God, That’s Not Fair

Dick Dowsett’s book, God, That’s Not Fair, had been sitting on my shelf, unread, for a number of years and in the wake of the storm in the Christian blogosphere over what Rob Bell wrote in his new book, Love Wins, it seemed like a good point to start reading it. Originally published in 1982, the copy I have is a new edition from 2006 with a new preface by Dowsett. The book makes a case for the necessity of hell argued from scripture and from what we know about the character of God. He also deals with mission, other faiths, suffering etc – anything that we might be tempted to say “God, that’s not fair”. It is a pretty good and accessible read about why the gospel is as it is, and why it is good news.

Regarding hell,  he makes the point that although it may not seem nice to us, it is fair by God’s true and just standards. God is sovereign, sin is worse than we think, but Jesus is better that we think. He frames the book as an imaginary correspondence, question and answer style, between a young Christian away at university, and his home pastor. Dowsett doesn’t attempt to discuss the nature of hell, but makes the point that although we may not like the idea of it, hell is real and Biblical and is consistent with God’s character. What it is like for those there, he doesn’t attempt to discuss. In fact his new preface leaves open the possibility of annihilationism:

When I wrote the first edition, I read passages about lostness, perishing, and the destruction of the ungodly through a grid which assumed all people were immortal. I have had to think again. Is the punishment of Hell unending torment? Or is the punishment relative in length and intensity to the wickedness of the sinner? For the moment I would say that neither position fits comfortably with every scripture.

But that isn’t his point. Dowsett comes from the biblical conviction and that those who do not respond to Jesus in this life are lost and separate from God and which leads, for him, to a missionary zeal for those lost. There is no post-death second chance that we’re told about in scripture. Talking of the parable of the rich man and Lazarus in which Jesus mentions the great chasm between them:

Such a comment from Jesus would be pointless unless he had wanted his listeners quite clearly to understand that there was no second chance after death. There is no concept of serving time in Hell before going to Heaven… Those who die in their sins are terribly, irreversibly, lost.

But God is a merciful and compassionate God as well as being a just God. He gives many opportunities to those who are lost to turn to him. In fact “God wants people to be saved”. He passionately wants people to come to him.

So far there have been over 20 centuries in which the Lord has patiently waited in order to give folk the opportunities to become Christians.

Now, we have all heard preachers try to scare the living daylights out of their hearers by giving in-depth descriptions of the terrible tortures that await those who will get there. Time magazine have recently published a photo essay of pictorial depictions of hell throughout history. None of them are nice. To those who object with the doctrine because of the type of evangelism it might promote, he says:

You may object to the very idea of frightening people into the Kingdom the Kingdom, and it is true that fear may not be the best of motives for coming to Christ. But then, whoever has come to Christ with anything but sinful and mixed up motives? Fear is a perfectly valid incentive to respond to Christ. People are in danger. People are lost. They are Hell-bound.

So his response is although it is not ideal to use fear (certainly not the way I want to preach), his response is: if it works, use it. This is not too far away from what Paul was saying about motives for preaching Christ:

Phil 1:18 The important thing is that in every way, whether from false motives or true, Christ is preached. And because of this I rejoice.

Dowsett’s emphasis is not how the gospel is preached, it is that the gospel is preached. Dowsett comes at the topic making clear the Sovereignty, love and Justice of God and the seriousness of sin. Our reaction to this, Dowsett argues, is to pray and to share the gospel. Since hell is a very real separation from God as a result of sin, there should be an urgency amongst all Christians to help others respond to God’s love and mercy through Jesus. Have we missed opportunities to pray for and chat (naturally) about Jesus to our friends? Then we should repent of the missed chances and pray to be more open to God leading us into those conversations.

Dowsett’s theology is a traditional, reformed and, I would argue, correct interpretation of God’s character and work through Jesus. There is one earthly life for each of us on this broken world which has been damaged and corrupted by the ravages of sin and which often results in injustice pain and suffering for many. However, there is also one enormously loving God who wants us to understand the extent of Christ’s love for us and realise the extent of who he has made us to be. He invites Christians into sharing this urgent message good news with those around us, before it is too late. Love does indeed win. And everyone has the opportunity to accept or reject it.

I would recommend this book for new (or old) Christians who are struggling with the whole concept of how a just and loving God might not save everybody.

Breakout, a book on church growth and leadership.

Breakout, by Mark Stibbe and Andrew Williams is the account of how a large charismatic evangelical church turned from being inward looking to outward looking. St. Andrew’s, Chorleywood (not a church I’ve ever visited) was by most accounts, successful, but they had reached saturation point with the ‘come to us’ method of evangelism. It was a consumer church. Congregants would come and enjoy the great worship and teaching, but, in general, were not plugged in to using their own gifts and creating their own ministries.

When a new vicar, Mark Stibbe, arrived and was closely followed by a new Associate Minister, Andrew Williams, the whole outlook of the church changed. Instead of meeting around one centralised worship event with anything up to 1000 people attending, they created Mid-Sized Communities (MSCs – later renamed Mission-Shaped Communities). These were groups of up to 50 people who met in a particular area or around a particular interest  which could more easily serve the wider communities in which they were based. To quote an analogy which Stibbe and Williams use in the book, the church went from being an ocean liner, to being a group of smaller lifeboats, more easily able to change course and react to what is around.

There are better books to read which outline the theology and practicalities of smaller church groups which aim to reach the community. The fresh expressions literature has a lot of information and examples of new churches springing up in new contexts, and Total Church by Steve Timmis and Tim Chester (which I have talked about in depth before) covers all the necessary ingredients of reaching society with the gospel in contextually-appropriate ways without losing the clarity of the gospel message. There is also a book called Clusters, by Bob Hopkins and Mike Breen (which I haven’t read yet) which covers the same ground)

Breakout is still an interesting read as it tells the story of what can happen when one person with a clear vision communicates that vision clearly, gets people behind him, creates a clear strategy, listens to the prompting of the Holy Spirit and allows the spiritual gifts of the congregation to grow and be used. Although this example is in a charismatic church, there is no reason why churches of other persuasions cannot act on the call to spread the gospel in similar ways. The book does begin to meander and lose it’s way a little in the second half as the authors try to insert some theology into what is essentially a narrative, but it is still worth a read. You have to admire Mark Stibbe for his leadership and praise God for what he has done.

Getting past worship-shaped churches.

David Muir writes about churches that find mission difficult because is it seen as a (however important) peripheral activity to the main activity of the church. He proposes that the mission of the church should be the central thing around which the church is formed.

Our challenge today is to create churches where the primary reason people join is the particular focus of its mission. Such churches will find worship hard – as hard as the worship-shaped churches find mission. Worship will not be the emotional powerhouse that it is for worship-shaped churches. But it will also not need to be. ‘Gathering for mission’ is what will give a mission-shaped church energy, and will keep it on track as a mission-oriented church.

via Share the Guide | Worship-shaped churches? Get real and get over them! (by David Muir).

There are some churches where you can quite clearly see what they are formed around – their values of justice, or enabling people to engage with God, or sometimes a specific community. Many fresh expressions begin with such an aim. Existing churches where the primary activity is perceived to happen on a Sunday often have difficulty in persuading people to get involved in the peripheral activities of the church.

There is a church in Exeter (which I have not yet visited) called Exeter Network Church where the primary activity is the small groups. They are all based around a specific cause or interest such as engaging the community in games of football, encouraging those who work from home, simple things like poker groups open to all, and a group which is committed to living and working in a challenging part of Exeter. On many Sundays they have no main meeting at all, but the church members go out and interact with the community in a variety of ways. The mission is at the centre of what they do as a church so that it flows naturally out of their Christian life.

Books: Novels, Mission, and Communion

You hay have noticed that the reviews of novels have stopped. That is basically because I’m reading War and Peace which is quite long, so it’s taking me a while! I read Grisham’s ‘The Broker’ before that which i enjoyed and have written a review of on this site.

Before that I read a book called ‘God’s Smuggler’ by Brother Andrew, which is the story of the Christian missionary who used to smuggle Bibles through the Iron Curtain back in the 1950′s and 60′s. It is extremely challenging in the way we think about our faith. For example, he used to leave the Bibles in plain view of the guards when he passed through a border, convinced that God could avert their eyes if necessary! Very challenging.

I’m currently reading a book called “Mass Culture” edited by Pete Ward. It looks at eucharist, how we do it, and its implications on youth work and the general church. As the common meal passed down to us by Jesus, it has to be central to Christian worship, but Ward claims that the way in which we have been doing it in the church has become almost sacrosanct, and by failing to adapt, it often fails to speak to our congregations and culture. He suggests that we allow ourselves to play around with it a little more within the context of worship to regain the lost significance. I’ll write more on this when I’ve got further through the book.

Total Church (vi) – Mission

Chapter 6 of Tim Chester and Steve Timmis’ book, Total church talks about the church’s need to engage in world mission. Mission, they say, is an activity of God – it is right at the very centre of his actions, from his decision to choose a people for himself who would be a light to all nations, to the Great Commission given by Jesus at the end of Matthew’s gospel.

“The term mission, [Karl Barth] pointed out, was originally used of the sending of the Son by the Father and the sending of the Spirit by the Father and the Son. To this was added the sending of the Church by the Trinity. The Triune God is a missionary God. The church, then has a mission because God has a mission. The role of the church is to participate in the mission of God. The value of this perspective is the way it roots mission in the doctrine of God rather than relegating is to allied theology”

Mission should be part of a church’s DNA. In Romans 15:19, Paul says that “from Jerusalem all the way round to Illyricum, I have fully proclaimed the gospel of Christ”. In what sense is that true? Paul preached extensively, and set up new churches, but by no means had the whole area been won for Christ! What Timmis and Chester suggest is that Paul has fully proclaimed Jesus to them. This is at the centre of mission. The rest of the work of growth, encouragement, preaching and planting was the responsibility of the local churches he left behind. Jesus was at the centre of their formation and consequently mission is part of their DNA. By no means should it be left to large mission organisations, as this simply distances the local church from the action of mission – which is part of their fundamental being. He cites the example of China – in 1945 all the mision agencies were expelled from the country, essentially leaving the task of mission to the local house-churches with no outside influence. Christianity boomed through their efforts, and because it is God’s mission.

Locally, the church engages in mission by being the community of grace and embodying the gospel of grace in the local society. On a more global scale, Chester and Timmis give examples of many local churches partnering with others around the world, or sending mission partners to various places to plant churches. All done in straight-forward ways by very ordinary people.

Total Church (iii) – whole community evangelism

Continuing on their discussion of church being a place where gospel ad community meet, Tim Chester and Steve Timmis move on to talk about evangelism in their book Total Church.

Too often evangelism is seen as something difficult, for individuals to engage in, and as something else that a Christian needs to slot into their life. They argue that if the church took the call to be a radical loving community seriously, this needn’t be the case. People become Christians and start asking questions, they claim, when they see the intersection between faith and the community of faith.

They see a three-strand approach to evangelism: Building relationships, sharing the gospel, and introducing to the community. And, they claim, it doesn’t matter which one comes first. This makes evangelism a role of the whole community, not just of the individual who first meets the seeker.

Some people are simply not good at speaking to strangers and forming new friendships. One of the practical benefits of the three strand model of evangelism is that it gives a role to all of God’s people. By making evangelism a community project, it also takes seriously the sovereign work of the Holy Spirit in distributing a variety of gifts among his people. Everyone has a part to play: the new Christian, the introvert, the extravert, the eloquent, the stuttering, the intelligent, the awkward. I may be the one who has begun to build a relationship with my neighbour, but by introducing him to community, it is someone else who shares the gospel with him. That is not only legitimate; it is positively thrilling!

If this is the model, evangelism does not become an extra thing that an individual needs to do, but it is a gospel intention in the way a community lives out its life. As it goes about what it usually does, inviting people into the community should become second nature.

Total Church (ii) – authentic community

I started taking God seriously whilst at university. There were plenty of questions about faith that were going around in my head at the time, such as how do we relate to God, etc. But the thing that made a difference in my faith was finding a community (in the form of a student group) in which I could ask these questions. Since then, I have been drawn to churches where there has been this sense of community in some way, be it in the whole congregation or in small groups.

Tim Chester and Steve Timmis address this issue of community in the second chapter of Total Church. They claim that community was at the heart of God’s covenantal dealings with us and his mission in the world – from the law that governed the community given by Moses at Mount Sinai, the nation that was to be a kingdom of priests to the surrounding world, to the small community that Jesus drew around himself to redirect  the mission of God.. This community was centred around Jerusalem to draw people in, now it is centred around Jesus a goes out. But community is still key. As the early apostles went out they planted communities in each city, not just a place where individuals could come and perform acts of worship. The church (that is, the community of believers) is still at the heart of God’s dealing with the world

Chester and Timmis also claim that too often church has been seen as just that place to come to deal with an individual’s worship needs. It is seen as one more thing to juggle in a busy life, alongside work, family, social activities and the like., So, when something else, say, a new born baby comes along to make life even more busier, church is often the thing that gets dropped.

What is the alternative? Well, in a truly supportive loving Christian community, the Jesus-centred community is the focus, not the individual. So when one person suddenly has more responsibility or less time, the rest of the community gather round to support. Similarly, when more time is gained, it can be offered to the community. So when, say, church members Bob and Mary have twins:

When babies are born [or anything else] it is an issue for the whole church. The congregation takes on some of the responsibility because their identity and life is that of persons-in-community. So, perhaps a couple of people go round early each morning to bath the babies so Bob and Mary can have time together over breakfast. Or someone offers to take Bob to work for  a few months so that on the way he can sleep… Bob and Mary may not be as involved in the church meetings, but they are more involves than ever in the life of the community.

That sounds like an attractive vision to me.

Dismissing the emergent church

St Benedict has written a good piece on some church’s (in particular one nameless pastor’s) reluctance to engage with the emergent church – the movement that is seeking to engage with those who have never been to church by recreating church in a way that is accessible and distinct from traditional religion.

The article is here: http://stbenedict.wordpress.com/2008/07/14/emergent/

Whilst it is certainly important to look at the theology of new movements, not all of which will be biblical, the underlying motive to engage in God’s mission in new and creative ways, in order to help those without faith and those who have never got on with Christianity as it has been traditionally practised is certainly a good one. Good theology should be the foundation to these though, not an optional extra.

Total Church (i) – Whole life discipleship

I’m currently reading Tim Chester and Steve Timmis book, Total Church, so I thought I’d blog my way through it.

The first chapter mentions the role of the Word and the Spirit in the church. They quite rightly point out that not all that is remarkable is from the Spirit, but that the Spirit convicts through the Word. God has acted through Word and Spirit together  all throughout the Bible, from Genesis, to Jesus (the Word), on through Acts and the early church – the word continues to spread through the power of the Spirit. Even today, Christians are convicted through the words of Jesus brought to them by the Spirit through the Bible. One required the other. (Perhaps there is stuff here to say about Todd Bentley and Lakeland – is it word centred or is it entirely amazing spirit based show. – That is another topic)

At the end of the chapter, Chester and Timmis question the role of churches in enabling regular congregants to be a part of the mission of God. Oftenw e think of mission as an add on, only for the super keen. This, he claims, comes from a tendency for churches to convert and retain new members, rather than train and release. He cites the example of overseas missionaries. When they are sent, sometimes to be full time, but often to do secular jobs in other countries so that they can engage in mission in that place (this is often called tentmaking after Paul the apostle’s example), the church (rightly) makes a big deal of it. We test their vocation, pray and commission them before they go, expect regular updates so the prayer can continue. Sometimes groups from the church visit and encourage them in their new setting.

But what about the Christian teacher who is the sole Christian member of staff responsible for 40 mostly non-Christian children? What about the Christian electrician of plumber who spend every day in other peoples houses, fixing essential services and making conversation? What about the Christian lawyer who ends up counselling or defending victims or perpetrators of crime? Don’t they deserve prayer and attention from the church?

This is one of the big problems of western Christianity, Chester and Timmis say. We don’t train and equip people to live as Christians in their whole lives. We have a two tier heriarchy of what ‘Christian mission’ means – namely, those people in other countries or in full time paid Christian work. We are all Christian missionaries and the church must take ‘whole life’ discipleship seriously.

Mission Shaped Questions (vi)

I’m onto the final chapter in the book Mission Shaped Questions, edited by Stephen Croft.

In this chapter Steven Croft asks the question – what is church? Are there any defining values or practices that are essential?

Picking out some basics from the early church, and from how Jesus dealt with his disciples, Croft brings out some (fairly obvious) points: Church is a community centred around Jesus. The disciples, like the church are called to Jesus to be sent out. At the heart of the early church activities are prayer, teaching, breaking bread together and fellowship. (Incidentally, the greek work for fellowship is koinonia which is often translated ‘communion’. There’s a great article about that by Father Stephen)

In any new expression of church, this can be summed up into having a ‘Up’ dimension, an ‘In’ dimension, an ‘Out’ dimension and an ‘Of’ dimension. These are the same as Mike Breen’s suggestions from his book The Passionate Church (the chapter on the triangle), except Breen doesn’t have the ‘Of’.

In a nutshell:

• Up – an aspect of journeying towards God in worship and discipleship
• In – relationships/fellowship/communion together which reflects the communion with God and God’s communion with himself in the Trinity.
• Out – mission focussed
• Of – this is the one Breen don’t have, but it reflects what that individual church belongs to, traditionally, denominationally, and as the worldwide church. I might also add that the church is ‘of’ the culture it is set in too

Croft also suggest that a fresh expression of church must work hard to show why it is/is not doing what it is doing.

A new community will need to go back to first principles and discover why  and how that practice came about and why it remains a good and helpful common discipline. (p196)

Consequently, he sees this being a three way discussion between scripture, tradition and the new community. Again, I would suggest that the surrounding culture should enter the discussion too.

All in all, it seems is a great place to start, freeing the church of all those things that we often think of as church but which aren’t really essential.

It involves a letting go of the old and persistent paradigm that the real church is the assembly that meets on Sunday mornings fr the parish Eucharist in a stone building with wooden pews… (p195)

If the only things that are essential are scripture, prayer, fellowship, breaking break, all centred aroudn coming to and going out from Jesus, a fresh expression then has much leeway in determining new ways to be church and engage with those who have never set foot in a traditional church building. It is going back to first principles and starting from scratch with the added benefit of 2000 years of Christian experience and tradition.