Jensen Shorts

With what Jensen would call “lying” – some paraphrasing and simplifying and so on:

Train people first and ministry opportunities will come second: when the first child turns up at church, there’ll already be a Sunday School teacher and the family will come back.

Put the mission before the people if you want to grow. But never forget that the mission is people.

Churches made up of closed cell housegroups will never grow as people can’t break in to a group who got married together and parented their teens together and….

People in their 50s can’t keep it up any more. They opt for comfort not pain and growth.

Don’t put money aside for a rainy day if its pouring already.

Growing churches will always spend more than they have and make up the difference next year, when they’ll spend more than they have and ….

Everything has declined in the 20^th C of the C of E, except the number of Bishops.

It is easier to give birth to something new than raise the dead.

Everyone has permission to start something, no one is allowed to stop anything.

Sometimes a church needs an under-taker ministry to give it a decent send off. A church may even need an assassin, but don’t kill the people.

Every 6 to 10 years ministers should take a sabbatical, refresh and work out what to do next, rather than looking for a new job.

Grant dependent churches will always behave like dependent children and never grow up.

The church planter should be a scavenger, hobbyist, entrepreneur.

If you don’t have the money, do it anyway. Always get a business man, not a civil service auditor / accountant to be your treasurer.

Growing churches behave like what sociologists would call fanatical / purist sects / cults. “Churches” go mainstream and sell out.

The Anglican chant: “And Make Thy Chosen People Joyful” is a prayer that hasn’t been answered in 400 years.

2 Timothy 2 tells us to “think”! A novel idea for some Christians.

Principled pragmatics.

Longer pastorates lead to growing churches.

Strategy is born of hindsight and opportunity.

Now I’m getting older I’m much wiser as I have much more hind…sight.

Keep at the core business of prayerfully preaching the biblical gospel with evangelistic edge.

Lower the bar and you’ll get more people in the short term and fewer in the long run. Raise the bar and you’ll get fewer people in the short term and more in the long run.

People must be trained to be self-starters: observe one – do one – teach one.

Once a church building is 80% full it wont get any bigger.

If you want to split a church, do some teaching on how to bring up your children and what music we ought to have.

What we need in church is a sense of reality [authenticity].

There must be diversity on staff teams but total personal and theological commitment to one another.

If you don’t change anything in your first year in a church, you never will. Change something that everyone wanted changing anyway and gain credibility as a change agent.

Take people from being passengers to being partners in the work.

In the Bible, gathering = salvation; scattering = judgement.

Preaching sets the tone for the whole church, but the preacher also has to be a leader, a small business man.

Types of Church (Life-Cycle)

With acknowledgement - and apologies - to Dean Jensen, churches and maybe ministers will typically go through the following faces from birth to death:

Aspiring / Arriving / Acquiring - needs resourcing / recruiting
Becoming / Booming / Blossoming - needs refreshing
Comforting / Complacent / Coasting - needs reform
Declining / Decaying / Dying / Done(-in) - needs re-inventing
Exstinct - needs removal

I'm sure you can think of better ones.

In Praise of Jensen

Yesterday I heard The (Very?) Rev'd Philip Jensen, the Dean of Sydney, speak at Oak Hill on a stratergy to reach a city with the gospel and today at a South East Gospel Partneership Day at St Helen's, Bishopsgate, on Growing Churches.

Even if one has some quibbles with Jensen, or even if you fear you might have some different paradigms, it seems to me we have to give several cheers for the Dean and much thanks and praise to God for his on-going minisrty.

Under God, Jensen has seen many people led to saving faith in Christ, discipled and trained for ministry. Churches have been planted and a small army of people have given their lives to full-time paid gospel work.

Jensen was highly stimulating, as ever, and spoke with a great deal of practical wisdom as one who knew what he was talking about. DV, more blog-posts arising soon.

Soon transcripts of his most worthwile talks and diagrams on the life-cycle of a church and minister will be available at the SEGP website.

He asked for any thanks for him to be turned into prayer for the Cambridge Inter-Collegeate Christian Union (CICCU) Mission, which he is soon to lead.

My Job Plans

God (and I guess the C of E and all that stuff) -willing, I'm going to serve my curacy at Holy Trinity, Eastbourne, starting in July.

Lookalikes & Facebook

Students of the Psalms should avoid confusing my old tutor, John Day, author of the Sheffield Academic / T&T Clark guide to the Psalms with John N. Day, author of Crying For Justice: What the Psalms teach about Mercy and Vengeance in an Age of Terrorism (IVP). I suspect the theology is quite different.

I was pleased to see, by the way, The Society for the appreciation of Professor Dr. Dr. Dr. John Day (B.A., Dphil, DD), on Facebook.

I’m still waiting for my wife to tell me what Facebook is for and how to use it. I’m sure the young people have discovered that it could offer all sorts of distraction opportunities.

As I think Ros pointed out, one can join The Garry Williams Fan Club.

Also not to be confused are my old student pastor, Vaughan Roberts, now Rector of St Ebbe's, Oxford and Vaughan Roberts the author of “Reframing the UCCF Doctrinal Basis,” Theology 45 (1992): 432-46.

Objectivity

The View From Nowhere.

Thomas Nagel's phrase for supposed objectivity in his 1986 OUP book of that name.

So many books to read

Having been trying to think about speech act theory and Scripture, I'm worried by this telling off from Richard Briggs:

… many biblical interpreters seem to suppose that speech act theory is constituted in its entirety by How To Do Things with Words, or at least that nothing is lost by adding to this only some footnoted appeals to the work of John Searle. (p5)

Words in Action: Speech Act Theory and Biblical Interpretation – towards a hermeneutic of self-involvement (Edinburgh, T & T Clark, 2001)

Burning question

Do you reckon that putting the bodies of the Christian dead to sleep in the earth is a more appropriate testimony to the hope of the resurrection of the body than cremating them?

AWOL

We're off to the Cotswolds for a few days of huddeling in "Stow-on-the-Wold where the wind blows cold."

I think Mrs Lloyd is expecting some walking so the location has been specially chosen by me in the hope that it offers a few small pimples we can easily conquor but not challenging summits.

I intend to make a special study of tea rooms, real ales and fine meals to offset my mud footprint.

Edible Words Website

This is a promising new resourse with a great name.

Edible Words is a living resource to help the sacraments of Baptism and the Lord's Supper play their fullest role in the life of reformed churches.

Edible Words is a community website containing meditations written to prepare a congregation to welcome new members by Baptism, or to share together in the Lord's Supper.

EdibleWords has been devised with busy elders / pastors / teachers in mind.

Such people may wish to lead a congregation in a short meditation before celebrating the Lord's Supper or administering Baptism. But time to prepare such meditations may well be less than the desire to give them.

EdibleWords provides a forum for such people to share the meditations that they have prepared, to the benefit of other reformed church leaders.

EdibleWords will also be a resource for those who would value such meditations, but they are not used in the church they attend.

Fianl Helping of Lusk on Supper

Some jottings arising from Rich Lusk’s fourth and final Auburn Avenue Media lecture on the Lord’s Supper:

The Lord’s Supper is training in mission, hence the end of the old Latin service, “You are sent out” and the title “Mass”. The Supper prepares the church to die for the life of the world and take the way of servant-sacrifice, transforming the creation into the Kingdom. As we eat the body of Christ we become more and more like the body of Christ, scars and all. See Peter Leithart, The Kingdom and the Power, ‘After the Supper’ on the cultural effects of the Eucharist.

A eucharistic life shows hospitality. Show grace as God has invited us into his home and life and fed us. God’s life is a life of openness, generous welcome, joy, sharing, regardless of worthiness and merit. God feeds us lavishly, undeserving as we are. God’s incarnational ministry patterns our own word and deed ministry. (Mt 11) Words and deeds belong together and are mutually interpreting.

The upper room of Jn 13ff is a heavenly mountain top experience with a new law. Wash feet and fill bellies: that is our calling.

The Supper incarnated the love of Christ, as should we.

The Supper affirms the intrinsic goodness of creation, culture and dominion. William Temple rightly said that Christianity is the most materialistic of all religions – the most earthy and oriented towards creation. Cultural transformation is brought into the kingdom in subordination to Christ. Salvation is an escape from sin, not from the creation.

The supper shows us the sacramental possibility of the whole of life.

The supper calls us to responsible stewardship as we eat and drink to the glory of God.

The supper tells us that Christian life is fundamentally one of joy and victory. We are satisfied in God who feeds us with the best of things (his Son). Week after week God sets before us glorious excess. The supper is the most uncommon common meal. It is about a table not a tomb.

The supper promotes grace consciousness. If you feel unworthy to come, good: that’s why you need to come. The Supper is for weak sinners to feed on. It is in Jesus we have access to this holy food. Holy things for holy people. Those who are in Christ eat Christ. The table is not something you attain to. It is a gift from the beginning. The liturgy imposes gratitude on us.

A wrong view of the supper is a wrong view of the supper.

The Supper must be open to all baptised non-excommunicate Christians.

The Supper is the high point of the Lord’s Day, which is the high point of the weak: feasting & rejoicing.

The supper cries out to God in hope. We do this until he comes. Christ is both really present and really absent so there is a longing. We are fed and satisfied but still hungry. Like the people who have not yet entered the land we eat the fruit ahead of time. The Supper is a foretaste in the present of the future. The future has occupied the present. In blessing or curse the supper leaves its indelible mark on the world. Definitive and future eschatology. The supper shows us where history is going.

We supper empowers us for the wilderness journey and the conquest of the whole world.

The Bible is a food test, like Gen 2-3. Israel in the wilderness grumbling, Ex 32, Num 5, Christ’s temptation in the wilderness (Mt 4), 1 Cor 11. Adam in the garden is in the best of all conditions in a garden with all food to eat and fails the test; Christ is in the worst of all conditions in the wilderness with nothing to eat and passes the test.

Just as Scripture does not explicitly command a weekly sermon, it does not command a weekly supper but both are fitting. The Supper marks out the Lord’s Day as covenant renewal worship.

Biblical order of service: Lev 9: Summons, call to worship; Sin offering / confession & absolution; Whole burnt offering – the ascension / going up offering (as smoke in the cloud into the heavenly glory cloud) – consecration, praise, Word; Tribute offering – tithes and offerings; Peace offerings – eat; benediction and dismissal.

The temple show bread / face bread / bread of the presence was eaten by the priests every week.

Jesus abrogates animal sacrifices but not sacrifice.

The Bible does not say much about worship because it presupposes the OT liturgy.

Acts 20 – an upper room again.

Churches that have cut off the Lord’s Supper have usually invented some other way of responding to the word, such as an altar call.

The sermon is table talk, not an academic lecture but a father talking to his household.

Spontinaity is not the essence of sincerity.

Worship forms like dance steps must be learned. We need to feel at home in them. The Lord’s supper should be habitual virtue that becomes part of who we are and what we characteristically do.

An infrequent communion can make it more of a superstitious bid deal.

Bible Translation Project

If we really buy Doug Wilson’s arguments in Mother Kirk and repeated on his blog (which I think have much in them, though I’m not sure) for a Church Authorised translation based on the providentially preserved textus receptus majority version, then it must be a high priority to get together as many churches as possible to sponsor a modern language English translation? What could be more important than access to God’s true Word.

The team could work from the KJV and it wouldn’t be too hard, would it? All those clever Oak Hill graduates could give it 20 mins a day?

This would have the added benefit that this version would neither be in hock to the academy nor the publishing companies. The version could be copyright free and cheap copies could be multiplied, there could be free versions on the web and lots of new audio Bibles, and so on.

Superstituous Ritual

By a superstitous ritual I mean doing something non-Biblical I don't like, in an organized way.

But surely this, from the BBC website, must be a great example.

Thanks to Neil Jeffers, who has yet to join the blogging revolution, for pointing it out.

Friday marks the most important day for Hindu pilgrims in the enormous Ardh Kumbh festival taking place in the northern Indian town of Allahabad.

The new moon night, or Mauni Amavasya, is celebrated on Friday, making it the most auspicious day in the six-week-long Hindu bathing festival. Millions of pilgrims are there.

A particularly choice quote is:

"I don't know the significance of this day but my Guru knows it"

This reminds me of a conversation I had with Brother Andrew (not the Brother Andrew). He is an Anglican monk in a silent enclosed vegitarian order! But I happened to be there on a feast day so we could have wine and conversation in few well chosen words.

I asked him why he crossed himself, which he must usually do at least 30 times a day.

He said, "Do you know, I've never really thought about it. I don't know. I suppose I do it because the Father Superior and the other members of the Community do it. If I really wanted to know why I do it I'd ask the Abbot".

Now I'm all for tradition, ritual, community and church authority but this seems like "I don't know but my Guru knows".

RP

That's the Regulative Principle (of Public Worship), not recieved pronunciation.

If anybody knows the first English use of the phrase in this way (or a foreign language equivalent) by the way, I'd love to know. The great Miss Wendy Bell, the college librarian, Revd Michael Del Rio MTh and the ABTABL emailers and I tried to find out once but didn't get very far.

There's been some discussion of RP on Daniel Newman's blog but as the trail is quite old, here are some expanded thoughts:

Reading John Frame on the Regulative Principle of Public Worship seems pretty essantial to me.

http://www.reformed.org/misc/index.html?mainframe=/misc/frame_regulative_principle.html

So properly understood we're saying that the regluative principle of the whole of life is valid and bibliacal though the reformed scholastics may have erred by (1) applying it in a special narrow sense to public worship and not to other things (e.g how we dress and what we eat) and (2) treating what the Bible taught too narrowly (e.g. not taking into account what the Old Testament tells us about public worship and God's love of special feast days, neglecting examples and images in favour only of explicit NT commands).

Also, the Westminster Confession and Directory are useful on all this, aren't they, in suggesting a kind of distinction about accidence (e.g. what time on Sunday morning we meet) and essence (we must meet on the Lord's Day morning, ideally early). I forget if those are their terms. The church has authority to make semi-binding rules for a time on the accidents but not to change the essence (e.g. she can't abolish Bible reading or sermons in favour of meditation on poetry but she can say that people who read the Bible in oublic must not wear shorts).

Frame has a further distinction between elements (e.g Bible reading and singing) and mode (e.g. how loud and what instruments) which all helps.

Pure Relationship with Jesus

I hope you all have a regular look at it anyway, but just in case, I thought this was perseptive and provocing from Revd Dr Peter Leithart:

Unbearable Burden of Evangelicalism

Anti-sacramental, anti-ritual evangelicalism emphasizes a personal relationship with God, but tends to encourage what Anthony Giddens calls "pure relationship," a relationship that is not tacked down with external anchors and supports. A live-in relationship, without benefit of the rites and legalities of marriage, is a pure relationship. Evangelicalism tends to encourage a live-in relationship with Jesus.

This is wrong, a departure from Christian tradition, and unbiblical. It also places unbearable burdens on the soul. Tempted by the devil, Luther slapped his forehead to remind himself of his baptism. His standing before God was anchored in Christ, to whom he had been joined by baptism.

For evangelicals, assurance cannot be grounded in anything so external and objective. Spontaneous enthusiasm is the test of sincerity, and the source of assurance. But eternal, self-scrutinizing vigilance is necessary to ensure that the enthusiasm is really spontaneous.

Enthusiasm was supposed to liberate the soul from all the dead forms, but it comes with its own set of chains.

posted by Peter J. Leithart on Wednesday, January 17, 2007 at 06:55 PM

More Productive...

Thanks to Alistair (link to blog on right) for pointing to http://www.lifehacker.com/

Perhaps "close down the blog" might have been one suggestion!

Theres some stuff there about how to turn your blog into a book, but unfortunately nothing baout how to turn it into a PhD.

Cross-Shaped Creation

I think it was James Jordan (it usually is!) who pointed out that the cross was right at the heart of the original creation, since the four rivers flowing out of Eden must have formed a cross.

Which is interesting theologically when one considers the relationship between creation, fall and redemption. There is the cross prior to and without reference to the fall.


I guess one could also say that the four rivers / the cross suggest universality and the whole world since they represent the four points of the compass.

Where does Jordan get all this stuff? Yes, the Bible, I know. And surely the man is a brillant genius. But this particular point looks like the kind of thing the Fathers would have said? Might go and see if the Ancient Christian Commentary on Genesis mentions it.

More Supper with Lusk

Some jottings arising from Rich Lusk’s third Auburn Avenue Media lecture on the Lord’s Supper:

Bread was used extensively in Old Covenant worship: grain offerings and the show offerings.

Baptism is a sacrament which speaks of pure grace. Water is not made by men and they contribute nothing to it. It is “nothing in my hand I bring”.

Bread is part of the good creation but it also requires human work transforming nature. Bread shows that God welcomes our efforts and works into the kingdom: human cultures are taken up into the kingdom. Bread is symbolic of our cultural endeavours as stewards and our faithful exercising of dominion over the world. The sacred – secular divide is shown to be a false dichotomy.

We receive the sacrament as gift but we also offer the bread back to God, grateful for his blessing on our work.

As Warfield and Kuyper point out, God’s original purposes for creation are fulfilled. Redemption brings creation to its goal. Kuyper can even call redemption accidental. There is an eschatology already built into Genesis 1 and 2: to bring the garden to a city, to bring humanity to maturity as a son, to make her a bride for Christ.

Samuel Johnson said animals take and eat but no beast is a cook. Man becomes human (civilised) with the breaking of bread.

We may decide to use leavened and unleavened bread at different seasons of the church’s year. Yeast speaks of the secret transforming growth of the kingdom, of hope. Unleavened bread speaks of Passover and of purity and may be appropriate to Lent.

A Biblical theology of wine: feasting and rejoicing, especially in victory and redemption and accompanying the coming of the Messiah. In the Old covenant worship no-one could drink: drink was poured out before the Lord. Worshippers always left the Old cult thirsty, but now with the promise fulfilled, God shares his cup with his people. Is 62: drinking wine in the courts of the sanctuary in the New Covenant. Old Testament priests could not drink wine while on the job but now we can rejoice in the work of the High Priest fulfilled. Jesus refuses to drink on the cross until his work is completed (just before in Jn, he says, “it is finished”) – Jesus will not drink the fruit of the vine until he drinks it again in the Kingdom. It is as if Jesus has taken a Nazarite holiness war vow as he does his special work.

The Supper is a wedding feast not a funeral ceremony. We are not just toasting a departed friend.

The vine is a picture of the people of God. Christ is the vine and his people are the branches.

Dt 14: drink wine in celebration of God’s goodness. New Testament worship should be even more festive than Old Testament worship since the OT saints only celebrated shadows whereas we celebrate the reality.

Gen 14: Abraham gives Melchizadek his tithe and Melchizadek gives Abraham the bread and wine – eating and drinking after victory.

Judges 9 even says that wine makes God glad!

Psalm 78: the holy warrior drinks a cup of wine and is ready to go into battle.

Wine is powerful stuff. Drinking it is a dangerous business. Drunkenness is a terrible wickedness that must be avoided. At the Supper we are trained in the right use of God’s gifts. The Lord’s Supper too is dangerous and must be used worthily if it is not to be the cup of wrath from which people drink condemnation on themselves.

The early Protestants were accused of being drunk with the joy of the forgiveness of sins.

Eating and drinking shows that the kingdom is here.

Just like the yeast, fermentation speaks of maturing, progress and transformation. The Old wineskins are burst. The gospel is no longer bottled up in Palestine. The cork is out and the Word is flooding the world.

Wine speaks of the blood of Christ. Wine is the blood of grapes according to Genesis.

The one food law in the New Testament is that we must do this: eat and drink bread and wine. We are not at liberty not to do this or to change the menu (e.g. to grape juice).

Peado-Communion:

The supper belongs to the baptised. It is for the whole covenant community: men, women and children. 1 Cor 12 – baptism and cup linked.

A new humanity must include every stage of human life. The whole creation (including children) is redeemable.

Covenant promises and practices always include children. Covenant succession is built in with the next generation sharing in the gifts / signs of the covenant.

Covenant children are regarded as believers, having faith in the Bible.

Jesus invited children into his presence. He surely wants them at his table.

Children are members of the body and we must rightly discern the body at the Supper. Presbyterian: examine yourself! We should not divide the body at the Supper. As Robert Rayburn says, peado-communion is fitting with a Reformed ecclesiology.

Peado-communion is the majority position in church history and dropped out because of transubstantiation. The Reformers failed to reintroduce it and did not really consider the arguments put forward today. We would not look to Calvin to find out whether or not we should use a PC or a Mac.

Anabaptists used the Reformed rejection of peado-communion as an argument against peado-baptism.

In 1 Cor when Paul speaks of examining oneself, he is clearly speaking to adult problems (such as drunkenness at the supper). If this text rules out children from the supper, by the same logic, children who do not work should not eat.

* * *

The supper not only expresses faith but is formative of faith. Doing the supper remoulds us as our faith is embodied. The Supper norms covenant life and shapes the church.

The supper manifests gratitude for a gift. C.f. Rm 1.A restored human life is eucharistic.

The habit of thanksgiving spills over to our common meals.

The Supper is intrinsically social and irreducibly corporate – an antidote to individualism. Gathered worship with the Eucharist as its culmination is the centre of our life. There are no private communions. This is a family meal, a fellowship, communion with Christ and with one another. We manifest and learn our community life at the table and are trained in the manners of the kingdom here. We wait for one another and serve one another. We learn the culture of the New Jerusalem. Our unity is celebrated. Kingdom justice and economics are worked out.

The Supper is a sacrifice and meal of covenant renewal with God and with one another,

We become friends with God at the supper, his companions, those with whom he shares the bread.

The table is about peacemaking and reconciliation.

Do not excommunicate yourself. You are summoned to do this. We must not amputate the body of Christ, depriving it of one of its members.

What's in a name?

Thanks to Ruth Field for pointing to the Times OnLine thingy about names.

Sadly there was no entry for "Marc", which no doubt would be entirely different from "Mark". Cruel discrimination against the Welsh by the nasty English yet once again.

But it turns out "Mark" is in the doldrums.

So Jeffers, if you need a baby name in the next few days, you may like to consider doing the decent thing. Additional middle name perfectly acceptable. (Marcia doesnt get a look in either, by the way, should the baby be of the other genre).

From Times Online here:

MARK:

From the Latin name Marcus, which is based on Mars, the Roman god of war;

Average age: 37.
Average income £30,000.

Most likely to live in the East of England.
Marks are twice as likely as most people to be directors or managers.
Marks are the most likely to have unsecured loans.
The name Mark has had a dramatic change in fortunes. After being in the Top Ten throughout the Sixties, Seventies and Eighties, it had dropped to 44th place by 1994, and is not now in the Top 100.

I have some growing up and some wage earning to do if I am to avoid being below average marks, it would seem.

PhD proposal

Some negative sorts might say that its perhaps a bit late to change - as by September I theoretically ought to be half way through my research (time-wise) - but I reckon the PhD I'd really like to be working on at the moment would be:

(1) An account of Auburn Avenue, Federal Vision, James Jordan, Doug Wilson, Peter Leithart, Rich Lusk and their pals doctrines of the Lord's Supper with footnotes

(2) An assessment of continuity and discontinuity between (1) and (a) the Bible, (b) the Fathers and (c) the Reformed Tradition

Unfortunately the C of E are kindly supporting a slightly different project, but I'm open to a bidding war? It might be debatable which project I've so far been working most on. :)