Character, Personality and Gifting

The Three Are Found in every One

Every son or daughter of Adam possesses Personality, Character and Gifting. 

Personality is largely given by nature. From the outset of life we can discern the personality of a child: shy, outgoing, timid, experimental. 

Clouds of tragedy may shroud, events may suppress, parents may try to direct, but Personality in the end is what is.

The God who has created over 400,000 different kinds of beetle has made, and delights, in a diversity of Personality.

Character is different from Personality because it is more in the hands of the possessor to shape. In Gospel terms Character may be expanded with words like faithfulness, integrity, uprightness and faithfulness.

And Character, though in the gift (and responsibility) of parents to form, is in some or large measure in the hands of the possessor. By the grace and power of God Character is open to development by the power of the Spirit.

Gifting is a mix of nature and nurture. If you have not been given some aptitude for music it's unlikely you will become a Bocelli or a Chris Martin. If no 'natural' aptitude with numbers, then you're unlikely to become a Maxwell or an Einstein. 

Gifting, as with Character, is partly in our hands. Graft and diligence can develop nascent gifts. Indeed, even though we are bestowed with natural gifts unless they are developed with diligence, they are unlikely to shine.

In the church spiritual gifts are divinely bestowed.

Confusion between Personality and Character

Believers are called to possess godly character and to add to their faith qualities such as goodness, self-control and perseverance.

And all leaders, elders and ministers of the Gospel must possess specific character traits found in 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1.

All thus far is common sense. 

But here's the point of this blog.  

We must never confuse Character and Personality. 

And this is very easy to do.

Godly character can reside in a vast range of personalities. From the apostle Peters of the world who tend to be bold, outspoken and upfront, to the apostle Johns who are more of the gentle, cautious and background kind. 

God's church should be liquorice allsorts when it comes to personality and gifting. But homogenous when it comes to character.

Something is wrong in a church or with a church grouping where everyone is of the same personality type. 

We should discover - and rejoice in - God's vast range of personalities. Peters and Luthers should be welcome.

And so should Johns and Melanchthons.

AI Image:

Draw a painting of personality, character and giftings in the style of Turner

How can we believe in miracles today?

Christianity is supernatural - from first to last

Christianity is supernatural through and through. 

It is founded on a miracle - the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. 

It requires a miracle for anyone to be converted to Christ: faith is a supernatural gift, the new birth is a supernatural change of heart.

Christians believe God was the author of the universe, not the trinity of chance + natural law + time.

The Bible says that the world will end supernaturally - not naturally.

Followers of Jesus are kept safe by God's mighty power every day, indeed every moment of every day.

So if miracles can't happen, Christians are in a pickle.

A reigning paradigm in the west?

A common view in the West - whether it reigns I know not - is that science has disproved the miraculous.

Or perhaps rendered those who believe in them philosophical cavemen.

The logic runs along two assumptive tracks:

Assumption 1: we know that the physical world runs by laws. Everything that happens from the 'movement' of electrons in an atom to the motion of the planets around stars runs according to known laws. 

Miracles can't happen because they would require either the suspension of those laws or the breaking of them. 

So for example, walking on the sea of Galilee breaks or suspends the law of gravity.

Assumption 2: the universe is 'closed.' By which it is meant that the only entities which can affect other entities in the universe are found within the universe. Nothing "outside" affects "inside." 

Miracles require that we posit "outside" entities (God, Satan, angels, demons) to act upon "inside" matter. (Whether we should consider God as an "outside" entity is considered below **)

So on two accounts at least - the behaviour of entities to respond in known ways by known laws, and the idea that the universe is closed - miracles are deemed impossible.

What is a Miracle?

So what is a miracle? Let's start here.

First, they are rare events - that's why they are so remarkable, why they stand out. If miracles were an everyday part of our lives, we'd call them nature. 

Secondly, miracles suspend, substitute or break the normal laws of nature.

Normally we can't walk on water, but Jesus can and does. 

Normally, it takes water, a vineyard, time and a winery to make wine. But Jesus can shortcircuit the whole process and turn water directly into wine instantly.

The laws of nature are God's ordinary modus operandi, his normal way of running his universe, miracles are God's unusual ways. 

(We should say here that what we call the normal laws of nature - are anything but normal, according to Scripture. Sustaining the universe every moment of every day is the supernatural power of the Son of God. Nature is in point of fact Supernature. So a miracle is God merely substituting Supernatural Mode Normal with Supernatural Mode Miracle.)

The third thing to say about miracles is that they are always purposeful, often with symbolic significance. Jesus turns a small meal into a banquet for thousands - meaning he is able to satisfy the spiritual needs of the whole world as the bread of life. Tales about Jesus showing off his miraculous powers as a child to his mates are just that - tales. No miracle in the Bible is ever 'for fun.'

Finally, since miracles are generally speaking local and small-scale, the rest of the universe is unaffected. Healing a blind man in Palestine does not affect the weather on Mars.

Why miracles can certainly occur according to science

First, there is no evidence that the universe is closed. It is a working assumption required for science to function, but it remains completely unproven and unprovable. 

From day to day, scientists assume that angels are not randomly 'interfering' with the behaviour of molecules; they assume that demons are not altering the orbits of planets. God's universe runs by the divine set of laws we call natural. It's a reflection of the faithfulness of God.

But, interestingly, there is not a single theorem of science which can prove this assumption! There is no good reason to believe that the universe is closed. Why would one assume this?  Scientists need this working assumption in their experimental work, but why should anyone assume that the universe is impervious to the action of a God?

Second, there is no way to detect a past miracle. Since miracles are rare, their influence in the ocean of creation is but a small ripple long dissipated, leaving no lasting trace, just the fact and its significance.

In the third place, however, modern miracles are provable. There is no such thing as a modern miracle that can offer no physical proof. If a healing takes place today, for example, then before and after medical reports will reveal the change.

And there are many examples of modern miracles (see the Two Volume "Miracles" by Craig Keener).

Science offers no hiding place for unbelief

In other words, there is not a line in science that says "miracles cannot happen." And thus science offers no hiding place for unbelief. 

In the everlasting attempt of men and women to hide from God, science has proven to be a convenient modern fig leaf. 

But science offers no cover. Miracles have, can and do happen. And many scientists past and present have felt the almighty power of God in their minds, hearts and lives.

-----------------

** Is God an "outside" entity? The very question is borderline blasphemy. Because Scripture insists that God is very much "inside" his universe, sustaining it by the word of his power. Indeed in him we live and move and have our being and nothing exists without the Word. There is nothing natural about quarks or electrons, molecules or galaxies. If God were to withdraw his influence from his universe it would disappear in an instant.

AI Drawing:

draw a miracle taking place in nature, pop art

How can the Resurrection of Jesus give Hope?

 

 Hope Springs Eternal

The English poet Alexander Pope is known for the line "hope springs eternal in the human breast." Whatever precise meaning he assigned to those words, the general interpretation is sound:

None of us can live without hope.

Hope is the belief that tomorrow will be better than today.

That an event of the past will somehow be corrected in the future.

The tragic accidental death of a loved one will bear fruit in the saving of other lives.

An injustice we have experienced will eventually be corrected.

A lost loved one will be seen again.

The illness we suffer today will find a cure one day.

Hope, or so it seems, is hard-wired into the human soul.

And one can see why.

The alternative to hope is despair. And despair - the conviction that present anguish will not find future resolution - is impossible for us to bear.

How can the resurrection of one man give hope?

But how can the resurrection of one man in history be the source of glorious hope?

For that is the radical claim of Christians: the resurrection of Jesus gives present living hope and future dying hope.

The reason is that Jesus was no ordinary man. He was the Son of God, both human and divine. A mystery statable but incomprehensible. But a mystery proven by his miracles, his words, his life, his death and his resurrection.

Whatever Jesus the God-Man does is of utmost import merely by virtue of who He was and who He is.

Present Living Hope

Present 'today' hope flows from Jesus like this. You and I are alienated from the God who made and loves us. Like beached whales who cannot survive without the sea, we cannot survive or thrive - not really, not fully - without God. 

Jesus came into the world to put us right with God.

He did this by paying the penalty for our sins on Good Friday. Sins are the wrong thoughts, attitudes, words and actions we commit every day of our lives. Sin alienates us from the holiness of God. Through Jesus' death, in some mysterious and wonderful way, he paid the full penalty for our wrongdoing.

Being God he could pay for more than one person. For all who trust in him.

Jesus reconciles us to God! 

And with God we experience new life in this present world. A Comforter in sorrow, a Friend in need, a community who love us.

But that's not all...

 Future Dying Hope

Future dying hope is the certain knowledge that death will not be the end. That we will enjoy eternal life in a renewed world beyond the river we all must cross.

And this is where the rising of Jesus comes in.  

His resurrection is the firstfruits of a harvest of innumerable resurrections to follow. Jesus promised that whoever believes in him will be raised to life after they die.

Christian hope is not Oxford dictionary hope "a feeling of expectation and desire for a particular thing to happen." 

Christian hope is not a "feeling of expectation" it is certainty of future and eternal joy.

AI Drawing: 

"draw the resurrection  of Jesus  in digital art."

Why should Christian Leaders show Hospitality?

 

The simple answer is to authenticate, by life, the preaching of the local church... but first we stand back....

 The New Era of Internet Influence

We must all recognise that the days of real church leaders teaching real congregations are now over.

Or, rather, the era in which the predominant teaching influence on a church was through the local pulpit.

With the explosion of material available on the web there will be some saints who are more influenced by online teaching than inperson sermons.

The real possibility has now arisen that a church pastor/teacher/elders may not, by any stretch, be the main teacher(s) of the flock of God.

The Blessings of the Web

I once heard someone jest that www stood for World Wide Waste of time, but it need not be. If we are discerning there are reliable teachers we can benefit from.

And it seems incumbent upon church leaders these days to guide their members to reliable faithful websites. Here are just a few that are presently faithful (vigilance is needed because all human organizations - without any exceptions - are prone to doctrinal drift):

1 - Got Questions 

2 - The Gospel Coalition

3 - Desiring God

4 - FIEC

The Dangers of the Web

There are significant dangers surrounding web preaching we need to be aware of.

Danger 1 - False Teachers. The web is alive with false teachers and false teaching. Young believers particularly need to be on guard. Especially beware of those who boast of worldly qualifications / ecclesiological titles / subscriber numbers /  etc - none of which are indicators of truth.

Danger 2 - IES (Itching Ear Syndrome). Anyone with a doctrinal bee in their bonnet can find websites that will keep that bee alive, buzzin' and breeding. The algorithms of the web will take a listener into ever narrower territory until every talk they hear reinforces previous biases.

Danger 3 - Truth by Numbers. "He must be right because he has a million subscribers." We can image many church conversations across the globe have taken the following form, if not the details, "But XYZ believes in dispensational mid-trib premillennialism and he has more subscribers than you!" We need a Christian doctrine of numbers which recognizes that numbers are no indicator of truth. In fact numbers may reveal just the opposite, for false teachers are far more alluring than truth tellers. 

Even among evangelicals, numbers are no test of truth or value because some evangelicals (both dead and alive) have wealthy backers who pay big money to boost subscriber numbers. A teacher may be popular only because he/his backers are wealthy, not because he is truthful or helpful. 

It is not pleasant to point out facts.

Danger 4 - Truth divorced from Life. High-profile evangelical fraudsters whose lives did not match their truth have arisen and deceived many. Which brings me to the topic of this blog...

...the only teachers we should truly trust are teachers known to us personally, because in Scripture truth and life are inseparably bound together.

Doctrine and Life are One

We see this supremely through the Incarnation, where the Word (Truth) became flesh to dwell among us. 

God did not send us only words, he sent us a Person. And the Person backed up his words with his Life.

We see this in the basic command of Christ to his disciples, "Follow me." Not learn abstract doctrine, but follow a living Person. 

We see this in the Great Commission, where the command given to the church is to make disciples from the world - in exactly the same way that Jesus made his twelve disciples (that's what making disciples actually means), namely, to talk and walk with people. 

We see this in the radical insistence of imitator of Christ, Paul, that people should follow his life as well as / as much as his doctrine. (1 Corinthians 4:16,17, 11:1-2; Philippians 3:17, 4:9; 1 Thessalonians 1:6).

Before we listen to preacher we should watch their life. They won't be perfect, of course, but they should be godly. 

Here then is the internet problem: we have absolutely no idea what kind of life a web teacher is living. That's a pretty stark truth. 

The greatest Christian internet guru may in point of life-fact be a fraudster. 

You don't know. 

At a distance you cannot possibly know. 

Which leads us to Christian leaders and hospitality...

Christian leaders need to Show (as well as Tell)

Christian leaders must show hospitality - and for more than the reason behind this blog. 

The Greek word behind hospitality means "friend-of-strangers" and gives us one clue as to why leaders must show hospitality. Christian leaders are to go out of their way to love the outsider, the lonely, the lost, and in this way to model the Friend of Sinners.

There's a second reason Christian leaders need to show hospitality. They need  accountability for their own lives. Our homes reveal an awful lot about our lives and priorities. Having people into our homes regularly will help to curb the obsessions that can so easily take over our lives.

A family home that has few people over for hospitality can easily turn into a shrine to one idol or the other. 

Hospitality gives life-style accountability to us all - and especially to Christian leaders.

But the third and main reason leaders must show hospitality - and the purpose of this blog -  is to show by their lives the veracity and example of what is preached.

What does the Bible teach about marriage?  The local church can preach from Ephesians 5, but visit a married leader's home and see how the teaching works itself out. (It won't be a perfect marriage but it should be loving and ordered.)

What does the Bible teach about parenting? A sermon from Ephesians 6 is one way to learn. But visit the home of a Christian leader with kids and see the preaching in practice.

What does a godly life style look like? Visit the home of a Christian leader.

Life and Word go together. 

If a Christian leader does not welcome the flock into his home, we must ask why not? What has he got to hide?

In both 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1 hospitality is a requirement for a church elder. For all the reasons above.

When we are looking for the next generation of elders we're not looking for men with lots of knowledge, but men who live godly lives - and their churches know it because they've seen those lives at close quarters. 

And when we are seeking out teachers to instruct us we need to know about their lives as much as their words.

AI Image:

"Draw an informal church pastor eating a meal with friends in his home"

Six signs your church is getting too big

When is big, too big?

Suppose a Bible church is growing - what are the signs that it is becoming too large and it's time to divide and multiply?

Of course, to some, the very notion that a church can be "too big" is heresy - aren't numbers a true sign of "success"? Certainly from a worldly point of view "too big" is not a valid category of thought.

But since the kingdom of God works differently from the kingdom of the world, and since all real spiritual growth in God's kingdom is through meaningful small-group discipleship (like Jesus did it), Schumacher got it right, small, really is beautiful. 

Here are six signs it may be time to downsize by planting...

1. When people attend because of popularity

The moment folks begin attending because they've heard about the church, because the church is becoming "popular" (whatever that means, Biblically), because hits and subscribe numbers are on the up, it's a sign the church is growing in the wrong way - a worldly way.

What value is it if the saints in one city or district are simply recycled, marching from the latest faddy church in town to the next? 

And remember, after marching up your hill, it won't be long before they march back down.

The kingdom is not being extended if the cards are merely being reshuffled.

The growing church might find itself ascending some illusionary ecclesiastical ladder, but what does it profit a church if it gains the whole world but loses its soul?

2.  When it has become a preaching centre

A preaching centre - where all the spokes are connected only to preacher hub - is an institution unknown in the Scriptures. All the justifying myths attached to this common idea, such as "but there is no good preaching for miles around," "why not steward a superior preaching gift," "We can achieve more as a larger congregation" etc, are very easily debunked.

The truth is that the exaltation of one gift and one man above all the other myriad useful, needful, wonderful, Spirit-given gifts of the New Testament is unbiblical - and dangerous. 

Imagine a body made up of just one gigantic eye, one humungous foot, one colossal ear, or one huge hand.  

In one famous London church of the last century it was boasted that members of the congregation could see the exalted preacher in the vestry afterwards to have their spiritual problems solved. A spiritual clinic if you like. I trust in the cold light of New Testament Day the notion that one saint (whoever he be) could or should solve the problems of a 1000 other saints is seen as outrageous. "Carry one another's burdens" is the call of Christ, not go to some Christian guru and have him carry them for you.

3. When you are approaching the "80% rule"

There is a well-known socio-common-sense rule that says that when 80% of the seats in any given auditorium are filled that church ceases to grow. New people want to hide for their first few weeks, but if they are marched to the front row or squeezed into the only available nooky corner on day 1, they may not return.

We get it. Some people hate crowds. Do you? I do.

As a church approaches 80% capacity it's probably too big. 

4. When living organism is replaced by human organization

Most churches look back on smaller earlier days as their "glory days" - and for good reason. With smaller numbers, if they wanted to do something different or exciting they could turn on a pin - and merely by word of mouth.

I heard of a church that decided - on the spur of the moment - to head out to the hills one easter morning  for their worship service, followed by a McDonald's McMuffin, I believe. An impossible joy with a church bigger than 20/30/40.

When small new churches need more workers in one area of church life, they just chat to / phone / email their brothers and sisters. Easy peasey. Nothing formal, nothing "organised."

This relational ethos sits well with the local church described as a family of brothers and sisters.

But once a church requires corporate organizational machinery run by someone with a Masters in business management, you have lost something very precious and human and divine.   

You've moved from organic to organizational.

5. When no-one can possibly know everyone

When it is actually impossible for everyone to have at least some small passing acquaintance with everyone else, again, you have lost something of that precious gift of fellowship. When folk ask people who have been around for a decade,  "is this your first Sunday here?"  

When everyone is lost in a sea of faces. 

When you, the individual saint don't matter any more. 

When you are a number, a mere statistic. 

6. When the number of people not attending small groups is increasing

As a church grows numerically, it is all too easy for the church to attract a non-participatory fringe.  Believers who have no connection to other saints in the body except on a Sunday morning. The "core" has stopped growing even though the periphery expands.

In New Testament body-speak this is equivalent to a collection of disconected eyes rattling around in a box. Lots of legs and feet trying to walk or move on their own. Ears hearing but passing the message to no-one else.

Without radical accountability to other believers through discipleship-size groups, it is impossible to grow in grace. (No matter what the quality of the preaching; for preaching alone never made a saint.)

The moment church numbers swell but the home group population remains static, the church has become too big. 

What next?

When a church grows to this kind of size, a number of responses are possible.

The first is to keep growing in numerical size...

Or else you could take radical steps to make the church smaller to grow even more! To plant a church in a needy area of town or district, nurture it to teenage and then let it go. Then plant another church and let that one go too. Then another, ad infinitum...

(The letting go is just as important as the planting, BTW, for kids who are manipulated into hanging onto mom's apron strings when they should be standing on their own two feet normally rebel).

If a church takes this real or true-growth strategy, reaching out to new communities all the time and staying small, they won't be famous in this world. But who cares about transient illusionary here-today gone-tomorrow earthly glory if one day we hear the Lord's well done?

 AI Art

Dalle  draw a small church and a large church together digital art

(Dalle, ignorant ecclesiologically, thinks that a church is a building!)

How old is the Earth?

 A Good Question

A question as deceptively simple as "how old is the earth?" turns out to contain some deep subquestions. 

Like, Do we just buy into the latest scientific theories?

And, Is the Bible intended to be a scientific text book with answers to such questions?

The Two Books

It's helpful in this enquiry, to think about the Book of Scripture and the Book of Creation. The Book of Scripture, the 66 books of the Bible were given so that we might come to know God personally; the God we already know exists.

The Book of Creation is designed to reveal the God of Creation to us and to glorify his mighty name. "O Lord, my Lord, how majestic is your name through all the earth." "The heavens declare the glory of God." 

Everything we see around us from our amazing bodies and blow away minds to the the furthest biggest baddest quasars scream, "God exists - and isn't he amazing!" 

That's a major purpose behind the Book of Creation.

The Two Books must Agree

Since the two books come from the same Author, they must agree with one another. That is the starting point for gaining an answer to our question, how old is the earth? The Book of Creation cannot disagree with the Book of Creation.

If they disagree, the disagreement must be apparent, not real.

Either we have misunderstood what the Book of Scripture is teaching, or we have misunderstood what the Book of Creation is teaching - or we've misunderstood both.

Add to these starting points, the fact - surely this is true - that Scripture has not been given to yield a precise chronology or science of the history of the earth. If the Scriptures did contain "final science" no-one would be able to understand it, not today nor tomorrow, not ever.

(I'm with the long-dead cardinal who said something like the Scriptures tell us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go.)

The Big Theories of Science

On the science side, we would be fools to buy into all of its grand theories. The smaller theorems will probably stand the test of time or be proven to be approximations of more accurate theorems, but the big theories - such as the Big Bang with its associated time lines - are likely to be provisional.

(For interests sake, some pretty weird bolt-ons have had to be introduced into the Big Bang theory to make it work. For example the invention of a period of rapid inflation near the start of the big bang, and the invention of dark matter to explain the acceleration of the universe. These bolt-ons raise the suspicion that the BB theory is not going to turn out to be true). 

We would be fools to take the theory of evolution or the Big Bang theory as fact.

(The sceptic should bear in mind that in the last century two enormous theories suffered paradigm shifts - the steady state theory which said the universe was eternal gave way to the Big Bang theory; and the "cooling shrinking earth" theory gave way to plate tectonics). 

There is not a single reason in the world to suppose that the big theories of today's science will not be the subject material of comedians in the not too distant future.

Where does that leave us?

On the surface it would appear that the Book of Scripture teaches the earth is say 10,000 years old while the book of Creation seems to teach that the earth is far older than that. 

Remember the options?

(1) Perhaps the Bible does not really teach that the earth is 10000 years old

There seems little doubt that Adam and Eve - real human beings - only trace back to thousands of years in time. But are the six days of Genesis one, 24 hour days? Can we be sure, especially when they have a poetic (or at least 'elevated prose') form about them?

(2) Perhaps the Book of Creation does not teach millions and billions

Scientists may have rock dating all wrong. Although many "clocks" in nature (presumably put there by God) seem to point to an age much greater than 10,000 years, these dating systems could be completely wrong. 

(3) Perhaps we've got both wrong

The other possibility is that both interpretations are wrong - and no-one knows how old the earth is.

We should be A-OK with such a possibility. It would show how tiny our minds are, and it would force us to ask far more important questions of Genesis 1,2 and 3.

The most important teachings

The most important teachings of these chapters have nothing to do with how old the universe or the earth is. 

Instead they tell us about the nature of mankind. We've been made male and female, we've been created heterosexual. There is an ordered relationship between the sexes. We have been made in the image of God and we're much more important than the animals. 

We've been made to know, love and obey God. 

But now we are fallen, ashamed, foolish and broken, hiding from God.

Yet finding that God in his immeasurable love for us keeps searching and seeking us out. This God rather than abandoning us to the fate we deserve reaches out and promises Adam and Eve a Saviour who will destroy the Tempter and restore us to God and bring us, in time, to a better Eden.

This Good News is infinitely more important than any arguments about how old the earth is.

AI Image:
Draw old earth and new earth

Why Preaching is Not Enough

The Importance of Preaching

There are few activities in the life of a healthy New Testament church more important than preaching. It is one of the defining characteristics of an evangelical church. 

But most of us in our tribe know that.

It's an assumption, an unwritten rule, the mood music in all our churches.

Through the Word we are converted, corrected, faithed, encouraged, comforted and warned.

But is preaching enough to grow in grace? Is preaching enough to disciple young believers?

That's the question. 

Put it another way:

Did Jesus ask his disciples to show up once a Sabbath to hear a sermon? 

Did the apostle Paul put on a Jerusalem Gospel lecture tour? 

No and no. 

What is needed to grow in Christ - in addition to good preaching - is close fellowship with other believers.  

Here are some of the major reasons:

Because the incarnation reveals that

God also speaks powerfully through human beings

The first reason we need more than the preached word lies in the doctrine of the incarnation, the coming of God into this world in the Person of Jesus Christ.

The Word was made flesh. The Verbal or Written or Propositional Word or words of God became and came through a real human being who dwelt among us.

If only pure Word or words were needed, God could have remained in heaven and spoken pure words, perhaps received by earthly prophets, written down in books and then distributed across the world.

But instead, God enshrined his Word or words in a living breathing human being, the Son of Man. We have seen his glory, we were eye-witnesses of his majesty, wrote the apostles.

And through that living human being he imparted his words. In the last days God has spoken through his Son. Not merely as sound waves from the lips of the Son of God, but through a powerful, gracious and truthful life. 

Jesus speaks not only with words, he speaks through human actions. This is the point.

New Testament communication is much more than verbal propositional sentences, it also comes, incarnationally, through the actions of the speaking person.

Life as well as lip.

What have the scholars discovered? In communication, we're told, 55% is transferred nonverbally, 38% vocally, and a mere 7% by words alone. These clever chappies may have their percentages all wrong, but I doubt if they are perfectly wrong.

The incarnation teaches us that when it comes to communicating New Testament style, with New Testament Truth, words are not enough. Embodied life is also required.

Because the Great Commission is all about

one disciple making another disciples through human contact

How did Jesus disciple his Twelve?

Did he command them to show up at a lecture every Sabbath?

Watch an additional YouTube video during the week?

No, the way Jesus taught was by life as well as by lip. The disciples not only heard Jesus speak truth, they saw truth demonstrated through his life. Love your enemies, they heard from him, and loving his enemies they saw in him. Have faith he taught them, and having faith they saw.

When Jesus gave his great commission he commanded the Twelve to make more future disciples by teaching them to obey. Not merely teaching them - a cerebral activity - but teaching them to obey. Helping them to work out what it means to live out the new life.

And how did Jesus do this practical part? By showing them through his life what he taught them with his words.

Show and Tell. 

Show as well as Tell. 

If we had asked Jesus, "What do you mean by the command 'make disciples'?" He would have surely said, "Do for the world what I have just done for my disciples over the last 3 years."

Spend lots and lots of time with them. Show them by life as much as by lip God's new and gracious ways.

So well were they discipled by this lip-life combination that everyone noted that they had been with Jesus. Not that they had been taught by Jesus (alone) but been with him.

Paul followed his Master and spent lots  of time with converts, urging them to "Follow my [life] example, as I follow Christ."  

(Kierkegaard, out of interest, someone I would not normally quote, suggested that Show was actually more important than Tell, when he said: "Order the parsons to be silent on Sunday. What is there left? The essential thing remains: their lives, the daily life with which the parson preaches. Would you, then, get the impression by watching them, that it was Christiantiy they were preaching?")

We may disagree with some of this quote, but SK is surely not far off the mark.

The great commission is not merely to Tell, but  to Show and Tell.

Because Christians only grow when they are connected 

 to the Head and to His body as well

The third reason we need living words as well as written ones is the doctrine of the church as a body, where one believer is a hand, another a foot, another an eye, and so on.

And where we each grow, the Head supplying the grace and power, as we are in community and connection with our brothers and sisters in Christ. 

We grow as we are with one another. 

Not by Word alone, but by brotherly and sisterly incarnational (small "i") word. 

If we neglect the influence of life upon life and try to build the saints by word alone (preaching alone), we're likely to end up with lopsided saints. Full of knowledge but lacking in the graces that are forged in saint-to-saint iron sharpening iron fellowship. 

If we try you build up the saints with knowledge only, we're likely to end up with religious people whose domestic lives are largely untouched by the transforming power of the Gospel.

So where has "Preaching is enough" come from?

But we should ask, Where does this preaching-only idea come from since it is nowhere found in Holy Writ?

One source is human pride. People, even Christian people, love to boast about doctrine.

Doctrine sells, Christ-likeness is a marketing flop. So often evangelical churches mimic the university model where knowledge is number 1.

A second source of this imbalance between Show and Tell is spiritual laziness. It's easier to listen to deep and wide doctrine than to love the unlovable, or to deny ourselves, take up our crosses or put sin to death. 

Anyone can hide unChristlikeness under the cloak of sound preaching.

A third source of  preaching-only inbalance is the numbers game. 

The other day, I came across a Christian bloke on LinkedIn who styles himself "Trainer of 10+ million leaders."

Jesus managed to train 12, but this guy has managed to train 10+ million leaders.

You can only delude yourself into thinking you have trained 10+ million people if you think that training involves words alone - and virtual words at that.

As long as we chase the numbers game we'll fall prey to the preaching-only myth. 

But the moment we realise that influencing others in the Jesus Way means spending a lot of sacrificial time with young believers, we'll settle for tiny little numbers, anonymity in this world, and heaven's well-done reward.

The need of the present hour is not more or better preaching but a revolution in our understanding of biblical discipleship. 

If every believer made it their life aim to disciple say just two people, spending much time with them, teaching them to obey everything Jesus has commanded, the world would be won in not that many generations.

AI Image:

Draw a picture of a bloke surrounded by his friends.