I was being trained by my MTS apprentice the other day and he reminded me that I'm not the best at saying things clearly and concretely and simply (I have other superpowers). More than that, he stressed the importance of sometimes being blunt and putting stuff out there, especially when speaking from the front.

I think he's got a good point. The hangups I have about being blunt are:

1) I really don't like it when this is the only weapon a church leader has in his arsenal. The church aren't doing what I want so I'll tell them off publically (or maybe run a training course...).

2) I think that if this is used too often, and other things aren't also done then the bluntness ends up being discouraging.

3) I don't want to come across as a leader who's angry.

There are natural 'elders' in the church, those who because of spiritual gifts practise oversight of the congregation even though they are not ordained. There are also natural leaders in the church who because of their natural office ought to practise oversight in the congregation even though they are not ordained.

I want Crossroads to emphasise the importance of the second type of natural leaders - the husbands, parents, household leaders and men. I want the church to know that the most important structure is not the small group but the household devotion. I want us to spend as much time strengthening the natural structures in our church as the programmed structures.

And I suspect that these structures will provide much more organic opportunities for evangelism, edification, hospitality and the concrete application of gospel truth.

Ecclesiastes' observations about work and wisdom and pleasure in a meaningless, mortal and twisted world under the sun are true for ministry too, from a human point of view..

Under the sun ministry, too, is meaningless toil. One man's ministry is a deadend, plateaued numbers, minimal conversion. Another man comes along, does the same thing, and yet is massively blessed. This is a miserable business.

One man gives his life to God, makes great sacrifices for the gospel and his wife is diagnosed with cancer and dies, leaving him with four kids to look after. Another man is corrupt and selfish and yet is making millions of dollars a year and has a happy family.

Meaningless! Meaningless! says the teacher. Utterly meaningless!

This is why we need to fix our eyes not on what is see, but what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

We have gotten a little bit creative with our hospitality (aka 'pre-evangelism') events. It's not necessarily appealing to be invited to a BBQ with a bunch of Christians you don't know. It's also pretty easy to forget to ask any non-Christian friends along to just-a-BBQ.

Giving our hospitality events a bit more razzamatazz has made them fun and also more exciting to invite people to. Some recent examples:

• Night walk up the Cascades walking track
• Brunch along with short talk/practical on the ABC of car maintenance.
• Wii night.
• We're also asking an SMBC mission team to prepare some kind of academic seminar on ... ancient mesopotamian love-myths or something equally esoteric so that we can run a Christian equivalent of a Compass show.
  

What's next? We'll see...

Why mention getting drunk?

1. It is a sin the Ephesians are particularly struggling with. Perhaps especially because of sexual immorality too. After all sexual immorality is mentioned a lot in preceding verses, and marriage gets the biggest plug of all the issues in the subsequent section.
   
2. It is a sin that Christians generally struggle with and shoudl be mentioned.
3. Alcohol has a pervasive influence on behaviour. The influence that leads to selfish lack of control is contrasted with the Holy Spirit's influence that leads to selflessnes and self control.
4. These verses particularly have the church gathering in view (see for example the references to singing). In the context of a meal, drunkenness should not be the outcome, but spiritual service in love (see 1Cor 11). I like the idea that this is part of the vibe in this verse.
   

Conversations about our working lives must not fit into the same category as conversations about sport and the weather. They should fit into the same category and Bible reading and evangelism and sexual temptation.

You can get yourself down and get crabby at your church if you don't have a rough idea of what a good turnout should look like in your church with all the givens (age and stage of congregation, degree of 'alignment with the vision', amount of advertising and adviting). Here's the Xrds breakdown, with a church partnership of around 70 people:

• Scary things (like doorknocking): If you get one person who isn't paid by the church to be there, you have a good turnout.
• Small things (like our gift collectives, an MTS conference or something): If you get 10% there (=7 people), you have a good turnout.
• Big things (like annual church conference or a whole-church community event): If you get 50% there (= 30 people) you have a good turnout.

I always count staff in my headcounts. I think it's a good principle, to realise we are not just there to run things, but to participate. I also "almost-count" people who take the effort to give apologies. It means that they wanted to come and are with us in spirit.

Paul chose not to use his right to payment for gospel preaching. Sometimes he says this is in order to combat the problem of idleness (1Thessalonians 2). But in Corinth, he says it was to distance himself from other teachers who gained cudos through receiving payment (2Cor 10-13).

I can think of one example of where we might, in Australia, also choose to refuse our rights for the sake of the reputation of the gospel. One day I will give my Board of Management a headache by asking them to implement this:

Refusing lawful tax-breaks and fringe benefits for the sake of the gospel.
Many non-Christians see big churches apparently abusing the tax-breaks that religious organisations get and are scandalised. It would be very wise for churches to deliberately choose not to use our rights in this area.

I have introduced a few new rules into our public meetings about guest missionary slots or other guest slots, be it someone from the Bible Society or whatever:

1. No longer than 3 mins. We have very few things in our meetings that run longer than 3 minutes. Guests often go fror 7mins or more. This is disproportionate, and rarely helpful. A guest is going to have as much success in generating interest and raising awareness with my church in 3mins as they are in 7mins.
2. No more advanced technology than we normally use. If we don't use video regularly, they can't. If we don't use powerpoint regularly, they can't. At the moment we do neither, so neither can they. This is because:

• Our tech support are not well-practised at using this stuff, so it's a big risk.
• I can't be sure that the production values of our guest will be high or not. I don't want dodgy videos filling up time in our meetings, doing a disservice to our guest's cause. If we have a policy, I don't have to say this stuff!
• It is jarring for the general tone, vibe and style of our meetings to have sudden jumps in technology.
  

I am going to launch into Christian Reflections once more, but with fewer posts and more often. This is my goal.

The blog began when I was having lots of ideas jumping into my head, lots of discussions and suggestions and reflections, but not way to store or express them. Now my role in church leadership has changed, so that the vast bulk of my thoughts and reflections are being processed, implemented or rejected in the day-to-day life and structure of my church.

Perhaps I can catch more of these reflections if I post more regularly.

For me and those older than me, those strongly influenced by the MTS vision, 'training' has strong and very positive connotations. It's a shibboleth - "Oh him, he's ok... but his ministry is not training-centred"; and it's a panacaea - "I've noticed a problem in our church.. I'm gonna write a training course on it!"

But I've noticed that it's a little less attractive to the "next generation". Perhaps the word has just grown tired. Perhaps a lot of the training we have actually delivered has been dull, or sub-standard, so the word has been drained of value.

But could it possibly be that there has also been a subtle cultural shift that removes interest in the training product? I can think of two reasons:

1. With wiki this and google that, we don't see the need for an expert training us. If we need to find out how to lead Bible Studies, we'll just download something from DesiringMarsHill.org.
2. With the often noticed reluctance to commit, why would I want to be trained in preparation for some future task that I am reluctant to commit to?
   

Sunday School:

1. Sunday School, Sunday School, Sunday School. Like Growth Groups, it's not explicitly taught in Scripture and yet is assumed to be necessary. But there are problems: it's another program, if you only have one public meeting then it removes members from the public meeting, it removes the church responsibility of ministry to kids from parents, it takes kids out of the wider church community.
   
2. Sunday School as a way of contacting parents from the community. Are we dishonest? Do we tell them up-front that we will be indoctrinating their children about the Christian faith. They may not seem to care. But that's because they may assume we're just teaching morals. We should tell them that they should care, rather than playing on their ignorance.
3. Do we have an option for parents who want to come to church, want their five year old to be looked after, but don't want them indoctrinated?
4. I think we should have a pretty low cut-off age for Sunday School. Perhaps 9 years old?

Children's talks:

1. "Adults get more out of the children's talk than the sermon." That's a reason for improving sermons rather than adding children's talks.
2. "Adults get more out of the children's talk than the sermon." That's not the primary purpose of children's talks, and yet it is often the primary reason given.
3. Are the children's talks actually good for the children? Or is it really something cute for the parents and something that communicated family-friendliness?
4. I have never seen children's talks that don't make the church meeting over-casual and overly-"folksy". It may be cute and educational and family-nice... but does it contribute to the seriousness and profundity of preaching and prayer?

Other options:

1. Perhaps a more important thing than a Sunday School program is having other adults in the church who relate to the congregation's kids as individuals. A mentoring program for children will communicate to them that they matter to the church, apart from their parents.
2. You could just run a beefed-creche every week, rather than a resource heavy Sunday School. Then put energy into other options.
3. You could run a good children's program on another night of the week.
4. You could just run really good quarterly holiday programs.
5. You could set up a couple of the Growth Groups to include a children's talk-type element, rather than junking up the public meeting with that.
   

I'm currently overseeing an inter-church IT group. It's a good idea, but I'm not doing an awesome job.

It was a reaction against our small churches having disorganised IT. It goes like this: a whole lot gets done by an over-eager volunteer. Then no-one updates the content. And they get a job interstate. And the domain name is not renewed. And only one person can do the tech support. And. And. And.

We are now much more organised... and are also very unmotivated.

So I'm now trying to think how to, with little available time and energy to inspire and energise the team. Should I send them out to dinner together? Should we take on some mammoth, technically demanding task? Should blow it all up and start again?

I like the idea of us being a virtual IT community, with minimal time wasted on meetings. But the reality is, I think, that if you want high degrees of ownership and empowerment you need to have a human face. You need to be letting down Mikey, not letting down an internet mailing list.

Also, to have a high degree of ownership you need to feel in control and in charge. So the challenge is to correct against the over-correction. I need to let our IT guys get excited about something and make a mess of things... without going to the extremes of old and without controlling them too much.

In the end, I need to channel some of that energy into getting them excited about doing the routine things I want them to do.

And I don't want to put too much energy into this particular group, because I am a preacher and an evangelist, not an IT manager. And I want a pony. And a laser gun. And I want Mark Driscoll to be our associate minister. And I want a gigantic water slide.

See my addresses on the Crossroads website. What do you think?

Addressing Non-Christians

I'm not sure of the exact numbers, but probably 1/3 - ½ of the people there will be non-christians. I (the groom) admit that I honestly don't know what it's best for you to say to them. I ask that you think about what will be helpful for them. If any of these very un-thought-out thoughts seem good or useful, then feel free to use them, but it's fine to not use them:

• Remember this isn't the only chance these people are likely to come into contact with Christianity/christians (they at least know us for a start). So it might be helpful to think about what you could say that'll make it easier for Christians to share the gospel with them in the future, or which makes them more open to the gospel. E.g. You could criticize the idea that “religion and politics are taboo topics” or “don't talk religion or politics” which, of interest to the left-leaning person fosters ignorance and a lack of understanding between people; which keeps relationships at a more superficial level; and which gets in the way of true tolerance and graciousness because it's based on the premise that you can only get along peacefully and lovingly with people different from you, if you censor your differences.

• I feel it can be unhelpful to say a lot of the things which often start with “and if you're not a christian here.....”. Maybe it's better to mostly just speak to everyone as being under God's wrath and needing forgiveness.

• Perhaps we (the groom and the bride) are a helpful point of connection with the non-christians there. They are hearing about what is central and most important in our lives, and our greatest hopes, loves and joys and fears (Heb 4:1).

Addressing the Bride and Groom

The “St.John's Hobart Presbyterian Church Order of Service for Marriage” describes the sermon as “Words of Counsel – the Minister offers the Bride and Groom a few words of counsel and presents them with a gift of the Bible”.

I (the groom) seem to remember hearing talks at weddings (of Christians) where the minister addressed the bride and groom, commending either the Bible or following God to them in their married life. Perhaps this happened in connection with presenting the Bible to the bride and groom? Anyway I felt it created the impression that somehow the Minister was the true religious one, who believed the Bible and that following God and his ways is good and right, whereas the bride and groom aren't truly committed to God in their own right, but will only believe and remain churchgoers with the constant exhortation, reminding, and encouragement of their pastor. Now, I know that exhortations and encouragement are important parts of the life of the church and the salvation of people including ourselves, however on this occasion, I'd rather sacrifice calling on us to follow God or the Bible in order to avoid re-enforcing the idea that “the church faithful are the product of the power and influence of the institution of the Church” or similar ideas. Although it's true that God may use words of ministers to sustain our faith, it's also true that:

• the bride and I will stand because God – not you – is able to make us stand

• We believe the Bible and in the goodness of following God ourselves, and not necessarily any less than you do. We don't necessarily need your (a minister's) encouragement and call to follow God any less than you need ours.

• I a sense we do believe “in and of ourselves” in that God's spirit is in us and we're new creations, and we don't need anyone to teach us, nor is our faith dependent on any man.

• You're not an intrusion on the wedding – some vestige of tradition or the historical place of the Church in society. Rather you're there at our invitation with the expectation that in speaking from the Bible and of God, you'll speak to us words we long to hear and be reminded of, and to declare to those present things we would want to say.

• A minister telling us to believe something doesn't make us believe something – we mostly believe if we can see for ourselves it's true.

Perhaps, if you want to call upon us to follow God or the Bible, then just do it in a way that acknowledges that you're reminding and encouraging us to do what we're already deeply committed to doing.

Richard Dawkins in his “Root of all evil?” TV program for instance had some of the false ideas about why people believe that want to avoid re-enforcing:

“The only truth they need is God – God as interpreted for them by their pastor.”

“...Believing because you've been told to believe rather than believing because you've looked at the evidence.”

“...Religion is about turning untested belief into unshakable truth through the power of institutions and the passage of time.”

Here are the suprisingly detailed but surprisingly wise instructions given me by a couple I am to marry this year:

Regarding Heaven and Hell

I feel there's a danger in getting married and having a big celebration and a beautiful ceremony, that the event will automatically communicate that our great hope and goal in life is to be married... Even the impression that during our wedding ceremony, our focus and joy in life for that hour is temporarily on each other rather than God is to be avoided...

Weddings and entering marriage are often thought of, and spoken of in heaven like language. “Happily ever after”. Marriage can be seen as the great goal and destination in life and a secure permanence and belonging. Entering a state of blessedness or bliss. Even the Bible talks a bit about the goodness of marriage (Prov. 5:18-19; 12:4; 18:22, 19:14; 31:10) We hope to have joy in marriage, but we're not placing upon it expectations that only heaven and God will meet. Our hope is heaven – of knowing God, his kindness and forgiveness now and forever.

• Our great delight will not be in the wonderfulness of each other but in the gloriousness of God. Making each other our great delight and love at the expense of God would be as much of a waste and as meaningless as a parent placing their delight in and giving their love to their pet mouse rather than their child.

• Our sense of meaning, roots, permanence and belonging won't be in marriage, house or children. All those will pass away – we'll enter heaven unmarried – brother and sister in the church, which will be married to Christ and our earthly home will be gone.

• Despite the marriage vows to serve each other, the LORD is our helper, our ever-present help in trouble.

• Our great goal and destination in life is to enter the true heaven and enjoy God's affection forever.

• Our great earthly joy (even on our wedding day) is nothing other than the embarrassingly good goodness of knowing who the true and living God is, knowing that he is a very great, holy and righteous God, and that we were crucified on the Cross with him so that our very great sins are paid for and he loves us and will treat us kindly forever.
  
  

Marriage is also thought of and spoken of in hell-type language. (perhaps starting out as heaven, or expected to be heaven, but turning gradually into hell). A place of oppression, tears and unending suffering. Or maybe just a loss of going out with mates and all other pleasurable freedoms in life. the bride and I certainly fully expect many difficulties and pains as we live together. We've already caused each other pain, even without either of us being unloving or “to blame”. Even the Bible talks about the troubles and trials of marriage (Prov. 19:13; 27:15-16; 21:9, 19; 25:24, Matt 19:10, 1Cor 7:28). the bride and I aren't going to enter hell through marriage either. Though painful times may come, they are all for our good and the good of the Church and given to us by God who is loving us – not by God who's abandoned us and is against us as in hell, so we have hope and joy in salvation whatever earthly pain may come. The LORD is with me; I will not be afraid. The LORD is my helper; what can man (or my spouse) do to me? (Ps 118:6)

1. "Believer-baptists accuse us of baptising unregenerate people, but believer-baptists do it all the time! How can they live with the fact that people fall away?"

This is unfair. What the believer-baptist is saying is that infant-baptists *delieberately* baptise people who are not regenerate.

For an infant baptist, the church kid who chucks in the faith in high school is a true member of the visible church who has betrayed of their ultimate calling. For the believer baptist, the convert who falls away was never a true member of the visible church - their membership was a sham.

2. "Don't call us 'infant baptists", call us 'convenant baptists'".

Seems sneaky to me. Believer-baptists believe in covenants too, and they believe that baptism is a sign of the covenant. They just happen to believe that the covenant is restricted to regenerate believers.

3. "I don't want my kid to go to Hell. Therefore infant baptism is true"

This is emotional, immoral and illogical:

• Emotional: Things are not true cause we want them to be true.
• Immoral: Why can you sleep better knowing *your* kid won't go to Hell, but don't care two hoots about the child of the non-Christian?
• Illogical: It does not necessarily follow that belief in infant baptism means belief in salvation of your kid.

4. "Baptism is God's promise.... we raise our kids in faith not in fear"

Belief in infant baptism does not mean belief that your kid will go to heaven. Clearly many kids from Christian families fall away from the faith and *don't* go to heaven. So there is some fear, isn't there? And if kids from Christian families don't go to heaven, what do we make of God's alleged 'promise'?

We need far more clarity here. I would prefer to remove these vaguely worded promises altogether. But for the sake of clarity let's map out three possible infant-baptist views:

• Presumptive regeneration: Baptism is a sign of God's promise of regeneration and eternal salvation. We presume that all children of Christians are regenerate and predestined. We know that in the mystery of God's will some are not, but our default position, and expectation, is that they are. (I don't like this view, but it is the one where is 'faith not fear' sort of logic works best)
  
• Sign of external blessings: Baptism is a sign only of the external blessings of belonging to the visible church and hearing the gospel, nothing more. Baptism, then says nothing about the salvation of the individual.
• Sign of internal and external blessings: Baptism is a sign of God's promise of regeneration and eternal salvation. But we do not give it to children of Christians because we presume they have received the reality. Rather, we consider that it is fitting to give them the sign of regeneration, even though they aren't necessarily regenerate.

5. "Household baptisms in Acts."

Whatever.

6. "We believe in the unity of the covenants."

So does a believer baptist. We both believe that there are some points of discontinuity. The believer baptist just draws the line at a slightly different point.

A strength of Reformed theology is that it is integrated and it joins the dots between its various doctrines really well. The problem is that as a result, Reformed theologians can often argue that every peculiar Reformed doctrine is central and fundamental to the gospel itself. I once read an article that said that Amillenialism, paedobaptism, presbyterian government and limited atonement were all totally central to the gospel and to deny any of them was to let the gospel itself crash down in a heap.

1. Believers-baptism is the default position. It does take time and care to argue for infant baptism, just as it takes time to argue for predestination or the Trinity or the two natures of Christ. This doesn't necessarily make it 'too many steps of extrapolation'. Some theological structures just take time to establish. Especially if we are clearing the ground of pre-existing ideas and assumptions.
2. Baptism is never defined in Scripture as being only for believers. It is often used in metanomic figures of speech (eg Rom 6, Gal 3) to stand for repentance, faith and conversion. But this does not mean that baptism is primarily a sign of faith. The closest we come to this is 1Peter 3:21. But even here, is God saying 'baptism can only be given to someone who is capable of a rational pledge of conscience' or 'baptism is only true, saving baptism when it is accompanied by a rational pledge of conscience'?
   
3. Better to see baptism primarily as a sign of God's grace, God's gospel, God's promises. Adult converts receive the gospel, and hence the sign of the promises of the gospel. Children are raised under the preaching of the gospel, raised inside the visible church. On this grounds alone, it is fitting to mark them with the sign of the gospel which has been held out to them from birth. But more, the OT and NT argue that God has a 'general electing love' for the physical offspring of his people (see 8 below). Baptising them is an expression of this love.
   
4. I like the section in Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion on infant baptism. A lot of arguments for infant baptism that have become simplistic and sloppy in the hands of later apologists - such as 'Let the little children come to me' - are written with care and subtlety by Calvin.
5. A believers-only view of the visible church feels very 'modern': a voluntary society of individuals. Do you know what I mean?
6. From a believers-baptism point of view, it is hard to know how to make sense of children of Christians. Are they the same as any other non-Christian guest? Not really. Surely they are 'members of the church' in some sense.
7. Baptising a child at birth is said to be artbitrary and without scriptural warrant. At the same time, most believer-baptists hold off on baptism until some arbitrary point. Few believer-baptists baptise confessing two-year-olds. If we are going to baptise kids of Christian parents at some abitrary point, perhaps birth is as representative as any other time.
   
8. John 1, Romans 2 and other such passages are not saying that physical descent has no significance whatsoever. They are merely saying that physical descent is not the *necessary* nor *sufficient* ground for eternal salvation. Romans 3, 9, 11 and 15 all teach us that there is significance to physical descent. There is a 'general electing' love of God as well as a 'individual electing' love of God.
9. Colossians 2 does not say (as some infant-baptists argue) that baptism *is* the New Testament's circumcision. There are four steps (1. In Christ circumcised 2. With circumcision of sinful nature 3. Having been buried with Christ 4. Through baptism) not two steps (1. In Christ circumcised 2. Through baptism). But what it does teach is the the spiritual significance of circumcision and baptism is the same. They may not be identical but they are parallel.
10. We must pay more careful attention, brothers, to the way we use Covenant of Grace and New Covenant. As a rule, the believer-baptist has a stronger emphasis on the distinctions between Old and New Covenant. They tend to use 'New Covenant' to speak about the things that are particularly unique about the new dispensation. Infant-baptists are a little more vague. 'New Covenant' can mean simply 'the Covenant of Grace as experienced in the new dispensation'. For a believer-baptist, 'member of the New Covenant' means 'regenerate, predestined person who *will* go to heaven'. For an infant-baptist, 'member of the New Covenant' can often just mean, 'member of the Covenant of Grace, even purely because they are members of the visible church'.
11. Believer-baptists often consider the visible church to be responsible for making sure the church is only made up only of the Elect. It is an "opt-in" ecclesiology: you can only join if you can prove your conversion. You might say the believer baptist *presumes* to purify the visible church. Infant-baptists often consider the visible church to be responsible for accpeting all who confess faith, and disciplining those who betray their confession. It is an "opt-out" ecclesiology: you are only rejected if it your unbelief can be proved. The infant-baptist *assumes* that a person's confession is true unless evidence is given to the contrary.
    

I have been struggling for over a year to convey to Crossroads the importance of a whole-life spirituality, a worshipping God in the everyday outlook.
A word that I think helpfully sums up this goal is 'integrity'. Not just in the sense of 'honest' or something, but in the sense of 'integrated'. This has been a helpful buzzword for the church, but I think we still have a long way to go.
So then I come across the values statement of the 'David Allen Company'. One of their values (they call them 'principles' and 'rules of engagement') is:

• We bring joyful engagement to our work and our lives (aka we have fun)

So then I start thinking. Perhaps John Piper is right in a whole other sense. Perhaps enjoying ourselves, or 'having fun' is the way we can make sure our lives are integrated. At the very least it is one clear proof that our lives are integrated.