Valiant for Truth

Below is the Text of a sermon preached in St Peters Free Church in the summer of 2011. I offer it here on this Blog to the public for there thoughts and comments. It is an attempt on my part to summaries the different ideas in my head about the whole subject of Church Ministry and all that goes with it. I hope that it will, by Gods grace, help some of you.

What I want to do tonight is to take a look at 2 Timothy as a whole and do a kind of summary of the whole message of 2 Timothy. But I don’t want to leave it at that either, for I want to use this sermon to try and help us think through a lot of the implications of the Pastoral Epistles for the way we actually function as a Church.

All of us have grown up in various traditions both old and new. And no matter how hard you try you are always influenced by those structures and traditions that you grow up with. That is by no means a bad thing. But it becomes a bad thing when our traditions and own personal likes and dislikes become so sacred that we aren’t prepared to reform them.

Having preached through 2 Timothy and mentoring people using 2 timothy I have thought a lot about its message and its applications. Indeed over the past 5 years I have read lots of books on how we “do” church. The best ones being the trellis and the vine and total church.

The reason I mention it here is that a lot of the ideas that these books come up with are in fact simply biblical principles fleshed out into practical ideas. A lot of what I want to say tonight will come from these books. Indeed it might be better that you all just read them!

But I want us to think through these things because they are very important for the life and health of our congregation. And it’s very important that all of us not just the elders think through these things.

Now 2 Timothy, as I have said before, could be in some ways described as a hand book for ministry in the last days. One of the very remarkable things about it is the fact that it is so very general. All that Paul says could in many ways be said to any of the churches or leaders in the first century.

It’s not that it wasn’t specific to Timothy and Ephesus it’s just that Paul's method of ministry was so wonderfully gospel centred and focused that it is applicable in every age. The priorities that we have been looking at can be taken with little difficultly and applied in our own situation.

But it takes some thought as to how they actually might work themselves out. To go from theology to actual ministry. So that’s what I want us to think about. To consider again a lot of the assumptions that we have, some deliberate and others that we unconsciously hold about Church.

And this will be by no means an exhaustive study of these things. This is just something to try and get us to think through these things. So I have three general things that I want to look at.

1) Our ministry must have a real gospel vision

2) Our ministry must be about People

3) Our ministry will cost us

Now these are very general headings and I hope to speak about lots of things under each area some of which can’t really be limited to one area alone. A lot of these things actually would come under all 3 headings. But for the sake of helping us think through this I will try and hold them under the 3 headings.

All ministry must have a gospel vision. Again and again in this letter we find Paul calling Timothy to faithfulness to the message that he preached. The definitive article regarding the apostolic Gospel. A specific body of knowledge that when believed and followed results in eternal life and godliness in the present. Think of chapter 1 verse 13 and 14.

And it’s this message that occupies so much of Paul's thinking. He calls Timothy to guard it so that it will be able to be passed on unchanged or unspoiled to the next generation. It’s this gospel that Paul sees as the means to make disciples or train people in righteousness. (Chapter 3:17)

As it is heard, proclaimed and obeyed it has an impact on the people in the church and we can say those who are outside the church as well. The vision that Paul weaves into this letter is one of growth of the gospel. His own ministry was about the spreading of the gospel to the gentiles.

Now for Timothy as he passes on the baton to him that same principle applies; that the gospels influence must grow.

You can see it when he says in chapter 2 that he endures everything for the sake of the elect that they might obtain the salvation that is in Christ. And just in the verses previous he is speaking of the gospel not being chained even when he is chained in prison.

Paul sees the proclamation of the gospel as the primary responsibility of the church and from that we see the transforming of the church and an impact on society as we are prepared for good works. The growth of the gospel is the primary mission of the church.

As we preach the gospel which Paul would describe to the Romans as the “power of God for Salvation” it makes an impact on firstly the people of God and then also the wider society.

However think about it a little more. If Church is more than just a Sunday service what else is it? and how much time do we spend doing church when we are not at a service? You see it’s perfectly possible for us to say church is more than a service but by our actions still live like running the services on Sunday is what church is.

Now don’t get me wrong services will always be an important part of what we do. People gathering together on the lords day is very important. And its right we put a lot of effort into getting the services right. But the question I want us to think about is simply this. Are we putting all our efforts and energies into Sunday services and leaving none for anything else; for being the church on Monday to Saturday?

Let me give you a quote from Steve Timmis and Tim Cesters new Book everyday church which I think highlights something we really need to take on board:

One of the common assumptions when people fail to turn up to church is that we need to improve the experience of church gatherings, the “product”. We need better music, more relevant sermons, multimedia presentations, engaging dramas. Or we need to relocate to pubs, cafes, art centres. We need cool venues with cool people and cool music. The problem with this approach is the assumption that people will come to church if the product is better. But remember that 70% of the UK population have no intention of attending a church service, and these figures are even higher among young people….Sunday morning in church is the one place where evangelism cannot take place in our generation because the lost are not there - not until we go out to connect with them where they are, where they feel comfortable, on their territory. We need to do church and mission in the context of everyday life. We must think of church as a community of people who share life, ordinary life.

You see when all our efforts are simply placed in the one basket of church services we are severely limited in the impact we are having on the surrounding society at large. People no longer come to church or have any real intention to do so. Now there will always be a few exceptions to the rule.

However it remains the case if we expect people to come to our services to hear the gospel then they may never hear it, for they are not coming.

So if that is the case then we can’t expect people to come in through our doors we must “do Church” where the people are. That doesn’t mean as Chester and Timmis point out running a service in a pub. It means the church that is the people of God must bring the gospel outside the buildings.

Another thing I think it would be helpful for us to consider, and this may or may not be an issue for some people. But there has been a tendency to think that gospel ministry or gospel work is all about evangelism. Now it is, don’t get me wrong. But I think Paul’s perspective on gospel work in the letter and indeed in the New Testament is a lot more to do with discipleship.

Now I’m not trying to separate evangelism and discipleship at all. They are in many ways connected. But there is a certain school of thought that I grew up with that suggests all we need to be doing is get people converted and into the church and that's it.

But the idea of discipleship comes at the issue from a different angle. Discipleship is from contact with the gospel through conversion right through your whole life to receiving the crown of Righteousness at the last judgement. Making disciples is a very long term view of gospel ministry,

It sees Gospel ministry taking a person from point A in their life right through the whole of life. That’s the perspective of Paul when to tells Timothy to Preach the word. That word that is able to make Timothy and his hearers wise for salvation.

That word that is able to teach, equip, correct and rebuke, even train in righteousness the people in the church. It’s much more than evangelism although that will be part of it. It’s the gospel for all of life. Its training people to not only know the gospel and make a decision for Christ. But to actively live out the gospel in their lives and bring the message of God’s grace to bear on their relationships within the church and outside the church family.

And when you have this perspective then it’s not really about doing Church, as an event or thing you go to. It’s much more about being the church in an area. Being the church amongst a society and allowing that society to see the good works that the ministry of the word amongst us produces (3:17)

So if that then is the case what becomes the purpose of the Church Gathering? I ask that as an open question. For I think that the answer has a lot more to do with equipping the saints for the work of ministry to quote Paul from Ephesians 4 than anything else.

It also I think means that church must be much more than simply the gathered congregation hearing a sermon. I believe that is an integral part in deed the catalyst for everything else that church is. But we must remember that the word is sufficient for equipping the saints not the sermon.

Good expositional sermons are necessary, very necessary, but they are not sufficient. I think we must have the word central in every part of the church; our people must be getting the word everyday not just twice on a Sunday. Again please don’t mishear what I am saying here.

The gathering will always be important and necessary for us. But I think we must move away from a model which gives so much weight to the Sunday service that there is not room or energy for anything else. I think what we need to move toward is to see the church more as the place where we are equipped and trained in righteousness.

A place where the word is central to our lives and relationships so that we are able to live upright and godly lives. Not only in the church services, but as the church in our daily lives amongst the pagans in our workplaces, shops and streets.

Which brings us very nicely along to the second thing I think we need to look at. And this for me anyway was the real paradigm shift. Our Gospel ministry must be about people. Now that might sound stupidly obvious but again think about it more carefully.

Very often we consider church and discipleship in terms of events or programs we run. We set a time, get a program sorted and invite people along. But in a culture which is very time poor is this really the best way forward?

For if our church activities consist only of programs and meeting then it puts a lot of pressure on our already very busy time schedule. It’s the most common complaint I hear from people; "We don’t have the time to do these things".

Part of the problem again is that we think of church in terms of meetings and events. But what if we thought of church more in terms of relationships with other people.

You see if you take what Paul says to Timothy in Chapter 2:2 his method of discipleship was more about identifying people and training them, or discipling might be better. Now the specific application of the verse might be to leaders in particular. But I don’t think it’s wrong for us to take the principle and apply it to other relationships within the church as well.

To think of discipleship as something that happens not at meetings alone but through teaching in a relationship with others. And that to my mind anyway fits very much with the great commission. Discipleship is done within the context of community.

Paul did not plant churches on his own, he needed people. And he invested in people in order to carry on the work. It’s the people who are the key to gospel growth. As Paul trained Timothy he was not only passing on a message but much more than that, an entire method that timothy was to follow. Remember what he said in chapter 3.

For here is one of the big things we need to get. A lot of gospel work is caught and not taught. That is people need to be able to see how the gospel affects everyday life before they really get it. Before it becomes real to them.

Very often the church has been good at getting the message right, but very poor at actually being able to display that message in the relationships we have. One of the very common objections to Christianity you find is that the church is a bunch of hypocrites.

Now that may or may not be true, but it should cause us, it certainly does for me, to question ourselves and ask just how seriously we are actually living out our faith before the watching world.

The church’s gospel proclamation must be like TV and not just radio. It must be both audible in what we preach and also visual in that people can see it. And that makes our relationships so vital.

But it also means I think that we need to move away from a place where we are so heavily dependant on programs and meeting and towards a place where we are prioritising relationships with other people. There are I think two parts to this. Relationships we have within the context of the community of the church. And those we have outside the church.

So in the church itself what would it look like to make our ministry more about people? Well I think a first step is to see that God gives gifts to his church. Those gifts are for the benefit of the whole church. And those gift are not programs or meetings, they are gifts given to people.

So we need to look firstly at the gifts that people have and try and build our ministry around those gifts rather than trying to get people to fit into our existing structures.

For example. Say we as a church wanted to start and do some youth work amongst teenagers or something. What would our first step be? To make a program or set up a meeting?

Or to identify someone with gifts to communicate to teenagers? And having identified that person give them the scope to go and build a ministry around their gifts. We give them support and help as needed but we allow them to use the gifts they have to do gospel work.

Building gospel ministry around people rather than simply trying to fit people into our existing structures would be a good start.

But I think we can go further and say that gospel growth and discipleship if they happen best in the context of relationships then we should move away from formal meetings toward informal one to one or equivalent methods.

Now I’m totally sold on the 1-2-1 idea. I have seen it work very well and I have watched that approach make real differences in the lives of young men. More discipleship and gospel growth has happened through this type of ministry than all the meeting I have ever conducted.

And the beauty of such methods is that it uses both teaching and relationship to help people grow in the gospel. In these types of meetings growth happens as the gospel is clearly presented. People meet together to study the bible. To talk about how the gospel affect their lives.

But much more happens than that for this teaching happens in a modelling relationship. That is the mentee actually sees the life of the mentor and gets to see how they put the gospel into practice in the relationships they have. It means not just hearing the gospel but seeing it lived. And it’s a very powerful and effective ministry.

It’s not a program but based on a relationship between people. Now again don’t mishear me here. I’m not saying that we don’t need programs and meetings. We always will need those. We will always need structures that’s common sense.

But I believe more growth will be seen in people through relationships then just through meetings and programs. That’s why things like mentoring for teenagers and students are so very important.

But it takes a lot of effort and energy. It means you have to put your life on display not so that people can see how pious you are, but so that people can see the gospel at work and see how to apply it to their own lives.

And I think we need to take this approach a stage further and not only look at discipleship through relationships but also look at training our people in this way as well.

Usually the way we train our people has been through theological colleges, but there are a number of problems with this that I think I spoke about briefly before. Firstly theological colleges train people in theology. Not necessarily in ministry.

Now there shouldn’t be a difference between the two. But in my experience there very often is. Theological colleges give the theory without the practice.

Again don’t mishear me. Theological colleges are vital. But one of the ways in which we can multiply the growth of the gospel in our local context is to train more workers.

Theological colleges are very expensive that’s the other problem with them.

So a much more local approach is required. To take the exact model that Paul gave to Timothy we need to identify reliable men and we could include women as well. And train them to pass on the gospel to others. In this way we multiply the number of people discipling others. But these people need to be trained. Again I would refer you to the trellis and the vine book if you want to know more about this whole idea. I don’t have the time to go into it here in detail.

But again that training needs to be done locally within the church and again is best done through mentoring relationships. Identifying people with particular gifts of teaching and with godly character who will be able to be trained and then released to get on with discipling others.

If I had time I would show you that this approach is simply the great commission implemented in the local context. The multiplication of discipling relationships within the church.

But what about ministry to those outside the church. How do we reach the lost pagans outside our church buildings if they aren’t going to come into them to hear the gospel? Well I think the answer in large part lies again in thinking more in terms of discipling people than about running courses or programs in the church.

Not that they won’t have their place, think of CE for example. But if we were to take a survey of all the Christians here tonight and ask them what were the main factors in them becoming Christians how many of us would say that it was through the influence of a Christian friend?

I would hazard a guess the majority of us would say that. You see if we are really serious about reaching people then again the only way to connect with those outside is for the people in the church to have meaningful relationships with those outside the church.

How can we make the greatest impact on our society? What if every single person in St Peters was equipped and confident enough to share the gospel with the people they meet in their everyday daily routines? How much gospel growth would we see?

And taking that long term discipleship view and working on those relationships we have with people outside the church would it make a difference? Would it impact the culture? Would it allow people to hear and see the gospel being lived out before their eyes? I think it certainly would.

But here’s the big thing if we make Church more about Meetings and programs and evangelistic courses then we greatly reduce the time any of us have to use and work on our relationships with those outside the church seeking to brings them to know Christ.

Now let me say at this stage say that I’m putting these things out there so that we can think about them. In true emergent style I want us to have a conversation. These things may or may not be right for us in Dundee. I think they are biblical and could work very well.

But no doubt others will not be as sure and might be able to point out weaknesses and flaws in it all. I don’t say these things as the definite plan for us to use but only as a way to get us thinking seriously about how we put the lessons of the pastorals and the New Testament into practice.

For I’m coming increasingly to the conclusion that the current model that we have in this congregation is getting more and more unsustainable as we have grown over the last number of years. There is more and more work needing to be done.

Yet that has not being matched with more people entering the harvest field. I don’t think we can continue as we are. That’s why I think we need to think through these things.

And in many ways this has been a totally inadequate summary and there is so much more than I could talk about. But I hope it’s a start for us.

But let me very briefly speak about the last thing I think we need to consider. And it’s a very clear theme in 2 Timothy. Ministry is costly. It will cost us a lot.

And that’s not even in terms of money that I mean it. The one thing we don’t have in this society is time to do anything. The big cost to us will be giving up other things to be involved in the ministry of the church. Building relationships with others in the church and outside it.

That won’t happen overnight. And it will mean a rethink of all our priorities as husband and wives, as senior citizens and office workers etc. The easy way out for us would be hire more staff to do the work for us. That’s not a luxury we have at the moment.

So that means sacrifices in terms of time and effort on all our parts to be the church in our daily lives. To work on the relationships with gospel intentionality to coin the phrase from Timmis and Chester.

I don’t know how many of you remember L****? I was talking to him when I was writing this. And you know what he told me...that he had benefited so much from meeting up to study the bible with me. I don’t say that so as to blow my own trumpet.

I say that to highlight the benefits of taking a long term view and working on the relationships we have. I don’t know how many hours I spent with L**** talking and discussing issues. I don’t know how many hours David spent with him and Andy before that in the CU.

But you know he’s doing really well. He’s even studying the bible over the Internet with his Mum. It was worth all the effort. And wouldn’t it be great if we could help more people like L**** in Dundee.

Like we saw this morning in 2 Timothy Paul’s vision and goal where always for the gospel. To make sure it was proclaimed and lives in the church and to the ends of the earth. That remains the same for us here in this city at this time. This is where we have been called to serve.

This is the place God has put us. And it is so important that we think through how we apply the lessons and priorities that Paul has laid out in the New Testament for us. We are Christs ambassadors in this City along with all the other Christians.

It will be us that God uses to bring the gospel to this city, so I hope and pray we will take these things seriously. And may God by his grace direct and equip us for the task.