CP4DbD – Know yourself

Are you a planter or a pastor?  How do you instinctively answer that question?

Now, what is the difference?  Sometimes we naively think that planting a church is something totally different to pastoring a church.  We imagine leading a committed core group storming the gates of hell, winning soul after soul for Christ.   Engaging in the exciting spiritual battle and holding out the light in the darkness.  Spending hours hanging out with those who aren’t saved; engaging in lots of bridge building, barrier knocking down, and gospel sharing.

And those things do happen.  But the thing with planting a church is that you are planting a church.  Stop and think about that for a minute.  That means from day one there are all the necessary things that come with pastoring a church.  There are people who come with their hurts, and in my experience they come out more readily in a smaller, newer, church and need dealing with.  There are others who come and are struggling with things from their past or present, and they need the gentle but firm pastoral application of the gospel.  There will be those needing discipling through issues in their work, their families, their marriages, their parenting and so on.  There may even be those who come and pretty quickly you find there are church discipline issues that need thinking about.

It’s easy for us to miss that and not plan and prepare adequately for pastoral care as we think about planting.  It is wise to think beforehand about pastoral care for those who are coming with you.  I’ll share some more thoughts on that later on.

But in terms of knowing ourselves there are other questions we need to ask.  What are our strengths and weaknesses?  Generally in a large church with multiple staff you can specialise, the strength of one member of staff covers the weaknesses of others.  That can make us blind to our own weaknesses.   But often when we plant we’re in a smaller team, now hopefully among your team you have those who are stronger where you are weaker, and one of the advantages with planting is giving people greater ownership of church and the part they can play in using their gifts in it.

But still as the pastor we need to be aware of our own strengths and weaknesses.  How would you score yourself out of 10 in these areas and why?

Preaching

Prayer

Pastoring

Evangelism

Dealing with conflict

Leading a team

Administration

Serving

Strategic vision

The why question is the key – it helps identify weaknesses, areas for development, and strengths.  Now, if you dare (and yes you need to dare), ask the same questions of those closest to you and maybe of your whole plant team.  What does it reveal?

How do the gifts and skills and strengths of others help cover your weaknesses?  Who is there whom you can learn from so you strengthen a weakness?  Where do you need to seek out some training? Where is there a gap that needs filling you can pray for God to send someone to fill?

Let’s be realistic, most of us aren’t stellar in terms of our gifting.  I’d say I’m pretty middle of the road on most of those scoring a 5 or 6 with a couple of outliers.   Some of those areas were areas of real weakness that have taken deliberate thought and time to strengthen and develop. Others are ongoing areas of development.

How humble are you?  I remember at one of our launch team meetings prior to us planting apologizing to the team and saying “You will be my first church and I will make mistakes, I will get things wrong and I’m sorry.”  I’m not a prophet, but that was definitely true.  In fact a few people have reminded me of that over the last 16 years and how true it has been.

Being assistant pastor is the best job in Christendom.  The pastor does most of the heavy lifting and makes you look wiser and more gifted than you are as he gently coaches and trains you from the sidelines.  And when you make a mistake either he intervenes beforehand or cleans it up afterwards.  But when you plant, you are the pastor and we all make mistakes.  Being able to admit them and ask for forgiveness it vitally important.  Don’t believe Satan’s lie that it will cost you creditability with your congregation.  On the contrary it is modelling grace and seeking the forgiveness that everyone needs and which oils the wheels of church life that gives weight to the gospel you preach and the discipling you call others too.  They need your developing, growing, genuine grace shape godliness not your pretended perfection.

Those 3 questions are probably enough to be going on with.  Are you a planter or a pastor?  What are your strengths and weaknesses?  How humble are we?

Church planting for dummies by dummies

I’ve had a few conversations with people about church planting. It usually starts with ‘Can I buy you a coffee?’ (The answer is always yes – black Americano please) and pick your brain about planting a church. I think it’s a really helpful thing to do. I’m always willing to give my time to chat with anyone about planting. The UK desperately needs more churches planted, especially outside of the university areas of our cities and towns. And looking at the looming demographic crisis for churches outside that bubble we’re going to need more plants in those places in the decades ahead of us to replace the churches that are closing and will close.

One of the questions I’m often asked is what books would I recommend they go away and read. And I get the impulse. I read everything I could get my hands on in the 2 years before we planting in 2007. But there were very few books that were UK based and so they needed huge contextualisation, and even fewer that were written by those outside of the universe town and city planting movement. I still don’t think we’ve plugged that gap very well.

I don’t feel adequately gifted or able enough to write such a book. If I did I’d entitle it ‘Church planting by dummies’ or maybe ‘Church planting for dummies by dummies’. But given the question keeps getting asked, and coffees keep being bought, I thought I’d post a few thoughts over the next few weeks about church planting in the context of the ordinary places in the UK.

I’m going to group it roughly under the following headings:

Know yourself

Know the gospel

Know your area

Know God’s people.

Know that no plan survives the first punch in the face

I’m not claiming any particular wisdom, but I’m hoping it’ll help me be at least a bit clearer the next time I’m asked about planting in what I say.

Model Problems

Getting leaders and pastors for small churches, revitalisations, and the places the UK church has by and large forgotten is not easy.  Many pastors in those places labour on passionate for the gospel, but also know that if they left it’s unlikely anyone else would take their post after them.  Other churches advertise for months and have no applications for leadership positions.  It is something as the evangelical church across the UK we need to think about and act on before it is too late.

Lots of pastors are approaching retirement and do we have the necessary young leaders trained up and ready to replace them?  Is that true in every place?  Or are our trained leaders, the next generation of pastors of Jesus flock, disproportionately spread, trained, and “called”?

This is purely anecdotal, as I have neither the time or funding or resources to look at it but someone ought to, but it feels to me as if the next generation of pastors primarily desire to function in a team ministry environment.  And by team ministry they don’t mean them and lay elders, they mean them and a paid full/part-time staff team.  I’ve had lots of conversations with young ministers and those thinking of ministry where that has been the goal.  They cite various reasons; “I think a staff team balances out weaknesses and strengths.”  “I don’t do well when I’m isolated.”  I need the care and support of others around me.”  “I need the encouragement of being able to plan and pray and dream together.”  And so on are all reasons I hear.

There’s a couple of huge problems that reveals; one is our model and practice of eldership is woefully flawed and unbiblical if that’s how eldership functions in the church.  A pastor shouldn’t feel isolated, he should feel part of a team, and not just when they meet but all the time, if he has other elders.  If not we need to radically reimagine eldership along biblical lines – elders are not an advisory board, they are not a performance review board, or a check and balance.  Elders are a team of pastors of God’s flock who shepherd God’s people keeping watch over themselves and over the flock and leading the church to fulfilling God’s missional purpose as they grow in and speak the gospel.

But the bigger problem seems to be with our model of training.  Is Bible College the best way to train pastors and leaders?  It has huge benefits but we need to be honest about the draw-backs.  As training for ministry as sole pastor and sole paid member of staff it does not prepare you well.  In fact it creates something of a culture shock, kind of like the ice bath of ministry, when you go from three years of being surrounded by your peers to isolation.

Bible College also costs a lot of money and so is disproportionately full of those who come from bigger wealthier churches who can afford the training.  Therefore the culture it naturally creates, the expectations it inculcates will tend towards team ministry in a larger church.  Yet the reality is that the average size of an evangelical church in the UK is small, and can probably only sustain one paid member of staff.

For those who enter ministry from para-church organisations there are similar problems.  The sudden shock of leaving a team environment to go solo is very real.  The sense of unity of purpose and mission shared among a para-church staff team can create a real sense of loss when one enters normal local church ministry.  And so there too I often hear of people looking for team ministry when they move into the church.

Lastly most assistant pastorates are in large churches quite simply because they can afford them.  But how good a preparation for ministry in a small church, or an average sized church, or a church in need of revitalisation, or in a church in a forgotten place in the UK is that?  I’d like to suggest probably not very not matter how well intentioned you are.

So how do we train the next generation of pastors and leaders for these churches if we want to see the average church in the UK revitalised?  If we want to see forgotten places reached with the gospel as the churches there are well taught and pastored week by week by week?

Want need and must have conceptional drawing on the chalkboard

Praying Big

Do you ever feel like you’ve got bogged down when you pray? Do you ever pray and then have the feeling that you’re prayers have only just scratched the surface, that somehow we’re not praying big or praying deep?

I’ve spent the summer reflecting on prayer. I read Paul Miller’s ‘A Praying Church” which was absolutely brilliant and contained a number of really helpful questions to think through personally and about creating a culture of prayer in an organisation.

I especially found his chapter on The Prayer Triangle helpful as it which detailed prayer on a number of levels. There is vision prayer that prays big about why we do things in light of who we are in Christ and God’s bigger purposes. There is strategic prayer that is about how we go about things. And finally there is tactical prayer about what we do today in light of the strategic and the vision. He then stresses the danger that we get stuck at the bottom of the triangle praying tactically but missing the connections between the everyday and the big kingdom vision of God for his people. I found his challenge to pray up and down the triangle really helpful.

I’ve been trying to flesh it out in Paul’s prayers for the churches he writes to. In Philippians Paul begins with his big vision prayer for the church to grow in love and knowledge of God and discerning God’s best in every situation as God works by his Spirit among them(ch 1). He then teaches them what that looks like in strategic areas for them in their living (ch1v27) and their thinkings (2v5-11) before showing them what it looks like tactically in their lives day by day. His teaching connects the big vision prayer of the kingdom and mission and purposes of God with the everyday actions such as not grumbling, helping others reconcile, living humbly and so on. Which shows them what they can pray for on each of those levels.

I’m hoping to do some work tracing this out in others of Paul’s letters. I think it’s helpful to be thinking through how our prayers for peoples everyday fits strategically with what we do in living for Jesus and seeking his kingdom first as we live for his glory and cooperate with the Spirit at work in us.

I’ve personally found it helpful in thinking through what God’s kingdom purpose is, what his bigger purpose is for each thing a person faces and asks for prayer for.. It is helpful to not simply pray for what someone asks but pray about it in light of those bigger plans and aims. So when we pray for someone’s work we’re connecting it with what God is doing in scattering his people to be light in the darkness where he has placed them. As we pray for someone who is ill we’re thinking through God’s bigger purposes and praying he accomplishes his purposes through their illness, their treatment, and that they can grow and become who God is making them by his Spirit.

It helps us reflect for ourselves as we pray not just about what we face each day but on what God wants and how he achieves it and where specifically he is inviting us to be involved and the opportunities he is placing before us.

There is no place for us and them in the church (Part 2)

Does the church look different from the world?  As God turns to Judah and Israel – his people, that’s the key question.

Have you looked at a colour chart for paint recently?  It has all manor or shades and hues on it.  Some are almost indistinguishable from the colour next to it.  Others are designed for a contrasting feature wall.  Which are God’s people, which are we, meant to be – just another slight variation on magnolia which almost no-one can see or a feature wall in stark contrast to society?

As God speaks to his people he uses the same formula in his pronouncement as he did to the rest of the nations.  But the major difference isn’t the length of it but that they’re held up to the standard of God’s law.

Judah faces judgement for rejecting and not putting into practice God’s law and their idolatry.  He will judge them.  But notice they only get 2 verses and Israel gets 11.  God isn’t concerned in outlining Judah’s sin in detail to Israel, he’s more concerned with their sin.  That’s a challenge isn’t it, when we pray, when we read God’s word to us, sometimes we can find ourselves more concerned about what God is saying and revealing about others than about us.  Israel need to hear from God about their sin, you and I need to hear from God about what he has to say about our sin, our hearts, our calling, not someone else.

You can imagine the awkward shuffling in seats now, the anxious nervous fiddling with hands and looking anywhere but at Amos.  Where a few moments before Israel were cheering and hallelujah-ing the judgement of their neighbour.  Now there’s awkward silence.  Is this outsider really going to judge us?

And as God lists their sin he does so in terms of breaches of the covenant.  Israel sell the innocent and needy for profit despite the law prohibiting slavery.  They trample the poor and deny justice to the oppressed despite God’s law calling on them to care for and provide for the widow, fatherless and refugee(6).  Sex has become their God and purity and faithfulness has been forgotten(7) and God’s name is dishonoured.  They have abandoned mercy and turned justice into a source of income(8) in pursuit of pleasure and profit.

After all that God has done for them(9-11); saving them from slavery in Egypt, protecting them in the wilderness, and planting them in the land which he gave as a gift.  As if that wasn’t enough he gave them prophets so they could hear his word and Nazirites who lived holy lives among them as a spur to holiness themselves.  Isn’t that true he asks?  You can imagine the people awkwardly scuffing the floor and looking down as they nod.  And how have Israel responded, they live just like the nations around them, except their sin is even more wilful and they pressure the Nazirities not to be so holy but to break their vow and be like everyone else, and tell the prophets to stop speaking God’s word.

Does that shock you?  It should and it shouldn’t.  But don’t we have the same thoughts?  Don’t be too holy, don’t be too different, fit in.  We can so easily hear God’s word but not respond to it.  Hear God’s word about justice and love and compassion, be reminded of how he’s shown that to us in Jesus, but have forgotten it 5 minutes after getting in our car.  Can’t we so easily be content to be saved by Jesus without longing to follow or be like Jesus.

We want to be the shade of magnolia on the colour wheel, not the contrasting feature wall to society.

Israel stand as a warning to us.  Don’t ‘us and them’ the book of Amos.  It’s spoken to them primarily but it’s words echo down the centuries to us at Hayfield in 2023.

And the outcome for God’s people is no different to the outcome for the other nations. 

“Now then, I will crush you as a cart crushes when loaded with grain.”

It’s a terrifying image isn’t it?  Think of the trailer you see the tractor pulling with it’s tonnes of potatoes or sugar beat in and imagine yourself under its wheels.  That’s the image.  God’s judgement begins with the people of God.

No one will escape no matter their speed, strength, skill, resources or bravery.  It’s time for judgment to begin with the people of God.

Amos is a warning that cuts through our complacency as God roars.  It calls us to stop deflecting his word with our ‘us’ and ‘them’.  It calls us to see the way we’ve neutered his word.  How we’ve willingly accepted a shade of difference from the world rather than pursuing contrasting holiness.  And he invites us to repent.  God has rescued us from slavery to sin, from bland world-like living, to be his people through Jesus death and resurrection and we are to follow him empowered by the Spirit.  We’re called to be holy not be bland.  That’s what God wants to do in us as people and as his people together.

Where is God calling on you to repent this morning?  Is it of failing to examine yourself, of applying things to others, or judging the world?  Is it of a failure to obey his word?  Is it of not just not being holy yourself but encouraging others to be less holy in what you’ve done or said.

God’s word of discipline is always an act of his grace.  Hear Amos’ invitation this morning to run to Jesus again, not to depend on ourselves, but come to God’s merciful provision of a Saviour who dies and rises again for us and bears our judgement, redeeming us for holiness, and pouring out his Spirit so that we can be who he has made us to be as we depend on him not ourselves. And as the gospel dissolves all our us and them divisions.

Big Kingdom vision

We held the first Medhurst Praise and Partnership evening last night, I was tasked with preaching, here’s my notes:

One of the biggest dangers for us as churches is that we miss the wood for the trees.  We love Jesus, we love our church, we love the people we’re trying to reach with the gospel in our community.  But we stop there.  That’s the boundary.  That’s the border our love doesn’t go beyond.  And so we confuse God’s kingdom with our church, God’s mission with our mission.

We become blinkered.  Just focused on what we’re doing.  Our church, our ministry, our outreach.  And our missional heart shrinks and shrivels.  We effectively treat church like we treat the club and national football teams.  We love our club, but we’re not that invested or interested in the national team.  If footballs not your thing, think about your kids, we can treat church like our kids.  We’re passionate about what our kids do; maybe we care a bit about what nephews and nieces do, but nothing beyond that.

But that’s hugely dangerous when it comes to the church for lots of reasons.  But most fundamentally because that’s not the kingdom we’re called to.  We need a bigger heart, a bigger concern, a bigger vision of Christ’s kingdom and our mission.  I briefly want to show you that from these verses at the start of Paul’s letter to the Philippians where we see 4 things that flow out of and fuel his bigger vision of the kingdom of God.

Praise God for others

(3)“I thank my God every time I remember you.”  Paul thanks God for this church.  And who can blame him?  It’s a trophy of God’s grace, a brilliant display of the gospel’s power to save and reconcile diverse people.  There’s Lydia – the god-fearing wealthy business woman who was low hanging gospel fruit, ripe and ready to hear about Jesus.  Then there’s the newly liberated formerly possessed slave girl from societies underclass miraculously saved.  There’s the jailer, probably a hardened former soldier, and his salt of the earth family, among others.  It’s a diverse church that displays the power of the gospel to save all and unite them together in Jesus!  Praise God!

We’re tempted to read that in isolation and draw the conclusion we’re to praise God for our church.  And we should, each church represented here is a miracle of grace, each story in it a story of God’s bringing the dead to life.  Some resurrected from the death of legalism and being good, others from the death of open rebellion against God.  Each church has manifold stories of God’s grace to tell, each of which like a diamond reflects new light on the grace and glory of God in the gospel.

But we miss something when we stop there, because Paul isn’t in Philippi.  He’s not praising God for where he’s currently ministering.  And Paul doesn’t just do that in this letter.  In Romans 1v8 he praises God for the church in Rome, in Ephesians 1v3 he leads the church in Ephesus in praise for God’s grace to them.  In Colossians 1v3 he thanks God for the Colossians salvation and faith even though he didn’t plant them.  In Thessalonians 1v2 he thanks God for the Thessalonians and so on.

We miss something vital when we just apply this verse as praise to God for our salvation, his work in our church.  Paul has a bigger kingdom mentality.  He’s thankful for God working wherever the gospel has borne fruit, not just in his immediate patch, or his current ministry.

I can all too easily lose that bigger gospel, bigger kingdom, view.  Can’t you?  Medhurst Ministries exists to help us praise God for his work in other places, and not just those like us, but diverse churches, which all speak powerfully of Christ’s salvation, his bringing life from the dead and uniting the divided.  And that praise fuels his joy, his perseverance even when his ministry is hard. 

Don’t we need that?

Pray for others

Paul doesn’t just praise God for what he did whilst he was there.  He continues to pray for them even though he‘s somewhere else.  And he prays (4)confident that God has begun a good work in them and will finish it(6).

Paul’s prayer for them connects the big vision of God’s kingdom of the church shining like stars, with the strategic gospel transformation that is needed in their thinking and what that looks like tactically day by day in their lives.

He prays big vision prayers for them, he tells them what they are in(9-11).  That’s the vision he prays for them, what God’s work looks like in them.  That they grow in love and are increasingly able to discern what’s pure and blameless and live it out.  That’s the big vision.

But he also tells us what that vision looks like strategically as he calls on them to live lives worthy of the gospel(1v27) and what that will mean, tactically, everyday on the ground(1v27-28) striving for the gospel and not being afraid of suffering.  Do you see what he does big vision kingdom prayer, strategic teaching on gospel transformation, followed by what that looks like where the rubber hits the road in everyday life together.  He does it again in (2v11)as he teaches that growing in love and knowing how to live out the gospel will mean thinking like Jesus (strategy), which leads (2v14)to doing everything free from grumbling and arguing, and applying that to two people who have fallen out in the church(rubber hitting road).

Paul doesn’t pray ‘be with prayers’ he doesn’t pray ‘bunion, sleep and work’ prayers.  He’s constantly praying prayers that move from the practical and everyday and connects them with how God calls his people to live and think and act to the vast scale of the work Christ is continuing in them as he builds his kingdom.

We need prayers for the church that connect God’s big kingdom vision with what God calls us to and what that means in the everyday.  And we need it not just for the churches we’re in but for God’s kingdom beyond our immediate borders, those like us.

Partner with others

One of the reasons Paul prays with such joy for the Philippian church is (4)“your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now.”  They weren’t passive receivers of the gospel, they weren’t gospel consumers; they became partners in the gospel quickly.  The jailer immediately opens his home.  Lydia does likewise and quickly the church meets there.

In 4v14 Paul can say that they shared in his troubles.  Right from the start they partnered with him and they didn’t drop that partnership when things looked bad, when he was in prison in Rome.  They weren’t fair weather partners, but faithful partners.  Practically (2v25)they sent Epaphroditus to Paul in prison to care for him.  And(4v15-18)  they gave generously right from the start even when no-one else did.  And they’ve kept giving, 2 Corinthians tells us, even in extreme poverty and beyond what they were able.

Their partnership is financial – they give, but it’s also personal – they send people, and permanent – they stick to it.  They don’t stop when the going gets tough and fruit is slow and ministry hard for them or for Paul.  That’s true gospel partnership.  Paul knows they have his back no matter what!

Ministry in every place is hard.  But particularly in the forgotten places, where church can be small, fruit can take many years, where you can be the only paid member of staff, the only elder, we need partnership.  Medhurst seeks to foster that through it’s pastors retreat, it’s women’s retreat, the family retreat, and also through local meet ups for a morning a month to chat, ask questions, laugh and pray together.  It also seeks to foster church partnership in a wider church network, between different churches that are financial, personal and permanent.

Maybe that’s something you feel God wants you to explore tonight.  Maybe that’s something you’re hungry for, chat to us.

Passionate for God’s kingdom

(7-8)Pulse with Paul’s passion for God’s people.  He loves them like Christ loves them.  He’s deeply moved when he remembers them.  It’s the compassion we read so often in the gospels Jesus felt towards people that animated him and made him act to serve and save. 

A compassion that’s unreserved and pours itself out for others.  And Paul doesn’t let his chains or the busyness of ministry constrain his love for them.  He doesn’t feel he has enough on his plate witnessing to the guard.  His big vision of God’s kingdom, his big Christ-like love for them, means he takes time to write to, and pray for them even in the crisis.

It’s a passion he has for where he is – Rome, but also where God’s people are but he isn’t – Philippi.  Wherever God’s people are, wherever the gospel is being proclaimed and is at work, wherever a church is striving to shine like stars against the backdrop of its society Paul is passionate for that church as an outpost of God’s kingdom.

One of my biggest dangers is loving my church like this but not your church like this.  One of the dangers of a parachurch organisation is that it can be so passionate for it’s thing that it has no passion for any other thing.  It has a ministry passion not a kingdom passion, a ministry vision not a kingdom vision.

Paul, like Jesus, is passionate for God’s kingdom made visible wherever the gospel is proclaimed by his people raised from death to life in the Spirit through the gospel.  Medhurst isn’t just passionate for the forgotten places, we have a particular passion or those places, but we’re not passionate exclusively for those places.

We want to see thriving churches living out and holding out the gospel in every community in the UK.  Be they gated communities, estate communities, campus communities, coastal communities,  retirement communities, commuter communities or any other community.  We want to foster big kingdom partnership that praises God for what he is doing, prays for his good work to be completed in his people, and partners together, and shares a passion for God’s kingdom for his glory.

There is no place for us and them in the church (Part 1)

Us and them.  That’s how we divide society.  Those who are like us and those who aren’t.  The good guys and the bad guys.  Those who are for us and those who are against us.  Those who think and live like us and those who don’t.  Us and them.  It’s true of sport, of the playground, of the staffroom, of the family, of the neighbourhood, of the country, of the world. The ‘us’ is always right and defines itself against the ‘them’ who is always wrong.  The ‘us’ is good or better, the ‘them’ is bad or lesser.

Have you got some of your ‘us and them’s’ in your head?  The ways you’ve divided society, family, community, and the world. 

Amos speaks God’s word into an us and them culture.  ‘Us’ is Israel, they’re God’s people surrounded by nations who are not.  There’s Judah just to the south, the nation they split from, and there’s a different division there, though it’s still an us and them division.  But Israel ‘us’ leads them to be are proud of being God’s people; God is on their side, as opposed to the other nations.  Yet the irony is that Israel is just as riddled with injustice and idolatry; just as riven by ‘us and them’, haves and have nots, oppressor and oppressed as the nations around them.

And so God sends a ‘them’, an outsider, to Israel with his word.  Amos isn’t a priest or a prophet, (1)he’s a shepherd farmer.  He isn’t even from Israel; he’s from Tekoa in Judah their brotherly rival.  Not only is the messenger a shock but so is the message,

“The LORD roars from Zion and thunders from Jerusalem”

and what’s the result of that? 

“the pastures of the shepherds dry up, and the top of Carmel withers.” 

God’s not tame!  God’s not indifferent!  God’s not weak and anaemic and unable to act!  God sees and like a lion coming out to hunt he roars judgment against his people.

One of the dangers for the church, and for us as disciples, is ‘us and them’ thinking.  It’s looking at the world and condemning it’s sin and missing our own.  We can be like the man Jesus talks of who sees the speck in his friend’s eye and misses the plank in his own.  We look at the world and see all it’s godlessness and idolatry and sin and then look at ourselves and think we’re not too bad.  And we settle for being a nicer shade of good rather than being what God calls us to be, which is his holy people, totally set apart for him with a completely renewed way of thinking and acting.

It’s so easy to slip into that ‘us and them’ way of thinking.  We can even do it within church as we’re listening to a sermon.  I can do it as I prepare; thinking of who this is for rather than applying it to myself and my sin.  You can do it, maybe you’re doing it right now, listening and thinking I hope so and so is really tuning in because this is for them, not for me.

God brilliantly uses that blinkered ‘us’ and ‘them’ thinking to get his message under Israel’s defences.  Chapter 1 is like a stealth bomb that their radar doesn’t pick up until it unloads it’s explosive payload.

God begins by pronouncing his judgement on Israel’s neighbours, those who are not his people.  Each oracle begins “This is what the Lord says…” and ends “says the LORD.”  This is God’s word not Amos’ hobby horses.  And each oracle has the phrase “for three sins of… even for four, I will not relent.”  God isn’t making a snap judgement, but he’s been watching each nation carefully and their whole society is marked by sin, deliberate sin.  Each nation is charged with injustice, oppression and arrogance, specifically treating people as disposable and worth less than stuff, and God pronounces judgement on that evil and cruelty.  Not based on his law because they don’t have it, but based on the moral law he’s written into the hearts of everyone made in his image.

And God works his way around the nations surrounding Israel.  Damascus capital of Syria is judged for brutality(3-5) in threshing Gilead, Gaza of Philistia for enslaving whole communities(6-8), Tyre for doing the same and breaking faith with a treaty of brotherhood(9-10).  Edom for attacking his brother and slaughtering women not just enemy soldiers(11-12).  Ammon for brutality against pregnant women in a land grab(13-15).  And Moab for an act of vengeful hatred against the dead body of Edom’s king(2v1-3).

The war crimes and abuse of people we so tragically still hear of are nothing new.  It’s the result of a turning away from what we were made to be, from the echo of God’s standard which he implanted in every human heart – that’s why we instinctively feel it’s wrong even if we aren’t Christians.

But God sees every act of oppression and injustice, every act of abuse.  And he pronounces his judgement.  Here he strips away the nations strength, their leaders, their position, their security and sends some into exile.  God acts justly because he sees every sinful act of barbarism and oppression and injustice.

And that ought to make us rejoice.  Don’t you hear of such things – the brutal acts committed in war, stories of people enslaved by people traffickers – and feel utterly helpless, feel anger and frustration at the injustice of it all.  Don’t let yourself become numb to it because God isn’t numb to it.  He will bring it all to judgement and that’s good news!

But it’s good news that comes with a health warning.  Israel would have heard this and been rejoicing – ‘Yes God, you see!  Yes, you are going to judge! Yes, send them into exile! God is just.  At last they’re getting what their sins deserve.’

But you can see the flashing warning signs can’t you because God’s justice doesn’t just apply to Israel’s ‘thems’, but to Israel’s ‘us’.  God doesn’t exempt his people from his standards.

An ‘us and them’ mentality that’s quick to condemn the world and slow to examine our own hearts and see and confess and repent of our own sins invites God’s judgment.  God is a holy God, he judges all.  We need to examine ourselves and check we don’t fall into that.

But secondly an ‘us and them’ attitude misses the missional heart of God.  God’s longing is for the sinner to be saved; he’s slow to anger, rich in love, compassionate and gracious.  It’s tragic that sometimes the people of God are the opposite, quick to anger, and bereft of love, compassion and grace.  Judging others stops us going to them and sharing the good news of salvation in Jesus with them.  Who is that true of for you?  Who are the people you’ve judged and so don’t want to share the gospel with?

Do we see our ‘us and thems’?  Who are we quick to judge and condemn?  Who are we quick to apply God’s word to so we avoid applying to ourselves?  Do we see the danger of that?  Will we repent of it?

Is our kingdom failing his Kingdom

I’ve tried to bite my fingertips to stop me from writing this but I can do it no longer. I’ve tried to restrain the overwhelming tide, tried to stem the pent up frustration, sought to pray it all through with a view to not posting this, but it just has to be said. We, the UK church, have a problem. I don’t mean the church nationally (it does but that’s beyond my purview) but the evangelical church in the UK.

Our strategies are in danger of killing the gospel. Our kingdom building is in danger of obscuring his kingdom because we haven’t built on gospel rich, early church, dynamics. We don’t give away we hoard. We don’t give to where we see need, we give to where we think need is based on our blinkered models and strategy. And the lost in the UK are suffering for it. What a tragedy it will be if it is not Jesus kingdom we build but our own, limited not by his riches and desire to bless his praying dependent people who ask for things beyond our imagination, but by our stunted sight based strategy.

Jesus kingdom has a shape to it, a shape he exemplifies. It’s a kingdom that’s exemplified in his life. It’s marked by a overwhelming concern for the glory of the Father at cost to self because of a conviction that his will is best and his glory matters more than anything else for the whole cosmos. It is marked therefore by a dying to self, a descent into death, that others might be raised to life in him as they are snatched from the very jaws of hell and reconciled to God as his Spirit-filled sons and daughters. It’s a kingdom exemplified by the risen Jesus sending out his disciples to do what he did in dying to self in order to go to the world dependent on the Father and filled with the Spirit. It’s further exemplified by his using the persecution of a rapidly growing church in Jerusalem so that they die to themselves and are flung out into areas of Judea and Samaria; who are needy and thirsty for the life giving water of Jesus Christ in the gospel.

As I look at the church in the UK I don’t see masses of dying to self, as I look at myself I see a reluctance to do so too, or at least a desire to set a limit on how far Christ can ask me to go down into his death with him. So as I write this I’m wrestling with it too. Let me give you some examples of where I see this problem at play:

I have spent this summer, yet again, getting email after email from student workers from university city churches encouraging me to recommend their church to any students going to that city, because they disciple and equip and train them for the kingdom through their discipleship programmes and the like. Now they may well do, and having sent 2 sons, and loads of teens off to uni, I know it’s an important time. But I want to write back to every one and ask them where do you then send those discipled students on to?

Is it to lead ministries in their churches only? Or are you training them up to go to the churches desperately in need of leaders in the non-university towns and villages across the nation? Because if we continue on our current trajectory with the drain of young Christians, especially young Christian leaders, to university churches where they are silo-ed until needed then we may in the decades not very distant only have churches in those university cities and towns. We need young believers trained and equipped and envisioned with the gospel strategy; to die to self in service of the Gospel and Christ’s bride – the church (and not just the comfortable, good looking bits).

We also have a problem with our ministry models. I’ve heard of ministers and elders being encouraged to think about moving on from their small congregations to bigger congregations because they have served their time there and are now ready for bigger more strategic things. As if small church ministry is the apprenticeship and now you can do big things, important things for Jesus. That wasn’t exactly how it was phrased but it is what it amounts to. Where is the dying to self in that way of thinking? By that way of thinking Jesus missed a key strategic step by not basing all his ministry in Jerusalem where the masses were and by preaching to the sick and the Samaritan. And, well, don’t even get me started on the strategic ministry opportunities lost by his submitting to dying on a cross… If our ministry models don’t follow Jesus how can we call ourselves his disciples? If our church strategy doesn’t follow Jesus then how can he be our head, how can he be the groom and we his bride when we are not united in this?

We have a problem with our church planting. Church planting is all about dying to self. It means leaving something comfortable and which we love [don’t plant a church, or join a plant, because you are unhappy with where you are] to start something new. It means labouring with a smaller team, a smaller budget, a smaller leadership, and having to establish all the things that already existed in the established church. Planting is all about dying to self not just for the planted church but for the planting church, it ought to experience the same dying to self.

And yet so many churches who are planning to plant seem to want to do so without dying to self. If any church is thinking or planning to plant it needs to ask are we will to pay the price, to die to self? Are we willing to give away leaders until it hurts? Are we willing to give away resources long term at significant cost to self until it hurts? Are we willing to die to self to plant this church? If the answer is no then please don’t plant a church, but if you decide not to then please also examine your hearts because God in love is graciously revealing something to you about the spiritual temperature of your leaders and your discipleship of your congregation. Too few churches plant in a way that mirrors Christ’s descent into death and trusts in his for resurrection.

And that partly influences where we plant. No church plant is easy. But why do so many churches plant into university areas? Why are student areas over-represented in church planting statistics in the last 20 years? Is it because we don’t want to die to self to fund that plant in the council estate for 15, 20, 30 years? Is it because we want the relatively easy win, the comfort, the kudos of a successful plant that is quickly on its own two feet so we don’t feel the pain for too long?

I could go on but I won’t. I just want to go away and let that question sit with me; am I building Jesus kingdom his way? Am I dying to self, following him down into death, trusting in him for resurrection? Or has my strategy so warped my view that I’m building my kingdom in place of his without even realising it?

Filling a Gospel Black Hole

I mentioned in my previous post that I was at the Medhurst Ministries Pastor’s Retreat in Pollington last week. For those who don’t know Pollington it’s near Doncaster, but nearer to Goole or Selby. It’s between Doncaster and York, not too far from Pontefract. It’s a beautiful part of the county and the country.

As we were there the gospel poverty of the area struck me afresh. Sat in the pub chatting to the landlady we’ve got to know over the years I was thinking where could I send her to church? And how would she hear the gospel? Apart from those 3 days and the 3 days of the Medhurst women’s retreat what chance would she have of meeting a Christian and hearing about Jesus? Is 6 days a year really all the opportunity to hear the gospel the church can offer her and those who live around her?

The chances of meeting a disciple of Jesus and of hearing the good news about Jesus in all of those villages is small. There are Methodist and Anglican church buildings present in some of them, but the need for the gospel is very real. Sadly that’s all to true of most of the villages from us in Hayfield all the way to York. Tragically it can be said of many from here to Hull with a few notable exceptions.

Yorkshire remains an incredibly gospel needy area. And yet still I hear of plants being planned for student areas in cities with churches that already serve those student populations whilst the likes of Thorne and Goole and Selby are left untouched. When will the UK church wake up to the hundreds of thousands across the towns and villages of the North of England and rural or coastal areas which live in a spiritual desert and where people are going to a lost eternity without ever hearing the gospel.

None of them are sexy places to plant. None of them will see a church grow quickly. They aren’t the kind of places that will be self sustaining within 3 or 5 or 10 years. The work will be hard and slow and laborious but there is a need. We need to think about new models of planting, more akin to the spider plant with runners from the market town to the surrounding villages where small groups labour evangelistically to engage in the community and win the lost. We need to rethink the models we have and the timescales and the funding because there are gospel black holes that need the light carried into them so the darkness may be overcome and the lost saved!

Photo by Joshua Rodriguez on Unsplash

Medhurst Pastor’s retreat

Imposter syndrome is a problem we all struggle with. It’s that itchy uncomfortable feeling that you just don’t belong, you don’t fit, you’re just pretending and any minute someone will expose you as the fraud you know yourself to be. It’s something lots of ministers struggle with. But it’s also something which the culture of ministry in the UK can exacerbate.

Ministry fraternals, ministry conferences, and even leaders conferences can feel like a study in them and us, insiders and outsiders. Some of that is just natural, we see someone we know and haven’t seen for ages, or went to bible college with and we want to connect with them. If we go with a large staff team then we naturally want to discuss those things with those people over an extended period. But all of that can leave some – if you didn’t go to bible college, have come on your own, have no real peers or friends in ministry because you aren’t from those circles – feeling on the outside, on the periphery, other, imposters.

And I’m going to be really brutally honest – often fraternals, and leaders or ministry conferences just aren’l’t that fun. There isn’t much laughter or relief or even honesty sometimes. They can feel more like a drain than a time of building up and strengthening. We want to take God’s word seriously sometimes seems to morph into we take ourselves too seriously!

Last week I spent 3 days in Pollington at the Medhurst Ministry Pastor’s Retreat. It’s the third time I’ve been, and it’s a break that involves lots of laughter, conversations, bible teaching and fun. None of those present are well known. All labour in the UK’s forgotten places; be that council estates, distance northern towns, or places in need of revitalisation because the community has changed around a church that hasn’t.

No one takes themselves too seriously, though we take the word of God seriously. No one thinks of themselves too highly, all of us come with the bumps and bruises and wounds of ministry in a forgotten place. There is a willingness to challenge one another and not let it become a pity party, and a desire to learn from one another and dream ministry dreams together. There is a growing sense of brotherhood and sharing of resources where before we may have felt we were competing with one another, fighting over the same scraps.

I’d love you to pray that those men who were there go home strengthened and equipped and challenged and refreshed.. And to pray for the Medhurst Women’s retreat to do similar for them in a couple of weeks.