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The mother was flustered and annoyed as she approached me. "What have you been teaching my boy this morning?!" she demanded, eyes glaring.
I was relaxing over a cup of coffee in the church lounge, enjoying the buzz and chatter, after what I thought had been a particularly excellent session. We had been thinking about the story of Lydia, and how she opened her ears, the Lord opened her heart, and she opened her home to Paul and his companions. The teaching material Click had suggested that I start with a demonstration on how to make purple cloth (you'll remember that Lydia was a seller of Purple in Philippi).
We mixed red and blue food colouring, and one by one the children dipped little squares of torn-up T-shirt into the mixture, and it came out Purple. OK, so it was more a muddy maroon – but you get the picture.
I stood there dumbfounded before Mum, who was on the verge of turning purple herself. "What do you mean?" I asked in my most "let's calm the parent down” voice. "I asked my boy what he had learned in Sunday School this morning," she said. "Dying" the boy replied solemnly. Concerned for the heavyweight subject for her delicate 4-year old, she asked: "Who was dying?" "I was!" replied the boy. Still hoping to rescue the situation, Mum asked the next question expecting the answer: "We go to heaven". "What happens when you die, darling?" "Turn purple!"
Fortunately, Mum roared with laughter when the truth came out. But it was a great lesson for me about language and little ones. Next time, I won't call it dyeing – I'll just say we are going to colour some cloth as Lydia might have done…
For some great training on how not to make more mistakes like this, do join us for the Growing Young Disciples Conference at All Souls, London or in Rugby next year!
This week the National Gallery in London opens a major new exhibition of work by Leonardo da Vinci. It includes nine of his surviving fifteen paintings – a coup for them – and is bound to be a sell-out. Leonardo is famous for much more than painting of course – as a scientist, engineer, inventor, philosopher and writer. He filled umpteen booklets with his notes on anything and everything – all written in his fascinating mirror-image handwriting.
But Leonardo thought words a poor substitute for seeing. He even went so far as to say: “My advice is not to trouble yourself with words unless you are speaking to the blind”. And that got me thinking about another famous figure from history – St Francis of Assisi – when he said: “Preach the gospel at all times; when necessary, use words”.
So, are words really a poor substitute, and only to be used when necessary? It’s certainly true that what we do points people to what we believe. The dad who takes his son to watch Chesterfield every week shows he believes they’re the only team worth supporting. The woman who’s in the gym at 6.00am each morning shows that fitness (and image?) matter more than sleep. And we find this in the Bible too. In Deuteronomy 6 parents are to live in a way that honours God and keep his commands. And when their children see them doing this, they will ask why (verse 20) – wanting to know what the belief is behind their actions.
So is St Francis right? Are actions enough to point people to the gospel?
No. That same chapter in Deuteronomy says this:
“These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.” (Deuteronomy 6 v 6-7) So it’s not “either/or” – it’s “both/and”. We take every opportunity to speak the truth about the good news, and try to live in a way that points people to the truth of what we say.
I find Leonardo da Vinci fascinating, and will be joining the queues at the National Gallery. He was a brilliant man. But I won’t be following his advice. I’ll keep on “troubling myself with words” as I try to point people to the living Word, Jesus Christ.
The Christian publishing world is abuzz with the announcement today that HarperCollins has purchased Thomas Nelson, making it by far the largest Christian publishing organisation in the world. But this piece of business news is of real interest to anyone who buys and reads a Bible (hope that's you!) or Christian books.
HarperCollins already owns Zondervan - the largest US Christian publisher and US publisher of the NIV, and the HarperOne imprint, which publishes material that is much more in the health, religion/spirituality and self-help sections of the bookshop. Thomas Nelson, originally started in Edinburgh, is now based in Nashville. It publishes the New King James Version, and is believed to be the 7th largest Christian publisher in the world.
What may surprise some readers is that the whole conglomerate is owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.
What are we to make of this move?
But how much does this really matter?
Publishing companies like this are less ideologically motivated than, for example, newspapers would be. They will publish what sells, because that is the bottom line. So long as Christian authors are happy to publish their Bible-centred gospel-hearted encouraging books in the same stable that publishes self-help drivel, or outright heresy, then that is fine - the publisher will not silence the evangelical voice if it can turn a profit at it. And of course, any attempt to stifle that voice would see an exodus of authors away from them. They have an incentive not to rock the boat, and keep things sweet.
But the alternative for authors would be to get involved with a Christian publishing company that had Ministry not money at its heart. A company where they know the commercial gain was ploughed back into Gospel ministry, not into mere mammon. A company where the central drive is to prayerfully get people engaging with scripture, and hearing the word of the Lord with clarity and power, not just producing what sells.
Praise God that there are many smaller publishers like that around. Pray that we at The Good Book Company would remain true to this vision for the future.
The anti-capitalists-on-the-steps-of-St-Paul’s saga rumbles on. Somewhere, in a parallel universe, a bunch of demonstrators recently turned up on the doorstep of a large church in central London. Here’s what happened next…
The people who worked for the church went out to chat to the protestors. They didn’t preach to them, they talked with them. They didn’t wear strange dresses, they wore normal clothes.
They pointed out to the protestors that other people wanted to get in to the church so that they could meet together and hear from God’s word together. They invited the protestors to join them, but asked if they would move their tents a little, to create a way of access into the building.
The protestors refused, so the church leaders hired a hall nearby to meet in, and closed the main building. The drawback of this was that tourists couldn’t look at the church (it was a famous one), but this didn’t matter much because (a) it wasn’t the main purpose of the building anyway and (b) the church leaders never charged anyone to look in the building anyway.
They continued to talk to the protestors. They made three main points:
The church showed its unity. And the church leaders made sure that whenever they spoke to the media, they mentioned in every sentence the name of Jesus, and what He had come to do—to rescue us not from material poverty, but from spiritual poverty.
Mind you, in this parallel universe:
Now back to the real world
Being good reformed Christians, who always read a Bible text in its context, perhaps a bit of context will help us treat tonight's "celebrations" a little differently.
Yes, tonight is Halloween, when children dress up and go door to door in search of a free sugar rush. But it is also a night of enormous opportunity, because it is also:
Reformation night!
October 31st was the day that Luther posted his famous 95 theses to the door of Wittenburg cathedral. An act which sparked the reformation and a return to the centrality of the Bible to the life and thinking of the church. No doubt he did it on that day because it was the eve of All Hallows day (Nov 1) with All Soul's day hot on its heels (Nov 2). Both days in the Catholic calendar when prayers for the dead, and the worshipping of saints was at its height. It was a night of protest for the Bible over tradition.
Suggestion: Why not nail your own theses to the door tonight in celebration, so that you can have the chance to share the Gospel message to your nocturnal visitors. John 8 v 12 might be a good place to start. As you kindly welcome your visitors and offer them a gift, read out the text to them, and tell them that there is now no fear of death and evil - because our saviour has already won over all of them when he died and rose again.
Jesus said: I am the light of the world, whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.
The question in the office/at the schoolgate/in the pub comes: Do you really believe in a God who told Israel to wipe out the Canaanites?
ÂAnd you take a deep breath, offer up a silent and very heartfelt prayer, and open you mouth…
Which “side” do you take over the Dale Farm evictions?
Is it Christian to insist that the law is applied, that people are treated fairly and so punished when they break it, that lawbreakers shouldn’t get ahead of lawkeepers? Or is it Christian to ask for compassion on the travellers, who are staying true to their own culture and way of life, and who have built their lives on that site and in that area?
Watching the struggle on the news, and the evictions that were inevitable once the bailiffs had moved in, brings to life the shock of the parable of the tenants (or maybe we should call it the parable of the eviction) Jesus told in Mark 12 v 1-12.
And it brings home the shock that the tenants facing eviction are us.
Ultimately, we’re all illegal squatters, living in a world that isn’t ours but refusing to pay our dues to the owner. And we’re all facing certain eviction.
So far, so “kick out the travellers”.
But there’s a greater shock in Jesus’ parable even than the forcible eviction and death of the tenants. “He will … give the vineyard to others” (v 9). Who are the “others” who are given the world to live in? Not the deserving, but the undeserving. Not those who never kicked out the landlord’s son, but those who realized their mistake and asked for forgiveness.
That’s grace. That’s like Essex Council winning all the legal battles, proving the land was theirs and the travellers had no right to be there, preparing the bailiffs to move in with overwhelming force… and then walking in with the deeds to the land and saying to those living there illegally: “Here you are. It’s yours”.
I’m torn between the impulse for the law to have its say and be applied, and for compassion to be extended to the travellers. And I think that’s probably the Christian way to look at it. God is a God of total, unremitting justice; He’s also a God of amazing, undeserving grace. It’s right for us to long for justice; it’s right for us to long for grace; it’s wonderful that in Jesus Christ, the Son who was evicted in our place, we find both justice and grace.
Sometimes groups of Christians get things spectacularly wrong.
With the persistence of sin in the lives of believers (1 John 1:8) and the reality of false teachers in the church (2 Peter 2:1-3) this should not be a surprise. But it should be a cause of great sadness. And a massive spur to prayer. So with that in mind it’s good to encourage one another to be interceding for the church in Zimbabwe.
The Anglican Church there is in turmoil. A reasonable desire to be involved in politics has been distorted out of all proportion with bishops using governmental alliances to further their own ends and destroy the ministries of their rivals. Clergy have been evicted. Orphanages left with few staff. Congregations put at physical and spiritual risk.
Of course, amid all this there are good and godly pastors seeking to serve the Lord in Spirit and in truth.
The plight of the Anglican Church in Zimbabwe has been highlighted this week because Archbishop Rowan Williams is soon to visit there as part of his trip round central Africa. So why not use this increased publicity to encourage yourself and others in your congregation to pray?
It would be fantastic if Christians around the globe could join together and ask the Lord to:
It’s an inescapable fact that men and women are different.
It’s not that men are from Mars and women are from Venus – we’re all from planet earth and need to accept that fact.
Nor is it that girls are full or sugar and spice and all things nice and boys obsessed with slugs and snails – we’re all sinners and there’s no escaping that.
But we are created to complement one another (Genesis 2:20-24). To be both diverse as well as similar. And that means to a certain extent we learn differently and serve differently.
This has implications for preaching. It doesn’t change the gospel but it does mean that if sermons are to inspire, instruct and equip women then some careful thought needs to be given to how preachers communicate and apply God’s precious word.
And this is one of the topics that are going to be considered at next week’s Evangelists' conferences. If you would like to explore this important area, there are still tickets available at both the London and Leyland venues. So why not come and join the conversation …? Or if you can’t make it to the event, check back here to read about some of the things we discussed.
