My Problem with "Rev"

This week saw the last-ever episode of the TV series Rev, about the vicar of a “failing” church in London. I've watched a fair bit of it, and all of the last series, but I always found it made me profoundly uncomfortable. This is why.

It wasn't because God hardly shows up, though he doesn't much. It wasn't because it's subtly hostile to the church, though it is, particularly in its depiction of all other clergy other than Adam as nasty pieces of work. It was because I found it all-too believable, and it made me face up to one of the fundamental problems faced by the Church of England. When I can do something about problems (or when it's my job to), I think it's important to face them and deal with them, but problems like this I'd rather bury my head in the sand and ignore. In some senses, it's none of my business, but it breaks my heart.

The Church of England has long been built on a foundation of fudge. We aren't really a denomination – we're a national Church which is a variously dysfunctional association of congregations bound together by a shared history which we disagree about, an often-distant episcopacy, a rough agreement that the Creeds are on the whole a good thing, an immensely flexible liturgy that can be indistinguishable from either Rome or Vineyard, and a slightly grudging agreement to work together for the common good. One of the problems with this is that there are some fairly fundamental things that we really don't agree on but never discuss, in particular the nature of ordained ministry.

As far as I can tell, there are two main ideas about the nature of ordained ministry in the Church of England – the ontological and the functional, or in less technical language “being a priest” versus “leading the church”. I'll explain what I mean.

Two Views of Ordained Ministry

The ontological view of ministry is probably the more widely-held view. It's certainly the closest thing to an official view in the C of E. It says that when someone is ordained priest, they become a priest – that is who they are, and it doesn't go away (unless someone does something really bad, and the bishop goes a stage beyond sacking them). Priests are allowed to preside at communion, pronounce official blessing and absolution on people, and so on. Non-priests aren't, but a priest is a priest is a priest, whether they are a vicar, an army chaplain or a retired social worker who helps out in the local church and got ordained so they can help out with communion services.

The C of E selects people for ordination on the basis of this idea. Their criteria are roughly as follows:

• do they live out some kind of spirituality, and can they articulate why they feel called to be a priest in the C of E?
  
• are they moderately well-adjusted as a person – are they aware of their strengths and weaknesses, wanting to grow, willing to serve and to lead, possessing integrity?
  
• do they have a decent understanding of the Christian faith, including the importance of reaching outsiders?

This isn't the view which comes naturally to me, but I've come to see some of its strengths. It's great to be able to appoint people like that as official ambassadors for the church. On the various occasions when Adam had a crisis of calling through the series, it was aspects of this call – the call to be a priest – which he kept coming back to.

The other view of ordained ministry is the functional view. It says that there is clearly a call to be different, but that call applies to all Christians. The distinctive call is a call to lead churches – to do something. On this view, a retired vicar is the same as any other member of the congregation, albeit with some skills and wisdom they might like to share.

The key texts for this view are the Pastoral Epistles – letters written by Paul to church leaders in the 60s AD, along with a few other bits like Acts 20 and 1 Peter 5. These distinguish several different levels of leadership in a church, from people who are involved in running practical areas of the church's life (e.g. Stephen) to people who are involved in appointing church leaders across a wider area (e.g. Titus). The criteria these passages give for someone to be involved in a senior leadership position in a church are:

• Character: good reputation in the community, above reproach, free from addictions, self-controlled, not argumentative, gentle, dignified, sensible, hospitable, not someone who runs after money.
  
• Domestic situation: either celibate or faithfully married, looks after own household well, spouse and children (under 12-ish) believe.
  
• Faith / skills: not a new believer, doctrinally sound, secure faith, good at teaching the Bible

The Problem

The problem is that these don't quite match, but the C of E pretends they do. I don't have a problem with people being called to be priests, but the call to be a church leader is different. Just because someone is called to be a priest, doesn't mean they're called to lead a church, but the C of E assumes it as the norm.

The result is people like Adam Smallbone in Rev. He's a nice guy; he's clearly got some kind of call on his life. But according to that list, he isn't called to lead a church, and the tension in the series comes from fact that no-one quite grasps that he may well be called to be a priest by the C of E's understanding, but he isn't called to lead a church by the Bible's understanding.

We see the problems shining through in the series. Adam isn't a good preacher; as a result his congregation don't have transforming encounters with God's word and so don't change. We see that painfully clearly when it comes to welcoming a repentant paedophile into the church. Adam understands grace, but he hasn't communicated that understanding to the rest of the church, so they reject him. Adam's wife isn't properly on board with him being a vicar – she clearly resents it and it causes all kinds of problems for her faith, and for his leadership. I know both from personal experience and from that of friends that if a vicar's spouse isn't keen on them following the calling to lead a church, it won't work.

The tragedy is that Adam has been badly let down by the C of E in its confusion between the calling to be a priest and the calling to lead a church. As a result, everyone loses – Adam, the local church, the wider church.

That's what breaks my heart. There are people with a real heart for serving God who have been misled into thinking it should be by leading a church, and end up being chewed up and spat out. There are churches where people aren't growing in their faith because they're being led by people who can't preach properly. And all because we confuse two different things – the calling to be a priest and the calling to lead a church.

Quick Book Reviews

Michael Reeves – The Unquenchable Flame

This is a very readable, clear and entertaining introduction to the Reformation. Obviously, it's an area I've studied a bit, and I can't say I learnt a lot new from this book, but I really enjoyed reading it! There are a couple of things he gets wrong – for example he recognises that Calvin wasn't a Calvinist, but I'm not sure he realises that Zwingli wasn't a Zwinglian either. There are, of course, loads of things he could usefully go into more detail on, but as a short (under 200 page) paperback introduction to the Reformation goes, this is as good as it gets.

Vaughan Roberts – True Friendship

This is a very short book (not even 100 pages), but it's brilliant and well worth a read. Vaughan has obviously read and thought a lot on the topic, and condenses it really well. Here are a couple of really helpful ideas I picked up from it.

• Our culture idolises sex in such a way that friendship is dramatically de-valued. It seems a common belief that all truly intimate relationships are sexual relationships, especially for men. As a result, classic Biblical teaching on sexual ethics sounds like it is condemning those who aren't able to marry to a lifetime of loneliness. This might be because they're exclusively same sex attracted like Vaughan is, or because they can't find a suitable Christian mate like several people I know, or for a variety of other reasons.
  
• Don't worry about other people not being good friends to you – make sure you're a good friend to others.

 

Malcolm Gladwell – What the Dog Saw

Malcolm Gladwell has become famous in the UK for his book-length popular treatments of social science topics, such as The Tipping Point and Outliers. This is a collection of 20 shorter articles (20 pages or so each) which he wrote for the New Yorker magazine. It's typical Gladwell – he can make pretty much anything seem interesting, even the history of advertising hair dye. It's always thought provoking, always informative, always entertaining.

John C Maxwell – Winning with People

This is a typical John Maxwell book. 25 big points about how to work well with people, explained really clearly, illustrated well, and explained in such a way that they seem utterly obvious. I can see that if someone really needed to learn soft people skills, this book could change their life, but it's got enough helpful advice that pretty much anyone would benefit.

Book Review - Keith Lamdin, Finding Your Leadership Style

A diocesan-run course I'm doing asked us to read this book. I read it, found it very mixed, and so wrote this review, which the good folks at Themelios were kind enough to print. They made a couple of editorial changes for the primarily US market - here's my original version.

This book represents a unique convergence of influences. Lamdin writes as a liberal catholic Anglican in strong positive interaction with Willow Creek and the Global Leadership Summit (GLS) but also significantly influenced by Freudian psychology and liberation theology.

This convergence leads to some significant strengths. The GLS would benefit from more theological reflection on secular leadership models and much of the church would benefit from clearer thinking on leadership. Lamdin seeks to do both.

In chapters 1 and 2, Lamdin introduces the idea of leadership as “one human's capacity to influence another”, and the need for leadership within the church. He introduces three necessary qualities for leadership as discontent to see what is wrong with the present situation, vision to see how it could be better and courage to speak up and lead people forwards. He also introduces six “paradigms for leadership” which he unpacks in the rest of the book: the monarch, the warrior, the servant, the elder, the contemplative and the prophet.

The final chapter, entitled “Taking the Strain” shows a thoughtful engagement with both the traditions of Anglicanism and the business thinking so prevalent at the GLS – this time on how to do ministry in ways that are physically, emotionally and spiritually sustainable. This chapter could certainly be read with profit by many in ministry. It ends with a powerful picture of ministry as a craft skill – like carving or music, which comes naturally to some, but can always be learned and improved on; it can be mastered in several different ways but never perfected by us.
The largest and most problematic part of the book, however, is the central section, where Lamdin considers his six paradigms for leadership. He begins with the two paradigms he finds to be more common and more dangerous – the monarch and the warrior. The monarch is the leader who is in charge, leading to the possibility of safety, stability and effective organisation. The warrior is the charismatic leader of a cause with passion and purpose, sometimes leading to growth and huge achievement in an organisation. Lamdin argues that neither of these paradigms is appropriate for a Christian minister.
His reasons are both pragmatic and theological. Pragmatically, Lamdin argues that these forms of leadership always resort to force and end up infantilising the followers – either by taking away their ability to decide or their ability to discern right and wrong.

Theologically, Lamdin argues that Jesus rejects the roles of monarch and warrior, instead adopting the persona of suffering servant. But in doing so Lamdin makes a serious Christological mistake. He argues that God is fully revealed in the humanity of Christ, but restricts his view of Christ only to the crucifixion – Jesus is only suffering servant, not risen king. He sets this out most fully on p59 when discussing the idea of Jesus' dual identity as suffering servant and lord of history.

“It cannot be said that Jesus was enacting servanthood while on earth but that as Christ he is 'lord' of all he surveys. The Jesus on earth has to fully embody the godhead for any view of incarnation to be viable, and so the God of all time has to be understood in terms of the kingdom teaching and living and dying of Jesus... while it is in the nature of God to be loving it cannot be in the nature of God to be 'in charge'.”

Lamdin doesn't state whether or not he believes in the Resurrection. However, if we understand that God is fully revealed in Jesus, who is both the Suffering Servant and the risen and ascended King who “will return in glory to judge the living and the dead”, we get a rather different picture.

In this picture, it is inappropriate for us to adopt the role of warrior or monarch precisely because Jesus is our perfect warrior king. We should not act as if we are in control because God is in control. We should not go on a crusade against those we define as evil because it is for God to say what our purpose should be and who the enemy is (and our struggle is not against flesh and blood).
Lamdin then considers the other four paradigms for leadership. The key theme seems to be the relationship to power. The servant, obviously Lamdin's favourite, gives up power; the elder has only the power to ask questions and expose their own ignorance; the contemplative depends on God through prayer; the prophet stands against power with the downtrodden. None of them allows for a classic “church leader”; several have troubling features such as the absence of any sense of a “word from the Lord” speaking into our human situation to either resolve ambiguity (the elder) or confront injustice (the prophet).

But the understanding of Christ as risen and ascended Lord opens up a new paradigm – the paradigm of the herald or of the under-shepherd. Both heralds and under-shepherds have no authority in themselves and do not point to themselves as saviour. They are sent by a Shepherd-King and are answerable to him, but under him can and do have delegated authority for the purpose of caring for the sheep and serving them by proclaiming the king's message to them. It seems that would be an altogether more fruitful paradigm to explore.

Books I've Read Recently 3 - Now, Discover Your Strengths

As far as I know, this isn't a Christian book. It's a book by two people who have done a lot of research (with Gallup) into people's working patterns. But we can learn from them, and it's always nice to see secular researchers getting back to where the Bible said they should be, which they kind-of do...

The basic thesis of the book is that we work best by focusing on our strengths rather than our weaknesses. I think that's a good point, and they justify it well.

The book is based around the question "At work, do you have the opportunity to do what you do best very day?" They asked that to a lot of employees, managers, and so on, and found that the people who said "yes" were more productive, enjoyed work more, were healthier and happier, and so on. They found that companies that enabled employees to do that worked better as a whole.

The authors then go on to identify 34 different "strengths", which is enough for there to be 34C5 = 278,256 different combinations of top 5 strengths, even if you ignore the order. Including ordering too, that's over 33 million permutations. And they offer an online test to determine what your top 5 are. There are then a good number of suggestions of how to use your strengths to deal with weaknesses, how to encourage others to use their strengths and so on. A lot of it is common sense, but common sense isn't always very common, as evidenced by some in the Church of England who think that all clergy should be able to do any clergy job.

Weaknesses in the book - they don't explain exactly where the 34 strengths come from. I very much doubt that they are all independent. For example, I would expect people who score highly on "intellection" also to score highly on "deliberative". Nor do they explain why 5 is the magic number - I would expect that some people are more focused than others - one person might have 80% of their abilities on one skill, another might have 20% distributed across each of 5 skills. And some people might just have more innate ability than others anyway. Some of their suggestions are just plain silly too - replacing interviews with just competency measures, for example - often basic conversational skills and personality are important, and you miss that through just doing tests.

There are some good insights as well - for example the way that performance reviews often don't measure performance in the ways that matter. All in all, I found it a thought-provoking read. I don't agree with everything in it, and some bits were overly long and tedious, and the good research doesn't justify all the conclusions they hang on it in terms of the 34 types. But in terms of thinking about what it means for us to be given different gifts, and for us to be different parts of the body, and to be supporting one another as different parts of the body, it was well worth a read.

Wanting to Feel Important

T.S. Eliot wrote, "Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm, but the harm does not interest them … or they do not see it, or they justify it … because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves."

Although our mission in Christ is to do good in this world, we will actually do harm if our deeper mission is to feel important and "think well of ourselves." Eliot's words forced me to ask, How much harm do I do to my family, my friends, the people I am supposed to lead, all because I want to think well of myself?

from Pastoral Narcissism by JR Kerr

Richard Baxter - The Reformed Pastor

I recently finished reading the classic book The Reformed Pastor by the great Puritan Richard Baxter. It's basically a book length plea for clergy to work hard rather than slacking off, and to devote their time especially to visiting for the purposes of evangelism and discipleship, specifically by teaching the catechism (and Baxter didn't really mind which catechism...)

It's the kind of book that ought to be a must-read for clergy, and I can well see why it was so heavily recommended at college. But last time I mentioned it in a gathering of clergy, no-one there had read it. Here's a sample quote:

For my part, I study to speak as plainly and movingly as I can, (and next to my study to speak truly, these are my chief studies,) and yet I frequently meet with those who have been my hearers eight or ten years, who know not whether Christ be God or man, and wonder when I tell them the history of his birth and life and death, as if they had never heard it before... I have found by experience, that some ignorant persons, who have been so long unprofitable hearers, have got more knowledge and remorse of conscience in half an hour's close discourse than they did from ten years' public preaching.
p.196

Jim Collins, Good Leadership and the Gospel

The gospel should make us better leaders.

The other day, I heard a talk by leadership guru Jim Collins, at the GLS. Jim Collins isn't a Christian as far as I know, but quite a bit of what he said ties in rather strongly to the Gospel.

For example, the first stage he identified in "how the mighty fall" was hubris born of success - failing to recognise that success isn't all our own doing. He even suggested that one of the best exercises for leaders of successful organisations to do was to "count their blessings" - to write out a list of good things that have happened to them or that they have that they haven't earned. It seems that understanding something of grace and having something resembling a healthy gratitude is key to being a great leader.

Another key feature that Collins identified was the importance of listening to feedback that is critical of you, especially when you are succeeding rather than having your sense of self invested in your achievements.

Or take the Stockdale Paradox. General Stockdale survived being a prisoner in the "Hanoi Hilton" POW camp because he never gave up believing that he would be let out. But at the same time, the optimists in the camp did not survive, because they kept saying things like "we'll be out by Christmas", and could not cope with the repeated disappointment. What is needed, said Collins, was both faith in the eventual outcome, but also willingness to face up to the brutal facts of the present. And isn't that exactly the Christian attitude to faith in a God whose victory will become clear in the end but often isn't in the present.

Yet another example. Collins said "the enduring greats are driven by a passion beyond money and value", and emphasised the need to be non-negotiable on core values, but very flexible when it came to aiming to achieve our objectives. Once again, it's Biblical.

And all of this got me wondering two things.

1) If the gospel implies great leadership, why is the quality of Christian leadership so often lower than great?

2) How do non-Christian great leaders manage it? My boss wisely suggested that they substitute some other aim for the gospel, effectively becoming idolaters and slaves of an ideal. But I'd much rather serve the real thing!

Spurgeon Quotes on Ministry

I've just finished reading a biography of the great Victorian preacher CH Spurgeon, of which more to follow.

But here are a few quotes from the great man:

Whatever "call" a man may pretend to have, if he has not been called to holiness, he certainly has not been called to the ministry.
Lectures to my students, p.3

Better abolish pulpits than fill them with men who have no experimental knowledge of what they teach... He who presides over a system which aims at nothing higher than formalism, is far more a servant of the devil than a minister of God.
Lectures to my students, p.5

A man who has really within him the inspiration of the Holy Ghost calling him to preach, cannot help it - he must preach. As fire within his bones, so will that influence be, until it blazes forth...
Autobiography

Are churches in a right condition when they have only one meeting for prayer in a week, and that a mere skeleton?The Sword and the Trowel, August 1887

"Do not enter the ministry if you can help it," was the deeply sage advice of a divine to one who sought his judgment. If any student in this room could be content to be a newspaper editor, or a grocer, or a farmer, or a doctor, or a lawyer, or a senator, or a king, in the name of heaven and earth let him go his way...
Lectures to my students, p.23

True preaching is an acceptable adoration of God by the manifestation of his gracious attributes : the testimony of his gospel, which pre-eminently glorifies him, and the obedient hearing of revealed truth, are an acceptable form of worship to the Most High, and perhaps one of the most spiritual in which the human mind can be engaged.
Lectures to my students, p.54

Video Preachers

Krish Kandiah has started an interesting discussion about preachers at megachurches who video their sermons for use in other congregations.

It's long been something I've been uncomfortable with, but not been able to put my finger on precisely why not. Krish suggests 4 problems with the approach:

1. Cult of personality
2. Lack of feedback / communication
3. Lack of relationship
4. Consumer Church

I think I'd agree that all of those are definite dangers, but I'd push the "personality cult" point further than Krish does. Having video sermons seems to say that not only is the Main Preacher unusually gifted (which may well be true), but it makes it harder to raise up good secondary leaders, or even good primary leaders for other churches / to succeed the main leader.

Consider the following scenario:

A church has 4 main congregations on a Sunday, meeting in different venues. For the sake of unity, the church leader decides that they will all have the same passage on the same day. Main Preacher does 2 of them, and upcoming leaders do the other two. Main Preacher's job is then not only preparing the sermon, but also mentoring the two upcoming leaders in preaching. They do a significant fraction of their preparation together or in discussion with each other, but end up with finished products which are their own. This doesn't add significantly to the workload of Main Preacher, and means that the upcoming leaders get the benefit of being mentored by Main Preacher, improve quicker. After a few years, if they were already fairly gifted and worked hard, they would likely be able to preach at a similar standard to Main Preacher, and probably taking a style of their own, albeit one heavily influenced by Main Preacher, and the result is greater multiplication of the ministry.

If these upcoming leaders are (for example) people who already know how to preach and are fairly gifted in it, that looks like a much better way of doing it in the long term.

I should add that I've got a lot of respect for John Piper, Mark Driscoll et al, and I'm sure they've got good reasons for doing it. I just don't see what those reasons are, and would be interested to know...

On the other hand, I'm aware that the church I'm a minister at does use video sermons from time to time as a way to give staff a month or so off preaching. That seems like a good idea, as long as it isn't regular...

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...

Sir Terry Leahy

There's an article here about the retirement of one of the most successful CEOs in British history.

How the article ends is very instructive when it comes to leadership in whatever capacity as well as the problems besetting the British corporate (and public for that matter) sector...

Sir Terry frequently says that there is no secret to his success – apart from paying attention to what customers want (as head of marketing, he pioneered the loyalty card). But I suspect that what really sets him apart from peers who are also bright, energetic and driven is that he has avoided many of the traps that lie in wait for the unwary CEO.

First and foremost, he is more interested in Tesco than in himself. As one person who has worked with him told me: "It's not that he doesn't have an ego – they all have an ego – but he doesn't have the personal vanity that afflicts almost every other chief executive."

Another said: "After a while, so many of these guys think they are supergods. He doesn't." The decision not to sit on the board of any other company typifies this attitude: he thinks he should dedicate himself to Tesco and does not consider himself above dealing with the nitty-gritty of the business, as well as the big picture. He has not sought to maximise profits in the short term: Tesco's margins are low, but by investing in lower prices for customers, the business has inexorably built market share.

Sir Terry's unremitting obsession with all things Tesco may also be the reason why he is often called boring. I have met duller men, but it is true that he is neither charming nor charismatic.

Caution, obsession with detail, genuine love of the business. It is not rocket science. But it is depressingly rare.

(emphasis mine)

Bits and Bobs - Cremation, Autocracy and Creationism

Cremation

Russell Moore has written an interesting article on cremation. I'm still not convinced either way about cremation, even (or perhaps especially) after presiding over a fair few. My worries aren't to do about the question of resurrection - it's to do with the attitude to humanity, the importance of the physical body, and respect for the dead. Moore concludes:

Sometimes the “culture wars” that really matter aren’t the ones you’re screaming about with unbelievers in the public square; they’re the ones in which you’ve already surrendered, and never even noticed.

Church Autocrats

On a not intentionally connected note, Mark Meynell has written about how church autocrats work. Interesting, true to my experience, and a worthwhile checklist for ministry.

As I may have mentioned before, one of the main things I've learnt from coming through some quite traumatic leadership experiences in Christian circles is that godliness is the most essential quality for leaders, especially humility.

Evolution Argument Gets Worse

Once again, possibly connected is this really sad bit of news. Bruce Waltke, who is a seriously good Bible scholar, has left his job at the Reformed Theological Seminary after a video he made about evolution attracted a lot of hostile attention.

In an earlier version of this post, I incorrectly stated that he was sacked (sorry!). RTS's comment on the issue is here, but from my POV the seminary should have stuck by him if they thought he was right to be allowed to say what he said. They try defending their corner by saying they're a confessional seminary. Confessional in the sense of sacking someone who doesn't believe something the Church has always agreed on (like the divinity of Jesus) - fine. Confessional in the sense of not sticking up for a seminary professor who points out the intellectual and apologetic difficulty of taking a popular but contentious line on the interpretation of one Biblical passage - mad and bad. And I thought RTS was meant to be OK...

Roy Clements

By my own reckoning, I reckon I've preached about 50 times now. And on Sunday, I did something I'd never done before. I reworked someone else's sermon and preached it. Now I reworked it and reapplied it so it was clearly in my own style, and I was quite open about what I was doing.

In this case, the passage in question was Psalm 42-43, and the preacher whose sermon I reworked was Roy Clements. (Of course, he was largely reworking a sermon on the same passage by D.M. Lloyd-Jones.) I'd been doing work on the passage, and realised I couldn't do better than Roy's exegesis, which had really helped me in the past. And lots of people found the sermon helpful, just as I thought and prayed they would.

And this got me thinking a bit. Roy was an uncommonly gifted preacher - he was a Baptist, but when I was at Anglican theological college nearly 10 years after his fall from grace, three Anglican ordinands cited him as the best preacher they'd ever heard. But after he left his wife for another man, he fell massively out of favour overnight, and all his books stopped being printed. For a while he maintained a web presence as a gay evangelical Christian (which I checked on occasionally), but in the last few years, he seems to have dropped off the radar even more.

[For what it's worth, I think it was wrong of publishers to stop printing his books - the books themselves weren't changed by any later mistakes made by the man. And I think him leaving his wife for another woman would have been just as bad.]

God gives his people gifts, to be used for the building up of the church. And they aren't earned, they are gifts, though they can be improved by hard work and prayer. And God can use those gifts for the building up of his kingdom, whoever he gives them to.

But in terms of ministry, we need godliness. We need to watch ourselves and guard ourselves carefully. Because God doesn't need us - he can give our gifts to others, and he can use our gifts without us. And his gifts don't protect us from falling away.

Wisdom from Charlie Cleverly

Last night we had a question and answer session with Charlie Cleverly in college. Charlie has been greatly used by God in leading churches, in both England and France. Here are some of the things he said - slightly paraphrased, of course.

The most important thing for people going into the ordained ministry is knowing God, and spending time with him.

The most difficult thing when leading a successful church is to keep trusting in God and looking to him for guidance and direction rather than in management and administration.

More Quotes

We must not talk to our congregations as if we were half asleep. Our preaching must not be articulate snoring.
C.H. Spurgeon

So right! If we are not interested and engaged in what we are saying, how can we expect our congregations to be? (And why is that so rarely taught?)

The task of every generation is to discover in which direction the Sovereign Redeemer is moving, then move in that direction.
Jonathan Edwards

Edwards sounding remarkably charismatic there...

The Good Shepherd

I was visiting an old Catholic church in Olinda, Brazil with a Brazillian pastor friend of mine. On the roof of one of the rooms was a painting of a bloke with a beard (presumably meant to be Jesus) and the words "EGO SUM PASTOR BONUS". My initial reaction was surprise that I could understand it so easily, before realising that was because it was Latin, not Portuguese. I was then slightly surprised at how similar it is to the Portuguese "Eu sou o bom pastor", whereas it translates into English as "I am the good shepherd", from John 10:11 (and 10:14). And yes, I know, Latin-derived languages and all.

I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.
John 10:11, TNIV

And that got me thinking. We're so familiar with those words and the ideas behind them we think "yeah, yeah". Bad shepherds - run away when wolves come or whatever (as in v12-13). Only in it for themselves (as in v13 and v8). Jesus isn't like the bad shepherds in Ezekiel 34 or whatever, because they didn't look after the flock, but Jesus will. But we miss the huge force of what Jesus is saying.

The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.
No he doesn't. Sure, a good shepherd will try to protect the flock from wolves or whatever, and he will care about the sheep rather than just his wage packet, but a good shepherd wouldn't seriously endanger his own life for a bunch of stupid wooly grass-eating dimwit quasi-suicidal animals. That would be utterly stupid. The shepherd should know that at the end of the day, he is still far more important than his stupid sheep. Yes, a good shepherd cares for his sheep but what sort of shepherd lays down his life for the sheep? A crazy one. One who has his sense of value all mixed up. What would the funeral be like? "What a great guy, he died so these sheep we're going to eat for lunch could last another couple of days." Mad.

But I think that's closer to the point. The point isn't so much that Jesus is being a good shepherd and looking after his flock well in comparison to the other shepherds, who didn't look after the sheep and were in it for themselves, though that of course is in there. But Jesus is going crazily overboard in the other direction - he is the shepherd who of course is worth far far more than the sheep (us) but who loves us so much he dies for us anyway.

Jesus is such a good shepherd that he goes beyond our notion of what good means into what seems to us to be totally crazy love for us. That is how much he cares for us, that shows us how he leads us. What a contrast to the way even the world's idea of what a good leader is and does!

Criticism

One of the things I like least about evangelicalism is the way that so often we don't help other people enough because we're scared of hurting their feelings by criticising them. I'll probably get thought some kind of unfeeling male fascist for this, but never mind.

If someone is in a position of Christian leadership, they should be a mature enough Christian so that their whole self-esteem isn't based on what other people think of their ability to lead. They should therefore be able to take criticism.

When people do criticise me honestly, lovingly and constructively, I find it really helpful for improving what I'm doing. One of the most important (maybe even the only important) skill I learnt in my teacher training was the ability to evaluate and be self-critical. I know I am not good enough at being willing to criticise honestly, lovingly or constructively.

Mark Dever offers five points for how to do criticism well, and they're well worth a read:

• Directly, not indirectly
• Seriously, not humorously
• As if it's important, not casually
• Privately, not publicly
• Out of love for them, not to express your feeling or frustration

His corollaries to each of those are also worth mentioning:

• Don't let people misread you
• Don't do it to try to make them like you
• Don't bother correcting unimportant stuff
• Don't make them worry what others think of them
• Sincerely encourage them where God is working

And am I secretly happy that this has knocked me saying why I disagree with the 39 Articles further down the page? Maybe.

Quotes from Steve Tilley

Steve Tilley, whom I think I met in a seminar many years ago, has some amazing quotes in his most recent few blog posts.

I think I will therefore say this once more. The only, the only management question worth asking of a subordinate, is this, 'How can I help you do your job better?'

'The neighbours’ lawn may be greener because there’s a leaking sceptic tank under it.'

Do you keep your sceptics in a tank under the lawn? What happens if they escape? A lawn covered in uncertainty and suspicion? I doubt it.

Book Review - "Not Me, Lord" by Max Ramsay

Time for a break from blogging about Israel, though I've got plenty more to say... Time to review a few books I've read recently.

This one was very generously given to me by a well-meaning relative. It's a really interesting read, and as with most interesting reads, it raises a lot of questions.

It's an autobiographical account of the author's time training for the Anglican Ordained ministry, having previously taught science (oh, that's like me!). It is pretty much there that the similarity ends.

While I'm sure that the author was a very good science teacher, he seems to have understood science to say that miracles can't happen, which is a very naive mistake. What science observes, of course, is that miracles do not usually happen, which is actually part of the point of miracles. They wouldn't be miracles if they were part of the normally observed process by which the universe works, and Jesus wouldn't have been able to do them if he was just a normal bloke.

He also somehow seems to have been selected for ordination training without any experience of leading churches, of preaching or anything like that, or indeed without being sure whether he was a Christian. He then went to one of the more liberal colleges in the Church of England, which seems to have affirmed him in his belief that he didn't need to believe much to be a vicar.

Which rather raises an issue about selection for ordination training. I know my process wasn't easy, but I think it was sensible. I was expected to do quite a bit of Bible teaching and leadership in my home church, both up front and in small groups, to ascertain whether I was gifted / capable at that sort of thing. The official selection process beyond the local level didn't really seem to investigate that much, but for me my sense of calling was strongly tied up with other people telling me I was gifted.

Here's Paul's list of criteria for church leaders:

• above reproach, respectable, good reputation with outsiders
• the husband of but one wife, must manage his own family well
• temperate, self-controlled, not given to drunkenness, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome
• hospitable
• able to teach
• not a lover of money
• not a recent convert

(from 1 Timothy 3, NIV)

Which rather raises the question - why don't the C of E use those as their selection criteria?