Rural Ministry

If you've been in a Christian bookshop or at a Christian conference, you'll have noticed a swathe of books on urban churches and urban church planting. I've previously read some of the books, and while they're great and exciting, the lessons don't always naturally translate to my setting of rural ministry and mission.

Having asked in a local Christian retailer about books on rural ministry, the owner declared that he has never seen any. Perhaps it needs to be written! Nevertheless, I was delighted to find this little snippet from the interview section at the back of the book 'The Supremacy of Christ in a Postmodern World' from the 2006 Desiring God Conference:

Justin Taylor:
I imagine that a lot of pastors could be discouraged with the size of their church. They may have a smaller church, and then they see Mark Driscoll talking. He preaches substitutionary atonement, and eight hundred people come to church the next week. They preach substitutionary atonement, and eight people leave the next week. What sort of encouragement would you give tot he small-town or rural pastor who feels that, in order to benefit from this conference, he has to drop everything and move to the city to make a difference for Christ?

John Piper:
I would say that feeding the flock of God is the most precious and high and glorious calling in the world. Jesus said to Peter three times in John 21, "Feed my sheep. Feed my sheep. Feed my sheep - and don't ever give up." There's always room for growth. We can always do better. I come away from conferences like these discouraged. Don't you? Every one of these guys discourages me. I just keep thinking: I'm not doing that well; I'm not doing that well; I'm not doing that well... But that's life. It's a great thing to rest in the calling that God has given you and to cherish the Word of God. To study it and to explain it and to apply it and to exalt over it is the highest calling I know.

Now, there has to be witness in rural areas. (As Tim Keller would be the first to say.) I mean, it would just be absurd to say that we shouldn't have churches in small towns or in the country. Tim wouldn't say that. He's outraged at the abandonment of the cities. Something's askew when evangelicals leave the city. It's not that everybody should go to the city, but what has caused such an exodus? What's going on there that needs to be redressed? And there are enough people here to fix both of those problems. We can have churches in the small towns and churches in the city. So God calls people in different ways, and he gifts people in different ways, and there are pastors who flourish in small towns.

Now you have to have different expectations in a small town because if there are eight hundred people in the town - and there's a charismatic church, a Roman Catholic church, a Lutheran church, and you're the pastor of a Baptist church - everybody's aligned already. The lines are drawn. Everybody knows where everybody stands. There are, say, ten families who don't go to church, and everybody knows who they are. Now what is a mission like that supposed to look like? Faithful, loving exposition, feeding, growing up, reaching out, forming relationships - it's got to look different. You can't be beat up by an urban pastor who says you have to go out and dress like the people you're trying to reach. You might say, "Everybody dresses the same in this town." Absolutely. Everybody's the same. And so be encouraged that God loves rural people, and God loves his church in rural situations, and God loves his Word, and God loves the faithful exposition of his Word, and God loves the faithful pastor showing up at a funeral or at a sick bedside. God loves all those things. Every place has its own different challenges, and a small town is a glorious place. Sometimes I think I'd just like to go there and pastor a flock without all the complications of suburbs and campuses and multiple worship services and complicated staffing where you're trying to draw charts that make sense and have small groups all over the place. And wouldn't that be nice if the church was just a small group and you knew everybody by name? That's a glorious calling.

Perhaps that says it all, without a book needing to be written!

Love One Another

'The new command is simple enough for a toddler to memorise and appreciate, profound enough that the most mature believers are repeatedly embarrassed at how poorly they comprehend it and put it into practice: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. The standard of comparison is Jesus' love, just exemplified in the footwashing; but since the footwashing points to his death, these same disciples but a few days later would begin to appreciate a standard of live they would explore throughout their pilgrimage. The more we recognise the depth of our own sin, the more we recognise the love of the Saviour; the more we appreciate the love of the Saviour, the higher his standard appears; the higher his standard appears, the more we recognise in our selfishness, our innate self-centredness, the depth of our own sin. With a standard like this, no thoughtful believer can ever say, this side of the parousia, 'I am perfectly keeping the basic stipulation of the new covenant.''

- Don Carson, The Gospel According to John, p. 484, commenting on John 13:35.

Who's Judging?

The world thought that it was passing judgement on Jesus, not only as it perpetually debated who he was, but climactically in the cross. In reality, the cross was passing judgement on them. Since Jesus was sent as his Father's representative, his agent and the supreme divine revelation, rejection of the Son is rejection of God himself. In the callous murder of the Son of God, sin displays itself in it's most virulently evil form. But in that death, God was also giving his Son as a sacrifice, the Lamb of God; in that death, Jesus was securing the life of 'many seeds'. Thus Jesus' passion/glorification signifies judgement both positively and negatively.

- Don Carson, The Gospel According to John, p. 443, commenting on John 12:31-33.

Staggering Substitution

'Two thousand years later, we who read John's words observe not only the mind-bending notion of the incarnation, God becoming a human being, but the utterly shattering fact that this God-man died a substitutionary death, the death of a redeeming lamb. It is staggering to contemplate the God of the Bible becoming a man; it is even more staggering to contemplate him as he dies our death - and is then vindicated in resurrection. Yes, yes, no lesser words of acclamation will do: "My Lord and my God!" The confession is scandalous; the confession is glorious.'

- Don Carson, Scandalous, 2010, p 162.

Christ's Death: Example or Substitute?

"The words 'for (hyper) the sheep' suggest sacrifice. The preposition, itself ambiguous, in John always occurs in a sacrificial context ... In no case does this suggest a death with merely exemplary significance; in each case the death envisaged is on behalf of someone else. The shepherd does not die for his sheep to serve as an example, throwing himself off a cliff in a grotesque and futile display while bellowing 'See how much I love you!' No, the assumption is that the sheep are in mortal danger; that in their defence the shepherd loses his life; that by his death they are saved. That, and that alone, is what makes him the good shepherd."

- Don Carson, The Gospel According to John, p. 386, commenting on John 10:11.

Perfect Freedom

"True freedom is not the liberty to do anything we please, but the liberty to do what we ought; and it is genuine liberty because doing what we ought now pleases us."

Don Carson, 'The Gospel According to John', p. 350, commenting on John 8:12.

Being Born Again

Don Carson on Nicodemus and Jesus discussing the necessity of being born again:

What must be seized from Jesus' insistence of the new birth as the prerequisite for entrance into the kingdom is the fact that this truth is applied to a man of the calibre of Nicodemus. If Nicodemus, with his knowledge, gifts, understanding, position and integrity cannot enter the promised kingdom by virtue of his standing and works, what hope is there for anyone who seeks salvation along such lines?

No hope indeed! We don't need a partial improvement of a weak constitution, but a participation in new resurrection life through faith and the Holy Spirit. Not minor running repairs, but a complete overhaul.

A Pet God?

Don Carson on the Jews' demand for a sign when Jesus cleanses the temple in John 2:

A sign that would satisfy them, presumably some sort of miraculous display performed on demand, would have signalled the domestication of God. That sort of 'God' does powerful stunts to maintain allegiance, and that kind of allegiance is not worth having.

Reminds me of the CS Lewis line about Aslan not being a Tame Lion.

Clumsy Hands

I'm preparing to preach twice on Sunday, which is a lot of work to be getting on with, besides visits and the routine stuff. The evening sermon is on hell, and the morning sermon is in our 1 Corinthians series. In my preparations, I came across this short paragraph in Leon Morris' commentary in the Tyndale New Testament Commentaries series, published by IVP. It's his concluding note on 1 Corinthians 13, the love chapter.

The commentator cannot finish writing on this chapter without a sense that clumsy hands have touched a thing of exquisite beauty and holiness. Here with is true of all Scripture is true in especial measure, that no comment can be adequate to so great a theme. Yet no commentator can excuse himself from the duty of trying to make plain what these matchless words have come to signify for him. And no Christian can excuse himself from the duty of trying to show in his life what these words have come to mean for him.

And if one of the evangelical greats like Leon Morris feels that he has clumsy hands, how much more me! With the humility, there is also encouragement to live it out and show it forth - this is what is needed!

Quote of the Day

"Susan is looking for men to barbecue."

- Heard in a Scottish Church last year, and I had written it down on the service sheet. Just found it there now as I was doing some clearing out. Wonder what the poor men did to deserve being flame-grilled?