Money matters....

"And what are we to think of all the current teaching on money and possessions that emphasizes what does not apply to us? Confident voices assure us that the Old Testament practice of tithing doesn’t apply to us, that the New Testament practice of sacrificial giving by liquidating assets and giving to the poor doesn’t apply to us, that the biblical prohibitions of interest and the restriction of debt don’t apply to us, that the commands not to hoard and stockpile assets don’t apply to us, and so on. It’s time to ask, “What does apply to us?”"

Full article: https://www.epm.org/resources/2024/Oct/23/how-view-money-matter/

Just saying.....

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/11/11/tell-us-your-three-year-old-preferred-gender-school/

Apparently, more than 100 UK local authorities will ask you your 3 year-old's preferred gender identity if you attempt to register a place for said 3 year-old in one of these local authority's schools.

Now, I'd tend to think that it's good of them to warn you, so that you now have opportunity to take preventative action. Fore-warned is fore-armed, as the saying goes.

I'm fairly sure that if the form asked questions about torturing your child, starving them or other forms of abuse, then most people would find this pretty obvious.

Somehow, and social pressure and implicit threats have a lot to do with this, people in the UK have been conditioned into trying to explain away the warnings that others intend to expose their child to the abuse of gender ideology and indoctrinate them in it, and to try to minimise that fact.

But if your eyes are open, then it is what it is. Drag queens (a.k.a. groomers), preferred pronouns, indoctrination about an imaginary and alternative "real you" somewhere deep, deep down inside, warnings against (and even bringing in social services to "protect" you against) wicked parents who think that your creator's gift of a male body reveals that you actually are male and that a body/"real me" dualism is a revival of of old Gnostic heresies (or female/female) - it's all on the way. You're being warned. And as ever, blind hope is not a strategy. If you walk towards a cliff at a steady pace, hoping that this will turn out well, and crossing your fingers that the signs saying "dangerous cliff ahead" won't mean much in the end, then this is not sensible. And pointing out that other people walked off other cliffs in other ways, or even that their children insisted on throwing themselves off anyway despite having been consistently taught truth, prayed for and shown a godly example, still won't make the landing hurt any less for you and your child.

Life involves choices. And the choice not to gift your child over to people who despise and reject truth and want to bathe your child 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, 40 weeks a year, for the next 14+ years of its life in their lies, really is one that God wants you to make. How do I know this? He said so (Deuteronomy 6:4-7, Ephesians 6:4).

On "Christian nationalism"

I believe that rulers should obey God, and respond appropriately, within their context and era, to the fact that God has revealed himself in the Bible, because I believe the same about everyone else.

This, though, seems to me to be far from what brethren who promote "Christian Nationalism" are really talking about.

In my evaluation of what they're really doing, such brethren are often simply engaging in empty displays of beating their chests in order to persuade themselves and/or others that they are manly. i.e. They hold the doctrine in order to position themselves tribally in their largely online in-house debates with other Christians. It's not because they feel called into serving God in government, and are working on a realistic plan for that. They're largely trying to build their tribe, and this is part of their positioning. If you are genuinely trying to understand how to serve God in government today as a faithful Daniel or Joseph, then theories of building Christian nations whose constitutions begin with a recitation of the doctrine of the Trinity, detailed right down to how many times you will lash blasphemers for their third offence, do not constitute practical help for anything you're likely to be getting up to, and such help was already available in the resources of the mainstream Reformed faith.

But let's leave questions of motivation, feasibility and what would actually be a plan to accomplish this in practice aside. (I think if you really believed in "Christian Nationalism" then your main priority ought to be white-hot gospel-preaching to reach the unconverted for the next couple of decades instead of wasting time upon so much online chest-thumping). Let's consider the ideas of "Christian nationalists" in practical experience.

Here, Bob Smietana explains what these types of ideas have usually/historically meant in practice. Here too is a book centred around Roger Williams and the New England Puritans which I read recently. These are good resources. In practice, attempts to build Christian nations have meant Christians being hypocritically persecuted, and non-believers (such as the Narragansett Indians and others) having the gospel presented to them being mixed with all sorts of ungodly and carnal power-plays. That's not a one-off. That's what happens. When believers at the Reformation concluded from Scripture that infant baptism was unbiblical, Christian-nationalist-minded Reformers called for their executions, and drowned them.

We're told that that's Christendom 1.0, and that what we should now be aiming for is Christendom 2.0 in which this should play out differently.

Please pardon me for laughing at this. Very funny.

We can all sit behind our keyboards and dream out our utopia, and explain why "it'll be different this time" - because people so wise as our good selves have now arrived in the world, and we'll implement so many wonderful safeguards and checks in our visionary kingdom. I don't believe a word of it. We're still fallen, and if "by their fruits you shall know them", we may judge that the church today doesn't yet show anything like the maturity to be asking God for dominion in any other realm, so let's not confuse our adolescent day-dreams with our calling to apply Christ to all of life. If there's a time for the church to turn large amounts of energy to understanding and discussing what to do when people are asking for a society run on Christian principles, then that time isn't now - we are at a different stage of development entirely. And our grown-up duty is to live in the age in which God has placed us, not a mythical one of our fevered imaginations.

It has to be said that whenever our Presbyterian brethren start discussing what kind of Christian utopia they're going to govern when their dreams transmute into reality, we Baptists do not detect the beautiful fragrance of the humble spirit of Christ, embracing suffering and lowly service before glory, but the unpleasant odour of an unsanctified lust for worldly power. (And yes, such an unsanctified lust runs free among Baptists today too; the phenomena of independent Popes ruling their local church domains is well known). It reeks of wanting to sit at Jesus' right hand before picking up the cross. The world in 2024 is one in which we're called to pick up the cross, and the mature will surely discern that instead of discussing their schemes for governing the ungodly in the civil realm.

"But, but, this just means you don't believe in King Jesus".

I believe in King Jesus. I just don't believe that I've met the Presbyterian or other brethren who are his appointed representatives on earth, destined to rule over the civil realm for us, and we will be thankful for it. Inevitably, Christian nationalists in history move very quickly towards identifying the rule of King Jesus with their own laws, and as night follows day, those who oppose the "rule of King Jesus" must be punished for their blasphemies. Again, as Baptist, we've seen how this plays out in practice, regardless of what you say in theory. No thank you!

Anglican Evangelicals and Ecclesiology: "Leave us alone!"

 

At some point it dawned upon me that the ecclesiology of our Anglican Evangelical brethren was actually quite simple. It can be expressed in just three words: "leave us alone!".

Though they have plenty of things to say about why they believe in the Episcopal (actually Erastian) structure of their denomination, and how it ought to work, and how they labour towards that end, and why they were not independents, etc., etc., by observation you come to the simple conclusion: they are actually independents in practice. They just want the rest of the Church of England to leave them be. If they can leave them be, then they'll agree to leave the rest of the Church of England be too. (I note that in recent years this is more and more becoming the official ecclesiology of Anglican evangelicals, openly: it's now being called "structural differentiation". This is much more sophisticated than saying "leave us alone". This might be attractive to you if looking sophisticated before others is something that you think the Bible says is important).

The gospel is so far from being essential or important to these Anglicans' theology of the church, that it's actually entirely optional. It doesn't matter who denies it or how they deny it; these evangelicals are finally quite happy to ignore them, as long as they're adhering to the rule "leave us alone". This has been Anglican evangelical policy for multiple generations now. Oh yes, they'll write blog posts about them and say at their own conferences and teach in their own parishes that they personally disagree, but that's not what I mean. I mean that there will be no church discipline, and no ultimate consequences. Only when there are ultimate consequences can someone be said to believe what they're saying, and thus I say: they don't really believe in their own official ecclesiology. For someone who does believe in their own professed ecclesiology, things go like this:

• Step one: you notice, and become convinced, that someone within the church hierarchy clearly and openly contradicts essential doctrines of the faith.
• Step two: you use all available mechanisms to apply the church's discipline to this situation, to restore the offender back to the truth and so that God's name isn't dishonoured before outsiders and other genuine believers aren't harmed.
  
• Step three: either the offender is disciplined, or, when it becomes clear that the church's official doctrines do not actually apply and that these precious truths are counted as not being of the essence of the church's life, then since you yourself do personally believe them, you sadly depart in order to find a church that does believe them so that the truth is maintained (and not just in some semi-Gnostic, hidden realm of your private definition).
  

What actually happens with our Anglican brethren is that they either replace step two with tut-tutting in unofficial channels (their blogs, newsletters or in-house unofficial conferences), or at step three they show that they themselves also hold these beliefs not as cherished, essential truths, but as optional too. They just accept that these are in fact not the official doctrines of the church after all....and that they can live with that.

Of course, I know that there are and have been honourable exceptions to this: there is a growing band of ex-Anglicans who did believe what they professed to believe (which happily was not just "leave us alone!"), and ultimately acted accordingly, struggled, overcame, and paid the necessary price. Well done, friends. You have gone outside the camp, and shared in the shame of the One who went there first.

The Archbishop of Canterbury does not believe what God says about marriage, fornication or sodomy. But here's the lame get-out clause being offered to all those who hold to "leave us alone!" ecclesiology: "Lambeth Palace said the Archbishop’s views are his own, and are not the official stance of the Church of England." Well, that's OK, then. If all you want is to be left alone, that is, it's OK. But if you actually believe that either the "Church of England" ought to be something other than a synagogue of Satan (and not just in some quasi-Platonic realm of forms, but in this creation too), or that if not then you shouldn't be part of it, then that's not OK. Steps 2 and 3 above are available. We'll be rooting and praying for you to do the right thing.

Don't be weary of the word

 Luther's commentary on Galatians, commenting on 1v11:

God creates faith in us through the Word. He increases, strengthens and confirms faith in us through His word. Hence the best service that anybody can render God is diligently to hear and read God's Word. On the other hand, nothing is more perilous than to be weary of the Word of God. Thinking he knows enough, a person begins little by little to despise the Word until he has lost Christ and the Gospel altogether. 
Let every believer carefully learn the Gospel. Let him continue in humble prayer. We are molested not by puny foes, but by mighty ones, foes who never grow tired of warring against us. These, our enemies, are many: Our own flesh, the world, the Law, sin, death, the wrath and judgment of God, and the devil himself.

What is a missionary? And some bigger questions

 On influential blogger Tim Challies' regular list of links to interesting articles or resources today, one entry is:

Missionary.com has launched a great new website. One of the best features is the glossary which provides definitions for many key terms related to missions. You might also enjoy the trailer for the forthcoming Missionary documentary.

The website looks like it has lots of good, challenging and challenging material. However, it didn't get off to a good start with me because its definition of the first word I looked up, "missionary", in its technical glossary, is quite wrong and even unhelpful. The glossary is introduced with an accurate description of what a glossary is for:

Like any area of study, missionary terminology can be complex and surprising. Sometimes seemingly straightforward or even biblical-sounding terms can have an unexpected meaning. Whether you’re new to missions or going deeper, this glossary can help.

But then, what is the definition of "missionary" ?

A missionary is a person who has been called (internally and externally) to leave their home and travels to share the gospel in a foreign nation or with a foreign language group. Their mission is to obey the Great Commission found in Matthew 28:18-20, where Jesus tells us to go out and make disciples of all nations. Characterized by an instinct to evangelize, ability to endure hardship, they know their Bible well, and love Christ and His church. A missionary also needs to have an aptitude for language acquisition and cultural analysis. They often risk great harm to themselves but go, despite the risks, in obedience to Christ. 

This is not how the word "missionary" is used, nor is there any reason why it must stop being used as it is actually used and instead used this way. The above is a definition of an ideal pioneering church-planting foreign missionary. Certainly that is one kind of missionary, and indeed the archetype of a missionary, what is at the heart of the overall missionary task. But equally certainly, not the only kind of missionary:

• There are also home missionaries - e.g. people in the London City Mission, Open Air Mission, missions to particular ethnic groups / migrant groups, etc. Such missionaries may be both living "at home" and may be working within their own culture.
• There are missionaries who are not working "on the front line" of pioneering evangelism to people who have never heard, but who are on the second or third lines. Missionaries may be building up an existing church; providing Bible teaching to allow converts to come to maturity, etc.
• There are missionaries in support ministries and mercy missions - medical missions, working with the handicapped, working in administration, providing logistical support and help to other missionaries, etc.  
• Missionaries doing evangelism to support existing local churches, and helping local churches to grow their evangelistic competence and confidence.

If the definition from missionary.com's glossary were taken seriously, then this could discourage a lot of people who are gifted and open to being part of forwarding the gospel in situations outside of their "home" situation (even in their own country), making them think that they cannot be missionaries. It would discourage a lot of people who could help the kingdom of God on the "mission field" because they'll believe that they have to have all the core gifts at the heart of pioneering church-planting or they can't be a "missionary". Today's world actually needs people with a huge range of gifts. Lots of lines of nation, culture, belonging, language and gospel reach are now blurred; there are still places that are a simple "they've never heard, there are no churches, there is no written language or Bible" situations; but there are also others which desperately people who aren't necessarily John Paton to assist churches comes to maturity in all sorts of ways.

Paul, being a pioneer evangelist, and one with a commission to plant across the Gentile world and not just in one place, moved on quite quickly after appointing other competent leaders in churches, in order to evangelise new places. But those who remained in a fixed place to bring a church to maturity (whether like Timothy for a longer time after Paul left, or as permanent elders in the churches) were still fulfilling the Great Commission, and everybody has always described them as "missionaries". Indeed Paul himself worked in a team alongside others. He was the great apostle, the pioneering evangelist, leader of the team - but others had different roles as part of it. As they travelled with him, they were also "missionaries", as that word is universally used.

The requirement for an "internal call" is problematic in this glossary. Is it a particular spiritual experience? A continuous burden? How heavy must the burden be, and how long for? Is the experience one that passes some test to authenticate it as infallible when considered alone, or does it require validation, and if so, how? Again, you can see how this could discourage someone whom the Lord has gifted and is opening the door to for kingdom work from moving out and taking action. Some souls are very sensitive, and unless this question is handled carefully, it could delay them for years or forever. Hence, in general, something of this sort belongs in a discussion in a book about missions, not unexplained in what's meant to be a technical glossary. This glossary does say under "calling", "Internal being the conviction that this is what God has laid on your heart to do". This, though, begs for further explanation; something may be laid on your heart, but this specifically requires that God laid it on your heart - is there a process to distinguish between this, or has the glossary just used unnecessary extra wording that has introduced confusion? And has there never been anyone who believed that God wanted them to do something that they actually revolted in horror and fear from when they first went to do it, but that they felt that they were the person God intended to do it anyway? To be fair, the entry does then point the reader to a separate article to discuss it - but as I say, this does stray somewhat from what a glossary should do, which is to define things sharply and clearly in a few words, and remove ambiguities rather than raise them.

Returning to the overall definition, I'm sure if (assuming you're part of a gospel church) you reflect on the "missionaries" that your church supports, you'll see that this narrow definition is unhelpful and inaccurate. A glossary should not re-define how a word is used, and should not do so when it says itself that it is seeking how to describe how a word is actually used in the circles and literature.

The website overall looks very good and run by good people as much as anyone could tell. But I'm sorry to say, dear reader, that the above wasn't the only part that made me sigh inside. And if you can take any more, here is some......

At the beginning there was also a link to a trailer video. Given the list of names below, I'd expect the trailer video to be edifying and helpful. But....

Interviews: Ian Hamilton, Mark Dever, Rosaria Butterfield, Nina Buser, Hezekiah, Michael Reeves, Conrad Mbewe, Kevin DeYoung, Me-Melar, John Piper, Wayne Chen

This is largely a list of well-known Western/English-speaking evangelical "Big Cheeses". How they got there and who appoints evangelical "Big Cheeses" isn't entirely clear, but there definitely seems to be a reasonably well defined list, plus some people who have tried very hard but didn't get admitted and ought to mortify their disappointment more than they have. In the trailer video, these "Big Cheeses" say entirely common-place things that any competent pastor or mature Christian who is not currently reading his first few missionary biographies should be able to say. Dear reader, please forgive me for studying maths in a rather earlier stage of my youth, but I begin to notice patterns, and there's one I began to notice a long time ago.

Not too long ago I saw that a large, well-known and influential church was having a "missions conference", and I couldn't help noticing that the main speakers were pastors and not missionaries and had never been missionaries. And (I've now watched the trailer from missionary.com which does this too), the main subject was missionaries who, being from the 18th and 19th centuries, they could never have met, but which it was clear that they'd read a lot about from their doubtless impressive book collections and praise-worthy reading habits (and may we all develop both of those!).

On the above list, I assume that "Hezekiah" is someone working under-cover who can't give his full name. I couldn't find out who "Me-Melar" was, so I suppose that he/she might be too. Wayne Chen was a cross-cultural missionary for 8 years. Nina Buser was for 13 years. The latter both now work for a missions agency and have no doubt learned a lot through that (7 and 8 years ago, respectively).

Again, don't get me wrong - I'm not criticising these people. They're on the right team. They're encouraging a great work. They're trying to stir up others to it as well. And yet I do wonder what is wrong with our evangelical sub-culture that you need a fancy video and "Big Cheese" names to say commonplace things about the well-known 18th and 19th-century missionaries with dramatic scenery, with "something very big is happening" mood music playing, and in voices that suggest that something very profound has been discovered and is now being revealed to us. Why do we need people with lots of strings to their bow in their on-screen bios, sitting in rooms full of books, to tell us that the church should send out missionaries who plant self-propagating churches? Do evangelicals today not actually believe anything they read in the Bible or from their bookshelves until this is done?

Again, don't get me wrong - it's all with the best of intentions, and may the Lord bless it to do much good. But it still is part of a sign that that there's something profoundly wrong with us. I do wonder to what extent we actually believe in the Holy Spirit. We are so used to having any new initiative headed up by the Big Wigs ("pastor, author, conference speaker, seminary teacher, he has travelled to 27 different countries in preaching the gospel, ...") that I begin to wonder if we actually believe that anything can be done without them. How about if instead of having a couple of days in which the important people are contacted by film crews and go through what they're going to say, and film the takes, etc., they spent 2 days in secret prayer for a few more missionaries to be raised up. Perhaps they did that too (by definition, they kept it secret!), but I don't believe it's what normally happens or what people in our evangelical sub-culture would expect to happen. I wonder, in our "heart of hearts", if we really believe that nothing can be done unless the Holy Spirit blesses, or that using the available means is to do with impressive promotional videos rather than seeking God earnestly and stripping what is hindering us in that away.

Don't misunderstand - I'm not picking particularly on the makers of this video or the people in it. I am talking about a "meta-level" trend, of something bigger that's going on. Something that we don't seem to talk about.

This is not a criticism of the website above, but is in a related area of our sub-culture. Why do so many pastors today appear to believe that part of their calling is to be a constant armchair pundit whose expertise extends to an astonishing number of subjects, and whose work as a pastor leads him to constantly share that expertise through various platforms, and develop a large following far beyond the reaches of his actual flock? Why does this strike anyone as normal, rather than a sign of a profound malaise somewhere not far beneath the surface?

This post has been long enough. But to return to where it began, I feel I at least owe you my stab at a proper definition of what the word "missionary" is used to mean in evangelicalism:

A missionary is someone who has been recognised as having appropriate spiritual gifts and evident Christian character, and set apart by the church of Jesus Christ to give themselves especially to work across one or more barriers (nationality, culture, language, etc.) or in a special outreach (e.g. to the unreached in a particular town or towns) in order to either directly work in the advance of the kingdom of God or in supporting/related tasks. At the heart of the missionary task is pioneering missionary work in forming new disciples and churches in places where they are not, but missionaries are commissioned to work in all kinds of domains behind the front-line as well as on it.

The importance of sex to the gospel

Tim Bayly has explained very clearly and directly here the importance to the gospel of manhood; the whole Christian world today has a vital need to be clear about these important truths: https://warhornmedia.com/2024/08/09/the-gospel-begins-with-sex/ .