Justin Taylor has drawn attention to a series of lectures on preaching which Sinclair Ferguson delivered at Covenant Theological Seminary. Certainly, this could be something of value for those of us who preach.
If you have an iPod or iPhone and would like to download these in an audiobook format (so that you don’t lose your place while syncing, and such) I have converted the four lectures into one audiobook file and it is available here.
Enjoy!
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Here are some flavorful nuggets from a recent reading of Richard Lovelace, Dynamics of Spiritual Life
On the lack of congregational prayer:
“Undoubtedly the small quantity of intelligent intercessory prayer in most twentieth-century congregations is part of the short-circuiting of missionary consciousness among the laity. The establishment of the kingdom of God is an elusive task; we cannot even see what it involves in our vicinity without specific prayer, and we certainly will have little urgency to carry it out unless we are praying.” (page 157)
On the misdirected focus of our prayers:
“In small prayer groups, often the concerns which are shared and prayed about are wholly personal, involved with healing, psychological adjustment and other immediate individual burdens. Larger issues which are closely related to the interests of the kingdom of God are ignored. Groups in which this occurs should make a determined effort to engage in kingdom-oriented prayer.” (pages 158-159)
Arguing against what he sees as the ‘monastic’ tendencies of many churches, the tendency to withdraw from the world and send evangelistic forays into it:
“Ultimately, however, [the church] loses by this approach: it erects too great a cultural gap between the believing community and the surrounding world, and it fails to see that converts are won more by the observable blessedness of a whole way of life than by the arguments of individuals.”
On the intersection of change and solidity in the church:
“The church ought to be like a mobile sculpture in which fixed forms of truth and fellowship are constantly shifting their relationship to harmonize with the decor of the social and cultural environment. Enculturation freezes the form of the mobile until it becomes a static monument, a reminder of the past which appears to have no relevance for the present.” (pages 197-198)
This morning, it seems, has been all about truth. If you want, grab a cup of coffee, sit down, and ponder the realities and ironies of the modern world.
First, Don Sweeting, the President of Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando, is attending the Lausanne Congress in Cape Town, and posted this report as a urgent plea for Christians to retain a commitment to truth. He quotes speaker Os Guiness:
“We as followers of Christ must be guardians of truth. Only a high view of truth undergirds our defense of the faith that all truth is God’s truth.”
Then, by contrast, ironically, in an article about atheists holding a similarly themed meeting, one by which they hoped to plot a path for their own ‘reaching the nations’, one fiery participant claimed this:
“The word for people who are neutral about truth is ‘liars.’”
Glad to see that we ‘agree’ on something.
And then, speaking of agreement, I was saddened to read an assessment by David Brooks that I’ve long suspected, that politics does something to a person, is probably true. Truth becomes less precious as it gets bent to serve another end.
Nobody who walks into the valley of our political system emerges unscathed. Today’s political environment encourages narcissism and inflames insecurity. Pols must continually brag about themselves, and Kirk has succumbed. Even with his record, he’s embellished his achievements. He claimed a military award went to him when it really went to the unit he led. He claimed his plane was shot at over Iraq when it wasn’t. He claimed he was a teacher when he was an assistant at the school.
And finally, two articles I have not yet read, but only glanced at, related to the above:
Lies, Damned Lies, and Medical Science
Pilate asked, “What is truth?” Perhaps as we ask that question more insistently, we will come to the Answer.
Enjoy your coffee.
When the Tampa Bay Rays lost game five of the American League Division Series against the Texas Rangers, I ceased being a baseball fan. I questioned all the time spent watching and reading and hoping and dreaming. I concluded that all that emotion and time would be better placed elsewhere.
I was through with baseball.
That was Tuesday night.
Thursday night, I couldn’t sleep. So, I opened up an essay I had been meaning to read. It was a New Yorker article written by a young John Updike regarding the very last game that Ted Williams ever played at Fenway Park.
At 11:00 PM I began texting quotes to my son, much to his amazement, as I’m always asleep by that time.
By the time I had finished reading, and had repented of my earlier foolishness, I was once again a fan.
There is an intoxicating and maddening magic in this game that I cannot explain. It is a magic that infected me as a young boy under the spell of Frank Robinson and later the Big Red Machine in Cincinnati. It was heightened through my years in St. Louis by the “Wizard of Oz”, “Whiteyball”, and one player who would reach our hearts, Willie Dean McGee.
The magic faded through our years in Southwest Florida, a player’s strike dowsing the wonder and exposing the dark business side of the game.
But it would never go away. Bradenton was the winter home of the Pittsburgh Pirates. I lived in the shadow of a field where Roberto Clemente and Willie Stargell would regularly play. I stood on home plate once and wondered at the fact that I was standing where they each had stood.
And then, in 2008, a lowly underfunded team from Tampa Bay slew the big boys in the American League East, and the magic was fully revived. Until last Tuesday.
John Updike is one in a long tradition of gifted writers, captured by the magic of the game, trying to capture that magic in prose. I texted to my son passages like the following.
First in defense of the charge that Williams’ hitting never advanced the cause of Red Sox wins, Updike says,
“Indeed, for Williams to have distributed all his hits so they did nobody else any good would constitute a feat of placement unparalleled in the annals of selfishness.”
With a novelist’s eye, he describes some of those attending Williams’ last game:
Two girls, one of them with pert buckteeth and eyes as black as vest buttons, the other with white skin and flesh-colored hair, like an underdeveloped photograph of a redhead, came and sat on my right. On my other side was one of those frowning, chestless young-old men who can frequently be seen, often wearing sailor hats, attending ball games alone.
Describing Williams’ last trip to the plate, he brings us into Fenway to join in the wonder of it:
Instead of merely cheering, as we had at his three previous appearances, we stood, all of us—stood and applauded. Have you ever heard applause in a ballpark? Just applause—no calling, no whistling, just an ocean of handclaps, minute after minute, burst after burst, crowding and running together in continuous succession like the pushes of surf at the edge of the sand. It was a sombre and considered tumult. There was not a boo in it. It seemed to renew itself out of a shifting set of memories as the kid, the Marine, the veteran of feuds and failures and injuries, the friend of children, and the enduring old pro evolved down the bright tunnel of twenty-one summers toward this moment.
Updike gets closer to the wonder as the tension mounts with that last at bat:
There will always lurk, around a corner in a pocket of our knowledge of the odds, an indefensible hope, and this was one of the times, which you now and then find in sports, when a density of expectation hangs in the air and plucks an event out of the future.
Hope is, indeed, unrealistic, and this really gets at the heart of the magic. Updike sees it clearly.
All baseball fans believe in miracles; the question is, how many do you believe in?
In spite of myself, I love this game.
Go, Rangers.
THAT the church is to be involved in evangelism is rarely the question.
HOW we should be about that business can generate conflict and fear.
It is no secret that I favor a relational, friendship style of witness over a directed, confrontational style. There are many reasons for that, but one of the main ones is that culturally we have moved into an era where the directed method may produce ‘decisions’ but rarely produces disciples, and may, in fact, harden others. I myself have little patience with any stranger who wants to ‘sell’ me something, be it vacuum cleaners, a political candidate, or Christianity.
Gordon MacDonald winsomely does a much better job than I could ever do in modeling the alternative in this helpful article. In it he details one example of how he and his church (an important part of this) loved someone and incorporated him into his life and the life of the church, with the result that this someone came to faith in Christ.
I never asked my friend if he’d yet given his life to Jesus. I just created the circumstances in which he began doing it: giving his life to Jesus, I mean. I have no idea when he (or his wife) completed the faith transaction. I just know that everything about these two wonderful people over a period of a year began to show the “Christian!” brand, in the best sense of that word….
I was never conscious that I was implementing some evangelism method. But I suppose it was a method of sorts. It was evangelism by first belonging. Rather than making him jump through doctrinal and ceremonial hoops before saying he belonged, we declared from the get-go: be family with us, and in the process you’ll discover what we’re about, and you’ll find what you’re looking for in Jesus.
Thanks to Geoff for the link.
This article is one of this week’s most emailed stories from the pages of the NY Times. It tells of a woman who stormed a Loveland, Colorado art gallery and destroyed a painting reportedly portraying Jesus having sex with a male.
The artist says that it was a commentary on abuses in the Roman Catholic church. The iconoclast says that it desecrated her Lord.
So, do we cheer her? Or distance ourselves from her?
When we have read reports of Muslims getting all moody over cartoons depicting Mohammed, we wonder what the big deal is. “Chill,” we say. In a similar vein, in this case, I believe Christians need to chill.
Yes, from what I read of the image, it is offensive. But are we to destroy every offensive representation of Jesus? I find it particularly offensive that Jesus is seen as the champion of the Republican party. I find it offensive that He is preached as the one wanting to provide all my wealth and prosperity. These are desecrations of Jesus.
If we are to take on every offensive portrayal of Jesus, then we should be sending Christian SWAT teams into many churches where He is presented as a mere man whose body rotted in a Palestinian tomb. [Sadly, I’m afraid some might think this is a good idea.]
We should be saddened by such things, but not surprised or overwhelmed.
Paul did not take a hammer to the provocative and idolatrous images in Athens. Rather, the provocation they caused in his spirit led him to do what he could to bring the kingdom of Christ to bear upon the city. He preached.
We must ignore the taunts of the enemy. He wants a fight. What he does not want are faithful Christians living out a Christian life of love before and with their neighbors. And what he does not want is Gospel truth being faithfully proclaimed. But that is the very response we should bring.
So, please, step away from the crowbar.
Hope is always a bit unrealistic.
The reason some of us – myself a prime example – retreat to the confines of what we proudly call ‘realism’ is because we are afraid to hope. Hope is not only unrealistic, it is fearful.
Hope is the longing that one’s desires will somehow be fulfilled. The single gal hopes for a suitor. The married couple hopes for a child. The college graduate hopes for a job. The sports fan hopes for a victory. The church hopes for stability and prosperity. Such hopes are variously realistic and unrealistic.
But if we have hoped and have seen our hopes dashed, it will not be long before we are afraid to hope any longer. Hope draws our fragile emotions out into the open where they are vulnerable once again to being beaten to death by disappointment. After a hurtful breakup, or the third miscarriage, or the fourth rejection letter, or the fifth pastor in seven years, we may have no more desire to risk disappointment. We retreat, fearfully, into what we call realism. It protects us from hope. It protects us from hurt. It’s not a happy place, but it is a safe place.
My sports obsession has given me insight here, insight that I see as applicable in the more serious affairs of life.
After the Tampa Bay Rays lost the second game of their best of five series with the Texas Rangers, I lost all hope. I was a realist, of course. They stood a 13% chance, statistically, of coming back to win the next three games. I watched game 3 with no emotion, and no fear, because I had no hope. To watch without hope was safe. To hope would have introduced the risk of hopes being unfulfilled, and I did not want to face that.
But they won game 3 and game 4. Now, they play Tuesday night with a chance to advance to the American League Championship Series. And I find myself trying to put away all hope, because of my fear of disappointment. I want to hope, but I’m afraid that if I do, I’ll face the frustration of disappointment.
That is a window into my heart and my sin, but I believe it to be a window into the hearts of many. We have been broken so many times, that we refuse to hope anymore. The only way to be open to hope again is to find a place to stash the fear. And I don’t know any way to do that other than to be reminded that I am a beloved child of God.
I can never know beforehand whether the Rays will win or not. And I cannot tell another whether he or she will find a mate or have a child. And I cannot know whether my church will prosper or falter.
But I can know that whether any of these things come to pass or not, none of them change the way God looks at me. His embrace never slackens. His heart never grows cold. And when I look into his face, the candle of hope can flicker once again to life.
+ + + + +
I cannot tell from day to day how many will or will not be reading this blog. I would benefit from hearing your thoughts on these reflections, or some word of your experience, regarding the intersection of fear and hope.
There are probably few little boys or girls when asked what they want to be when they grow up say, ‘Theologian.” Certainly there are few of us who would, even if we thought of that as a career to be pursued, would pursue it for the fun of it.
So, I had to chuckle out loud (would that be ‘COL’ in texting parlance?) when I read this footnote in John Frame’s The Doctrine of the Christian Life
I’m not sure that decalogical is an actual word, but part of the fun of being a theologian is being able to invent new words.
There it is. ‘Fun’ and ‘theologian’ in the same sentence.
As a reader I can say that part of the fun of READING such a theologian is the fun of reading his footnotes. I’ve noted this before. Later, Dr. Frame again makes me smile when he gives credit for a particular illustration, this also in a footnote:
Thanks to Linc Ashby for this artwork. I can draw triangles and rectangles with minor computer assistance, but I look in awe at people who can draw decagons.
Thanks, Dr. Frame, for moving theology out of its musty, somber, and dull confines into the messy and delightful realities of real life.
+ + + + +
I’m not sure if there is a need for ‘full disclosure’ in a blog like this, but though I have written favorably about Dr. Frame’s work before moving to Orlando, I feel some constraint now to point out that now I serve not only as his admirer, but also as his pastor.
A lost fragment of the Bible has just been found which sheds light on yesterday’s post.
Scholars are still studying this fragment to determine its place in the canon of Scripture. However, it appears to be a portion of a conversation between Moses and his brother Aaron. Israel is pinned between the Red Sea and the advancing Egyptian army. In the fragment, Aaron comes to Moses, and says:
“I’m neither an optimist nor a pessimist. I’m a realist. We’re toast.”
As I said, scholars are still debating the authenticity of this fragment. Rings true to me.
I have spoken, with pride, and from the pulpit, the fact that I am neither an optimist nor a pessimist, but a realist.
I now repent of such notions.
When I have said such things, it was to separate me from the irrational, polyanna-ish view of life which suggests that all is right with the world. It’s not and so a dose of what we call biblical realism is certainly necessary.
And yet it is far too easy to settle into ‘realism’ as an abandonment of hope. We can look at a situation, a marriage, a church, children, or whatever, and claim that we are being realistic about the situation as we paint the grimmest of possible outcomes. In so doing, we may under the banner of realism be wrongly subduing hope.
Hope, really, is always just a bit unrealistic, isn’t it? Jesus encouraged his disciples to expect him to rise again from the dead. But they were realists. Peter’s friends prayed for something, but obviously not his release from custody. They were realists, after all.
Hope is always unrealistic. There is a place for rational evaluation of circumstances. But there is no place for rational evaluation displacing hope. And we who claim to be realists, we are all so good at displacing hope.
I am still neither a pessimist nor an optimist. But I do not wish to be a realist if that means emptying life of hope.
So, I’m hopeful. I think that is where we are supposed to be.
Powered by WordPress & Theme by Anders Norén