Sabbatical ends

Today, as Jennifer and I pass through what has become my theological 'home' at IBTS in Prague, on our drive home to Edinburgh from Bulgaria, I cannot reflect on the wonders of contrast in life. The contrast where there is no contrast - how people have shown genuine love and friendship, and are as delightful in North West USA as they are in South East Europe; and the inherent contrast and contradiction of humanity - so innately lovely and yet so inherently sinful - Christians and pagans all!

And it causes me to see again that only God is good; only He is unchanging; only He is pure love; and the only place where He, as He fully is revealed can be found, is in the person and works of Jesus Christ of Narareth. He is the complete focus and example for human life. Participation in His life is life itself. And such cause for peace and pleasure and hope and faith and love ....

This, truly, is what I see with such vivid clarity refreshed and thankfulness renewed. Praise God!

Delightfully disagreeable

One of the sheer joys of Sabbatical study is having the time to read and seek to understand writings that one would never normally have time for nor choose to look at. Infuriating, frustrating …. and always instructive! It’s not just about enforcing self-abasement, although that has to be part of it. It’s good to be faced with a well argued conviction that one finds hard to own. There’s something good about the way our convictions are shaped by not only our response to the Word of God, but also by our character and circumstances. And its also good to read something that one, initially, wands to disagree with! and then perhaps to rethink and reevaluate. To rejoice in the diversity that is born out of the reality of Christ impacting upon people in so many different circumstances and situations.

Following in faith

And when the Israelites saw the great power the LORD displayed against the Egyptians, the people feared the LORD and put their trust in him and in Moses his servant (Exodus 14.34).

This morning, I have been reflecting on this verse. Increasingly, I see how our ability to read and understand the Bible is both enhanced and curtailed by the parameters of the culture and context we find ourselves embedded in. Now, given that God’s Word has the power to speak into each and every situation, this should not unduly alarm us. At the same time, however, we need to be aware how our own presuppositions can limit our appreciation of the revelation that comes in and through the Word of God.

I am increasingly discomforted by popular, contemporary interpretation of faith in God in our western context. Too individualistic, too voluntaristic. Here, the reality of God evokes a response that is here rendered ‘and put their trust in him’. This interpretation is based on the LXX rendering, but the Hebrew reminds us of another, deeper sense: one which carries the connotation of a relationship characterised by an acknowledgement of God’s sovereign power and the need for our submission to and seeking of Him.

I think a deeper understanding of this submission is what is needed in our culture. It would transform, for one thing, the nature of prayer. Submission brings a culture of faith that looks for the fulfilment of God’s covenant desires, not our covetous ones.

Glimpse

Karl Barth –a great theologian, misunderstood and misrepresented by so many. But does dogmatic theology get better than this?

“If God required and makes possible that He should be served by the creature, this service means that the creature is taken up into the sphere of divine lordship. We have always to remember that God’s glory really consists in His self-giving, and that this has its centre and meaning in God’s Son, Jesus Christ, and that the name of Jesus Christ stands for the event in which humanity, and in humanity the whole of creation, is awakened and called and enabled to participate in the being of God …. The self declaration of God is true and real, which means that God Himself is God in such a way that He wills to have the creature as a creature with Him, that He does not will to be God without it, without claiming it, but also without being personally present to it”

(Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics 2.1 pp. 670 & 756, quoted by John Flett in his impressive monograph, The Witness of God, Eerdmans, 2010, p. 196.)

Submission

Submission is not something that we find readily acceptable in our day. The rights of the individual are so strongly asserted that any challenge to free, personal determination can be received as a violation.

But this is how it is in the life of Christian discipleship. Our Lord models submission, submission to the God of Israel, Creator and Sustainer of the Cosmos. Although in the nature of God, he embraced the nature of a servant and, as man, humbled himself in obedience. For the Christian, submission is a necessary way.

Submission begins in the heart of each of us. But it does not end there. The security of corporate discernment is that it is allows an environment of confirmation as to the will of God. Submission to our own delusion or ambition is no submission at all. It is one of the beauties of fellowship in Christ that we should find confirmation through the discernment and confirmation of others. If we are truly seeking to submit to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

In Pursuit of Excellence

Meeting with the leadership mentoring group of the ABC has provided interesting insights. The overall philosophy of this denominational region, much the same size as the Scottish Baptist Union, emphasises missionality. This stress, under the leadership of the executive pastor, Charles Rees, has helped serve in transforming this area of Christian witness from one of decline into one of growth. There is a critical self-analysis among the pastors, as they seek to focus together in Lifelong Learning Groups and hold each other accountable. The question, ‘what is the best way to do this’ is constantly before them.

I’m impressed by this drive to be mission centred is giving focus and energy here. May it be so also in Scotland and elsewhere in Europe.

Sifted like Wheat

I have spent the last 2 days, coming as a guest speaker, at a conference here for the pastors and lay leaders in this region of the American Baptist Church, historically separated from the Southern Baptist at the time of the Civil War tragedy of the Americas in the 19th century.

There has been an ‘uncommon grace’ present in these meetings. The people are lovely Christians, but the sense of oneness and the favour of God present here has been special. It appears that it has not always been so. Some 7 years ago there was a real sense of crisis here, ‘dark days’, that threatened to pull apart the very fabric of denominational life.

In conversation, one leader reflected that Jesus spoke to Peter saying, Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift you as wheat. But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers (Luke 22.31-32).

We should not imagine that each of us will not, at times, disappoint the Lord and succumb to the temptations and attacks of the evil one at times. Times of testing will surely come.

But the Lord intercedes, holding us in union with Himself and lifting us in the power of His resurrection. This transformation of those who are crushed and are lifted into the reality of renewal is what has come among Baptists here. And the promise is for us all.

One, Holy, Catholic & Apostolic

After a wonderful and blessed first day at the ABC conference here in the heart of the Rockies at Ross Point in Idaho, I'm reflecting on the way that, wherever you are in the world, the essence of real Christian, confessional community remains the same. Here I am, 5,000 miles from home and 10 time zones away from Jennifer, yet the pastors and leaders here are the same gracious, humble and Christ-centring people that I know in Scotland and Bulgaria. And it causes my heart to rejoice with praise to God, for I see yet again the indellible stamp of the Spirit of God on the lives of people, imprinting on them (and me!), imperfect and fallible people all, the present reality and presence of the risen Christ. This is a real joy.

And it's not just the people who you expect to agree with. I'm reading a book for review, which I didn't expect to enjoy, by an English Calvinist. It's excellent and has challenged and corrected me in quite unexpected ways. What joy! There really is, despite all the fleshly difference, one church of Jesus Christ in the world, carved out by the Spirit of God - one, holy, catholic and apostolic. A taste of heaven indeed.

Elk burgers, buffalo steaks and guns

Greetings from Great Falls, Montana in USA. Great to be here as guest of IBTS research student Patti Duckworth and her husband John, pastor of the baptist church here. Great hospitality, Christian love and fellowship and yet also another experience of how the context and culture we have to express our faith in Jesus varies so much. Never eaten elk or buffalo before, but both were great! John and Patti also took me to the local county fairground yesterday, and an exhibition of stalls selling hunting gear and so many tpes of weapons and guns! People here are strong on their right to hold weapons and hunt in the wide open country of northwest USA, and are very suspicious of government control and legislation.

Many Christians here will have weapns in their homes. And this is the context for John, Patti and their people in which the Christian life of transformation and change has to be rooted and come to find expression. In a way that engages with the culture and context that is real for people here. No place for sweeping judgments on weapons control or unrelenting vegetarianism. But, as everywhere, a need to find the voice of Christ's call speaking to people where they are and draqwing them into the life of God's transformational love. God help us all to realise this and to be slow to judge and quick to love.

Full Atonement

In these days of prayer and reflection, I’ve been challenged to summarise in a very concise way what the Atonement is all about. In other words, what it is that Jesus Christ has really done that makes Him so important. It struck me that there are three distinct but complementary dimensions that can be summed up: the propitiatory, the palliative and the paradigmatic aspects. Yes, I know they are big words, but they fit well. And the alliteration can be helpful.

Propitiatory comes from the translation of a Greek word used in Romans 3.25, but also summarises that aspect of the cross that is about punishment and penal retribution as well as propitiatory sacrifice. It’s an important – crucial – aspect of what Jesus Christ has done for us. God punishes sin but Jesus took our punishment. It’s the triumph of mercy over judgment for those who will receive Christ. It is something to be proclaimed now by us, in the power of the Holy Spirit.

Palliative refers to the healing aspect of what Jesus was doing, bringing healing and restoration to people. It is interwoven with the first aspect but is distinguishable in itself. God heals. It’s a critical mark of his ministry in Galilee, as it is now. He delivers us from the devil. He brings us His peace and tasters of healing, when we are willing to receive it. All this flows out of Christ’s atoning work. It is something to be manifested and ministered now in Christ’s name by us, in the power of the Spirit.

Paradigmatic is the life lived by Christ as a man and vindicated by God. He gives us a pattern of human life, acting as the paradigm for humanity – the second, unsinning Adam. He gets crucified because of it, but God does not allow that to be the end of the story. God raises Him up from the death and equips Him with the new body that we all now long for, when Jesus ushers in the new heaven and the new earth. A life to be demonstrated through outworking what it means to live for the Kingdom of God today.

The full atoning power of Christ has to be proclaimed, manifested and demonstrated. All of these aspects of telling, ministering and behaving are involved. This is the power of the three dimensional understanding of the atonement Jesus Christ brings. It is all of propitiatory, palliative and paradigmatic. It removes the risk of simply being about ideas alone, power alone or deeds alone. Anything less runs the risk of reducing the truth to but a fairy tale, fantasy or social fashionability.

Cruciform and contemporary?

I’m feeling challenged over being more missional. The question arises, ‘is it possible to be both missional and cruciform’? At one level of analysis, being missional is about being relevant to the society that we’re rooted in. Communicating with people in ways that they can understand. But I’m left with the question, ‘communicating what?’ The Gospel of the Kingdsom of God, come in Jesus Christ?

If the Gospel is essentially cruciform (entering the Kingdom of God by conforming to the call of the Christ whose path leads to and through the Cross), can we focus in phrasing the Gospel in a way that is readily attractive? Or is it not first necessary to express that message in the way and manner in which we live and form and express our agendas for life and living? What’s our focus? Being relevant or radical?

I can’t get away from the conviction that the greatest need of relevancy is to focus on church life that prioritises the Nazareth Manifesto. Where Jesus is found amidst our pusuit of care for those who suffer because of societal values that are fashionable yet unrighteous and unjust, merciless and unfaithful.

Seems to me that being radically cruciform is the meat in the meal of missionality, with everything else a side salad.

What names are really needed?

I have come to something of a watershed in my attitude towards identifying ‘ministries’ or ‘giftings’ in a way that allows us to tag individuals. I decisively dislike it. A fashionable preoccupation with blandly referring to the importance of the ‘fivefold ministry’ of Ephesians 4.11-13 as if such demarcation or identification were easy or even possible in our contemporary church is, I believe, at best facile and at worst dangerous. Too easily it encourages a secret agenda that is about status and power.

What really matters, says Paul later in that Epistle, is the pursuit of the imitation of Christ (Ephesians 5.1). I suspect this is better served today by speaking of fivefold ‘voices’, voices that reverbate with Christ centring, Scriptural emphases and practices. Be wary of stressing personal ‘ministries’ that we are to identify. Rather, let us listen for voices that carry the resonance of the voice and implement the message of our master, Jesus Christ.

I am guarded against any mindset that produces such questions as, ‘What is your ministry?’ I am far happier with a stress on relationality and servanthood, prizing the work of those who faithfully seeks to serve in whatever way they are released into within the body of Christ and in His name. It seems to me that God will take a man or woman with such an attitude and use them in any number of different ‘ministries’, in different places and at different times, as the needs of the occasion demand.

Certainly, give me someone to work with who seeks to be known as a ‘servant’ rather than recognised in their ‘ministry’ any day. Egos that accompany ‘ministries’ are hard not to trip over. I have to confess, I have become both wary and wearied by claims to charismatic anointing from individuals, sometimes meriting serious consideration but often, sadly, simply spurious. The floating of fanciful notions accompanied by proof texting, masquerading as Scriptural teaching, is neither honouring to God nor proves itself fit for equipping the saints.

If there are, as I believe there should be, differing and complementary ministries within the body of Christ that are to be recognised and affirmed, it should be on the basis of them being offered with servant hearts and in sincerity; but they should be properly assessed and where appropriate affirmed.

Within our Baptist Union, we specifically assess and affirm, through a thorough process, those recognised and accredited for a teaching, pastoral and oversight ministry. This process of identification has proven fit in affirming recognised ministries that serves both the local and wider church. We talk, in our Board of Ministry, of looking for indicators that bespeak ‘call, character, competency, conviction and conduct’. If these are fit criteria in assessing candidates for the church office of pastor, then they might happily be applied to any other offices that the local church feels it appropriate to identify and affirm for the pursuit and execution of its corporate ministry. Otherwise, let people be happy to be know and function as servants of the Lord. Is there a better title?

Ecstasy

Meeting with God in prayer. And ecstasy. Because without some sense of being caught up, embraced, confronted and met with by the God of Glory and Goodness; well, it can all seem a bit dreary, can it not? So for me, prayer and excitement in engaging with it always has this sense of expectation, and the need for moments of tasted fulfilment and consummation. But that by itself can seem a little too self indulgent.

I’m so aware of two things. Firstly, ecstasy is not the end we seek. Many approaches, religious and otherwise – even now, a tablet – can bring experience of ecstasy. Which has to bring doubt as to whether this is the summit of Christian meaningfulness. Secondly, ecstasy in the Bible always finds context in another, bigger picture. Whether we look at Exodus 34, Jeremiah 31, Joel 2 or Ezekiel 36; Acts 2 or 4 or the baptism of Jesus, the mount of transfiguration or the Ascension, all of these and related passages are set in the context of being taken up and involved in the plans and purposes of God: the mission of God.

And this makes sense. The profoundest moments of communion with God come, not when we seek it for our own gratification, but when as willing servants of God we focus on the hope of the Resurrection Kingdom of Jesus Christ. Relationships, mending with forgiveness and reconciliation. And give our creativity and imagination to pursuing this and sharing the vision with others.

What a relief.

Sabbatical begins

I have been reading a book newly written and published by a colleague at IBTS, Rollin Grams. It is a tribute and a biography of his parents’ ministry in South Africa, as independent Pentecostal missionaries. Their story is interesting, but what I especially value are the reflective comments of their godly and scholarly son, himself a New Testament theologian and missionary teacher.

As I enter further into my sabbatical in prayer, reading and reflection, I am especially arrested by his reflective ‘capsules’, and especially one on ‘prayer and healing’, where he notes, relating to serious and answered prayer in their mission activity,

‘The prayers were spoken in a pleading voice, perhaps different from the prayers one sometimes hears in certain Pentecostal and Charismatic circles today, where the vold voice of prayer has a certain air about it, as though one can demand healing because some Scripture or other is thought to hold a divine promise to heal in every instance. But the prayers of former times often meant wet faces: they were an emotional seeking and beseeching of our miracle-working and all compassionate God’.
(Rollin Grams, Stewards of Grace, Wipf & Stock, 2010, pp 89-90)

I’m not sure why, but I find this really helpful. Maybe I’ve become too mechanical in prayer, or unwittingly ‘name it and claim it’ orientated. But this reminder, to cast myself before God in His sovereign compassion, I find really helpful. It reminds me and calls me back to the excitement of meeting God in prayer.

A Plain Man's Guide to Being Baptist

How can we get baptists into meaningful mission? Three keys:

1.   Christ centring

To state that we are ‘Christ centred’ can sound a bit presumptuous. A safer and more humble tack may be to affirm that we, amidst all our sinful struggles, we are really trying to keep our eye on Jesus and to focus on Him. Remember Peter walking on the water? It’s really easy, amidst all the splashes, spray and waves we make in our declarations and defences, to sink theologically. A claim to be aspiringly Christ centring, rather than already Christ centred, may prove firmer ground!

Our forbearers had a stroke of genius when, back in 1869 when the Scottish Baptist Union was founded, they swallowed their parochial pride and followed the example of their neighbours the English Baptists by affirming that Jesus Christ is the sole and absolute authority in all matters relating to faith and practice. Now, it would be daft to suggest that the Bible was not critically important for them as it is for us now. So they rightly joined on the affirmation, ‘as revealed in the Holy Scriptures’. This wasn’t an ‘add on’ or a slip of focus. It kept things in perspective. You see, it’s a question of where our emphasis lies. Lots of folk can and do misuse the Bible. From the very start of church, it was therefore acknowledged and affirmed that the fullness of God’s revelation to us is in and through Jesus Christ. That’s in the Bible. And it affects the way that we read and look at the Bible. This emphasis on reading the Scriptures with Jesus as the key to what they’re about is what they had in mind. When we search the Scriptures, it has always to be in our minds that the key to reading, understanding and applying the Scriptures to our life today is Jesus Christ. He is alive and by the Holy Spirit mediates His mind to us: Who He is, What He does and How He does it. The measuring rod, or canon of this, is recognised as being in the Scriptures. Lose sight of that and we lose our way with Scripture. Lose sight of this and Conservatives become legalists just as Charismatics become phenomenalists.

It’s so easy to get carried away with theological theories and succinct summaries. But the truth is, we need to keep coming back to test it all in the light of Jesus Christ and what’s said about Him in Scripture. This is the reason why early Baptists, right back in their central European Anabaptist beginnings, struggled with forming ‘Statements of Faith’. Because they realised that anything we say is conditioned by the power-plays of people and the politics of a place. And people, politics and places change. So with a Bible in our hands and history in our heads, we need to keep going back to reading the Old, Old story again in a fresh way for our time, working out its implications for our context and contemporary culture. What was said yesterday was for yesterday. The Bible sets a standard for measuring and assessing the faith of every succeeding generation. We have to learn how to say ‘it’s all about Jesus!’ in a way that’s both socially relevant and Biblically accurate today.

Of course, to say that we are Christ centring is also to affirm that every person can and needs to have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. ‘You need to invite Jesus into your life!’ and ‘There’s a difference between being Christian and being religious.’ These convictions we share with all evangelicals. And they’re absolutely basic for us. Christian faith involves coming into relationship with a person, Jesus Christ. Until that relationship is there for someone, then they haven’t entered into Christian faith.

One more thing. By stressing that we’re ‘Christ centring’, we’re emphasising that the folk others see us to be are neither the finished product nor people who have arrived at their final destination. We’re on a journey. A journey of change and transformation. A journey where we’ve heard about Jesus, are trying to share our lives with Jesus and are focussed on becoming more like Jesus. It’s not just a matter of sticking our hands up in a meeting, saying a wee prayer and then that’s it all – done and dusted. We delight in acknowledging that we’ve not got it all tied up and neatly explained. We’re following a route plan. Jesus is our guide. The Bible is our map. And we’re on the journey. We’re Christ centring.

2.  Community discovering

Community first, individuals second. Too much to handle? Why? Because, of course, we live in a culture where we’re constantly told that ‘me matters!’ We are bombarded through media with the affirmation that discovering who we truly are, finding out what our potential is, seeking our own destiny and having the right to be the people we choose to be is what matters. Good, secular values. But such emphases have more to do with the ‘I’m worth it’ affirmations of contemporary, cosmetic consumerism than with Christ-centring Christianity. And mark this well: it’s so dangerous and potentially destructive when such selfishness is repackage and rebranded for Christian congregations, all in the name of ‘seeker friendliness’.

Make no mistake. Jesus called people into relationship with Himself and others. He stressed that what matters the most is that we root our identity and self-worth in following this way. Not in who we are in ourselves, but in who we are in our relationships. With Jesus and with others. Learning to lose ourselves in order to find ourselves. Discovering and maturing our Christian identity not by looking inwards into ourselves, but looking to Christ and others who follow Him.

Now, if it’s true we are to highlight community, we might question whether is it right to have more than one congregation in the world! What’s the answer? Well, there is an obvious limit to the number of people we can gather in one place and meaningfully relate to. If meaningful relationships define church, then there is a point when a group becomes so big it ceases to be a church and then becomes a crowd. It is not by accident that we refer to local churches as ‘congregations’: gatherings of people congregated together. It’s good and natural that there is diversity in styles and structures among and within different denominations. There are going to be factors, such as shared culture and context or language and lifestyle that will bring people together. We just have to make sure that Jesus – Who He is, What He does and How He does it – remains the key catalyst for our own group.

As Baptists, in common with other Christians, we want to emphasise that the main relationship that counts is that key, personal relationship with Jesus. But having established that, we aren’t then to hurry back to look into ourselves or simply to look out for ourselves. Baptists stress that before we come back to ourselves, there’s a second base to visit. And that base is the relationship we share with others.

This is how the church gets formed and how people get truly reborn. It’s not just a collection of individuals who are a local, Jesus fan club. It’s a gathering of people together, constituted by their common owning of the identity of Jesus. Praising together God, the Father of Jesus. Listening to the teachings of Jesus. Exploring the values and convictions of Jesus together. Discovering and working through the implications of these together. Discussing and praying together. It’s this network of people, built together in relationship, that constitutes real church. It’s an organic, local body designed by God. Constituted by Christ. His community.

This is no small thing to get into. It’s huge. It’s really difficult for people today. It involves renouncing the quest of ‘me matters most’ and really turning round our lives to face up to the calling and teachings of Jesus Christ.

What’s fundamental to being a Baptist Christian is this act of gathering to worship God and centring on Jesus. Through praise and prayers. In reading Scripture. Learning from those who have a deeper understanding of the Bible and a longer experience of living the Christian life. And from those who have different experiences of following Jesus from our own. Listening to one another. Learning to empathise and sense the presence of Jesus as part of a group, of something bigger than ourselves. Moving forward together.

There’s a momentum when the convictions and goals of Jesus Christ grips people. We learn to take seriously people beyond ourselves, because the Spirit of God reaches out to them. We begin to look beyond our own identity, towards those who are not yet part of our identity in Christ. Now, people who are focussed on themselves only see the value of others in terms of serving self. But people who are focussed on Christ will see others in a different way. They will start to look at those who are still strangers to Christ with a new yearning. A new longing to develop disciples.

3.  Disciple Developing

It may seem startlingly obvious, but it bears saying. Before we talk the talk, we need to walk the walk. Before the disciples were sent out by Jesus, they were called to follow Him. We have to develop disciples. And we have to begin with ourselves. So a Baptist church can never be a static community identified by a sterile building. As long as the people are changing, Christ centring and community discovering, the shape of things will continue to change.

 

Our message is that God forgives and welcomes failures. But not just that. As people come to realise God’s love, they need to repent and change their ways. They have to learn to take steps to live out lives of submission to God and conformity to Christ. We’ve got to model this in ourselves. We’ve got to have the confidence to say to people, ‘Look, we’re taking Jesus and His way seriously, can’t you see? Come and join us.’ It doesn’t develop people as disciples to tell them we have the best preacher, praise band or biggest gathering around. It just invites them to become corrupt consumers, like ourselves. But it does develop disciples if we ourselves are pursuing a new identity, a reason for living and a way of doing things that is rooted in the life and ministry of Jesus Christ.

 

No one can develop as a disciple by themselves. Why not? Because the only voice we’ll listen to is our own; or perhaps, in times of praise, prayer and perusing God’s Word, also God’s voice: heavily filtered through our own ambitions, preferences and prejudices! We need other people to develop as disciples.

 

The Baptist Christian is committed to humility. To listening to others. To saying, in the face of the profoundest of epiphanies, ‘this is what I think God might be saying to me. What do you think?’ The Baptist Christian knows the reality of their own sin well enough to know the power of self delusion. They look for confirmation from those other Christians who are seeking to pursue God’s way with them, especially from recognised leaders within their communities of faith.

 

We need other people to develop as disciples. Because discipleship is discovered through relationship. Relationship with God and with one another. We are in God’s recruitment business. To set up meetings and outreaches where others simply are led to make decisions for or have experiences of Christ, without being challenged to repentance and nurtured into disciples of Christ, is a parody of evangelism. To develop disciples is to grow organically. To draw others into a community of searching the Scriptures, together seeking to work through how we can conform to God’s will and Christ’s way.

 

Baptist Christians know that Christian faith will always lead them to expand and grow, personally and dynamically, beyond their comfort zone.

 

So .... what about mission?

Well, it all depends on whether you’re truly Baptistic. Because mission is simply the expression of who we are. Are we intent on being Christ centring, community discerning and disciple developing? A church caught in this dynamic cannot help itself. It is being missional, without seeking to be. As a baby stands up and learns to walk, so any developing community of Christians will learn to engage in mission.

But beware. To try and shortcut this way, to enter mission for mission’s sake, runs the risk of turning the church into a lecture or concert hall or, at worst, an entertainment centre or freak show. Baptists are not interested in gathering groupies. Our focus in plain and simple. Christ centring. Community discovering. Disciple developing.

Psalm 22

1-8
Real life can be hard at times …..

Faith begins with the recognition of another dimension there with God: BUT YOU!

Not just A god. God in His holiness is self defining. The God of Israel is the Creator, known through His promises and His past deeds. He is not under our control. He brings His own presence, purpose & power.

‘BUT YOU’ Faith is not defined from the culture and context we are in, but redefines for us our environment. It adds the DNA of the presence of God. This is why church can find expression in so many different ways. We need to recognize that there are many ways of expressing church. What matters is the defining presence of the DNA of holiness.

9-18
Baptism is the door into a new identity. By discovering our identity is in Christ, we recognize the amazing agenda that God has for us to shape and form us for our destiny as His children.

That agenda might not be easy. This psalm is amazing, in that it speaks in advance of what will happen to a ‘seed of David’ – a descendent, Jesus Christ. It speaks of His crucifixion, and of what He will experience at the cross. Amazingly, it even senses the sharing of His clothes at His crucifixion.

To be taken up in the purposes of God does not mean that we will have an easy life. God has His eye on maturing, preparing and perfecting sons and daughters for eternity.

19-31
But faith is not just about recognition that there is a God there. It is also about this invitation for this God to draw close. We recognize that there might well be hard times, but these come for a purpose that God has in mind. He looks into the present and also in the future. And this is what He comes to us for.

For this is one of the resurrection psalms. It looks forward to what will come. When God will take people from the dust of the earth and bring them into His future.

Prayer needs the readiness to have our request changed in the light of God.

The Cost of Discipleship

I’ve been reflecting much on some conversations I’ve had recently. The most noticeable is something I learnt from one of our Bristo interns, David Nemeshegyi, as we were reading through Old Testament together. In looking at Ruth 1, he commented that the conversation between Naomi and Ruth, where the former seeks to discourage the latter from going to her hometown of Bethlehem with her, is the reason why rabbis have the duty of seeking to dissuade three times any potential convert to Judaism.

Can you imagine a revival evangelist? The invitation goes out. The people come forward. And then the reasons why they should not become Christians and the persuading begins!

Which leads us to a question. When is a convert really made? Is it simply when a persons has been coming around regularly to church? Is it when they respond to the truth that Jesus died for their sins, that God loves them and that they can have eternal life? Can we make the Christian life and entry into it seem too easy?

Perhaps we should stress that there is always cost and renunciation when we become a Christian. And now I remember the reason for the title of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s classic work ….

The Wisdom of Elders

Eric Watson retired 17 years ago as Superintendent of our Baptist Union of Scotland. He's as sharp and insightful as ever. Three quotes from table-talk with him:

• The endless search for programmes for revival is useless, unless people see that being, not doing, is where you must start 
• Christians have to realise that they are doing mission every day, whether they want to or not. The only question is 'what witness are others seeing in them?'
• Real fishermen go out and let their nets down into the deep places, to reach down to catch fish, where they get torn and ripped by rocks. They need to repair the nets. Sunday is our time for repairing the net of the church, before the net is let down through the week to catch fish among the rocks. 

Scottish Pastors' Conference 2010

That time again, in St Andrews. Great to meet with colleagues from all over Scotland. This morning's seminar is with Michael Harvey speaking on ‘BackToChurchSunday’.

Michael’s message was about ‘unlocking the growth’ - acknowledging that God gives the growth; but it is the constituency of the church, within a time, culture and context, that tends to lock down and inhibit God’s plan, purpose and power. The starting point is in acknowledging that God is active and working across the nation. This strategy is simply serving God’s purpose. All we have to do is invite people.

So … we need to just chill  and believe that people might enjoy church. I like it.

Life infused creativity

We had Alan Donaldson, our new General Director for the Baptist Union of Scotland, join us today at our weekly pastors' meeting in north Edinburgh. Great guy, and with a real heart for getting our union of churches functioning together. I'm really excited about the way ahead. This is the biggest crossroads both in our Union and in the history of Bristo in a lifetime; and if we get it right, we can see our congregation being taken forward in renewed purposefulness within an exciting and bigger picture.

I was reading NT Wright again today, in The Resurrection of the Son of Man, and was impressed in how he talks of John's Gospel's emphasis on the new creation. We live in the season of the 8th day - the new creative act of God that issues, in the power of the Holy Spirit, to fashion and reshape all things in the life and the light of the Resurrected Jesus Christ.

I like that. For those who are arrested in the ministry and mind of Christ, things will never get stale. There is always freshness, newness. Amen - come, Holy Spirit!