Came across this little guide, 40 tips for ministry, aimed at young pastors (by Craig Groeschel):

1. Life is short. Make every day count for God’s glory.
2. Don’t take yourself too seriously.
3. Ministry is a marathon, not a sprint.
4. Jesus cares more about the church than you do.
5. You can’t please everyone…so why try?
6. People will criticize you. Quit whining. Get used to it.
7. Three months from now, you won’t even remember most of the things that are bothering you today.
8. You can’t do it all. Stop trying.
9. God called you because He is good, not because you are.
10. If you blame yourself for the bad results in ministry, you’ll likely also take credit for the good results.
11. Become close friends with other pastors in your town (as many as you can).
12. Your kids will be grown before you know it. Don’t sacrifice them on the altar of ministry.
13. Your ministry isn’t your god. God is your God.
14. You know how to give and how to minister to others. If you don’t learn how to receive, you’ll burn out and/or die.
15. Studying for sermons doesn’t replace your personal time with God and in His Word.
16. Err on the side of generosity.
17. Believe in people that others overlook.
18. If you’re going to reach people that others aren’t, you’ll have to do things that others won’t.
19. Your integrity matters more than you can imagine.
20. Hire staff members that you like.
21. When you have a tough decision to make, but you know it’s right, make it immediately. (Like pulling off a Band-Aid: do it fast, and all at once.)
22. Hire slowly. Fire quickly.
23. You can’t change people. Only God can.
24. Don’t criticize others’ ministries. Yours isn’t nearly as perfect as you think it is.
25. Take care of yourself. Eat right. Rest. Exercise. Take time off. No one else can do that for you.
26. If you don’t take much time off, it’s because you’re proud, and you think you’re more necessary than you really are.
27. Don’t just delegate responsibility. Delegate authority.
28. Laugh frequently.
29. People will leave your church. People you love and trust will leave your church. Don’t take it personally.
30. When you suffer and hurt because of ministry, worship Jesus all the more.
31. Talk about Jesus every time you preach.
32. Be careful what you say. You’re being watched (and recorded).
33. Don’t return emails when you’re angry.
34. Check to make sure your microphone is turned off before you use the bathroom. Double-check.
35. Check to make sure your zipper is zipped every time before you preach. Double-check.
36. Love your wife more than you love the church. The church is Jesus’ bride, not yours.
37. Always be caught speaking well of others.
38. Compliment, encourage, and build up your staff and volunteers.
39. Hand write thank you notes.
40. Smile and look people in the eyes when you talk to them.

So here’s where I’m going on Sunday morning…

Setting the scene
Jesus has been teaching parables about the Kingdom of God around Galilee… last week, we saw the parable of the net and the sobering picture of the separation of righteous and wicked at the end of the world… now Jesus travels 20 miles south to his home town of Nazareth… this section seems a little out of place (it’s not a parable) but it’s here for a reason…

What’s going on here? - People don’t recognise who Jesus is!
v54 - he’s just a man… the people can’t see the source of his power
v55-56 - the people are blinded by his humanity… they think they know who he is, they know his family
v.57 - they took offence… no surprise, in Luke 4 they tried to throw him off a cliff!… ‘Familiarity breeds contempt’ - he’s the boy from next door, why should they listen to him?

Same situation today… Jesus is a prophet, great example, good teacher… and if he says anything offensive (like last week… weeping and gnashing of teeth) then we just ignore that…

C.S Lewis “Either this was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”

Have you fallen at his feet and called Him Lord and God?

Why is this section here? - to show that the word of God divides
We know that’s true because it says so… Hebrews 4:12
Matthew 13 = division… seeds that grow and seeds that don’t… wheat and weeds… good fish, bad fish

Matthew 13:11-17… Jesus quotes Isaiah 6… v.15 “Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts and turn, and I would heal them.”
v.58 “And he did not do many miracles there because of their lack of faith.”
This section shows us what Jesus was talking about… the people don’t see, don’t hear, don’t understand, don’t have faith… hence v58, no miracles

The word of God divides… some believe, some don’t
Origien (early church father) put it like this… “The same sun that melts wax hardens clay”… God’s word provokes a response!
Psalm 95 “Today if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts”
BHMC SofFaith… Bible is supreme authority in all matters of belief and behaviour

So… when we hear God speak in his word… let us not harden our hearts… but let us trust and obey
As the hymn says… “Trust and obey, for there’s no other way. To be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey.”

What about us? - Do we have a right view of Jesus?
Have you fallen at his feet and called Him Lord and God? Maybe you have, and have continued to do so for many years…
But let us not forget Jesus’ humanity… Hebrews 4:15 – “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet was without sin”

Let’s have a right view of Jesus…. Lord and King and Eternal God… yet personal, one who has known the pains and struggles of this world, one who left the joys of heaven, who humbled himself, becoming obedient to death on a cross, so that we might live!

…was good. Yes the actions are cheesy, and we didn’t actually open a Bible which seems bad… but the actions mean that it was easy to remember all these things…

Creation, Fall, Flood, Nations, 4000 years ago.

Ur, Persian Gulf, SALT, Sarah, Abraham, Lot, Terah

Tigris, Euprates

Haran, Terah dies

Sea of Galilee, Jordan River, Dead Sea, Mediterranean

Israel, Ishmael, Isaac, Esau, Jacob

Joseph, Egypt

Jews, Egypt

400 years of bondage, Moses Let my people go, No

1o plagues, Passover, Red Sea, Mount Sinai, Law, Tabernacle

On Tuesday a representative of the Barnabas Fund came to speak at BH - had been expecting the main guy, Patrick Sookhdeo, but his roads got flooded. Did you know that 1 in 10 Christians are persecuted…

We saw videos of the church in Iraq, Indonesia, North Korea and Egypt… Christians are offered great incentives to convert to Islam, and are ostracised or worse if they don’t. The humbling thing about these brothers and sisters is they’re so much more passionate about Jesus, so much more bold in evangelism, and so joyful in the face of trials.

This is another kind of heresy bashing post again, it happened to come up a few weeks ago, and I guess will do again, so I thought it wise to collect some thoughts…

I hadn’t heard of the ‘baptism of the Holy Spirit’ in those terms before I came to Uni, then I found there were some different beliefs to what I held… I just assumed Christians have the Holy Spirit…

So anyway, this issue came up, I turned to Grudem… disappointed that Bible Doctrine contains nothing on this issue, I assume the bigger one does. The Big Moon man preached a sermon on the work of the Spirit, which was great and then lent me a book called ‘Baptism and Fullness’ by John Stott.

Stott goes through the Bible passages in question, examines the arguments and comes I guess to the same conclusions I had all along, just now I have these with a grasp of what the Bible actually says…
Who has the Spirit?

The basic argument of Pentecostal and some Charismatics is that scripture prescribes a subsequent experience of the giving of the Spirit after conversion. They say that speaking in tongues is the sign of having received the Spirit.

Various scriptures are used to justify this view, but all of them are really just talking about people becoming Christians, and many of the accounts referred to in Acts are hardly normative. For example the Ephesian disciples in Acts 19 are used as an example of a second blessing of the Spirit, but the reality is they hadn’t received the blessing of knowing Jesus, they weren’t Christians! It’s not good to take theology from Acts, when so much of what’s going on is not normative, partly in terms of how God is working, but also in terms of the social, geographic and religious situations that can never be repeated, such as the conversion of some Samaritans in Acts 8, another passage pointed to as proof of a required second blessing.

Tongues?

One church in Brighton states this in their beliefs…

We believe in the baptism in the Holy Spirit as an enduement of the believer with power for service the biblical evidence of which is the speaking with other tongues as the Spirit gives utterance

Six passages from Acts are quoted as a justification of this statement. That’s the problem when you take your theology from Acts, turning narrative passages into doctrine. 1 Cor 12:30 - Paul asks “Do all speak with tongues?” in the context of that passage the answer is NO, the same Spirit gives a variety of gifts.

So what is the sign of having received the Spirit? Outwardly, lots of different gifts, ultimately regeneration, increasing Christlikeness. But the question is not really about signs, inwardly, when do you receive the Spirit? Ephesians 1:13 when you “Believed in Him”

Be filled?

Ephesians 5:18 says “…be filled with the Spirit”, Stott says 4 things about this:

1. It’s a command
2. The verb is plural - it has application beyond the time of writing
3. The verb is passive - let the Holy Spirit fill you
4. The verb is present - it is a continuous action, continually be filled

The Moon talked about this and quoted D.L. Moody… when asked why he preaches that we must be ‘continually filled’ he replied… “I Leak”

Spirit Baptism?

Yes, I believe in Spirit Baptism. It’s just a synonym for ‘being saved’, ‘becoming a Christian’ etc. Passages that Pentecostals refer to are usually simply talking about becoming a Christian or are somehow unusual, not normative for Christians today. Paul is clear that the gift of tongues is not for everyone, and that you receive the Spirit when you believe. Being filled with the Spirit is not a one time event, but a continuous part of the Christian Life, asking the Spirit to fill and renew us.

I was pleased to discover that this term at church group we’re going to be studying the book of Colossians… pleased on a number of levels… it’s fun to study God’s word, especially with others and also it’s started to refresh memories of the summer and time studying the book at CB3.

Tonight we looked at Colossians 1:1-14, of course the best part of this is the great truth contained in verse 13 (the first memory verse at CB3), “for he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us in to the Kingdom of the Son he loves”. One of the issues that arose from this study was what it means to be “filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding”, verse 9.

The question is, what is the ‘knowledge of his will’, and how is the knowledge imparted to us - what is ’spiritual wisdom and understanding’?

The implication of verse 10 is that the ‘knowledge of his will’ is not a specific guiding will, but rather a general will as to how we as God’s people can live to please and glorify him. A true knowledge of God’s will is when our will and our desires are inline with His, in fact the whole purpose of the Christian life is to be moulded into the image of Christ (Rom 8:29), who is the perfect example of a man whose will is lined up with the Father’s - “not my will, but yours” (Luke 22:42).

This knowledge of how to live a life holy and pleasing to God our Maker is given to us by ’spiritual wisdom’ and ‘understanding’. Both wisdom and understanding come from the Holy Spirit, and Colossians 2 starts by stating that these things are found in Christ - ‘..which is Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.’ This makes perfect sense when we read that the work of the Holy Spirit is to declare truth about Jesus, thus glorifying Him ( John 16:12-15).

So.. how does the Spirit let us know about the wisdom and knowledge that is found in Christ? The Bible has to be our focus here - two reasons; the Spirit wrote the Bible (2 Tim 3:16 - breathed out by God), and the Bible is all about Jesus (Luke 24:44) who is the source of all wisdom and understanding. Is that it? Is the Bible all we have??

• Can God speak outside of the Bible? - yes, God can do what he wants.
• Does God speak outside the Bible? - yes, 1 Cor 12 speaks of the gifts of knowledge and of wisdom… the role of the preacher is to bring prophecy, to apply God’s word… Christians may have dreams, visions etc. that are given by God.
• Does God always speak outside the Bible, to every Christian? - No. In the past God spoke in loads of ways, but now he speaks to us in Jesus (Heb 1:1), the testimony of Jesus is recorded in the Bible… God is merciful and sometimes may speak directly to believers, directly into situations… we should be open to God’s voice, but not demand or expect him to speak… he’s already spoken, 66 different books!!
• Can words from God contradict the Bible? - No. The Bible is authored by a perfect, eternal, unchanging God.

There’s always a danger, particularly for those from a more “Charismaniac” persuasion of moving on from the Bible, being more attracted by the “fresh” or “direct” words… and maybe the more “Conservative” position is in danger of wanting a quick fix to the question of guidance…? Often I find myself just wishing that I could pray and God would reveal everything I need to know in a crystal-clear vision… that would be nice, but in reality I’m just being lazy, I’m too impatient to wait on God, and too stubborn to spend time searching the scriptures and wrestling in prayer.

All mysteries are in Christ, one day I shall see him face to face, there will be no more mysteries, just perfect relationship with my Maker.

Just watched (now several days ago) Cromwell on Channel 4 - better than the usual daytime TV. Don’t know how accurate it is historically, but I do like it, generally because I like those classics, historical, war based films, also because it’s very interesting politically, thinking about the establishment of our political system, and in the past debating with my housemate whether Cromwell was right in doing what he did. On top of this we have the Puritan element, the hope a nation under God, Cromwell coming to prayer, seeking to do God’s will.

Interestingly at the end of the film it shows Cromwell’s coffin with the epitaph “Christ, not man, is King”. This quote of his got me thinking about a few things studied recently…

Two weeks ago at CU we were joined by Elliott from Gloucester Place Church in Brighton. The focus of his talk was Acts 5:29 - The Apostles under persecution say “We must obey God rather than men”…

Colossians 1 (we’re doing the book on camp this year), Jesus is king over everything! He created all things and all things were created for him. He is the image of God. He was before all things. The fullness of God was in Him. He reconciles us to God.

I did a talk at Global Cafe this week, Mark 8: 27-29… Peter says “You are the Christ”. You are God’s chosen king - wow! This guy Jesus is chosen by the Father to be his eternal king, king over all things.

Hmm… Piper again…