I've just about come to the end of C J Mahaney's little book Living the Cross Centered Life. It's one of the few books that I've known before I've finished that I will be rereading immediately....it's that powerful and I don't want to miss one bit of what the Lord wants me to get. I could talk about how I'd like it to be required reading for LBC over the next year but that's for another time.
For now I just want to quote a John Newton hymn that Mahaney included in the chapter I read yesterday. Newton's the guy who was a slave trader dramatically converted (is there any other kind of conversion....when that which is dead comes to life can it ever be anything other than dramatic....anyway....) and who subsequently encouraged Wilberforce to work for the abolition of the slave trade.
This hymn is extraordinary. The deep, wide and high Truth that it contains; the passion, emotion and real experience that it captures - it's just amazing. People say that hymns are a tremedous way of teaching good theology and this is a great example. I can't help but think that if we sung this each Sunday for six months then we'd gain richly from it.
In evil long I took delight,
Unawed by shame or fear,
Till a new object struck my sight,
And stopped my wild career.
I saw One hanging on a tree,
In agonies and blood,
Who fixed His languid eyes on me,
As near His cross I stood.
Sure, never till my latest breath,
Can I forget that look;
It seemed to charge me with His death,
Though not a word He spoke.
My conscience felt and owned the guilt,
And plunged me in despair,
I saw my sins His blood had spilt,
And helped to nail Him there.
Alas, I knew not what I did,
But now my tears are vain;
Where shall my trembling soul be hid?
For I the Lord have slain.
A second look He gave,
which said,“I freely all forgive;
This blood is for thy ransom paid;
I die that thou mayst live.”
Thus, while His death my sin displays
In all its blackest hue,
Such is the mystery of grace,
It seals my pardon too.
With pleasing grief and mournful joy,
My spirit is now filled;
That I should such a life destroy,
Yet live by him I killed.
- John Newton
Just brilliant - gave me goose bumps when I read it in Waitrose drinking "cappuccino".
And if I had to pick one line....it would probably be....
"With pleasing grief and mournful joy" - what a wonderful description of the posture we should live with as Christians. It's Luther's simul justus et peccator (at one and the same time both justified/accepted and a sinner) and it's life changing! Oh that I might live this way....
Saturday, 27 June 2009
Thursday, 25 June 2009
Why "Attentive"?
Eugene Peterson - you know, the guy who "wrote" the Bible - authored a book that's probably in my top 5 most significant/helpful books I've ever read. I read Working the Angles 12 years into being a Pastor and I sooooo wished I'd read it years earlier. Like it would have been great to have had a half decent theology of what it is to be a Pastor after I'd come out of college (even if it was probably the finest theological college in Western Europe(!)). When I started in my first Pastorate my head was full of loads of really great North American church leadership stuff (combined with no small amount of the management philosophy I'd been indoctrinated with during my time with Marks & Spencer) but precious little about the heart of what it was to be a Pastor/Elder - shepherd of the flock of Christ.
So 12 years in I was seriously restless..... I needed to know what it was, actually, that I was called by God to do. Anyway, long story short, I read Peterson and he showed me the light. It was one of those massive "Ahaaaa" moments.....so that's it!
From the off it was like....."I can't believe you've said that!" Have a look at his first paragraph:
American pastors are abandoning their posts, left and right, and at an alarming rate. They are not leaving their churches and getting other jobs. Congregations still pay their salaries. Their names remain on the church stationary and they continue to appear in pulpits on Sundays. But they are abandoning their posts, their calling. They have gone whoring after other gods. What they do with their time under the guise of pastoral ministry hasn’t the remotest connection with what the church’s pastors have done for most of twenty centuries.
Crumbs!!
Anyway, he goes on to say this:
(Churches) are communities of sinners, gathered before God week after week in towns and villages all over the world. The Holy Spirit gathers them and does his work in them. In these communities of sinners, one of the sinners is called pastor and given a designated responsibility in the community. The pastor’s responsibility is to keep the community attentive to God. It is this responsibility that is being abandoned in spades.
That's it...when you boil it all down and strip everything else away, in the final analysis and when all is said and done the role of a Pastor is to keep people attentive to God: he's got to help people to notice Him, His grace, His truth, His glory... And if the Pastor is to keep the people he serves attentive to God then it's essential that he himself keeps attentive. Was it Robert Murray McCheyne, the hugely significant Scottish pastor who died before he was 30, who said that the greatest thing that he could do for his people was to keep close to God...anyway whoever it was, Peterson is saying the same thing... the most urgent call on my time as a Pastor is to keep attentive to God, being alert to Him, seeing what He sees and joining in with what he's doing.
So, hence the Blog. It's an exercise in helping me to keep attentive. My hunch is that to this end it will be really helpful and, maybe, possibly, perhaps, it might help others to do likewise. We'll see.
So 12 years in I was seriously restless..... I needed to know what it was, actually, that I was called by God to do. Anyway, long story short, I read Peterson and he showed me the light. It was one of those massive "Ahaaaa" moments.....so that's it!
From the off it was like....."I can't believe you've said that!" Have a look at his first paragraph:
American pastors are abandoning their posts, left and right, and at an alarming rate. They are not leaving their churches and getting other jobs. Congregations still pay their salaries. Their names remain on the church stationary and they continue to appear in pulpits on Sundays. But they are abandoning their posts, their calling. They have gone whoring after other gods. What they do with their time under the guise of pastoral ministry hasn’t the remotest connection with what the church’s pastors have done for most of twenty centuries.
Crumbs!!
Anyway, he goes on to say this:
(Churches) are communities of sinners, gathered before God week after week in towns and villages all over the world. The Holy Spirit gathers them and does his work in them. In these communities of sinners, one of the sinners is called pastor and given a designated responsibility in the community. The pastor’s responsibility is to keep the community attentive to God. It is this responsibility that is being abandoned in spades.
That's it...when you boil it all down and strip everything else away, in the final analysis and when all is said and done the role of a Pastor is to keep people attentive to God: he's got to help people to notice Him, His grace, His truth, His glory... And if the Pastor is to keep the people he serves attentive to God then it's essential that he himself keeps attentive. Was it Robert Murray McCheyne, the hugely significant Scottish pastor who died before he was 30, who said that the greatest thing that he could do for his people was to keep close to God...anyway whoever it was, Peterson is saying the same thing... the most urgent call on my time as a Pastor is to keep attentive to God, being alert to Him, seeing what He sees and joining in with what he's doing.
So, hence the Blog. It's an exercise in helping me to keep attentive. My hunch is that to this end it will be really helpful and, maybe, possibly, perhaps, it might help others to do likewise. We'll see.
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