Essentials
The default position of the frustrated minister
- Written by: Simon Manchester
After almost 30 years as Senior Minister of St Thomas’ North Sydney, Simon Manchester reflects back on the vital importance of a ministry characterised by grace rather than frustration at stubborn sheep.
I have often said publicly that I was rescued by a friend from a joyless ministry. He had the courage to tell me that though grace drove my evangelism it did not drive my ministry. I thought his comment was nonsense at first, but he was right.
My message, to put it crassly, was “to the lost there is grace…. to the found ‘lift your game’.” The only way you can do that kind of ministry is in short bursts-five years will drive people to submission or rebellion, then you move on to the next place.
Having said that, I notice preaching grace often does not get all the cooperation from a congregation that a pastor would like. You can preach the loveliness of Christ and the privilege of believing, and still find that people are frustratingly inconsistent. What is going on? We lift the burdens off their backs and give them all the freedom of the gospel and it just does not turn our people into cooperative members of our pastoral cause.
It is here that we so easily go back to the law to get things done. After all what is left to do if the gospel is not doing it? Have we not all noticed that the “searching application” (also known as cutting to the bone of congregational non-cooperation) has a strange power that people often feel? Are there not a few parishioners who love and encourage a good whack every now and again? Can we lurch like that from gospel to law?
Whatever may be said for a sermon with proper reproof or correction (and there is a time for this) the big question is, what is driving the ministry? If you think this is irrelevant simply ask yourself what your people consider to be the driving message of your ministry. Once a term I meet with the Sunday School teachers (God bless them) to talk through what gospel ministry to children – not moralising – looks like. When I meet with the youth leaders (could there be a finer group?) it is to keep them in the love of Christ. We want the young people of the church to go home from their group saying, “How great is Jesus!”.
So it is with our people. The pastor-teacher needs to take great care that the congregation hears the sufficiency of Christ for salvation and service all the time. As Paul infuses his letters with sentences like “the one who calls you is faithful and he will do it” so we must allow this grace to infuse our ministry also. Too often I hear sermons where the preacher loses the roots of the gospel and calls for the fruits. We not only need to show people what righteous living looks like but where it comes from.
The “strange power” of reproof that I mentioned above is a temporary and surface power. The real power is gospel deep and gospel strong. You may be called to abandon the happy side of the faith for the sad side of correction but it should never be cut off from Jesus Christ. People who hear us should leave saying, “what I am called to do he will enable me to do”.
Nothing else will give your people joy in their fellowship with each other. If you lay a big burden on your burdened people with no good news of his power at work then they will begin to wonder if the bar of performance is too high and there is little to share.
Nothing else will give your people joy in their witness through the week. Do you want to see your people overflow with the desire to see people saved? Do not send them out with a miserable message. Send them out with a proper sense of privilege which causes them to say to themselves “there is hope for me” and to think for their friends “you need to get this”. I’m reminded of the young man who refused to become a Christian because he refused to be an annoying witness. Finally, a shrewd old saint told him that he should forget about witnessing and just become a Christian. The young man believes in Christ and runs outside yelling “I’m a Christian and I don’t have to tell anybody!”.
I am not suggesting a “positive” gospel. I am not suggesting a “half” gospel. I am simply urging a present gospel not an absent gospel. You may say this is obvious, but I have noticed that in a day of harder ministry, people are being given either nothing to rejoice in (because it’s so predictably bland) or something to struggle in (because it is so frustrating for the preacher).
Are you teaching on David and Goliath? Let your people leave with joy in a greater David. Are you teaching on Jonah? Let your people leave with gratitude for a compassionate Saviour. Are you teaching the Sermon on the Mount? Let your people leave with gratitude for a new life through the One who died. Are you teaching the Epistles? Let your people leave with the same love that the author wrote with.
And if you think that such a gospel-driven ministry is all too soft and all too ineffective ask yourself whether in those times where the condition of your soul felt dead and hopeless you were grateful for another guilty feeling – or the realisation that the love of Jesus was deeper, wider, longer and higher than you’d felt possible. Then pass on to others what really works.
“To him who is able to do more than we ask or imagine” – this is the fuel for the work.
Book of the Year 2019 Shortlist
- Written by: Chris Appleby
A strong collection of books were shortlisted for the Australian Christian Book of the Year AwardA strong collection of books were shortlisted for the Australian Christian Book of the Year Award2019. Reviews will be published in following editions of Essentials.
At the SparkLit Awards Nighton August 15 Th e Fountain of Public Prosperity: Evangelical Christians in Australian Historywas declared the worthy winner. Congratulations to Stuart Piggin and Robert Linder.
THE APOSTLES’ CREED: A Guide to the Ancient Catechism.THE APOSTLES’ CREED: A Guide to the Ancient Catechism.By Ben Myers (Lexham Press).COMING HOME: Discipleship, Ecology and Everyday Economics.By Jonathan Cornford (Morning Star)FOR THE JOY: 21 Australian Missionary Mother Stories on Cross-CulturalParenting and Life.Edited by Miriam Chan & Sophia Russell (Grace Abounding Books).THE FOUNTAIN OF PUBLIC PROSPERITY: Evangelical Christians inAustralian History 1740–1914.By Stuart Piggin & Robert Linder (Monash University Publishing).GOD IS GOOD FOR YOU: A Defence of Christianity in Troubled Times.By Greg Sheridan (Allen & Unwin)HEAVEN ALL AROUND US: Discovering God in Everyday Life.By Simon Carey Holt (Cascade Books).TEA & THREAD: Portraits of Middle Eastern Women Far from Home.By Sally Bathgate & Katrina Flett Gulbrandsen (Grace Abounding Books).THIS ONE LIFE: Conversations on the Journey of Life.By Sharon Witt (Collective Wisdom Publications)UNEXPECTED: Leave Fear Behind, Move Forward in Faith, Embrace theAdventure. By Christine Caine (Zondervan).WORKSHIP 2: How to Flourish at Work.By Kara Martin (Graceworks).
A New Edition of Leon Morris’ Bush Parson
- Written by: Adrian Lane
As part of its centenary celebrations, Bush Church Aid has republished a new expanded edition of Leon Morris’ Bush Parson.
Bush Parson is Morris’ autobiographical account of his service as the Bush Church Aid-supported minister of the massive and challenging Minnipa parish on South Australia’s Eyre Peninsula during the Second World War.
Leon and his wife Mildred, a nurse, travelled around the parish in a large green van named the St Patrick’s Van by its Irish donors. The van served as ambulance, clinic, bedroom, kitchen and study for Leon and Mildred. Mildred often drove over sandy, dusty and boggy tracks while Leon studied the Scriptures in their original languages!
Leon writes, “This…is my tribute to the big-hearted people I met in the outback. I want to acknowledge my debt to so many battlers in their very difficult situations. And with them I want to link those in our cities who are interested enough in what is done in this vast country to support with their prayers and their gifts those who go out to minister to their outback cousins. I am indebted to them both.”
Royalties from the book’s sales have been donated to Bush Church Aid by the Leon and Mildred Morris Foundation. Its Chair, the Rev Neil Bach, also Leon’s biographer, comments, “Leon wrote over 50 internationally acclaimed theological works, yet only one was autobiographical - the one describing his service with BCA. Who ever thought that this ministry would lay the foundations for Australia’s greatest theological scholar and writer?”
The book was originally published in 1995 by Acorn Press. However, when the BCA Victorian Regional Officer, the Rev Adrian Lane, discovered it was unobtainable, new or used, BCA approached Acorn requesting a new edition. Acorn, now an imprint of the Bible Society, generously agreed to cover all pre-publication costs. The new centenary edition includes rare archival colour photos from glass negatives from the BCA Archives and the Morris Archives, held in the Ridley College Library. A number of appendices from these archives are also included, including Leon’s original Application for Service with BCA. Adrian Lane comments, “The new edition is a significant value-add to the original, with its photos and appendices, all of which will make further study of Leon and Mildred’s ministry and remote area ministry more generally much easier.”
The new edition was launched at the BCA Victoria Centenary Dinner on the 4 May 2019 at Glen Waverley Anglican Church by Dr Kris Argall, Commissioning Editor of Acorn Press, the Revd Neil Bach and the Revd Adrian Lane, who prayed for its fruitfulness.
Adrian Lane is the Victorian Regional Officer of Bush Church Aid.
The book is an interesting, engaging, easy read. Copies are available from from BCA state and National offices, https://www.bushchurchaid.com.au/content/shop/gjjyqg and from other book sellers.
Editorial Spring 2019
- Written by: Gavin Perkins
In this first edition of Essentials for which I have editorial responsibility I am glad for the quality and range of focus on the content that follows. If there is a thread that holds together each element of Essentials Spring 2019 it is the theme of ministry.
Simon Manchester, now approaching the conclusion of thirty years as Senior Minister at St Thomas’ North Sydney, reflects firstly on the importance of a pastoral approach fuelled and characterised by grace rather than frustration. Simon then steers us towards three books that focus on the weighty responsibility and matching joy of gospel ministry.
Adrian Lane reminds us of the wonderful work of BCA in this its centenary year, and in that light also gladly commends to us a new and expanded edition of Leon Morris’ autobiographical account of his time serving as a BCA minister during World War II.
On a sadder, but nonetheless vital, note Christopher Ash considers how we ought to respond in a wise and godly way when a Christian ministry is undermined by revelations of abuse.
In his review of the new book of essays from the Doctrine Commission of General Synod Marriage, Same Sex Marriage and the Anglican Church of Australia, Bishop Rick Lewers helpfully draws out the results of two contrasting approaches to ministry that flow from two contrasting attitudes to the nature and authority of Scripture. In the process we are drawn straight to the heart of this issue.
As I read through these contributions and others in this edition of Essentials I am reminded of the core truth that although ministry is not getting any easier or less complex, the gospel of repentance and faith for the forgiveness of sins is no less powerful or glorious. Even when we fail, or when those around us fail, God is good and Jesus is keeping his promise that “repentance for the forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations” (Luke 24:47, NIV).
Gavin Perkins -
Gavin Perkins is Rector of St Jude’s Bowral, NSW
Essentials - Spring - 2019
- Written by: Ben Underwood
Becoming a better reader of the Bible
- Written by: Ben Underwood
Becoming a better reader of the Bible:
An approach to Bible Study preparation
We have about 4 different names for small group Bible studies at my church. I mostly call them
growth groups, and I regard them as the backbone of the congregations. What follows is part of
training I ran focussed on the core of the activity of such groups: helping others engage with what
the Bible says. Ben Underwood is Associate Minister at St Matthew’s Shenton Park.
Pastoring through helping others read the Bible well.
Since pastors teach the Bible as a central act of leadership, the best resource we have to be pastors and teachers, is the word of God written in the Bible. Thus we read in 2 Timothy 3:16-17:
16All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 17so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.
The Evolution of the Gender Debate: A Complementarian Perspective
- Written by: Kara Hartley
The basic positions may not have shifted in the ministry-and-gender conversation, but the cultural context around it has. Kara Hartley looks at it from the complementarian point of view. Kara is the Archdeacon for Women in the Diocese of Sydney.
When it comes to the ongoing disagreements in evangelicalism about the Scriptural teaching on the roles of women in Christian leadership the phrase from Ecclesiastes 1:9 comes to mind, ‘There’s nothing new under the sun.’ That is not to say nothing has been written. On the contrary, over the last 20 years there have been numerous books, blogs, articles, and talks given to the topic. Commentators from both sides continue to advocate their position with passion and vigour. I have been asked to write about whether there have been any new developments in these debates, without necessarily repeating all that has gone before. My conclusion is that despite all the ink that’s been spilled (or keyboards that have been thumped) no real game-changing arguments have emerged. The disagreements so passionately debated are generally a rehash of what has been said already. Yet while the arguments haven’t necessarily changed, the context in which we have them has. Various conversations around sexuality and gender, movements like #metoo and issues relating to domestic violence have certainly placed a renewed spotlight on Scripture’s teaching on roles of men and women, in both the home and in the church.
Read more: The Evolution of the Gender Debate: A Complementarian Perspective