Continue in what you have learned...

As Paul languished in a Roman jail, he knew the challenges that would face Timothy. There was no promise of financial support, no guarantee of additional ministry partnerships, no certainty that jail would not be Timothy's future, no clarity on how the church would develop. Everything was uncertain, nothing was obvious, the only firm promise was that the risen Christ would remain with Timothy through the presence of the Holy Spirit

It was to this situation that the aging apostle wrote to his younger apprentice, to my 'dear son.' Paul had run his race and knew that his end was not a long, distant expectation but was to be a soon occurring reality. He longed for Timothy not to give up, not to compromise, not to forget who he was and the plan that God had for his life. Paul wrote many things to Timothy including this great exaltation, But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it 2 Timothy 3v14

It was as if Paul was crying out to Timothy. 'You have learned so much, you have been convinced of this wonderful gospel, don't give up now! Don't throw away everything that you have fought so hard to achieve.' 

This verse has been important to Alison and I over many years! it has come to us a number of different times as a reminder to ensure that we don't slide back into compromise, that we don't give up on the principles that we have been pursuing over many years. God in his grace has opened up to us important truths regarding church life that we have tried to live out, recognising that to do so must be in the context of the Christian community. We cannot be true followers of Jesus unless we are walking in fellowship with others who are seeking to walk on the same path

Looking back on our lives, there are a number of truths that we have become convinced of. Principles relating to the corporate body of Christ, that if we gave them up, would mean that we would become less than the people that God made us to be. Below I have listed some of the issues that have become so important to us:

• A simplicity of church life
• A closeness of relationship
• A passion for prayer
• A growing unity in the local church
• A worldwide vision
• A place for all
• A reality of God's presence
• A love for the lost
• A freedom from unreality

I hope that we can continue to pursue these principle together with others on the same journey

Marks of a Movement

I listened recently to a very interesting podcast by Australian Steve Addison called 'Marks of a movement' in which he outlined five key points that mark a Christian movement. Not just principles that would see a church or ministry grow but ones that mark a movement of rapid development that multiplies quickly. He used the Methodist movement under John Wesley in the 18th century as an example, similar principles were seen in the ministry of Howell Harris and Daniel Rowlands during the same period in Wales. 

The five principles were as follows:

1. White hot faith
2. Commitment to a cause
3. Contagious relationships
4. Rapid mobilisation
5. Flexible methods

Having been struck by these principles, I looked into Scripture to find support for each of the points 

1. Matthew 22:37 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. No half-hearted commitment 
2. Matthew 28:19,20 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you
3. John 4:39-42 Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman's testimony, “He told me everything I ever did.” So when the Samaritans came to him, they urged him to stay with them, and he stayed two days. And because of his words many more became believers. They said to the woman, “We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world.               John 1:40-42 Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, was one of the two who heard what John had said and who had followed Jesus.  The first thing Andrew did was to find his brother Simon and tell him, “We have found the Messiah” (that is, the Christ). And he brought him to Jesus.                           Also Cornelius in Acts 9
4. Luke 9 Jesus sends out the twelve and Luke 10 Jesus sends out the seventy-two. Both happened within two years of Jesus starting his ministry.                                                                             Mark 5:18 As Jesus was getting into the boat, the man who had been demon-possessed begged to go with him. Jesus did not let him, but said, “Go home to your own people and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you.” So the man went away and began to tell in the Decapolis how much Jesus had done for him. And all the people were amazed. Also John 4 as above shows the Samaritan women being mobilised quickly
5. Different ways that the gospel spread demonstrating flexible methods
1. Acts 3. People respond to an individual healing at the temple
2. Acts 5. Many healed and people impacted
3. Acts 8. People scattered through persecution and preached wherever they went
4. Acts 8. Philip sent to one man - the Ethiopian
5. Acts 9. Saul converted with no human involvement                
6. Acts 9 Tabitha raised from dead and impacted whole of Joppa
7. Acts 10. Cornelius has a vision and then gathers his family and friends                                                                                         

Marks of a stationaryment (opposite of movement!)

1. Luke-warm faith
2. Either commitment to the status quo or no commitment to a cause
3. Either non contagious relationships or lack of relationships
4. Slow or non existent mobilisation
5. Inflexible methods

It is difficult, when you are in an environment of long-term decline as in the church in Wales, to find faith for God to do something as wonderful as initiate a movement. We long for God simply to halt the seeming inexhaustible decline in the churches, let alone do something that would see this trend reverse. The question perhaps that I need to ask myself is not so much is God willing, but am I willing to play my part?

Note

Steve Addison's podcast is called 'Movements with Steve Addison' and can be found on iTunes

Other Voices

The Bible, particularly the Gospels, is full of 'other voices.' Voices not of The Father nor the Son, but of ordinary people interacting with the divine story. There is space in the narrative of salvation to hear how other voices interact with His-story. In fact it appears that the story of the unfolding drama of redemption is only complete when it is over laid with our own story. The voice from heaven can be more clearly heard when it is seen involved with and in contrast to, our own voice

Christian faith rooted in the family and home

Some more thoughts from my dissertation entitled 'An investigation into home based mission in South Wales using historic and contemporary examples; could these examples show a way forward for the welsh churches in the twenty-first century?'

Martin Holland

Christian faith rooted in the family and home

‘ How could a small Judean sect… expand its ranks steadily for more than two centuries in the face of often sporadic and local, sometimes consistently legislated, opposition?’¹ There are many possible answers to this question but interestingly, Joseph H. Hellerman in his book, The Ancient Church as Family, gives a number of characteristics of voluntary associations including churches in the ancient Roman world that led to successful growth. These characteristics, including ‘common meals, social inclusiveness, exclusive allegiance and familial emphasis’² are seen as part of the reason for the associations’ success and particularly the churches emphasised them for their own benefit and growth.

A look through the New Testament sees a powerful expression of Christian churches as family. Words such as brother,³ sister, ⁴ family,⁵ home⁶ and brotherhood ⁷ abound in the New Testament. This emphasis can be seen as one that underpins much of the life of the New Testament church and one that can also be seen in periods of Welsh church history. Commenting on Howell Harris, the famous 18 ^th century revivalist, the historian Geraint Tudur says, ‘like many other lay preachers in the Evangelical Revival, he began by conducting meetings in his own home in which he was joined by his mother, his friends and neighbours.’⁸ How mission would be different if the majority of missional activity started this way.

Therefore there is a challenge to be faced as much of current Welsh ecclesiology is focused on religious meetings in religious buildings conducted by religious leaders. This emphasis has led to the Christian message being separated from normal, everyday life and rooted in a meeting dominated church structure. Others believe that this should not be the case. ‘ We believe that church should happen wherever life happens. You shouldn’t have to leave life to go to church.’⁹ The family, in its various forms, is surely an ideal environment as a base for church and missional activity. Seeking to re-route church life back into the home and family would require significant changes in leadership, ministry and training, as well as the need to think through how communion, worship, discipleship, teaching and other aspects of church life would take place.

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¹ Hellerman, Joseph H., The Ancient Church as Family, Fortress Press, Minneapolis, 2001, p.1
² Hellerman, Joseph H., 2001, p.6
³ Acts 9:17, Romans 14:15, 1 Corinthians 16:12
⁴ Romans 16:1, James 2:15, 2 John 13
⁵ Act 7:14, Galatians 6:10, Ephesians 3:15
⁶ Acts 18:26, Philemon 2, 
⁷ 1 Peter 2:17
⁸ Tudur, Geraint, Howell Harris From Conversion to Separation 1735-1750, University of Wales Press, Cardiff, 2000, p.64
⁹ Cole, Neil. Organic Church: Growing Faith Where Life Happens. Jossey Bass, San Francisco, 2005, p.24 

Mission restored to the heart of the church

A couple of years ago I completed my MA in missional leadership, the following comes from my dissertation entitled 'An investigation into home based mission in South Wales using historic and contemporary examples; could these examples show a way forward for the welsh churches in the twenty-first century?'

Martin Holland

Mission restored to the heart of the church

David Bosch and others have for some years been emphasising the Missio Dei,¹ the mission of God. This view locates the primary instigator and sustainer of mission in the life and nature of God himself and encourages Christians to participate in the mission in which God is already engaged.

‘Mission is thereby seen as a movement from God to the world; the church is viewed as an instrument for that mission. There is church because there is mission, not vice versa.’²

One of the key lessons to be learned therefore is that mission should become rooted at the heart of all with which Christians are involved. It should not be some adjunct that certain gifted and qualified people pursue, it is the reason that the Christian community exists at all. What is needed is a ‘fresh commitment by many to restore mission to the heart of the church - not simply as an added extra but as an integral part of the church’s ethos.'³

Alan Hirsch goes one step further than Bosch and possibly offers a different emphasis that possibly could help church leaders. Hirsch talks about Missional DNA (mDNA) and argues that in the same way that DNA carries information necessary for healthy plants to reproduce, so mDNA is present to enable God’s people to reproduce the life of God in other individuals.

'Institutional church attempts to organise through external hierarchical forms whereas organic missional movements organise through healthy mDNA coding embedded into each individual cell then released rather than controlled.' ⁴

Alan Roxburgh and Fred Romanuk argue that lasting missional transformation ‘ cannot be done by large-scale plans imposed on people.’⁵ Alan Hirsch agrees when he says that ‘all great missionary movements begin at the fringes of the Church’⁶ Leaders might do well to look at this emphasis and seek to find ways to embed this missional desire in the lives of the congregations rather than seek to simply organise a structure and hope that mission becomes the result.

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¹ González, Justo L., Essential Theological Terms, Westminster John Knox Press, Louisville, 2005, p.111
² Bosch, D.J. Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission, Orbis, Maryknoll NY, 1991, p.390

³ Campbell, Alexander, Mission 21 - A Report on Church Planting in the UK since 2000, Mission 21, 2006, p. 4

⁴ Hirsch, Alan, The Forgotten Ways, Brazos Press, Grand Rapids, 2006, p.77
⁵ Roxburgh, Alan & Romanuk, The Missional Leader, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, 2006, p.101
⁶ Hirsch, Alan, The Forgotten Ways, Brazos Press, Grand Rapids, 2006, p.30 

If You Always Do...

Henry Ford didn't invent the car, neither did he invest mass production. 'All' he did was to produce a car cheaply enough that middle class Americans could afford to buy, the Model T.  He is reported to have said, 'if you always do what you've always done you will always get what you've always got"

To be blunt about it, Henry Ford not only was wrong, he was catastrophically wrong. Although we should not be too hard on him because we perhaps do not understand the context in which he spoke or what he was trying to say through the comment. Ford, like all great industrialists knew that to maintain and grow their market share, they had to constantly develop a better understanding of their consumer and also improve the manufacturing process to better meet the consumers' needs. 

Perhaps the motivation behind Ford's famous quote was to make it clear that to have a different output there must be a different input. Continuing to do the same thing will not result in better outcomes. Henry Ford's comments were perhaps a rallying call to continually seek to make changes to improve performance

How is all this relevant for Christians in a rural Welsh, twenty-first century context? There seems to be evidence that many Christians here are committed to continuing with their current practise of church life and expecting the results to somehow significantly improve. It is as if we are saying, 'One hundred years ago we set a meeting time, choose some hymns, organised a preacher and half the village would attend. Now we do exactly the same and hardly anybody turns up!' Perhaps we think, like Henry Ford's words imply, that if we carry on doing what we've done in the past, eventually we will get the same results - people will start to come again. 

However the reality is that this has not been the case for many years and probably never will be again. 

The gospel is still 'the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes (Romans 1:16) but our methods are not working and perhaps we must at last face the reality that they never will. There is an important truth to face; we are to seek God not just for the message but also the method, not just what to say, but how to say it. 

For I did not speak of my own accord, but the Father who sent me commanded me what to say and how to say it (John 12:49)

But when they arrest you, do not worry about what to say or how to say it. (Matthew 10:19)

In his book, The Medium is the Massage, Jerome Agel argues that how a message is presented significantly influences, not only how the message is received, but the very nature of the message itself.  Could it be that by continuing with methods that are not working, we are inadvertently changing the actual message itself? Could we be changing the gospel from a powerful, relevant, life giving reality to an out of date, irrelevant, un-connected message that interests very few?

To return to Henry Ford, he was obviously not talking about the impact of a post-modern and post-Christendom culture. However in our current context, perhaps we should change his saying to this: 'if you always do what you've always done, you will never again get what you've always got.'

There surely must be a better way!

Martin Holland 

Incarnation

According to Wikipedia, which surely is the font of almost all knowledge, incarnation literally means 'embodied in flesh or taking on flesh.' This sounds a bit boring and does not carry the weight of the incredible truth that is revealed in the Bible

When The Word became flesh and dwelt among us (John1:14) it meant that:

The God who created the universe became a person

He was squeezed through the birth canal of a teenage virgin

He suckled on the breasts of the Virgin Mary, his mum

God not only took on flesh and became flesh but 'felt' flesh for the first time

God tasted and drank and chewed and swallowed and defecated and urinated

He had an internal heart beat that he could feel when he touched his own wrist or neck 

God could look up at the sky through lens fixed in his eyeballs

God could sence hot and cold and needed to change his environment to deal with both situations, for example put on extra clothes when he was cold

He existed, for the first time, in one place at one time

God could have felt his own feet kicking stones on a dusty road whilst the sun beat down on his head making him thirsty

God became a bloke; a living, breathing, sweating, talking, thinking, laughing, crying, labouring, walking, sleeping, average looking bloke. 

Jesus was and is utterly, totally and completely human, he knows what it is to deal with real issues, with real people, in a real world as a real man because he is one!

This and far more is what the incarnation is all about. Oh, and by the way, he is also the eternal, omnipotent, perfect, glorious, creator, God and Lord of all things. One worthy of my worship