Couldn't Help Noticing

Church leadership

I've just finished listening to the Anglican Archbishop of Sydney's opening address to the 2007 Sydney Synod, delivered on Monday. It is an inspiring blend of gospel proclamation, theological thinking, perceptive analysis of our society, humour, vision-setting, and powerful challenge to Sydney Anglicans to pray and sacrificially participate in the vision he (or, more accurately, God) has set before them.

Naturally, it will be of great interest to Sydney Anglicans. But, in my view, it is a model of what Christian leadership of a church or denomination should be like, and it is encouraging for any Christian person to listen to. Praise God for his servant Peter Jensen.

Preaching application

I'm watching a DVD of Paul Dale speaking to Col Marshall as I type this. Paul is presenting superlative material on preaching and on how to train others in preaching. All of this will end up going into the DVD(s) I'm working on for MTS. Paul points out that Richard Baxter, the great Puritan preacher, spent half of his sermons preaching application of the passage he was exegeting. I don't know if I'd want to see all ministers trying to do quite that much, but it would be a stretching exercise for most of our preaching (and, dare I say, useful for our hearers) if we all worked harder on this.

Ministry practice

Sandy Grant is another man who appears on video talking about MTS (Ministry Training Strategy) training. Again, he says wonderful stuff. Like me, he believes that ministry training really is ministry. So when training ministry apprentices, one of the things he does is encourage them to speak to other people about the gospel. He suggests asking a non-church person if they would mind helping out with training the trainee who wants to learn how to communicate what Christians believe and wants to practise on a real live person. The other person is almost always happy to help out. And more often than not, lo and behold, a pretend conversation about Jesus turns into a real conversation about Jesus, with benefits flowing in both directions.

A word of interpretation, please

I couldn't help noticing that some Christians seem to speak a quite different Christian language to me. I received a brochure in the mail for a conference being run by ‘DaySpring Church’ in Sydney. It came in a Koorong Bookstore catalogue. I think I may need the Holy Spirit's gift of interpretation to understand the profile of one of the conference speakers:

Kris Vallottan is the founder and overseer of the Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry in Redding, California. He is the Senior Associate Leader at Bethel Church and has been a part of Bill Johnson's apostolic team for over 26 years. Kris has trained and pastored prophetic teams all over the United States and is a recognised prophetic voice both here and abroad. He is a notable speaker with a vision and passion to equip an “Elijah generation” for the end-times harvest. Kris and his wife Kathy have been married for 30 years and together help to develop prophetic teams and supernatural schools all over the world. They have four children and seven grandchildren.

I honestly have no idea what much of this means. Can anyone explain to me what “supernatural schools” are, or what “Supernatural Ministry” is? How do you ‘train’ or “develop” a ‘prophetic team’? And just what is meant by an ‘apostolic team’?

Contact me if you know.

Passive-aggressive church billboards

Some people don't like the idea of God judging us, but are too scared to say so. So a church billboard which says, “You are under the judgement of God and are going to hell” would give them the screaming heebie jeebies, but they would have to find a way to say so without also attracting attention to the fact that they have stopped believing in the idea of divine judgement—if, indeed, they ever did. Instead they will talk in terms of the need for respect, love, gentleness, humility and the desire not to be misunderstood. As if to speak truthfully about the reality of judgement, even if in a short-hand way, is somehow not respectful, loving, gentle or humble.

Rather than giving such people grief, it seems to me that we need a line of regular billboards which state gospel truths in a rather blunt and unvarnished way, as well as a whole other line of passive aggressive billboards that don't really speak of judgement, but kind of hint that all is not well:

“We all share in the guilt”

“Why can't we all just be nice to each other?”

“God is very disappointed.”

“About something.”

“I think you know what I'm talking about.”

“Do I have to spell it out?”

“I hope you understand faint disapproval.”

“Remember to breathe.”

“Practise random acts of kindness.”

“Watch this space”

Admittedly, some of these slogans are not particularly obvious. But their juxtaposition with a nearby church building should be enough to help people take the hint. I can almost now see the penny dropping: people reading such billboards, noticing the nearby church and falling to the ground convicted by guilt and crying, “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!” (Isa 6:5).