Back in Autumn 2011 I spoke at an evangelists' conference. Afterwards I was chatting to one evangelist who said this: I think I am doing good, orthodox evangelism. I am giving people the truth of the gospel straight from the Bible and presenting Christ accurately. However, if I am honest, I know in my heart that in a year's time the only thing that will be different in the lives of most of the people who become Christians is that they will be going to church.
Read moreLeadership Lessons: Discipling People in the Ways of the Lord
Think hard to day about discipling people in the ways of the Lord as well as in the truths of the Lord.
Read moreStealing The Fruit of Mission; 2 Cor 10:12-12:13
Never, ever, ever boast that you have done something for the Lord that was, in fact, done by someone else. Never muscle in and try and take over another person's ministry or try to build your own by taking credit for their work. Don't sheep-steal. It's ungodly and it reveals you to be a deceitful workman (11:13). That's the claim of Paul in this passage.
Read moreIt's Worth Getting Killed For; 2 Cor 5
How important is the good news about Jesus? Paul has been completely upfront in 2 Cor 4 that it is so overwhelmingly important that it is worth risking our lives, if need be, to spread it. Some - even some who identify as Christians - will hear this and think that is just insane. The implication in 5:13 is that some people said "you are just out of your mind. There is no way we are going to take the gospel seriously to that extent."
So why did he? And why should we? And why isn't it insane to do so?
Read moreSafety, Security, Comfort, Convenience
Excellent three minute video from Alan Hirsch (Desiring God). Middle class comfort is dangerous to the gospel and turns faith-filled Christianity into mere civil religion almost without us realising it.
Alan Hirsch - Are You Stuck In A Rut? from Verge Network on Vimeo.
I think this critique is relevant in so many ways. Here are three:
1. Societal values create our sense of what discomfort is OK for a reasonalb person to put up with - and it is very little. Nowhere near what the gospel requires. But those values are STRONG and subtle. Therefore Christians tend towards the unthought assumption that risk is bad because that is the message we are fed every day
2. People shaped by these values are usually conceptually unable to evangelise outside of the middle class, but don't evangelise the middle class either, because of middle class embarrassment and a vague feeling that middle class people don't infringe each others comfort zones by talking about religion or politics. It is somehow impolite, unseemly
3. People shaped by these values are the ones funding and shaping many of the current mechanisms for training the next generation of leaders. Therefore the institutions and programmes unwittingly reflect their values from the ground up. Why is so much training for Christian leaders done in a setting that mirrors expensive secular teritary education? Because that is what middle class, risk-averse people are familiar with. Why do almost no minister training schemes include planting a church or leading mission trips or running local evangelism trainings as core training requirements? Because middle class risk-averse methodology has replaced them with mostly abstract classroom learning.
As my old mentor Nigel Lee used to say "you don't learn to fish in a class room, but on the river bank". Middle class desire for safety is likely to keep us away from the river bank and turn us all into armchair anglers.