ECCLESIOLOGY Part 11 - DEVELOPING A HEALTHY CHURCH CULTURE

Every local church has a culture. Culture is a sociological term. It encompasses what a community regards as: proper, acceptable, and honourable. Sociologists refer to these as morēs. Conversely, culture conveys what is: not proper, not acceptable, and is disgraceful and shameful. Sociologists refer to this negative behaviour as deviant. Culture celebrates what a community regards as important, and, what it frowns on. Every local church as a culture, but sometimes that culture is not entirely healthy. In this instalment in the Ecclesiology series, I am sharing some of the insights that we deal with in my church leadership seminar.

 

WHAT HEALTHY CULTURE ACHIEVES

The other week I saw a YouTube video of a Western tourist in Japan who showed a video of passengers on a Tokyo train. The passengers sat in an orderly fashion and were seated in silence. The tourist wondered if there was a Japanese law requiring the passengers to sit silently on the train. He found out that there was not. The reason the Japanese passengers sat on the train in silence was due to their culture. They didn’t need to be told to sit quietly – they just knew that it was the proper thing to do. This kind of positive culture is something any local church can achieve, if it works on the following two principles.

When I Kim and speak at a church for an extended weekend it is our mission to serve that church community and to help them to be even more effective in their mission to reach their community. This involves sharing on a Friday night with their youth or young adults about relationships; then sharing on a Saturday morning with Kim speaking to the ladies and myself speaking to the men; then a mid-morning leadership seminar with Board members/elders/team leaders;  a Saturday night dinner with the pastor/s elder/s; and on Sunday sharing in the morning service/s followed by an open (for anyone attend) Q&A luncheon. In the church leaders’ seminar we look at what makes for a healthy church. It is in this interactive seminar that we discuss the elements of what makes for a positive culture in a church. In essence, from my study, and the feedback we have received from these seminars, I can reduce what is needed are these two factors: firstly, the leader, and secondly, the attitude of the church.   

 

1. THE INDISPENSABLE RÔLE OF THE LEADER

The leader of a local church may be identified as the elder, pastor, senior pastor, senior minister, rector, or even the leader. Their title is not necessarily a critical issue. What is indispensable though is that they lead. It simply can not be overstated just how important their role is. The leader carries the weight of responsibility for the tone of a local church’s culture. It is not only the leader’s preaching which contributes to their culture-setting. It is their example –

• How they treat people, how they deal with interruptions,
• How they speak to their spouse and child/ren,
• How they interact with their staff and/or volunteers,
• How they manage their time,
• How they admit their mistakes,
• How they take correction,
• How they deliver correction,
• How they respond to tragedy,
• How they they open their home to show hospitality,
• How how they use those who are better than them,
• What they laugh at – or – what they get angry at, and,
• How they strive to improve their strengths and weaknesses. 

 

2. THE ATTITUDE OF THE CHURCH

While the leader is ultimately responsible for teaching sound doctrine and to exposit the Scriptures, as critically essential as this, it is not enough to ensure a positive and healthy church culture. It must be supplemented with a demonstrated explication of sound doctrine and the Scriptures. That is, a preacher can be a brilliantly powerful preacher who is an amazing teacher of God’s Word – but this is almost irrelevant if this preaching and teaching is not reflected in their godly attitude. When a leader consistently models a godly attitude it has an incalculably positive effect on their church’s attitude. Therefore, the senior leader must preach, teach, and model the biblical description of a godly attitude. This description is found in Colossians 3:12-17.

(12) ¶ Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience,
(13) bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.
(14) And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.
(15) And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful.
(16) Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.
(17) And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him.
COLOSSIANS 3:12-17

If I was to list these attitude qualities, and then ask you, “How would you feel if your church was described by others as:

+  Compassionate

+ Kind

+ Humble

+ Meek

+ Patient

+ Forebearing

+ Forgiving

+ Loving

+ Harmonious

+ Peaceful

+ Thankful

+ Biblically literate

+ Wise

+ Prayerful and Pious (worshipful)

+ Sincere and holy?

Conclusion: The Gospel informs us that a culture can change. People can change. But what is needed are champions of cultural change who embrace the Church’s God ordained charge to be counter-cultural. When there is a champion of change – and better still – a champion team of change – building a healthy culture within a church is absolutely possible. And as this culture continue to be pursued I suspect that there will be many people who will be attracted to this church’s Christ-fragrance. Please pray that it does!

Amen.

Complementary Audio Podcast

UNDERSTANDING THE UPSTREAM VISION, Part 1

 Part 1

 The best way for me to explain to you the Upstream Vision is to tell you a story. A man was walking through the bush with his dog enjoying the outdoors, the fragrances of nature, the warmth of the sun’s rays, the chirping of the birds, the sounds of the flowing river, and — suddenly he heard the panicked cries for help coming from the river. He ran to the riverbank and saw a hapless victim being swept downstream. He threw himself into raging river and eventually managed to rescue the drowning man further downstream. The next day this bushwalker’s heroism was featured on the front-page of the local newspaper. That day, he and his dog attempted to complete their previous day’s interrupted walk — but it was interrupted again by the cries for help from yet another drowning person being swept downstream! In fact, for the next five days the same dog-walking bushwalker vainly tried to complete his walk but was kept busy rescuing drowning people being swept downstream! Recognising the growing crisis, the municipal councillors met and decided to apply for a government grant to be able to station a full-time lifeguard on the riverbank. After the lifeguard was hired, he too was kept busy rescuing people being swept downstream. The council then applied for further federal funding as the lifeguard was barely able to keep up with the numbers of rescued victims now requiring to be driven into town to be hospitalised. The council received their funding to build a permanent ambulance station next to the lifeguard station. Soon there were multiple full-time lifeguards and ambulance drivers working around the clock to rescue and hospitalise victims.The council then needed to employ a CEO to manage the worksite and the CEO, of course, needed an executive assistant who needed a personal assistant who needed an admin’ assistant to help oversee the busy operation. Then the predictable happens! There was a government funding cut-back and the council decide that they could no longer afford the lifeguards, the ambulance drivers, admin’ assistants, or the personal assistant, but decided to keep the CEO and his executive assistant.

Around this time, the dog-walking bushwalker decided one more time to complete his walk through the bush track. As he went deeper into the bush going upstream and alongside the river, he walked over the foot bridge spanning the river and noticed that there were two $2 planks of timber missing in the foot bridge through which everyone had been falling into river!

¶ “You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people’s feet … In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.
Matthew 5:13, 16

And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
Matthew 28:18-20

The Christian Church has had a long tradition of working ‘downstream’ in and amongst society’s deepest and darkest problems. In fact, Christianity itself was birthed in one of the darkest hours in human history. Dr. F.W. Boreham has noted that at the darkest points in human history when all hope seemed lost, it was often the case that God’s response to such bleak times was to send a baby into the world. The greatest example of this customary divine response was the birth of Mankind’s eternal Saviour, Jesus the Christ.

¶ But when the right time came, God sent His Son, born of a woman, subject to the law. God sent Him to buy freedom for us who were slaves to the law, so that He could adopt us as His very own children.
Galatians 4:4-5 NLT

 Consider the unlikely geo-political-cultural backdrop at the time of Christ’s incarnation. 

• It was a time of widespread political corruption at every level of government and administration.

• It was a time of rampant sexual abuse of women and children.

• It was a time of economic suppression of the poor.

• It was a time of educational deprivation reducing in ignorance and illiteracy which placed the uneducated in a vulnerable state of manipulation.

• It was a time of widespread fictional religious ideas that played on this widespread ignorance.

When He saw the crowds, He had compassion for them,
because they were harassed and helpless,
like sheep without a shepherd.
Matthew 9:36

But then…

 When the Christ came, and Christianity was birthed –

• The place of women was elevated (women were the first witnesses to, and proclaimers of, Christ’s resurrection for example)

• The position of slaves was redeemed (Gal. 3:28)

• The practice of baby exposure (were unwanted babies were left out at night in forests or the market square to be ravaged by wild animals) was countered by Christians actively rescuing these abandoned babies (most of whom were girls)

• Churches were planted around the Empire which became centres of learning which countered the pervasive errors and false ideas widely accepted by the masses (1Pet. 1:14).

•  Lepers were  cared for and their wounds tended to.

• When plagues came, Christians were at the forefront of caring for and nursing the sick and dying (“During plague periods in the Roman Empire, Christians made a name for themselves. Historians have suggested that the terrible Antonine Plague of the 2nd century, which might have killed off a quarter of the Roman Empire, led to the spread of Christianity, as Christians cared for the sick and offered a spiritual model whereby plagues were not the work of angry and capricious deities but the product of a broken Creation in revolt against a loving God.” [SOURCE]). Christians became known as “those who ran into the plague—not from it!” 

• Over the centuries, Christians pioneered and established public hospitals, public schools, and universities.

• Missionaries were sent to the far-flung parts of the world bringing ‘social lift’ wherever they went.

• Grounded in the emerging Christian worldview, modern science was birthed and promoted by: Galileo, Copernicus, Isaac Newton, Louis Pasteur, Johannes Kepler, Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit, Anders Celsius, Sir William Thomson (Lord Kelvin), Edwin Hubble, and Hugh Ross.

Sir Isaac Newton (1643-1727)

“This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being….All variety of created objects which represent order and life in the universe could happen only by the willful reasoning of its original Creator, whom I call the ‘Lord God’….He is eternal and infinite, omnipotent and omniscient; that is, His duration reaches from eternity to eternity; His presence from infinity to infinity; He governs all things, and knows all things that are or can be done. I have a fundamental belief in the Bible as the Word of God, written by those who were inspired. I study the Bible daily.”

-Sir. Isaac Newton

But then…

 In AD 312 a new trajectory was also seeded into Christianity. This eventually led to the message of the saving gospel being subjugated by the lure of political power. Over the ensuing centuries, many of those who rose to high leadership positions within the Church, whose Christianity was quite questionable, used their ecclesiastical (“Church”) position to further their own interests not the interests of Christ or others. In many respects, the expression “Dark Ages” refers to this superficial period of Christian leadership who were more interested in political power rather than spiritual purity. History tells us that wherever the light that God had ordained to shine through His people ceased, there has been a void and a darkness that the enemy has been too keen to fill. In the late 600s and into the early 700s, when the Dark Ages were nearing their darkest, a new religion challenged Christianity—but not merely with strange ideas, but with the edge of the sword. Church leaders responded, proving their ignorance of the Scriptures, recruiting mercenary soldiers to fight in the crusades. This merger of Church and State led to what became known as Christendom and became not just a political force, but by the Medieval period it had also become a military force as well.

Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first. If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent.
Revelation 2:5

 

But then…

John Wycliffe (ca. 1328 – 1384)

 In AD 1328 God introduced a baby into the world by the name John Wycliffe. His arrival marked the early days of what would later become known as the Enlightenment Period and The Reformation. The Dark Ages would be soon be over because John Wycliffe would take the ancient manuscript copies of the New Testament in their original language and translate them into the language spoken by common Englishmen of his day. The Holy Spirit then sent William Tyndale, another Englishman, to build on the work of Wycliffe. He translated the whole Bible into English and paid for it with his life. As more and more people were able to read or hear the Bible in their own language the more they realised that what the Church was teaching did not accord with the Bible. Added to these flames of revival, in Italy the gospel according to the Bible was being preached by Girolamo Savonarola, in Switzerland by Huldrych Zwingli, by the great Czech preacher John Hus in Bohemia, in Germany by Martin Luther, and in Geneva by John Calvin. These flames of revival were fanned by the Holy Spirit into the 1700s with the great preaching ministries of John Wesley and George Whitefield who both saw tens of thousands of people come to Christ and led to William Wilberforce the English Parliamentarian become the patron of around 70 societies which included the abolition of slavery, the establishment of the Bible Society, the formation of the Royal Society for the Protection of Cruelty against Animals (RSPCA), prison reform (including the principle of Habeas Corpus), and the establishment of free public schools.

A young Billy Graham preaching to a huge crowd, 1947

In the 1800s when the light of the Enlightenment finally enabled people to see that scientific facts should not be disregarded merely because the Church had claimed the Bible said so, more and more people began to openly challenge the claims of the Bible. This was especially so from November 24th, 1859, when Charles Darwin published, Origin of The Species. This helped to fuel a movement in Tübingen among German theologians known as Liberalism which denied nearly all of the supernatural claims of the Bible including the virgin birth of Christ, His miracles, and His resurrection. Liberalism attempted to reduce the purpose of Christianity merely to achieving the newly coined term, social justice (largely caring for the poor and the downtrodden). But by the late 19th century and early in the 20th century a fresh move of the Holy Spirit began to reignite the Christians around the world to return to accepting the supernatural aspects of the Bible as true. The Holy Spirit raised up many great preachers who built extraordinarily large congregations and experienced phenomenal miracles in the process. A new breed of evangelists around the world helped to strengthen this new move of God with thousands being converted to Christ all around the world. In particular, a young dairy farmer from just outside Charlotte, North Carolina, Billy Graham, would end up preaching to around 2.2 billion people throughout his evangelistic meetings, with 3.3 million people coming to know Christ as their Saviour! Billy Graham is largely credited with creating the term Evangelicalism. The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association has continued to be focused on evangelism and has grown into one of the world’s most respected rapid response relief agencies. 

[NEXT:  Part 2 – How the Holy Spirit is inspiring a new generation of “Upstream” Christians to develop strategies for solving the world’s greatest and darkest problems in a neighbourhood near you!]  

Your pastor,

Andrew

Let me know what you think below in the comment section and feel free to share this someone who might benefit from this Pastor’s Desk.

7. What It’s Going To Take – THE SERENDIPITOUS CHURCH

7. What It’s Going To Take –

THE SERENDIPITOUS CHURCH

In recent times the Church (I use Church when referring to the universal/worldwide
Church, and the word church when referring to a local church) has come under intense scrutiny and condemnation for its various scandals involving sexual abuses and financial misappropriations. To make matters worse, rather than the Church’s prophets leading the condemnation, it has largely fallen to secular agencies such as the media and the justice system to highlight these atrocious misrepresentations of Christ. And to make matters even worst, the Church has too often denied its guilt and defended those responsible. Is it wonder now that the Church is held in such contempt by mainstream culture? Is anyone actually surprised at the failure of what many church leaders were arguing for (the sanctity of marriage with time-honoured arguments) against such aberrations of marriage, such as ‘same-sex marriage’ or ‘polygamous marriage’, when other church leaders were divorcing their wives or being exposed as adulterers? Is there any hope for the Church to become who Christ died to build? Yes.

So that He might present the church to Himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.
Ephesians 5:27

THE BODY OF CHRIST

For all its shortcomings, the Church is still the body of Christ, His bride! It is estimated that there are around two billion people around the word who identify as Christians. The fact that many, and perhaps its – most, of these people do not understand the Christianity they profess only reinforces the need for the churches to nurture, teach, and train these people. In this sense, there is an urgent need for a revival of sorts where those who profess to be Christians are truly converted to Christ! 

The body of Christ comes in a many varieties and shapes. Over the past century with increasing urbanisation of the globe where the populations of cities have increased dramatically, there has arisen a new church trend known as the mega-churches. A mega-church is defined as a church with “a sustained average weekly attendance of 2,000 persons or more in its worship services, counting all adults and children at all its worship locations” (Hartford Institute for Religion Research, http://hirr.hartsem.edu/megachurch/definition.html). In the USA, the average mega-church attendance is 3696 people over a weekend. In 1990, the USA had 350 mega-churches. By the year 2000, there were 600 mega-churches. By 2015 there were 1650 mega-churches. The largest mega-church in ’America averages 60,000 attendees a weekend. (For a list of the world’s largest mega-churches go to research of Dr. Warren Bird.) 

Curiously, with the phenomenal rise of mega-churches, the average number of Americans attending church generally has dropped dramatically over the same 40 years. According to churchleaders.com, there were around 39% of Americans attending church at least 3 Sundays out of 8 around 40 years ago – whereas by 2018, there were only 18% of Americans attending church at the same rate. With the rise of mega-churches there has generally been the demise of existing smaller nearby churches (which helps to also explain the dramatic increase in attendance of mega-churches). Yet, in smaller, more rural, areas, local churches are often surprisingly still quite healthy.

How will the body of Christ look into the future? This depends almost entirely on one factor…

IT STARTS WITH A CHURCH’S PASTORAL LEADERSHIP

The one common trait of all growing churches, whether they be a city mega-church, or a country church, is the calibre of its leadership. It doesn’t matter if the leader is full-time, part-time, or bi-vocational. It doesn’t particularly matter if they are seminary trained or not. What matters is their competence, resilience, passion (Rom. 12:11), giftedness, and determination. Consider the Apostle Paul. There were times when he was full-time (enabled by the missions support of other churches, Phil. 4:14-15, 1Cor. 9:6) and other times when he was bi-vocational (when he served as a tent-maker to support his apostolic ministry, Acts 18:3; 1Cor. 4:12). What made Paul, and the churches he planted, successful, was that he focussed on Christ (Phil 3:9-10) and the Word of God (1Tim. 4:13) and was led by the Holy Spirit (Rom. 8:13-14). 

And they went through the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia. And when they had come up to Mysia, they attempted to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them. 
Acts 16:6-7

Added to this, Paul understood that Christ’s Church was multi-faceted. While he evangelised to pioneer churches, he never lost sight of the need to help these churches become evangelising churches. In order for this to happen effectively, he worked at ensuring their elders and deacons were well-grounded in God’s Word and sound doctrine. He set strict guidelines for godly conduct for those in the congregations and insisted that elders and deacons were the ones who set the highest example of what this looked like.

¶ The saying is trustworthy: If anyone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a noble task. Therefore an overseer must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, sober-minded, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not a drunkard, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money. He must manage his own household well, with all dignity keeping his children submissive, for if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how will he care for God’s church? 
First Timothy 3:1-5

While some people teach and promote the idea that the Church only exists to evangelise, the Biblical revelation is that its existence is multi-faceted with evangelism being one of its God ordained facets. It is also called to care, console, correct, teach, train, educate, worship, prophesy, heal, pray, inspire, feed, clothe, marry, bury, to name just a few. Added to these mandates is the realisation that God calls churches into being with unique opportunities and talents for reaching a particular people or bearing witness for Christ and His Testimony in a spiritually dark place. For example, the ministry of (Nathan) Burl Cain in Angola, Louisiana (West Feliciana Parish, north of Baton Rouge). Burl was appointed as a the Warden of the Louisiana State Penitentiary in January 1995 and served there until 2016 (when he retired at the age of 74). 

Louisiana State Penitentiary is the largest maximum-security prison in the United States. Many of the inmates are serving life sentences and will never be released. A devout Christian, Cain encouraged a spiritual atmosphere in the prison to build a culture of morality and to help inmates serve their time. Under his leadership, violent incidents decreased markedly among the inmate population of more than 5,000.

Cain improved relations with the media, and allowed several documentaries to be filmed at the prison during his tenure. He said that he wanted people outside to see the lives of the men and understand them. He established positive incentives, including a television station so that all prisoners could see some programs. He supported the newsmagazine and radio. The Angola Prison Rodeo, football, and prize fights, are all filmed by TV crews. The latter two activities were started under Cain. On the other side, he worked to increase compassion, establishing a prison-run hospice program in 1997. The changes which he brought about at the prison are detailed in the 2005 book Cain’s Redemption: A Story of Hope and Transformation in America’s Bloodiest Prison by Dennis Shere. In 2008, Cain became the longest-serving warden in the history of Angola.
Source: Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burl_Cain

The ministry of Burl Cain at Angola Prison resulted in the transformation of thousands of ‘lifers’. Eight inmate churches were planted in the prison, as well as a Theological Seminary. As with every other effective church in the world, it was the leadership of Burl Cain which God was able to use to bring about the redemption of Angola Prison. 

If the Church today is to have any hope of being the agents of Christ’s hope to the world we must at least get this foundational principle for church leadership right! Sadly, there are some churches where elders and deacons are appointed because they are popular or generous rather than because they are called and qualified.

¶ Deacons likewise must be dignified, not double-tongued, not addicted to much wine, not greedy for dishonest gain. They must hold the mystery of the faith with a clear conscience. And let them also be tested first; then let them serve as deacons if they prove themselves blameless. Their wives likewise must be dignified, not slanderers, but sober-minded, faithful in all things. Let deacons each be the husband of one wife, managing their children and their own households well. For those who serve well as deacons gain a good standing for themselves and also great confidence in the faith that is in Christ Jesus.First Timothy 3:8-13

The pastoral leader of a church is called by God to care for those He places in their charge. They do not do this because it is a job. They do not this because they couldn’t find a better job. They do not do this because of their own psychological neediness to be needed or affirmed. They do not this because to ‘grow their ministry’. They do this because they are called by God to gather and shepherd His sheep. This involves paying a price. It means staying and standing in the face of opposition and adversity. It may mean sleeplessness, impoverishment, or poor health. And they do it gladly and willingly.

He who is a hired hand and not a shepherd, who does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees, and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. He flees because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep.
John 10:12-13

A PROPHETIC CHURCH

Prophecy is not merely limited to predicting. In fact, Biblical prophecy was mostly about reminding. In our church’s 8 year journey through the book of Jeremiah I continually pointed out that Jeremiah was repeatedly reminding God’s people of God’s Word. To be sure, God used Jeremiah to foretell that the Babylonians would be God’s instrument of judgment upon them, but even this was on the basis of what Moses had already warned centuries earlier as recorded in Deuteronomy 28 (particularly verse 36). Today, we are in a very similar situation to Jeremiah where people have largely forgotten what God has long ago said. Our society is playing a very dangerous game with its various social experiments. Ironically these are being done in the name of being ‘progressive’, when in fact, it is actually regressive since several ancient civilisations did similar things which ultimately led to their overthrow and downfall. 

If I delay, you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, a pillar and buttress of the truth.
First Timothy 3:15

One of the most unloving things any church can do is to ignore the cultural self-harm of its society. Christians stand against sexual misconduct not only because our Creator forbids it, but also because it injures those who deceive themselves by entertaining it. Professor Nancy Pearcey powerfully makes this case in her book, Love Thy Body. For a pastoral leader of a church to remain silent while those they are called to reach, and care for, are legislating for the right to harm themselves and each other, is a violation of the second greatest commandment (Matt. 22:39). 

It is not political for a pastor to criticise or oppose a government’s proposed legislative agenda. It is love. It is also their prophetic responsibility for the office to which God has called them. This is why more pastors must write to politicians and legislators expressing reasoned concerns about legislation dressed up in soft buzz words like – ‘equality’, ‘dignity’, ‘compassion’, ‘health’, ‘reproductive’, ‘justice’, ‘fairness’, and ‘right’ – which are in fact concealing a deadly and harmful poison concocted from an attempt to legitimatise: abuse, misuse, and even murder! 

Too many pastors are afraid to use their pulpits to pastor their people! Congregations need pastoring when it comes to understanding God’s view of the sacredness of life, the sacredness of sexuality, the sacredness of marriage, and the sacredness of Scripture. The story of Abby Johnson, a former Planned Parenthood Clinic Director, is one marked by the tragic fact that although she was raised in a church, she never once heard abortion addressed from her church’s pulpit. Before Abby came to see firsthand what abortion truly was, she had overseen 20,000 abortions in her clinic. She is now a Pro-Life campaigner whose story became a best-selling book and more recently was depicted in the movie, Unplanned. 

The fear of man lays a snare,
  but whoever trusts in the LORD is safe.
Proverbs 29:25

Recently polling in America among young Evangelicals shows that they have become less committed to the inerrancy of Scripture because in their minds it is now outdated about its views of sexuality. While this is concerning and even alarming, it is sadly not surprising when many pastors refuse to openly explain what the Bible teaches about sexual purity and why it teaches it!

But I have a few things against you: you have some there who hold the teaching of Balaam, who taught Balak to put a stumbling block before the sons of Israel, so that they might eat food sacrificed to idols and practice sexual immorality.
Revelation 2:14

A SERENDIPITOUS CHURCH

Serendipity means unexpected, surprising, fortuitous. This is exactly what I am calling the Church and each church, to be! The grace that we have for the world is exactly what it is needed by this mixed up, broken, dysfunctional world. Even though the world scorns us, as Christ said they would, we still persist in loving them and proclaiming the grace that can redeem them in the midst of their brokenness. The Church is always at its finest when it best presents the healing grace of Christ with acts of serendipity. A great example of this today is the work of Dr. Kent and Ruth Hodge in northern Nigeria, our missions partners there, who up until recently have been labouring in an extremely dangerous part of the world blighted by radical Islamists. Kent and Ruth have reached out to the Islamic leaders in the surrounding villages to their College by offering medical assistance, and vocational educational for the young people of these villages. He recently wrote-

Bringing the poorest Muslims and Christians together to form relationships, providing both with educational opportunities, vocational skills, paying school fees for destitute orphans, whose Muslim and Christian parents killed each other, helping forsaken Christian and Muslim widows… all goes a long way to breaking down enmity, atoning for community bitterness, providing hope that changes behaviour, and sharing Christ where once the door was shut. These are the kind of responses that are needed, rather than complaints about the faults of others. These are the things we and others are doing, reaching thousands, which studies and our own experiences show work. If we don’t want Christians persecuted, then this is what needs to be done.
 
THIS is Jesus’ response to terrorism, from any source.

A world where 1% percent of the population own 50% of the world’s wealth, wealth safely tucked away, while 10.5 million kids, just in Nigeria alone, are out of school because their damaged families can’t afford school fees, points us to the underlying issues that are at the heart of our problem. The fact that a school is cheaper to build than the cost of one bomb dropped from a drone, must say a lot about the world we live in. This must impact us.

I recently heard a professor of Philosophical Theology describe the message of the Church, as entrusted in the Gospel – the Scriptures – as, “high comedy”! I was shocked to hear such irreverence from such an eminent professor of a respected Seminary – until he explained what ‘high comedy’ was. We live in a world where the only comedy we experience is low comedy. He explained that ‘comedy’ originally meant unexpected. He went on to explain that “high comedy” meant ‘something so surprising and unexpected it was shocking‘. He declared that this was indeed what the Gospel was! The God who created us had been betrayed us, and even though He warned us what the penalty for doing this was, we defiantly resisted Him and His plea – and despite this, He gave up everything to rescue us and adopt us as His privileged children for all eternity! High comedy indeed! Serendipity indeed!

A CHURCH FOR EVERYONE

One of the most pleasing things about what God has been doing in our church lately is how He has been diversifying it. One of the challenges that all churches are facing at the moment, and we are particularly struggling with, is helping people to realise the priority Christ has placed on gathering together to worship together, to heed  together, to pray together, to minister to one another, to be pastored together, to reach out together, to pool our time, talent, and treasure together, so that the whole body of Christ is built up and together makes Christ beautiful in the eyes of the world. As C.S. Lewis wrote in The Screwtape Letters, if the devil was serious about undermining the cause of Christ, the first thing he would do is to distract believers from assembling together. It will be a sure sign of the church’s battle-readiness when most of its soldiers are not AWOL and make assembling together each Sunday a sacred priority. It will be then, that the Church of the Living God may well become who Christ died to build and we may get a glimpse of heaven on earth – especially the bit mentioned in Revelation 7:9!  

Pastor Andrew