Author: Nathan Campbell
20% time and “working on your church, not in it”
If you hang around in the business world for long enough – especially with small business owners who are working really hard at growing, you’ll hear the phrase “I’m wanting to work on my business, not just in it”… this realisation that growth comes through changing and improving, rather than maintaining the status quo (generally), is what drives big companies to spend big bucks on research and development.
This was the sort of mentality that drove some friends I used to do PR for in my old role to do all sorts of cool things – two guys in particular were champions on this front – my friend Allan, who ran a cafe, decided to set up quad bike tours, a gift shop, a function centre, walking tracks, a bus tour, a furniture shop, and to start selling Kopi Luwak – cat poo coffee – a decision that netted him millions of dollars worth of media coverage. He was a big fan of this maxim. The other, my friend Ross, spent time looking into grants for solar power, and found a heap of other ways to not just cut costs at home, but become greener in a way that opened up new markets for his cabins. Working with these guys was pretty exciting – because they were always coming up with new ideas. Both businesses started off as family projects. Both Allan and Ross lived on site at their businesses and could easily have been caught up in the day to day operations, the mundane stuff – and the important. But they found time to develop and change through a bit of creativity. They kind of inspire me – I learned heaps from them, lessons that I’d love to apply to ministry. I’ve spent a long time trying to figure out how I’d do that. I don’t know for sure – but I reckon there was a reason they were heaps less jaded and likely to burn out than other people I worked with.
Big technology companies have worked pretty hard to foster this sort of culture and harness the creativity of all their staff by giving workers a certain portion of their week to work on their own projects – usually with certain parameters about being related to the core business of the company. Google has 20 percent time – one day a week – and about 50% of their current range of products have been developed in that time, Apple has just introduced Blue Sky Time – encouraging certain staff to think creatively, and perhaps most famously 3M, the company behind such ubiquitous stationery as the post-it note, has been driving innovation by freeing up their staff to develop ideas since 1949.
But what would this look like in the church context – to “work on your church, not for it”? I’ve got no idea – for full time church workers, or for the members of the body of Christ. I think this is a “priesthood of all believers” thing – the companies that do this best let everybody in on the action, 3M has patents produced as the result of ideas from administration staff… But I reckon it’d be pretty cool to figure out.
I’ve been a student minister in a couple of different shaped churches in Brisbane, a member of a few different churches in different places, and the son of a minister of churches that grew from small to big… but I still have no idea what the average week of full time ministry should look like. I’ve only experienced four years of reality outside of a life framed by full-time ministry – my family’s, and now my own, and all I know is that full time ministry is time consuming.
I’ve got no idea what a ministry week looks like other than that it’s busy. Very busy.
It seems to be a mix of the routine, and the reactive.
If you’re the sole minister at a church, regional or otherwise, you seem to routinely prepare a talk, write a Bible study, go to a meeting, teach RE, and you reactively pastorally care for people, take funerals, and deal with whatever else pops up. That all seems to take up a fair bit of time. All your time. It’s pretty much the same in a team context – it’s impossible not to be busy in ministry. Because all of life is ministry – in one form or another.
If the principles from the business world translate, then this seems like a recipe for staying the same. We’ve been thinking about this a bit at Creek Road – a couple of us were struck by a similar thought within a day or two of each other as we read and watched some stuff about Google. We’re trying to figure out what 20 percent time might look like in our team ministry, but the principles seem applicable to any ministry – by analogy – just as they are for small one man tourism operations, and multibillion dollar technology companies.
What I’m really keen to explore is how this sort of paradigm shift in thinking about ministry and how we use our already busy schedules when we’re talking about life as a church community. How we could start a culture of 20% time, or research and development time… how we could free people up to think about, and work towards, growth.
I’m a bit blown away by how well Luther got his base of supporters involved with promoting the Reformation – just by empowering people to produce their own material and modelling how to distribute new ideas in a really fast and effective way. How do we free the human resources at our disposal up to get people coming up with new ideas and opportunities to share the gospel – rather than just doing the same old stuff, and how do we control what ideas get legs and which ones are thrown back into the pool of ideas for refining… so that we’re not doing a million things badly.
Here’s a paper I wrote for our staff retreat that is trying to figure out what time like that would look like in our context – it’ll look different based on the shape of a church, or the people involved (both in your mission field, and in your team)… but for a creative person like me, this sort of freedom to think, explore, and fail – without it interrupting the flow of a normal week, is something I find really exciting.
“20 percent time” at church: building “blue sky thinking” into the work week
Big tech companies who value, and rely, on innovation to keep growing and developing new products, and who also value, and rely on attracting staff who are passionate about the vision of their company, have adopted an interesting policy – let staff work less on their “job,” and spend a portion of their time creating something new.
The idea is typically traced back to post-it note company 3M. The stationery company came up with an idea, back in 1948, to give staff a portion of time (15% of the work week), to dream big, and use the company platform to come up with new ideas that would help grow the company’s range, and bottom line.
The company is still, years later, a stationery powerhouse – with more than 22,000 patents. They’ve got a culture of creativity – and the Post-It Note itself, which you’ll find in offices, homes, schools, and just about anywhere that pen and ink exist, was a product of the 15% time of its inventor, Art Fry. Cool name.
Other companies have taken the idea to the virtual world – where it’s cheaper to develop new products, and even to the hardware world – Hewlett-Packard, Google, and Apple all have variations of the theme. They all want staff to feel like part of the company’s vision, and have the opportunity to pursue their passions and their own personal, but work related, projects.
Google call this 20% time. They give staff one day a week to work on new tech developments. Figures get bandied around a bit about how effective this has been for the company – but the conservative estimate is that 50% of their innovation has been the result of this time. Products that heaps of us use, like gmail.
Here’s something a google staffer says about the value of the program:
“We try to encourage this type of blue-sky thinking through ‘20 per cent time’ – a full day a week during which engineers can work on whatever they want. Looking back at our launch calendar over a recent six-month period, we found that many products started life in employees’ 20 per cent time.”
Blue-sky thinking is thinking free of the restrictions of your day-to-day job and routine. It’s the kind of thinking that’s needed for change and innovation to happen – but it’s only really valuable if you’ve also got time, and resources, to try to implement the changes – without it hurting your ability to get your job done.
Apple now has a “blue sky program” where certain employees can work on a “passion project” – something they’re keen to see get off the ground, they’re giving staff a block of time, rather than a regular window, but they too are keen to give their staff some room to experiment and try new things.
Blue-sky thinking in our context
We have a growing team with a huge range of gifts at our disposal, and all sorts of people who are passionate about different things. Hopefully all these passions are related to the gospel – our “core business” or “product.” We passionately want to reach people with the good news about Jesus. Hopefully we’re all also on board with our philosophy of ministry – which wants to see people end up as mature Christians, with servant hearts, via our two pathways.
We’ve all got particular jobs to do, we’re all busy – and while we’re certainly passionate about the work we’re doing every week – it’s possible that there are huge untapped ideas and new ways of doing things, that we’d discover if we had the freedom to dream, to experiment, to get a bit creative, and to produce new things in a bit of time each week.
Blue sky thinking is something we can do alone – given the right environment – and having the freedom and time to put some new ideas, outside your core “job description” into practice might be a great way to connect, grow, or serve – or to reach people in our city, and around the world. Having the time to do some of this is just the first step.
But what if, like Captain Planet, we combined some of our powers. Some of our Blue Sky time. And came up with new things together.
It’s also possible that we’re greater than the sum of our parts – that mixing and matching some of our gifts and resources might produce new and exciting things that help us reach more people with the Gospel.
What if the kids team spoke to the media team about a video series to post on YouTube, that didn’t really tie in to the teaching program, but was something people might share that taught kids about Jesus in a clear and fun way.
What if some of the coffee snobs on staff came up with a way to connect the coffee snobs of Brisbane with some Christians, and the gospel, in a clever way.
What if the music team sat around with the youth ministry team and came up with a dub-step, spoken-word, fusion piece that would take the Internet by storm…
What if we all tackled some projects together – coming up with a stream of content for the website in a brainstorming session, or if we all jumped into the kitchen to make a batch of freezer meals for people in our neighbourhood, or in our church community. A one hour meeting with 30 staff could become 30 man hours spent on a project that makes a real difference.
One of the Google staffers realised the potential power of harnessing the “20 percent time” of some of his colleagues – he’s got an army of Googlers – 200 of the staff in his 1,000 person office – working on his “YouTube for Good” which provides technology solutions for the fight against AIDS, for clean water in various countries, and the United Nations World Food Program.
What next?
What would our week work with if we spent a day working on projects that help our core business – reaching Brisbane, and our world, with the gospel, in line with our philosophy of ministry – helping kids, youth, and young adults to reach maturity, and moving people towards Christian maturity.
What if we spend a few hours a week “promoting” things that we’re already doing – finding new channels to get information about Jesus, and our church, out to new people? What if we spent a few hours encouraging some people by giving up some of our time to catch up to read a helpful book together? What if we put some time into developing a clever and engaging video on the modern fight against slavery that we could share around the web? What if we created some pictures or social media campaigns using different hash tags that would get some of our big ideas from the term shared by people from our church on their social networks?
That’s just scraping the top of the barrel – the great thing about Blue Sky Thinking is that we’re only limited by imagination and time.
So how might we make this time a part of the work week at church – and what would it look like?
There’s a danger in just implementing this policy, that it’ll end up in wasted time, especially if the ideas are never put in to practice or development. Here’s what an author who studied the approach said:
“Many companies have tried to emulate the 20 percent time idea but failed because they remained conservative about supporting the new ideas.”
How do we use this time to create new resources, gospel opportunities, and growth?
More reading:
- 3M: http://www.fastcodesign.com/1663137/how-3m-gave-everyone-days-off-and-created-an-innovation-dynamo
- Google: http://royal.pingdom.com/2010/02/24/google-facts-and-figures-massive-infographic/
- http://www.thinkwithgoogle.co.uk/quarterly/innovation/8-pillars-of-innovation.html
- http://go.bloomberg.com/tech-blog/2012-10-17-how-a-youtube-exec-built-an-army-with-googles-20-percent-time/
- Apple: http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424127887324073504578115071154910456-lMyQjAxMTAyMDEwMjExNDIyWj.html
- LinkedIn: http://www.wired.com/business/2012/12/llinkedin-20-percent-time/
- The value of “non-commissioned work”: http://www.creativitypost.com/business/why_free_time_frees_creativity
Same Love: the pathos power of music, and what love truly is
Heard this?
It’ll probably hit somewhere near the top of the Hottest 100 today (UPDATE – it got number 15, but it is number 1 on the ARIA charts at the moment).
It’s pretty powerful. It’s catchy. Its mix of perspectives works as a stand alone song, and is intensified in video form, where you get the additional benefit of seeing a young man, presumably the singer’s uncle, find happiness in his gay relationship.
That’s the fundamental premise of the song. Happiness is the ultimate end, and how can we deny someone the warmth and fulfilment a relationship offers.
It’s fairly convincing. Sort of. It’s just a shame it gets so much wrong. At the very least it’s persuasive, in the technical sense, and it got me questioning why I’m more persuaded by a song like this, than by the same premise put forward in dry argument.
For those getting ready to throw stones at me for being bigoted, or a heretic, let me remind you of my position – I am willing to cede the point that so far as our legislation is concerned this is the “same love” – in that it is voluntary, between two free individuals, and because I’m not huge on letting the government dictate what morality is and isn’t, I am not opposed to changes to the marriage act that reflect the wishes of the population – we live in a democracy, after all. But I’m also not willing to budge on the theological question – God says proper sexual expression that is in line with the order he established at creation (before the fall), and is good for the flourishing of humanity, is the kind of expression found in a loving, heterosexual union, for life, where man and woman become one… though neither, as individuals, were “less than one” beforehand – and it’s absolutely ok to be single without feeling like you’re missing out on an aspect of humanity – which this Same Love thing kind of glosses over in its bid for sameness. Pushing same sex attracted people towards heterosexuality isn’t really the answer, showing all people that the ultimate form of love and identity is found in a relationship with Jesus, and the community of the church (and being a community that people want to be part of) is ultimately far more valuable for everyone.
Anyway. Back to why I felt my head moving as my heartstrings were tugged by this song…
Part of the power of music is that as a song is catchy, and as it bounces around in your head, and as the lyrics start to resonate with your experiences and observations of the world, suddenly you find yourself giving assent to whatever conclusions the songwriter offers.
Old Testament theologian Gordon Wenham has some great things to say about the power of music in shaping our ethics, perhaps especially if we sing along to something, via the power of a little speech-act connection where the words we say become the words we think, a little bit of reader-response theory being applied through something called democratisation, where use of the first person can make something feel like it’s about us, and via this reality regarding the value of some sort of performance in shaping our thinking, which he describes in a piece on the teaching value of ritual:
“Educational psychologists tell us that we remember 10% of what we hear, 30% of what we see but 70% of what we do”
Anyway, in a piece called “Reflections on Singing the Psalms,” Wenham makes the following points about how music is perfectly geared to shape our thinking on moral and ethical issues…
“But even mere recitation is a more powerful instructor than listening to stories, commands or wisdom sayings. Listening is passive, indeed the message can be ignored by the listener, but recitation and especially singing is an activity which involves the whole person and cannot be honestly undertaken without real commitment to what is being said or sung…”
Here’s a little on the power of first person – which the song Same Love uses extensively. We become part of the story and identify with the protaganist.
“Another device inviting the worshipper to identify with the sentiments of the Psalm is the use of the first person. The psalmist often speaks in the first person ‘I will bless the LORD at all times’ (34:1). Someone singing or praying this Psalm later is thus invited to do the same… This switch between first and third person encourages the user of the Psalm to identify with the viewpoint of the psalmist. But particularly the use of the first person encourages such identification: ‘The experience of the I of the psalm embodies a religious ideal, whose reality is open to the reader to experience…
And here’s a little more on why music is more powerful than other mediums.
I have already observed that the Psalms differ from other parts of the Bible in that they are meant to be recited or sung as prayers… This involvement of the worshipper in expressing assent to these sentiments makes the Psalms quite different from the other modes of teaching ethics in the OT. The OT narratives were presumably recited by storytellers within the family or in the tribes, but they rarely make explicit their judgments on the actions that are recited, so the moral of the story might have been missed and certainly did not have to be endorsed by the listeners. They could have just ignored the point, as I suspect many listening to worthy sermons often do… When you pray a Psalm, you are describing the actions you will take and what you will avoid. It is more like taking an oath or making a vow… Promises for example change the situation and impose obligations on the speaker and create expectations in the listener. A promise is an example of a speech act.”
It’s powerful stuff – and I reckon Same Love will form a pretty powerful part of the case for gay marriage in Australia, it makes me think we need to do heaps better at writing music that is artistically good for a bigger portion of the world than our congregations on a Sunday. It worked for Luther.
But as powerful as it is – it makes some pretty interesting assumptions about what Christians believe about homosexuality, and about the motives of Christians in shutting down love.
Here’s a little bit from Macklemore and Ryan Lewis themselves…
The right wing conservatives think it’s a decision
And you can be cured with some treatment and religion
Man made rewiring of a predisposition
Playing god, aw nah here we go
America the brave still fears what we don’t know
And god loves all his children, is somehow forgotten
But we paraphrase a book written thirty-five-hundred years ago
I don’t know
Look – I’m sure reparative therapy (the cure with treatment and religion) has been harmful when people have been forced to undertake it against their wishes by bigoted parents or something… but the only real research I’ve seen that does something like a longitudinal study, by Jones and Yarhouse (it’s a fairly controversial study – as is anything Christians write on this issue), on the effectiveness and effects of such therapy found that it doesn’t actually cause harm, even if it doesn’t always work. And it doesn’t always work – contented celibacy is a statistically more probably result. I’m not sure that this is a “right wing conservative” issue either…
I’m also not sure that for a Christian the idea that something is a predisposition means that it shouldn’t be changed – or at least not acted upon. We call constantly try to challenge ourselves to leave predispositions behind. I’m lazy, I’d say all the evidence suggests this is my predisposition. That’s bad for my ability to be productive. We do this all over the aspects of our person, identity, and personality – without being accused of “playing God” – and the notion that “predisposition makes right” is patently impossible to demonstrate as soon as you throw in an example of someone who is predisposed to doing something heinous. The Christian account of human nature which sees us as simultaneously “children of God” made in his image, and broken by sin, such that the child-God relationship needs restoring through Jesus, the true child of God, means we can simultaneously say God loves all his children, while he punishes some for the broken relationship, and the broken acts that result. You don’t need to paraphrase the Bible to find this either. It’s right there. Especially in Genesis and Romans, but also in Psalms – the Bible’s biggest insight into what it means to be human but want a relationship with God.
There are some great bits about the song – it really nails why we need to be careful in how we speak of those who are homosexual in orientation, and who identify according to that orientation. There’s not much to disagree with here – except to say there’s a tragedy that you could easily replace hip-hop with “church”…
If I was gay, I would think hip-hop hates me
Have you read the YouTube comments lately
“Man, that’s gay” gets dropped on the daily
We become so numb to what we’re saying
A culture founded from oppression
Yet we don’t have acceptance for ‘em
Call each other faggots behind the keys of a message board
A word rooted in hate, yet our genre still ignores it
Gay is synonymous with the lesser
It’s the same hate that’s caused wars from religion
Gender to skin color, the complexion of your pigment
The same fight that led people to walk outs and sit ins
It’s human rights for everybody, there is no difference!
Live on and be yourself
That is a powerful reminder – even if it’s feeling the hate somewhat vicariously – that we’ve got to be sensitive and clear when we talk about issues that surround the areas people choose to identify themselves by… The song doesn’t really seem to be all that interested in letting one or two categories of humans be themselves though – Christians who want to disagree with the stance it takes, and perhaps more importantly, those who are same sex attracted who do want to make the choice, free of coercion, to not pursue a relationship with a member of the same sex. That is an ultimate act of “being yourself” – but it’s implicitly, and somewhat explicitly denigrated by this song.
The chorus, where we hear from Mary Lambert, singing in the first person, about her love, who keeps her warm, is where the real thrust of the song’s argument is – we’re talking about denying somebody this love. This happiness. How could we?
And I can’t change
Even if I tried
Even if I wanted to
I can’t change
Even if I try
Even if I wanted to
My love
My love
My love
She keeps me warm
She keeps me warm
The same sentiment is repeated in the final verse…
“Whatever god you believe in
We come from the same one
Strip away the fear
Underneath it’s all the same love
About time that we raised up”
Again – he attributes opposition to gay marriage or “equal love” to “fear”… I don’t doubt that some of the negative aspects of the way those in the GLBTI community are treated is the result of fear, but I’m not sure that’s always true.
Sometimes it’s love.
The love that counts.
Sometimes we do actually disagree with somebody, and say something is wrong, because we love them. It’s not just possible to disagree with somebody and do it with love, it’s possible to disagree with somebody out of a greater love. Sooner or later, to be really loving – we’ve got to stop saying it and keep loving people despite this disagreement. But it is never loving to stay silent.
Not all love is the same. That’s why there are five Greek words for love. The song ends with a few little snippets of the famous 1 Corinthians 13 passage about love (love is patient, love is kind), but there’s a better passage about love in the Bible – one that shows that not all love is the same, and where real love is found.
It’s from 1 John 4… and while Macklemore, Lambert, and Lewis would like you to think that because we’re all God’s children this means everything we do naturally is good – John, who wrote this following passage, also wrote that famous bit of the Bible that describes the manner of God’s love as tied up in the death and resurrection of Jesus – which had to happen precisely because everything we do is naturally bad… anyway that’s there in verse 10 of this passage too.
Here’s 1 John 4 on real love, the kind of love that makes singleness a possibility if we do community well (we need to be much, much, better at this – we need to be very noticeably different from the comments section on YouTube), and makes giving up eros or epithumia (greek words for lust and desire) worthwhile in the pursuit of the true happiness that comes from knowing God.
7 Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.9 This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. 10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. 11 Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.
13 This is how we know that we live in him and he in us: He has given us of his Spirit. 14 And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. 15 If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they in God. 16 And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.
God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. 17 This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world we are like Jesus. 18 There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.
19 We love because he first loved us. 20 Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. 21 And he has given us this command: Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister.
You heard it here third…
I’m not a big fan of putting too much personal stuff on this blog – it’s bad enough for my family (extended and nuclear), and especially my lovely and patient wife, that I am constantly putting my thoughts and stuff out there, let alone posting about the boring and mundane things I’m eating. I’m not really all that interested in talking about me when there are whole other social networks that exist for exactly that purpose, and for photos of my food (or coffee).
And I struggle with sharing good news on this particular front, and figuring out how to do it in a sensitive way, because we know what it’s like to hear other people’s news while you’re struggling in this area. But I love sharing in other people’s joys, and praying for safe arrivals of new babies… and I expect others are the same… so I guess there’s this.
We are actually pretty excited about this, even if it’s still in that stage where it hasn’t quite sunk in just what double the responsibility will feel like.
If you’re the praying type – we’d love, and crave, your prayers. Especially for Robyn as she tries to knock over the last three subjects in her Masters between now and mid-year.
If you’re not the praying type, then please send financial gifts or other donations to us (not really).
The step before content: finding your website’s voice
A little while back I was posting through the process of putting together a church website (post 1, post 2). While I’ve been posting about other things, the process of actually putting together and writing content for the new website is picking up steam.
One of my big jobs before we launch the site is coming up with a content strategy and a content schedule – defining the scope of our website and thinking about what sort of things we’ll post, and putting together a calendar for posts that matches up with our church calendar, and keeps things coming along with regularity. I can’t emphasise how important these two things are if you’re going to do something other than a static website.
Content is king.
New content is, like in the history books of any exciting monarchy – more interesting than a royal who sits around and gets bloated or doesn’t really do anything different.
But before one gets to content, one needs to think about how this content is presented. It’s not that style triumphs over substance. It’s a question of one of the biggest bits of getting any sort of traction or recognition for a brand.
Your church is a brand.
Brands aren’t creepy corporate entities like they used to be – they’re something that describes the association people develop with entities. Including your church.
Your brand is not your logo.
Your brand is your story, it’s your character, it’s what people think when someone says the name of your church… your website helps create your brand because it’s where people experience your story, and your character. It’s where they hear your voice (or read it).
So the first step – assuming you’ve got a pretty realistic notion of what your brand is (hint, don’t pretend to be Apple if you’re Dodo, Dodo, the internet that flies…), is to figure out the sort of voice and tone that is going to carry your brand messages (stuff you want to say about you) to other people. The people reading your site.
This needs to match up with what people are going to experience if they move from your virtual front door to your real world front door on a Sunday. Nothing will turn people off quicker than something that isn’t authentic.
For those who’ve been following at home as I’ve unpacked the relationship between ethos, pathos, and logos when it comes to church communications – your voice, in this sense, is mostly pathos, though it’ll influence the words that you use – but it has to come out of your ethos…
So how do you figure out what your voice sounds like.
I sat down with a few people the other day to think about how we want to sound as we write – across the board. We don’t want to be really prescriptive – there’s no blacklist when it comes to what words we will and won’t use – it’s more a descriptive thing.
And one of the things that helps is to play a little brand association game. There are plenty of big money brands out there who spend a lot of time thinking about their target market (pretty much our target market – in just about every case), and tailor their messages accordingly.
So we thought about some popular brands – Australian brands – who resonate with the kind of people who we might find in our neighbourhood. And we thought about our “product” – what a church service feels like, what the personalities of our preachers are like, and our service leaders… what the vibe is on a Sunday, and what we’d like it to be.
This will be different for every church because there are heaps of variables – but I’m not a huge fan of all churches sounding the same on their websites. I’m not a fan of churchy jargon. I’m not a fan of overly technical language. So it helps me, as I write, to write in character – what would this type of person say… maybe you should think of your church as a famous character or actor… as long as its authentic.
Hopefully if everybody jumps on board with this style it’ll drive consistency across our communications, so that the job of moderating, rewriting, and posting stuff to multiple platforms doesn’t fall to just one person. It’ll also hopefully stop anyone hitting post on anything reactive where the tone of our reaction is damaging.
Here are a couple of excerpts from the document – I hope it’s helpful.
Bear in mind – this is a draft, it isn’t anything official – it hasn’t been approved. It’s not our church policy. We’re not inauthentic Billy Connolly rip-offs, just with less swearing…
This is just something I’m doing as part of the process of launching a new website, and it’s something I think is important to that process.
This is a corporate style suggestion for guiding the approach to speaking, presenting, writing, graphic design, and recording as our church across different platforms including:
- Online – Our website, our blogs, social media
- Written resources – Printed material, the ministry papers, and e-books
- Marketing Material – Announcements, Slides, handouts, advertising, and fliers
- Videos and multimedia
It is not a prescriptive or restrictive guideline for individual personalities within the staff team, or congregation – that would be odd and decidedly inauthentic, but, instead, describes an aspirational corporate approach to communication conducted on behalf of the church community to represent our church to the community at large.
Ultimately, we don’t want our individual or corporate personality or brand getting in the way of people hearing about Jesus clearly.
Our brand personality – the “voice” we choose to speak with – can be described up through a list of the qualities we aspire to, but in summary we aim, through how we communicate, to:
- faithfully present the good news of Jesus,
- be persuasive to our audience – be it those we aim to reach, those connected with us, or those we serve,
- encourage people to connect with Jesus, and with our church.
We aim to be winsome, generous, interesting, and wise in our contribution to any conversation – taking our core business (the gospel), and convictions (our philosophy of ministry), seriously, but not taking ourselves too seriously in the process.
We want stories the gospel itself, and stories about the work of the gospel in the lives of real people to drive our message – not our own corporate spin or in house jargon.
We want testimonials not advertorials.
We want authenticity, so real people with real stories will carry the communication load wherever possible – rather than simple assertions like this one.
This means we aim to present our message, and ourselves, with:
- truth,
- love,
- grace,
- humility,
- integrity,
- clarity,
- good humour, including a dash of laconic “Aussie” self-deprecation.
These are essentially the traits we hope to display every time we put pen to paper, or finger to keyboard – whether we are presenting our own position on issues, or responding to criticism.
We are, ultimately, in all areas, beggars telling other beggars where to find food.
Some “golden” brands to plunder…
Ultimately we hope that our communication will be shaped by the Lord Jesus, and the cross, and that we will be guided by the Holy Spirit, and the example of the apostles and those who have gone before us – but there is also much we can learn about communication and branding from the world around us.
Augustine says we should see truth wherever we can, and “plunder the Gold of the Egyptians” to serve the communication of the gospel.
Here are some secular brands that capture something of the communications ethos behind the Creek Road “brand personality.”
The best brands to look at are those with lots of money to spend on advertising and branding – banks and beer companies…
If we were a bank, we’d be something like ING – both focusing on, and presenting ourselves as focused on, our core business with minimal distractions (for them – banking, for us – the gospel). We pursue excellence in our product rather than spending time and money talking about how good we are. Our communication is personality driven, and simple, without expensive bells and whistles (or walking ATMs). When we speak with a little self-awareness, and self-deprecating humour. The joke is never at the expense of others, but ourselves.
Like ING, we recognise that people in our audience have negative experiences or impressions of our product (Church), and industry (religion), but expect, and speak as though, our product (both the Gospel, and our church) can exceed overturn those impressions and past negative experiences.
If we were a beer – we’d be XXXX, the beer for the everyman, sold through human stories and relationships that people can relate to (think the group of guys on a camping trip), with an emphasis on our humanity and our fallibility (like the guys making bad mistakes on their camping trip), and on our desire and intention to achieve our others-centered goals (like the guys cooking dinner in a new and exciting way). We’ve got an old product – one of the oldest brands going still in existence (Jesus), but like XXXX, we’ll try new ways to make it appeal to new audiences because we believe in the product.
This is a voice I think we can pull off without having to moderate our personalities too much across our team. It’s not a perfect fit for anyone – but it’s a comfortable fit for everyone. It seems real. It seems manageable.
So what do you think?
Does this whole process seem a little artificial?
Is it really all that necessary (it’s possible we’re overthinking this)?
How important is consistency?
How would you describe the voice of your church? How would you describe the voice of other churches using a famous pop-culture character?
Lance Armstrong, Me and the “perfect story” of redemption
Lance Armstrong has confessed and apologised, which, as we all know, is the first step to a public redemption. He did so with what seemed like as much genuine contrition as possible for somebody who has been pretty much tarnished as a pathological liar – it’s a classic paradox.
He did it to Oprah, who I guess is the secular religion of the public self’s closest thing to both a deity and a confessional…
I can’t help but feel like calling Lance Armstrong “Al” such is the resonance with the classic Paul Simon song – if only his drugs were administered by a roly-poly little bat faced girl…
Image Credit: BBC, Armstrong’s doctor Michele Ferrari, Bat-faced? Maybe. He denies being the administrator of the doping campaign anyway…
The song begins at where Armstrong is now…
“The rest of my life is so hard
I need a photo-opportunity
I want a shot at redemption
Don’t want to end up a cartoon
In a cartoon graveyard”
He’s also hoping the public will forget about all of this… because of our short little spans of attention… but here’s pretty much the dilemma we face…
“Who’ll be my role-model
Now that my role-model is
Gone Gone
He ducked back down the alley
With some roly-poly little bat-faced girl
All along along
There were incidents and accidents
There were hints and allegations”
Armstrong really does risk falling from being the character at the centre of a perfect story – which was part of his rationale for cheating – to being a cartoon in a cartoon graveyard of broken and forgotten men. Especially because the media does enjoy destroying idols almost as much as they enjoy building them up – that’s the celebrity news cycle.
Lance and the broken “perfect story”
Here’s a bit of the transcript…
You were defiant, you called other people liars.
“I understand that. And while I lived through this process, especially the last two years, one year, six months, two, three months, I know the truth. The truth isn’t what was out there. The truth isn’t what I said, and now it’s gone – this story was so perfect for so long. And I mean that, as I try to take myself out of the situation and I look at it. You overcome the disease, you win the Tour de France seven times. You have a happy marriage, you have children. I mean, it’s just this mythic perfect story, and it wasn’t true.
Was it hard to live up to that picture that was created?
“Impossible. Certainly I’m a flawed character, as I well know, and I couldn’t do that. But what we see now and what’s out there now.
But didn’t you help paint that picture?
“Of course, I did. And a lot of people did. All the fault and all the blame here falls on me. But behind that picture and behind that story is momentum. Whether it’s fans or whether it’s the media, it just gets going. And I lost myself in all of that. I’m sure there would be other people that couldn’t handle it, but I certainly couldn’t handle it, and I was used to controlling everything in my life. I controlled every outcome in my life.
Lance, and Me
I can relate to that. In a lot of ways I am like Lance Armstrong. I’m not really interested in throwing stones at him – in a way I’m guilty for the standards he set for himself. I want my sporting idols to go harder, faster, stronger, and for longer.
I think this bit, where he talks a little bit about his state of mind as he cheated, is honest, and scary – but it’s scary because I can completely relate.
Was it a big deal to you, did it feel wrong?
“No. Scary.”
It did not even feel wrong?
“No. Even scarier.”
Did you feel bad about it?
“No. The scariest.”
Did you feel in any way that you were cheating? You did not feel you were cheating taking banned drugs?
“At the time, no. I kept hearing I’m a drug cheat, I’m a cheat, I’m a cheater. I went in and just looked up the definition of cheat and the definition of cheat is to gain an advantage on a rival or foe that they don’t have. I didn’t view it that way. I viewed it as a level playing field.”
But you knew that you were held to a higher standard. You’re Lance Armstrong.
“I knew that, and of course hindsight is perfect. I know it a thousand times more now. I didn’t know what I had. Look at the fallout.”
What do you mean by you ‘didn’t know’? I don’t think people will understand what you’re saying. When you and I met a week ago you didn’t think it was that big? How could you not?
“I see the anger in people, betrayal, it’s all there. People who believed in me and supported me and they have every right to feel betrayed and it’s my fault and I’ll spend the rest of my life trying to earn back trust and apologise to people.”
I am Lance Armstrong. I am a wretch – a wretch who wants to be the center of attention. We all are. We all want to be characters in the perfect story, but we’re all deeply flawed.
Lance and Me and the perfect story of redemption
But Lance Armstrong is wrong – he can’t earn redemption – he can’t earn anything back. And neither can we. We’re all accountable – not to the media, not to Oprah – but to the real God. The God who created us. The God who humanity turned on.
The God who authors the perfect story. The one perfect story. The only perfect story.
It’s the perfect story of redemption.
The perfect story of overcoming those flaws.
The perfect story with the perfect character at its centre.
And it’s this perfect story that, to continue the Paul Simon motif – might help Lance Armstrong see “angels in the architecture” it might see him “spinning in infinity” and all it takes – for us to see Graceland (to borrow from another song) – is to say “amen and hallelujah” – I could really spin this out a bit longer with some hackneyed line about Jesus being our bodyguard, who doesn’t always stop us getting into trouble – but gets us out of it… but the story is better than that.
I am Lance Armstrong. I am human. I know what it is to not do the things that I want to do – I have no doubt that when Lance Armstrong says he wishes with hindsight that he’d fought against the culture, rather than pretending to when Hollywood came calling (see his cameo in Dodgeball)… because to err is human… To want to do right is human. That’s what Paul expresses in Romans 7 – our natural state is to be caught up in the tension between wanting to do right, and desperately wanting to paint ourselves as perfect people by putting ourselves on a bit of a pedestal – serving our flesh…
19 For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing.
20 Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.
21 So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me.
This is what it means to be human. We’re all made in God’s image – we’re all at least partly wired to do good things, which creates a tension because our very nature, tainted by the effect of sin, means that we can’t.
We can’t earn our redemption – because this is a pretty vicious cycle. And Paul sums up the good news like this, in the same chapter…
“24 What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? 25 Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!”
The best part of the story, I reckon, is that we’re not just rescued – we’re perfected. By centering our story around Jesus, rather than ourselves, we start to become part of the greatest perfect story. The gospel really is the best story. It’s a redemption story.
It’s a story that unravels the human condition – the human condition that lead Lance to drugs, and leads us to all sorts of bad stuff – that all changes. And the notion of the “good life” and the “perfect story” changes too – because that tension at the heart of humanity starts to disappear. That’s where Paul goes in chapter 8…
“28 And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. 29 For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. 30 And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.”
In Jesus we become part of God’s purpose – and achieve something greater than the sort of unblemished humanity that was around when we were just run of the mill “children of God” when humanity was created. We’re now being “conformed” to the image of Jesus. We have a role model – one who’ll stick around. And we are being made like our role model – the perfect role model. We’re redeemed – and we’ll be perfected, or glorified… We’re not faced with the prospect of being a cartoon in a cartoon graveyard – we’re loved, in three dimensions, by the God who calls us his children.
That’s a heaps better redemption story than anything Oprah offers.
Bad Lip Reading and the NFL
This is great.
The old atheism: why it’s more dangerous than the “new”
I don’t want to suggest Richard Dawkins and his other two horseman friends (following the very tragic demise of Christopher Hitchens) aren’t effective in their campaigns against religion, and for atheism… but I’ve been reading some David Hume (Dialogues on Natural Religion) for the Philosophy subject I’m taking at college this year, and he’s much more interesting and engaging, and therefore more dangerous, than today’s $2 shop atheists like Richard Dawkins. He makes some of the bilious rhetoric these modern guys employ seem very cheap indeed, not because the substance of his argument is all that different – in many ways Hitchens, Harris, Dennett, and Dawkins have all simply been developing Hume’s arguments in line with modern knowledge, but because he is all style. He’s just so winsome, and gentle, it’s like one of those kung-fu moves from the B-Grade movies out there, where you don’t know he’s actually started hitting you until it’s too late – unless, you are familiar with kung-fu.
I can’t help but make comparisons with Dawkins as I read Hume (By the by, Hume’s Dialogue, while it was said to undermine “natural theology” and the argument from design pretty much assumes the conclusions it then sets out to prove, by essentially ruling out divine revelation by looking for natural causes of both nature and religion, and then admitting that such revelation is probably necessary to know anything about the nature of God).
Hume is wrong because he essentially fails to engage with the question of who Jesus is – God made incarnate. God made subject to empirical observations. God made man – a man who was real, historically verifiable, and whose death and resurrection didn’t just legitimise his claim to be king – but all the stuff he said was written to point to him from beforehand – the Old Testament, and the testimonies that are written about him are the empirical evidence offered to support his claims. Written documentation of history – Hume was a history writer himself, so it’s surprising he’s so dismissive of history’s ability to contain and describe truth.
But back to the comparisons…
I like how at times Hume, in contrast to Dawkins, will engage with some of the big theological questions that present themselves in the course of his argument (lets not forget how Dawkins chooses not to engage with where hard Christian thought is happening), here he is highlighting the dangers of trying to draw an analogy from the creation to the creator:
“But as all perfection is entirely relative, we ought never to imagine that we comprehend the attributes of this divine Being, or to suppose that his perfections have any analogy or likeness to the perfections of a human creature. Wisdom, Thought, Design, Knowledge; these we justly ascribe to him; because these words are honourable among men, and we have no other language or other conceptions by which we can express our adoration of him.”
At that point he presents a much bigger picture of God than he seems to employ throughout the book, where his God, if he exists at all, is a neutered, deistic god, who has no influence on natural events, and potentially even less interest. It’s a bigger picture of god than some modern Christians are willing to conceive. God is so far beyond comparison to man that drawing analogies is largely futile… unless, of course, you have something that claims to be the word of God which essentially establishes a comparison between God and man (Gen 1:26-27) right off the bat…
Anyway, like I say, I’ve enjoyed reading Hume because he seems genuine in grappling with the issues he’s writing about – though you’re never really sure, at this point, how much legitimacy he’s giving to opinions other than his own when he writes, his Christian character, Demea, who promises to indoctrinate her children before they’re taught any “scientific” enquiry, is pretty much a caricature with very little of substance to contribute.
Where Dawkins is shrill, Hume is gentle. Where Dawkins is bombastic, Hume presents with doubt and not a little epistemic humility. Where Dawkins is brash and intolerant, Hume is empathetic and questioning. Where Dawkins is filled with smug certitude and self-righteousness, Hume is a little bit charming and self-effacing. Where Dawkins can’t see much good in any religious people, Hume was enamoured with the leading Christians of his time (he used to go to see Whitfield preach, not because he believed what Whitfield was saying, but “because he [Whitfield] does.” Where Dawkins seems to want the quick victory, Hume amassed a pretty comprehensive case against Christianity almost by stealth – with snippets in all sorts of publications that almost needed to be put together posthumously.
This article in the New Yorker comparing the atheists of old with the new atheists has a nice little para on Hume…
“Yet his many writings on religion have a genial and even superficially pious tone. He wanted to convince his religious readers, and recognized that only gentle and reassuring persuasion would work. In a telling passage in the “Dialogues,” Hume has one of his characters remark that a person who openly proclaimed atheism, being guilty of “indiscretion and imprudence,” would not be very formidable.
Hume sprinkled his gunpowder through the pages of the “Dialogues” and left the book primed so that its arguments would, with luck, ignite in his readers’ own minds. And he always offered a way out. In “The Natural History of Religion,” he undermined the idea that there are moral reasons to be religious, but made it sound as if it were still all right to believe in proofs of God’s existence. In an essay about miracles, he undermined the idea that it is ever rational to accept an apparent revelation from God, but made it sound as if it were still all right to have faith. And in the “Dialogues” he undermined proofs of God’s existence, but made it sound as if it were all right to believe on the basis of revelation. As the Cambridge philosopher Edward Craig has put it, Hume never tried to topple all the supporting pillars of religion at once.”
What’s particularly interesting to me, given my recent penchant for all things Ciceroesque, is how much Hume follows Cicero. Deliberately and unabashedly. While there’s a fair bit of overlap in philosophical approach and the questions both men asked, there’s a style comparison as well. It’s, I think, a testimony to the quality of the communication advice and approach to life that Cicero laid out for communicators (believe in your cause, live for it, speak eloquently and passionately, write often, etc). This too, is why I think Dawkins and his ilk, though they persuade some, will eventually fade away into insignificance – their “rhetorical triangle” is not particularly balanced, they’re heavy on the pathos, with not much logos, and not a whole lot of conduct worth imitating or being convinced by…
Fresh Prince theme lost in translation
If you translate, and then translate, and then translate… another 61 times… this is what happens to the Fresh Prince of Bel Air theme song…
A Third Eagle song about the Denver International Airport mural (oh, and Psy says the Antichrist is a gay polygamist)
I love it when he sings… and when he talks about the Denver International Airport. So this is fusion gold.
But here are some things we learn from Gangnam Style about the antichrist.
- The timing of end times events (but you’ll have to wait for the next video for this).
- The timing of the end of the Catholic Church.
- The timing of the end of the United States.
- The timing of Russia and China’s invasion of the United States.
- The relationship between the false prophet and the antichrist.
- The sexuality of the antichrist – he’s a homosexual, bisexual, pedophile who is married, to two wives.
- The gender confusion of the antichrist – he’s a transexual, apparently.
- The bow-tie in the video promote gay marriage because they are phallic symbols.
- The antichrist will publicly proclaim his support for gay marriage…
The real fun starts at about 6 minutes in…
What is preaching?
I’ve been talking to my dad a little about the hubbub surrounding Hearing Her Voice, my review, and some of the stuff I’ve been suggesting is relevant to how we think about preaching from the thought world of the first century. Dad (and now Mikey) made the interesting point that there’s never really been a solid definition of preaching, as in “what we do in the pulpit in church on a Sunday,” beyond teaching, especially for those influenced by the Knox/Robinson revolution in the Australian evangelical scene.
Here, as a bit of a cheat note, is the relatively pregnant definition I’m suggesting in this post:
Preaching is the persuasive and authoritative proclamation of the good news that Jesus is the Christ, who launched God’s kingdom in his death and resurrection, it relies on the authority of God provided by his word, and the gifts supplied to his body – the church – by the Spirit, to beget and nurture the faith of those God has called.
It’s interesting that the Knox/Robinson ecclesiology, which Mark Thompson has just summed up in The Briefing, seems to influence the understanding of what happens in the pulpit on a Sunday. There is another useful factor that I’ll get to below – but I wonder if the appropriate first principle for figuring out what “preaching” is, particularly in the context of the gathered people of God, is to figure out what church is.
What is church?
I’m a young guy, I have nothing like the runs that either Knox or Robinson had on the board – but I want to humbly suggest that their focus on the internal aspect of church life, appears to have come at the cost of ignoring the simultaneous external aspect of what it means to be the church.
I’ll bold the bit that I think create an unnecessary limit on what church is.
“Thus church is Christian fellowship. Like all fellowship it requires as a sine qua non ‘other-person-centredness’, that is, being genuinely interested in the other person as a person, and, in particular, as a Christian person. It will require communication, talking to each other in Christian things, in the things of faith and hope in Christ. Christian church fellowship means not only talking together, but doing together Christian things such as praising, praying, and thanking God. Our fellowship is not only directed towards God, but also towards one another, building one another up as Christians.”
What’s really interesting is what’s missing. If the reformers model of church as mother, the ordinary means of both begetting and nurturing faith, is correct – and I think it is, then an ecclesiology and understanding of what the role of the church is that excludes the process of begetting is slightly lacking.
Also, if the church is incarnational – the physical body of Christ, united to him, and the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit – it seems odd to limit its focus like the quote above does. Christ’s ministry, recorded in the gospels, seems to be directed to all people, publicly, in the service of God, with clear demonstrations that he was and is the long promised king bringing the long promised kingdom, ultimately for the benefit of those who put their trust in him, but this definition explicitly suggests the church (and its gatherings) should only really focus on God and other Christians.
It’s not just “missing” – it’s deliberately absent. Here’s how Thompson sums up how both Knox and Robinson conceive of the mission of the church…
“We might discern a slight difference of emphasis between Knox and Robinson at this point, though both consistently argued that “the visible church has no purpose or mission beyond being the church, that is, being the fellowship of Christ’s people”
Thompson says the pay off of this position for who we think church is for is one of the significant contributions Knox/Robinson make for today – and I’d say it’s part of the significant contribution to whatever confusion exists about what the difference is between “teaching” and “preaching”… I’ve heard from someone sharp, and remember, I haven’t read anything by either of these guys, that their emphasis, and thus the emphasis at Moore College is on training Bible teachers, and letting authority rest in the word of God, rather than training preachers.
Thompson sets up, or articulates, what I think is an unhelpful false dichotomy in our thinking about the orientation of our gatherings.
“Some of our contemporary confusion about what we do when we come together, it seems to me, arises from a failure to observe the important distinction between being intelligible to outsiders and being oriented towards outsiders. Paul expected that an outsider might enter the assembly at Corinth and understand what was being said. But he did not expect that all that was being done would be oriented towards the outsider, calculated to remove all that might seem strange to the outsider, or even designed so that the outsider might anonymously observe and feel more comfortable.”
I’d argue that the problem isn’t one of failing to observe an important distinction, I’d say it’s failing to grasp that the thing that both outsiders and insiders need – the one thing – is to know the gospel of Jesus.
You don’t have to choose between “seeker” and “believer” oriented – because both seekers and believers receive their mothering in the same way – the gospel. Sure. The full significance of the gospel is something that bites with time – which is why Paul can say he gives the Corinthians “milk, not solid food” (1 Cor 3:2), but I don’t think his preaching ever goes beyond “Christ and him crucified” (1 Cor 1:22-24) and the wonder of being united with Christ and having our status as children of God restored in him – and the impact that has on how we understand what it means to be human (which seems to be part of the solid food he serves up in Romans).
To know how Jesus, the long awaited Christ, is foretold in the Old Testament, and to know what the kingdom he launched at the cross is, and how we can be a part of it. Clear, authoritative, gospel proclamation, based on the authority of the Scriptures (including the apostolic deposit) – aimed at persuading (both those who are already persuaded, and those who aren’t), will serve both believer and unbeliever, doing the “mother” thing the reformers saw as so key to what the church was on about.
Also, if we assume that part of being the church isn’t just wanting to have fellowship with one another and to do things together as we worship God, sacrificially, with the gifts he gave us, as the Body of Christ, under his head, but see this role extending to something like seeking to be, actively, his representatives on earth – as his ambassadors, as participants in his mission – then not letting this impact how we gather, such that our gatherings make the gospel message as clear as it possible can be (which in turn benefits the insider), is a bit odd.
While I think Knox and Robinson made some incredible contributions to how we think of the church using appropriate theological categories, I suspect their desire not to meddle with the harmful stuff the ecumenical movement was doing meant their picture of the church as an entity with some sort of outwards focus was a little weak.
Thompson says:
“Of course we should recognize the danger of alienating those who visit our churches with obscure language, unexplained rituals and general insensitivity or rudeness. However, the outsider is visiting or entering a fellowship that has a particular character that marks itself out from other gatherings. Not all ‘strangeness’ is bad, especially when we consider how distant our contemporary culture has become from gospel priorities. The desire in some circles to transform church into something which resembles other gatherings (theatres, cafes, etc.) needs a better justification than it is often given.”
And again, sets up an interesting dichotomy. Strangeness isn’t bad, unless it obscures the gospel. Unexplained rituals or obscure language is bad because it obscures the gospel. You don’t have to jump from an unexplained ritual to theatre though – a better place on the spectrum might be doing whatever it takes to make the message of the gospel, as it relates to the revealed word of God, as clear as possible – using the gifts God has given his body to make his Christ, Jesus, known.
What is “preaching”?
This definition is a bit of a work in process, it brings together the essence of a few previous posts, I’ll provide links here and you can read them, or not, at your leisure, at times I’ll assume premises that I’ve argued for in these posts:
- A post where I argue for a link between oratory and persuasion and preaching and evangelism. I suspect one of the necessary implications of what I’m arguing here is that the primary qualification of the preacher is that they are “an evangelist” – which John Dickson has suggested elsewhere is a specialised role.
- A post where I argue that faithful preaching involves cross-shaped logos, pathos, and ethos.
- A post where I outline where I think preaching differs from teaching following John Dickson’s recent book (and how I think the New Testament, and the Reformers support my case).
In yesterday’s post (the last one in that list) I tried to show that when the New Testament uses the word preaching it brings with it the idea of proclaiming Jesus as the Christ, and proclaiming the kingdom of God.
I’m also assuming the legitimacy of a Biblical Theological framework that is something like Goldsworthy’s (while recognising that attempts to apply one central motif, rather than seeing many strands contributing to a rich picture of fulfilment in Jesus, is a bit reductionist). Such a framework also sits in the Reformed tradition, where it is understood that for any passage of Scripture to be appropriately understood by a Christian audience, as Christian scripture, it needs to be understood through the lens of Jesus being the Christ.
On this basis all faithful “Bible teaching” points to Jesus being the Christ. You can certainly “teach” about the Bible both the Old Testament, and narrative bits of the Gospels that occur before the cross, and its meaning for its first, pre-cross readers, but that’s not preaching.
Harking back, for a second, to the Knox/Robinson model of church – because they rightly want to place the emphasis on the authority of Scripture, they saw teaching (as I understand their position) as expositing Scripture faithfully, with the preacher and his congregation sitting under the authority of the word – rather than the office of the preacher. And there’s a real rightness to that. In this way “teaching and exercising authority” was one act – the act of standing in front of the congregation and presenting the authority of God, and it was limited, by Paul’s instruction, to men.
But in jumping on “teaching” as the vehicle for authoritative instruction in the church, without really adequately defining or emphasising what “preaching” is – such that any trained monkey can be taught to teach – they’ve robbed us a little bit, I think, when it comes to supplying a definition of what preaching is.
Here’s my working definition – hopefully tying up nicely where I’ve been heading in the last few posts:
Preaching is the persuasive and authoritative proclamation of the good news that Jesus is the Christ, who launched God’s kingdom in his death and resurrection, it relies on the authority of God provided by his word, and the gifts supplied to his body – the church – by the Spirit, to beget and nurture the faith of those God has called.
Preaching is multi-genred, as the Scriptures are, and includes, I think, exhortation, teaching, rebuking, prophecy, and anything that helps people to see who Jesus is. It’s multi-media, it is communicated through the word – primarily, as it is adorned by the character of those who speak it, the way they speak it, and through the work of the Spirit (in the gifts supplied to the speakers, and the work the Spirit is doing in conforming the speaker to the image of Jesus, and in his work in the lives of the hearers).
If I ever get up in the pulpit on a Sunday and what I’m doing isn’t achieving that end, I feel like I’m wasting my time.
It’s interesting that Broughton Knox, in this quote from the Thompson piece, appears to agree with the essence of the sermon.
“We who are members of Christ’s church should lift our thoughts to where Christ is, and remember that the purpose of Christ’s gathering us in his presence is for fellowship with him and with one another by our hearing his voice which comes to us in the preaching of the gospel within that fellowship…[34. Knox, ‘Church’, p. 22.]”
I’d just add that it’s also for the purpose of bringing other people into the fellowship that we enjoy as we participate in the task of glorifying God by declaring his good news in a clear and persuasive way.
How to do (good) coffee at church
This post is a response to a request on Twitter, but hopefully it’ll be a handy little resource for the long term…
There are lots of good reasons to ditch instant coffee at church morning teas – it tastes awful, it potentially reveals a shoddy doctrine of creation (and is one of the 7 deadly coffee sins), it’s (generally) less likely to be ethical, and doing coffee well is a chance to show your newcomers (and regulars) that you care about them.
Did you know that “no es cafe,” essentially nescafe means “is not coffee” in Spanish…
Anyway. Once you’ve decided to ditch the dirt from the church menu – you’re faced with a few conundrums.
Here are the three big questions (and some sub questions that’ll each send you in a different direction).
Some Questions
1. Who is it for? New people, or everyone? free? or paid? Covering costs? Making a profit?
2. What’s your budget? Are you going to buy a commercial machine with all the bells and whistles? lease one? Get a second hand ex-cafe machine on eBay? Get a giant percolator? And where are you going to get your beans? The supermarket (urgh)? A local roaster (mmm)? Roast your own? Will they be “ethical”? What program will you use (you know Fairtrade is stupid. Right?)
3. Who is going to run things? Who’ll man the machine? Who’ll do the training? Who’ll monitor supplies? Who’ll clean up?
Some Answers
The answers to these questions will depend largely on your church context – who your immediate mission field is and how many people you have who are able to help carry the load.
Here are some universal principles for answering these questions and providing good coffee at church – you can read more about these in my five steps to better coffee eBook for just $5… That’s right. $5.
1. Fresh coffee is best. Both roasted, and ground – that’s why I’d lean towards roasting your own, or getting into some sort of relationship with a roaster. You’ll probably need to buy a grinder, or, if you’re going the percolator route – get your coffee ground for your percolator as close to when you brew as possible.
2. Consistency is important. If you’re going to sell your coffee at church and you want to use the money to sustain a coffee ministry (in our case this happens at things like the playgroup that our building hosts during the week), then you want the product you’re offering to be trustworthy and good.
3. If you’re going to buy a second hand machine – choose carefully. I’ve now bought six used commercial machines on eBay for a 4-2 scoreline (priced between $270 and $750 excluding freight) – two were lemons (one was a lemon where the spare parts more than justified the cost), one needed pretty major work to get up and running.
4. If you go with a commercial espresso machine you have to think about incidental issues like electricity and water supply – some machines will happily draw from a tank (generally those with rotary motors), others might need plumbing in. Most will need 15A and above, power wise (the normal run of the mill socket is 10A).
5. Don’t make people pay. I’m a firm believer that hospitality is an important part of what we do on a Sunday both for the congregation and our guests. I’m not opposed to providing a “premium” option at a cost, if there’s a free option also.
A percolator using the right amount of fresh coffee, appropriately roasted, with attention paid to the brew cycle (where it isn’t left to stew for too long), will produce brilliant coffee with less fuss, less mess, and at a cheaper cost. So that is a more than adequate solution in most cases. But if you’d like something a little more high brow…
Two Case Studies
I’ve now set up Sheila (one of my pride and joys), my three group Rancilio Z-11 beast, at two different churches. Sheila, a tank (google Red V Blue, Season 1), is from an era when people knew how to make coffee machines. At one point I had rewired her to run on 10A power, but this meant she took 45 minutes to heat up. She’s now properly serviced, and running at full capacity on our coffee cart at Creek Road.
The first church, Clayfield Pressy, was a church of around 50 people, in a relatively high income pocket of Brisbane, there was just one morning service to cater for – it was a no brainer to make coffees for the 65% of the crowd who drink it, most weeks. I supplied the coffee at no cost (I roasted it myself), we had a small Sunbeam grinder, or I’d bring mine from home, and we upped the weekly milk order by two or three bottles.
Because the coffee was free, there was no need to provide an alternative option. I’d estimate I was going through about $5 worth of coffee a week, at cost (roasting for yourself is much cheaper – depending on the scale of your operation), and 8-10 litres of milk (I was also doing hot chocolates).
After I left, Clayfield purchased a relatively new Boema machine – they’re Australian made. I have no idea how often it gets used now.
Sheila came with me to Creek Road. For the first ten months or so of last year, she occupied pride of place in our Connect Lounge – the first port of call for newcomers at our church. We supplied coffee in that lounge after all three services.
Regulars who attend our 8:30 service, which is followed by morning tea, were supplied with percolator coffee made in a big percolator/urn (I’m relatively fond of these, given a light roast, and coarse grind). I was roasting for both the newcomers lounge, and the percolator. We were using about 1kg of coffee a week.
We’ve made the decision – thanks to some equally passionate people on staff at Creek Road, to invest into coffee as part of our ministry strategy. We’re keen to not only supply coffee to newcomers, but to be able to get on the road and support local chaplains by providing coffee at school functions, and we want to offer coffee at our “connect” ministries (the aforementioned playgroups, our annual mission week/kids club). So we’ve purchased a 2nd grinder, and a semi-commercial machine (new) for the Connect Lounge, and set up a coffee cart, featuring Sheila, for the congregation to be able to purchase this coffee for $3 a pop after all our services (and before all but the 8:30 service) – this will fund the operation of these ministries and hopefully the investment into equipment. We’re continuing to provide percolator coffee at morning tea.
I’m no longer roasting – we’ve entered into an agreement with Cleanskin Coffee, a Brisbane company, that roasts well chosen ethical coffee, spends some of the proceeds on development in producing companies, and gives us a generous price, as well as the promise of training for our baristas should they need it. This has been a good solution for us – it frees up some of my time to do other things, and means we’re getting consistently good coffee in a way that adequately answers the relevant questions from above.
It also means we can produce coffee that looks something like this, at church… as part of the testimony to how we love and value our newcomers… did someone mention ethos…
Some Recommendations
So what have I learned from these case studies… and the countless hours I’ve poured into making better coffee.
1. People appreciate good coffee (especially if it’s free) – especially the particular breed of person who is a bit snobby about coffee. We live in an age where people are increasingly taking good coffee for granted – I’m not suggesting we give in to fads and trends, but surely we can do better than International Roast.
2. It takes effort – time, human resources, money – it’s a big commitment to step up from urn to espresso for visitors to espresso for everybody.
3. It’s important to be transparent – both in terms of where your coffee is coming from, and where any money is going.
4. Be choosy about the equipment you buy – If you’re going to buy a commercial machine look at parts sites to make sure parts for your machine are readily available. Coffeeparts.com.au is your friend. I love my Rancilio machine – I’ve bought an Expobar, 2 Boemas, and 3 Rancilios. The only problem with the Rancilio that didn’t work is that it requires plumbing in – other than that it’s a 20 year old machine that works perfectly.
5. Seriously consider leasing – Buying your gear is probably the best bet, if you can find some good second hand deals that aren’t complete lemons, but finding a bean supplier who is prepared to cut you a good deal on a lease machine, especially if you’re going to use it a fair bit during the week will give you some more predictable costs (though they’ll be higher in the long run if you score a gem of a machine – Sheila cost me about $750 from the point of purchase to the point of pouring delicious shots), it’ll mean your machine is newer, more reliable, and maintenance is often included.
6. People will drink less than you think they will – except when you under cater – Figuring how much coffee to roast and how much milk to buy is a bit of a lottery.
7. It’s pretty cheap to make good coffee if you’re not paying staff – Some basic maths – a standard take away cup (8 ounce) holds 250mL. Pouring a standard espresso shot that means 220mL of milk. This is textured milk – so it’s lets assume that’s about 150 mL of milk per cup. That means you get 13 cups per litre. Which, at $1 a litre means you’re paying about 7c a cup for milk, an 18-20gm dose in a double shot basket (lets assume 20), will give you 100 shots per kilo of coffee, if you’re paying $25/kg (I can roast you coffee at that price), you’re looking at 25c per shot, factor in about 20c for a cup and lid (that’s on the high side) and we’re talking 52c per cup.
8. A simple menu is the best way to ensure consistency – this is the one thing I didn’t get my way on with our current set up. Differences between types of coffees, if you’ve only got one cup size, are essentially meaningless if you’re aiming for microfoamed milk. Sure. You could add some chocolate powder to a long white with microfoam and call it a cappuccino – but flat whites, lattes, and cappuccinos are essentially indistinguishable if your milk is a uniform texture (or as close to as possible). If I had my way we’d offer short/long black/white – giving people a total of four combinations (a long black, a short black, a picolo, and a flat white). This would cut down on stupidity as people ask for whatever their normal coffee order is, and your volunteer baristas stand there scratching their heads trying to figure out how to make a macchiato. It means you only have to train people to make four drinks.
Hearing her voice: teaching, preaching, and a complementarian ethos
If you haven’t been following along on the interwebs, a hornets nest has been kicked and then ignited with the release of three Zondervan e-books about women and preaching, and whether or not they should do it.
I’ve read one of these, Hearing Her Voice
In this book we get more of Dickson’s very solid hermeneutical model applied to a pretty tricky question, and particularly applied to a verse that creates quite a few difficulties for the modern church. Seriously, he is, I think, the model of what being a careful interpreter of Scripture looks like, there’s a great para in the book that outlines his approach to using history as a tool for exegesis, and I commend it to you.
I was going to include quotes from the book – but this post is already almost 6,000 words long.
The question at the heart of this book – well, there are two questions, I think – and perhaps three – is what is “teaching?” Is preaching teaching? And if not, can women preach in church?
What’s not up for grabs for Dickson is the real strength of his work – he’s big on the authority of Scripture, big on consistently reading and exegeting it with the original readers and meaning in mind, and big on the principle that while male and female are equal in God’s sight, we are different.
I feel like I should throw in a few disclaimers at the start so you know where I’m coming from…
- I’m aware of the dangers of being a “privileged” and unoppressed class speaking out on this issue – a white, anglo-saxon, male, protestant voice in this debate needs to be pretty mindful of his cultural background and relative freedom to make proclamations that appear to come at a cost to others. (UPDATE: If you’re reading this post in the present day, post 2014, I’m also a guy who occupies a pulpit — even more ‘privilege’ to account for in this conversation).
- I love the concept of a priesthood of all believers – it goes without saying that this includes men and women – I think it’s biblical, I think we’re all called to be on mission together, and equipped by God to serve as part of the body of believers as we serve and love one another and try to reach people together.
- I think there are lots of women who are gifted preachers, teachers, and evangelists. I don’t see any gender specific traits that make being able to show someone else that Jesus is the Christ a particularly male act. This isn’t an “innate” issue, or a “masculinity” issue, men are not innately more competent in this area than women.
- I’m also a complementarian – I think our different genders are a good and necessary part of what it means to be human. I think we’re different but equal.
- I agree that there are lots of roles open to women that we’ve essentially closed because we’re scared of transgressing in this area – including prophecy, exhortation, partnering as “gospel workers,” etc.
- I think the gender stuff at the fall is pretty interesting, and is certainly something Paul has in mind in this verse. While this is pretty absent in Dickson’s book, it is something Mike Bird, who wrote a second book in the series, spends some time considering – but I haven’t read that yet.
- I’m wary about tossing out 2,000 years of church tradition, particularly the interpretive traditions from people who took the Bible seriously – though I’m also aware that all interpreters are fallible, and texts, and interpretations of those texts are the product of different cultures. I’m interested in a tendency, beyond Dickson’s book, to pit current movements of the Spirit through female preachers against historic movements, through tradition. I’m also pretty sure the Spirit of God is able to speak, and point to Jesus, through all sorts of wrong things we might, as humans, adopt. Our fallibility has never been an obstacle to the Spirit moving people to faith.
- I’ll also presuppose that how we do church – including who preaches – is part of our ethos, so that the decision about who preaches is, in part, a decision we make about our presentation of the gospel.
What is a sermon? Teaching? Exhortation? Preaching?
I have some reservations about how Dickson approaches the Greek language (and how others do too) – but this is probably because they are experts at Greek and I am not. I think word studies have some merit, but I think assume too much about the deliberation that goes into the use of particular words, rather than paying heed to the vibe of a paragraph, or whole letter. I think words often have a broad semantic range that overlaps with other words, and you kind of use those ranges together to create new concepts – Dickson thinks this happens with “teaching” and “authority” in the verse in question… So I don’t really like arguments based on word studies – and most of my response won’t really engage with the question of whether or not “teaching” or in the Greek, didaskein, is a technical word for a particular act, or a general word for the passing on of knowledge – this is where the debate is being fought out on the interwebs by Lionel Windsor, and Dickson himself (in a great model of how you can disagree with people without calling their character into question…
Like I say – I’m not an expert on Greek, and don’t pretend to be, and I’m fairly sure that words can also be used technically to mean very narrow things – but I do think literary context guides interpretation… and I think one of the concerns of Paul’s letter to Timothy is to help Timothy, and the church, think rightly about questions of pastoral leadership – including the establishment of a role that seems to be for men and includes carrying the responsibility of preaching and teaching, within the church.
I don’t think Dickson necessarily disagrees with this approach to language – though his treatment of “teaching” here is very similar to his treatment of “evangelism” in Promoting the Gospel. He allows for general use of words, while suggesting we need to pay heed to the technical meanings that may have been in operation in the first century.
He spends significant time making the case that “teaching” isn’t directly transferrable to what we do in the pulpit of a modern church each Sunday – and his argument seems to have some merit. I don’t think preaching is the teaching, in the technical sense, that Dickson identifies. So I’m almost happy to cede his whole argument, on one level – if the Sunday sermon is exhortation, as he suggests, or prophecy as the Puritans suggest, and not teaching (as Lionel Windsor suggests it is) – then I think he’s right – women should be able to exhort, prophecy, and do all the things that Paul specifically or implicitly allows, and even all the things he doesn’t forbid.
Anyway – here’s the passage in question, with a bit of context. From 1 Timothy 2…
5 For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, 6 who gave himself as a ransom for all, which is the testimony given at the proper time. 7 For this I was appointed a preacher and an apostle (I am telling the truth, I am not lying), a teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth.
8 I desire then that in every place the men should pray, lifting holy hands without anger or quarreling; 9 likewise also that women should adorn themselves in respectable apparel, with modesty and self-control, not with braided hair and gold or pearls or costly attire, 10 but with what is proper for women who profess godliness—with good works. 11 Let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness. 12 I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet. 13 For Adam was formed first, then Eve; 14 and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. 15 Yet she will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith and love and holiness, with self-control.
In 1 Timothy 3, when he’s establishing the qualifications of a deacon, and an overseer he gives a set of ethos heavy principles, like being “above reproach” – which presumably has something to do with not undermining his leadership of others, and “be well thought of by outsiders, so that he may not fall into disgrace, into a snare of the devil.” It is assumed in these verses that the person in question is a man – building off his argument in chapter 2.
In 1 Timothy 5 it appears he assumes these elders will be the people doing the “preaching and teaching”…
17 Let the elders who rule well be considered worthy of double honor, especially those who labor in preaching and teaching. 18 For the Scripture says, “You shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain,” and, “The laborer deserves his wages.”
Then, in 2 Timothy 4, he kind of spells out what Timothy is called to do, under the umbrella of “preaching”…
4 I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: 2 preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching. 3 For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, 4 and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. 5 As for you, always be sober-minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.
Ultimately, I’m not convinced by the way Dickson groups “teaching” and “authority” into one command, rather than two separate but related commands based on the same Old Testament/created order principle… and I think there’s another reason, an ethos reason, when it comes to how we persuade people about the message of the gospel that means we should think carefully about how we use, or emphasise, gender and authority in church gatherings… which I’ll get to below. Somewhere. I think what is done from the pulpit is an act of authority – and listening is an act of submission.
Where I think Windsor is right to go (but slightly wrong in where he lands – I think), and where I think Dickson is wrong – is on what the sermon actually is. In sum, Windsor thinks it’s teaching, and Dickson sells teaching short, Dickson thinks the sermon is exhortation, or something analogous to that – and thus thinks women can give sermons.
What Preaching is not…
I’d argue, along with Dickson, that preaching is not teaching, we’ve hastily drawn an analogous line from the Bible’s use of teaching to our modern equivalent, and that’s come at a cost.
- Preaching is not simply teaching – though it may involve the transmission of information from someone with knowledge to someone without.
- Preaching is not strictly exhortation though it may encourage.
- Preaching is not simply prophecy, though it may speak God’s word to people at a particular time… though in a sense a good sermon is all of these things.
This is one of the areas I think Dickson’s argument breaks down – you don’t have to look much past Paul to find someone who exercises more than one of the “offices” of word ministry that Dickson seems to suggest are in operation… Paul also suggests all of these things are part of Timothy’s job as a preacher (2 Tim 4).
It’s quite possible that there’ll be an overlap of different styles of speaking in any particular speech, much as there was in just about any form of first century oratory. Where Cicero, in Brutus, bags out some orators for being too specialised in one area, because the idea was that public speakers could adopt a wide range of styles, from the boring didactic history lecture, to the witty declamation of an opponent on the election trail.
What a sermon (preaching) is…
Preaching is preaching. It has a New Testament equivalent – and an Old Testament equivalent. It has a Greek word – kerusso – which had a pre-existing technical meaning, and a meaning that developed through Christian usage, and it appears to be something like being a herald and proclaiming good news, with authority.
I’d argue that if one:
- stands in the tradition of the reformers (and I’ll try to demonstrate below in the “read more” section – the New Testament), and the Westminster Confession,
- is prepared to think about preaching as an act of persuasive declaration of the gospel, using whatever persuasive resources are at your disposal to convince people that Jesus is the Christ – including logos, pathos, and ethos,
- and is convinced that a Christ-centred Biblical Theology is the best way to approach, interpret, and truly explain any passage of the Bible – such that all expository sermons are a declaration of how an Old Testament passage is fulfilled in the Christ, Jesus, or how a passage in the New Testament relates to life in his world, under his Lordship,
then our sermons are not “teaching” in the sense identified by Dickson – but “preaching”… in the sense that the word is used throughout the New Testament.
Our sermons should point people to Jesus and the kingdom of God, attempt to persuade people to accept the message, and declare that, Jesus is Lord – This essentially does nothing for the gender question but move the goalposts, so the question is not “can women teach?” but “can women preach?” – so Dickson’s insights, while useful, are potentially irrelevant to the question.
I would say that I think preaching is an act of authority – but the ultimate authority rests in the same person it rests in when Jesus is challenged about the authority behind his preaching – God and his Christ. When we preach faithfully we are simply pointing to the authority of Jesus. The way authority is exercised over the church is ultimately in the preaching of the word (and the faithful passing on of the apostolic traditions) as they relate to Jesus, not the appointment of humans who have particular gifts in particular areas. We judge a preacher’s authority on their adherence to the divine logos, Christ-made-flesh and Christ-crucified — the message of the Bible, not on their particular ability as a speaker. And I want to make the case below that we should ultimately profoundly be assessing a preacher on their ethos — their willingness to have the truth of this logos shape who they are and how they preach. I want to make the case that this isn’t a new way of thinking about what preaching is – first from the Reformers, and then, after a little ethos excursus from the New Testament (though the order should be reversed – the NT stuff is pretty long).
Preaching in the Reformed world
Both Luther and Calvin (Institutes, 4.1.5) put a pretty high value on preaching , if preaching involved the gospel – so much that preaching was more important than the sacraments in terms of constituting Christ’s presence in the gathering of the body – this was a big deal in a time where people were killed over what they thought happened at communion.
Calvin says:
“We see that God, who might perfect his people in a moment, chooses not to bring them to manhood in any other way than by the education of the Church. We see the mode of doing it expressed; the preaching of celestial doctrine is committed to pastors. We see that all without exception are brought into the same order, that they may with meek and docile spirit allow themselves to be governed by teachers appointed for this purpose… Hence it follows, that all who reject the spiritual food of the soul divinely offered to them by the hands of the Church, deserve to perish of hunger and famine. God inspires us with faith, but it is by the instrumentality of his gospel, as Paul reminds us, “Faith cometh by hearing” (Rom. 10:17). God reserves to himself the power of maintaining it, but it is by the preaching of the gospel, as Paul also declares, that he brings it forth and unfolds it.”
Both (Luther Large Catechism (PDF, p 72), Calvin Institutes 4.1.1, 4) saw the church as the “mother” of believers – responsible, ordinarily and under God, for giving birth to new believers and nurturing the faith of existing believers – and it did this, for both groups, in the same way – by preaching the gospel of Jesus. Not legalism. Not morals. Not ethics. Not just words of encouragement. But the gospel.
The gospel will have necessary implications for our morality and ethics – and it will necessarily be encouraging as we consider that the creator of the universe sent his son to earth to buy us, for a relationship, to make us his children. But our sermons that do all these things do these things because they first declare the truths of the gospel, and these things are part of the persuasive case the gospel makes for those who hear it.
The preaching of the gospel is one of the “marks of the church” for Reformed people.
The Westminster Confession of Faith essentially follows both Calvin and Luther on this point – it says the church is responsible for the “gathering and perfecting of saints” (WCF VII, XXV), and that the preaching of the word is one of the two marks of the church (along with the administration of the sacraments).
“And particular Churches, which are members thereof [the universal, visible, church], are more or less pure, according as the doctrine of the gospel is taught and embraced, ordinances administered, and public worship performed more or less purely in them.”
In XV the Confession says ministers are to preach: “Repentance unto life is an evangelical grace, the doctrine whereof is to be preached by every minister of the gospel, as well as that of faith in Christ,” and in XXI it says faithful preaching is part of worship. This preaching is conducted by these “ministers of the gospel”…
I like this quote from Calvin that Justin Taylor shared last week:
“This is what we should in short seek in the whole of Scripture: truly to know Jesus Christ, and the infinite riches that are comprised in him and are offered to us by him from God the Father. If one were to sift thoroughly the Law and the Prophets, he would not find a single word which would not draw and bring us to him. . . . Therefore, rightly does Saint Paul say in another passage that he would know nothing except Jesus Christ, and him crucified.”
Biblical, expository, sermons will point people to Jesus Christ in a way that declares his kingdom has come at the cross. It is preaching, not teaching.
An argument from “authority” – an ethos consideration
I think a case can be made that Paul’s prohibition on women exercising authority in the 1 Timothy 2 passage refers to what is going on in the gathering, and works a bit with the similar prohibition in 1 Corinthians, to establish a principle, rooted in creation and the fall, for what happens when the church meets and the gospel is preached… as an authoritative act.
But even if that case is weak – I wonder if there’s an ethos driven, cross-shaped, argument for women letting men preach, if sermons are preaching, and preaching is an act of persuasion where both pathos and ethos are as relevant as what we say… even if they are more gifted than their male counterparts, which is surely often the case.
A willingness to submit is part of the testimony of the gospel of the cross – as is a willingness to sacrificially not use our gifts for the sake of others… I’d argue Paul is essentially doing this in Corinth when he avoids using his full rhetorical prowess, that he demonstrates in Acts, in order to “know nothing but Christ and him crucified” as he teaches them, knowing what he does about their culture and context – and the sinful desires they have to place value in their abilities or flashy man made idols. I reckon its possible that gender equality is a bit of an idol in our culture – I’m not arguing that it’s a bad thing, idols are good things turned into ultimate things… but I wonder if a refusal to give in to cultural pressure on the gender front, voluntarily, might be a hugely important part of our testimony.
This is where a little bit of trepidation kicks in on my part – because I recognise that I’m a guy telling gifted women they can’t do what they’re gifted to do.
But, I think it’s possible that If we believe that:
- genders are different, but that people are equal in value,
- that the gospel does away with inequalities that people might establish on the basis of differences (Gal 3:28),
- that submission isn’t a statement of inequality, this is where some smart egalitarians like Miroslav Volf depart, but it must be true because if we believe that the Trinity is made up of three parties who are equally God, we need to be able to say that Jesus can submit to the father without calling this equality into question (in academic terms this is a question of whether you can have functional subordination alongside ontological equality, I think the answer has to be yes, if the submission is voluntary, an act of love, offered without coercion),
then we should be able to sacrificially let men do the preaching… even if there are women out there who are better equipped to do the job… because this is part of our testimony, and our act of testifying – to the sacrifice of Jesus, for his church – just as it is in marriage (Ephesians 5).
The act of preaching is an act of authority – but this authority isn’t establishing an inequality – and if it does create such an inequality, then questions have to be asked about whether or not the guy is doing his job – just like in a marriage. Because a cruciform preacher who humbly uses the gifts God has given to build up the church and point people to Jesus through the persuasive preaching of the gospel won’t, if logos, pathos, and ethos stack up, be in a position to create any inequality except the inequality created by considering everybody else better than yourself…
Our value to God isn’t caught up in our ability to serve him – with the gifts that he has given us, nor is our testimony – I would argue our testimony is caught up in our ability to live cross-shaped lives where we imitate Jesus, who despite having all authority and abilities in his grasp, and being equipped to do otherwise gave himself up for us, as an example, here’s Philippians 2:
2 So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, anyparticipation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, 2 complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. 3 Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. 4 Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. 5 Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, 6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.8 And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. 9 Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
Perhaps the way we testify to our unity, our like mindedness, and avoid promoting our gifts, interests, and selves, is to be prepared to not do things we could do, as part of our testimony to Jesus, and to the creator who sent him, and made men and women different.
Communicating why we’re doing this, and valuing, affirming, and giving avenues for gifted women to be effective members of the body and servants of the mission of God is obviously pretty tricky – and one of the great strengths of Dickson’s work is that it’s motivated by exactly this concern.
Spurgeon v Augustine: Egyptian gold, “faithful preaching,” equilateral triangles, and church growth
It seems we’re at a bit of a crossroads in the Australian evangelical church at the moment – once we recognise that the church isn’t really growing – do we throw our lot in with Spurgeon, or with Augustine… For many in our scene – faithful preaching from the pulpit is the ultimate panacea – and if the church isn’t growing then it doesn’t matter, so long as we’re faithful, or perhaps a lack of growth is a sign of some lack of faithfulness…
I reckon the problem is that many of us have conflated “faithful preaching of the gospel” with “expository preaching on a Sunday” – and we’ve pretty much checked our responsibilities in at the door at that point. I’m not going to argue against expository preaching – because I think it is part of faithfully preaching the gospel – but I wonder if we’re missing two-thirds of the persuasion triangle… We seem hesitant, or suspicious, of anything other than unadorned words – be it emotive production values or anything that by itself would be manipulative, or an emphasis on the sort of life and good works we should be producing outside of the pulpit… Part of this has been from a desire to respond to the imbalance of the pentecostal movement on one hand, and the social gospel driven ecumenical movement, which focused solely on “liberating the oppressed” because nobody could agree on what the gospel actually is, on the other. But we’ll get to that when we get to the triangles below…
On the merit of “Egyptian Gold”
I read this stirring Spurgeon quote about preaching that Justin Taylor shared a couple of days ago, especially these bits:
“Are you afraid that preaching the gospel will not win souls? Are you despondent as to success in God’s way? Is this why you pine for clever oratory? Is this why you must have music, and architecture, and flowers and millinery? After all, is it by might and power, and not by the Spirit of God? It is even so in the opinion of many.”
…”I have long worked out before your very eyes the experiment of the unaided attractiveness of the gospel of Jesus. Our service is severely plain. No man ever comes hither to gratify his eye with art, or his ear with music. I have set before you, these many years, nothing but Christ crucified, and the simplicity of the gospel; yet where will you find such a crowd as this gathered together this morning? Where will you find such a multitude as this meeting Sabbath after Sabbath, for five-and-thirty years? I have shown you nothing but the cross, the cross without flowers of oratory, the cross without diamonds of ecclesiastical rank, the cross without the buttress of boastful science. It is abundantly sufficient to attract men first to itself, and afterwards to eternal life!”
…In this house we have proved successfully, these many years, this great truth, that the gospel plainly preached will gain an audience, convert sinners, and build up and sustain a church.
There is no need to go down to Egypt for help. To invite the devil to help Christ is shameful. Please God, we shall see prosperity yet, when the church of God is resolved never to seek it except in God’s own way.
There is much to like in Spurgeon’s quote – the church is God’s agent in the world and its job is to promote, proclaim, declare, whatever verb you like, the wonder of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. That’s our mission, and arguably how we worship.
But there are a couple of things that rankle me in this quote – while I agree that the gospel requires words – because it is the story of God’s word made flesh…
- I still can’t help but think that the reduction of our mission to just words misses the point of both the actions that the written accounts we call gospels contain, and the strong links made between the lives we live, the good we do, and the love we give and our testimony to the world (so to provide a sample of from three different New Testament’s authors – John 13:35, 1 Cor 10:33, 1 Peter 3:8-16). Interestingly, Augustine suggests that the good we do should be to the end of seeing people come to know God…
- I don’t understand the assumption that the Spirit can’t work through architecture, music, flowers, or even millinery – surely the Spirit doing so would be a greater testimony of his power, not lesser. Surely if there is a milliner, or flower arranger, in your congregation they can find some use for their profession as part of the body, to point people to Jesus – these things can’t replace word ministry but word ministry doesn’t need to happen in a cultural vacuum (and the right balance is important). I like Luther’s potentially pseudopigraphic “make a good shoe and sell it for a fair price” quote at this point…
- I can’t figure out why “word ministry” as in the promotion of the Gospel should be limited to the spoken word in a way that rules out using the “gold of the Egyptians” – or without the metaphor – the good parts of the created order that can be applied to gospel ministry and declaration of truth. Music, video, the arts – all of these can be used as “word” ministry – they just lean heavier towards pathos than logos when it comes to the persuasive act.
- This displays a limited doctrine of creation – one I’ve been guilty of in the past when it comes to free range eggs (and the environment) – the way we treat creation and how we use it is also part of our testimony – and this includes the way we think of the arts, and things that people make as part of our stewardship of creation and desire to bring order to it… as an aside: I don’t think the way “creation” and “redemption” are as separate as some people want to suggest (there’s a bit of a debate about this) – I now think redemption, and God’s mission, encompass creation – and how we use it – but “redeeming creation” is not an “end,” it’s a means to support the ultimate end – our mission to redeem people.
In fact – on the second point – what we do with the “gold” we find – or the goodness of creation – is an incredibly strong part of our testimony.
The “receive, redeem, reject” paradigm for culture that has been made popular by Keller, Driscoll, et al is pretty useful – and it works with the plundered gold analogy that Augustine ran with…
If the gold of Egypt is some sort of “truth” – a “created order” thing, being used in a cultural way – perhaps, for the purpose of this post, a persuasive technique, or musical style… it seems to me there are four options for this thing:
1. Leave it in Egypt – assuming the gold itself is inherently bad – because people use it to make idols.
2. Bring it with you, as is, or make it your own idol – like a golden calf, at the foot of Sinai.
3. Bring it with you, because gold is beautiful – recognise its goodness without worshipping it – music whether written to honour God – like Bach, or written as a recognition of the way ordered sounds can work together to create pleasure – captures something of the goodness of creation, as music.
4. Bring it with you, use it to glorify God – build the temple out of it, artistically, with sculptures. People will then both understand a good God made it, and understand that this Good God is Yahweh, who reveals himself in creation, and the redemption of creation.
The first seems to be Spurgeon’s approach when it comes to what happens in church, the fourth seems to be what Augustine advocates… it’s no secret that I think Augustine is right – my masters project is going to be an application of his principle to modern communication theories. Here’s the money quote…
“…all branches of heathen learning have not only false and superstitious fancies and heavy burdens of unnecessary toil, which every one of us, when going out under the leadership of Christ from the fellowship of the heathen, ought to abhor and avoid; but they contain also liberal instruction which is better adapted to the use of the truth, and some most excellent precepts of morality; and some truths in regard even to the worship of the One God are found among them. Now these are, so to speak, their gold and silver, which they did not create themselves, but dug out of the mines of God’s providence which are everywhere scattered abroad, and are perversely and unlawfully prostituting to the worship of devils. These, therefore, the Christian, when he separates himself in spirit from the miserable fellowship of these men, ought to take away from them, and to devote to their proper use in preaching the gospel. Their garments, also —that is, human institutions such as are adapted to that intercourse with men which is indispensable in this life — we must take and turn to a Christian use.”
There really is no “Egyptian Gold” – but rather an Egyptian use of Gold, that may or may not be redeemable. This is demonstrably the case if we believe that every idol results from taking something good that God has made and using it in wrong ways.
On “faithful preaching” and equilateral triangles
But all this got me thinking about “faithful preaching”… and triangles.
If the following linked premises hold true:
- Preaching must involve the faithful articulation of the gospel. I’m with the Bible, the reformers and the Westminster Confession on this – for a church to be a church, it needs to be a gathering of people united by the gospel of the Lord Jesus, who are proclaiming the gospel through preaching and the sacraments.
- Our “preaching of the Gospel” can’t just be words. It has to include words – so Francis of Assisi is still wrong – but those words need to be backed up by action. How the church lives and loves its community is part of the package of faithful gospel preaching… because teaching is more than words.
- Paul’s call to “imitate him, as he imitates Christ” (1 Cor 11:1) is a bit of a unifying principle delivered to a church fractured over preaching styles (the conflict he addresses earlier in the letter) – where imitation was a key part of first century oratorical competition (so, for example, Cicero bemoans poor choices about who and what young orators imitate and pushes for an imitation of substance over style).
- Paul, in both 1-2 Corinthians, champions an approach to preaching that includes the embodiment of the cruciform (cross-shaped) life as the key aspect of this imitation (you’ll have to read my essay on Corinthians to find out why I think this)
- Preaching is an act of persuasion (no doubt governed by the work of the Spirit – I’d argue, like Augustine, that rhetoric works because it recognises a truth about the order God has created in the world, particularly how human minds work).
- Faithful preaching is more than what is said from the pulpit, but is how a preacher, and by extension the church, as a whole, lives as the Body of Christ in their time and place.
There’s something nice and Incarnational about all of this that I’m increasingly appreciating…
But if these points are true – then we can kind of understand “faithful preaching” using an Aristotelian framework, which includes logos, pathos, and ethos – with the type of life the preacher lives (ethos) being a decisive communicative act – serving to either emphasise or undermine the “pathos” or “logos” (ie the content of the preaching)… Which is where the triangles come in…
I’d argue that part of the mix which is limiting the growth of our branch of the church is that we’re so cerebral and logos driven in our approach that we’re relying almost entirely on our ability to persuade solely by reason (I’m not suggesting the Spirit can’t work through this – simply that it might be true that God has created us to respond to pathos and take note of ethos as well – and that we’ve been instructed to employ those aspects as part of our “preaching” more than we might at present in our gatherings and the rest of our life as a church).
It’s hard to make generalisations here… and I’m reflecting a little on my experience in some churches that were actually growing as a result of faithful and engaging Bible teaching – and some attempt to figure out how to engage with the world around us (I don’t think they’re just doing what Spurgeon says is all they need to be doing – they typically also have excellent music, well thought out architecture, and other bits and pieces) – but also on my observations of the churches that I’ve been part of that seek to imitate the logos aspect of those churches without necessarily investing heavily into pathos in a way that treats each place and people group as different…
I’m also reflecting a little on my training, the things that have been emphasised as I grew up in evangelical ministries in Australia including my churches, AFES, other groups I’ve been part of, and my experience at theological college. All of these groups require a certain threshold for “character” when it comes to involvement, but I don’t think ethos – which I’m defining as how to live in the world in a winsome and persuasive way that backs up my words – has ever been the focal point of the training I’ve received.
I’ve been pretty well equipped with the logos stuff… I think, like Spurgeon, we’ve been pretty suspicious of pathos too, because without logos it can be manipulative and lacking in substance (and we’ve seen that a little in the worship wars and the Pentecostal movement), though I think being “winsome and gracious” in how you speak is a mix of pathos and ethos.
I suspect the lack of focus on ethos is because ethos will ultimately look, without the logos, like the social gospel stuff we’re all so keen to avoid.
And now. For the visual learners and thinkers… a triangular approach to this issue.
This is a triangular picture of Aristotle’s approach to rhetoric. It’s an equilateral triangle, and represents all these aspects being held nicely in balance – I suspect this is the model for faithful preaching – because I think Aristotle has rightly recognised the way humans are persuaded of truths.
If this is a truth about the way people, and creation, works – then we should expect to see some fruits of it in terms of growth, assuming that the Holy Spirit works, in some way, consistently with the created order that God declared to be good. Perhaps even by helping us see that order in a way that guides our participation in the world.
This is my caricature (thus it is a little reductionistic) of the emphasis I think exists in our evangelical circles, it’s not without pathos or ethos – but logos is heavily emphasised.
This is my caricature of the emphasis in more charismatic churches… My guess is that these churches are growing faster than those in the evangelical tradition because their triangle is a little closer to being persuasive – while they don’t necessarily place a heavy emphasis on solid teaching, they tend to, as a generalisation, be more interested in social justice type stuff, and much better at appealing to the emotions via their production quality, use of music, style of music, etc… Though their teaching is a little shallower than we might like, and occasionally just plain wrong in terms of what promises are fulfilled now for Christians, and what is still to come – it’s generally recognisable as Christian preaching, in that the Lordship of Christ is foundational.
And this is my caricature of the emphasis in liberal churches where the emphasis is on bringing transformation to the world, and liberating the oppressed – rather than articulating any actual definitive truth. There’s a complete lack of balance here – and depending on the churches in question, the lack of anything remotely like logos translates to a lack of moderating influence on what constitutes faithful gospel shaped pathos or ethos, which is why I think the liberal church is shrinking faster than any other variety.
So, I reckon Spurgeon is right – I think all that is required for the church to grow is faithful, Christ centred, gospel preaching – but I think that encompasses more than the delivery of a logos-heavy presentation from the pulpit, it’s got to involve using the goodness of creation to point people to the creator of that goodness, through the right use of pathos – music, art, and an understanding of how to stir the emotions, but it’s ultimately got to be matched with the type of ethos outside the pulpit that lends weight to our words when we talk about God loving people.