Evangelicals then and now

I was pleased to find the article ‘Your welcome’ (March 2008) in such a widely read publication as The Briefing. Having recently moved to a new city, my family has experienced the welcome of many congregations as we look for one that fits us. Sadly, we have made our way out of the ‘back door’ of many churches.

On one recent Sunday morning, we attended a church that we found out about online. A sign on the street directed us into the complex where the church met, but we had to discover which building and doorway on our own. We made our way through the foyer looking for a newsletter or outline which we didn't find, and sat near the front. During the service we were directed to notices on page 2 of the newsletter which we still didn't have, and when the time came for children to leave for ‘Sunday School and Youth Group’, my husband and I looked around for any indication of a crèche, but kept our toddler with us.

After the service, we waited around for a while and, feeling dejected, headed for the door. The minister ‘caught’ us on our way out with “I've met you before, haven't I?” Um ... no. He then let us know that he saw us looking unsure when the children were leaving for Sunday School, and that there is actually a crèche at the top of the stairs. It was a bit too late to let us know!

Having been on welcoming teams at our previous churches, it has been really disappointing to see the lack of welcoming in churches in our area. I hope that many people have read your article and will invest in the ‘Welcomer's Training Course’ and give people a better welcome than we received.

Robyn Robson of Sydney, NSW, AUS (10/03/2008)

I am a big fan of The Briefing and read it from cover to cover every month. I bought the CD and read all the back copies too. I was challenged by your article on church in 2003, called ‘The gathering: thinking afresh about church’. I thought you might be encouraged to know that we are trying your ideas and they are working! I attend St Faith's Anglican church at Narrabeen and, inspired by the Holy Spirit, we have planted a new little church/congregation and we are running it using a mixture of your ideas and our ideas.

Our church plant was different to what you normally hear about because evangelism was not our prime motivation, even though we are passionate about telling others about Jesus.

We go to church to encourage each other, to spur each other on with Jesus as our focus. You can do that without a sermon, without songs, without prayers, without announcements and without a cup of tea and a biscuit. If you include a sermon, songs, prayers, announcements, a cup or tea and a biscuit then the effect should be more encouraging, shouldn't it?

Early in 2005 Steve Ross and I and others felt that it wasn't happening. We were going to Sunday @ 6 and encouraging the brethren but some of the other things we found discouraging rather than encouraging. (Our church had three Sunday meetings: 8:30 a.m., 10:30 a.m. and Sunday @ 6. Then we had a couple of church plants: one called The Gathering on Saturday nights which was to attract young workers, and one at an adjacent suburb, Warriewood, where there was no Anglican church, to attract families.)

For instance, we felt Sunday @ 6 was having too many evangelistic services. We were hearing evangelistic sermons so often that attempts to persuade non-Christians were more like pestering them and it could be turning them off. Some non-Christians like to take their time, check things out and weigh up the cost (Luke 14:28-33) before making a decision. Even when we weren't having evangelistic services, the meetings and the sermons were kept at a very basic level of understanding of the Scriptures—stuff we'd heard a thousand times before. The songs we were singing were repetitious and without much meat in them. Were we just grumpy old men? Others agreed with us (other whingers?) so we presented our thoughts to various members of the staff.

We were told that Sunday @ 6 was the only service that was accessible to youth. So even though about half the congregation was over 40, the decision had been made to pitch the sermon, songs and the tone of the meeting in general at a level that suited the youth. The problem with that, we felt, was that it didn't encourage growth in the older half of the congregation. In reply, we were told that the more mature Christians were there to serve the less mature, and that maturity comes through service. We were left wondering: does the leadership team want the older half to go to Sunday @ 6 just to serve the younger ones? Does the leadership team want the older half to grow a bit more than that?

Further enquiries led us to believe that Sunday at 6 wasn't going to change. We thought about going to another service but we had ideas—a vision, if you like—for something different and appropriate to our needs and to the needs of others like us—something which wasn't being provided at the other meetings. So we approached Kerry, the Senior Minister, with the possibility of starting a new congregation which would target a group of people beyond the ‘youth’ level. We were inspired by your article and it gave us more ideas on how to run a congregation. We began to see how a smaller group of people (smaller than those currently attending Sunday @ 6) would allow us to implement some of those ideas and allow greater interaction and in-depth discussion.

We had a few problems: Who would lead it? Where would we meet? Should we meet on Saturday nights or Sunday nights? Who would preach? Who would come (we didn't want to take key people away from other congregations and hurt those congregations)? How would we present it to the rest of St Faith's?

Our first meeting was on Sunday the 10th of February, 2008. It was a pretty traditional ‘hymn sandwich’ with a sermon and prayers, we sang ‘Amazing Grace’, and we had announcements, and something to eat and drink. Since then, we've tried different things. The best thing is the sense of community. We are small in numbers (about 20 so far), friendly, united in our love of Jesus, and this sense of community just happened. And people love it. All the work we did to try to make it good and then, almost by accident, the best thing was something we didn't organize. People are coming—friends of ours or friends of friends who haven't been to church for ages—and they love it.

We still haven't solved some of those problems but God has been good to us and builds his church regardless of our failings and fumblings. We hope to keep our focus on Jesus and give God the glory in all that we do.

Ed O'Conor of Cromer, NSW, AUS (10/03/2008)

I like the comparison made in passing in the CHN about Emoting about Idols with Australia's cricket boasts. It got me thinking that perhaps we need some of the mocking chants that we hear at the MCG (presumably SCG too). When someone is taken off by police, there's the chant ‘You're going home in the back of the divvy van’. So some sort of variation on that to idols and false gods might be good: ‘You're gonna rust away; moths are gonna eat you up’. Or ‘You're going away in the back of a robber's van’.

A variation is the taunt: ‘Can't bat, can't bowl, can't field’. So, in line with Isaiah 46:1-4, we could sing or shout ‘Can't make, can't carry, can't save’.

Of course, there's also the taunts to fielders when they miss a catch (as well as to spectators who pass the beach ball to the police): You are a w*****. So an occasional chant in a liturgically appropriate time to idols and false gods of ‘you are a nothing’ could wake up a few congregations.

Mockery is, of course, biblical as evidenced by Isaiah 46 and not least by Elijah on Carmel. Indeed, in 1 Kings 18:27, there is possibly a euphemism mocking their gods for going to the bathroom, not all that different from the blunt cricket cry above.

Even a slow hand clap mocking idols might be an idea.

Taunts and chants lend themselves to kids songs so perhaps Colin Buchanan can be contracted to help here. Interspersed with some Mexican waves, I can see quite a future for liturgists and congregations. As well, I see a future for liturgical expression when the congregation can point mockingly, not to the dressing room when a batsman is out, but down to hell. Given the demonstrative nature of umpire Billy Bowden, maybe he could choreograph something for us? Signal a six to celebrate God; raising the finger when the idols fail. Of course, already cricket fans bow down in adulation at some heroes. We need to rescue that back to God.

Paul Barker of Melbourne, VIC, AUS (10/03/2008)

I was really pleased to see your article on Francis Schaeffer in this month's edition of The Briefing. Schaeffer's skill was in understanding and interpreting the times he lived in. He could see across the various disciplines of theology, philosophy, art and literature to the mega-trends that had and were continuing to shape society. He was then able to project these trends forward to what the next generation of society would become.

Reading Schaeffer as someone in my early 30s, I find I am reading the origins of my generation. As he wrote and published in the 1960s and 70s, he was envisaging a future where the loss of absolutes would move from the lecture halls and art galleries into everyday life, resulting in a moral and social disintegration. This is the generation that I have grown up in. I read Schaeffer to understand my culture so that I am able to speak the truth to my friends in concepts they understand. I would encourage others of my generation to discover Schaeffer—particular his books on philosophy and culture as we seek to take the eternal truths of an unchanging God to an ever-changing and biblically illiterate society.

Martyn Link of East Lothian, Scotland, UK (10/03/2008)

Martin Pakula's article is interesting, both for its interpretation of certain verses, and for the relevant verses it omits.

Even if one leaves Romans 2:29 aside, Christians from all nations are said to be “Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise” (Gal 2:29), “the Israel of God” (Gal 6:16), formerly “excluded from citizenship in Israel” (Eph 2:12), “the circumcision” (Phil 3:3), “a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God ... the people of God” (1 Peter 2:10). Those were all former descriptions of Jews.

To take Romans 1:16 as a rationale for the primacy of Jewish evangelism is surely mistaken. Is it not rather describing the way the evangelistic activity commenced, as also seen in Luke 24:47 and Acts 1:8. The same letter to the Romans sees “no difference” between Jew and Gentile in God's redemptive plan (3:22, 10:12). It would be a practical impossibility for the international church to make Jewish evangelism their priority, nor should such a burden be laid upon them.

I would not accept the charge of being anti-Semitic, or of denying Jews their identity. I'm simply saying it is not helpful to make national Jewish identity an issue. When Paul asks whether God has rejected his people, he answers by saying that he is saving them through the gospel as he is Gentiles. Not to see God's promises to Israel as being fulfilled in Christ and the Gospel is to read the Old Testament without Christ and his apostles as our interpreters.

To say that “the church is primarily Jewish” is to fly in the face of the evidence, for Jews are an exceedingly small part of God's international church. Let's not rebuild distinctions the Gospel has erased, but rejoice in what has happened through the cross—the tearing down of the old dividing wall.

Malcolm Jones of Elmstead Baptist Church, London, UK (10/03/2008)

It was wonderful to read Martin Pakula's article ‘Who is a Jew?’. I just wish that it wasn't always left to Jewish believers to write such articles!

As a Jewish believer in Britain, I'm afraid to say that the situation is the same over here as in Australia. There is very little acceptance in Gentile churches of the Bible's plain teaching that the gospel is for the Jew first, and as a result—just as Martin would predict—the huge Jewish population in the UK is almost entirely unreached.

I remember a sermon in Oxford on Romans 1:16 which explained that the gospel was for the Jew first ‘in a chronological sense’—i.e. it happened to be broadcast first in Israel. If only the speaker had done his homework properly! His exegesis must be wrong in view of Romans 2:9 which uses the same expression “first for the Jew, then for the Gentile” to refer to God's judgement on the Last Day. If anyone is still in doubt, Acts 13:46 should settle the matter: Paul, the Apostle to the Gentiles declares to a group of Jews, “We had to speak the word of God to you first. Since you reject it and do not consider yourselves worthy of eternal life, we now turn to the Gentiles.”

I think of that sermon in Oxford—and other sermons on Romans 1 when the speaker has simply dodged the issue—as terrible missed opportunities. God's people need mobilizing for the task of reaching unbelieving Jews. When Christ returns, God will call on each of us to give an account of our efforts (or non-efforts) to reach the Jew first. Hudson Taylor is one who will receive glowing praise: while taking the gospel to inland China, he found time to send an annual cheque to the Mildmay Mission to the Jews. On the back of the cheques, he used to scrawl, “To the Jew First”. Robert Murray M'Cheyne is another who submitted to this particular discipline of godliness. On one occasion, he told his congregation,

It is an awful thought that the Jew will be the first to stand forward at the bar of God to be judged ... When the Son of Man shall come in His glory, and all the holy angels with Him ... when the awful sentence comes forth from His lips, depart ye cursed—and when the guilty many shall move away from before Him into everlasting punishment—is it not enough to make the most careless among you pause and consider, that the indignation and wrath shall first come upon the Jew—that their faces will gather deeper paleness, their knees knock more against each other, and their hearts die within them more than others?

If only Gentile pastors would preach similar sermons today.

Nick Howard of Gravesend, United Kingdom (16/04/2008)