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Monday 24 August 2020

On Sabbatical!

Bilbo Baggins

A line from Bilbo Baggins comes to mind: "I feel thin, sort of stretched like butter scraped over too much bread. I need a holiday a very long holiday....."

Many pastors and full-time Gospel workers and missionaries - and their wives - feel like Baggins from time to time, but in the place of the word "holiday" they would put "sabbatical."

The Old Testament is filled with work - and rest. The Lord's people worked hard because they had God as their model. As he worked six days, so did they.

But they also rested, once again, because the Lord was their model. Just as the Lord rested on the Seventh Day and hallowed it, so they rested on the seventh day.

The word "sabbath" means rest.

But in additon to the weekly Sabbath, Jews enjoyed feasts all year long, four in Spring (Passover, Unleavend Bread, Firstfruits, Pentecost) and three in Fall (Trumpets, Day of Atonement, Tabernacles). Some lasted seven days. 

Which means the Lord wanted his people to rest.

In the church I serve, and in many similar churches, full-time pastors are given sabbaticals of around 3 months, every seven years. 

Pastors and Sabbaticals

The reasons for this are many. For one, a pastor's work is a calling, not a job. Many jobs occupy 37 hours a week. Rarely will a pastor work less than 60 hours a week.

Pastors can be called upon at any time of the day (or night). 

Pastors never "leave their work at the office" but carry the burdens of ministry 24/7, 365. 

Pastors, perhaps above all else, are at the forefront of Satan's attacks on the church. Satan's logic is "strike the shepherd, scatter the flock." So pastors are attacked like no-one else. Because if Satan can undermine a pastor, he scatters the flock. So pray for your pastors.

For all these reasons, and more, pastors need regular breaks to be rested, restored and revived.

Sabbatical Plans

Sabbaths are not extended holidays. (I know of no genuine pastor who would want to sit on the beach for 3 months!) No, Sabbaticals are about rest through change. Since I am just about to go on Sabbatical myself (September-November 2020) let me tell you what I will be doing, God-willing.

Rest

Not sleep or beach stuff, but taking time off from the daily and weekly pressures of ministry - that will be rest in itself.

Reading

A large part of those three months will be given up to reading. I have a long list of books to read, from one on the latest books about how bees and bee hives are organsised "The Lives of Bees" to books written about and by the Anabaptists. (The Anabaptists are my favourite 1500-1600s reformers. They came from the ranks of ordinary folks, and were concerned to restore the church not only to pure doctrine but just as importantly to pure practice).

We have lost out by neglecting these precious reformers, so I plan to drink from that stream for a while.

Scripture

I plan, God-willing, to study Ezekiel in my daily Bible studies. It's a book I know little about and am looking forward to exploring what God is saying through this great Old Testament prophet.

Meditation

To help me meditate and pray I am taking AW Tozer's The Christian Book of Mystical Verse. Don't be put off by the title - it's just a book of ancient hymns.

Fisherman's Press

And then, God-willing I am hoping to start a new Christian Press, which will focus on simple and practical and tested material for ordinary churches.

Report Back

Perhaps I shouldn't have started with Bilbo Baggins. For he goes on to say, "And I don't expect to return!" I plan to return, and report back to my church and on this blog a progress report, God willing, on my sabbatical.

But this will be one of my last posts until December.

Sunday 16 August 2020

Three Score - Reflections on Turning Sixty

 

 My Favourite Birthday Card

A month or so ago, I turned the grand old age of sixty. A few weeks earlier, I asked my wife if she would help me turn off my age data on Facebook - a platform I do not use all that much anyway - so that my birthday could pass by unnoticed. 

This was not because I wanted to avoid the facts of the case, it was because I notice in the Scriptures that Birthdays don't get a good rap mainly because they are opportunities for excess - Pharoah and Herod both chop off heads on their birthdays. Job's children, he fears, will have sinned through excess on their birthdays. We never find the apostles taking a day off because it's their birthday. Birthdays are non-entities in New Testament Christianity.

Following this global and universal trend of excess, we must confess that we make far too much of a fuss over birthdays. I doubt if anyone thought of birthdays in the persecuted yet beautiful Underground Church of former communist USSR. Our zeal for birthday celebrations is a direct consequence of living in an age of ease: we simply have too much time and too much money on our hands.

(Notwithstanding, I appreciated every token of kindess shown to me on my sixtieth!)

A Pslamic Approach 

The first thing I notice about the passing of the years comes from Psalm 90, the reflections of Moses in the late winter of his life.

Moses is sober about the turn of the seasons. He starts with the eternity of God, to set our few three score and ten years in context. "From everlasting to everlasting you are God." 

He ponders the utter sovereignity of the Lord over life and death. "You sweep men away in the sleep of death."

He reflects the sinfulness of our present lives and the consequent discipline of the Lord, "all our days pass away under your wrath."

He remembers that he has no home in this world, for the Lord has been his "dwelling place throughout all the generations."

And he utters the note of passionate longing that marks every Spirit-born saint, "Satisfy us in the morning with your unfailing love."

I make three short observations on my sixtieth year...

 Contrast

The first is how little I have accomplished for the Kingdom of God in my life thus far. I do not say that to attract symapthy. I was brought up in a missionary home, by parents who were sold out for Jesus in a way I have never witnessed anywhere in anyone. And I know that their zeal and accomplishments and sacrifices for the sake of the Gospel far outstrip mine. 

Without models around us, we tend to think we're doing OK. But having lived with humble godly sold-out parents, I know that I have done little by contrast.

Thanksgiving

I am profoundly thankful to the Lord for his amazing mercy to me over these six decades. He has showered gifts on me that I do not deserve. He has given me a lovely godly wife who is both my best friend and my kindest critic.

The Lord has given me four wonderful sons. I often marvel how well they have turned out considering their dad!  I thank the Lord for the precious gift of children.

The Lord has granted me wonderful health. People have said to me "I can't believe you are sixty years old!" If that is true, I put it down to the grace of God. Perhaps I have inherited good genes. Perhaps the example of my dad who walked every where every day has inspired my daily walking habits. Perhaps the copied custom of my parents to fast regularly has helped my body to repair itself. I don't know, but all is of grace, not me.

The Lord has given me the opportunity to serve his people - a high calling which I so enjoy, though it is often exhausting. I am particularly thankful for the loving and supportive church it has been my privilege to serve for the last 14 years, and especially the godly leaders who have been by my side through calm as well as storm.

So I look back with deep and profound thankfulness.

Hope

But finally, since I am trying to be brief, I look forward with hope. My father, in whose long shadows I often find myself, began his greatest ministry at the age of 60, retiring at the age of 84 (much as Moses began his at 80, retiring at 120). So if the Lord provides health and strength, I sincerely hope I can serve the Lord and be of some use in his kingdom in the summer and autumn of my life.

Perhaps at the age of "18" I can use my "42" years of experience to bless other!

Nothing terrifies me more than the secular idea of retirement - the idea of living a  new lazy selfish life, simply playing golf or visiting the grandchildren or wasting both time and money on travel. That would be utter purgatory to me!

My greatest hope is to go home. This world is emphatically not my home. To be honest I often feel a stranger in the west, for I was born and shaped by a poor missionary life in Pakistan.

Many missionary kids (MKs) refer to themselves as "third culture" kids. Not at home where they were born on the missionfield, not at home back in the west, straddling two cultures, happy in neither, a kind of third culture nomad. 

Well, I'm a fourth culture kid, for nowhere here is my home. And the older I get the more I long to depart and be with Christ which is better by far. 

But the Lord may have work for me to do here. And I have children who still need me (they never really 'leave home!') and a wife I dearly love and want to grow old with. So we mustn't be selfish about leaving, must we?

In the 60s, on the shores of the Aabian Sea each summer, the Summers' Family would spend ten days or so in a clapped out wooden beach hut. There in the cool of the evening shadows, we sang what I have always felt is the true song of my heart:

This world is not my home, I'm just a passing through
My treasures are laid up somewhere beyond the blue;
The angels beckon me from heaven's open door,
And I can't feel at home in this world anymore.

O Lord, you know I have no friend like you,
If heaven's not my home, then Lord what will I do?
The angels beckon me from heaven's open door,
And I can't feel at home in this world anymore.

Wednesday 12 August 2020

Should We Disobey the Government? Is John MacArthur Right?


 John MacArthur, Grace Community Church Sun Valley
 
 A Great and godly Pastor
 
I have long admired the ministry of John MacArthur, the 81 year old pastor of Grace Community Church, Sun Valley, California.

I have been blessed by his preaching, profitted from his books, and above all else, admired his uncompromising stand on the key issues of our day.
 
(My appreciation of MacArthur, by the way, has got nothing to do with the size of his church, for in God's eyes, according to the Scriptures, numbers are irrelevant to the way the Lord views both churches and their leaders. Not one New Testament church is commended for being large, not one reproached for being small).

We thank the Lord for John MacArthur!

But we question his decision to open up Grace Community Church against the commands of the local authorities. 

You can hear his reasoning HERE and HERE
 
Should we in the UK follow his lead? There are four reasons, as far as I can see, for not following MacArthur on this one - and let's remember that it is a secondary issue, not a primary one.

The American Scene

The US is not the UK. The pioneering can-do attitude which enabled the pioneers to advance across inhospitable terrain transmutes to a fierce individuality and  independency which is just not British. We have seen these differences during lockdown - Americans have been far more outspoken than their British counterparts.

The Big-Building Issue

And then you have the natural pressure that any institution which owns a building feels when it is not used. Something needs to be done! When it comes to churches this can easily translate into a faulty view of the church. Church is a group of people; where they meet is irrelevant. But we can imagine the pressure on the megachurches to open up again for all sorts of reasons, including financial. 
 
The church is alive when folk meet in homes, in gardens, in outdoor spaces. They don't all need to meet together in a building for church to be "real." 

So Grace Community Church, and indeed any church, could simply encourage their people to make better (and more New Testament) use of their homes, gardens and basements. That could have been their response to the pandemic - let's get ourselves a more biblical ecclesiology. And perhaps that is happening.

What Governments are not Saying

No government in the world (exceptions excepted) are telling churches "you may not meet for worship any more." If they were, we'd all have to ignore their instructions, as the believers in Communist Russia did, and meet in secret, in basements, attics, forests, wherever.

Governments are saying "don't meet at the moment because of the risk to health." That is a world away from "stop meeting." And they are saying this to all religious groups, and all festivals and all large gatherings. Christians are not being targetted.

The Archilles Heel

The fundamental flaw in the decision of Grace Community Church is this: they have made the assessment that the risk of the pandemic is far less serious than the Government are making out. It is largely, as far as I can see, this argument that is propelling their move to re-open.
 
There may be some truth in it. My own guess, for what it is worth, is that governments are looking at how they will be judged. If their policies result in more deaths than the country next door, then ammo is given to their political enemies.

And of course, governments are on a steep learning curve themselves! So they may well be over-egging the dangers and erring on the side of caution.

But is it right, on a matter of a secular judgement "how serious is this pandemic" for churches to act as though their own judgement is more accurate than that of the Government's?

A simple analogy, I think, settles the matter. As a driver I constantly disagree with the judgement of the road authorities on what speed limit they set on each road. Most of the time I think it's too low, but sometimes I think its too high.

So near me, thet've set the speed limit on the Oldbury Road at 30mph. There are stretches of that road where it could easily be 35 or even 40 - at least that is what I think.

Do I then have the right to drive at 35 or 40 on those stretches? Emphatically not. I am called upon by the Lord to obey those in authority (Romans 13). 

My judgement does not count, theirs does.

If a government comes to the conclusion that it is unsafe for large gatherings to take place, we must obey them. They are not stopping Christians from meeting - for we can meet anywhere. They are not stopping worship, for we can sing in our homes or in the countryside.

They are not asking us to disobey any rule of Christ. And therefore we are bound to obey them.

Summing it Up

If we really believe the judgement of the goverement is wrong, we should spend our energies lobbying them, persuading them where they are going wrong. Hopefully they will listen. Once a vaccine is ready we'll be able to meet up anyway. 

But there seems no compelling reasons to disobey the law of the land, and in the process chalke up a $1000/day fine.

Let's wait and see what happens.