Worth knowing

Before, God-willing, I become an Incumbent, I think I might re-read The Canons of the Church of England. There's lots of interesting useful stuff worth knowing. For example, B20.2 Of the musicians and music of the Church is quite helpful:

Where there is an organist, choirmaster or director of music the minister shall pay due heed to his advice and assistance in the choosing of chants, hymns, anthems, and other settings, and in the ordering of the music of the church; but at all times the final responsibility and decision in these matters rests with the minister.

Virtual Communion

"A retired Methodist minister is to use Twitter to conduct Holy Communion - with his online flock taking bread and wine in front of their PCs. The Rev Tim Ross will tweet out the lines of the Eucharist next month to his 357 followers, and says participants can tweet back "Amen". He hopes that it will unite the faithful across the world. 'Where it could lead, who knows? Maybe one day to a baptism by Facebook,' he said."

From The Times, Monday July 26 2010, p.9

One of the potentially many problems of this would be that they will not partake of one loaf (1 Cor 10:17).

Yoked

As Glen pointed out on Sunday night, in Matthew 11:28-29, Jesus seems to assume that we are all (already) yoked or burdened. The only question is whether we will accept Christ's easy yoke and light burden or will stick with some ill-fitting hard yoke and heavy burden for which we were never intended.

New Family Connections

Citing Luther in The Freedom of a Christian, Glen spoke on Sunday evening of faith union with Christ as like a marriage. When I am married to Christ by faith in the Spirit, Jesus pays my debts, I take his name, I gain his wealth, his family connections and his status, just as someone marrying a royal might become royal too.

I think the passage Glen had in mind is Three Treatises (Fortress Press, 1970), p286, the section beginning "The third incomparable benefit of faith is that it unites the soul with Christ as a bride is united with her bridegroom".

Here it is nicked from the Theology Network site:

The third incomparable grace of faith is this: that it unites the soul to Christ, as the wife to the husband, by which mystery, as the Apostle teaches, Christ and the soul are made one flesh. Now if they are one flesh, and if a true marriage--nay, by far the most perfect of all marriages--is accomplished between them (for human marriages are but feeble types of this one great marriage), then it follows that all they have becomes theirs in common, as well good things as evil things; so that whatsoever Christ possesses, that the believing soul may take to itself and boast of as its own, and whatever belongs to the soul, that Christ claims as His.

If we compare these possessions, we shall see how inestimable is the gain. Christ is full of grace, life, and salvation; the soul is full of sin, death, and condemnation. Let faith step in, and then sin, death, and hell will belong to Christ, and grace, life, and salvation to the soul. For, if He is a Husband, He must needs take to Himself that which is His wife's, and at the same time, impart to His wife that which is His. For, in giving her His own body and Himself, how can He but give her all that is His? And, in taking to Himself the body of His wife, how can He but take to Himself all that is hers?

In this is displayed the delightful sight, not only of communion, but of a prosperous warfare, of victory, salvation, and redemption. For, since Christ is God and man, and is such a Person as neither has sinned, nor dies, nor is condemned, nay, cannot sin, die, or be condemned, and since His righteousness, life, and salvation are invincible, eternal, and almighty,--when I say, such a Person, by the wedding-ring of faith, takes a share in the sins, death, and hell of His wife, nay, makes them His own, and deals with them no otherwise than as if they were His, and as if He Himself had sinned; and when He suffers, dies, and descends to hell, that He may overcome all things, and since sin, death, and hell cannot swallow Him up, they must needs be swallowed up by Him in stupendous conflict. For His righteousness rises above the sins of all men; His life is more powerful than all death; His salvation is more unconquerable than all hell.

Thus the believing soul, by the pledge of its faith in Christ, becomes free from all sin, fearless of death, safe from hell, and endowed with the eternal righteousness, life, and salvation of its Husband Christ. Thus He presents to Himself a glorious bride, without spot or wrinkle, cleansing her with the washing of water by the word; that is, by faith in the word of life, righteousness, and salvation. Thus He betrothes her unto Himself "in faithfulness, in righteousness, and in judgment, and in lovingkindness, and in mercies" (Hosea ii. 19, 20).

Who then can value highly enough these royal nuptials? Who can comprehend the riches of the glory of this grace? Christ, that rich and pious Husband, takes as a wife a needy and impious harlot, redeeming her from all her evils and supplying her with all His good things. It is impossible now that her sins should destroy her, since they have been laid upon Christ and swallowed up in Him, and since she has in her Husband Christ a righteousness which she may claim as her own, and which she can set up with confidence against all her sins, against death and hell, saying, "If I have sinned, my Christ, in whom I believe, has not sinned; all mine is His, and all His is mine," as it is written, "My beloved is mine, and I am His" (Cant. ii. 16). This is what Paul says: "Thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ," victory over sin and death, as he says, "The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law" (1 Cor. xv. 56, 57).

Impressive but dead

In his sermon on Sunday evening, Glen argued that if you mess with the heart of the gospel you risk killing the church and being left with a corpse. It might still be a big, impressive, sprawling body with much to admire, but it might still be dead.

2nd most read book in the world ever?

According to Glen, John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. I'm assuming no. 1 is the Bible!

Christ Alone is not narrow

In his sermon on Sunday evening, Glen argued that "Christ alone" is not a narrow statement since Christ is not narrow. It is because Christ is so great and vast, so cosmic and complete that we must say "Christ alone": he is so immense that there is no room for anyone or anything else. Additions and alternatives are superfluous, indeed, in a way even impossible, since Christ is all.

Christ or the System

In his sermon on Sunday, Glen suggested that we need to be delivered from some kind of "system" to / by Christ. He spoke of Luther's escape from the system of medival piety. Interestingly, later, he also spoke of Bunyan's deliverance from a Protestant system in which he lacked assurance.

What's your system?

What are the besetting systems of conservative evangelicals / the Reformed? Conversionism? Systems of doctrinal orthodoxy, of the 5 points of Calvinism or the Westminster Standards?

Perverse Penance

Glen Scrivner's sermon on Sunday evening (on Christ Alone from Mt 11 & Col 1), suggested that one of the perversities of a system of penance is that it tends to think of saying prayers as some kind of punishment (or a meritorious good work) rather than a privilege of grace.

Son as Camp Adjutant

I wonder if we might think of the relationship between Father and Son as somewhat analogous to that between the Overall Leader of Camp and the Adjutant?

Exactly what heresies that initially suggests to your mind will of course depend on how your camp is run and on the sins and foibles of overall leader and adjutant!

The Overall Leader and the Adjutant are ontologically equal, yet the Overall leader has a functional authority. The Adjutant exercises rule on behalf of the overall leader and runs all things for him.

Another way of saying this might be that the Son is the Executive Officer of the Trinity who carries out all the will of the Father in the power of the Spirit.

Alphabet Photography

We just splashed out on a JONATHAN and an ABIGAIL from Alphabet Photography at the knock down price of £120 for the pair (at The Eastbourne Town and Country Show in Princes Park). If the kids weren't in tow, one could spend ages having fun choosing the pictures. We both thought they were rather clever and cool and hope the kids will like them all their lives!

ENTJ

Mrs Lloyd and I reckon that some of this (and this, and this, and this and this, and this, and this, and this and this and this) is quite insightful about me. As Glen mentions, some of this is aspirational, of course, but I fear there's some truth in the less flattering bits too (e.g. a danger of unforgiving hyper-critical insensitive task-focused self-righteous bigotted dictatorship!). Pity the camp leaders!

Danehill 1

Please pray for the 50 11-14 year olds and 30 leaders who will be at Danehill 1 CPAS Venture from Saturday for The Best Week of the Year.

Preaching Plans

Here are my preaching plans for Sundays at Holy Trinity (Sept - Dec 2010). I'm performing a little more often than usual due to the interregnum.

12^th Sept AM – Ecclesiastes 5:1-7 – Shut up & listen up!

19^th Sept AM – Harvest Family Service – Mark 4:1-20 – How to have a bumper crop

26^th Sept AM – Back to Church Sunday – Ecclesiastes 5:8-6:12 – Money & Meaning: Are the better off better off?

3^rd Oct PM – John 13 – Jesus serves

24^th Oct PM – John 14:1-14 – The Way to a Heavenly Reservation

31^st Oct AM – Ecclesiastes 7 – Better Wise Up!

7^th Nov PM – John 14:15-31 – Father, Son and Spirit

21^st Nov PM – John 15:1-17 – How to be a fruitful Christian

28^th Nov AM – Ecclesiastes 8-11 – Knowing how to live when you just don’t know

5^th Dec PM – John 15:18-16 – What to expect

19^th Dec PM – Christmas Carol Service – Bible passage TBA

24^th Dec PM – Midnight Communion Service – Bible passage TBA

25^th Dec AM – Christmas Family Service with Communion – Bible passage TBA

26^th Dec AM – Ecclesiastes 11:7-12:14 – Resolve to remember your creator & fear God

PT Conferencing

I've recently booked myself on to the Proclamation Trust Autumn Joint Ministers' Conference (8th - 11th Nov), details of which are here. See some of you there, perhaps?

Can We Trust The Bible?

Here's the text of my handout:

Can We Trust The Bible?

Yes! And we can trust the God who wrote it!

The burden of proof / unjustified scepticism? - Why wouldn’t we trust it?

A very important question – central to Christianity, big claims, life changing, eternal significance

World’s best selling book - both revered and rubbished – popular rejection / ignoring of the Bible (myths, legends, fairy tales, maybe moral or theological truths but not history)

The basic Christian view of the Bible / what the Bible claims about itself:

Historic / traditional consensus of the church: God’s words – inspired (2 Timothy 3:16) - God’s Word Written – What the Bible Says, God says – God’s Word reflects the character of God - true / authoritative / reliable in all that it affirms – inerrant / infallible (no errors)

Not just believe the Bible because the Bible tells you to (not a circular argument)!

Some reasons to trust the Bible:

Main argument (for Christians!):

Jesus is Lord and Jesus viewed the Bible as God’s trustworthy Word and therefore so should we. He accepted the Old Testament as God’s words and authorised the Apostles to write the New Testament

E.g. John 10:34-36; Matthew 5:17-18; 19:4-5; 22:29-32; John 14:26; 16:12-16

à Are Jesus’ claims about his own identity and authority convincing? E.g. the quality of his life and teaching, the evidence for the resurrection

Supporting arguments:

We can be confident we know what the original manuscripts said since the evidence for the original text of the Bible is very strong. The original text is very well preserved in our Bibles. Relatively few texts are disputed and no major doctrine hangs on any of the mostly trivial disputed texts

Manuscript Evidence for Ancient Writings

Author / Work	When written	Earliest fragment / copy	Time span between writing and copy	Number of manuscripts
Caesar	100 – 44 BC	AD 900	1000 years	10
Plato	427 - 347 BC	AD 900	1200 years	7
Thucydides	460 - 400 BC	AD 900	1300 years	8
Tacitus	AD 100	AD 1100	1000 years	20
Suetonius	AD 75 – 160	AD 950	800 years	643
Homer (Iliad)	900 BC	400 BC	500 years	643
New Testament	AD 40 – 100	AD 125	25 – 50 years	24000

(from Orr-Ewing, p43)

The Gospels were written very close to the events they describe by eyewitnesses or drawing on eyewitness evidence

E.g. Luke 1:1-4; John 20:29-31; 21:24-25; 1 John 1:1-4

The Apostles clearly believed Jesus was who he claimed to be, since they were willing to be persecuted and killed for trusting in him. Christianity is not a fraud job by the disciples!

The extraordinary unity of the Bible – agreement of 66 books, over 40 different authors, written over a period of ? about 1600 years

Where the Bible can be checked, it has proved to be accurate e.g. by archaeological discoveries of inscriptions confirming previously questioned details from the book of Acts

Many Bible prophecies have been remarkably fulfilled (e.g. history of Israel, Jesus)

Professor Peter Stoner took just 11 fulfilled prophecies from the Old Testament and tried to calculate the probability of them being fulfilled by chance. He reckoned it was 1 in 8X10^63 (Blanchard, p28 citing Stoner, Science Speaks, Moody Press, pp67-96).

The Bible is remarkably realistic and insightful on many matters, makes psychological sense, interprets our experience. It is a work of supernatural genius

The Bible has the ring of truth about it (J. B. Phillips), it speaks with convincing power

Countless peoples have met with Jesus and been transformed by reading the Bible

à Try reading it (perhaps one of the Gospels in a modern translation) and pray that God would show you whether it is true or not

Further reading:

Paul Barnett, Is The New Testament History? (originally Hodder & Stoughton, 1986; Paternoster, 1998)

John Blanchard, Why Believe The Bible? (Evangelical Press, 2004) – only 40 pages
Craig Blomberg, The Historical Reliability of the Gospel (IVP, 2^nd ed. 2008)
F. F. Bruce, New Testament Documents: Are they reliable? (Eerdmans / IVP, 1943)
Walter Kaiser, Old Testament Documents: Are they reliable and relevant? (IVP, 2001)
* Top Recommendation? * Amy Orr-Ewing, Why Trust The Bible? Answers to 10 tough questions (IVP, 2005) – includes consideration of some more modern and postmodern type objections e.g. the Bible on sex, matters of interpretation

J. B. Phillips, Ring of Truth: A Translator’s Testimony (Hodder & Stoughton, 2^nd ed. 1978)
John Wenham, Christ and the Bible (Baker) - deals with a number of supposed "difficulties" with the text. Argues, as above, that Jesus thought of the Bible as the authoritative Word of God and so should we
Brian Edwards, Why 66? The Canon of Scripture (Answers in Genesis, DVD, 2008) - how do we know we have the right books in the Bible?

Seeking A New Vicar (worksheet)

What should we look for in a new Vicar?

Or (rather!),

Biblical qualifications for Pastor-teachers

Look up the passages below and see what you can discover about:

(A) The person specification for a Pastor-teacher – who are we seeking?

Consider (i) character (ii) skills etc.

(B) The job description / work of a Pastor-teacher – what should he do?

Be ready to feedback

(1) Mk 9:35; 10:42-45

(2) Acts 20:17-38

(3) Eph 4:11-16

(4) 1 Tim 3; 4:6-16; 5:17-22

(5) 2 Tim 2; 3:10-4:5

(6) Titus 1:5ff; 2:1, 15; 3:1, 8-11

(7) 1 Peter 5:1-4

(8) (Heb 13:7, 17)

Can you think of any other teaching of Jesus / the example of Jesus or other people in the Bible (e.g. Paul) or any other relevant Bible passages?

Bishop of Chichester re Women Bishops

A pastoral letter from The Bishop of Chichester to the Diocese in the light of movements in the C of E towards women bishops (PDF file).

Bible Prophecy a Fluke?

Professor Peter Stoner took just 11 fulfilled prophecies from the OT and tried to calculate the probability of them being fulfilled by chance. He reckoned it was 1 in 8X10^63. In other words, mind bogglingly unlikely.

(John Blanchard, Why Believe The Bible? Evangelical Press, 2004, p28 citing Stoner, Science Speaks, Moody Press, pp67-96).

REAL

Classically the Church of England is Reformed and Evangelical. The historical formularies of the C of E unmistakably take such a position. But there is great (and not so great!) variety within Anglicanism today and much confusion about what it means to be an Anglican - not to mention what it means to be Reformed or Evangelical!

For these and other reasons, The Church Society's new Reformed Evangelical Anglican Library, edited by Rev'd Lee Gatiss is to be welcomed. They've kicked off with some Whitefield and I look forward to seeing what the subsequent publications will be.