I’m not sure what to make of this.

One of the women in our congregation works as a care assistant to a woman with a disability. She was talking with this woman and the woman’s cleaner, both of whom are Buddhists. They were asking her about why she came to Sheffield. She told them about coming to learn about church planting and about what our church we as like. The cleaner asked her what her church was called so she told her. ‘I thought it might be,’ the cleaner replied. ‘I was at a Buddhist retreat weekend recently and the trainer commended The Crowded House as a model. They said The Crowded House were good at creating community.’

I’m not sure whether the imprimatur of Buddhists is a blessing or not! I guess a good reputation with unbelievers is positive, but I suspect some of our more conservative friends might take this as confirmation of their worst fears. So let me relate another story …

Eight of us sat round the table on Tuesday. A pretty disparate group of people. My family. A teenage girl. A woman on disability allowance. A young man who works in a supermarket. A pregnant woman whose husband was away on business in London. It was beautiful. We ate a simple meal together, talked, laughed, shared our news, encouraged one another. And we broke bread together. As we did so I was struck again how this kind of community cannot be created by human effort or human vision. The Buddhists are wasting their time if they think The Crowded House is any kind of model that can be copied. This kind of community is created by the body and blood of Jesus. ‘We, though we are many, are one body because we all partake of the one loaf.’ It is the death of Jesus that brings together such disparate people and makes us family.

In The Crowded House we’ve recently written a new statement of faith. We’ve tried to write it in a more narrative form with a minimum amount of theological jargon and with some passion. Here it is …

We are a people longing eagerly for the future

We are waiting the arrival of a new heaven and earth, which God will bring about through his transforming power. A day is coming when Christ will come again to establish his reign of justice and freedom. He will create the home of righteousness which his people crave, banishing forever sin, Satan and de ath.

In renewed bodies in a renewed creation, we will live as God’s people in unbroken relationship with God and each other. At the centre of everything will be the one God, eternally self-existent as God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, the creator and sustainer of all that is. His character is constant and his purposes unchanging. He will be all our glory. This will be life as it was meant to be lived – life in all its glorious and satisfying fulness.

We are a people formed decisively in the past

From before the creation of the world, God the Father chose us and blessed us in his Son, Jesus. We depend entirely upon the life, de ath and resurrection of Jesus, our King and Rescuer. Jesus is God-in-the-flesh, who shares our humanity, having been born of Mary. She conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit while she was still a virgin.

As the Son of God, Jesus came to make God known. As the Servant of God, Jesus came to undo the corruption of humanity and the divine curse on creation caused by the first man, Adam. He came to liberate us from our devastating self-love and to rescue us from the consequences of our ongoing wilful refusal to love God and others. Jesus fulfilled the promises made by God to Israel and realized all that Israel was called, but failed, to be. He gave us a glimpse of the world to come, calling the people of God to follow him and to demonstrate the goodness of his rule by their shared lives.

Through the power of the Holy Spirit, Jesus lived the life Adam and the rest of humanity could not live. And through the Holy Spirit, Jesus died the de ath that Adam and the rest of humanity deserve to die. On the cross he endured and exhausted God’s righteous anger against our rebellion, paying its penalty in full. Jesus rose physically from the de ad, proving the effectiveness of his de ath. The resurrection is the promise and beginning of God’s new world.

Jesus then returned to his Father in heaven, from where he now rules over all creation. He sent his Spirit to apply all that he achieved on the cross. The Spirit equips us as God’s people to live for Christ and speak of him so that others might submit to his gracious reign. In this way Jesus sovereignly gathers his church as he rescues those the Father has given him.

We are a people living joyfully in the present

God has given his Spirit and word to his people to equip us to serve him in the world and to bring us to his future.

God the Holy Spirit is the giver of life, the one who convicts of sin and the creator of saving faith. He is the one who opens our eyes to see the beauty of Christ so that through the Spirit we succumb willingly to irresistible grace. He is the one who gives us new hearts to turn to Christ and trust him. The Spirit sets us apart for Christ and makes us more like him through the word of God.

The Holy Spirit is the author and interpreter of the Bible, which is God’s word to his world concerning his Son, Jesus Christ. The Bible reflects the characters and circumstances of people who wrote it, but the Holy Spirit guided the entire process. So in the Bible God reliably reveals his character and plans as he tells the story of his grace in rescuing sinners for his glory. Because it is the word of God, the Bible is the final authority in matters of conduct, questions of life and issues of truth.

We live together in union with Christ as his church. God is littering the world with local expressions of this church. We celebrate our cultural diversity while enjoying unity in Christ. These churches are a means of grace to a needy and dying world. God has given us the task of making the good news of Jesus known to those without God and without hope. Our community life points ahead to what God has in store for his world. So, by word and life, we mo del and offer reconciliation to those alienated from God by their wilful rejection of him. We call people to turn from despising God and urge them to trust in Christ. Without Christ, people face only the judgment of being forever cut off from God and all that is good. It is by grace that we live in the present as forgiven sinners. We never earn the right to be called children of God. The gift of faith hears the ‘not guilty’ verdict that God will proclaim for his people on the coming day of judgment and enables us to live in the light of it now.

As those welcomed, forgiven and accepted, we become a community of those who welcome, forgive and accept. We respond to the gospel in baptism, expressing that we have become part of the people of God. The Lord’s Supper is the meal we regularly share together to celebrate the work of Christ and express that we continue to be part of the people of God together. Our shared life proclaims the Lord’s de ath until he returns to make good the invitation to his eternal banquet.

Last week I attended one day of the Fulwood Conference here in Sheffield. The stand out talk for me was Gavin McGrath on John Owen’s doctrine of the Holy Spirit. It was a great introduction with some very suggestive (if brief) contemporary application - especially on the importance of the doctrine of the Trinity. His two talks are available for free download here and here.

It got me thinking. I’ve written a book on prayer and I often get asked to speak on prayer. I’ve written a book on social involvement and I often get asked to speak on social involvement. I’ve written a book on busyness and I often get asked to speak on busyness. I’ve written a book on missional church and I often get asked to speak on missional church. I’ve just written a book on sanctification and already I’m being asked to speak on sanctification.

I’ve also written a book on the Trinity, but no-one has ever asked me to speak on the Trinity.

Why is this?

Actually while we’re on the subject … Why is my book on the Trinity the only one to be going out of print?

The irony is that of all the topics above the Trinity is the one on which I would most like to be asked to speak! Indeed I often find ways of speaking on it even if I’m asked to speak on something else. If I’m asked to give on prayer then I nearly always end up talking about the Trinity.

I also think it’s the most practical of all those topics.

My book Delighting in the Trinity is available in the USA from Kregel, but is now out of print in the UK. I have some copies available for sale in the UK at £6 each including packing and postage (discounts for multiple orders).

How does this new economic reality change the way churches are planted? Are church planters moving to more organic & decentralized models? Will there be more bi-vocational church planters? Will more church doors close, consolidating Christians into larger churches?

Here’s my final post based on my talk on ‘Communities of Grace’ to the Evangelists Conference.

How can we create communities of grace? Let me suggest seven ideas:

(1) Make the connections

We need to teach grace. We need to often speak, pray and sing of the cross. But we also need to make connections with people. Plenty of people believe in justification by faith for the final day, but doubt justification by faith for the next. On a Monday morning in the workplace they are still trying to prove themselves, to find identity in their achievements. We need to paint a picture for people; to show them what grace in action looks like; to fuel their imaginations, tell stories.

(2) Welcome the mess

Welcome messy communities. Welcome messy people. Obviously you’ll want them to change, to become more like Jesus, to be set free from their slaveries. But don’t make your welcome dependent on change. Don’t suppress conflict. Don’t hide problems.

(3) Stop pretending

Don’t hide your own problems. You’ll need to exercise some discretion. Let everyone know you struggle. Let some people know what you struggle with. A break through moment in our context was when I confessed long-standing sin to a small prayer meeting. I didn’t do it to create a break-through moment, but that was the outcome. Other people suddenly felt able to confess their sin and it has led to a time of change and accountability throughout the community.

(4) Stop performing

Don’t put on a show. Don’t push people to perform, to produce results, to get it right all the time. Give people permission to fail. We’ve realised that polished Bible studies and articulate prayers disenfranchise semi-literate people.

(5) Eat and drink with broken people

The Son of Man who receives all authority in Daniel 7 comes eating and drinking (Luke 7:34). Jesus eats and drinks with sinners. It’s a powerful expression of community. We think we are enacting grace if we work among the poor, if we serve them. But we are only half way there. It is not really grace because we still act from a position of superiority. We think we are humble when we serve. But we have missed the dynamic that is going on. What we really proclaim is that we are able and you are unable. I can do something for you, but you can do nothing for me. Think how different the dynamic is when we sit and eat with someone. We meet as equals. We share together. We behave as friends. We affirm one another and enjoy one another.

(6) Give people time to change

I think there are some tensions and questions here, but we need to give people time to change. How long did it take for you to become perfectly like Jesus? Of course, you’re still changing. There are some sins we’re prepared to work on over a lifetime, but there are others where we demand instant change. Why is this? The answer, of course, is that we want them to become respectable. We don’t want a messy community. So we say, ‘You’re saved by faith, but to become part of the church (e.g. to be baptised) you need to change your life.’ So which is it? Are we saved by works or are we saved by works?

(7) Focus on the heart

What’s your agenda for change? All too often we focus on behaviour. We can list the behaviours we would like someone to stop or start. But Jesus says our behaviour comes from the heart (Mark 7:20-23). Our focus needs to be on the heart. Our job is to help people love God and treasure Christ. In Philippians 1 Paul says the aim of his ministry among them is their joy (1:25-26). He wants them to find joy in Christ – only then will people turn from the pleasures of sin. I do need to describe a life that pleases God. But my job is not to go round telling people to reform their lives or change their behaviour. My job is help people find joy in Christ.

We’re been thinking for a while about how we can train married couples as couples to do ministry together as a couple. This was reinforced by the visit to us of Robert Banks in which he highlighted the way Aquila and Priscilla worked together as a married couple.

But where to turn? Does anyone know of any resources for training couples to minister together? I don’t mean material on marriage - we’ll cover that, but we have plenty of material on married life. I’m interested in resources on partnering in ministry, supporting one another in ministry, using your home for ministry and so on.  

I recognise that, while some couples may have a shared ministry, other couples may have distinct ministries so the focus for them will be on mutual support and identifying opportunities for overlap. 

Any suggestions?

Last month Robert and Linda Banks spent the weekend with us which was a great privilege. Robert’s book Paul’s Idea of Community has been a big influence on The Crowded House. But actually the book that most influenced me was his short, fictional account of a Roman visiting an early church gathering called Going to Church in the First Century. Another big influence was his book All the Business of Life which I think has now be republished as Redeeming the Routines: Bringing Theology to Life.

Robert led a seminar for us on the New Testament household churches. Here are my top ‘take away’ ideas.

1. We don’t know much about what the churches did when they gathered. But it seems the thing they always did was eat together. (One of my top ideas for my next writing project is a reflection on meals and hospitality.)

2. We did a case study of Aquila and Priscilla. One notable thing is that they are always mentioned together. It seems they ministry together. So in the Edge Network we’ve begun thinking about how we might train couples together to do ministry together or to support one another in ministry.

3. Robert introduced us to a traditional Anabaptist household church hymn which he thinks has been passed down the generation from the sixteenth century. Here it is …

What is this place where we are meeting?
Only a house, the earth its floor,
walls and a roof sheltering people,
windows for light, an open door.
Yet it becomes a body that lives
when we are gathered here,
and know our God is near.

2. Words from afar, stars that are falling,
sparks that are sown in us like seed.
Names for our God, dreams, signs and wonders
sent from the past are what we need.
We in this place remember
and speak again what we have heard:
God’s free redeeming word.

3. And we accept bread at his table,
broken and shared, a living sign.
Here in this world, dying and living,
we are each other’s bread and wine.
This is the place where we can receive
what we need to increase:
God’s justice and God’s people.

Amazon appear to be having a sale on the generally excellent NICOT and NICNT commentary series. Some are at silly prices. For example V. P. Hamilton’s commentaries on Genesis are £1.99 each for 540 and 733 pages!