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On March 27, 2017 By In Books, Culture, Family and Children, Interviews, Theology, Wisdom

Teaching Redemption Redemptively: Theological Educators in Dialog

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Aside from actually teaching, nothing has aided my growth as an educator more than talking with experienced, respected teachers; particularly those in my discipline: theology/worldview. It’s hard to think of two living teachers more esteemed in the field than Dan Kunkle and Dan Ribera.

Mr. Kunkle has been the longtime worldview teacher at Phil-Mont Christian Academy in Philadelphia, PA (to learn more about Kunkle, check this out). And on the other coast, Dr. Ribera teaches bible at Bellevue Christian School just outside of Seattle, WA (to learn more about Ribera, check this out). Together, they have close to 80 years of teaching experience.

I recently engaged in some shoptalk with the Dans (Dani?). While I had high expectations for the exchange, I couldn’t have anticipated just how rich their insights would be. With permission, that conversation is reproduced below: (more…)

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On March 10, 2017 By In Theology, Wisdom

Selecting men for ordination

There are a couple of different situations in which a church (and in particular the Minister and Elders of a church) might find themselves needing to train and select men for ordained Eldership. Perhaps there’s an older man in the church who looks (and lives) like the kind of guy who could serve as an Elder. Or perhaps there’s a (younger?) guy in the church who aspires to serve as a Minister, or an evangelist, or a missionary, or some other role in the body of Christ for which ordination is normally required.

In both cases, the initial reaction from the existing Elders and the congregation should of course be great enthusiasm, great encouragement, and so on. For even if the guy is currently not ready for the role, it’s nonetheless a fantastic blessing to have people either growing towards the grey-haired maturity that makes ordained Eldership appropriate or aspiring to the life of Christian service that makes ordination necessary.

However, it needs to be emphasised at the outset that the role is a demanding one, and that (especially in the case of those aspiring to any kind of teaching ministry) a great deal of training is likely to be required.

In order to clarify the nature of the demands upon a man’s lifestyle, understanding, orthodoxy, and so on, it can be helpful to have some questions to think about, both for the man himself and also for discussion among the existing leadership team and the broader congregation.

(more…)

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On December 26, 2016 By In Family and Children, Theology, Wisdom

Raising Expectations

A few weeks ago, the young people at Emmanuel Evangelical Church in North London organised a conference to share with the wider church their own aspirations to stop thinking of themselves as overgrown children and instead to grow towards greater maturity in Christ. The conference was called Raising Expectations, with talks on The Myth of Adolescence, Godly Ambition, Motivation, and Taking Risks, and the videos are now online below.

(Click here for audio recordings only.)

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On November 9, 2016 By In Theology, Wisdom

101 Things I’ve Learned from David Field

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 (more…)

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On October 7, 2016 By In Theology, Wisdom

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.

(more…)

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On July 25, 2016 By In Theology, Wisdom

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 In Wisdom

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?

(more…)

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On May 25, 2016 By In Wisdom

Socrates & Seeking the Truth in Love

socrates“Meno:  Somehow, Socrates, I think that what you say is right.

Socrates:  I think so too, Meno. I do not insist that my argument is right in all other respects, but I would contend at all costs in both word and deed as far as I could that we will be better men, braver and less idle, if we believe that one must search for the things one does not know, rather than if we believe that it is not possible to find out what we do not know and that we must not look for it.” (Plato’s Meno, tr. G.M.A. Grube)

Last month, I was honored to speak at a Collegium event held by New College Franklin in Franklin, Tennessee. I teamed up with a faculty member to speak about “Seeking & Speaking the Truth in Love.” I was “seeking,” focusing on Plato’s Meno, and my counterpart was “speaking,” focusing on Plato’s Gorgias. Actually, I did some speaking too, which is what I’d like to share with you here.

My lecture was entitled “Seeking the Truth in Love,” and it focused on seeking the truth through Socratic dialogue–not Socratic dialogue generally, but specifically, as in the ones Plato wrote. After some introductory remarks and an historical introduction to Socrates and Plato, I walked through the first half of Plato’s Meno, all the way up to the end of the geometry problem with the Slave Boy. My application and conclusion summarized what I have been learning as a Christian studying Plato and how I see those lessons trickling down to my neighbor, who is also seeking the truth.

If you already enjoy Plato, I hope you enjoy this somewhat informal rehearsal of the dialogue. If you are unfamiliar with the study of Plato’s dialogues and have no idea why Christians even spend precious time reading them, then I invite you into one of my favorite things to talk about: Seeking the truth in love, and loving your neighbor through it.

 

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On April 1, 2016 By In Culture, Wisdom

Social media and the death of human society

So much has been written about the impact of social media from a Christian perspective that it’s hard to imagine how anyone could contribute anything new. But my friend Arthur Kay, Minister at Trinity Presbyterian Church in Bolton, Lancashire, UK, made some remarkably profound and insightful comments in a recent email exchange with a few friends. Here, with his kind permission (thanks Arthur), are some reflections prompted by what he said, including some large chunks straight from his pen (of course, I’m to blame for anything that’s inaccurate, irritating or confusing):

People today have fewer and fewer reasons for getting together. Many of the things in the ancient world that reinforced tradition and kept people together geographically are gone. Travel is much easier; we no longer need to go to the local market to exchange goods; many cultural and social festivals are disappearing.

But even today the constraints by which cities have arisen in the past are being stripped away. Technology is enabling more and more personal isolation. For example, consider the impact of:

  • Instant remote communication
  • Remote diagnosis and even remote surgery
  • Online shopping and drone deliveries
  • Online multi-player games
  • Working from home
  • Virtual meetings
  • 3D printing
  • Superb all-round sound and vision reproduction over vast distances so that it is no longer worth the hassle of attending concerts and art-galleries

What all this means is that human selfishness is easier than ever to indulge. Human community does not arise “naturally”; it must be formed deliberately, and it takes a considerably effort to do so.

This prompts some interesting thoughts about what the local church community will look like in the future. Assuming that we don’t capitulate to the virtual church movement (Lord preserve us), perhaps God is bringing us to a point where pretty much ther only communities around are those gathered around the Lord’s Table. Though our cities may be larger than ever before, there may come a time when there might simply be very few actual localised, embodied communities left.

Perhaps God is handing us over to the consequences of our individualism, giving the world in an extreme form what we’ve been foolishly been seeking for many years, and daring the church to stand against the cultural tide. Churches that have the courage to do this may find that they suddenly become havens for large numbers of fragile, splintered people who have been stripped bare by the folly of (post-)modern, post-romantic individualism and are desperate for a community that will hold them together.

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On March 8, 2016 By In Wisdom

No, you DON’T need to read those books

In a recent article, Matt Smethurst of the Gospel Coalition asked 20 church planters for their list of 3 books every church planter should read. It provides a very instructive insight into the character of the modern western evangelical church.

Looking at the combined list, I have to say I’m dismayed, though not as surprised as I might have been a few years ago.

There are over 60 books on the list (some of the contributors took the phrase “3 books” slightly loosely). A quick glance reveals that almost all of them were written in the last 15 years. Yes, seriously. Unbelievable, right? But true.

There are a few exceptions – a shout-out to Lloyd-Jones; a couple of texts from the 20th (Leon Morris, Ronald Allen) and 19th (Spurgeon, Charles Bridges) centuries. And you need to look carefully at the lists, because in one or two cases the dates given are the dates of reprints, not the dates of first publication. But once you’ve worked through this, you discover that just four of the works hail from earlier eras: Richard Sibbes, Richard Baxter, John Flavel, and Thomas Brooks.

While it’s encouraging to see this nod to the Puritans, there’s little cause for excitement about their overall contribution of around 7% to the total. What’s astonishing is that none of the books come even from the early Reformers, never mind the Medieval or Patristic eras. (more…)

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