Wednesday 10 February 2016

The pastor as parent



In class yesterday we spent some time thinking about Paul’s letter to the Galatians as a model for us of pastoral ministry. Of course the whole letter is an exercise in pastoral ministry, but we focussed on 4:12-20 and read through Calvin’s commentary on that section which draws out many helpful implications for pastors (you can find that text here).

In particular there is the arresting image of Paul as a mother in the pains of childbirth (4:19). Paul uses the parent metaphor in several places to describe his relationship to those converted under his ministry (e.g. Paul and his companions as mother and father in 1 Thessalonians 2:7-12, Paul as father in 1 Corinthians 4:14-15, Philemon 1:10), but it’s an image that many people have rightly applied to ministry more generally. 

In Galatians, the power of the metaphor is that it is able to express Paul’s anguish as well as his affection for his people, a point wonderfully explored by the lesser-known Reformer Rudolf Gwalther (son-in-law of Ulrich Zwingli):

This passage reminds us of the many things needed for our understanding. First of all, we have to realize that the ministry of the Word is something full of hard work and trouble. Just as a mother carries a fetus in her womb with great effort, losing her appetite for food and appealing to others for help, and just as she gives birth in great pain and then feeds and educates her child with enormous effort, so the trials laid on the backs of ministers of the Word are infinite, and those who risk their reputations in order to win others for Christ have to suffer great trouble (as we are taught by the example of Elijah). The innate depravity of our mind and nature does not accept that we are children of God. The world is against them, because it does not let people escape from its clutches. What grieves ministers the most is that those for whose salvation they sacrifice everything are often not only ungrateful to them for their efforts but even hostile to them. But just as a mother’s love conquers everything and turns sorrow and trouble into joy, sustaining her through the birth process and the education of her children, so ministers should burn with unquenched love for Christ and the church, so that however hard the going may be, nothing will overpower the joy and delight that they get from fulfilling their ministry. (Quoted in Gerald L. Bray, ed., Galatians, Ephesians, Reformed Commentary on Scripture 10 (Downers Grove, Ill.: IVP Academic, 2011), 154.

Lots there to ponder, and in the midst of the passage an interesting thought: that one of the key roles for pastors in this parental role is to assure believers that they are God’s children.

Sunday 7 February 2016

Kevin DeYoung on UK evangelicalism



I greatly enjoyed being back at St Helens Bishopsgate this weekend for the South East Gospel Partnership conference, having spent two very happy years there as a church apprentice. Not least it was a pleasure to see again the memorial stone one husband erected to his wife, having decided that of all his wife’s many accomplishments, he would record for posterity that she breast-fed all ten of their children. But I digress.

Kevin DeYoung and Justin Mote were speaking on Scripture and gave a thoughtful Q&A session, during which Kevin was asked what his impressions are of British evangelicalism, and any constructive critique he’d offer.

He mentioned two things and they both deserve some reflection and development…

      1.      British evangelicals are generally very strong on the Bible. They promote and champion expositional preaching. But, they are relatively weak on doctrine and historical theology.

It’s a similar point to one he made a couple of years ago:

“Our biggest strengths tend to be some of our nagging weaknesses. While the training programs are impressively robust, my sensibilities as a Presbyterian/Reformed pastor make me wish more full-time church workers and pastors could benefit from a seminary education. I sensed that young men and women in England were Bible people (which is most important), but less in tune with old books and any particular theological tradition.” http://blogs.thegospelcoalition.org/kevindeyoung/2014/02/18/reflections-of-my-trip-to-england/

What strikes me is that adding church history and doctrine to the mix is not like adding a second string to our bow: such that we can say now we do Bible and theology. Rather, church history and doctrine and the Bible are more integrated than that. If theology is asking the question of how the Bible coheres and applies to our thinking about God, salvation, the world, and so on, and church history is the transcript of the ways in which those questions have been answered for 2000years, then the neglect of theology and church history is more serious. Put simply, without them, we might be emphasising the Bible, but not actually reading it in very self-aware or informed ways.

      2.      UK evangelicalism appears to be actually composed of a number of subgroups and they tend to view each other with a degree of suspicion. That is, UK evangelicalism has a unity problem. I think this is spot on.  In my experience of a number of subgroups, we do not think or speak of one another as we should.

There are several causes. As de Young said in the same article mentioned above there are historical and cultural reasons for this, but there are others. In a time of scarce resources it is very easy to think (somewhat perversely) of the ministries that are most closely sympathetic to your aims as competition. In addition, it is striking that a recovery of doctrine and church history can have a negative impact: a greater emphasis on ecclesiology and polity can mean that we start to make the growth of our denomination/grouping our chief goal, and to see conversions to our tribe rather than to Christ as a cause for celebration. There is a Corinthian spirit to it all (1 Cor 1:10-17); indeed I wonder if our relative neglect of those letters is another contributing cause. To generalise, we preach a cross that atones for sins, but we speak far less of a cross that confronts sins, and sins of these very kinds. The divisive, self-promoting, glory-seeking, kinds of sins. So, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord” (1 Cor 1:31). Taking that to heart, and reckoning with the scale of the evangelistic task before us, would, I suspect, do us all some good.