Church as we know it can sometimes be a bit weird and jarring. A few weeks ago at church, we heard an encouraging sermon on the second commandment (Exod 20:4-6). We heard that God cannot and must not be represented by or worshipped through images because images can only ever distort and misrepresent God. Yet the sermon was preached in a 150-year-old Cathedral building containing a plethora of accumulated religious imagery. As we listened to the sermon with our ears, our eyes were easily drawn towards a wooden statue of St Michael the archangel holding a gilded Bible, numerous large stained-glass windows depicting Jesus, a banner sewn with Mary and the baby Jesus, various crosses, and other striking images. Understandably, a few questions were raised after the sermon about the seeming disparity between what was heard and what was seen by the congregation.

The second commandment does not seem to be a blanket ban on the use of any concrete image in the spiritual life of God's people. Just five chapters after he utters the second commandment, God himself commands that golden statues of angels be made to cover the ark (Exod 25:18-22). A little later, he commands that a fiery serpent be made so that people who were afflicted with a plague of snakes could look at it and live (Num 21:8-9). In the New Testament, water baptism and, perhaps, the Lord's Supper also appear to involve a kind of imagery.

So what do we make of the second commandment? I offer here four principles about how we can honour the intention of the second commandment when it comes to our use (or abandonment) of images in Christian gatherings, and in Christian worship and obedience more generally. These aren't intended to be comprehensive, but they may serve as a starting point for discussion.

The first principle is that God's word must always be given pride of place in our worship, no matter where and when. God is known through what he says, not through any pictures we may make of him (e.g. Deut 4:9-19). It follows that, as we speak and obey his word, God will make himself known to us in his glory and splendour. The clear proclamation of God's word, by itself, will go a long way towards relativizing the importance of images, and will remove many of the problems that we might otherwise encounter when God's word is not spoken clearly. Who, having tasted the pure delight of knowing God truly through his word, would desire to go back to a bland and futile attempt to apprehend his glory through mere images?

The second principle in evaluating the use of images in our Christian lives is to consider their purpose. Why is an image being used? The cherubim in Exodus 25:18-22, for example, seem to have been used to show that God's glory in the tabernacle and ark was essentially hidden. They actually discourage, rather than encourage, worship of God through created things. In our own lives, we should be discerning about the purpose of any particular image in the Christian life. For example, if we use children's Bibles or drawings for the illiterate that depict Jesus, why are we doing it? Are the images there in order to represent God for the purpose of worshipping him through the image? This would be wrong. Or are the images there to illustrate the reality that Jesus was a human (because he is drawn just like the other human beings in the story)? Or is it just a quick illustration to guide the readers towards focusing on God's word—such as the images from Two Ways to Live that I often use to explain the gospel? Then it could be all right. One way to determine what the purpose of something is to ask what would be lost if we took it away. The more upset somebody is at the idea that a picture could be removed, the more likely it is that the image is being used for an idolatrous purpose.

The third principle is related to the second: it concerns the context of the image. The bronze snake that God commanded Moses to make, for example, later had to be destroyed because it had become an idol to which the people of Israel were making offerings (2 Kgs 18:4). An image that was necessary in one context became unacceptable in another. The same is true today: we may accept the argument, for example, that in medieval times, stained-glass windows were good and right because they used a common pictorial symbolic language to depict events in the life of Jesus. But even if we do accept this argument, all we have gained is interesting knowledge about medieval history. The question that matters is what do the stained-glass windows achieve in our context? Are they merely there for educational purposes? Or are people using them as a way of gaining access to God somehow? Has there been that (some say, inevitable) ‘leakage’ where a simple image ends up actually representing God to the hearts and minds of God's people?

The final principle follows from all the above. It is the principle of love. Those who are Christians—who are gripped by the gospel of God's love to us in Jesus' death—will want to do everything for the sake of others, not just ourselves. This applies to what we do with images. We could use Romans 14, for example, to argue that those who tend towards an auditory learning style (that's you, if you like to learn through listening and discussing) should take into account people like me who learn a lot better with diagrams and pictures. However, 1 Corinthians 8-10 pushes us towards another important application of the principle of love in Christian fellowship. There, we learn that love is expressed when we curtail our own freedoms in order to help a Christian brother or sister by removing any temptations towards idolatry. So from 1 Corinthians 8-10, the onus of love may well be on us visual learners to strip away and remove images from our lives and fellowship. Even though the images may hold no temptation for us (we're merely using them for an entirely innocent purpose), we may decide to get rid of them for the sake of our brother who struggles against the tendency to turn those images into idolatrous worship of God.

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I admit it, the title is a serious temptation: I feel an overwhelming desire to make bad jokes about posteriors (perhaps it's the result of me spending too much time with my seven-year-old son). But I do want to talk for a moment about the dangers of the killer but. What exactly do I mean? I mean the but that qualifies almost every significant theological statement we ever make. Let me give you some examples:

• Christians believe in the mercy of God, BUT you've got to remember that the mercy isn't a license.
• God is the sovereign Lord of all, BUT of course that doesn't mean you aren't responsible.
• Believing in Jesus means true freedom, BUT of course you have to understand exactly what freedom means.

My issue isn't with any of the above qualifications in particular, but rather with the constant desire to cover all our theological bases. Are we so worried about what people might do with the grace of God that we constantly qualify it? Is there a place for just sticking the mercy of God out there without ‘butting’ it to death? When was the last time you just luxuriated in the unadorned love of Christ without qualifying it in some way? Is your life defined by the killer but?

Let me remind you of the word of God:

For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die—but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:6-8)

Here is the right kind of ‘but’—a but that doesn't qualify truth out of existence, but a but that displays all of the riches of the glory and goodness of God towards his people. Even we manage to love the people who matter most to us up to a point, but there is no guarantee that we would lay our lives on the line for them. God loved the people who hated him at the cost of his own Son. It's just a truth to swim in, isn't it? God knew exactly what we were like. He knew our hearts—our selfishness, our pride, our lust, our backbiting, our greed, our idolatry, our jealousy, our impatience, our anger, our immorality, our hatred, our meanness, our spite, our thoughts—and most of all, he knew that we were his enemies. And, knowing exactly who we were, he chose to send Jesus. He did not wait for us to repent. He didn't even wait for us to be mildly less ill-disposed. He chose to send Jesus for our sake. Jesus died for us while were still sinners.

What's the best thing about this passage? It's that there is no but. Paul isn't saying “God loves you, but ...”; he says simply, “God loves you”. Any but would be an injustice, a misunderstanding and a misrepresentation of God.

It seems to me that God's love is a ‘but’ killer! Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

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One of the pitfalls most non-profit organizations fall into at one stage or another is endless discussion about vision and mission statements. Because these organizations exist for reasons other than to make money, it's very easy for non-profits to get bogged down in navel-gazing about why they exist, and whether the purposes they were originally set up for are still relevant, and so on.

We've tried to avoid too much of this sort of thing at Matthias Media over the years, but as we approach the end of our 21st year in existence, we thought it was time for a bit of re-focusing and clarification of our goals as an organization.

In one sense, most people who know Matthias Media know what we're on about. We stand for a Reformed evangelical theology, and we try to serve the growth of Christ's gospel in the world by producing high quality ministry resources based on that theology.

But as we've been talking around the table over the past couple of months, we've realized that it would be helpful to sharpen what's distinctive about us and our particular mission. Among all the different organizations in the world that are producing books and Christian resources, what are we trying to do that's distinctive? What's our particular contribution?

Here's where you come in. We thought it would be really useful to share where we're up to in re-crafting our mission statement, and ask our Sola Panel readers to give us their thoughts. Here's the current draft of the new Matthias Media mission statement that we've been working on:

To serve the growth of Christ's gospel throughout the world by persuading and training every Christian to be a committed, godly fellow worker in prayerfully speaking the Bible's truth.

As usual, with these sorts of statements, we have pored over every word and chosen each one very carefully. We want to communicate what people already know—that we stand for the Bible's truth and that we produce resources for people to use in ministry (which consists of speaking that truth prayerfully). But the sharper edge of the statement really lies in its emphasis on teaching and equipping every Christian to be engaged in this as a fellow worker—that is, to persuade every Christian to be involved in ministry to others, and to equip and train them with tools and resources to do that work. That's always how we've seen ourselves, but I'm not sure we've always communicated it as clearly as we might have.

So what do you think? How does that strike you? What does it communicate to you? Is the emphasis right? Does this fit with who you think Matthias Media is or should be?

Fire away. Your thoughts and reactions will really help us.

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Here is the next one in our line of Saturday blasts from the past. If you're new to us, let me remind you that we are reading through a series of old articles from The Briefing. They were articles about being a ‘factotum’ (i.e. a servant)—practical articles about living the Christian life and serving others with the message about Jesus. This week and next week, we will be looking at the topic of consumer friendly evangelism.

A few weeks ago, I was evangelized in my front garden. There I was on a balmy Sunday evening quietly cultivating a few weeds when it was done to me. I was presented with the gospel of environmental salvation. It was very appropriate really, being Sunday and my hands creating new life in mother earth. But I hated it. I always recoil from evangelists, even this very pleasant Greenie. The only way I could cope was to tell him I too was an evangelist and to show off the battle scars from our common despised vocation.

Christians have a communication problem. We want to tell people of the gracious loving Father who has given up his Son to make them his children, but evangelists are perceived as narrow-minded, bigoted, moralistic ratbags who infringe upon other's civil rights. The stereotype puts us on the back foot from the outset. We have a poor public image.

But hold on, doesn't the gospel lead to poor PR? After all, the gospel speaks about standing under the judgement of God. Col Marshall continues:

Good PR may work in telling people to buy a new toothpaste, but we are telling people that their lives are going the wrong way—to hell. It's never going to be popular. The gospel will always divide and create conflict.

Jesus was perfect in human relationships and look where he ended up. And Paul wasn't exactly a model of healthy public relations. We see them contending for the true God, tearing down idols and falsehood and so becoming an intolerable threat to the religious power brokers of their day.

However, it is a distortion to make their battles for the faith the model for our evangelism. Both Jesus and Paul related very differently to the false shepherds and the lost sheep. Lost sheep are to be sought out, nurtured and protected. This is the atmosphere of evangelism, reflecting the tenderness of the Shepherd calling and comforting his lost sheep.

Hostility and rejection will always be a part of our PR, but consider these two questions:

1. What is the focus of the hostility: God's gracious invitation or a caricature of the gospel?
2. Are we obscuring the message of God's Fatherly love by our speech, behaviour or corporate activity?

Fishing, not big game hunting

Jesus called his disciples to be fishers of men, not game hunters. And in his day, he would have had in mind something a bit smaller than a two metre marlin. I'm sure Jesus did not intend the implications I am drawing (especially since the disciples were professional fisherman using nets). For Jesus, the image of fishing expressed God's work of salvation and judgement. However, fishing with a line and hook captures an image for Consumer Friendly Evangelism. Fishing requires a certain subtlety and finesse. We could blast the river with a few kilos of nitro, but that's not exactly fishing.

Evangelism can be reduced to this sort of blasting, firing facts and arguments at a rapid rate, exploding the dynamite in the first few seconds. We get excited and nervous when the opportunity for the gospel arises, and we go for it.

The essence of fishing is getting a slippery customer onto a hook, and the main trick is to use the right bait. How can we get people hooked by the gospel—listening, curious, letting down their guard, nibbling at the line? How can we attract people so they want to talk with us about Christ?

So let's finish with a question to ponder: “What bait will draw people to Christ?” We'll think more about this next week.

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I am struggling to find reasons to avoid reading a few things, including a small pile next to the bed, and a larger pile shoved inside a cupboard next to the bed, and a pile on the desk at work.

Everyone knows that Christians are readers, or God would not have given us a Bible. But “Of making many books there is no end, and much study wearies the body” (Eccl 12:12). And because life is full, and because we are busy, we know exactly what this means.

So I turned to a friend to ask what books he thought I should read next, and do you know what? He gave the best advice of all.

He said that it looked to him like I was extremely busy, and that I should get on with reading Romans 12-16 (which is what I wanted to do anyway, because I was working on it), and forget all my fairly significant and numerous piles of books until another day.

So that is what I'm doing, and discovering once again that the best book to read is the Bible. Follow my example, stop reading and start reading!

That said, I can't resist sharing this gem from page 56 of Bryson Smith's book Faith. Why page 56? I've been playing a game in which you have to share the fifth sentence of the 56th page of the book that happens to be sitting closest to you when someone asks, and I realized that the last time I played this game, I was sitting in semi-dark and missed Bryson's book which was lying on the floor at my feet. So here, by way of penance, are the fourth and fifth sentences from page 56 of Bryson's book, and mighty fine ones they are too:

When we believe in the gospel of Jesus Christ, we are granted an eternal inheritance which is kept in heaven for us. Furthermore, while we wait for the time when we will receive it in full, we are granted God's own Spirit as our deposit and guarantee.

Think about that while you avoid reading other books.

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I spent two days last week at a writing conference. It was a great couple of days, and I learned many things about the art of writing. (Like, apparently you need to know something about grammar! Who would have thought? [If you listen carefully, you can hear me exhaling loudly and rolling my eyes. Actually, the person leading the sessions who raised the issue was exactly right to do so. I think I am just frustrated that we have come to the point where that point needs to be made.]) All joking and then serious reflection aside, I learned heaps (like the fact that ‘learnt’ is an archaic form that is passing out of use, and I should always use ‘learned’). But I was also reminded of the rather strange relationship between words and meaning in the (post?)modern world.

One of the great gifts of that irresistibly indefinable thing called postmodernity is the insistence that nobody is a neutral observer. Whether you are a scientist watching an experiment or a football fan watching the game (and you can take ‘football’ to mean whatever you like, depending on your culture of origin), the way that you make sense of what you see will be affected by your bias. It's a crucial observation for helping us to see through the false objectivity of many strands of human knowledge.

But it's not really a new observation. Jesus said something very similar when he was talking to the Pharisees:

Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and I am here. I came not of my own accord, but he sent me. Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot bear to hear my word. You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and has nothing to do with the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies. But because I tell the truth, you do not believe me.” (John 8:42-45).

Our reception of the truth is never neutral: we believe what we believe because it suits us, our family, our cultural subgroup or ... well, you get the picture. Sin works deep in the hearts of every person so that no-one is neutral. Sin is the ultimate bias.

But of course, without God's eyes to see the world, what do you do with the observation that there is no unbiased place from which to find truth? There are many responses to that question, but my experience last week reminded me of a common literary response. In the absence of any neutral position for evaluating truth, I am free to become the one who decides on truth. So when I read, I read not necessarily to find what the author meant to say; I read the text to find out what it does to me and how I respond to it. So in a text with lots of ideas side by side, especially where some ideas are comfortable and some uncomfortable, I am free to take the comfortable ideas and relate them to my own personal situation without having to grapple with their place in the argument of the original writer. According to this position, there is ‘truth’, but it is horribly difficult to attain. And because of the relationship between truth claims and the exercise of power, the only way to guarantee that we will get something like the truth while avoiding those who will abuse truth for the sake of their own thirst for power is to make sure that every dissonant voice is heard. It seems that as long as every competing voice is heard equally and I am free to choose which voices to listen to, then I will arrive at the truth.

I have been trying to think of a name for this position. For the moment, the best I can come up with is ‘the grab bag of truth’. Thinking about the grab bag of truth reminded me of reading Tharunka, the student newspaper on my old university campus. Every year they would publish a feminist issue, and every year it was basically the same. There would be one article from a stay-at-home mum, and somewhere else in the issue, there would be an article about the oppression of marriage as a patriarchal institution. There might also be an article reflecting on the sadness of one woman who had had an abortion and another article talking about the importance of abortion for a right and just society. There was never any attempt to try and get the voices to engage with each other or to debate questions of truth. There was never any discussion about whether you could hold all of these views at the same time, or even whether you would want to. It was simply assumed that the only way to truth was to let all of the dissonant voices speak. Maybe it was only in the contradiction that the voice of truth was heard.

Interestingly, the Bible is comfortable with this position up to a point. The writer of Proverbs can say “Answer not a fool according to his folly” in one breath and “Answer a fool according to his folly” in the next breath (Prov 26:4-5). Wisdom is able to see that the truth is sometimes contradictory. Or perhaps, to put it more helpfully, the application of truth is dependent on our circumstances, and there is a time for everything under heaven.

But my question today is, “What does all of this mean about how we evaluate the truth?” The question has been raised for me by some responses to the article I wrote recently condemning The Shack. In particular, one man wrote offering to write a counter review of The Shack. He thought that I hadn't been fair to the author by presenting the book so negatively. Shouldn't I say something positive about the view of God as Trinity and the presentation of God's grace and kindness in the book? Wouldn't we be better served by a balanced critique?

My answer is no, and it is no because of the nature of truth. It is here that the limitations of the grab bag approach to truth begin to be felt. There are times when our decision about the positive or negative nature of something is not just a tallying of the pros and cons; you can't evaluate something by simply summing up the positive and negative points about something, and seeing if you get more than 50 per cent.

The conflict between Paul and Peter in Galatians 2 is a case in point. Paul opposed Peter to his face because he had chosen to stop eating with the Gentile Christians (Gal 2:11). Paul would have had no difficulty in listing hundreds of good things about Peter's theological position and about his long-term commitment to ministry. Surely, when everything was considered, Peter's choice not to eat with the Gentiles was a small thing in comparison to everything else he had done and taught. Had Paul applied the grab bag of truth, he would have made a speech about Peter's great contribution to the work of God over the years.

But Paul didn't do that. He could see the terrible danger. The unity of truth meant Peter's one action effectively denied everything he taught. More importantly, Peter had to be clearly and publicly opposed because of the position and authority he held. It would have been easy to believe that there was so much good about Peter, the issue of eating with the Gentiles was irrelevant, but it wasn't. It was about the truth of the gospel.

The unity of God's truth means we must be very careful about the grab bag approach to truth. The fact that someone has many things right does not mean we must forgive them for their wrongs. Sometimes it is because they say so much that is right that we must reject their wrongs all the more clearly.

Such is the case with The Shack.

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I count it one of the privileges of my life to have grown up in a time and a place when so many people have accepted the challenge to go into full-time Christian ministry. Historically, it has been quite extraordinary: since the mid-1980s, here in Sydney several thousand gifted young men and women have abandoned jobs, careers and lucrative futures in order to give their lives to gospel work—as student workers, pastors, evangelists, youth workers, missionaries, and more besides. MTS-style apprenticeship training is now a standard feature in many churches. Moore College and SMBC are bursting at the seams.

It has been an amazing move of God—certainly without equal in the history of Christianity here in Australia, and (I would suspect) in any western city in the last 200 years. Who knows what impact all this will have for the gospel in the next generation?

However, I've been thinking recently about one of the negative by-products of this incredible history. Because the challenge to give our lives to ministry was so powerful, and because so many heard and accepted that challenge, what of those who, for good reason or bad, chose not to accept the challenge? What of those who stayed in their jobs, got involved in their local churches, and were just ‘normal’ Christians? Did they end up feeling a bit second-class? Did they wonder whether they had compromised or copped out because (often for good reason) they had decided not to pursue theological training and full-time ministry?

I've been thinking about this especially in light of Katoomba's Engage conference, which seems aimed at this group—that is, at the young 20- and 30-something professionals who didn't end up in full-time ministry. The implicit message of Engage seems to be, “It's perfectly all right to stay in your career and be a faithful Christian. It's okay. You're not second class, and if the full-time ministry thing is not for you, don't beat yourself up about it.”

This is a perfectly correct and reasonable thing to say, and, no doubt, it needs to be said. Whether or not someone ends up in full-time paid Christian ministry should, in no respect, be some sort of litmus test of their faithfulness or godliness as a Christian. All the same, I can't help thinking that this way of addressing the question perpetuates an unhelpful dichotomy.

When I was first challenged about full-time ministry (back in the mists of time—1983, I think it was), the revolutionary message was not that all Christians should become full-time paid gospel workers, except for those losers who didn't make the grade; the truly radical idea was that every Christian should be utterly committed to God's work in the world, as he fulfils his cosmic purposes in Christ Jesus. That's where the action is; that's what's happening in the world. And—almost unbelievably—God is calling me (and you and every Christian) to be a fellow worker in this incredible cause.

Now I can support myself by working a job as I get involved in God's work in the world, or others might support me financially so that I can do more of it. This is a matter of gift, opportunity, circumstance and the wisdom of those around me. But either way, there is only one thing really worth doing in this world: being part of God's plan to sum all things up in Christ Jesus.

The difference between being a self-supporting servant of this gospel, or a financially-supported servant of this gospel, is really very small. The Apostle Paul, after all, did a bit of both. But there is all the difference in the world between giving up our lives for Christ's cause as a fellow worker in the gospel and choosing to live a comfortable life in a nice suburb with a nice career, a nice family and a bit of Christianity on the side.

Here's the test: someone who has denied themselves, who has taken up their cross and who wants to serve the gospel of Jesus makes their decisions in this order:

1. What's the best gospel work for me to be involved in?
2. Where do I need to live in order to share in that ministry?
3. What sort of job do I need to fund living in that place in order to do that ministry?

Let me be provocative and say that if you're making your decisions in the reverse order (i.e. 1. Which job? 2. Which house? 3. Which ministry?), then you haven't grasped the radical nature of the normal Christian life.

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Today we interview Jean Williams.

Jean, how did you come to Christ?

It's not an exciting story, but in some ways, it's the most exciting of all! Like Timothy, I knew the Bible from infancy (2 Tim 3:15). I was brought up by faithful, godly parents who read the Bible and prayed with us, who trained us to live God's way, who talked about Jesus during the day (Deut 6:6-7), and who loved, disciplined and cared for us. They never talked down to us, and were always willing to discuss difficult doctrines like the Trinity, predestination and judgement, as well as God's love and grace. I have no idea why we prefer dramatic conversion stories to the profound blessing of being brought up in a godly home where we're faithfully taught God's word; this is just as great a miracle!

That said, I remember deciding to become a Christian, and praying the ‘believer's prayer’ many times as a child. When I was nine, I was on a beach mission, and I accepted the leaders' invitation to pray the prayer. When I talked with the ‘counsellor’, she asked me if I'd ever made the decision to become a Christian before, and I said “Yes, many times”. I've never forgotten her answer: “You only have to pray the prayer once, you know”. That was the day I gained assurance. I am writing this with tears of gratitude in my eyes!

At university, like many young people brought up in a Christian home, I doubted and questioned my faith. Did I really believe it for myself? I read books like Is the New Testament History?, Who Moved the Stone? and Mere Christianity. The turning point came the day I decided to read the Gospel of Mark all the way through while pretending I hadn't heard every story a thousand times. I did it to figure out if I really was convinced that this guy Jesus was the Son of God who died for us. Was he, to use CS Lewis's language, lunatic, liar or Lord? As I read, I found Jesus to be the most wonderful, compelling, irresistible person I'd ever encountered, and that day, I fell in love with him all over again.

How do you occupy your time?

Loving my husband, raising four children, caring for our home, reading, listening to talks, blogging, writing, and teaching women about God. I'm trying to carve out the first part of each day to be a Mary, not a Martha, and spend some time sitting at Jesus' feet, reading his word, reflecting on his grace, and praying for my family and others.

Tell us a bit about your other interests.

What other interests? That keeps me pretty busy! I love going for walks, reading novels, watching TV series on DVD with my husband, taking photos of the kids, and doing craft. These days, I manage to fit in everything except the last one.

What are some books (no more than five) that have really helped you grow as a Christian?

1. JI Packer, Knowing God: The first few pages (on knowing God, rather than just knowing about God, and on meditating on God's truth) are etched on my mind.
2. John Owen, Communion with God: I studied John Owen for my PhD, and this book had the most lasting impact on me. It taught me that God delights in us, that he wants us to delight in him, and that union and communion with Christ are two different things.
3. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Spiritual Depression: An invaluable guide for anyone who wants to know how to deal with anxiety or discouragement from the Bible, or how to counsel their parishioners.
4. Don Carson, How Long, O Lord?: Someone told me to read this when I was young, before I faced suffering. I'm so glad I took their advice.
5. John Piper, When I Don't Desire God: This is two books in one—a helpful summary of Piper's teaching on the enjoyment of God, and the best introduction to the spiritual disciplines I've ever read.
6. CS Lewis, The Screwtape Letters: Lewis has taught me much about living in the light of heaven. He has a profound practical wisdom which lives on in the heart and mind.

Yes, I cheated: I know that's six. But I couldn't skip any of those authors, sorry!

What are you reading now?

1. John Bunyan, The Pilgrim's Progress: I'm writing on this for the EQUIP book club at the moment. Charles Spurgeon thought it was a ‘must-read’: he read it nearly as often as the Bible. It's a serious call to a persevering, courageous, holy Christian life and death—something we don't hear enough these days.
2. Carolyn Mahaney, Feminine Appeal: I'm taking a group of women through this at the moment, and I'm writing on it for my blog ‘in all honesty’. We may believe in biblical womanhood, but we've forgotten how to teach and train young women in it, and how to live it. This book reminds us how.
3. Tedd Tripp, Shepherding a Child's Heart, and anything else on parenting by Tedd, Margery and Paul Tripp: Their books provide a wise, biblical approach to loving, disciplining, teaching and training children of all ages. Their work is not to be taken as Scripture! But their insights are still profoundly helpful.
4. Ed Welch, Depression: A Stubborn Darkness, and anything else on biblical counselling by Ed Welch and David Powlison: I'd call these ‘must-reads’ for pastors, counsellors and anyone struggling with issues like depression, anxiety and addiction because they start and finish with God's word, and call sin ‘sin’. But at the same time, they are sensitive, wise and pastorally experienced.

What websites do you check ‘religiously’?

Actually, I'm more a faithful blog writer than blog reader. But here's my favourite sites:

• Desiring God
• 168 hours
• EQUIP book club
• Girl Talk
• Gordon Cheng's blog
• Sola Panel (that's called not biting the hand that feeds you.)

What would your friends say are your hobbyhorses?

• Teaching and training women in biblical womanhood, and encouraging women to fulfil their God-given responsibility to teach and train younger women.
• Recovering the forgotten spiritual disciplines of memorizing the Bible, meditating on God's word and world, and preaching the gospel to yourself.
• Biblical counselling: trusting in the sufficiency of the Bible to deal with every spiritual and emotional problem. (Yes, there's a place for medicine and human wisdom, but we undermine the sufficiency of God's word when we fail to counsel people from the Bible.)
• Enjoyment of God: the subject of my PhD, and something I've been passionate about ever since, particularly because I think Australian evangelicals aren't always good at this.

What's something that makes you angry?

My own sin (that I'm not perfect), and perfectionism (that I feel like I need to be perfect). I preach God's grace to myself every day.

This question made me realize that not enough things make me angry. The news makes me sad, rather than angry, most of the time. It should probably make me angry too. One issue gets my blood boiling: defending everyone who can't speak for themselves except unborn babies.

Who is someone who inspires you?

My husband, with his faithful, patient, cheerful, self-denying, loving, daily service of Jesus, me, his children, and those God has given him to teach and train.

What is your ideal day off?

Staying with my family in a holiday house in Bright or Apollo Bay, playing with the kids, reading good books, going for walks, and staring at trees, mountains or waves while thoughts drift through my head.

Give us your top five quotes.

• “So much of what I see reminds me of something I read in a book, when shouldn't it be the other way around?” (You've Got Mail)
• “People are so ready to think themselves changed when it is only their mood that is changed.” (George MacDonald, The Lost Princess)
• “All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.” (JRR Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring)
• “All your life an unattainable ecstasy has hovered just beyond the grasp of your consciousness. The day is coming when you will wake to find, beyond all hope, that you have attained it, or else, that it was within your reach and you have lost it forever.” (CS Lewis, The Problem of Pain)
• “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:38-39, NIV)

Believe me, I could have kept going ...

Any more questions? That was fun!

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While ploughing my way through The Shack¹ recently (and it was a matter of ploughing my way!), a thought occurred to me about the dynamic at work in our culture and in our sinful hearts—the dynamic that generates books like this one and makes them such big sellers.

What I have in mind is the impatience that our generation of Christians has with the idea that the principle, foundational, authoritative way in which God speaks to us and in which we meet the Lord Jesus is in the pages of Scripture. When I read the narrator of The Shack disparaging the idea of “God ... in a book ... with gilt edges, or was that guilt edges?” (p. 66) and the character representing the Holy Spirit promising instead that “you will learn to hear my thoughts in yours” (p. 195), I’m not hearing a radical new idea; I’m hearing one of the great clichés of my generation. Echoes come to mind of last season’s Christian blockbuster Captivating, with its disparaging dismissal of “that infamous icon, ‘The Proverbs 31 Woman’”, who is blamed for “sanctify[ing] the shame most women live under ... that sense that you are a failure as a woman” (p. 6) and its advice that the way to hear God speak is to go to a quiet place, put on some headphones and listen to a song from The Phantom of the Opera and then “write down what you hear God say in the depths of your heart” (p. 126).

There’s a way of expressing this sort of thing that can sound so innocent—like the godly longing of every Christian for “a closer walk with God”, like the panting of the deer in Psalm 42, like the longing of the pure in heart to see God face to face. But there is all the difference in the world between the godly longing for closer communion with the true God and the consumerist demand for a private, lightweight, convenient god we can ‘listen to’ on our own terms—like an iPod nano.

It’s no accident that the spirituality of The Shack and Captivating offers, at the heart of their appeal, an escape from the ‘guilt-edged pages’ of the Bible and the ‘sanctified shame’ of the Proverbs 31 woman. But by bypassing or minimizing the guilt-inducing, shame-evoking realities of the Bible, the spirituality of books like these ends up bypassing or minimizing realities that lie at the heart of the glory of the cross, and at the heart of real Christian faith, hope and joy.

David Wells expresses it perfectly:

The assumption that we have direct access to the sacred through the self rests on a pagan assumption: that the Creator and the creation are related to one another pantheistically. God, it is assumed, is found within the self. He is naturally discovered in the depths of our being. This speaks to both our understanding of sin—that no rupture has taken place—and to our thoughts about creation, that he who makes and that which is made are the two parts of one reality ... Down this road there is supposedly access, but there is in fact no reconciliation. There is no reconciliation because there has been no estrangement. The glory of Christian faith is the grace that has bridged the chasm sin has created, the heights and depths of God’s saving love expressed in the person of Christ. This new spirituality claims access but has none of the grace and power of the gospel. (The Courage to be Protestant, Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, 2008, p. 169).

When we decide that we are going to go looking for God inside the self, we should not be surprised if we end up finding a reassuringly self-shaped god. But when we go searching in Scripture for the true God, the God we find (or rather, the God we are found by) comes to us in a revelation infinitely more guilt-inducing, but also infinitely more gracious and glorious.

¹ For more on The Shack, see Paul Grimmond’s excellent article in this month’s Briefing and Tim Challies’ comprehensive review which seeks to respond biblically to its errors.

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Last week we started looking at an old Briefing series called ‘Factotum’. It was a series about the practicalities of a life spent serving others with the gospel of Jesus. This week we get some reminders about what to do before, during and after church to make the most of serving others. These ideas changed my life when I first heard them, and I am realizing that I need to hear them again.

Before

Preparation

One of our great contributions is our preparation. The minister should not be the only one preparing for church. We prepare by praying for the preacher, the musicians, the service leader, the Bible readers and the newcomers. We prepare by studying the Bible passages so that we maximize this learning opportunity by being sensitised to the issues and questions in the passages being taught. Such preparation also has other benefits. We are better equipped to enter into discussion with others if we have looked at the passage beforehand. It is also a great encouragement to the preacher to know that the congregation is eager to understand the Bible and willing to put in some effort. Preaching is hard work, both for the preacher and the listeners. An intelligent question, comment or observation upon the sermon is an enormous motivating factor for the preacher who, week by week, has to try and engage the congregation's minds and hearts in the word of God. Those who sit in the pew can make a great contribution to those teaching from the pulpit.

Meeting visitors and newcomers

We enjoy meeting our friends at church, but we need to develop a nose for new people. We need to sit with them and help them feel comfortable in this strange place by introducing ourselves and explaining what is going on. We should greet the non-Christian friends of other members and introduce our friends to others. It's all about genuine hospitality. The way we welcome and look after people when they visit our homes should be a model for the household of God. And genuine, relaxed hospitality will slowly evaporate some of the prejudices held by outsiders.

Arriving early

All of this requires that we arrive not on time or late, but early. That may be the greatest miracle of all.

During

Active listening

People in the pews have an enormous impact on those who are teaching and leading. Communication is always a two way process. Energetic listening through taking notes, making eye contact with the preacher, sitting at the front, laughing at jokes (even old ones), will spur on the preacher. It is very hard to preach enthusiastically to a sleepy, distracted, fidgety group. Our active listening will also infect others with enthusiasm for learning, just as our fidgeting will discourage them. Unbelievers will also pick up that these ideas are worth listening to if they see rows of regulars eagerly soaking up the Bible.

Singing

Similarly, those in the pew can be a great help to the singing and leading of music. It is everyone's responsibility to share in the corporate singing of the congregation. The music may be well chosen and played but if it is poorly sung it is disheartening. Our enthusiasm and gusto in singing the great anthems of the faith is of great help to those around us and those leading the music, even if we can barely hold a tune. Just pretend you're under the shower.

Logistics

Each member in the pew also has an important part to play in the smooth running of the meeting. The devil will use anything to distract people from hearing the word of God. We musn't rely on ushers to fix things. If the window needs to be opened, get up and do it. If the microphones are not right, signal to the speaker so the problem can be fixed before they continue on without being heard.

Newcomers

Keep attending to newcomers' needs. If they can't find their way around the Bible or the service outline, or they don't have a Bible, or they need to find the creche, help them yourself. It is your meeting, not the minister's. It's all about being observant and outward-looking.

After

Discuss God's word

We have just heard the word of God and we spend all of morning tea talking about last night's video. It isn't right and we know it, but many of us are just uncomfortable starting up ‘spiritual’ conversations. If you get the ball rolling, others will pick it up. During your preparation and the sermon, think up some comments or issues to raise with others. Asking “What did you think of the sermon?” will usually put your neighbour into a coma, but making a specific comment like “I didn't know Abel was a prophet. What makes someone a prophet?”, may generate a fruitful conversation. Even if the conversations don't always get off the ground, your enthusiasm for learning the Bible will be contagious and non-Christians will see that church is not dull and boring but fascinating and life shattering.

Pray with others

Use the supper time to meet others and find out their concerns and pray quietly with them. This will look a bit weird to newcomers with pairs of bowed heads all around the building, but they will know that we love each other and trust God's providence.

Newcomers

Newcomers tend to leave fairly quickly so we have to move fast by identifying the visitor in our pew and offering them conversation immediately the service ends. It's all very purposeful: make sure they are welcomed properly by you and your friends, maybe introduce them to the minister and help them see how they can fit in to the congregation. You may have to postpone catching your friends until after the newcomers have been cared for.

Stay late

Once you catch this vision of church, you are always the last to leave because the opportunities to minister don't end until the last person leaves. Gone are the days of fitting church in between breakfast and brunch. Ministry of the pew takes time. In the forthcoming issues of Factotum, we'll continue to explore practical ways in which we can be better Christian servants. Sorry to have ruined your ‘day of rest’. Church requires a lot of effort, if we are to build the body of Christ. Don't worry: you have Monday to Saturday to rest so that you'll be fit for next week's work at church.

Read the full article at The Briefing website.

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