Steve Jeffery, Author at Kuyperian Commentary

On October 17, 2016 By Steve Jeffery In Worship Like

Formality in the Lord’s Supper

How did the formal liturgical ritual of the Lord’s Supper develop in the early years of the church? More importantly, why did it do so, and should it have done so?

It is often noted at, in the very earliest days of the church, though the believers indeed gathered regularly to “break bread” together, this appears to have been a fairly informal occasion enjoyed as part of a larger meal, rather than a ritual associated with a more formal service of worship (see for example Acts 2:42-47, and possibly Luke 22 and 1 Corinthians 11). This has led some to argue against the practice now found in the vast majority of churches, where the Lord’s Supper is detached from the domestic mealtime context and located instead within a service of worship. This, they claim, represents an illegitimate development. If we want to be faithful to our Lord’s original intention, the argument runs, we should get rid of all those “churchy rituals” and instead simply have a meal together, perhaps “breaking bread” in that context.

For what it’s worth, I think it’s a great idea for the whole church to get together for meals. But the above argument doesn’t work, and it’s important to see why.

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On October 7, 2016 By Steve Jeffery In Theology, Wisdom Like

An alternative to therapeutic theology

There are many books designed to help Christians deal with issues such as anxiety, depression, alcoholism, loneliness, (lack of) fulfilment, bereavement, grief, marital struggles, addiction, low self-esteem, and so on. Many of them are very good – I’ve read a good handful myself. However, it seems to me that there might be a more fruitful way of addressing the issues underlying these symptoms.

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On August 20, 2016 By Steve Jeffery In Politics Like

A bloody right ear

In Luke 22, one of Jesus’ disciples (identified in John’s Gospel as Peter) attempts to defend Jesus from arrest by striking the High Priest’s servant with his sword, cutting off his right ear. Jesus rebukes his wayward disciple, and promptly stretches out his hand to heal the servant’s ear.

A remarkable display of healing grace? A typically Christlike display of love for enemies.

Yes, indeed. And yet so much more.

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On August 12, 2016 By Steve Jeffery In Family and Children Like

Don’t let worldliness destroy your family

What are the two periods of a child’s life that are most dreaded by most parents?

Answer: the terrible twos, and the teenage years.

It’s obvious why these periods of a child’s life strike such fear into the hearts of the average mum and dad…

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On August 2, 2016 By Steve Jeffery In Theology Like

Reading the Fathers

An increasing number of people in the evangelical and Reformed tradition are becoming aware of the importance of engaging with the writings of the early church Fathers. The Reformers themselves would of course have taken this for granted, a point regularly made, for example, by students of Calvin – notice the huge number of quotations from the Fathers in his Institutes and elsewhere. In a similar vein, if we turn to Cranmer on the Lord’s Supper or Jewel’s Apologia for the Church of England, once again we find not only a heavy dependence on the writings of the church Fathers, but also a deep-seated conviction that a theological (and indeed historical) continuity with the Fathers is a vital part of what it means to hear the truth of God in the Scriptures.

It’s therefore very encouraging to see the self-identified heirs of Calvin, Cranmer, and the rest following in their footsteps in this matter, since working hard at this connection with the early church is really the only way to ensure that we acquire a vision of the Christian faith with the deepest possible roots in the (small-c) catholic tradition of which we rightly consider ourselves to be a part.

Yet the enterprise of reading the Fathers is not always as easy as it seems.

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On July 25, 2016 By Steve Jeffery In Theology, Wisdom Like

How not to miss opportunities in theological and ministerial education

I was chatting with a friend recently about ministerial and theological training, and I had a couple of thoughts about some of the ways in which the whole experience can go awry.

It strikes me that one of the problems that sometimes arises when people go to seminary or theological college is that they are frankly a little suspicious of their lecturers (whom they don’t know very well, after all), and about the books they’re asked to read (many of which are written by people they’re never heard of), and they therefore approach their studies with an attitude of rather unconstructive criticism. They adopt a “personal theological position” on a whole range of matters about which they profess sufficient knowledge to make pretty final-sounding judgments, and then proceed to assess what they read and hear on the basis of whether it agrees with what they already think they know.

As a result, their theological training is characterised by two major disappointments. First, they experience only the slightest incremental growth in theological understanding during their training, because they have innoculated themselves anything new, and it’s quite hard to have your world rocked by someone who is saying stuff that’s basically pretty familiar. Second, on the (rare?) occasions that they happen to encounter something genuinely new (perhaps by accident, or perhaps because it’s forced upon them), they respond with an unhealthy dose of critical-spirited-ness, because, after all, this stuff contradicts my “personal theological position.” It’s all pretty sad.

At the risk of causing offence – a risk worth taking in this instance – I’ll be blunt.

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On July 22, 2016 By Steve Jeffery In Wisdom Like

Bittersweet goodbye

It’s always sad for a church to say goodbye to our friends. It’s inevitable, of course, for people move house for many different reasons – work, family commitments, and so on – and very often this means leaving their church to worship elsewhere. But this doesn’t make it any easier when we suddenly realize that friends who’ve been a permanent fixture in our lives are going to be around a whole lot less often.

It’s even harder when the people moving on have been deeply involved in the church’s ministry. A church might lose an Elder, a family-full of wise listening ears, and a flock of behind-the-scenes servants who over the years have been responsible for a myriad of practical tasks from putting the coffee on before church to clearing up the mess afterwards.

This is the situation we’re going to find ourselves in at Emmanuel in the next few weeks with the departure of one of the families who have been with us from our very first service in March 2009. Frankly, apart from the fact that some other church somewhere is about to be richly blessed by some new arrivals, it’s hard to see the bright side.

But there is a bright side. There’s always a bright side. The God who disciplines us for our good so that we may share in his holiness (Heb 12:10) and who brings affliction so that we might keep his word (Ps 119:67) is perfectly capable of taking the bitter water of a friend’s departure and making it sweet (Ex 15:23-25).

So then, what are the good things that could happen as a result of our friends leaving the church?

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On June 25, 2016 By Steve Jeffery In Culture, Family and Children, Worship Like

What do young people really need from church?

In the last two or three generations, so many new and different answers have been given to this question that you could be forgiven for failing to keep up.

What young people need from their church, the gurus tell us, is specialised youth ministry, and specialised youth workers, and contemporary music, and midweek sports clubs to keep kids out of trouble, and midweek social activities to keep teens off the streets, and accessible worship, and youth-centred sermons, and shorter sermons, and interactive sermons, and audio-visual sermons, and online resources, and social media engagement, and a thousand and one other things. If churches don’t provide these things, we are warned, young people will undoubtedly turn away from Christ, we will have failed the next generation, the church will wither and die, and it will all be our fault.

Well, I’m sceptical. It seems to me highly unlikely that any of these activities are essential for young people to keep following Christ, for at least two reasons: First, none of them have a particularly high profile in the Bible. Second, for around 2000 years, countless millions of Christian young people have managed to grow into well-adjusted Christian adults without any of them.

So whatever benefit there might be in some of them (and I’m a fan of some contemporary Christian worship music, for example), none of them can reasonably be regarded as essential.

So then, what do young people really need from church?

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On June 18, 2016 By Steve Jeffery In Culture, Family and Children Like

Latin or Greek?

A friend asked a question recently on the subject of Christian education, along these lines: Why Greek rather than Latin? This isn’t the first time I’ve found myself tempted to talk about this subject; as it happens, I’ve had quite a few conversations about it over the years. And so perhaps now is as good a time as any to put a few thoughts in writing.

To begin with, a little background. Some Christian educators, particularly those in the so-called “Classical” tradition, regularly extol the virtues of learning Latin. The reasons are legion: it provides mental training; it helps with the grammar of (many) other languages, including English; it clarifies the etymology of many English words, thus broadening students’ English vocabulary; it opens the door to many great works of classical literature; and so on. I happily add my three-and-a-half cheers to the noisy, happy, Ciceronian throng. All these are, it seems to me, entirely worthy aspirations.

Yet we’ve chosen to teach our kids Greek instead. Why? Well, there are a few reasons. But first, two caveats.

First, I want to make it abundantly clear that this isn’t the sort of thing I want to get hot under the collar about. I think Latin is great. Seriously. Totally, wonderfully, utterly great. I’m not about to criticise anyone for teaching it to their kids. Frankly, if another family is already committed to giving their kids a thoroughly Christian upbringing, including the academic aspects of their training, then I’m 110% on their side. To start throwing brick-ends because they choose the language of Augustine rather than that of Athanasius seems to me rather like setting off across the Atlantic in a two-man rowboat, only to start complaining somewhere just west of the Scilly Isles that the other guy’s paddle is the wrong colour.

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On June 14, 2016 By Steve Jeffery In Theology Like

What do we receive in the Lord’s Supper?

The debate about what exactly we receive at the Lord’s Supper, and how we receive whatever it is that we receive, is a long and complex one. Normally, it gets bogged down pretty quickly in some fairly flaky metaphysics from Roman Catholics and Lutherans, facing off against strident denials of almost everything from evangelicals, with the Reformed types sitting somewhere in the middle, uncertain quite which way to jump. One wonders whether there might not be a better way of approaching the question.

Fortunately, there is.

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