Why is it that some people seem so much happier than others? Why is it that different people, with seemingly identical lives, can have such diverse levels of happiness?

Why do some pastors sing as they sail through the week, and some pastors wail like they've been the recipient of a daily root canal? Why do some mums ‘glow’ as they shop with their three kids in tow, and some growl? Why is it that the Karachi airport crowd seem to smile heaps more than those at Melbourne's Terminal 2? What is the secret to happiness?

The answer is given in the Scriptures, of course. But before I go there, let me tell you why I'm asking the question. It was prompted by a novel I read recently. Numbered Account is a murder mystery written by Japanese, US and Swiss (what a combination!) author Christopher Reicht. Reicht's main character, Nicholas Neumann, in a moment of quiet reflection, throws out a great one-liner: he says, “Happiness is equal to reality divided by expectations”. What he uttered was the mathematical formula for happiness. This sentence was so profound, I had to pause: I stopped to take the time to savour his point and digest it. I even wrote his formula down on a piece of paper in classical mathematical format (i.e. with equal sign, numerator, denominator, horizontal line, etc).

Neumann's formula really is a profound observation. It's a very helpful observation or formula because it assists us in working out what either increases or diminishes our happiness or joy. According to the formula, happiness can decrease for two reasons:

1. Reality gets worse

Firstly, the reality of the lives we live gets worse. Our circumstances take a dive. For example, discovering that your superannuation has halved in value over the past three months, going through a miscarriage, forgetting our wife's birthday ... again (arrgh!)

Now, these three scenarios are really horrible things to experience, and yet what we all know to be true is that some people are more joyful than others in the midst of the same trial. Why is this the case? It is often related to the second cause of unhappiness.

2. Our expectations are unrealistic

Even though our circumstances can take a dive and our happiness can decrease, I want to focus on the second cause of unhappiness—the denominator in the equation—the less obvious and even more insidious cause of unhappiness—that is, unrealistic expectations.

Now I don't know if you're used to fractions, but if you look at the formula above, you will notice that happiness is inversely proportioned to expectations. As expectations increase, happiness decreases. If a person walks around with very high expectations of life, their happiness is tenuous. If a person expects little, their happiness increases.

You see this in life all the time. Let me give you some examples:

• You go to your week 19 ultrasound expecting to find out your baby's gender. You're told it's a boy. You buy the little wooden multicoloured teddy bear letters that spell B-A-R-R-Y. You paint the nursery blue. You're expecting a boy. 21 weeks later, you give birth to a bouncing baby girl! Argh!!! You're still happy that you have a healthy baby, but you are stressed; after all, it's very hard to find a girl's name that is an anagram of B-A-R-R-Y.
• You expect Baz Luhrmann's Australia to be a 9/10, but in reality, it's a 5. Your joy reduces, and you walk away glum.

Now, the above examples aren't big clangers, are they; there are other situations in life that are much more serious. There are some expectations people carry around that, when they are not fulfilled, cause them to sink into very deep lows—deep depressions … even despair.

What I've noticed is that Christians adopt the expectations of the world without first filtering them through the word of God. Christians should never ‘expect’ to have, to be or to do anything that our gracious heavenly Father has not promised to give them, make them or empower them to do.

Let me share with you some common erroneous expectations and how they weigh against God's word. Have you ever heard someone utter sad statements like these?

• “I've just turned 30. I thought I'd be married by now. I feel like I'm missing something.”
  • God never promises a marriage partner.
  • Jesus was not married. He wasn't “missing something”.
  • Have you ever noticed what happens at Christmas time? People sit around the tree and open gifts they've been given. Sometimes Barry looks at Bob's gift and wishes it was his. It is the same with marital status. The singles have been given a gift (1 Cor 7:32-34, 38), but often they look sideways and want marriage. The marrieds have been given a gift—a great gift!—but often they too look sideways and wish they were single again. Godliness with contentment is great gain (1 Tim 6:6).
• “I thought life gets easier as you get older.”
  • You need a lobotomy to believe this one. From a physical point of view, it is absurd. What did Lazarus do post-John 11? He died! What will all of us do? Die. Death usually involves sickness, sickness usually involves pain, and pain is plentiful in old age (cf. Eccl 11:10).
  • From a responsibility point of view, life gets harder too! The older you get, the more responsibility you bear. Responsibility hurts; the older you get, the more people you are responsible for. This means more people competing for your time and attention. This means unhappy people, and this means conflict. Look at the New Testament letters: what do elders/overseers/leaders have to do? They have to preach sound doctrine (Titus 1:9). Woo Hoo! What else do they have to do? Refute those who contradict it (Titus 1:9). Doh!
• “I find it really hard being a Christian. My atheistic family give me more curry than the North Indian Diner.”
  • What did you expect? 2 Timothy 3:12 says “all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be pampered [oops!] persecuted”!
  • Jesus' family thought he was a lunatic too, despite the fact he could do really cool party tricks (Mark 6:4).
• “I thought being a pastor would be really satisfying, but I really miss my old architectural firm.”
  • It is no accident that 1 Timothy begins with ‘fight’ language and ends with ‘fighting words’ (1 Tim 1:18, 6:12).
  • It is no accident that, in 2 Timothy, Paul's apprentice is told to ‘man up’ or ‘be strong’ and to “share in suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus” (2 Tim 2:1, 3).

I won't go any further; I think you can see my point. Perhaps it would be wise to do the following:

1. Take note of when you feel unhappy or down.
2. Write down how you feel.
3. Write down why you feel down.
4. Try to work out whether your mood is a result of an unfulfilled expectations.
5. Run that expectation through the filter of God's word.
6. Finally, do the one thing that will stop you from losing heart (i.e. succumbing to helplessness) or losing your mind (i.e. succumbing to hopelessness)—that is, obey Philippians 4:4-7:

   Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

   We are to rejoice and pray, for “this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you” (1 Thess 5:16-18)

Perhaps you can point us to some other Scriptures that can help us train our expectations.

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Last week we looked at the idea of finding someone and encouraging them to learn from you about how to serve in church. This week we examine some of the things we will need to do if we are going to train people well.

Becoming talent scouts

Why don't we actively and deliberately go out and find the best people to lead the Christian enterprise? This is left to the corporate and sports world with their headhunters and talent scouts. Do we feel a theological ambivalence at this point? It sounds a little ungodly and unspiritual, less than a full-orbed confidence in the kingship of the risen Christ to equip his church (Eph 4).

Pragmatically speaking, there is some great talent in our churches. In their working, community and leisure lives, some of our members are communicators, leaders, sellers, managers, visionaries and entrepreneurs. Why aren't they using their talents in the Christian enterprise? Maybe because no-one spotted, recruited and apprenticed them for a specific ministry role.

Too often we are reactive in recruiting for ministry. We wait or ask for volunteers and create those embarrassing moments when no-one puts their hand up to direct the church camp. It would have been better to think through our membership and personally recruit someone with the right gifts and personality. A member who works as an office manager might be the right camp leader who could be apprenticed to the experienced camp leader for a year.

Part of apprenticing is developing an eye for grooming people for the ministry that suits them.

Who should be apprentices?

The well-known FAT person is a good guide.

• Faithful—those who are proven faithful to Christ and in serving his people. Those who persevere and fulfil their responsibilities.
• Available—apprenticing requires a relationship and ministry responsibilities which take time. There are seasons of life when being an apprentice is more compatible with the demands of life.
• Teachable—an openness and respect for the trainer is fundamental.

To clarify the matter, who should not be apprentices?

• The young convert—especially if they are being trained as a teacher (1 Tim 3:6).
• The enthusiast—those who volunteer for every ministry may not be reliable or suitable.
• The insecure—those who are overly dependent on acceptance and recognition may make poor ministry apprentices. They will jump through all the hoops but for the wrong reasons.

Understanding apprenticing

What are the qualities, attitudes and skills required in the trainer for effective apprenticing?

From the business world, Anne Rolffe-Flett offers nine qualities that make a good mentor (as reported in The Sydney Morning Herald, February 24, 1996):

• The ability to nurture
• Strong interpersonal skills
• Intimate knowledge of the organization
• Leadership skills
• Competence
• Status and held in esteem
• Team spirit
• Tolerance for risk
• Compatibility

Dr. Philip Douglass, Professor of Church Planting, Growth and Renewal at Covenant Theological Seminary in St Louis, Missouri, has surveyed the literature on mentoring in the business, educational and Christian fields and distilled 12 key ‘descriptors’ of the mentor's role (unpublished PhD thesis, 1995):

• Confidant
• Friend
• Teacher
• Coach
• Sponsor
• Role model
• Developer
• Strategist
• Protector
• Leader
• Supervisor
• Nurturer

But how does God's word inform effective apprenticing? And what warnings and correctives would the Bible bring to the apprentice model of training? This will require more space than this article allows, but many strands can be suggested for careful study.

At one level, the patterns of apprenticing in the Bible are instructive: Moses with Joshua, Eli and Samuel, Elijah with Elisha, Jesus with his disciples, Paul and his missionary band. However, we must not interpret too much from these for our ministries. They are not recorded to teach us apprenticing, and each has a unique role in God's plan for the world, which means we are not to view their relationships as an exact model for all times and ministries.

We should consider how God relates to us as Father and Shepherd, and our roles as parents and shepherds in the family and church. We should look at the roles of older men and women in the church, especially from the Pastoral Epistles.

The connections between teaching, pastoring and equipping in the New Testament need to be explored. These are not distinct ministries but to a large degree overlap. The pastor shepherds the flock through teaching the Word, and so equips each one to serve.

Further, we should not draw much distinction between teaching and discipling. In our modern world, teaching has often become a more impersonal and dispassionate process of handing on information. In much of the ancient world, teaching always implied discipling. The learner became a follower of the teacher's philosophy and way of life.

All of these biblical and theological themes need to shape our understanding and practice of apprenticing.

The weaknesses of apprenticing

Charles Van Engen (“Shifting Paradigms in Ministry Formation”, Perspectives, Oct 1994, pp.15-17) suggests at least three weaknesses in the apprenticing paradigm:

• It can be ideological, manipulative, and oppressive if the mentor imposes certain agendas, styles, and thought patterns on the disciple without allowing them the freedom of self-expression and self-discovery.
• This paradigm is limited to the vision, wisdom, skills, and creativity of the mentor. The student cannot learn more than the mentor knows.
• Learning may not be transferable to other contexts.

The practice of apprenticing

Here are some practical tips for effective apprenticing. They are all expressions of sincere and selfless love which is to be the mark of all relationships as Christ's disciples.

• Make Bible study and prayer the heart of apprenticing. They are Christ's disciples, not yours.
• Communicate your confidence in them.
• Be explicit in giving permission to fail. They will fail, and this will often provide great training moments!
• Be available to them, not secluded in your office. Brief, courteous conversations will not train them.
• Be authentic. They learn from your success and failure.
• Expect high performance standards, otherwise your approval means nothing.
• Train them, don't just use them. Apprenticing in the short-term creates more work rather than reducing it. It is not about getting help to achieve your goals.
• Extend their responsibilities beyond what they know they can do. Responsibility is one of the great developers of people.
• Identify the progress they make and report to them for encouragement. This prevents a censorious atmosphere.

Read the full article online.

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Over at Sydney Anglicans, Dominic Steele has kicked off a discussion about the Jesus, All About Life (JAAL) campaign—in particular, focusing on the follow-up material that is sent to enquirers who see the JAAL ads on TV.

I had a squiz at the JAAL follow-up material several months ago. The main component is a very nicely produced 128-page book, consisting of 80 pages of material about Jesus and Christianity, followed by the text of the Gospel of Luke (from the Good News Bible). There is also a tract/leaflet that expands on the TV ads, and a five-week DVD-based follow-up course (in the mould of Alpha and Introducing God).

I was very interested in how The Bible Society had put all this together and interested in what they had decided to include and not include—not least because I was making very similar decisions myself around the same time in producing the Matthias Media gospel giveaway book, The Essential Jesus (so full disclosure: what follows could be seen as critiquing a ‘competitor’).

At the time, I concluded that the JAAL follow-up material was mostly harmless. It didn't say anything wrong or misleading, and it said many helpful and true things about Jesus and the Bible and how to become a Christian. It sought to persuade me that accepting Jesus would be an excellent thing to do, and it would make a huge and very positive difference to my life (Jesus is all about life, after all). And the whole thing had the warm, chatty tone of those new NRMA commercials that tell you to ‘unworry’. It was a very pleasant package, but it was also strangely flat and unconvincing.

I think what I found unnerving was the sense that Jesus was being marketed to me, rather than preached to me. I was being sold the key benefits, and I was reassured about the quality, while at the same time any negative feelings I had about the product were negated or soothed. There was a notable absence of anything that might be perceived as a downer (things like sin, the anger and judgement of God, the need to deny yourself and take up your cross, and so on).

Since then, I have come across an excellent little piece by Jay Lemke in Modern Reformation that helped clarify my feelings of unease. Lemke, who has worked for many years in the PR industry, argues that Christians are making a huge mistake in jumping on board the marketing bandwagon of ‘bait and switch’—where you promise a glowing product, and having got the customer interested, explain the real thing with all its attendant costs and disadvantages. According to Lemke, many desperate American churches are trying to drag people in by making church fun, teaching people how to be better husbands, how to manage their finances and how to be cool and do rockclimbing, and then, once they've got them there, they say, “Oh and by the way, Jesus died for your sins”.

This is hopeless, Lemke argues, not only because it's not the Bible's message, but because it doesn't work in the long run—which is what secular marketers now realize. The modern consumer is very savvy. They've been deceived too many times, and now they see through the spin and hate it. Modern PR and advertising is jumping off the “bait and switch” bandwagon just as (predictably enough) the church is jumping on. Lemke's conclusion is worth quoting:

We tell people they should read the Bible because it will help them in their daily lives. While there is a sense of truth to it, that is like telling someone to read Moby Dick because it will help them with whale spearing.

Whether overtly or subtly, we are telling people they should be Christians because it will make them better in their particular area of interest. The American church is playing a huge game of spiritual bait and switch. At some level we must be ashamed of the basic message of Christianity, and we don't believe that on its own it is powerfully interesting—to men, to women, to boys, and to girls. We are scared to give people the best message of all—because we believe we know better than God ...

The bad news of Christianity must be very bad, and the good news must be even better. If those two tensions are not there, then the Bible is simply boring and dull.

Now, I don't think the JAAL material is a particularly egregious example of this trend, but it's further down that end of the spectrum than I would like. It's just too nice and bland and positive. It tries too hard to present the good news of Jesus without any bad news, but in so doing, the gospel feels less like a momentous announcement that will save me from the judgement of God and more like an ad for lifestyle improvement.

But then, I freely admit, I'm hopelessly biased!

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Here's something simple and biblical.

1. Buy something necessary, but not cheap, on behalf of your church—for example, all the meat for the men's evangelistic barbecue evening, or a large amount of food for a soup kitchen.

2. When you collect it and pay for it, throw away the paperwork—receipts, tax invoices, credit card slips, what have you. The nearest bin outside the shop will do.

3. Don't claim the expenses from the church.

4. Forget about it.

5. If your church treasurer has just the right sort of personality, he will eventually chase you up about it, feeling quite anxious about his need to make sure that his budget is accurate and aware that not all expenditure has been claimed. When he does, look anxious. If pressed, promise to look for the paperwork around your home. Go home and look in your bin. Then repeat step 4.

   In doing so, you will be obeying Matthew 6:3-4. If, however, you have an exceptionally good memory, you will need to go through steps 1-4 many, many times during the church financial year. Even the most relaxed treasurer will eventually notice that all is not well.

6. Last but not least, and as they say in fast food restaurants, enjoy!

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One of my memories of arriving home from school and watching bad TV re-runs in the early 80s involves a show called Project UFO. It was a show supposedly based on US Air Force investigations of paranormal sightings. The voice-over for the opening credits said (and you really should try and say this in the deepest and most significant voice you can muster),

Ezekiel saw the wheel. This is the wheel he said he saw. These are Unidentified Flying Objects that people say they are seeing now. Are they proof that we are being visited by civilizations from other stars? Or just what are they? What you are about to see is part of [a] 20-year search.

I have just started reading through Ezekiel again, and the opening chapter triggered the memory. Ezekiel saw a vision of God. But it's a vision that's hard to get your head around. There are creatures with four-sided heads, and each side is different (one side is human, one is a lion, one an ox and one an eagle). And the creatures have four wings, human hands and feet like a cow. And each of the creatures has a wheel that is full of eyes—a wheel that doesn't turn around. What would someone say if they walked into your church on Sunday and heard someone reading the words of Ezekiel chapter 1?

Yet, perhaps strangely, they are words that are supposed to comfort. Why? Well, the creatures and the wheels form a celestial chariot. And on the chariot rides the Lord himself, which is incredibly significant for Ezekiel and his friends. The chariot of God's glory is symbolic of God's freedom. In chapters 8-11, God mounts his chariot and rides out of the temple in Jerusalem towards the east. Ezekiel is living about 1000 km away in the east by the Chebar river in far-flung Babylon. The word of God to the exiles—to those living as aliens in a strange land—was that you didn't need the temple to have the presence of God; God could go wherever he desires. And part of his desire was to be with the exiles. They were not alone. God was present, even when they were far away.

Now, it's not all comforting, of course. The holy, righteous God whose voice is like the roaring of the waterfall and who dwells in glory was the God who was present with them. And, as Ezekiel would later point out, they needed a new heart and a new Spirit (Ezek 36).

But how comforting is that vision for us? On this side of Jesus' death and resurrection, God's people are the temple in which he dwells. And now, as those living as aliens and strangers in a land that isn't our home, the righteous and holy God has dealt with our sins and made us his children, and is present with his people by his Spirit. He is the same holy and unapproachable God that Ezekiel saw, except he calls us his children and we call him ‘Father’.

Ezekiel didn't see aliens; he saw the holy, righteous creator of heaven and earth. That's why he could live rightly, despite being an alien in this world. I don't know about you, but I want to live as an alien, rather than see an alien. Therefore I don't need visions of UFOs, but instead I need a constant reminder of the face of Christ, reflected in his perfect word so that I will know God and know myself, and live like this isn't home.

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A tree is good.

A tree is beautiful.

A tree is for food.

A tree is a blessing from God for his creation, even in those wild places where no human being has set foot.

A tree is for birds.

A tree is for war—to make tools to beseige a city, but never beyond the strictest limits.

A tree is a blessing from God for people and a sign of peace, giving shade and shelter to those under his protection.

A tree is a gallows for a man cursed by God.

A tree is for houses for kings and people.

A tree is for the praise of God's glory.

There is a tree that brings life.

There is a tree that brings death—a curse from God himself: death to man and death to his world.

There is a tree where a man absorbed and suffered the curse.

There is, on that tree, healing and life.

There is a tree in a garden city where there is no curse—a tree whose fruit gives life and whose leaves bring healing to the nations.

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For those not up with the Australian swimming scene (i.e. about 99.9% of the world's population), the name Nick D'Arcy is probably meaningless. But he's a big name in the local papers. Why? Well, about a year ago now, in the lead-up to the Beijing Olympics, D'Arcy was out partying with friends when he king hit one of his teammates, and left him with fractures to his jaw, eye socket, hard palate, cheek bone and nose. The police charged him, and he pleaded guilty. He was ruled out of the Olympic team, and has spent the last 12 months in the wilderness, so to speak. This week, at the Australian swimming trials, he broke his own national record for the 200m butterfly, and booked a place in the Australian team for the Rome world championships. The only hitch is that the judge will sentence him as he's been convicted of grievous bodily harm.

The reason for raising D'Arcy on this blog? The article in our local newspaper about his victory at the national swimming championships said this:

The controversial swimmer Nick D'Arcy has done all he can do. Now he must patiently wait until next week when a court decides his future.

Last night he took a private step towards redemption by winning the 200 metres butterfly at the Australian titles and, in doing so, earned himself a place on the team for the world championships in Rome in July.

Now is it just me, or is this a new use of the word ‘redemption’? It is certainly one that is becoming more prevalent in our world. Redemption, it seems, has nothing to do with justice or dealing with wrong or paying what we owe. Since when has clocking a national record in the 200m butterfly counted as redemption for leaving a guy with a broken face? Why is a sporting performance seen as a redeeming act?

It's a reminder of how badly our world needs the gospel of Jesus. In the gospel, God deals justly with sin and brings forgiveness. Justice isn't swept under carpet; sins are actually dealt with. Redemption isn't about public popularity, but about being acceptable to the holy God. How badly our world needs the good news of justice done and forgiveness offered! Without it, we live in a very shallow world, whether we're Christian or not.

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This week and next week, our blast from the past focuses on training up people to serve others. Whether you're the minister of the church, a musician or the parish accountant, have you ever thought about finding, encouraging and training others with similar gifts to yours to see how they could use them in the life of your church? In this two-part article, Col Marshall thinks about how you might encourage others to do a form of apprenticeship with you in order to learn how to serve.

Apprenticeships are a familiar part of our community life. It is a well-established model of education and training where the master craftsman passes on his knowledge and skills to the trainee. Before our more formal educational institutions arose, apprenticing was the way craft and knowledge were handed down.

There is a vast and growing literature on apprenticing, which is one of the many terms being applied to Christian training and training for the ministry. Each term has its own background and nuances. Coaching is most commonly used in the sporting world, but there are also coaches in education and the arts. Coaching implies a personal commitment from the coach to develop the player.

Mentoring is another popular training model coming to us from the business and educational world. The mentor has a protégé who is being groomed for a particular role in the organization. The relationship is a mix of teaching, being a role model, developing competencies, friendship, protecting and sponsoring within the organization.

Discipling is the Christian term that has been used for some time to describe the personal training of Christians in life and ministry. Jesus with the Twelve and Paul with his delegates are viewed as the pioneers and models of the discipling of leaders.

Each of these models of training capture the same elements which we will summarize as ‘apprenticing’.

We will use the terms ‘trainer’ and ‘trainee’ to describe apprenticing since ‘master’ and ‘apprentice’ have unhelpful connotations for those who serve one Lord and Master.

Elements of apprenticeship

• Development—the trainer is committed to the development and progress of the trainee
• Instruction—there is a program of formal instruction to build a knowledge base sufficient for the required skills.
• Modelling—the trainee observes the skills and attitudes of the trainer and can ask questions.
• Practice—knowledge and practice are integrated by learning on the job. The trainer can critique the work of his protégé.

Educationally, the apprenticeship model has a great advantage. Hugh Mackay in Why Don't People Listen proposes that one of the laws of human communication is: “... people pay most attention to messages which are relevant to their own circumstances and point of view” (p.114). As the apprentice tries to cut the mortice joint accurately, he is motivated to listen and learn from the cabinet maker. After a young evangelist has been savaged by his listeners for his view on the authority of the Bible, he realizes that attending lectures on inspiration and authority is not simply in order to pass the exam!

Applying apprenticing in the church

Every leader in church life should have an apprentice. This is the central proposition of this article. The logic is simple and compelling: to grow the Christian workforce, the current leaders should recruit and train apprentices. This is not just a maintenance strategy to replace leaders, but a growth strategy to initiate new ministries.

Who should have apprentices? The possibilities are endless: the minister with those preparing for full-time gospel ministry; the songleader with a young gifted leader; the Bible study leader training a potential leader in the group; the church secretary preparing her replacement.

Read the full article online.

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I need your help. I've trained a number of MTS apprentices for a decade and a half. (For more info on the whole MTS apprentice training philosophy, read Passing the Baton by Col Marshall.)

But more recently, I have overseen their training by others. This year, for the first time in a little while, I am acting as someone's direct trainer, and I want to give them a basic reading list. What would you give to read to an apprentice who does not already have an extensive heritage of reading theology? I want something that will stretch them beyond entry-level popular, evangelical theology, but something not so heavy going, it will be off-putting for those who are not natural or easy readers.

I'd like my basic list to comprise no more than eight books. This is arbitrary and basically comprises one book for each of the four school terms over the two years of the apprenticeship. (Obviously apprentices are welcome to read more!)

I also want to cover certain key areas: (Some of them are perennial, but some of them are especially under pressure at present.)

• the doctrine of Scripture
• the doctrine of God
• biblical theology
• the atoning work of Christ
• justification (by faith alone!)
• the sovereignty of God
• the historicity of the Gospels
• guidance
• gender.

Here's my first question: what's missing from this list of topics and is there anything you'd drop? (I expect some books will cover more than one topic!)

One of my difficulties is that even though I am a voracious reader, I've never read or at least completed some of the classic titles that typically end up on these lists. With others, it's been a long time, and so I am relying on memories, but there may well be something better now.

Anyway, here's my first draft of the eight books:

1. On Scripture: Peter Jensen's The Revelation of God. I understand that Packer's Fundamentalism and the Word of God would be a good alternative, but I've never read it.
2. On the doctrine of God: I think I'd plump for Packer's Knowing God, but once again, I'm going on reputation since, despite attempting it twice during my teenage years, I've never completed it. Or would Broughton Knox's The Everlasting God be better (in his Collected Works Volume 1)?
3. On biblical thology: Graeme Goldsworthy's Gospel and Kingdom in The Goldsworthy Trilogy. Or would his According to Plan be better?
4. On the atonement: I'd have to plump for John Stott's The Cross of Christ. It includes justification. However, I have a soft spot for the recent Pierced for our Transgressions and In My Place Condemned He Stood (Packer and Dever). I'm not sure what to recommend if we needed something straight on justification; Piper's The Future of Justification?
5. On the sovereignty of God: Everyone says Packer's Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God for this one, and I'm glad about that because (you guessed it) I've never read it! However, I found RC Sproul's Chosen by God very helpful as a younger Christian. I wonder if Still Sovereign (edited by Schreiner and Ware) might be too tough upfront. Perhaps Carson's How Long, O Lord??
6. On historicity (which I think is important): I'd go for Craig Blomberg's The Historical Reliability of the Gospels. Otherwise, I'd recommend Paul Barnett's excellent work, such as Jesus and the Logic of History.
7. On gender: I think I'd go for Wayne Grudem's Countering the Claims of Evangelical Feminism. I also still think Piper's What's the Difference? Manhood and Womanhood Defined According to the Bible is a brilliant and brief pastoral treatment on this topic.
8. Arguably, guidance could be covered under the first topic, but I think it's so important, I've listed it separately, and would recommend Guidance and the Voice of God by Phillip Jensen and Tony Payne. Although this book is profound, since it is less stretching to read than some of the others on this list, I'd probably get them to follow it up with the companion volume Prayer and the Voice of God.

Okay. That's my first draft. So here's my second question: what would make your list of eight? What—if anything—would you substitute in place of my first recommendation? And if you've picked a different topic area altogether (see question one), what book would you pick to address it?

I know I gave a lot of second and third options, but try to stick to no more than eight. And keep in mind the stretching-beyond entry-level-but-not-too-academic criterion I outlined at the beginning.

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Time magazine has called ‘The New Calvinism’ (whatever that is exactly) the third most influential idea changing the world right now. In response, Mark Driscoll has produced his list of four ways in which the New Calvinism is different to the Old one. For the sake of the discussion, let me repeat them below:

Four Ways ‘New Calvinism’ is So Powerful

1. Old Calvinism was fundamental or liberal and separated from or syncretized with culture. New Calvinism is missional and seeks to create and redeem culture.
2. Old Calvinism fled from the cities. New Calvinism is flooding into cities.
3. Old Calvinism was cessationistic and fearful of the presence and power of the Holy Spirit. New Calvinism is continuationist and joyful in the presence and power of the Holy Spirit.
4. Old Calvinism was fearful and suspicious of other Christians and burned bridges. New Calvinism loves all Christians and builds bridges between them.

So that you have the full picture, Driscoll has also posted entries about what loving all Christians means and doesn't mean, and about the importance of keeping the gospel central. All of this has been followed up by some short bios on some fairly old Calvinists who, I assume, were actually new in their day too (e.g. Athanasius and Augustine).

At one level, it's a pretty shrewd political manoeuvre. The general public's understanding of Calvinism (where they have any understanding) is not fantastic. The Time article captures the vibe:

It will be interesting to see whether Calvin's latest legacy will be classic Protestant backbiting or whether, during these hard times, more Christians searching for security will submit their wills to the austerely demanding God of their country's infancy. [emphasis mine]).

So Driscoll's attempt to distance what he is teaching from public misperceptions is, in one sense, timely and wise. However, I for one am lead to ask whether the instrument he has used is too blunt—in the way that a chainsaw is too blunt to peel tomatoes with.

My main question is what exactly does he mean by the ‘Old’ Calvinism? As far as I can see at the moment, it is anything that ever called itself Calvinist that doesn't fit Driscoll's four points. But I am having trouble understanding why Driscoll has chosen the four points that he has.

Let's take his first point. It seems to me that he has characterized the Old Calvinism in terms of Fundamentalism versus Liberalism because his desire is to get to cultural engagement. That is the pay dirt for Driscoll. But this ignores all sorts of issues. Firstly, the fundamentalists became fundamentalist, at least in part, because of their reaction to Liberalism. And their cultural situation was nothing like ours. In the US at the turn of the century, America was effectively mono-cultural, in as much as most people thought of themselves as Christian, with Christianity being part of the public discourse. So what would you do when you are part of a world where people are calling themselves Christian, but are disobeying the gospel and rejecting the atoning work and Lordship of Christ? At least one good biblical response is to separate from them (e.g. 1 Cor 5:9-13, Rom 16:17, Titus 3:10). It is, at least, possible that separatism, in their context, was precisely the right action. They needed to declare that what others called ‘Christian’ was not Christian at all. I am not claiming that those tendencies haven't left us 100 years later with a real problem that now needs to be addressed; some people have failed to appreciate the fact that the world has now changed and that the culture does not describe itself, even in the US, as Christian anymore. But Driscoll's comment suggests that both groups have failed equally. This is an assessment I find very hard to accept. Cultural engagement is not all that the gospel has to say (and we'll come back to this in a later post).

However, his first point is not where my greatest disappointment lies. My greatest disappointment lies in his third and fourth statements. What exactly does Driscoll mean when he says that cessationists are fearful of the presence and power of the Holy Spirit? I suspect that what he means is that they don't share his understanding of the way the Spirit works in God's world today. And I am almost positive that that understanding involves the Spirit's work in giving words of knowledge and such things. Why do I say this? Well, because every thoughtful cessationist (yes, there are thoughtless cessationists, just like there are thoughtless non-cessasionists) I have ever met or read does believe in the presence and power of the Holy Spirit. They believe in the miracle of God-given new birth that comes about through the power and presence of God's Holy Spirit as he changes people by his word. And they believe in the power of God's Spirit in putting to death the old man and enabling the Chrisitan to live God's new life in righteousness and holiness. So if this isn't the presence and power of the Holy Spirit that Driscoll is talking about, what is he talking about? I can only conclude it involves such issues as words of knowledge, or spiritual intuition that he has spoken about in a number of other places. But if that is so, then on what biblical basis does this become the defining thing about the presence and the power of the Spirit?

It's worth saying here that I am not a cessationist. But I am highly skeptical of much that passes as miraculous in the wider Christian world, and therefore some have accused me of being practically cessationist. I would prefer to call it biblically skeptical. Jesus was profoundly skeptical about belief based on miracles (e.g. John 2:23-25, Matt 12:38-39, Matt 24:24). Furthermore, the book of 1 Corinthians (the darling book of most people I know who promote miracles and signs) is, in fact, profoundly uninterested in the externally miraculous. The whole book is about the fact that the Corinthians' apparent miraculous spirituality is almost entirely devoid of gospel spirituality. If Paul is looking for a sign that the Spirit is at work, it is that the Christians love each other and act with godliness. I believe that God can (and sometimes does) do all sorts of things that are contrary to our normal experience of nature. But I am equally convinced that the overwhelming evidence of the New Testament points to the signs of the work of God's Spirit in the apparently ordinary, but spiritually extra-ordinary, work of bringing people to Christ and transforming their lives in holiness. I think that there are many cessationists who share something very close to my position.

All of this makes me ask the question about point 4. Driscoll says in a later post that your opinion on spiritual gifts is not a primary Christian issue. In fact, according to his analogy, it is not about national boundaries, but state boundaries (i.e. it is a disputable matter on which Christians may disagree). If that is so and, according to point 4, the New Calvinism is about bringing Christians together, then why on earth is being not cessationist one of the defining characteristics of the New Calvinism, as he states so clearly in point 3? I can't help thinking that Driscoll has hopped onto the Time bandwagon without thinking seriously enough about what he is saying. His comments may be politically savvy, but they are not theologically or historically helpful. If the New Calvinism is defined by Driscoll's four points, I'm not sure I'm a New Calvinist, no matter how much I agree with his desire to seek God's glory by making Christ known. Maybe I'm just an ordinary Calvinist?

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