When God Won’t Hear – Minister’s Letter May 26

Dear all at IPC,

Does God always answer prayers?

We teach our children, rightly, that God always answers prayer. He says yes, he says no and sometimes he says wait. That is right and helpful in so many ways. Yet the bible does give us another answer to that question.

I came across a phrase in the Psalms that I’ve not been able to shake off and I have found that it is more prominent in scripture than I thought.

The Psalmist says in Psalm 66:
‘Come and hear, all you who fear God,
and I will tell what he has done for my soul.
17  I cried to him with my mouth,
and high praise was on my tongue.
18  If I had cherished iniquity in my heart,
the Lord would not have listened.
19  But truly God has listened;
he has attended to the voice of my prayer.’

We see in Jeremiah where the prophet is told, ‘As for you, do not pray for this people, or lift up a cry or prayer for them, and do not intercede with me, for I will not hear you.’ (Jeremiah 7:16). In chapter 11 he says, ‘Though they cry to me, I will not listen to them’.

Zechariah has this devastating refrain, ‘When I called, they did not listen; so when they called I will not listen’ (7:13). Micah 3:4 says similarly, ‘Then they will cry out to the Lord but he will not answer them’. In Isaiah 1:15, ‘When you spread out your hands in prayer, I hide my eyes from you; even when you offer many prayers, I am not listening’. Isaiah 59:2, ‘Behold, the Lord’s hand is not shortened, that it cannot save, or his ear dull, that it cannot hear; but your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you so that he does not hear.’

In the wisdom literature Proverbs 1:28-29, ‘Then they will call to me but I will not answer; they will look for me but will not find me, since they hated knowledge and did not choose the fear of the Lord.’

It is as if God says to his people, who continue deliberately in their rebellion, ‘talk to the hand because the face is not listening’. It is a sobering picture we are given of a God who will not hear.

These verses are using the language of accommodation – where the infinite God speaks to his finite creatures. There is something about God and the mystery of prayer that we cannot fully understand.

We know that God calls on us to pray, that he loves to hear his people pray. We are to pray about little things and big things. Scripture tells us that we often don’t have because we don’t ask (James 4:3). We are to pray all kinds of prayers (Ephesians 6:18). In fact, we are to pray at all times, without ceasing (1 Thessalonians 5:17). Jesus tells us parables with the intention that we might pray and not lose heart (Luke 18:1).

The Psalmist is not saying that God ignores the prayers of imperfect people. We know that when we pray, often our motives are mixed and we don’t know what to pray. Jesus intercedes on our behalf – he is the mediator between God and man. He is our great high priest who prays for us and with us. Prayer is Trinitarian work: we come to the Father through the Son by the Holy Spirit, who helps us in our weakness and intercedes for us with groans that cannot be uttered (Romans 8:26-27). Prayer is speaking with God, pleading his promises, coming before him honestly and he will use our less than perfect petitions to change us and advance his kingdom.

This verse in Psalm 66 cannot mean ‘being conscious of sin’, because all of God’s people see their sins and are grieved by them. God commends us in doing this.

So what do we do with these warnings about God not hearing us? Are they just Old Testament warnings that don’t have anything to do with us? I do not think we can agree with that.

They are telling us an uncomfortable truth that unconfessed, deliberate, intentional sin means that God will not hear our prayers. It is directing us to examine ourselves, pointing us to the danger of sin of which we won’t let go. If we find ourselves loving a known sin, God will turn a deaf ear. Spurgeon said, ‘You cannot hold onto wilful, unrepentant sins while simultaneously asking God for grace and expecting Him to answer.’

There are similar warnings to Psalm 66:18 in the New Testament. In 1 Peter 3, verse seven states that if husbands do not honour their wives, their prayers are hindered. James 4:3 warns us that praying with deliberatly wrong motives results in us not receiving. In John 9:31 Jesus himself says, ‘We know that God does not listen to sinners, but if anyone is a worshiper of God and does his will, God listens to him’. We know that on that final day, religious people will cry to the Lord. But he will not answer them. It’s part of the horror of judgement.

I think we also need to see that when the people of God sin deliberately with a high hand, refusing to let go of their sin – their prayers will be hindered. If we cherish iniquity in our hearts, the Lord will not listen to our prayers. It is true for both churches and individuals and has been proved throughout church history.

The intention of verse 18 in Psalm 66 is for us to examine ourselves to see if there is any sin that we are cherishing. We will need God’s help to let it go, as the hymn says, ‘The dearest idol I have known what’er that idol be help me to tear it from thy throne and worship only thee.’

The Puritan, Matthew Henry, when commenting on this verse says, ‘If I have favourable thoughts of iniquity, if I love it, indulge it, allow myself in it, if I treat it as a friend, and bid it welcome, make provision for it, and am loath to part with it, if I roll it under my tongue as a sweet morsel, though it be but a heart-sin that is thus countenanced and made much of, if I delight in it after the inward man. God will not hear my prayer.’

The verse functions as a warning that we cannot cherish both sin and God and we mustn’t take some neat theological turn to wriggle out of it. May we as a church see sin for what it is, and never cherish it so that our prayers might be heard.

Your Minister and friend,

The Lord is near the brokenhearted – Minister’s Letter April 25

Dear all at IPC,

Psalm 34:18 – ‘The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.’

I recently spoke at a difficult funeral and took these words in speaking to the family who were in the midst of heartbreak and crushed spirits. But these words are not just for the sorrowful, they are for us all.

Psalm 34 is taken from that time in David’s life which is explained to us in 1 Samuel 21. It recounts when David changed his behaviour because his life was in danger as he was being pursued by King Saul. He escapes, and this Psalm is written as a thanksgiving to that and testimony as to how God has dealt with him. It is an acrostic Psalm so each line begins with the letters of the Hebrew alphabet. In verses 1-10 we have the thanksgiving and v11-22 he tells us what he has learnt from his experience.

He begins the Psalm with a pledge that he ‘will bless the LORD at all times; his praise will be continually in my mouth’. He goes on to recount that the Lord answered and delivered him. He recounts what God has done in hearing and saving him. He talks of the angel of the Lord who is near to those who fear him.

He calls on God’s people to taste and see that the Lord is God, to take refuge in him and they will be safe, and satisfied.

In verses 11-22 the language is similar to what we have in Proverbs – there is a fatherly tone. He addresses our speech. We should keep our tongue from evil. He instructs us in our behaviour – turn away from evil and pursue peace in relationships with others.

Then in verses 15-16 the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous. He knows everything about us, and a contrast is made with enemies of God – the face of the Lord is against them.

In v17 David speaks of the righteous crying for help and the Lord hearing, delivering them out of their trouble. In v19 he tells us that ‘many are the afflictions of the righteous’ and again the Lord delivers them out of them all. Verse 18 is obviously still addressing the righteous. It isn’t a generic promise for all people going through difficulties, but it particularly speaks to those who know God and are counted righteous.

In his most famous work, ‘Christianity and Liberalism’, J Gresham Machen writes ‘Christianity is the religion of the broken heart’. He goes on to specify that although Christianity does not end with a broken heart, it does begin with a broken heart because there is a consciousness of sin in the world. One day our hearts will be healed because of Jesus did. We know that now our sins have been: dealt with at the cross of Christ; hurled in to the sea (Micah 7:19); put as far as the east is from the west (Psalm 103:12); put behind his back (Isa 38:17). And yet our hearts are not completely healed…yet.

Authentic biblical Christianity and the authentic Christian church is marked by this brokenness of heart:

God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble (1 Peter 5:5, James 4:6)
God cannot and will not inhabit a proud, rebellious, stubborn heart but he inhabits by his Holy Spirit, a submissive, believing, contrite heart. That is God’s dwelling, where he delights to be.
He is near to all who call on him (Psalm 145:18), he is near to those who seek him (Isa 55:6) but wonderfully he is near to the broken hearted.

The God who is infinite, eternal, unchangeable in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness and truth is also near. David in his repentance in Psalm 51 tells us that ‘The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.’ (Psalm 51:17). He is not only near but he saves those who are crushed. When we describe someone as being crushed, there is a sense in which we are are admitting there is very little we can do. We and they sense their desolation and sadness.

The picture here in Psalm 34 is of having to be broken in order to be healed, the breaking of bones in order to be healed.

Who is the healer?

The Lord Jesus wonderfully goes to the synagogue in his home town Luke 4 and he quotes from Isaiah 61:

‘The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me,
because the Lord has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor;
he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,’

Jesus is in the business of mending broken hearts, we see that again and again in his ministry, particularly though not exclusively to women.

He does not and he will not heal the self righteous and the proud. He brings people down in order to raise them up. We see him healing broken hearts. He breaks in order to mend.

He is still doing that work he promised Isaiah 57:15

‘For thus says the One who is high and lifted up,
    who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy:
“I dwell in the high and holy place,
    and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit,
to revive the spirit of the lowly,
    and to revive the heart of the contrite.‘

It may be this is the reason so many will not come to him as they refuse to break their hearts. There is no other way to God than a broken heart and a contrite spirit.

The church of Jesus Christ is wonderfully full of the broken and the crushed, who have looked to him for healing. The Christian life is this paradox of a joyful and broken heart.

‘And from my stricken heart with tears
Two wonders I confess:
The wonders of redeeming love
And my unworthiness’

Your Minister and friend,

The Clueless Farmer – Minister’s Letter March 25

I’m not sure we should have favourite parables, but I find myself reflecting on, and speaking of, the parable of the growing seed in Mark 4 more than any other.

26 And Jesus said, “The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground. 27 He sleeps and rises night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows; he knows not how. 28 The earth produces by itself, first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear. 29 But when the grain is ripe, at once he puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come.”

The reason I love this parable is because in many ways it gives us a blueprint for our work as a church. It tells us of our limitations and gives us our confidence.

In the previous parable of the sower, we’re told the seed is the word of God (v14). In the next parable, we have the parable of the mustard seed on the certain growth of the kingdom.

I love the picture given here of the church. In v27, the farmer is up night and day, going to sleep and rising early. Each day, there is the relentless work of sowing the seed. There is the slowness of the whole venture: you put the seed into the ground and at first nothing seems to be happening … but you have to persevere.

I have friends who are farmers. Their days are long, there is always more to do and there is a sense in which the job is never finished. Things often need redoing. There is a rhythm to their weeks and years. Often things happen which are out of their control. Holidays are difficult to manage because the work of the farm never stops. The farmer has to wait and trust. He needs to stick at it and persevere. It is relentless, back breaking, gut wrenching work. So much of the farmer’s life is monotonous.

Jesus tells us this seed that the farmer puts in the ground begins to sprout and grow. Then at the end of v27, we are given one of my favourite lines in all of the gospels: this hardworking farmer sees the growth, ‘and he knows not how’.

He has worked hard and he has begun to see growth, but he cannot tell you how it has happened. He does not understand it.

Verse 28 moves on to tell us about the nature of this growth. It is slow and it is gradual, ‘The earth produces by itself, first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear.’ The farmer doesn’t get up one morning and there is a full blown grain harvest. The slowness of growth would be frustrating at times. Different years, with different weather conditions, means growth is not uniform.

Then v29 teaches us the certainty of harvest. Despite the slowness and the gradual nature of the growth, there is a harvest at just the right time.

This parable is a beautiful picture of Christian work in the kingdom and in church life.

The sowing of the seed of God’s word happens both morning and evening, sleeping and rising, keeping on keeping on. The work is slow and monotonous. Christian ministry is all of that. We are utterly convinced that God works through his word and so we will keep on sowing. For some of us that has meant years, even decades, of faithfulness in various ministries keeping teaching God’s word. That is a beautiful thing. The temptation is to look for something else to build the church, to depend on our ingenuity and efforts. But the path of faithfulness is to keep teaching God’s word.

The minister is to devote himself to ‘preach the word’ (2 Timothy 4:2) and there are only two seasons when he is to do that: ‘in season and out of season’. He is to keep on doing it and not give up. He is to be relentlessly sowing God’s word.

In the farmer’s life there are disappointments, and so it is the same in ministry. I heard of a minister who when once asked how he had lasted so long said, “I developed an infinite capacity for disappointment”. That is the nature of Christian ministry.

As well as the keeping on sowing, the first lesson we can learn from this clueless farmer is so important: ‘he knows not how’. We are living in an age of the minister being encouraged to be the CEO, to look at his systems and metrics, inputs and outputs, measuring growth. Some of this is of course right. As elders we are to manage the household of God. But fundamentally, when it comes to how people come to a saving faith in Christ, how they grow, how and why God blesses, ‘we know not how’.

There are many books on church – Pure Church, Total church, Simple Church, Messy Church, Everyday church, Mission shaped church. If I was going to start a ministry, using Mark 4: 27 I’d call it ‘Clueless Church’ – the strapline would be ‘Levy: he knows not how’.

Then we need to remember the gradual nature of the work. Disciples are not made in a flash, and leaders are not trained instantly. Don’t expect the church to go from 0-60 quickly. It’s long, slow, hard work sowing the seed. Things happen slowly and gradually. The change of sanctification you see in your own life – which is so painfully slow – is what we see in the lives of others.

So the faithful farmer/ elder works and waits and trusts. The work of the gospel in a church’s life is often little by little. I feel like I constantly have to repent of the sin of impatience.

And finally, there is the certainty of harvest. There will be definite results, we just don’t know how much or how many, or what shape those results will take. But at the right time, in God’s economy, there will be a harvest. We labour in the light of a certain glorious harvest.

Don’t you just love the simplicity of it all: sow the word, work hard at it, keep sowing. This obviously includes the work of prayer. But go to sleep! God gives the growth, but you don’t know how he does it. Be sure of a gradual, but certain harvest. Keep going.

Yours cluelessly,

Time – Minister’s Letter Feb 26

Dear all at IPC,

I was recently up in the Isle of Harris at a conference and there was a time of prayer at the start of the day. An older man began his prayer by saying “Today Lord is a day that has been given by you, a morning which we will never have again, a day which we will not be able to redeem”.

I can’t remember anything else about the prayer but I was suddenly struck by the force of truth that our time on earth is finite. A certain number of days, hours and minutes and then no more. On our gravestones there is a date of our birth and a date of our death.

The bible begins and ends talking about time.

Genesis 1:1, ‘In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth’. The creation story is full of references to time. Right at the very end of the bible in Revelation 22:20, John writes, ‘He who testifies to these things says “surely, I am coming soon.” Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.’

God is the author of time, he is the Ancient of Days. God is above time, he is eternal, but he has made himself known in time. ‘At just the right time Christ Jesus came into the world to die for the ungodly.’ (Romans 5:6) ‘When the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law,to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.’ (Galatians 4:4-5). God is sovereign over time, he is working all things out in accordance with his will. (Eph 1:11). There is a season and a time for everything (Eccl 3:1). He ‘declares the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done’. (Isa 46:10) God is the one who ‘changes time and seasons’. (Daniel 2:20)

We experience time sequentially; there is the past, the present and the future. But God knows the beginning from the ending. He is eternal in his being, wisdom and power (Shorter Catechism Q4) – there is no change in God. He does not age!

When you were little do you remember that feeling of wanting time to speed up? Now in middle age with my children the age they are, I want time to slow down. I am told that in old age people want to wind the clock back. None of those things are possible. We are not in control of time, and so it is vital in life to understand how we must live in the time we’ve been given.

We receive time as a gift from God – it’s why the prayer of the friend at the conference is so striking and so helpful. Day by day, morning by morning, we remind ourselves with the Psalmist ‘that our times are in his hands’. It means that we don’t need to give way to fear but recognise that God has given us time to use and enjoy.

The book of Proverbs is full of advice on investing time wisely and not wasting it. (3:2,9:11, 28:16, 31:12, 10:27, 15:15). Psalm 90 famously prays, ‘Teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom’. (Psalm 90:12) The finality of life is taught again and again in Scripture. Jesus tells us that none of us can add a single hour to our life (Matthew 6:27, Luke 12:25). Time is precious and limited.

How can we number our days wisely?

Paul tells us in Ephesians 5:15-16, ‘Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil.’ The old King James Version talks about redeeming the time. It’s the sense of there being so much we can spend our time on and so much we can waste time on that we should deliberately and carefully use our time. It’s the bible version of a time management course. Colossians 4:5 tells us ‘to make the best use of time’.

We will also see that time is a gift from God to be enjoyed. God has made everything beautiful in its time (Eccl 3:11). The years, months, days, hours and minutes are given to us by God. We have no idea how many we will have. In comparison to God, our lives are like a few handbreadths (Psalm 39:5-6), we’re like the morning mist, the dew on the grass and so we are to enjoy the time that God gives us. Seeing time as an opportunity to glorify God and enjoy him, the good gifts he has given us are to be enjoyed.

We also live in the light of eternity. I find thinking about how time will work in the new creation difficult to understand, and yet it will be glorious. We will never have that feeling of wanting more time, and that fear of things passing too quickly will be removed. We will never just ‘run out of time’. The dread of times to come will be removed.

We are told more in scripture regarding time in hell, where it will be tortuously long, where there will be no end to suffering.

Living in the light of both these realities will change how we live, how we act and how we speak. Time is very precious and limited and so I suggest that you begin your days with the prayer of my friend:

‘Today Lord is a day that has been given by you, a morning which we will never have again, a day which we will not be able to redeem’.

Your Minister and Friend,

Don’t run – Minister’s Letter Jan 26

Dear all,

I wonder what you think of on a Sunday straight after the Benediction. You have received by faith God’s declaration of blessing…then what?

The lunch needs to be put on, the work that’s looming on Monday, I’m starving, the children are driving me mad, what was that preacher on about…

Occasionally, I preach in churches where there is a stillness and silence, no one speaks for a time and there is a slight awkwardness as the Minister makes his way to the back before the piano or organ plays. I used to think that this was because of the powerful sermon that I had just preached, but it just turns out that this is their pattern. No one really knows when to move! It is a good thing where people take time to pray and reflect on what they have heard. However, I don’t think it is mandated in the bible that we have a period of silence after the Benediction and it has never been our practice at IPC Ealing. After the Benediction, the pronouncement of God’s blessing upon his people, there is normally the joy of people talking together and children racing for biscuits.

However, we all know that it is really easy for people to slip out of church quietly, for folk to want to come to church anonymously, to get into the habit of not really engaging with anyone, coming, sitting, hearing, consuming but not having meaningful contact with anyone in the church.

A little bit like when we are in the supermarket and we have the choice of the self service check out or going to the till with a real life human being on it. Tragically, many of us will choose the non human option and disappear from the shop as quickly as possible. There is something in us that wants to remain anonymous.

I want to encourage us to use this time immediately after the service, to be thinking of others. At the moment in church life, and for the last year or so, we have had an unusual amount of visitors. They have come for all sorts of diverse reasons. Some have moved into the area and decided to come to church, others have come in the most random ways. I’m always amazed and humbled as to how and why people come to us. It is often completely independent of what we are doing in seeking to reach out. God teaches us the lesson again and again that he is the church builder.

It is one of the reasons why those who do the ‘welcoming and greeting’ have such an important ministry.

Each week we pray for, and are genuinely pleased when, people come to church. Surely it is a good thing to show and express that to them.

I am not talking about what it is like when we go into shops and are greeted with, ‘How’s it going? Let me know if I can help you?’ Or even worse when they compliment you to set you off guard and engage you by saying ‘nice hat’.

We want people to come to know God as their Father. We believe that Jesus Christ is the Saviour of the world and he is calling out people from every tribe and tongue and nation (Revelation 7:9). All sorts of people from all sorts of places are being brought into the family of God. People who are like me and people who are very unlike me. So when it comes to Christ’s church, I am to be welcoming of all. There is something very unChristlike when you go into a church and everyone is exactly the same. It is one of the tragedies of London churches where there are different services for different types of people – young families in the morning, older families with teens who like to play sports on Sunday mornings so have their own service late afternoon, twenty and thirty somethings looking for love on Sunday nights. The church gets segregated, and people never actually get to meet one another or be in one another’s homes. The true family of God will be and must be diverse and so it is important that we welcome all sorts of people to our church and hang around to meet them.

We all have different personalities. Some of us are more outgoing than others and most of us find speaking to people we don’t know slightly unnerving. Even our language in calling people we don’t know ‘strangers’ encapsulates is. There is something very powerful in someone quiet, or someone speaking in their second language, nervously welcoming someone else.

The term social anxiety is used more and more in our culture. Covid and online life brought it to the fore, and yet the Bible envisages our gatherings together to be warm in affection, that we express joy in God and in one another. Five times the New Testament tells us to greet one another with a holy kiss – (Romans 16:16, 1 Corinthians 16:20, 2 Corinthians 13:12, 1 Thessalonians 5:26 1 Peter 5:14). Culturally of course this will look different. JB Phillips famously said in his translation of ‘greet with one another with a holy kiss’, ‘give a hearty handshake all round’.

So can I encourage you, at the end of services, look around at the people sitting next to you, or behind you, or in front. Express to them it’s good to see them and if you’ve not met them before, introduce yourself. It is awkward I know, but really powerful. God has brought them to church and he could use you in bringing them into his family.

For those of us in the church, we all need encouragement. Paul, in his letters, expresses thankfulness for his brothers and sisters. Even saying how thankful we are for one another is a powerful spur to keep going in the Christian life.

If you are reading this and are in the habit of running away after church – can I plead with you to stop running! Allowing yourself to know and be known is part of the Christian life.

Of course, all of this is grounded in a Welcoming God – A God who welcomes sinners, who runs to the prodigal son, who rejoices in sinners returning home, a friend of sinners. A God who in the person of his son, calls us to himself.

When we welcome and greet one another, we are being God like.

Your Minister and Friend,

Encouragement – Minister’s Letter Dec 25

Dear all at IPC,

As we come to the end of this year, I’ve been thinking about one of my favourite characters in the Bible: Barnabas. This wasn’t his real name. His real name was Joseph, Barnabas was the nickname that I assume other Christians gave him. It means ‘son of encouragement’ or ‘Mr Encouragement’. He’s the kind of person you want in church life.

He was a generous man. In Acts 4, he sold a field and gave the proceeds willingly to God’s work. Barnabas was a Levite and strictly shouldn’t have owned land, but Barnabas is from Cypress. It is possible he owned a property there. In any case, he sells the land. But what is interesting is that he didn’t take his gift to the temple in Jerusalem but he brought it and laid it at the Apostle’s feet. He’s a Levite and he’s keeping that ancient Levitical law from the Old Testament that for the Levites the Lord God of Israel should be their inheritance. He’s saying, that in Jesus and his church, he finds the fulfilment of the Old Testament. In taking the proceeds from the sale and laying them at the Apostles feet, he is saying Jesus ‘you are my inheritance, you are my security, you are my all in all’. The Jesus whom the apostles preach is the Lord God of Israel and is Barnabas’ inheritance. He is committed to Christ.

One of the high points of Barnabas’ life and ministry is when he is sent by the Jerusalem Church to Antioch to investigate this new church. When he arrives, we are told what he saw. ‘When he came and saw the grace of God, he was glad, and he exhorted them all to remain faithful to the Lord ^rwith steadfast purpose,’ Acts 11:23.

How you look at things is very important. ‘Two men look out through prison bars, one saw mud the other stars’. Barnabas comes into this situation and if he was looking for something to worry about, there was plenty to worry about. It was a new and unprecedented situation in Antioch. God was at work and large numbers of the Gentiles were being converted in this great city. There seems to be no link at all with the mother church in Jerusalem. Headquarters, so to speak, had nothing to do with it! There would be lots to be concerned about, but when Barnabas comes into the situation, it was the grace of God at work which he saw.

Barnabas had the sense to see that when God is at work there will be problems. There would be very real issues, but the key thing is that God was at work. Seeing growth in Christ’s church brought him gladness, and he showed it. Quite literally he was delighted at what was going on in Antioch. The text tells us not only what Barnabas saw and how he felt but how he reacted. He was glad and he showed his gladness. Some of us are very good at criticising one another, damning one another with faint praise. But Barnabas is glad, and he shows it. I suspect you like me could probably do with more gladness.

In Acts 11 verse 23, ‘he exhorts them all to remain true to the Lord’. In verses 25 and 26, this is at considerable cost. He recruits Paul, brings him to Antioch and together they spend a year teaching the many disciples at Antioch. It was here that the disciples were first called Christians, which wasn’t a compliment. The work of God took a quantum leap forward in Antioch. God by his Spirit did something tremendous through this man. Maybe for the first time the Christian Church began to be the worldwide movement that it is today.

It is said that there are three types of people: those who make things happen, those who watch things happening, and those who haven’t got a clue what is happening. Barnabas was in that first category. He was positive, encouraging and took initiative.

If you think of the ministry of the Lord Jesus, he needed encouragement. In Isaiah 53 we are told that the Lord upholds his servant. We read in the gospels the Father crying out from heaven, “this is my Son with whom I’m well pleased”. As he steps out into public ministry after years of obscurity; as he identifies with sinners in his baptism; taking that first step to the cross, the heavens open and the father tells him I’m pleased with what you are doing. The words of the Father put courage into the son.

Every single one of us needs encouragement. As we look around our church family, it is easy to see the frustrations, become frustrated, and then show that frustration. In every church there are problems, difficulties, and personality conflicts. It can happen even more so in a growing church like in Antioch. In a true church where there is life, with people from different cultures with different temperaments rubbing against each other, there will aways be the need to bear with one another. Even the nature of church life and the slowness of the work in sowing the seed in various ministries can be discouraging. Then there are parents who have to bear with the slow work of discipling their children, people bearing with difficult families and marriages. We could go on and on about the need for encouragement in the face of frustrations. If anything, the whole of the church in the UK in a hostile culture desperately needs encouragement.

I’m not arguing for an “always look on the bright side of life” attitude, but I am wanting us to look as Barnabas did, for evidence of the grace of God at work amongst us, to recognise it and be glad in it. We are not the people we should be and we fail and let each other down in countless ways. And yet, and yet, and yet, and yet, the grace of God has been, and is, at work in our church. We need to finish this year and start the new one by recognising this, rejoicing in this, and committing ourselves to the ministry of encouraging one another.

Your Minister and Friend,

Dust – Minister’s Letter Nov 25

Dear all at IPC,

What does God know about you and what does God remember about you?

In Psalm 103:14 we are told that amongst the many things that God knows, he knows our frame, and amongst the many things he remembers, he remembers we are dust. It is a beautiful reminder of how our Lord views us, and a reminder of our limitations.

Psalm 103 is one of the greatest of Psalms, full of wonderful expressions of God’s character and love and his overwhelming grace. We bless and praise him because he forgives, redeems and satisfies. He is a God who can be relied on and he has proved his faithfulness to his people from generation to generation.

The way he relates to us is by his covenant promise….
“The Lord is merciful and gracious,
    slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
He will not always chide,
    nor will he keep his anger forever.
He does not deal with us according to our sins,
    nor repay us according to our iniquities.
For as high as the heavens are above the earth,
    so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him;
as far as the east is from the west,
    so far does he remove our transgressions from us.
As a father shows compassion to his children,
    so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him.” (Psalm 103:8-13)

It is at this point we have this wonderful reminder of what he knows and what he remembers. We move from the cosmic and the extremes of the universe, the heights – ‘as high as the heavens are above the earth’ and the breadth ‘as far as the east is from the west’ – where they are talking about infinite measurements, and we come to v13. Like Google Earth, we zoom in from outer space, to the globe, to the satellite pictures of the continent, to the country, to the city, to the borough, to your street and to your very home. It is here God says, “I know your frame and I remember you are dust”

When the Psalmist thinks on this doctrine in Psalm 139 it’s no wonder he says ‘such knowledge is too wonderful for me’. He looks upon us with compassion.

The word ‘frame’ that the Psalmist uses, has the idea of ‘intention’ behind it. It is used of pottery and sees something being made with a purpose. So a cup is made to be drunk from, a vase is meant to hold flowers. God knows how you were made, he knows for what purpose you were made. How we look, who we are, our constitution, our temperament, our weaknesses and strengths: he knows our frame.

He then tells us that he remembers something. When God tells us in his word that he remembers, we must never think that he forgot and it has come back to his memory. As if God’s memory needs jolting. When God remembers, he is recalling truth in order to act. So when God remembers the people of Israel in slavery in Egypt, he is saying he is getting ready to act.

In Psalm 103:14 he remembers a rich biblical term that we are ‘dust’. The word dust occurs around 110 times in our bible. In Genesis 2:7 ‘the Lord God formed the man out of the dust of the ground’. In Genesis 3 after the fall, the serpent is told he will eat dust (v14) and Adam is told ‘for you are dust and to dust you shall return’ (v19).

Gordon Wenham expresses this beautifully in his chiasm of life;

from dust

to dependence

to growth

to flowering

to giving

to dependence

and then to dust.

Job says to God, ‘Remember that you have made me like clay; and will you return me to the dust?’ (Job 10:9).

This is a wonderful reminder to us of our limitations. When I was growing up in the 1980s, the Prime Minister was nicknamed the iron lady, the heavyweight boxing champion was called ‘Iron Mike’. That prime minister has died, the boxer is a shadow of what he was. Both are just dust. Our lives, as we are reminded at funerals, are ‘from dust to dust’.

Too often we forget this. We push ourselves mentally and physically to the point of exhaustion. We can judge others who are – to our minds – not strong enough to bear the loads that we possibly can. It is a wonderful thing to know that our Father in heaven never overloads us and he never fails to gives us strength equal to what we need (2 Cor 9:8, 12:9) because he knows our frame and he remembers we are dust.

A good friend of mine says around this time every year he loses his wife for a few weeks because she goes into a Christmas frenzy of exhaustion, all of which pressure she puts on herself. God has no such expectations of you this Christmas!

WS Plumer writes beautifully, ‘This knowledge of God embraces our constitutional temperament, the feebleness of our understanding, the strength of our fears, the shattered state of our nerves, the violence of temptations, our readiness to sink into melancholy, and everything calling for tender compassions.’

The Lord knows everything there is to know about us. There is not a molecule he didn’t personally design. He understands the complexity of our brains, the unpredictability of our feelings, the subtleties of our genetics, the powerful influence of our upbringing, the lusts of the flesh, and the temptations that afflict us. He understands the mystery of birth and the terror of death, he knows temptations of Satan. There is nothing about a human being that God does not know. When the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak, he knows. When I’m fearful and overwhelmed, that is not unknown to him.

There is of course an even more glorious truth to this verse and that is in the incarnation that the Lord of heaven became the dust of the earth. The Lord Jesus took on our humanity in its fullness – he was fearfully and wonderfully made in Mary’s womb.

He assumed our nature to redeem it and as he steps out to accomplish it to begin his public ministry, his father in heaven shouts down from heaven, ‘This is my son with whom I’m well pleased’. He lives a dusty life like we do – his father knows his frame and remembers he is dust. He lives for us, he goes to the cross for us, he is risen for us and he ascends to heaven for us and is seated at the right hand of the throne on high for us.

It is why Rabbi Duncan can famously and gloriously say, ‘the dust of the earth is on the throne of the Majesty on high’.

Our Saviour has been given a resurrected body and one day we will share in that – “The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven.As was the man of dust, so also are those who are of the dust, and as is the man of heaven, so also are those who are of heaven.Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall[f] also bear the image of the man of heaven.1 Cor 15:47-49.

I recently heard of an old Welsh Minister whose final words were, ‘Thanks be to God for remembering the dust of the earth’.

It is a beautiful thing that God knows our frame, he remembers we are dust

Your Minister and Friend

Paul

PS. We used to sing this hymn in the church where I grew up. It is a magnificent meditation on the dustiness of Jesus by Joseph Hart, to the tune Beethoven

A Man there is, a real Man,
With wounds still gaping wide,
From which rich streams of blood once ran,
In hands, and feet, and side.

‘Tis no wild fancy of our brains,
No metaphor we speak;
The same dear Man in heaven now reigns,
That suffered for our sake.

This wondrous Man of whom we tell,
Is true Almighty God;
He bought our souls from death and hell;
The price, His own heart’s blood.

That human heart He still retains,
Though throned in highest bliss;
And feels each tempted member’s pains;
For our affliction’s His.

Come, then, repenting sinner, come;
Approach with humble faith;
Owe what thou wilt, the total sum
Is canceled by His death!

His blood can cleanse the blackest soul,
And wash our guilt away;
He will present us sound and whole
In that tremendous day.

Praying for Church Plants

In the last 10 years, the Lord has grown our fragile little denomination in remarkable ways. There are external factors which have contributed, but in the kindness of God, we are now 25 congregations, with 13 of these being church plants. In these past few months we have seen three IPC congregations begin in Salford, Carlisle and Lincoln.

There are times and seasons in church life as well as denominational life. We are now in a period of needing to see church plants grow and become sustainable. In many ways the crying need of the UK is strong churches, and so I thought it would be good for us to think about how we can be praying for these church plants using 5 points starting with P.

People

It is easy to be obsessed with numbers in church life, but we do need to see that God’s ordinary way of working is of adding to his Church. We are to be praying that our congregations would come to spiritual maturity and grow in depth of love and insight, and that as churches we would become more and more conformed to Christ. It is also right to pray that the Lord would bring people to our church plant. That people would be converted and added to the church, and that Christians who move into the area would join these churches. There is a strength in numbers. As a congregation grows it is able to reach more people, have different ministries, support other congregations, and see more churches planted. There is a reason why in the book of Acts numbers are recorded so that we can see and rejoice over how Christ’s church has grown.

It is true that many churches in the UK have stalled at the 40-50 people mark. It means that the church is always on the borders of viability. Vulnerability and fragility can be good things in a church’s life. There is a sense in which it can cause us to cast ourselves on the Lord. But for the sake of the gospel, for the establishment of new churches, for the work of the kingdom, churches that grow and have more people in them are able to often have a greater impact.

There is something in the British Christian mentality that is very nervous about churches growing big. I wonder how we might have felt on the day of Pentecost?

Pounds

To plant a church takes considerable expense. There is the Church Planter’s salary and accommodation, a decent website, the hiring of premises, the expenses go on and on. Our church planting committee estimates that it takes £100,000 for the first year. This means that our church planters as well as being Preachers and Pastors have to become fund raisers. Our church planting fund at Presbytery has been a brilliant thing in being able to give grants to enable plants to get going. We normally give grants for 3 years of about a third of what the planter has to raise. It would be wonderful to see this fund able to give more and see more churches planted and established.

Presbyters

Elders are a precious gift of the Ascended Christ to his church, to be able to share in the work and governance in our churches. The Church planter is not able to do all the work and is extremely vulnerable on his own. The pattern we see in the New Testament is of a plurality of leadership. We well know the danger of power in the hands of one man corrupting that man. The testimony of the whole of Scripture bears this out.

“Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow. But woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up!” Ecclesiastes 4:9-10

“Without counsel plans fail, but with many advisers they succeed.” Proverbs 15:22

It is for the health and safety of Christ’s flock that we believe elders are needed. Please pray that our church planters would see elders raised up in their congregations to shepherd Jesus’ church.

Properties

‘The church is not the building’ is of course true, but it is also equally true that buildings serve churches. Our experience is that a building enables you to be more established in a community, to have a base from which you can do ministry and mission. It says to the transient community around us ‘this church will outlive you’. Our church plants which are renting find themselves very vulnerable to the whims of their landlord. Some of our church plants have found themselves under attack for holding to a biblically faithful position on sexuality and been told they are unable to rent the space any longer because of that. Others of our church plants in places where space is at a premium, are paying thousands of pounds for two hours on a Sunday morning. Enormous amounts of energy can be taken up in church plants with set up and take down with only a very small number of volunteers.

I realise it is naive to think that having one’s own building will lead to growth, and yet we need to realise that seeing churches established for the next 100 years necessarily means having your own building. We need to have a long term mindset in planting. We are going to have to be creative in seeing how churches can get established in their own buildings. Please pray that those church plants which are struggling to buy properties would be able to purchase a building. Is there a way that you could financially support one of our church plants in obtaining a building?

Planters

We have been blessed in the last 15 years with men who have come forward with their families willing to sacrifice and give themselves to Church Planting with the IPC. We realise that the needs are enormous and that church planting does take a certain type of personality. It isn’t for everyone, and so it is right that men’s gifts are tested to see whether it is a good fit. Pray that the Lord would sustain these church planters and their families, who are often in isolated situations. The pressures in a church plant, where one is beginning from scratch, are significant. Pray that we would care well for those men and their families.

There are also more opportunities than we can currently meet. We are in need of more church planters. Jesus tells us, “The harvest is plentiful, but the labourers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.” (Matthew 9:38,39). Pray that the Lord would raise up church planters. Pray for those considering planting with IPC.

As a denomination, we have so much to be thankful for. We recognise that unless the Lord builds the house, we labour in vain. Pray that the Lord would continue to build his church through us.

* I think I got at least 3 of these P’s from Jonty Rhodes in a Presbytery report he gave.

Give us today our daily bread – Minister’s Letter Oct 25

Dear all at IPC,

Every Sunday we say together what is commonly called the Lord’s Prayer, which is of course wrongly named. Jesus never had to pray this prayer, it’s the prayer he gave to his disciples. He didn’t pray, “Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us”. It’s both a model and a form of prayer and we are to use this to base our prayers upon. But also, Jesus tells us to pray it, “when you pray, pray this… Our Father who is in heaven…” (Matthew 6:9)

The Lord’s prayer is in many ways Systematic Theology in miniature. It gives us the equipment to live out the Christian life. This prayer controls our Christian attitudes, it enables us to face life with all its ups and downs and uncertainties.

I’ve been thinking on the petition ‘give us today our daily bread’ and each word is worth meditating on. What is immediately striking is that this request doesn’t come until halfway through the prayer. The Lord’s prayer is first of all about God’s name, God’s kingdom and God’s will. Those things are the utter priority. The Lord’s prayer forces us to speak of his concerns before our own, before we come to forgiveness and our needs.

How often my prayer life is the opposite, the concerns of my daily life crowd in, my priorities are tragically the other way round.

This petition includes everything we need: our health, our food, our wants, our cares, our need to be sustained. It reminds us that the Lord provides, and reminds us of his overruling providence in everything. Every word is loaded with meaning.

Give – “What do you have that you did not receive?” 1 Cor 4:7. As we pray give us our daily bread, we are to recognise God is the generous giver. All good gifts around us are us are sent from heaven above. What we have is not earned, the home that we live in, the food on our table, the money in our bank account, the clothes on our back – all is given to us and to be received as gift. We need to recognise the source of what we have.

I often think of Nebuchadnezzar looking out, “Is not this great Babylon, which I have built by my mighty power as a royal residence and for the glory of my majesty?” (Daniel 4:30). While the words are on his lips, the Lord humbles him and after seven years, he recognises there is a God in heaven who is to be praised and blessed forever. He sees himself as he is – a creature, who is dependent and God has given him all that he has.

Our daily necessities are given to us by God.

Give us – I don’t think I had realised here that it is a corporate prayer – Give ‘us’

It does not say ‘me’ or ‘my’. So often I am keen to pray for me, myself and I. What patience God must have with me constantly being focussed in on myself. This petition puts me in my place, it shows me my concern should be with others. We’re even told to pray for our enemies by the Lord Jesus.

This prayer is a disciples prayer and Jesus is encouraging us here to be thinking of his disciples. It is right and fitting to pray this as a church Sunday by Sunday. Our own needs are prayed for in the context of others.

Give us today – Jesus famously said, “Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble” (Matthew 6:34). Proverbs reminds us, “Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring” (Proverbs 27:1). To pray give us today our daily bread recognises that we are not in control, we are mortal, limited, finite creatures. We live by God’s daily sustaining grace. It is a great reminder that we live reliant on the daily care of God and when it comes to tomorrow, we can rely on God’s daily grace then.

For the Israelites in the wilderness they were given manna daily, they had to rely on God’s fresh daily provision each day. They weren’t able to gather tomorrow’s manna today, they had to trust God would provide it in the morning.

Our Daily Bread – speaks to us of daily necessity. In our culture we know exactly what this means – bread is a slang term for money, dough is used in the same way. It is the stuff of life. It’s not the fleshpots that the children of Israel longed for in Egypt, nor the extravagant food we see in restaurants. Jesus is speaking of Daily Bread as the basic food which keeps us alive. The bare necessities!

The whole petition tells us that the Christian life is one of reliance and dependence: we entrust ourselves to the Lord. I think this is one of our basic struggles, am I willing to live reliantly on the Lord? When I am forced to do that by my circumstances do I kick against it? As I’ve written before, dependence and reliance are coming to all of us whether we like it or not. It is just a case of whether we will learn to embrace them or be forced to.

The writer of proverbs tells us, “Give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with the food that is needful for me,lest I be full and deny you and say, ‘Who is the Lord?’ or lest I be poor and steal and profane the name of my God”. (Proverbs 30:8-9). This is counter cultural living and it always has been. Where discontentment and envy of others can so easily creep in, Jesus is teaching us God gives us what we need and that is all ok.

He is teaching that we humans are like the rest of creation, we are as dependent as the birds who neither sew nor reap and so we are not to be overly concerned about what we wear and what we eat, what we look like (Matthew 6:32). God knows what we need before we ask it (Matthew 6:8). You can look at these physical provisions of the Lord and the prayer is certainly referring to them, but we realise that “man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God” (Matthew 4:4).

It would be incredibly foolish of us to set our hearts on the things and stuff of this life that we are given. To seek to hold on to it. To elevate ‘give us our daily bread’ above God’s name, God’s kingdom and God’s will. Jesus is teaching us to keep our daily bread in perspective.

This is obviously a prayer for today as we will not pray this prayer in the life of the world to come because there will no need to pray “your kingdom come” because the kingdom will have come, we will not pray “forgive us our trespasses” because there will be nothing to forgive. We will not have to pray in glory “Give us today our daily bread”, because we will enjoy abundance in glory forever at the wedding supper of the Lamb. We will feast in the house of Zion. But till then, let’s recognise that our lives are one of humble reliance on a generous God.

Give us this day our daily bread.

Your Minister and friend,

Elders and self!

When we think of self what do we think of?

I think our minds go straightaway to self denial. Tim Keller has written an excellent book on self forgetfulness. I have often found myself giving the advice to people that you need to forget your self, don’t focus on your self. We see self love as a problem. In our culture, when someone is described as being full of one’s self, that is a bad thing. Philippians 2 tells us to consider others as more important than oneself.

But I also think sometimes we present self too simply. Our view of self needs to be more nuanced than that. The New Testament speaks of self in different ways.

Before we come to the Lord’s Table, we are to consider ourselves (1 Cor 11 v 28). In 2 Corinthians 13, we are to examine ourselves to see whether we are in the faith. Romans 6 v 11 is one of the key verses for believers in how we live out the Christian life, “Reckon yourself, consider yourself dead to sin and alive to God.” (Romans 6 v11)

These verses tell us that our concept of self matters. We have to understand who we are and what is our identity.

If we have too high a view of ourselves, we will become proud and conceited. We will be devastated when we inevitably sin or face criticism. Too low a view of ourselves will show itself in looking for acceptance and identity by what we do or achieve. It can lead us looking for affirmation in all the wrong places. I have been been struck that those of us in Christian leadership can easily fall into these extremes, in fact we can find ourselves struggling with both too high a view and too low a view in one day!

So I want us to think about what we need to understand about ourselves as elders to enable us to fulfil this role. To consider ourselves, reckon ourselves.

First of all, an elder must have a belief in the sovereignty of God. He is the Lord of the universe and he rules over all the earth. Before the foundation of the world God set his love upon you, he chose you in Christ. There has never been a time when God did not love you.

In time, at a certain point of history, God sent his son Jesus Christ to live for you and to die for you, to rise for you, to ascend for you, to sit at his Father’s right for you, and one day he will come again for you. “The Son of God loved me and gave himself for me.” (Galatians 2 v 20)

We must know that it is this God who has worked in the elder’s life by the Spirit bringing him to faith in Jesus Christ and new life. It is by God’s Spirit he enables us to put sin to death.

There is nothing which I have written here that is not true for every Christian, but it must be the testimony of every elder. These things must be known and experienced: we are sheep before we are shepherds.

Secondly, an elder must have the belief that he has been shaped by God’s providence.

The elder must know that the Holy Spirit has been preparing him for service. Through years of experience as a christian and by means of his experience in church in which he serves, God has been providentially at work. His appointment to the eldership by the church and presbytery was not a mistake but God’s hand was clearly in it. Men do not put themselves onto the eldership. Good churches have a process for appointing elders where there is input from the elders and a vote by the congregation, and the involvement of Presbytery. Elders were not ordained by accident or mistake.

The elder can look back and see something – not everything of course – but something of the providence of God in bringing him to the point of Ordination and Installation.

Elders are where they are not by any mistake. Elders are in the church they are in because of God’s sovereignty. Elder: the circumstances of your life, the difficulties, all that you have gone through, are not an accident or have occurred by blind chance, but all has occurred due to the loving sovereign hand of God. God has so worked in your background and shaped you to this point.

Thirdly, the elder must know he’s been called by God through his Spirit and by his people.

The desire for the work of an overseer is an excellent thing (1 Timothy 3 v 1). There needs to be a willingness on the part of the elder to do this work and give himself to it.God’s people have recognised him and so there is a desire by the congregation for the elder to shepherd them. There has been a period of training for becoming an elder, and in our context, there is also the involvement of presbytery and the role they play in guarding, training, examining, appointing, ordaining.

All of that is to say elders have not put themselves into their position, but God through his church and by his Spirit has put the elder into it.

God is the one who calls and so an elder acts under Christ’s authority. Elders are shepherds, but are under shepherds.

This understanding of who elders are in Christ and what they’ve been called to do by Christ should give elders a dignity and a responsibility. Being an overseer of God’s people speaks of privilege and authority.

I think this is particularly helpful when it comes to pastoral work. Elders need to recognise they are not our own, but are stewards in God’s house. It is his church, his flock, his people, his work. Yet, he has delegated his authority to elders, he has given them keys to his kingdom. What do keys do? Open and close doors. So the elders are given these keys to use in Christ’s church.

Elders speak with an authority they’ve been given. In Ordination, an authority is given to the elder. I often say to a couple the night before a wedding that the most important thing that will happen tomorrow is what you can’t see. It is what God does: “What God has joined together let no man separate”. In Ordination, by the laying on of hands God sets apart his elders. There is something definitively different before an elder gets on his knees and after he get up from his knees – God has done something. Elders are different whether they feel it or not after the act of Ordination.

There is an obvious danger to this: abuse of the position. This is seen throughout scripture. There have always been false shepherds, lording it over the flock which is a perennial danger, where leadership is domineering. The power goes to the elder’s head. The abuse of the position though does not negate the right use of the authority an elder is given.

This act by God in Ordination enables elders to deal straightforwardly with Christ’s flock. Elders do not have to manipulate. Sadly there is a lot of that manipulation in conservative evangelicalism. I sometimes think that the obsession with 121 bible studies and personal work can lead to an unhealthy dependence on one person. We need to say to people I’m your elder not your guru.

The ways in which elders can manipulate are manifold. Elders can make someone feel special, helping them feel like they have the inner track. The elder might not even be aware of it but loyalty is being bought in this instance. Even in communication by notes and messages, elders must do so out of genuine love and concern. I’ve known leaders who use those communications to keep people on side. It is a fine line between showing genuine concern and needing people to be kept on side.

In the last 30 years, it has been popular to decry a call to ministry. It a reaction against a false super-spiritual approach to people entering ministry. However, it has had devastating effects. People have been told any Christian should think and pursue full time ministry and we have ended up with many people who shouldn’t be publicly preaching. It has been to the detriment of themselves and the congregations they serve. That is not to doubt their sincerity, but just to say they would have been more fruitful in other vocations. In the last 5 years, with the cost of living and ministry being more difficult and with allegations thrown at leaders regularly, ministry has become less attractive to young people. The chickens have come home to roost. If you keep telling people there is no such thing as a call to ministry, it is no surprise that the long term effect of this being, unsurprisingly, people haven’t been called.

As ministers and elders in the UK haven’t had a sense of self and calling, leaders have led through manipulation. You remove accountability also, and that gives you some indication as to why some of the abuse scandals that have rocked the church have taken place.

The opposite problem – which is equally likely – is that elders become timid. There arise shepherds who are terrified of offending the sheep, nervous about leading and conflict averse. I suspect this may well be more of an issue than we like to admit. All of us want to be liked and the elder is no different. Elders like to be counted as peoples’ friends, the desire itself not being wrong, but it can get in the way of good shepherding. The parent who desperately wants to be their child’s friend will be incapable of disciplining them. Elders must love the flock, but must be willing to not be liked. The sheep don’t always love the shepherd.

The elder having an understanding of self will realise they are under shepherds, called by Christ to this work, which gives an elder dignity and poise, enabling them to speak the truth in love with gentleness. It also enables elders to be realistic, to evaluate and appreciate their particular gifts, understand their strengths and weaknesses. It should give them a willingness to take feedback and accept their limitations.

It also enables elders to persevere in their responsibilities even when faced with tremendous difficulties. What keeps an elder going is that they are called to this work by God. What this understanding should do is it give to an elder a sense of dignity and authority but it should also be humbling.

The model in many ways is the Apostle Paul in his understanding of himself, that he was the least of the least (which is impossible!). He lived his life in the awareness of his past sins: he could never forget that he was there when Stephen was stoned, giving approval. (Acts 8 v 1; 22 v 20). He lived in the light of his past righteousness – there things he once boasted in which now he realised were worthless. His present reality was struggles (2 Corinthians 11 v 23-29). Allied to all of this, he saw clearly the dignity and privilege of who he was. He was an Ambassador, an Apostle, a Minister of Christ Jesus.

We can see throughout his ministry the balance of authority and humility.

Elders can be like dogs! There are ones that growl at you grumpily but they scurry off if you come near them. There are those who will do anything for you if you scratch their ears or tummy. There are ones that cower and look with wide eyes at you desiring pity. There are elders who who grovel and compromise and apologise at the slightest trouble. There are men who will do anything if you give them a pat on the head.

If you are an elder, God chose you in eternity, he created you and he shaped you into the person he wanted and he called you to his service and ordained you. He has given you an authority. Dignity and humility is the biblical self concept. Elders should seek to develop and grow in these things as we live with its tension and complexity. We are sinners and we are saints. We are beggars we are princes.

Which is exactly what God says in Psalm 113:7

“He raises the poor from the dust
and lifts the needy from the ash heap,
⁸to make them sit with princes,
with the princes of his people.”

I originally got the the idea for this article from Knox Chamblin’s book “Paul and the self” & an address given by Edward Donnelly at the Banner of Trust Ministers conference in the 1980s. I am pretty sure the elders as dogs illustration comes from him.