David Field has been an Elder at Emmanuel Evangelical Church in London, England, where I serve as Minister, since we began in March 2009. Before that, he taught at Oak Hill Theological College in North London. It was there that I first met him when I trained there a decade or more ago.
Since that time, David has been everything I could have wished for as a mentor, fellow-Elder, and friend. I think I can say without fear of exaggeration that I have been shaped more by David as a Christian, husband, father, and Minister of the gospel than by anyone else I’ve ever met. Indeed, the whole Field family have been an immeasurable blessing to the whole congregation at Emmanuel ever since we began.
But the Fields have left Emmanuel and moved to Oxford. This will be wonderful for them, as they’ll be able to see a lot more of their second daughter
(Naturally, I alone am responsible for what follows, so please don’t hassle David if you disagree.)
1. A Minister had better be an evangelist. “I’d rather have a slightly rambling, slightly over-long, and slightly disjointed set of reflections from a Minister who had been wearing out shoes knocking on doors and dishing out tracts, than an exquisitely conceived, elegantly structured, and crisply delivered exhibition of expository brilliance from a Minister who has been locked in his study all week.”
2. Bible, Bible, Bible. There is simply no substitute for being soaked in the word of God.
3. Biblical interpretation. The decisive interpretive backdrop to every biblical text is the Bible itself.
4. Bodily posture. Clapping, standing, sitting, kneeling, raising hands. I think we’ve tried them all at least once, and most we’re still doing.
5. Capital punishment. Why would that be so bad?
6. Care for the poor. Because God does.
7. Church (Dis-)unity and the Lord’s Supper. “The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, knowing what his church was going to become, took a sharp knife and a loaf of sliced white bread, and proceeded to cut the individual slices into nice neat cubes about 1 cm in size, before leaving them in an airless vestry for a couple of hours to go slightly stale. He then served them accompanied by alcohol-free grape juice in small plastic cups to a sullen-looking congregation who hadn’t experienced a similar meal for about 6 months, and who in view of the unpleasantness of that experience were unlikely to be hankering after more of the same any time soon.”
8. Church government (1). Something that looks a bit like Presbyterianism isn’t an entirely bad idea.
9. Church government (2). Whatever the merits of “Persbyterianism-lite,” the climactic achievement of two millennia of Christian culture-building is not a 200-page Book of Procedures.
10. Church History 101. The “you” in point 26 (i.e. “The Bible is all you need”) is both plural and historical, referring to the whole body of Christ throughout the ages. So get stuck into Athanasius, Augustine, Anselm – in fact, pretty much everyone you can get our hands on from Aquinas to Zizioulas.
11. Church politics stinks. As with sexual immorality in Corinth, Christians in positions of responsibility pull stunts in churches and other Christian organisations that they wouldn’t dream of trying (and certainly wouldn’t get away with) if they were working in the secular business world. Get used to it, and steer clear of church politicking.
12. Continuous partial attention. What distracted people do when they think they’re working.
13. Distinguish, distinguish, distinguish. Casuistry is not a dirty word. “How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?” is a great question. There is no contradiction between the right kind of biblicism and the right kind of (what other people call) hairspitting.
14. Divorce. Bad in the kind of way that hearing an ambulance siren is bad. No one “likes” is, but when someone is being (or has been) hurt it’s a jolly good job they exist.
15. Don’t work too hard. Look at the daisies. (But remember no. 101)
16. Early mornings are good. Just don’t wake your neighbours.
17. Ecclesiological respect. Try to find ways to respect other churches’ ecclesiology.
18. Ecclesiology 101. The “you” in point 1 (i.e. “The Bible is all you need”) is plural, referring to the whole body of Christ, including the parts that lie beyond the bounds of your tribe. So get your hands on (for example) Robert W. Jenson, Austin Fagothey, Rowan Williams, Kallistos Ware, and a whole pile of other weird stuff besides. Stick around long enough and we might even read some Presbyterians.
19. Economics (1). Fractional reserve banking, central bank interest rate fixing, quantitative easing, etc. It’s all madness.
20. Economics (2). Almost everything the state does with the aim of “improving” the lot of its citizens turns out to have almost exactly the opposite effect.
21. Economics (3). Some useful reading: www.mises.org; Henry Hazlitt, Economics in One Lesson.
22. Embodied presence. There’s no substitute for personal face-to-face conversation if what you want is real mutual understanding.
23. Emotional and existential subtexts. What’s the question behind the question? What’s the issue behind the issue? What’s the pathology behind the pathology? What’s the complaint behind the complaint? What’s the cry behind the cry?
24. Equality is a chimera. A well-meant aspiration whose integrity, on closer inspection, and when pressed to its extremes in every respect (as opposed to being honoured in biblical terms), either dissolves entirely or (perversely) is transformed into totalitarianism.
25. Ethical principle. Pragmatism is death.
26. Ethics 101. (1) Life is complicated; (2) The Bible is all you need; (3) Everything else is a waste of space.
27. Euthanasia. A really complicated ethical issue, raising issues that won’t be solved adequately by knee-jerk sloganeering.
28. Everyone is a theonomist. The only question is, Who’s Theo?
29. Everything is fascinating. Provided you take to trouble to be interested in it.
30. Everything lasts. Including mowing the grass.
31. “Fair trade”. It isn’t fair, and sometimes it isn’t even trade, but stealing.
32. Government is like jazz. Less is generally more.
33. Government. “Statism … the greatest false god of our age.”
34. Head and heart. Firmly joined together.
35. Irenic theology. The aim of theological conversation is not to identify the appropriate box into which someone’s theological views can be placed prior to disposing of them. Nor is it to work out where you disagree with them so that you can have a good argument. Try listening, and you might just learn something.
36. It’s good to talk. And if you can’t or won’t talk about it, then no amount of procedures, guidelines, rules, laws, or books of church order will help you.
37. Law. “O, how I love…”
38. Learn to read again. One hour with a book can tell you (almost) everything you need to know.
39. Liturgical glory. “When we reach 150 people, we get a silver platter, OK?”
40. Liturgical renewal. You can probably move faster than you think.
41. Liturgy. Inescapable, and potentially beautiful.
42. Love other people’s enemies. Diotrephes committed a great evil when he not only refused to welcome the brothers, but also stopped those who wanted to welcome them and even put them out of the church (3 John 10). If a brother in Christ has been unjustly criticised and excluded by other believers, then that constitutes an additional reason why you ought to go out of your way to express fellowship with the one who has been excluded.
43. Love your enemies. Some things are best learned by example.
44. Lying is almost always bad. Because the Bible says so.
45. Lying is sometimes good. Because the Bible says so.
46. Marriage and divorce. Three models: park a car, build a house, bake a cake.
47. Old Covenant penal sanctions. Where else should we turn for guidance?
48. Online theology. It’s not entirely true that you’ll never learn decent theology on the internet. But you do need to know where to look.
49. People are more important than things (1). What would you rather have: Five minutes longer with your child, or £10,000?
50. People are more important than things (2). Ministers of the gospel don’t have “Do not disturb” signs. Stop the sermon prep and talk to the human being who just walked through the door.
51. People are more important than things (3). I first met David when he was one of a number of incredibly gifted, hard-working and godly faculty at Oak Hill Theological College. The whole faculty were all extremely generous with their time and energy, even (especially?) when their students were a pain in the neck. But it was David in particular who somehow managed, whenever you knocked on his door, to make you feel as though you, and you alone, were the one person in the whole world that he most wanted to see, hear, and give 100% of his attention to at that precise moment.
52. Perspectivalism in ethics. Normative, situational, existential. Amazing how much clarity John Frame could provide, if we’d only listen.
53. Perspectivalism. There’s always another way of looking at everything.
54. Politics. “Left” and “right” is not always a helpful categorisation.
55. Popular misconceptions. Some of the stuff that gets printed (sometimes by publishers who should know better) is just so bad it’s unbelievable.
56. Postmillennial spirituality. Since you believe that Jesus is in the process of re-making the world, and you also believe that this is going to take a long time, why are you getting stressed because your small corner of the world isn’t perfect yet? Chill out.
57. Postmillennial theology. The earth shall be full of the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. He shall have dominion from sea to shining sea. You get the picture.
58. Postmillennialism. The Lord’s Prayer is a plea for ouranification.
59. Poverty. Merely quoting the book of Amos does not constitute an argument in favour of whatever humanistic, totalitarian, faithless “solution” to the problem of poverty that your favourite think-tank happens to have dreamed up.
60. Preaching the “irrelevant” details. It’s fine to preach on small details of a biblical passage. After all, how else are you ever going to proclaim that God cares about animals (Jonah 4)?
61. Preaching. “More of Christ.”
62. Property rights. The foundation for almost everything, since in effect they amount to a re-statement of the doctrine of creation.
63. Public theology. “The gospel is inescapably political.”
64. Questions open hearts. “Do you know how many questions there are in the Bible?”
65. Read poetry. Start with George Herbert (actually, it was RC who first taught me this, but then David took up the reins); then move on to John Donne and Gerard Manley Hopkins.
66. Self-esteem. “No one can make you feel inadequate without your permission.”
67. Show, don’t tell. “Preachers: Stop telling people that they should be joyful; give them a cause for joy. Stop telling people that they should be prayerful; encourage them to pray. Stop telling people that they should be thankful; show them something to be thankful for. Stop telling people that they should love Jesus; show them Jesus.”
68. Silence is golden.
69. Simple pleasures. “Just sitting here with a plate of chips.”
70. Sin is madness. “Crazy, isn’t it?”
71. Sin is multiperspectival. Every sin contains and embodies every other sin. Each of the Ten Commandments contains and embodies all of the others.
72. Sin is suicide. “Like slashing away at your own wrists, tearing yourself apart.”
73. Sin. “It’s better to die than to sin.”
74. Sing the Psalms. For goodness’ sake, it’s a songbook. Stop just reading it.
75. Singletasking is better than multitasking. Because you’re not God.
76. Singletasking is harder than multitasking. Because we can’t shake off the desire to be God.
77. Sport fishing. Weirdly, this might be a lot worse in God’s eyes than fox-hunting.
78. Statism is idolatry. “The greatest false god of our age.”
79. Strategic prioritisation. It’s a good idea to work out what you can do well with relatively little effort, and what you struggle to accomplish even if you break your back over it.
80. Take your time. Don’t be afraid to preach small chunks. It’s not a race.
81. The Bible is beautiful. Chiasms everywhere. Allusions everywhere. Fractal detail and multi-perspectival symmetry everywhere.
82. The EU and the UN. Let’s just say a healthy dose of scepticism is in order.
83. The free market. Just people buying and selling stuff to each other.
84. The fruit of the Spirit. Love, JOY, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, FAITHFULNESS, gentleness, self-control.
85. The Holy Spirit. We’re all charismatics – at least, we’d better be.
86. The Lord’s Supper. “At least once a week,” just like Calvin said.
87. The main point. There’s no such thing as “the main point” of a passage of Scripture, so stop trying to preach it.
88. The New Perspective. It’s not all wrong, despite what a lot of people say, but it also has some fairly fundamental problems that no one seems to have spotted.
89. The Puritans weren’t prudish. Despite the caricatures.
90. The whole Bible. No neo-Marcionitism here. Every word of Scripture, from the case laws of Exodus and the ramblings of Job to the imprecatory Psalms and the genealogies of 1 Chronicles, is inspired, authoritative, true, and given for our encouragement and instruction.
91. Theological disagreement (1). It is at best a dubious move, and at worse a great injustice, to criticise someone for what you think are the logical implications of what they believe, especially when they deny those implications.
92. Theological disagreement (2). Stop typing and pick up the phone.
93. Theology is Kuhnian. It proceeds in paradigm shifts.
94. There are many different kinds of death. “I die every day.”
95. There’s more than one way to preach. So stop assessing sermons on the basis of their degree of conformity to the homiletical mechanics of your personal pulpit idol. Try listening to them.
96. Time management. God gives time to those who pray.
97. Time-wasting. Technically, for a believer in union with Christ, sanctified by the Spirit, living to the glory of the Father, there’s no such thing.
98. Tribalism. The enemy of churchly unity.
99. Victimhood. The enemy of repentance.
100. We already live in a theocracy. The only question is, Are you a rebel or a loyal subject?
101. Work hard. Consider the ant. (But remember no. 15)
There’s one more item missing from this list. In truth, I couldn’t really do it justice by simply including it as another item among many; it’s far too significant for that. You can read about it here.
I am very blessed to learn how someone is very blessed by someone else. “That which you have received, entrust to faithful men who can teach others also.” There are a few idiosyncracies in there – just like with my own mentor of the 80s, Harold Owen of the Coyne Baptist Church in Woking, Surrey. But somehow these make the banquet more piquant. (Harold’s was his hatred of canned music. Rev Field’s seems to be a problem with fishing!)