming that ministry is more than simple proclamation. Simple proclamation is essential to ministry—it's a non-negotiable. But then that proclamation takes place in the context of a community of people who know each other. They're geographically in the same place; they assemble regularly together; and, as a consequence, they know each other.
There seems to be the presumption in the New Testament of pastoral authority accompanying pastoral relationships, as in Hebrews 13, where the members are told to consider the lives of the leaders (in verse 7) before they are told to obey those leaders (in verse 17).

The importance of knowing one another also fits with what we hear the Lord say in John 13 about our witness: that the world will know we are his disciples by the love we have for one another.
I in no way want to denigrate the centrality of preaching the word. But if we just preach the Word without having this relational web or context for ministry, which is the local church, then we don't know how to do membership, how to do discipline, how to disciple; we're not going to be a very good witness either (or if we are, it's accidental)...

Read the whole thing.

The other interesting section was the profiles of various church-affiliated training programmes, and particularly the one on Ministry Training Course (MTS) in Australia, as that's the one which provided the template for church apprenticeships here in the UK. A few of their reflections on the benefits of these apprenticeships:

Apprentices learn to integrate Word, life and ministry practice.

Apprentices are tested in character.

Apprentices learn that ministry is about people, not programs...They learn that ministry is about prayerfully proclaiming Christ to people, not administrating endless programs.

...Another problem with the academic training model is that it suits certain personalities. But our best evangelists and church planters might be those who struggle to learn in the passive context of the classroom. These people thrive in a context where they were talking and preaching and building ministries and being tutored along the way. In academia they would be deemed failures.

And on seminaries:

"...An apprentice model has the advantage of on-the-job training, but the disadvantage of training with only one man's perspective and capacity. Seminaries have the great blessing of "the multiplier effect," preparing many students under the best minds in their fields of study. And the best seminaries do this with field-service requirements that will also involve students in the real life of the church.

No system is perfect, but the blessings of a good seminary education are seen both in the ministry retention rates of well trained graduates as well as in the increasing availability of first-rate seminary training in the developing world. Such training will do much to curb the destructive health-and-wealth gospel that passes for Christianity in too many nations.

...I believe the best ministry preparation takes place where there is a partnership between the seminary and the local church. Some things are well learned in a classroom. Some things are best learned in the dynamic of a local church..."

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Book Recommendation: Faith that Endures

This is my most inspiring read of the year. And I had not even heard of it just over a week ago! I was on a weekend away last week, and upon perusing the little book table, this one leapt out at me as it was the only title I didn't recognise. I picked it up, read a couple of pages, then read a few more pages, and before I knew it I had forked out my chequebook! But it was worth it. I finished it in 3 sittings - utterly compelling and challenging.

Ronald Boyd-Macmillan is a long-time journalist and researcher with Open Doors International, having also worked for a couple of other news organisations and seeing the persecuted church up-close. Faith that Endures bills itself as "The Essential Guide to the Persecuted Church", and Boyd-Macmillan seeks to answer 5 questions:

What does contemporary persecution look like?

What is a persecuted Christian?

Where is the persecuted church?

How can we best assist the persecuted church?

What does the persecuted church have to teach us?

So it sets itself pretty lofty standards! But Boyd-Macmillan rises to the challenge admirably. It is a remarkable blend of even-handed reportage, incisive analysis, and passionate exhortation. He takes us on a tour of places like Kurdistan, India and China to give us a flavour of persecution today. He then deftly navigates his way through the current literature on the subject, as he thinks through both legal and biblical definitions of what "persecution" means. This is one thing I especially appreciated about his work. His style was readable and clear, but I had no doubt that the author had done his homework; I could feel the weight of learning.

The persecuted church is bigger than we think, and Boyd-Macmillan takes us through the different regions of the world. How, then, can we help the persecuted? This section is a good example of the nuanced approach with which Boyd-Macmillan approaches the issues. He shows how often well-intentioned Christians can do more harm than good, as well as the politicised nature of the NGO world. He helps us see two sides to each tactic ("Bible-bombing", for eg.).

Also, he helped me see the importance of keeping informed. I discovered, to cite one instance, that my assumption that state churches in China were banned from preaching the 2nd coming of Jesus was at least a decade out of date. There was also a very moving account of how, upon meeting some of the Chinese church leaders, they broke down in tears when the author gave thanks to God for the revival in that nation. Astonished, he asked them why. Their reply was instructive: "we often ask God, why he has given us more converts than we are able to disciple!" I thought that was a very insightful and mature perspective on the biggest revival in modern history, given that in Matthew 28, Jesus asks us to go and make disciples, not converts. Finally, there is a section on learning from the persecuted church, and he rounds up by providing an informative annotated bibliography.

Another thing I really appreciated about his work is how often he tries to set things in wider context. So he is keen to emphasise that for every dazzling story of martrydom we hear, there are so many more ordinary stories of endurance that we might not know about this side of heaven. For some of the persecuted, deliverance from their suffering might never come in this life. Indeed, to focus only on the more sensational stories is to distort the true picture. Nor is it always true, he contends, that the "blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church". There are times where it has had adversely negative effects. But it wakes us up to the reality of what it means to take up our cross to follow Jesus and reminds us that in all things, we can trust that God will be with his church.

Sure, I wish there was more explicit engagement with biblical texts at times, but that's a minor point. This has got to be currently the best one-volume work on the persecuted church. But sadly, it's not well-known at all. I hope blogging about it would go a tiny way to rectifying that situation.


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One-Anothering: A Communal Gospel

I just finished listening to this talk from the Total Church Conference, having picked it at random since the title looked helpful. I'm blown away - it's outstanding and challenging, and also scary on one level actually! Dave Fairchild, the speaker, shows how the gospel and community relates to one another in fresh and convicting ways. I was struck by how much "one anothering" is there in the NT: love one another, care for one another, forgive one another, don't pass judgment on one another, spur one another to good deeds etc., and how that's intricately related to the indicatives of the gospel. So often the construction in the NT goes along these lines: "As I have loved you, so love one another".

If you have an hour or two, this is worth listening to. Don't worry about the first 5 minutes, where there's some audience interaction, as the talk only really gets going after that. The Q&A is pretty long and I think starts around the 55 minute mark.

One Anothering: A Communal Gospel