Always on the tip of his tongue

The Apostle always has Christ on the tip of his tongue. He foresaw that nothing would be less known in the world some day than the Gospel of Christ. Therefore he talks of Christ continually. As often as he speaks of righteousness, grace, the promise, the adoption, and the inheritance of heaven, he adds the words, "In Christ," or "Through Christ," to show that these blessings are not to be had by the Law, or the deeds of the Law, much less by our own exertions, or by the observance of human traditions, but only by and through and in Christ.  - Martin Luther on Galatians 3:7

If you are a minister of the gospel, then are you one that Paul would recognise, because Christ is always on the tip of your tongue?

If you are a believer in Christ, then is your manner of life one that the Bible would recognise - your cry is always "more of Him!" ?

Measure your Christian life

One measure of Christian life and growth is: how real is eternity to you? And how important is it?

To a healthy Christian, eternity is present, and all-important. He/she lives, as seeing the things which are invisible. Christ is real and present; the evil one is real and dangerous; eternity is glorious and eagerly expected; life is lived hoping to hear "well done, good and faithful servant" and looking forward to the enjoyment of the New Creation. Prayer is precious and valued, and the struggle to establish and maintain it one that is felt and engaged each day.

For an unhealthy Christian, eternity is vague, far off and of little immediate concern. He/she lives as seeing the things that the world sees - money, advancement, pleasure. Christ is distant and of little relevance; evil is a theory that rarely intrudes into daily life; eternity is far off, does not need to be thought much about, and will probably sort itself out; life is lived to pursue and enjoy the good things of this life. Prayer is a few muttered words to satisfy conscience before getting down to the real business.

How is your Christian life doing?

"Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also"

"Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also" - Matthew 6:21.

In context, this line is not saying "your attitude to wealth reveals where your heart is". That would be a true statement, and a Biblical one too. But it's not what this line is saying.

Here, Jesus was saying that where you put your treasure influences where your heart is directed towards. By investing your resources in the kingdom, you will enable and direct your heart to follow. Giving will improve the state of your heart.

Randy Alcorn explains this further in this article. "I’ve heard people say, “I want more of a heart for missions.” I always respond, “Jesus tells you exactly how to get it. Put your money in missions—and in your church and the poor—and your heart will follow.”"

Life in Christ (Charles Spurgeon)

These are a tonic for the soul; Charles Spurgeon preaches Christ to us from the parables, and reminds us that the blessing is obtained simply be believing. Here is the gospel in all its graciousness and freeness towards needy sinners.

These are Kindle links for the UK Kindle store. Volume 1 is free, the others are just pennies. If you follow them and change the ".co.uk" to ".com" you'll get the US store if you have a US-based Kindle.

Life in Christ volume 1

Life in Christ volume 2

Life in Christ volume 3

Volume 1 is also available on Nook, Google Play and Apple Books for free, here.

Two retractions

1) I am always eager to read about the 1950s Hebrides revival for various reasons, including 1) I once knew a man who visited the area at the time and talked engagingly about it and 2) I'm hungry for God - aren't you?

In the past I've recommended Duncan Campbell's autobiographical account of the Hebrides revival. At the start of this year, I mentioned that I was reading Island Aflame by Tom Lennie, a new and edifying historical account of those events. I recommend that you read both, and you will gain a lot from the experience. But if you do, you will be forced to conclude that whilst being used of God in an astonishing way, with the evidence indicating that true revival did go where he personally went, again and again (even to other countries) - and would that God would use any of us even just 1% of how he used him - yet Duncan Campbell did have an unmortified personal problem with fabricating events which simply never happened. A full account of the revival was needed to put the record straight on that.

2) I have also occasionally linked on this blog to edifying and/or incisive pieces written by Douglas Wilson, of Moscow, Idaho (as well as writing some criticisms). As is well known amongst those theologically interested, over the years he has produced a number of good writings on family, education and (with rather more reservations) culture particularly.

However, he also has, and for long has had various unmortified issues (but in more recent years they seem to have moved more to the fore and become significantly more dominant in his output), such as (a sample list, not intended to be comprehensive) 1) an unmortified zest for unnecessary controversy 2) deploying controversy as a recruitment and marketing tool 3) neglecting to engage responsibly and adequately with critics, preferring to brush them off with responses far beneath the level of someone of his education, ability and understanding (and this not just for unworthy challenges, but at all sorts of levels) 4) (related) frequent fundamental unseriousness in his writing style which is not (as his defenders claim) mere misunderstanding of his sense of humour and playfulness, but crosses the line into a regular ongoing refusal to switch out of his default mode and deal with serious issues in a way that respects their importance and which respects the readers 5) straying far outside of his areas of competence and embarrassing himself and the church (such as his recent attempts to argue that overall voter numbers constitute a statistical proof that the 2020 US presidential election was rigged - if you want to suppose it was, please distinguish this from his statistically hopeless arguments for it; I may or may not explain the specifics of this one day) 6) A line increasingly implied of "them and us", "only we are faithful, you have to be with us to be faithful", "unless you're talking about what we're talking about, and doing it in the same way, then you lack discernment" 7) a catalogue of serious and consequential doctrinal errors, of which his particular brand of Christian Reconstructionism is one which is particularly serious and influential, resulting in prodigious amounts of empty and prideful talk and time-wasting across the Internet, instead of the godly edification and challenge which leads to serving the needy and lost. His "objectivity of the covenant" doctrine is also both largely novel and has serious consequences. This list could be considerably expanded.

The sorts of controversies and issues that constantly arise around Douglas Wilson would lead most men to ask "how exactly did we get into the situation where we keep needing to talk about this, and refute this and that crazy thing?". Unfortunately Wilson does not seem to understand that if you regularly attract the wrong company and those who thought they were following you make predictable classes of ruinous errors, you can't always blame this on people failing to understand the full breadth of your vision or pay enough attention to another pile of your writings. At some point, a wise person has to ask why certain classes of problems keep happening and ask, is all the blame on the other side because those people have failed to understand my full vision?

I would very much regret pushing anyone towards the influence of Douglas Wilson and his brand of thinking and acting on the Internet. I condemn nobody who has benefited from any of his efforts or resources, as indeed have I (though even at the beginning of encountering them, 25 years ago, I found the undertone which I thought I detected that nobody else quite knew how to be faithful today in all the world as well as his circle did, hard to stomach).

In many things we offend all, and the number of my own failings and omissions (too many to enumerate) rises up to the heavens. We repent, and Jesus Christ will keep his promise and pardon us, and wash us through his blood. Douglas Wilson makes it clear that this is his faith too, and this is what he preaches when he sticks to the Bible. But, I think that for honesty and clarity it has to be said: of Douglas Wilson's writings the good parts, you can get elsewhere (despite the impression you might sometimes get from him and those around him); and the other parts, could lead you far astray from a productive life of service and into many lost years of useless and empty chatter. "Your manuscript is both good and original; but the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good".

Paedobaptism and a priori argumentation

This piece by Jared Longshore is an archetypal example of paedobaptist argumentation in important aspects.

What I mean by that is as follows. He begins by defining some theological abstractions, and their characteristics (N.B. by this I am not implying that theological abstractions are bad things, or to be avoided in general). Then, he moves from those abstractions to discuss the Biblical evidence in their light. And along the way, he asserts that the abstractions already require, before the New Testament begins, what conclusions can validly be drawn from the New Testament data.

This is the wrong way to approach the question he's addressing. Instead, you should begin with the New Testament's various direct and deliberate explanations of how the New Covenant works, and how it relates to other covenants. From there, you should then work back towards your higher-level/deep abstractions about how God's ultimate covenant of salvation works.

If you fail to do this the right way, then what's going to happen is that your a priori abstractions are going to control the interpretation of the data, instead of being built from the data.

The covenantal paedobaptist may assert that he if he were to do things the way I say, he'd still get the same result, but this raises the question: why doesn't he? Or if I chose to be ruder: actually I don't believe him. If paedobaptist conclusions could be built by starting with the Bible's clear and deliberate explanations of how the New Covenant works, and how it relates to what came before (and what comes "behind"), then paedobaptists wouldn't always choose to carry out their argumentation another way. (And note that the above link is the opening statement of a debate about baptism; it is a basic of debate that you should present your strongest case in relation to your opponent's argument, so this would have been exactly when to do so). Instead, by laying down arguments which then control, a priori, how the New Testement should be read, the Bible is muzzled, and the conclusion is pre-determined by the higher-level abstractions which come in prior to the detailed exegesis, and control its boundaries.

That's how you end up - even in a debate when presenting your strongest arguments - with statements from the paedobaptist side like this one from the above, "thus the burden is on those who would change God’s covenantal pattern in the new covenant". Baptists don't propose to "change" anything. That's a loaded statement. Since the New Covenant contains the full and final revelation of God's purposes, and illuminates, explains and clarifies what was previously in the shadows, it guides the interpretation of what came before and our doctrine of precisely how they relate. Understanding the New Covenant is required first in order to reveal to us how the covenants relate.

This loaded statement also assumes what needs to be proved in multiple ways. How do you know that "God's covenantal pattern" must mean that when the New Covenant comes, the category of "children of Abraham" is going to include the one-generational offspring of Gentile believers? There's a lot of issues of continuity and discontinuity of different kinds that have to be worked through before you can get there. Happily the New Testament has more than enough to get us to the correct conclusion. But you certainly can't conclude "one-generational offspring of Gentile believers are 'in the covenant', and also all receive any covenant sign" without detailed New Testament exegesis, so it can't be asserted a priori. Any argument which asserts it a priori must be, ironically, a priori wrong. And indeed, such an assertion proves too much: if there is indeed (as I believe there is) a final covenant involving the Triune Godhead and the elect, then such a strong assertion would have to result in the conclusion that these one-generational offspring are not only entitled to any covenant sign, but also actually and definitely and always finally saved. Otherwise, we're supposed to conclude that all the "administrations" of the covenant are critically different (at the point which the writer's whole argument is to insist is key, the point which the whole debate is about) from the final covenant itself. That is to say: his argument proves too much; he's ultimately obliged by it ultimately to argue (something which we know is false), that all one-generational offspring of believers are certainly finally saved; otherwise we have precisely the sort of change which he is arguing is already known to be impossible by the time that the Old Testament closes.

"Abraham's physical descendants through the lines of Isaac and then Jacob were all in covenant with God, and their male offspring were thereby required to be circumcised; therefore all the next-generational offspring of Christian believers are also members of the New Covenant and thus should be baptised" cannot be proved by a priori argumentation about God's "covenant of grace" and assertions about how "administrations" of that covenant "must" work. It has to be proved by demonstrating, by good and necessary inference, that this is how the apostles actually explained that the New Covenant operates upon the relevant points of detail. They didn't do this, and their actual explanations point in a different direction.

Stephen Dancer: with Christ, which is far better

Earlier today I heard that my brother in Christ, Stephen Dancer, has gone on ahead and is now in the presence of his Saviour.

I knew Stephen when we were apprentice church-planters and (distance) Bible college students together in Derbyshire. Alongside others (and not including me), Stephen played a notable role in the planting of Ashbourne Baptist Church. He also assisted amongst the saints at Derwent Free Church in Chaddesden (which no longer meets). Stephen subsequently moved to Solihull to help establish Solihull Presbyterian Church, amongst whom he has served ever since (bio here).

The chief characteristics for which I remember Stephen are his spiritual seriousness; his desire to do what he did for the Lord as well as he could, in all sincerity, as one seeking to please God and not men. He loved the Bible, believed in the importance of holiness and prayer, and in serving the people of God. This was reflected in his (very intermittent) blogging (here and here), but experienced by the believers in Solihull from week to week. Such things, you might think, are the common characteristics of true Christian ministers in general. Sadly, all experience shows that this is not so; and whilst there are many who start that way, and there are many who you believe deep down still hold to those things, the fight over the years doesn't go on as it should. With Stephen, I always came away persuaded that with him that he was still walking with Christ and serving him. And as such, I believe that Stephen has now heard his "well done, good and faithful servant", and passed into the presence of his Lord.

Stephen was not old - I don't recall his exact age, but I think he was past 55 and not yet 60. He used his life well and the abiding memory left with me will be his sincere love to his Master, and determination to serve him faithfully whilst here below. As such he "being dead, yet speaks".

How many more times will I have the opportunity to do something for Jesus Christ, and to speak to others about him? Reader, how many more times will you be allowed the privilege of speaking about Jesus Christ? If you intend, when you pass from here, to be known as someone who prayed, someone who served, someone who spoke up for the Saviour, what is it you're doing now and today that will lead to that result? One day we will have no further opportunity, and our eternal record will be cast and sealed. Much of our record is already set. What will we do with that which remains?

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/ .

Lying via selective truth-telling

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-68905041

The above article is a classic in the genre of lying via omission and careful selection of what truths are allowed to be mentioned (as well as the occasional straightforward traditional untruth). Consider (somewhat in the order of mention in the above article):

1. No discussion at all of why the state power company is failing to supply enough power. What factors might be involved? Is a state monopoly an inherently bad idea? What has the level of corruption been in the last couple of decades? How much has been lost over the years to human wickedness? How does level of investment match with growth in level of demand? Is anything being done about any of these issues, really, or is it "same old, same old, don't rock the boat"? Why are none of these questions worth investigating?
   Here, as with many issues, you suspect that the issue contains a substantial man-made component.
   
   
2. It's the hot season in West Africa. It comes every year, at this time, and the temperatures are in the 40s every single day. This, apparently, was also not a piece of context that BBC readers needed to be given. Where's the editor?
   
   
3. Note that the scale of the problem is related to urbanisation and development. People living in the village sleep outside and don't have back-up generators for when the state power company lets them down, and have thus slept and thus lacked diesel generators for several hundred years, since before any state power company existed. But in those days, it was easier to sleep on top of your house (best not to sleep on the ground if there are hyenas or other predators around), and there weren't huge numbers of concrete buildings (and air conditioners from those who do have them) emitting heat into the outside air. i.e. Some problems in developing-country cities are problems of development and symptoms of progress. This context gets mentioned.... nowhere.
   
   
4. "At night it can reach 46C" - no, it can't. That's absurd. How did this line get in the piece? You'd have thought that given that a few paragraphs earlier 48C was given as the maximum temperature reached anywhere at all, in the day, during a heatwave, a journalist or editor might have paused to wonder how it can be reaching 46C at night. Perhaps they could have looked at the BBC Weather page for Mali?
   
   
5. "Since March, temperatures have soared above 48C in parts of Mali, killing more than 100 people" - unlike an earlier, similar, BBC article, this article has slipped in a mention of Ramadan, a few paragraphs later, but you'll have to join the dots yourself. This is a month-long Islamic festival (and the majority of Malians are Muslims - the writer forgot to mention this) in which the Muslim faithful abstain from both eating and drinking (and even in many cases from swallowing their own saliva, which is seen as breaking the fast) between dawn and dusk. This year the festival has - the article omits to mention - coincided with the hot season. The temperature is over 40C in the day, every day. "We were seeing about 15 hospitalisations a day," says Prof Yacouba Toloba, who works at the university hospital in Bamako. "Many patients are dehydrated". Well, yes. And yet the article heavily emphasises that the message for its readers that it's human burning of carbon-based fuels since the Industrial Revolution that is the main reason why Malians have suffered during this time.
   
   
6. "Schools in some areas have closed as a precaution, and people in the Muslim-majority nation were advised not to fast during the Ramadan period which ended recently". Advised by whom? How widely known was this advice? How widely was it followed? Did the 15 hospitalisations a day come from people who followed it, or who didn't? Nobody reading the article will find out, because the journalist had no interest in these questions.
   
   
7. ""We need to plan more for these situations, which will perhaps come back. This time it took us by surprise," adds Prof Toloba." Words fail me.
   
   
8. We are then treated to the scientifically entirely bogus claim that it's possible to determine what the temperature would have been in Mali in March 2024, if we'd burned less carbon-containing fuels in recent centuries. Such claims are based upon computer models, whose results can tell you nothing other than how the computer model behaves. So, a modeller runs the model, then sees what the real-world results were, and then learns how good his model was. He doesn't learn about the real world from this. A perfect illustration of this is the UK Covid-lockdown-that-wasn't in December 2021, when the modellers predicted doom and health-system collapse in the UK if no (fourth) lockdown took place. No lockdown did take place, and the case numbers, deaths and consequences predicted did not happen. From this, any rational modeller learns that his models were severely defective. (Bit of a shame for those who endured the previous three lockdowns and their consequences, and we're still waiting for someone in authority to issue a few mea culpas over that, but I digress....). The idea that you can model the counter-factual of the weather in a particular city in a particular month is a complete inversion of the truth, and the BBC should be ashamed for making this the climax of their piece (the one that, we deduce, they want the reader to go away most impressed by).
   
   
9. "With temperatures expected to remain above 40C in Bamako over the next few weeks, people are trying to adapt to their new normal." The temperature is over 40C in Bamako at this time of year, every year, and has been for the last few centuries. It's West Africa, on the edge of the Sahara desert (where, being a desert, by definition, it's 50C every day) and this is the hot season. There is no basis at all for the BBC to tell its readers that temperatures over 40C are a "new normal". This is simply a gross untruth.
   
   
10. "As sun sets in the capital, Ms Konaté Traoré takes several large mats outside to her yard and lays them down." This is what many people in several West African capitals have been doing every hot season of their lives, or as much of their lives that they've lived in urban centres since moving there from the village. This is because people being able to afford electricity (whether via the state company, or solar panels with attached storage batteries) and afford fans is something that can only happen together with a certain level of financial progress and development. Without that privilege, in the city, you're surrounded by concrete, tin roofs, and other things not conducive to buildings being cool inside. The journalist doesn't deem these things worth mentioning.
    
    
11. "The heat is showing no sign of letting up" - which isn't that surprising, given that the article has been published in the last week of April, and the rainy season arrives at the end of May, or the start of June.

In reality, the principle thing that cools people down in the Sahel area at this time of the year, and has done throughout all the years of urbanisation, is the energy that comes from burning carbon-based energy sources. It's carbon-based energy that allows millions of people (not just 15 a day here) to live in the otherwise unnatural setting of the West African city at all. Even if they have got a solar panel and battery, then this was almost certainly produced in a mine and in a factory and with transport using a lot of carbon-based energy (which they may very well never generate as much power as used in the production and transport). Otherwise, they get cool using water and being outside, as they have done for many centuries. The real threat to people's ability to cool down in the context of current urbanisation is the refusal of Western banks, NGOs and donors to fund the development of better grids because they refuse to fund projects that aren't sufficiently green according to their new standards. But solar farms don't produce at night, and power storage is very expensive (whether in Africa or in the West). As such, in West Africa, "green" power is currently not economic, and not being able to access funds unless the power is sufficiently green means that grid capacity isn't growing at the same rate as demand is, resulting in more power cuts and being very hot at night. The BBC doesn't see this as worth discussing.

You may have different views about the some of the questions above to me. Perhaps you believe that mass-scale green power can be made available in West Africa, at night times, quite easily, in a short time. I'd be glad to have that explained to me, but that's not really my point. My point is that the BBC has an agenda, and they're willing to repeatedly lie by serial omission to push it. These lies don't concern small details. They concern massive gaping facts that are evident to anyone after a few minutes. If you're a professional journalist, these aren't the sort of mistakes you can make by accident.

Have you ever put anything at risk for the Lord?

1 Corinthians 15:30 And why do we stand in jeopardy every hour? 31 I affirm, by the boasting in you which I have in Christ Jesus our Lord, I die daily.

In context, Paul explains that his ministry made sense, and only made sense, in the light of the fact of the resurrection of believers. Jesus Christ is already risen, and believers will also rise - and this is why they live as they do in the present age, offering their lives up for Jesus Christ. This is the rational way to live, because they cannot everything - even if they die, they shall be raised up again. Jesus is risen, and we shall rise too. Hence, risk makes sense - because ultimately, the victory is already won. It makes no sense for believers to jealously guard their comfort, their security, their peace, because these things are not in ultimate jeopardy: the resurrection means that these things cannot be lost in the end. And actually it makes no sense to try to cling on to them as the highest good, because they can't be kept. We shall lose this earthly body, so that we shall rise again in a glorious resurrection body.

I do wonder that if Paul were writing back to churches in the year 2024, if some of them wouldn't respond to him and suggest that he needed a break. "Paul, we're very concerned about you, and the extreme things that you are writing. In jeopardy every hour? This lies far outside the parameters established by our care committee and operational guidelines. You are taking yourself too seriously. Relax. Don't you believe in God's sovereignty? God doesn't need you to do this. We suggest you take a long period of leave for your mental health, and to reflect upon best practices." That is the atmosphere that we are immersed in in the modern West; these are the ideas that spontaneously come to us if we have lived there long enough. But Paul didn't believe in those ideas. He believed in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and his own future resurrection because of it. Do you?

Meekness and Majesty

 I've been singing the beautiful hymn "Meekness and Majesty" since I was a small boy, but only in the last few weeks came across its inspiration.

"He is thy Lord, worship thou him... He is meek, but it is the kind of meekness that likewise takes nothing away from his majesty. The meekness and majesty of Jesus. I wish I could write a hymn about that or compose music about it. Where else can you find meekness and majesty united? The meekness was his humanity. The majesty was his deity. You find them everlastingly united in him. .... the majesty of the man who was God." - "Worship every day of the week", A W Tozer.

Are painless and comfortable deaths possible?

 I can't help noticing that in the media, two separate but linked debates go on in parallel:

• Capital punishment: the trend of opinion in our Western culture is that this is always inhumane, and that no effective means exist for putting someone to death that are not degrading and unconscionably painful.
• Euthanasia: here, we are told that a painless and dignified death is medically and scientifically possible for everyone, and that the only reason why euthanasia isn't generally available is because of cruel and arbitrary legal hurdles, which should be removed.

I'm not, here, going to rehearse the arguments in favour of either one or the other (though, for the record, I believe that capital punishment can be justified and is the proper judicial response to certain crimes such as murder or rape; and that euthanasia defined as the deliberate application of procedures or substances (as distinguished from the contrary declining to apply them) to cause death is morally wrong).

Rather, I'd just like to point out what you've probably already spotted: the things said about the possibility of a painless and dignified death in the case of the two debates are mutually contradictory. If such a death is possible in the case of euthanasia, then it is also possible in the case of capital punishment. Conversely, if such a death is impossible in the case of judicial punishment, then it is also impossible in the case of someone's elective decision to end their own life. Or in other words, in at least one of these two debates on this particular point, the proponents of the arguments for the popular position (against capital punishment, for euthanasia), are lying. They say that a thing is both impossible in one case, and possible in the other, in a direct formal contradiction. A painless and dignified death is either available or non-existent depending on what is being argued for and nothing else. This is deception. People making either argument should have this contradiction pointed out to them, and be challenged as to which of the two they believe to be true: pick one side and then accept the implications, not both or neither depending upon your goal.

Note that here I'm not claiming that you have to either favour both capital punishment and euthanasia, or vice-versa be against both. Either, neither or both could be argued for despite conceding that death either can or cannot be dignified and painless. My point is that if the argument is being made based upon this supposed possibility or impossibility, then the argument has to be consistent; and currently, the arguments are being made based upon the possibility or impossibility of dignity as a central plank of the argument.

The question in general of whether death can or should be made dignified or not, and to what extent (and whether the answer to that depends upon whether the death is a penal infliction or not), is worth exploring. So are the ideas of personal choice and freedom and control in Western culture and how they relate to death. But that will all have to wait for another day.

Time for self-evaluation over Covid?

A little under 4 years ago, across the UK, churches closed their doors and ceased to meet for corporate worship, meekly accepting the UK government's announcement that the worship of Almighty God, unlike in-person food shopping or physical exercise, was a non-essential activity. Church services could, it appeared, be conducted over Zoom or Youtube - whereas everyone was allowed to exercise their own discretion over whether to buy their groceries online or in person.

Whatever you think of this, I hope that we might agree that what should have happened afterwards is that churches carried out an analysis and evaluation of their decisions and responses. When new announcements were being sprung by governments with rapid fire, it could be difficult to step back and think through the principles (though you might also say that there was plenty of time during the lockdowns, and in between the lockdowns, to catch up). But supposing that it was for some reason not possible to do at the time, there's now been a few years since. What are the principles, and how should they be put into practice?

I don't hear of churches or other organisations in the UK doing this. Why not? Do we have principles? What are they and how do they relate and get applied in the difficult cases? Was this event - the making of corporate worship to be illegal - big enough to matter enough that we need to think this through? I like to think that evangelicals have principles, and that they think it's important to think through how to apply them in events of this size. It's been nearly 4 years now... please can we hear something soon?

The year of our Lord, 2024

This year, the Father, Son and Spirit invite us to grow nearer to them. We are invited to have communion with the blessed and Eternal Trinity in prayer and personal worship, in meditating upon the Word, and in the corporate worship and fellowship of God's people.

The year will bring lots of duties of different kinds, according to the station that God has appointed us to in life. There will be a mixture of blessings, challenges, griefs, sorrows and joys, according to his good and perfect and loving will. But whatever else comes to pass, we are assured that there is nothing which need leave us further away from our God and Saviour. If anything does, then that is through our response to it, not through any lack of willingness or resources on God's side to draw us nearer.

It is always helpful at times of pause and reflection in the year to remember that a lot more is possible than we have yet experienced. The Bible teaches this clearly and repeatedly. "If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him!” - Luke 11:13. "Yet you do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures" - James 4:2-3. "But you, when you pray, go into your room, and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father who is in the secret place; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly" -  Matthew 6:6. Christian history and experience teach us too. Currently I am reading "Island Aflame", perhaps the most historically rigorous account that we now have of the 1949-52 Lewis revival (https://www.christianfocus.com/products/3130/island-aflame). There are many people who have known and experienced more of God than we have, and every last one of them was a son or daughter of Adam with the same sinful propensities, and the same glorious Saviour and God of grace, as we have. At a time around 18 years ago I had the privilege of knowing a believer in our own locality who was in Lewis at the time of the revival, and it was such a thrill to hear from him about it and pray with him. The God of the Bible, and the God of all the advances of the Christian church in the past, is alive today. He invites us to know him and walk with him. There is a cost in doing so. But it is nothing compared to the price paid if we waste our lives doing something else.

May 2024 be a year in which God visits our souls, our churches, our prayer meetings, our missions, our families and our nations, to put us down in the dust and to lift up his own glorious name, through our Lord Jesus Christ, Amen.