More Book Reviews - Center Church / Preaching and Preachers / And the Lamb Wins

I don't post book reviews here often enough. So here are some quick reviews of three good books I've read recently.

Center Church - Timothy Keller

Keller (senior pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian, New York) is one of the most influential writers on theology and church at the moment, certainly in the Reformed world. And this is the closest he has come to a magnum opus. It's essentially a 400-odd page textbook on what it means to be and do church in the specific context of city-centre ministry in a global city. I'm not there, and I don't agree with Keller on everything, but if this was a course when I was at theological college, it would have been one of the best and most helpful courses on offer. He outlines different views on just about everything, shows where the tensions are, and usually shows how to plot a third way (or a fifth way) between them.

Genuinely helpful on big-picture stuff; really clearly laid out; genuinely brilliant. There's quite a bit of stuff that can't really be put into practice when you don't have a congregation of at least hundreds including talented artists (and there's not much on how to deal with having enthusiastic but not-talented amateurs), but there's lots of stuff that is helpful in my context and at painting a vision for why and how Redeemer has done what it's done, it's great.

Preaching and Preachers - Martyn Lloyd-Jones

The way I remember it, a few years ago someone did a survey of which books on preaching today's most respected preachers valued, and this one came top despite having been out of print for 20 years. So now it's back in print, sprinkled with essay-length commendations and appreciations from the likes of John Piper.

Martyn Lloyd-Jones's book was originally a series of lectures he gave on preaching in the late 60s, and the only book it really compares to is Spurgeon's Lectures to my Students. (For what it's worth, I'd rate Spurgeon slightly above P&P, but only slightly). Preachers & Preaching is like having a brilliant but utterly eccentric tutor. If you listen to him, you'll learn a lot, but some of what he says is quite batty. He has strong opinions on almost every imaginable topic, some of which are just odd (views on the shape of the roof of buildings and how it affects spiritual health of the congregation) and some of which are challenging and thought-provoking but probably wrong (why it is wrong to debate atheists).

I can see why so many great preachers value this book so highly though. It's really good, despite the quirky bits, and I've really been encouraged, challenged and built up by reading it! Strongly recommended...

And the Lamb Wins - Simon Ponsonby

This is a book-length version of Simon's St Aldate's School of Theology sessions on eschatology and the end times. It's clearly aimed at a bright undergraduate-level audience - he gives the histories of different theories on the millennium, for example. But if you can cope with that, it's very readable and a clear overview of a number of different aspects of end-times debate. He interacts with most of the main schools of thought, gives his own opinions and backs them up well. He probably succeeded in slightly changing my opinion on Israel, for example.

There are a couple of other areas I'd like to have seen him interact with - the nature of the final judgement for example, whether there is just one or two (works & faith?). But overall this is just about the best, sanest, most Biblically faithful handling of the end times I've read. I recently compared it with Randy Alcorn's Heaven, for example, and Alcorn is better on Heaven itself, but Ponsonby is clearer, more detailed and more rigorous in just about every other respect.

On Women Bishops and Yesterday's Synod Vote

It's worth saying right from the start – I'm not on Synod. Had I been able to vote yesterday, I would probably have voted “yes”. But I grew up in the conservative evangelical camp, and I know a good proportion of the 44 clergy who voted “no” yesterday.

I think it's important to debunk a few myths.

First, this isn't about equality. I know to outsiders it looks like it is, but it isn't. It's actually about identicality, and there's an important difference. Everyone (I hope) on synod agrees that men and women are equal in status and in the sight of God. Everyone agrees that men and women are not identical on a purely biological level. The question is to what extent men and women's differences work out as differences in the roles they play within church.

Secondly, this isn't about rights. No-one has the right to become a bishop. It isn't a “promotion”. It's a horrible job where you can't be part of a normal church fellowship and work far too many hours with far too many people who expect you to have all the answers. Jemima Thackray wrote a great piece in the Telegraph this morning where she argues that the real question should be whether women can have the opportunity to serve in this job. In some ways the even more important question is “Is God calling women to serve in this way?”. Women who say they should have the right to become bishop shouldn't have it, because they don't understand what they say they want.

Third, this isn't about traditionalists in the house of laity spoiling everyone's party. Yes, this time it was voted down because people thought it didn't cater well enough for those who would rather not have a woman bishop. Personally, I'd have voted for the motion because I think it does cater well enough for conservative evangelicals, even though conservative evangelical friends say it doesn't. But last time, 2 years ago, the archbishops proposed a motion which would have catered well enough for them. It was overwhelmingly passed in the houses of clergy and laity, but voted down by modernists in the house of clergy. If those clergy had passed it then, we'd have women bishops by now.

So what is this actually about? It's about how we handle profound disagreements. The Church of England as a whole has been rightly trying to keep people on board, and be as accommodating as possible to those who have good reasons for disagreeing with women bishops, while still trying to move ahead with them. The problem is that the Church's structures are somewhat Byzantine, and sometimes working at counter-purposes and it therefore moves very slowly indeed.

What we haven't done enough of, I think, is actually discussing the reasons for disagreement rather than stating them. For example, a lot of the opposition hinges around one paragraph in Paul's first letter to Timothy. I have listened to a fair bit of the debate, and I've only heard that paragraph discussed by those against women bishops. Now I can see several ways to argue that the paragraph doesn't apply to women bishops today, but I don't really see that argument being engaged with at a national level. Of course, all that discussion should have happened decades ago, but as far as I can tell it just hasn't been done.

The C of E will get there in the end, but in the meantime we need to be patient, we need to be loving, and we need to keep listening to each other, and not just letting it wash over us, but engaging with what the other person is saying. Then, maybe, we'll be able to move on from this and work together for God's glory.

Yes Minister on Bishops and the C of E...

Remaking a Broken World - Chris Ash

One of the things that winds me up about Bible overviews is that they always seem to take the same point of view, usually based on Graeme Goldsworthy's People / Place / Presence idea. It's a good way to do a Bible overview, but it only gives one perspective and there's so much more to see! Chris Ash here chooses a different point of view - the point of view of scattering and gathering.

I'd strongly recommend the book to anyone who has done a Bible overview from the Goldsworthy point of view (or read its best write-up in God's Big Picture by Vaughan Roberts) and wants something a bit different. From my point of view as a Bible teacher, the first two thirds was good but not much new except for his wonderful treatment of Babel. The last third or so of the book, where he gets on to talking about the Church, was spectacular.

The thesis of this chapter, indeed the theme of the book, is precisely this: the ordinary local church with all its imperfections, weaknesses, oddities and problems, has within in the seeds, the spiritual and relational genetic blueprint, of a broken world remade.
p.138

When I walk in Jesus' footsteps and become 'like a child' I will willingly receive 'a child' into my group. Only when my self-perception is that I am a despised nobody will I welcome other despised nobodies into my fellowship. Only when I am deeply humbled will my door be open to the lost, the struggling and the desperate.

If we do not receive nobodies, we do not receive Jesus Christ. That is why putting up barriers of pride is so serious. That is why it would be better to have a quick and early death by drowning than to do something like that. That is why it is so desperately important that a church be a church of 'children', a church in which status is zero and agreed to be zero and proclaimed to be zero.
p.150

Class Barriers in Church

A couple of days ago, I posted some initial thoughts on the book Total Church by Tim Chester and Steve Timmis. I said that it raised some interesting questions about class and evangelical Christianity.

One church leader commented to me recently: 'Social class is British evangelicalism's equivalent of racism in American evangelicalism.'... It means the leadership in conservative evangelicalism largely runs along lines of social class. Those from a lower social class who achieve positions of prominence do so by adopting the culture of the upper class.
p.74

I'm pretty sure that should read "middle class" at the end...

When we look at church throughout the world, God is choosing the weak and lowly to shame the power and wealth of the West. It seems that God's response to the imperialism of global capitalism is to raise up a mighty church in the very places this new empire marginalises and exploits. Let the Western church take note.
p.81

One of the reasons we have middle-class churches that are failing to reach working-class people is that we have middle-class leaders. And we have middle-class leaders because our expectations of what constitutes leadership and our training methods are middle-class. Indeed, working-class people only really get into leadership by effectively becoming middle-class. p.117

I think they're right, of course. In one sense it's a symptom of the old problem where attempts to improve education levels in working class areas tend to produce middle-class people who then leave the areas and so create no overall improvement. Chester & Timmis even suggest (probably rightly) that one of the keys to reaching the working classes is for converts to decide to stay rather than to leave.

Another is of course "downward mobility", Christians moving into more working-class areas intentionally instead of following the standard trend of society to try to move out of them.

But there's an awful lot to be said for the massive problem facing evangelicalism in the UK - that it's just too middle class to seem relevant to the working class. Stuff like the "reaching the unreached" conferences help, but there's a long way to go in terms of changing culture, not least in terms of mobility around the country. Generally speaking, working class families are rooted in a specific area over generations, and middle class families move around a lot and are geographically dispersed. For me to be fully part of the community I live in would require my family to have lived there since the 1950s.

There's a big challenge here...

Doing Church Differently

I've read a couple of books recently on doing church differently. They're the sort of book I wish I'd read in book group this year instead of the book we did do, which is best characterised as rich in complex theological language and poor in content. In contrast, I'd strongly recommend both of these for church leaders - not because I completely agree with them, but because they really get you thinking.

The first one is a book I've seen highly recommended - The Trellis and the Vine by Colin Marshall and Tony Payne.

Marshall and Payne basically argue that churches in general and church leaders in particular often spend far too much of their time looking after the existing structures (the trellis) rather than focusing their attention on growing Christians (the vine).

It's basically a persuasive book length plea for church leaders to invest their time in training people in the congregations to serve God better.

Here's an extract:

If we pour all our time into caring for those who need help, the stable Christians will stagnate and never be trained to minister to others, the non-Christians will stay unevangelized, and a rule of thumb will quickly emerge within the congregation: if you want the pastor's time and attention, get yourself a problem. Ministry becomes all about problems and counselling, and not about the gospel and growing in godliness.

And over time, the vine withers.
p.111

What we're suggesting is that [the sick and suffering] aren't the only ones that need your time and ministry. If you really want to care for them and see real gospel growth, then the wise thing to do is to train and mobilise the godly mature Christians in the congregation to do some of that caring work.
p.183

Another book, and more controversial, is Total Church, by Tim Chester and Steve Timmis.

They argue for a total remodelling of the way we do church, to be far more community-centred, far more about living lives together. There are some very good points in here, but they often raise them in deliberately controversial ways, and don't provide a discussion of what it would look like for a traditional chuch to try to take some of this on board. It works and is convincing as a manifesto for planting radical house churches, specifically in working class areas (I'll post some of their discussion of class at a later date).

This is the sort of thing I'd really like to discuss with other people in church leadership positions.

The communities to which we introduce people must be communities in which "God-talk" is normal. This means talking about what we are reading in the Bible, praying together whenever we share need, delighting together in the gospel, sharing our spiritual struggles, not only with Christians but with unbelievers.
p.62

At present the military and economic might of Western nations is struggling to counter the threat of international terrorism. It is proving difficult to defeat an enemy made up of local 'cells' working towards a common vision with high autonomy but shared values. They are flexible, responsive, opportunistic, influential and effective. Together they seem to have an impact on our world far beyond what they would if they formed themselves into a structures, identifiable organisation. Churches can and should adopt the same model with a greater impact as we 'wage peace' on the world.
p.107

G.K. Chesterton said: "The man who lives in a small community lives in a much larger world... The reason is obvious. In a large community we can choose our companions. In a small community, our companions are chosen for us.
p.111

I don't agree with everything they say at all - for example their rejection of the importance of silence on p.139-140 seems a massive over-statement which contradicts the fact that both Jesus and Paul took long periods of such quiet, as well as the fact that I read the book while on a silent retreat. But there's a lot I do agree with, and a lot of thinking to be done...

Bits and Bobs - Public Prayer, Introversion

Thirteen tips for leading the congregation in prayer is an interesting and good set of pointers. I'm thinking through the whole way we do church at the moment, and I seem to be coming to the conclusion we need one prayer time immediately after the sermon to pray it in, but a different prayer time for intercessions (which is what this article is discussing)...

On an unconnected note, here's an interesting and helpful article on caring for introverts and why culture is designed for extroverts (HT to Greg B).

Tim Keller - why is the church full of moralists?

Jesus' teaching consistently attracted the irreligious while offending the Bible-believing, religious people of his day. However, in the main, our churches today do not have this effect. The kind of outsider Jesus attracted are not attracted to contemporary churches, even our most avant-garde ones. We tend to draw conservative, buttoned-down, moralistic people. The licentious and liberated or the broken and marginal avoid church. That can mean only one thing. If the preaching of our ministers and the practice of our parishioners do not have the same effect on people that Jesus had, then we must not be declaring the same message that Jesus did. If our churches aren't appealing to younger brothers, they must be more full of elder brothers than we'd like to think.
Tim Keller, The Prodigal God, p.16

Consecrating Vices

John Piper (in the introduction to The Pleasures of God, strongly recommended a book called The Life of God in the Soul of Man by Scougal, so I'm having a go at reading it. Here's a quote from near the beginning that really struck me.

There are but too many Christians who would consecrate their vices, and follow their corrupt affections, whose ragged humour and sullen pride must pass for Christian severity; whose fierce wrath, and bitter rage against their enemies, must be called holy zeal; whose petulancy towards their superiors, or rebellion against their governors, must have the name of Christian courage and resolution.

A Scandal in Spiritual Illiteracy

The other day, I was at a gathering of curates. (What's the collective noun for curates?) We were discussing a book which was partly about the Charismatic movement. And it came out in conversation that half of the people in the room had no experience of charismaticism at all. I think that's a scandal.

Consider this - roughly 1/3 of the world's Christians are charismatic or Pentecostal. Among regular church-attenders in this country, the proportion of charismatics and Pentecostals is probably about 20% and growing fast. And half the people in the room had no experience of them at all, and we were all ordained ministers in the Church of England.

When I was considering training for ordination in the Church of England, we discussed my experience of the breadth of the Church, and I was told to spend 3 months worshipping at a high Anglo-Catholic church. I did, and I found it helpful. When I was at college, I made an effort to broaden my experience as much as possible. I spent time at churches in difficult UPAs and in the countryside because I was more used to the suburbs. I spent time at an Anglican church in the developing world because I've lived in the UK all my life. I got to the point where I've got a decent level of exposure to pretty much everything that happens in the C of E. Some of it I disagree with; some of it I think is wrong or mad, but at least I'm aware of it and have spoken to people who do it and got to know a bit about where they are coming from. Much of that was expected of me as part of my training; some of it was me wanting to understand where different people were coming from.

So how on earth have people got through selection and ordination training and even got ordained and through a decent chunk of their curacies without any experience or understanding of the charismatic movement? I'm not blaming them at all - it's the job of those providing and overseeing their training to make sure that that happens, and I think it's a scandal that they have been allowed to do so.

(As it happens, I think the charismatic movement tends to get some things wrong and a lot of things right - not least the expectation of personal experience of God's action. But that's largely irrelevant to this rant...)

Before Communion

We've been discussing church discipline this morning at college. One point made was that we sometimes need to be willing to exclude people from communion. Of course, the Anglican Book of Common Prayer had a strong view on this. This is from the official Anglican liturgy, but I've never heard it used.

For as the benefit is great, if with a true penitent heart and lively faith we receive that holy Sacrament; (for then we spiritually eat the flesh of Christ, and drink his blood; then we dwell in Christ, and Christ in us; we are one with Christ, and Christ with us;) so is the danger great, if we receive the same unworthily. For then we are guilty of the Body and Blood of Christ our Saviour; we eat and drink our own damnation, not considering the Lord’s Body; we kindle God’s wrath against us; we provoke him to plague us with divers diseases, and sundry kinds of death. judge therefore yourselves, brethren, that ye be not judged of the Lord; repent you truly for your sins past; have a lively and stedfast faith in Christ our Saviour; amend your lives, and be in perfect charity with all men; so shall ye be meet partakers of those holy mysteries. And above all things ye must give most humble and hearty thanks to God...

Infighting and Church Politics

A Happy New Year to all of you!

Quiz question: After King David had conquered so much of the Promised Land, according to 1 Kings, how did the first bit of that land cease to be under Israelite control? How did the destruction start?

The answer is not what you might expect...

In 1 Kings 9, Solomon tries giving away some of the Promised Land to Hiram, King of Tyre, but Hiram doesn't want it.

King Solomon gave twenty towns in Galilee to Hiram king of Tyre, because Hiram had supplied him with all the cedar and pine and gold he wanted. But when Hiram went from Tyre to see the towns that Solomon had given him, he was not pleased with them. "What kind of towns are these you have given me, my brother?" he asked. And he called them the Land of Cabul, a name they have to this day.
1 Kings 9:11-15, NIV

But the first bits that are clearly conquered by outsiders are done so far more because of infighting among the Israelites, specifically between the kingdoms of Israel and Judah.

Asa [King of Judah] then took all the silver and gold that was left in the treasuries of the LORD's temple and of his own palace. He entrusted it to his officials and sent them to Ben-Hadad son of Tabrimmon, the son of Hezion, the king of Aram, who was ruling in Damascus. "Let there be a treaty between me and you," he said, "as there was between my father and your father. See, I am sending you a gift of silver and gold. Now break your treaty with Baasha king of Israel so he will withdraw from me."

Ben-Hadad agreed with King Asa and sent the commanders of his forces against the towns of Israel. He conquered Ijon, Dan, Abel Beth Maacah and all Kinnereth in addition to Naphtali.

1 Kings 15:18-20, NIV

Quick and easy moral from those stories - the destruction of God's people starts when the leaders are more concerned about looking good than about living in the way of God's promises, and when they are more concerned with winning their own little internal battles than about helping God's kingdom to grow.

When church politics is about trying to look good in front of others rather than genuinely being faithful to God (even if he disagrees with us) or when it's about our side winning whichever stupid internal Christian v Christian battle we're fighting at the moment, it leads ultimately to the destruction of God's people and is therefore Wrong.

Wright - Lectionaries

Whenever you see, in an official lectionary, the command to omit two or three verses, you can normally be sure that they contain words of judgment. Unless, of course, they are about sex.
Tom Wright, Surprised by Hope, p.190

Paganism

Paganism... is also a sort of permanent and natural magnetic pole of religion, and in this sense a constant threat for every religion. Christianity demands unceasing effort, continual filling of its forms with content, self-testing, and a "trial of the spirit". Any divergence between form and content, or the emergence of form as a value and goal in itself, is paganism. It is a return to natural religion, to belief in form, ceremony, and sacred objects without regard to their content and spiritual meaning. In this sense even Christian rites and sacred objects may themselves become centers of pagan veneration and may overshadow what they solely exist for: the liberating force of truth.
Alexander Schmemann, The Historical Road of Eastern Orthodoxy

Death

I've spent most of the last week thinking about death, funerals, etc.

One of the things that struck me most was when thinking through the doctrine of the Resurrection (the general one - us all being raised from the dead at the end), I realised that the vast vast majority of Christians seem to live specifically as if it were not true, except when confronted with the death of someone close to them. We invest far too much in this world, and our heart follows our treasure.

The church today denies the practical reality of the General Resurrection because it denies the practical reality of death by joining our culture in its conspiracy of silence. If we are genuinely to think and live correctly in the light of the General Resurrection, we need to be decidedly counter-cultural in the time and emphasis we give to death.

A Healthy Church?

Back once again to the Purpose-Driven Church movement. They give out awards for having a healthy church, which seem to be assessed entirely on their standard criteria - does the church have an explicit and deliberate emphasis on worship, discipleship, fellowship, evangelism and service? Problem is, plenty of churches can have that and be chronically unhealthy.

Here are some extra questions...

• Is the preaching normally preaching systematically through the Bible rather than just whatever the preacher wants to say that week?
• Are Christians there excited about Jesus?
• Do visitors actually feel welcome?
• What is the drop-out rate through the youth work, right up until they are fully integrated into the main body of the church? Ideally, it should be negative.
• How well are different social groups integrated? Do people primarily love and mix with other people like them or do all members of the church genuinely learn from people from different social, economic, age backgrounds?
• If the church stopped being all about God, how long would people take to notice?
• Does the worship reflect well on the worship band or on God?
• Does the preaching reflect well on the preacher or on God?

The Purpose-Driven Movement - A Reassessment

My initial reaction to much of the Purpose-Driven movement was that there is a fair bit of wisdom there, but little that is distinctively Christian. There is little emphasis on doctrine, and actually the book Purpose-Driven Church would work pretty much just as well for a mosque, synagogue or health club. And quite a few of the organisations that subscribe to the Purpose-Driven philosophy seem somewhat batty.

Over the last few weeks, I've seen some more of the movement. I've read bits of Doug Fields' book Purpose Driven Youth Ministry, and I've met and heard talks by some of the Purpose Driven Worship team from Highlands Fellowship, whose website includes this rather strong recommendation of Rick Warren's work:

God had given Pastor Rick Warren his plan for our generation, and now Jimmie knew that God had the same in mind for the church in Abingdon. [That's Abingdon, Virginia, USA, not the original one.]

And I have to say (despite the above quote) that I have been generally very impressed by what I have seen. Both groups - both Doug Fields and the folk from Highlands have stressed the importance and priority of the youth worker / music group member's relationship with and dependence upon God even above their skill as a youth leader or musician. Both of them seem to be using the "purpose-driven" approach simply to mean the importance of thinking through what you are doing and the way you are doing it beforehand, and aiming it all to God's glory.

The Clerical Role of "Answer Man"

An interesting quote here which raises interesting questions about theological education. For what it's worth, I certainly know quite a bit more than I did when I started my theology degree, but I don't think I'm much better at coming to an opinion on a new topic than I was as a "proper" layperson. So on topics I have studied at university, I think I'm better informed than I was, but that doesn't mean I was wrong or incapable of refuting bad theology before. On topics I haven't really studied much, I don't see why my opinion now is worth more than it was two years ago.

To perpetuate the clerical role of answer man, the layman when inside the church building must act as if he has only half a brain, while outside, in the world, he is expected to be an ambassador for Christ, a lay transmitter of faith. Outside, he is to be informed and vocal; inside, he must appear ignorant and mute as a sheep. Christians have within them many questions--questions that are at once elementary and profound, questions that would ripple the water were they raised. However, because a Christian is supposed to have "answers," life's important questions are not discussed outside the church building; and, because the pastor is the educated, spiritual authority, they are not discussed inside either.
Paul G. Johnson (b.1931), Buried Alive [1968]

Infant Baptism

A friend asked me to write down my thoughts on infant baptism. It's a difficult topic, as evident by the fact that there are so many Christians committed to the same high view of Scripture who disagree over it. It seems that those with a higher ecclesiology seem to be in favour of infant baptism, which suggests that the strongest arguments may well presuppose that the Church can decide on secondary issues. I'm going to try to ignore that argument and concentrate on some which are more traditionally evangelical in style (i.e. ignore all tradition since the Apostles). Even then, a lot of the classic arguments are rubbish. Overall, it's a tricky argument because it needs answers to other difficult questions.

Who should be baptised?

Baptism as such seems to start in the Bible with John the Baptist, but picks up on symbolism going a long way back. So in 1 Peter 3, Peter says that Noah being saved from the flood was a picture of baptism.

John the Baptist baptised people who wanted to change the way they were living (e.g. Mark 1:4-5). It didn't require a commitment to Jesus, because Jesus only really started his ministry once John was put into prison. In Acts 19:4, Paul links John's baptism to being told to follow Jesus, but not necessarily to follow Jesus.

Christians took baptism and used it differently – baptism was either in the name of Jesus (e.g. Acts 19:5) or in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit (e.g. Matthew 28:19), and was seen as being different to John's baptism (as seen in Acts 19). It was seen as linked with repentance and with forgiveness (e.g. Acts 2:38) and with union with Christ (Romans 6:3).

Baptism was seen as the first thing that happened to someone as a Christian – it was linked very closely to conversion. That means there were some examples where they baptised people who later turned out not to be Christians, for example Simon Magus in Acts 8:9ff. There doesn't seem to have been detailed examinations of belief before baptism.

1 Corinthians 10 gives a striking parallel with the Old Testament. Paul argues that the whole nation of Israel was baptised, though most of them didn't “keep going”.

For I want you to know, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptised into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ. Nevertheless, with most of them God was not pleased, for they were overthrown in the wilderness. Now these things took place as examples for us, that we might not desire evil as they did.
1 Corinthians 10:1-6, ESV

Paul clearly saw parallels between those who had been baptised in the church in Corinth and those who were physical members of the covenant people of Israel.

Conclusion – baptism seems to have been used as an initiation into the Christian community. Sometimes people were baptised who didn't keep going as Christians. In other words, it seems sensible that we should say that Christians should be baptised, but to err on the side of baptising too many people rather than too few if we are to follow the pattern of the apostolic Church.

Who is a Christian?

Since the Reformation, the trend to try to define Christians by whether they believe a certain set of beliefs has been very strong. But it doesn't seem to be the way the Bible sees saving faith – the key question is not the intellectual content of the faith, but the object of the faith.

And there was a woman who had had a discharge of blood for twelve years, and who had suffered much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was no better but rather grew worse. She had heard the reports about Jesus and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his garment. For she said, "If I touch even his garments, I will be made well." And immediately the flow of blood dried up, and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease.

And Jesus, perceiving in himself that power had gone out from him, immediately turned about in the crowd and said, "Who touched my garments?" And his disciples said to him, "You see the crowd pressing around you, and yet you say, 'Who touched me?'" And he looked around to see who had done it. But the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling and fell down before him and told him the whole truth. And he said to her, "Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease."
Mark 5:25-34, ESV

Biblically, I'd suggest that saving faith seems to have been trusting that Jesus could save and that no-one else could. It doesn't require any level of intellectual sophistication, though it will have more intellectual sophistication in some people than in others. The woman with bleeding thought that just touching Jesus could heal her in what we would call a superstitious way. The centurion in Matthew 8 recognised that Jesus could heal at a distance by just saying a word. Both had saving faith.

Saving faith isn't about believing precisely the right things or being able to articulate them – it's about looking to Jesus for rescue and not looking to anyone else.

Baptising Children

So then, should we baptise children?

The obvious answer is “yes, if they are Christians”.

Are children Christians? This where the arguments against infant baptism really get tied up, with the question of what the minimum age for a child to be considered a Christian is (let alone the pastoral question of the death of children before they reach that age). The most common (and consistent) view is that the right age for baptism is whenever the child can articulate a faith of their own and request baptism, though some impose arbitrary age limits. There are however significant difficulties with either position.

My parents are (and were) Christians. I was baptised as an infant. I consciously identified myself as a Christian from at least the age of 4. I could and did articulate a faith of my own and requested to be confirmed, and was confirmed. I very much suspect that in a baptist church except for one with an arbitrary age limit over 15, I'd have been baptised. But the first time I realised my sinfulness and need of salvation and repented and meant it, rather that saying what I knew was the right answer was when I was 15, after baptism and confirmation.

One of the standard baptist arguments is that “God has no grandchildren”, which is true. And so they wait until the children of Christians make their own confession of faith rather than baptising them as infants. Given that, they'd have baptised me before many people would say I became a Christian (but they'd only say that retrospectively), which is exactly what their policy tries to avoid. How many 6-year old children of committed Christian parents fail to identify themselves as Christians?

Conversely, if they impose an arbitrary age limit, they are consciously refusing to baptise those who are able to confess faith and who may well be Christians by anyone's definition. I certainly know adults who are Christians today, and who say that, as far as they remember, they have always been Christians. Given that the apostles clearly erred on the side of baptising too many people rather than too few, and that baptism followed as soon as possible after conversion, can that policy be right?

Summary – Two Arguments

I think the following points are all obvious, and between them they constitute two strong arguments for baptising the infant children of committed Christians:

First Argument

• Committed Christians seek to raise their children to be Christians
• Young children understand more than they can articulate
• Young children trust their parents
• While of course they have to decide later whether to continue in the faith, children of committed Christian parents are almost invariably professing Christians at age 6, and have at no stage prior to that professed to be not Christian.
• The baptismal policy of the apostles was more likely to include too many people than too few, and to baptise early rather than late. There are no recorded cases of declining to baptise someone who was professing faith.

Therefore, it being clear that children of committed Christian parents trust Jesus (or think they trust Jesus) before they can profess it, and that they pretty much invariably profess faith early, it seems only sensible to baptise them at the earliest opportunity.

Second Argument

• The Parable of the Wheat and the Tares/Weeds teaches that “the evil is always intermingled with the good” - that there are people visibly in the Church who are not “saved”, and that it will stay that way until the judgement.
• While theologically, the significance of baptism is linked to inclusion in the group of those who are “saved”, practically it seems that baptism was rather inclusion into the visible Church (as seen from the example of Simon the Sorcerer).
• Examining the apostolic practice of baptism, it is clear that both the Wheat and the Tares were baptised.
• Infants of Christian couples are part of the visible Church

Hence they should be baptised.

Further considerations

I haven't discussed verses like 1 Corinthians 7:14, which says that the children of Christian couples are made holy by their parents. I think that actually works along the lines of my second argument.

There's also the question of rebaptism. If Simon had come back to faith, would the apostles have rebaptised him? My gut answer is “yes”; the policy of the C of E is “no”, and I think the usual Biblical argument for the “no” position – saying there is “one Lord, one faith, one baptism” (Ephesians 5:4) doesn't work. In context that verse means that we should respect and accept the baptisms done by other Christian groups – I accept that people baptised by the Roman Catholics have been baptised and so on. It just isn't addressing the question of whether people who have been baptised, have backslidden to the point they were no longer part of the Church, and then come back to faith should be baptised again or not. On the other hand, the C of E is quite clear in its policy, and I'm happy to abide by that bit of church discipline.

The most important thing in all this, though, is for Christians to love one another, and respect that other Christians may disagree with us, that by and large they don't disagree because they're evil, but because they're genuinely trying to follow God and submit to the teaching of the Bible just as much as we are.

Best Practice

When I was a teacher, one of the things that bothered me most was the culture around criticism. Not the culture that meant that teachers spent half their free time bitching about pupils (though that should have bothered me more than it did). The culture that meant that teachers often refused to accept criticism or feedback. Often their self-esteem was so tied up with their own perception that they were good teachers that they really couldn't cope with the idea that they might not be, or that they might have something to learn from other people. I guess it's a bit like driving – 90% of teachers would say that they are above average.

This was more extreme in my PGCE (teacher training) than in the school I taught at for 5 years. For example, during my PGCE, I wanted to investigate what made a good explanation. My plan was to ask pupils which teachers they thought were particularly good at explaining things, then observe some lessons with those teachers and try to find commonalities. My plan got vetoed by senior staff at the school, because they couldn't stand the idea of pupils being asked who was good at explaining things because that would imply that other teachers were less good at explaining things.

The same sort of thing happens in churches too, though with even less good reason. If church A is very good at youth work, for example, then the response of neighbouring churches of different traditions is (in my experience at least) likely to be one of the following:

• ignoring it
• accusing them of stealing the young people from “our” church
• pointing out deficiencies in the way that church A does things

The better response, of course, would be to get the youth workers from A in to talk about how to do youth work. Don't necessarily accept everything they say – it's possible to build what looks outwardly like a successful youth group on foundations that are distinctly not Christian, for example – but aim to learn from what they do well. Why don't more ceremonial churches get evangelicals in to talk about how to help people to grow through preaching? Why don't evangelical churches get ceremonialists in to talk about the power of the acted word? (With examples of how lives have been changed in both cases of course – it's all very saying how we think God should work in something; it's much better to say how God has worked in something).

As it is, we too often lose that in a haze of politics and pride.

Sharing best practice – good. Obvious, but ignored.