Contents

FEATURES

The first Good Friday

Are our Reformed churches drifting into heresy?

With the concerted attack on Kate Forbes, Scotland has become ‘the Land of the Beast’

What’s wrong with swearing?

Key questions on human sexuality answered

Massive need: Tiny Turkish church responds to earthquake

Special book review: Biblical Critical Theory

Asbury and the holy FOMO

COMMENT: Our beliefs are being policed, this is no time to keep quiet

GUEST COLUMN: Glorifying God with an ordinary life

THINKING IT THROUGH: Confessions then and now (Part 2):Read, mark, inwardly digest

A WALK WITH MR O: Everyone in the world

A SHRINK THINKS... Leadership

NEWS

News in brief

Street preacher overturns his conviction for ‘misgendering’

The Prime Minister vows to review sex education in schools

Parents remove their child, aged 4, from Church of England primary school over gender-change book

Woman arrested for a second time for praying in her head near an abortion clinic, despite court judgment

‘Terrorist’ chaplain vows to appeal against employment tribunal ruling

BBC Panorama programme in ‘hatchet job’ against Christian pregnancy crisis centres

House of Commons rejects attempts to make clear that silent prayer is lawful

Over 70 people celebrate the marvel of God’s love at Reformation and Revival Fellowship conference held in Swanwick, Derbyshire

Jude Conference, held in Bedford, highlights value of the local church

Church Support Fellowship established to heed modern-day ‘Macedonian Call’ and offers to help in time of pressing need

Dinosaur bones and Babylonian stones on display at new creation museum and research centre at Shropshire site

Induction held for Donavan Lurrie at Cornerstone church, Bolton

Obituary: Michael Grant (1941–2022)

Obituary: Revd Edward ‘Ted’ Donnelly (1943–2023)

Obituary: Michael Toogood (1936–2023)

US: Keller Centre’s disturbing article is removed from The Gospel Coalition website after criticism

Australia: Law Commission accused of trying to water down the ethos of the nation’s faith schools

China: Christians are forced to register on a government app before they are given permission to attend a church

Global: Anglican group says it will break communion with the Church of England over same-sex blessings

Senegal: World’s largest mercy ship treats its first surgical patient, aged 4

France: Age verification checks set to be brought in to shield kids from porn sites

REVIEWS

Holy Spirit Now Descend

Revival: The Work of God

Understanding Family Worship

Dear Beth, Dear Tom: Letters to an enquiring Christian

God-Centred Priorities: Five principles for making wise decisions

A Sheep Remembers

FEATURES

The first Good Friday

IThe following is an edited extract from the author’s new evangelistic Easter book, Three Days that Changed the World, by 10Publishing.

Dian Fossey was an unusual woman. She was an American-born zoologist who left the comforts of home to move to Africa. There she lived among the rare, gentle mountain gorillas of Rwanda, who were threatened with extinction due to the cruelty of poachers who were tracking them down one by one and slaughtering them.

In 1967 she established the Karisoke Research Centre in Rwanda, on the side of a 14,000-foot tall, rain-shrouded volcano. After several years the gorillas came to accept her as one of their own. Fossey named them, cradled their babies, and cried with them when they mourned their dead.

She once wrote, ‘These powerful but shy and gentle animals accepted and responded to my attentions when I acted like a gorilla. So I learned to scratch and groom and beat my chest. I imitated my subjects’ vocalizations, hoots, grunts, and belches, munched the foliage they ate, kept low to the ground and deliberate in movement.’

After spending many years with the gorillas, she became like them, dwelling among them, and they were her friends. When faced with danger, she bravely defended them.

In the early hours of 27 December 1985, Dian was knifed and murdered, apparently by poachers whose trade she had sought to destroy. She died for those she had come to live among and save.

God-forsaken

Jesus did more. He came to save, and willingly and deliberately laid down his life for us. As he was being crucified, Jesus prayed, ‘Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do.’ As his sufferings came to an end, he prayed, ‘Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.’

But while he endured the darkness of the cross and bore the heavy load of our sin, he did not address God as ‘Father’. Instead he cried out, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’

In a way beyond our comprehension, as Jesus carried our sin, the intimacy between the Father and the Son was severed. God the Father turned away from God the Son.

‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ are heart-wrenching words. Jesus was forsaken by his Father. He was forsaken by God so that we could be forgiven and never forsaken by him.

He bore our sin

People speak of ‘Good Friday’. It is good only because, out of extreme love for us, Jesus bore our sin and paid a debt we could not; all eternity would not be sufficient for us to clear it.

About 600 years before Jesus’s crucifixion, God told his people, ‘I have loved you with an everlasting love.’ As Jeremiah the prophet shared these words with the people, one wonders how much he understood about how eventually the eternal Son of God would come to the people he had made in order to bear the penalty for their rebellion against him.

Sin is so serious it has eternal implications and an eternal penalty. The Bible compares it to a thief, a debt, a heavy burden, a wound, a plague, a deadly poison, a sickness, an abominable vomit, uncleanness, a sting and even to grey hairs!

Either we who are finite would suffer the penalty for our sin eternally, or we trust in God’s remedy of forgiveness for it.

Jesus, the eternal one, paid the penalty in a finite period of time on the cross. As the divine Son of God clothed in humanity, Jesus was able to carry all the sin of the world on himself during those hours. If he was only human, that load would have been too great to carry, but as the incarnate God, he was able to die to ‘reconcile all things’ to God the Father.

Divine justice

If you can, picture the British Airways or Air France plane, Concorde. The front conical nozzle was designed to pierce the atmosphere, taking all the friction and heat onto itself to protect the rest of the plane. That nozzle is called ‘the propitiator’.

The Bible says that Jesus is ‘the propitiation for our sins’. A propitiator takes the wrath onto himself to protect the would-be recipient.

God is rightly and justly angry at sin. Jesus, as the substitute sacrifice, endured the cross as he took the judgment that should be ours onto himself. He is the propitiator.

No one has ever faced justice for the murder of Dian Fossey, although all the evidence pointed to the poachers which Fossey had relentlessly fought against.

One team member, US citizen Wayne McGuire, was convicted in absentia, but there is widespread consensus that the true culprit was never found. When terrible wrongs go unpunished, we are rightly angry. We want justice.

God is a God of justice. He is also a God of forgiveness and love. He holds these things together as Jesus died on the cross. God satisfied his justice, remaining true to his holiness, while demonstrating his love towards us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

It was at the cross of Jesus, at a place called Golgotha, where we see those three attributes of God – his holiness, his love, and his justice – perfectly displayed without any contradiction or friction between them.

Power over life

But there is something more. Jesus did something you and I cannot do: he dismissed his own spirit as he prayed, ‘Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.’ Earlier, Jesus had spoken remarkable words: ‘No one takes [my life] from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again.’

He had said, ‘I am the life’, but also that he would ‘lay down’ his life. Jesus is the only person who chose to die. Of course, there are those who in tragic circumstances have taken their own life. They chose when and where and how they would die. However, eventually they, like all of us, would have died anyway.

But Jesus, who is the life-giver, who had never sinned so was not subject to death, need not have died. It was out of love for us that he gave himself over to death, to ‘taste death’ for every one of us.

Those who plotted to have Jesus crucified had guilty intentions and actions intending to kill Jesus, but it was Jesus himself who dismissed his spirit and gave himself over to death.

No other death has captured the imagination of artists, musicians, writers, and preachers as has the death of Jesus. It is the very heart of the Christian message.

It is the main theme of the four Gospel writers – Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John – who spend up to half of their writings describing the last week of the life of Jesus. They point our attention to what Jesus accomplished for us when he hung on that cross. But the cross of Jesus is now empty. Jesus’s story was far from ended on that first Good Friday.

By Roger Carswell, Mr Carswell has worked as an itinerant evangelist for over 40 years.

Are our Reformed churches drifting into heresy?

I’m becoming increasingly troubled by a trend which is appearing in churches, particularly independent congregations which claim to adhere to the Reformed faith. It’s manifested in two different but related ways.

In your name, amen

The first is the tendency to finish prayers addressed to God the Father with words like, ‘we pray in your name’. As far as I can see, there is no biblical legitimacy for this whatsoever. On seven occasions in the New Testament the pattern is laid down that we pray to the Father in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. The only thing which we are permitted to do in the name of the Father (along with the Son and the Holy Spirit) is to be baptised.

In the Old Testament, three relevant phrases appear: ‘in the name of the LORD’ (meaning there the Lord Jehovah), ‘in his name’, and ‘in my name’, where God himself is speaking. These occur a total of 45 times, and they are linked with things like serving, speaking, blessing, prophesying in his name (and a few other things).

However, never once does the Old Testament speak of praying in the name of the LORD. Surely, therefore, we need seriously to consider whether we have the right to invent a new formula which has no Scriptural authority whatsoever.

Now this is certainly not a totally new phenomenon, but earlier on it seemed to happen in prayer meetings, and we could be tolerant, because we know how easy it is for any of us to have a slip of the tongue.

But what is worrying nowadays is that it appears to be occurring increasingly frequently in public prayer led from the pulpit by people who ought to know better. If they don’t, then they shouldn’t be appointed to lead public worship at all.

In an online article entitled ‘Theological Disagreements: Praying “In your name, Amen,”’ an American Christian College Professor, Mark Krause, also comments on this trend. He asks why this way of finishing prayers has replaced the more traditional ending, ‘in the name of Jesus, Amen.’

Krause answers his own question with the comment that confusion about the truth of the Trinity has crept into our churches.

Did God the Father die?

And that leads me on to the second issue of concern, which is, I fear, even more serious. I am starting to notice how often prayers start by being addressed to God our heavenly Father, and then, all of a sudden, come words like, ‘We thank you for shedding your blood and dying on the cross for us.’

If there had been a transitional statement, making clear that we are now addressing God the Son, perhaps this would be admissible. But if there is no such transition, then the congregation is being subtly, and no doubt unwittingly, led into outright heresy.

To praise and thank God the Father for shedding his blood for us on the cross is in fact to revive a heresy which first surfaced in the teaching of a man called Noetus towards the end of the second century, perhaps around the year AD 190.

Noetus was one of the elders of the church in Smyrna in Asia Minor, in modern day Turkey. His emphases were revived in early years of the following century (maybe around the year AD 210) by someone called Sabellius. He was at that time an elder in Rome, though he may have come originally from Libya in North Africa. Both these men were deemed to be heretics, and were excommunicated from their churches.

In those early centuries this heresy became known by several different titles, each of which highlights a different aspect of its errors. Sometimes it was called ‘Monarchianism’, a word which means one governing principle. This title highlighted the fact that the perpetrators of this error regarded the God who governed the universe only in singular terms, and rejected the doctrine of his Trinitarian nature. They rightly confessed that there is only one God, but wrongly denied the truth that he has his being eternally in three distinct persons.

Actually, there was more than one form of Monarchianism in those early days, so sometimes the heresy with which we are concerned was labelled ‘modalistic Monarchianism’, or just ‘modalism’ for short. This meant that any distinction made between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit was not a statement of an eternal reality within the one Godhead, but simply three different modes in which the one God chose to appear for different purposes at different times – Father for creation, Son for redemption, and Holy Spirit for sanctification.

Another title was ‘patripassianism’, a word meaning the sufferings of the Father: because Father and Son were only different modes in which the one God could operate, it followed that the sufferings of the Son were the sufferings of the Father, since there is no genuine distinction between the two persons.

This is the mistake which is being committed by those today who address their prayers to the Father, and then thank him for dying on the cross.

Guard the faith

What concerns me in all this is that, if such careless phraseology continues to be used, it will probably only take one generation for churches which today are known as ‘Reformed’ to become perpetrators of this modalistic Monarchian, patripassian heresy. If that happens, we will no longer be part of the authentic, historic Christian faith.

We may today, dare I say it, pride ourselves on being sound – at the risk, I fear, of feeling superior to churches in other networks. But give it a decade or two, and might we have become a heretical cult?

This emphasises the vital importance of teaching and training those who are appointed to stand in our pulpits. How we lead in prayer is a matter of crucial importance, and we need to take action before it’s too late.

By Dr Jonathan Bayes, Pastor of Stanton Lees Chapel, and UK Director for Carey Outreach Ministries.

With the concerted attack on Kate Forbes, Scotland has become ‘the Land of the Beast’

Editor’s Note – This article was written in the aftermath of the initial attacks against the Christian beliefs of Kate Forbes MSP. This April edition of ET went to print in mid-March, before the results of the SNP leadership election were announced.

They worshiped the beast, saying, ‘Who is like the beast, and who can fight against it?’ (Revelation 13:5)

The concerted attack on Kate Forbes from the media, the ‘twittering class’, political opponents, and her own party reveals this has to do not with mere politics but with the darkness of our nation in its hastening rejection of all that is good, holy, and true. The land of the Book has become the land of the Beast and hard days lie ahead for all who will stand with, and for, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Christian and secular commentators have written on the hypocrisy of the witch hunt against Kate Forbes in the name of ‘tolerance’; the religious discrimination (and cowardice) which hounds a Christian on questions of homosexuality while walking on eggshells around a Muslim; and the absurd irony of making obeisance to the cult of ‘trans’ the touchstone of acceptability in political leadership – the very issue which finally sank Nicola Sturgeon.

Brendan O’Neill sums up the irrational derangement of the ‘progressive’ elites of our political class with acerbic clarity: ‘They have created a world in which kids can’t read the original Roald Dahl books in case they feel offended by the word “fat” but they can be read stories by drag queens with names like Flow Job. A world in which you’re more likely to do well if you believe the violent male tormentor of women is himself a woman than if you believe what the Bible says about marriage. Listen, it isn’t Kate Forbes who’s crazy.’

Quite; and if the publicity around the ‘controversial’ candidacy of someone as wholesome, honest, and decent as Kate Forbes helps expose the debased thinking of those in the corridors of power, it will be a good thing. Are we really to think that truthful answers from a politician are evidence of suspicious naivety to despise, not honesty to esteem; or that believing in and practising sexual chastity is a mark of bigotry to discourage, not beauty to admire?

However, it is not only the political elites, but Scotland as whole, which seems to be further down the descent into what Rod Dreher has called the ‘soft totalitarianism’ of cultural Marxism than elsewhere in the UK. Since devolution, and in particular during the reign of the SNP (supported by the even more extreme agenda of the Greens), Scottish society has been accelerating into a hegemony of godless paganism.

As a result, though the proverbial ‘man in the street’ sees the folly of gender redefinition on demand, there is a pervasive culture of fear such that anyone wishing to be considered ‘mainstream’ knows they must keep their head down and, at the very least, give the nod of worship to the prevailing ideology – for ‘who can fight against it?’

At the inaugural meeting of the Scottish Free Speech Union last year an eclectic gathering of academics, writers, campaigners, and others (including Christians) gave one voice to the sense that Scottish society is the most prone to censorship and ‘cancel’ culture in the UK.

Many in the workplace experience this, the fiercest front perhaps seen in schools. Teachers have told me only those within sight of retirement feel able to voice concerns against the onslaught of LGBT ideology; younger teachers seeking promotion dare not rock the boat, so stifle their misgivings or, more often (particularly among the most recently trained), embrace the agenda enthusiastically.

That schools should be the front line should not surprise us; in the words of the UK Supreme Court judgment against the Scottish government’s notorious Named Person Scheme, ‘the first thing that a totalitarian regime tries to do is to get at the children, to distance them from the subversive, varied influences of their families, and indoctrinate them in their rulers’ view of the world.’

That legislation was struck down, but the ideological driving force behind it is still at large, winning de facto what was the lost de jure in that historic ruling in 2016. That which long ago captured higher education institutions, spilling over to colonise mainstream middle-class thinking, is now well on the way to the complete takeover of schools down to the very youngest. Soon the least educated will be as ‘re-educated’ into the new ‘mainstream’ thinking as the most educated.

Writing in 1972, my father quoted Lord Hailsham saying then that ‘our country is being destroyed before our eyes by a conspiracy of intellectuals without faith, delinquents without honour, muck-rakers without charity or compassion, young men who are incapable of dreaming dreams and old men who have never known what it is to see visions’. How much more is this so today!

However, the root of the problem of a generation where there is complete spiritual blindness, where young and old alike have no vision, and cast off restraint, is not the mainstream media, but what is now called ‘mainstream Christianity’. Joining the attack on Kate Forbes were those keen to deny her views could be called ‘mainstream’ Christian, as she claimed.

The Very Reverend Lorna Hood OBE, KHC, a former Moderator, was quick to tweet: ‘the largest Church in Scotland, The Church of Scotland, allows ministers to conduct same sex marriage and recently the Anglican Communion voted to allow priests to bless same sex relationships. We must never forget the basic tenet of Christianity is love, respect and tolerance.’

Leaving aside the woeful definition of the ‘basic tenet’ of Christianity (mentioning neither Christ nor sin nor salvation) and misrepresentation of the ‘Anglican Communion’ (the majority of which has rejected the Archbishop of Canterbury as leader because of the Church of England’s heterodoxy), the message is quite clear: orthodox Christianity is beyond the pale, an odious relic of ‘strict’ sects like the lampooned ‘Wee Frees’ (though former Westminster SNP leader Ian Blackford, also a member of the Free Church, dissociated himself from orthodox belief, pitching firmly for the ‘mainstream’ by calling same sex marriage ‘a marvellous thing’).

‘Who can fight against it?’ – and give a renewed vision of health, wholeness, and hope to a nation that has so calamitously lost its moorings in reality, and morality?

Not a church that craves the praise of the ‘mainstream’ and cowers from the pain of martyrdom. Only a Church which knows that Jesus is Lord and, as Kuyper put it, ‘there is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, Mine!’

‘Here is a call for the endurance and faith of the saints’ (Revelation 13:10) – and for fearless witness to the truth. The fiercer the attack the brighter will shine the light of true witness, as our Lord promised: ‘they will … persecute you … and you will be brought before kings and governors for my name’s sake. This will be your opportunity to bear witness … which none of your adversaries will be able to withstand or contradict’ (Luke 21:12-15).

There is a cost to real witness; the word itself – martureo – breathes suffering. But no prize – not the whole world, let alone the welcome of ‘mainstream’ society, or a home in Bute House – is worth the price of losing that witness, or its true reward (Mark 8:35). The deceiver of the whole world, the vile beast who stands behind every earthly accuser of our brethren, is conquered ‘by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony, [who] loved not their lives even unto death’ (Revelation 12:11).

God’s call for every true Christian and church in the firing line in the darkening days in which we live, Kate Forbes included, is that, having irreversibly fastened on the belt of truth, and faithfully cherishing the true gospel of peace, we ‘stand firm’ – whatever earthly loss may be the result. To lose with God is to win – in everything that really matters.

By William Philip, Senior minister at The Tron, Glasgow.

What’s wrong with swearing?

At school, almost everyone does it, including teachers. I heard about a local school where teachers told their students to make sure they use gender-neutral swear words!

It used to be that swearing was on the BBC only after the 9pm watershed, but not now. It’s there on Radio 4 in the evening. In fact, no one had used the ‘F’ word on British TV until 1965, when theatre critic Kenneth Tyan said it during a live broadcast. It resulted in four motions in the Houses of Parliament and an apology from the BBC!

Now of course, language changes. The Authorised Version of the Bible uses words we’d consider inappropriate today, e.g., ‘pisseth against the wall’ (1 Samuel 25:22) and ‘bastards’ (Hebrews 12:8). Shakespearean English is fruity. The language of some of our theological heroes, like Martin Luther, contains lots of filth.

Look up a Hebrew lexicon and you’ll notice all kinds of words describing male and female genitalia, that are more obscure in English translation. A careful study of the vocabulary of a chapter like Ezekiel 23 would make lots of us blush.

We shouldn’t underestimate the effects of a prudish Victorianism upon us. We mustn’t sanitise the Bible and clean up God’s holy Word.

Writing a list of banned words is a fool’s errand. The Bible doesn’t give us such a list. I can’t tell you that to utter such-and-such a word is automatically sinful. But does that mean that swearing is okay? Is this just an area of ‘Christian liberty’?

Definitely not. There are plenty of words that Christians shouldn’t be in the habit of using. For example, ‘Let there be no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking, which are out of place’ (Ephesians 5:4). The Bible is crystal clear on the importance of pure speech. Christians are not to be potty-mouthed.

Jesus encourages great care in the words that we use: ‘on the day of judgment, people will give an account for every careless word they speak, for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned’ (Matthew 12:36-37).

Then there’s the question of self-control. Can you stop? I remember a youth leader sharing that it was his inability to stop swearing as a teenager that God used to convict him of his sin and lead him to Jesus. He was scared to realise that he couldn’t stop swearing; it dawned on him that he wasn’t the good kid he liked to think he was.

For Christians to simply stop swearing is hardly the goal for Christian speech, but it’s definitely a good start. To work in the office or the warehouse and not swear will immediately make you stand out. And that’s not nothing.

The gift of speech is one of the things that makes us God-like and distinguishes us from the animals. Jesus Christ wants to sanctify our tongues. Sure, we live in a sinful world, and need to express moral revulsion and hatred of sin, but we’re called to do it in a holy way.

American journalist H. L. Mencken (no Christian!) pointed out that ‘thousands of excellent nouns, verbs, and adjectives that have stood in every decent dictionary for years are still unfamiliar’ to lots of us. Why not try using them?

If this is a struggle, start praying about it. ‘Set a guard, O LORD, over my mouth; keep watch over the door of my lips!’ (Psalm 141:3).

By Simon Arscott Minister at All Nations Church, Ilford.

Key questions on human sexuality answered

We live in days of widespread confusion about sexuality, gender, and LGBT issues. Have you ever encountered one of these situations?

Your child comes home from school and asks, ‘Is it possible for a girl to say that they want to become a boy? My teacher says that’s okay and most of my friends agree.’

A long-standing friend asks to meet for coffee and shares that they struggle with same-sex desire. They ask you for advice and support.

Someone begins to attend your church who is confused about their gender. They ask for help and counsel about what the Bible teaches on gender and sexuality.

Many Christians are confused about how to address these situations. However, we must respond with faithful biblical teaching, shared with genuine concern for those who are seeking answers.

Our confused world is affecting real people. Our children, young people and young adults need to know what the Bible says about their identity as people created in the image of God. They need to know what God says about the wonderful hope of the gospel for eternal salvation and real change.

New catechism

Christopher Gordon’s ‘New Reformation Catechism on Human Sexuality’ addresses these situations and many others in a question-and-answer format.

For hundreds of years, Christians have learned God’s truth in this way. Through 41 questions and answers, in four main sections (creation, fall, redemption and restoration), he addresses a wide range of subjects with biblical clarity and balance. The resource is modelled on the Heidelberg Catechism which means it is warm in style and pastoral in approach.

In his opening question, he teaches that the Christian’s identity is found in Christ and not in anything else:

Q. Why is it comforting that we have a new identity in Jesus Christ?

A. I am being remade into the image of Christ, to have a true identity – in body and soul, throughout the whole course of my life, to enjoy God and glorify him forever.

He redeemed my life with the precious blood of his Son, and has delivered me from the lie of Satan in the Garden.

He also watches over me in such a way that he might free me from all sexual impurity as the temple of his indwelling; in fact, all things must work together to remake me into the image of his Son.

Because I have this new identity, Christ, by his Holy Spirit, also assures me of God’s steadfast love, and makes me wholeheartedly willing and ready from now on to enjoy true freedom as a new creation.

In his section on creation, he explains that there are only two sexes and that God’s grace in redemption restores his creation design for us as male and female.

He also carefully deals with questions about those who are born with intersex conditions where he states:

We may not use the existence of anomalies to change or redefine the creational order that God has established as good.

Eternal resurrection hope is pastorally applied to those who experience gender confusion in this section:

Further, in the new Jerusalem, any genital mutilation, or confusion over sexual orientation identity, will be restored in our new resurrection bodies.

When discussing the effects of the Fall upon our natures, he is clear that all the desires of the human heart, even if unchosen, are affected by sin:

All the desires of the human heart, even though they may be unchosen, have become distorted and fallen in the sin of our first parents. These desires cannot be trusted, since we have a natural tendency to be led away by various passions.

Some teach that unholy sexual desires or inclinations are not sinful and we should only reject the temptation to live out those desires. In response, this catechism shows that the biblical teaching is that:

God condemns desires that are contrary to his law, as well as our actual sins. These contrary desires are sinful even if they are unchosen, since they proceed from a corrupt heart. All impure thoughts and desires, prior to the conscious act of the will, are considered sin in God’s eyes.

Redemption

The section on redemption is full of hope for all who struggle with sexual sins:

Through true faith in the promise of God’s Word, and wholehearted trust in Christ, by the gospel, God has freely granted – not only to others but to me also – the forgiveness of all my sexual trespasses, cancelling all my guilt and meriting for me eternal righteousness and salvation.

He also shares how true freedom from sin is possible in the gospel:

Since I died, was buried, and have been raised with Christ through his death and resurrection, I am set free from slavery to any form of sexual sin. Christ has broken its dominion over me, and I now live with a renewed desire to reckon myself dead to my old way of sexual immorality, but alive to God in pursuing a sexually pure life for his glory.

Gordon gives clear teaching on what real repentance looks like. He is particularly clear that if we are Christians, there is no guilt about forgiven sin and no defeat such that we need to give up striving in our battle with sin.

There are very helpful sections on honouring the Lord as husbands, wives, and singles as well as excellent instruction to parents and young adults.

Loving others

The closing question of the catechism: ‘How do we love those who live in sexual sin?’ He answers:

We should not avoid or shun those who are mastered by sexual sin. Instead, we should speak the truth in love about sexual sin, repentance, and faith in Christ; give witness to the deliverance God gave us from our own sins; and perform acts of kindness. By our godly living, we should seek to win over our neighbours to Christ.

All Christians should be good Bereans, searching the Scriptures to test all teaching. This catechism includes many Bible references in footnotes at the bottom of each page so that key passages can be consulted

This is a short and punchy resource well worth reading and digesting. It is so helpful in applying God’s Word in many situations that evangelicals find perplexing.

The catechism can be used in many different contexts. Families with pre-teen and teenage children could work through this resource as a part of family devotions or one-to-one with their children.

The catechism is available for purchase from Reformation Heritage Books (USA) via their website, but is also available for free download as a part of the June 2022 edition of the Reformed Perspective magazine.

By Matthew Seymour, an elder and pastor at Emmanuel Church Leamington Spa.

Massive need: Tiny Turkish church responds to earthquake

Just after 4:00 a.m. on 6 February, as over 84 million people slept in their beds, the very earth heaved as in the pangs of childbirth (Romans 8:20), causing devastation and terror not seen in Turkey for over a century. A 90-second earthquake affected an area the size of England and has changed modern Turkey forever.

In Antakya (ancient Antioch), Elmas, a pastor’s wife, reached out via social media at 5:57 a.m.: ‘Please pray. Buildings are destroyed, screams are resounding, it is raining.’ Such was the destruction of her city that it was being said, ‘Antakya is no more’ – a city of 200,000 residents plus many refugees reduced to rubble.

Diyarbakir

250 miles east, in Diyarbakir (a city of nearly 2 million), the damage was not as great, but the terrified population sought refuge from fear and the cold. Some, Muslim and Christian alike, headed for the Protestant church building still standing strong.

A generator provided light as all the utilities had failed, and the church leaders provided food for their many traumatised visitors. As roads opened, some of the believers found homes in nearby villages, leaving in order to make room for the fifty or so who remained there longer-term to receive practical Christian love.

The church leaders, realising that the situation in Antakya was so much worse than theirs, made the dangerous journey over badly damaged roads to support the church family there, as they too endeavour to care for those around them.

Hard facts

The facts and figures are hard to absorb, but they are essential to understanding the whole story.

– Turkey’s population stands at 84.78 million, across 81 provinces.

– 13.5 million people across 10 provinces were affected by the earthquake, besides refugees.

– The death toll (at the time of writing) stands at over 40,000, with an estimated 200,000 still under rubble.

– Over 100,000 have been injured, and some 1.6 million are homeless.

– There are over 7,000 Protestants in Turkey, with 172 established local churches.

– In areas affected by the earthquake, we understand there are some 241 Protestant believers, and 16 churches.

Challenges

The challenge is not the massive size of the devastation (huge though that be), but the miniscule size of the church!

You have seen the breathtaking images of destruction over an area 300 miles east-to-west and 200 miles north-to-south; ten provinces with ten major cities affected; tens of thousands injured; more than 1.6 million homeless. How do fewer than 300 believers even begin to meet a fraction of the need?

Cooperation from within Turkey

The church in Turkey is small, but inter-church relations are good and mature local leadership was ready to take the initiative.

Immediately after the earthquake the church in the nation’s capital, Ankara, was busy. They acquired vehicles, supplies, and the necessary official documents, so that by the next day food, water, warm clothes, and sleeping bags were on their way to Adiyaman. Another group sent a mobile bakery and two mobile toilet facilities.

By the end of the first week, from just one centre in Ankara there were 17 teams serving in 9 cities, reaching out to villages that had not received any aid. Soup kitchens are providing hot meals for hundreds in at least three areas.

Kahramanmaras is a province without a visible church, but the brothers from the local church in neighbouring Kayseri have made it their business to serve there in the name of Christ.

One of the churches in Adana (a less affected area) is being used as a distribution hub for supplies coming in from the rest of the country.

Accommodation is the most pressing need, and is being met in various ways. Tents with heaters are the most readily available, some already sheltering families. Bearing the logo, ‘Donated by the Protestant church’, their unspoken witness is clear.

The church in Adiyaman has permission from the authorities to build tent ‘cities’ as well as wooden cabin homes. The homeless are also being housed outside the area.

A church building in Adana has become a dormitory, as have the premises of Christian organisations in Ankara. Christian families are receiving strangers into their homes. As well as providing basic needs, ‘we spend time with them: we eat together, sometimes we cry together and we pray together’.

Cooperation from abroad

The Turkish church needs help from outside to be truly effective. Support coming from abroad is best channelled through local churches. In this way, a 52-bed field hospital has been set up in Hatay next to the irreparably crippled state hospital, and includes emergency operating rooms and a pharmacy.

Another international Christian organisation is heavily involved in distribution programmes and is working on bringing mass water purification facilities, vital in the aftermath of the destruction.

Brothers from Cyprus are now in Hatay starting a project of building wooden cabin homes. All this is being done by believers working as servants of local churches, and enhancing their long-term witness to the gospel in the process.

Antakya

Back in Antakya (80% destroyed) and determined to serve their local community, Elmas and her husband are still sleeping in their car as their home has been condemned.

A new church building, still under construction, remained standing, though the old building was in ruins. The unfinished building was soon used to house supplies, as well as offer sleeping accommodation for teams of helpers.

A newly erected notice proclaims, ‘Antakya Christian Church Aid Building’. Water supplies are a major problem but, with one of the water purifying units from the international body soon to be delivered, their care for the surrounding community will be increased.

Elmas has written on social media, ‘I still have high hopes because I can clearly see God’s hand. Our brothers and sisters from all over Turkey are with us in every way. This wonderful unity can only come from the Lord… our old church building has been destroyed but with the Lord’s will and help, we will do much better things at our new church place.’

Our response

It is comparatively easy to be moved to respond to the humanitarian crisis. Yet this disaster gives the local church in Turkey an opportunity to show the love of Christ in a way that they never have before.

In light of this, make sure that your giving goes through organisations that will ensure that it reaches the local churches who are serving in God’s name. One way this can be done is through Lefkosa Protestant Church (Cyprus) via Forest Fold Baptist Church in Crowborough.

More challenging is our response to the spiritual need. Once the world turns its attention to the next crisis and the southeast of Turkey returns to a new normality, the 16 churches of the area will still be bringing the gospel to over 13 million lost souls. What is our response to that need?

From the comfort of our churches, it is easy to sing, ‘We go to all the world / With kingdom hope unfurled / No other name has power to save / But Jesus Christ the Lord’, but Turkey needs your urgent ongoing prayers for a new generation of Christian labourers who are passionate for the glory of Christ, who know the value of a soul and who will go with servant hearts to work alongside the local churches reaching out to its hopeless millions. Disaster relief is for a moment; gospel work is for eternity.

By Daphne Swanson, Member of Lefkosa Protestant Church in Cyprus.

Special book review: Biblical Critical Theory

Christopher Watkin

Biblical Critical Theory

Zondervan Academic, 2022, 648pp, ISBN: 9-780310128724

Christopher Watkin’s aim is to analyse and critique our contemporary culture through the lens of the Bible. He seeks to set out a Christian social and cultural theory based in theology and Scripture to help us understand and relate to the world in which we live. A laudable objective indeed, as shown in the sub-title, ‘How the Bible’s Unfolding Story Makes Sense of Modern Life and Culture’, and a welcome endeavour to deal with an important topic.

The book consists of 28 chapters set out over more than 600 pages and 114 figures or illustrations covering a wide range of theological themes and biblical overview. Dr Watkin, who is not a theologian, admits that he is not saying anything radically new. He takes an expansive overview of the subject matter and quotes from a range of diverse authors across various disciplines, although the choice does not always seem entirely relevant.

While the aim is admirable, it is not achieved. Rather, there is a good deal of fog and lack of clarity. The title is problematic and so too is much of the content. Perhaps most problematic of all is what is excluded.

Critical theory, which originated in the ‘Frankfurt School’ (a school of critical theory, philosophy, and social thought deriving mainly from the 1920s) is primarily an approach to action (praxis) rather than dogma or belief. The aim is to pursue certain outcomes – for example, equality or social justice. The late sociologist, Professor Christie Davies, always used to point out that the insertion of the word ‘social’ before a noun tended to reverse the actual meaning of the noun itself.

We see the impact of critical theory today in the current contemporary challenges around gender, racial issues, and approaches to history. We must overthrow the existing structures which prop up unjust systems of power or economics, rewrite partial and discriminatory histories, and so we end up with critical race theory, critical gender theory, and so on.

Critical theory or theories seek to overturn biblical norms for the family, for work and the economy, for justice, history, and gender, to name but a few. To equip us to respond, we need biblical clarity. But this book does not provide it.

Watkin develops an idea which he calls ‘diagonalization’ (is that even a word?). He argues (p.15): ‘Given a choice between two camps or positions in our culture, the Bible frequently settles for neither and presents us with something richer than both, a subtler solution that neither position has the resources to imagine.’

Consequently (p.17), ‘diagonalization presents a biblical picture in which the best aspirations of both options are fulfilled, but not in a way that the proponents of those options would see coming.’

Forgive me if I see this as simplistic, illustrative of the often superficial discussion of the actual issues Christians face today. Extreme dichotomies are presented. For example, immersion in the culture or separation from the culture? And diagonalization tells us we are ‘in but not of’. There are over a hundred such simplistic diagrams, which I found irritating rather than helpful.

Indeed, one consequence of all of this is little or no discussion of the actual cultural issues facing Christians. This derives from two structural weaknesses in the book.

First, there is a failure to properly discuss the creation mandates and the place of the moral law in society. One would expect to see both of these foundational points in any biblical social or cultural theory.

The first chapters of Genesis are authoritative and decisive for all humanity for all time. Yet the book lacks a proper discussion of the principle of a creation mandate. There is some helpful discussion around the Sabbath, but no attempt to place that into a context built on the creation principles.

One would expect something about creation mandates in general and then a discussion around particular examples and how we apply these today – dignity and life, work and wealth creation, marriage and gender, family, property rights, and so on. How is it even possible to discuss creation without discussing the creation mandate for marriage?

Perhaps it is this failure to consider creation mandates which explains the author’s intense criticism of the market economy which is spread throughout the book? The material on economics, markets, and taxation is shallow and insufficiently grounded in a proper understanding of God’s created order.

The so-called diagonalization on tax is between paying taxes and refusing to pay tax, a simply bizarre dichotomy. Perhaps there could have been a discussion as to why the Bible has no examples of progressive income taxes, only flat rates, but I suppose it would not fit the narrative.

Second, one would look for some discussion around the continuing place, or otherwise, of the moral law in society. We got emancipation and liberation theologies (old hat, I am afraid), but nothing on the manner or extent to which God’s moral law continues to apply to society. Does the moral law matter, or not? Does it matter today, or not? None of this was discussed in what was supposed to be a book on biblical engagement with culture.

Where is the debate around values, marriage, abortion, dignity, enterprise, work, crime, the nation state, the role of government, the voluntary principle? This type of discussion from a biblical perspective (and yes, wider than the traditional personal moral issues) would be genuinely beneficial.

One final point is that C. S. Lewis is often quoted; but he would be aghast at the content. Lewis viewed family, marriage, life, and liberty at the heart of what God has provided for us – the natural law, or the Tao as he referred to it sometimes. Biblical Christians see that reflected in the moral law of Scripture and its continued relevance for us today. Lewis was also concerned for economic and educational independence and highly resistant to an overpowerful state.

I am not convinced I am much the wiser after wading through over 600 pages. In reality I don’t expect many people will get that far. The book would be much improved at half the length.

Christians need help in engaging with the culture around us, clarity over the principles involved, the dangers faced, and the stands to take. We need high quality reflection on biblical and theological foundations, as well as the inspiration of examples from history. We need concise, coherent, and clear expositions and reflections to guide us. Perhaps try Sharon James’s The Lies we are Told, The Truth we must Hold?

By Dr Richard Turnbull, Director of the Centre for Enterprise, Markets and Ethics and Chairman of the Trustees of the Christian Institute.

Asbury and the holy FOMO

A lot of people were heading to Asbury University, a private Christian university in Wilmore, Kentucky. I had not been to Asbury, and I have not been to Asbury. I do not anticipate going to Asbury.

Why were they going to Asbury? It was because, for several weeks in February, something was taking place in the chapel of Asbury University. A regular Wednesday morning chapel service became a sort of rolling worship service. Revival, we were told, is happening at Asbury. Many people were heading to Asbury. A couple of friends asked me, ‘Should I go to Asbury?’

I think they may have holy FOMO. FOMO, as you may know, is the Fear Of Missing Out. It is a fundamentally stressful state of being, involving a sort of constant apprehension – usually fuelled in these days by a stream of online information and a flood of social media – that someone, somewhere, is enjoying something that you want or need, some event or experience that will make your life fundamentally better.

It is understandable that genuine Christians, those who have longed for and prayed for the reviving of Christ’s church, should hear of events in a place like Asbury and suffer a little holy FOMO. Notice the qualifying adjective! They are not seeking to be slaves to spectacle or entranced by mere experience, but they are eager for the Lord’s favour. If that favour is being poured out, they have a genuine appetite to be a part of things.

It may still be FOMO, but I think we understand it. After all, if the Lord were genuinely reviving his people in a place, say, a hundred miles away, if there were a preacher whose ministry seemed to be attended by showers of heavenly blessing and he were speaking down the road, would you or I not have an appetite to be there, eagerly anticipating God’s mercies toward us?

Naiveté and cynicism

With regard to Asbury, typical responses seem to involve a lot of naiveté and a lot of cynicism. I am aware of good men who have refused to condemn, or even to critique, sub-scriptural religious charlatanism because they knew of similar periods or events which produced some good (the 1904-05 revival in Wales is a historical case in point – I know men who, because good things came out of it, were willing to entertain anything which involved something similar to its excesses and weaknesses, just in case; similarly, it should be said, I know some who condemned everything for the opposite reason).

For some people, if it is lively and Christian (at least, kind of) and prominent, then surely it is a good thing, and who are we to criticise?

Others are inherently negative. They hear of men of bad reputation heading that way and sneer, ‘Ah, the vultures are gathering!’ They look at the theological pedigree of a place or person and assume that the Lord should not, could not, and would not work among such unworthy people (the working assumption of our own worthiness is, of course, woven into that).

Perhaps, then, they are bitter that something may have happened elsewhere that has not happened here, to me. Some are quickly dismissive of what they consider to be an inherently empty religious spectacle. That cynicism can be dressed up in clothes that look like garments wisdom might wear: ‘Let’s just wait and see, shall we?’ (The difference between wisdom and cynicism there might lie in the tone – cynicism has already made its mind up that this is a bubble soon to pop.)

I have to be careful

So when friends ask me questions like, ‘Do you think it is genuine? Do you think I should go?’ I have to be careful how I answer.

I was recently involved in the production of a documentary called Revival: The Work of God for Reformation Heritage Books (go online to revival.movie for more information). There were several early drafts of the script for that documentary, offering two different approaches to the material. The one which prevailed for the documentary focused on the histories, the stories of God’s dealings, drawing out lessons along the way.

The other approach used the historical details to adorn and illuminate a series of lessons about the theology of revival, the setting of revival, the nature of revival, the agent of revival, the instruments of revival, the effects of revival, the dangers of revival, the pursuit of revival, and the history of revival. All of those issues are addressed in the documentary as it now stands, but the categories themselves are helpful in asking what was taking place in Asbury, and how we ought to respond to it.

Part of the problem is that I was not in Asbury, did not and do not expect to be there. Whatever took place in Asbury was communicated and filtered by way of media that are not necessarily going to portray accurately what is taking place, for good or ill, for better or for worse.

Most of us saw snippets and snapshots, some of which seemed to suggest that this phenomenon took place largely or entirely apart from any preaching and teaching, and that the revival seems to have consisted solely in an extended concert (which, in today’s Christianity, is often considered to be synonymous with ‘worship’).

Others contained suggestions, if not testimonies, of people repenting of sin and drawing near to God. I have neither the energy nor the opportunity to filter through all these reports, trying to discern and determine what is valid and valuable and what is not. A lot of people have been very quick to make their assessments and judgments, sometimes dogmatically, at a distance, and that is a dangerous game to play.

How should I respond?

So what do I say? Should I say anything? How should I respond, to them and in my own heart?

Well, I have studied in small measure the history of revival, and know some of the dangers of revivalism. I have been present when some men have preached and I was persuaded that there was an unusual sense of heavenly reality, making my soul humble and hungry. I have also seen some excess and ugliness which fill me with grief, and which are no more manifestations of the Holy Spirit’s presence and power than a twitching corpse is evidence of real life.

I know that the Lord is sovereign. I know that he works in mercy and in grace. I therefore do not think that we have any right to tell the Lord where and when and whom he must bless. I cannot restrict the Holy Spirit’s operations, but I can know how he operates. If charlatans or naysayers arrive where God is at work, I know that they might quench the Spirit of God, but I also know that the Lord might be pleased to convince, convict, and convert his elect.

I know that the devil often sets a kind of religious wildfire alongside or near a genuine work of God in order to dilute or discredit the power of the gospel. I know that the Lord uses weak and foolish instruments to accomplish his purposes, so I do not expect every man whom the Lord uses to be the finished article, either as to doctrine or practice.

I know that the primary means he uses to stir and sustain life in his saints and to bring life to the lost is the preaching of the Word of God, and so I wonder how much preaching and teaching is involved in any such situation. I am fascinated by Spurgeon’s concern that the genuine revival in Northern Ireland in the 1850s occurred without the obvious instrumentality of the Word of God, to which he attributed some of its weaknesses and its lack of longevity.

I know that the work of the Spirit involves a profound and humbling sense of the presence of a holy God, a deep and accurate conviction of sin, a genuine and striking newness of life, a committed pursuit of true godliness, and a sincere appetite for and delight in the worship of God, and I anticipate that these will be the present and lasting fruits of any genuine spiritual renewal.

I know that sometimes, in desperation for something to happen, we are ready to excuse, overlook, and romanticise something that is deeply flawed or even not genuine. I know that, because we have been disappointed in the past, we are ready to dismiss or deride anything and everything, having already concluded that it cannot or will not happen in our day or our place.

We are to test the spirits

If someone were to say, ‘Of course this is real revival! To question this is to question God himself!’ then I would say, ‘We are not to deny or to limit God, but we are to test the spirits (1 John 4:1), and those are not the same thing.’

If someone were to say, ‘Of course this is not real revival! How could it be, given where and when and how and among whom it is happening!’ then I would say, ‘And who does deserve God’s blessing, and which of us ever responds to it with a perfect blend of light and heat? Salvation is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy (Romans 9:16).’

Should we be hopeful? Why not? The Reformed have no monopoly on God’s grace. Should we be careful? Of course, for a tree is known by its fruits. The mere fact of long meetings for praise, or even prayer, or even preaching, do not a revival make! Are Christians being humbled and stirred before God, are unbelievers repenting and believing and manifesting transformed lives? Those are marks to look for and wait for.

The great theologian of revival, Jonathan Edwards, makes clear that it can take time to distinguish between a passing religious excitement and a genuine work of grace. A true work of the Spirit will not suffer for righteous caution, but an excess of excitement and a mere appetite for experience may prove dangerous, as might a sneering suspicion and ungrounded negativity.

I need not become a slave to spectacle

I am wary of chasing the fire and turning events like these into some kind of spectacle. I would be grieved at the thought of the Lord drawing near and not taking an opportunity to draw near to him. So I do not need to live in the stressful state of FOMO, even a holy FOMO. I need not become slave to spectacle or entranced by mere experience.

I need to be more eager for the Lord’s glory than for the Lord’s blessing, ready to rejoice if he is pleased to magnify his name, even if he does not magnify it where I might have prayed or hoped. I need to be more earnest in pleading for the Lord’s favour toward me and those whom I serve.

So I did not go to Asbury because I did not need to go to Asbury. I do no more than raise a quizzical eyebrow at the news that the University announced the end of the outpouring services on 24 February, for the Spirit of God cannot be shackled any more than he can be scheduled.

I have a place to be and a work to do and a God to serve. While God is often pleased to limit his operations to particular moments and periods, places, and people, and while I long to know his blessing where I am, I do not need to be a Spirit-chaser in the wrong sense.

I know that the Lord is not limited in what he can do and where. I know what he has promised, I know what I desire, and I know what he is both willing and able to do. And so, it will be better simply to serve as God has commanded, and to pray, ‘Lord, for your glory’s sake, work here too!’

Those who want to look at these issues in more depth might try the following volumes:

The Religious Affections by Jonathan Edwards

Revival and Revivalism by Iain H. Murray

Pentecostal Outpourings: Revival and the Reformed Tradition by Robert D. Smart, Michael A. G. Haykin & Ian H. Clary (eds.)

Revival: A People Saturated with God, Brian Edwards

An earlier version of this article, written in mid-February 2023, appeared on The Banner of Truth website. The article was updated and altered by the author in early March 2023 for the April edition of ET.

By Jeremy Walker, Jeremy is the pastor of Maidenbower Baptist Church in Crawley.

COMMENT: Our beliefs are being policed, this is no time to keep quiet

It is good news that Dave McConnell has successfully overturned his conviction for ‘misgendering’ a member of the public. But it is outrageous the case went as far as it did in the first place. It is high time the police stopped trying to regulate Christian beliefs. Andrea Williams is surely right when she says it is difficult for Christians to see the police as impartial when they are flying LGBT flags on top of their buildings.

It’s not just sexuality issues that the police are obsessed with. The second arrest of Isabel Vaughan-Spruce for praying silently in her head close to an abortion clinic shows this issue is more widespread. It is disappointing that MPs voted down an amendment to make clear it is lawful to engage in silent prayer and consensual conversations near an abortion centre. On top of that, the BBC hatchet job against Christian-run pregnancy crisis centres shows the major institutions of society are lined up against us.

If you think that’s a bit strong, consider the attacks on Kate Forbes MSP as soon as she announced her candidacy to be leader of the SNP and the next First Minister of Scotland. She is a member of the Free Church of Scotland and an evangelical believer. She was hounded by the press because of her biblical beliefs about sexual ethics and the sanctity of life.

By and large, she has handled it well. The polls show the public respect her, even if the cultural elites don’t. At the time this edition of ET went to press, the results of the leadership election had not yet been announced. But regardless of the result, the initial attacks against her show how difficult it is to be a Bible-believing Christian in today’s culture.

So how should Christians engage with a culture that is increasingly hostile to our beliefs? Some Christians think we should stop talking about these controversial issues and pivot to subjects that are more in tune with the modern world. Is that the answer? Should we just keep quiet about gay marriage and abortion and talk more about climate change and biblical critical theory?

No. That’s not the answer. We must not allow ourselves to be blown about by the winds of culture. It goes without saying, that means a whole lot more than just sticking to our guns on the sanctity of life and of marriage. It means preaching the whole council of God and never being ashamed of the gospel.

Nevertheless, to quote Elizabeth Rundle Charles, ‘Where the battle rages the loyalty of the soldier is proved; and to be steady on all the battlefield besides is mere flight and disgrace to him if he flinches at that one point.’ Or better still, to quote our Saviour, ‘Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.’

GUEST COLUMN: Glorifying God with an ordinary life

Ask a classroom full of six-year-olds what they want to be. Their answers are filled with the dreamy optimism of young hearts. To hear them tell it, their class will someday be filled with professional athletes, astronauts, rock stars, and presidents.

I doubt there are many tiny visionaries who see themselves as future insurance agents or call-centre operators. Yet, most of them will wind up in ordinary jobs, driving ordinary cars, doing ordinary life stuff. In fact, most of them will live the majority of their lives in relative obscurity, influencing only a small circle of people during their lifetime.

I remember when my husband Chad and I first discussed marriage. During our long-distance romance, we fired passionate emails back and forth for the months leading up to our wedding, promising each other that we would be anything but ordinary, daring each other to be different from the rest of the world.

Yet, 24 years later, here we are, paying our bills, driving a minivan, carting kids to basketball practices, and living a life that looks quite a lot like the life our parents led. Ordinary life didn’t come upon us against our will. It just came, like it comes to everyone. And we found that we didn’t want to run away screaming like we once thought we might.

Even though ordinary life has its annoyances, even though it can get a little monotonous, it turns out that it isn’t a fate worse than death, as we once imagined. We learned that ordinary life is filled with extraordinary moments, and they are enough.

In years past we couldn’t imagine what these moments would make us feel. At age nineteen you can’t dream up any feeling as heart-melting as laying eyes on your child seconds after she emerges from the womb. Yet this ‘ordinary’ occurrence happens hundreds of thousands of times every single day in our world.

How is it possible that ordinary life has turned out to be so surprisingly remarkable in so many ways? I think it’s because God is glorified in the ordinary things of life. A couple falls in love, and their marriage illustrates Christ’s love for the church. A child is born, and God’s creativity and life-giving power is showcased. A mother handles more than is humanly possible dealing with her children, and his strength is demonstrated. A child overcomes a fear, and the peace of Christ is highlighted. A man deals kindly with someone who doesn’t deserve it, and Jesus’s love shines.

Every day, in a million different ways, right in the thick of the ordinary existence of God’s people, his goodness is set before the world like a shiny trophy – except it actually looks more like a minivan filled with the kind of mess only young children can create.

We may not be called to be missionaries in a remote village. We may not be meant to speak to thousands. We may not be designed to rock out colosseums. We have to stop thinking that we could really bring glory to God, ‘if only’.

We can and do bring glory to God right where we are, you and me and all the other ordinary folks like us, living out our ordinary lives. Christ takes everything ordinary and turns it into clear pictures of his mercy, grace, goodness, and love. And he uses you and me and our kids and our messes and our successes and our failures in order to accomplish that. God gets glory out of us in extraordinary ways, even in this good old, ordinary life.

I’m not disappointed by the fact that Chad and I couldn’t maintain our delicious plans to take over the world. It wasn’t just that reality hit us and we realised we weren’t as incredible as we thought we were (although that did happen). No, it was that God became more real to us. We got to know him better, and we learned that every day with Jesus is an extraordinary adventure. His glory is all over the ‘ordinary’ existence of his people. The sooner we recognise how he works through our everyday lives, the more we will be able to enjoy the miracle of each and every amazing, ordinary day.

By Melissa Edgington, Blogger at yourmomhasablog.com

THINKING IT THROUGH: Confessions then and now (Part 2):Read, mark, inwardly digest

Last month I introduced the subject of creeds and confessions: summaries of Christian teaching adopted by a church or group of churches as an official statement of what they believe. I also mentioned catechisms: summaries of doctrine presented in question and answer form.

I tried to show you that both the Old and New Testament Scriptures include examples of concise, memorable summaries of key truths, intended to be passed on from one generation to another. The Bible itself makes clear that God’s people need such fixed statements of truth.

So, following the example of the Bible writers, all through history churches have drawn up and used creeds, confessions, and catechisms.

Of course the summaries that have been drawn up since new Testament times don’t have the same authority as the summaries which the apostles drew up. The apostles were infallible in their teaching. They were foundation stones for the whole Church. The bishops who met at Nicaea and Chalcedon or the theologians who met at Dordt or the elders who met at the Westminster Assembly were by no means infallible. So we don’t treat any of the creeds and confessions they authored as having the same total authority as Scripture.

But we still treat them with great respect. After all, Scripture promises that God will raise up people in his church with special gifts, including gifts of teaching. Well, if the Lord in his providence makes it possible for many of the teachers he’s raised up to meet together to discuss points of doctrine, then surely we ought to take their findings very seriously.

And more so, because these men were representatives of churches. The great creeds and confessions weren’t drawn up by professional scholars. They were drawn up by leaders of churches. Why is that significant? Well, because the Bible encourages churches to meet together when there’s some issue that needs resolving.

In Acts 15, we read of an occasion when the leaders of the churches of Antioch and Jerusalem came together in Jerusalem to discuss a knotty theological question. At the end, they were able to agree an answer to the question. So they issued a statement on the matter, and they could say, ‘It has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us...’ (Acts 15: 28). They were sure that the Holy Spirit had guided them in drawing up their statement. They then made it available to a wide circle of churches and expected the churches to respect it (Acts 16:1-4).

The Holy Spirit is present when representatives from different churches gather and try together to come together and seek his guidance in matters of faith and practice.

That’s how the great creeds and confessions have come into being. Take the Synod of Dordt. 56 Dutch ministers and ruling elders came together. They were joined by representatives of evangelical churches from eight other European countries. They sought together to discover from God’s Word the truth about the plan of salvation and then to put it down on paper as clearly as they possibly could for the benefit of all the churches. Surely, we should believe that God was present with them as they talked together. Surely, we ought at least to respect the summary of Christian doctrine that those godly men drew up together?

Jesus promised that the Holy Spirit will ‘guide you into all the truth’ (John 16:13). But who’s the ‘you’? Is it each individual believer on his or her own? Or was Jesus promising that the Holy Spirit would lead first the apostles and then the Church built on the apostolic foundation, step by step into all truth? Isn’t it part of that process that he brings churches together at key points in history to search the Scriptures and to come to a common mind on the great doctrines of the faith, and to set them down in a form that we can still build on today?

The creeds, confessions, and catechisms of the Church should never be treated as infallible or given an authority above that of the Bible. But they should be honoured and used judiciously. As the Westminster Confession itself puts it (chapter 31): ‘All synods or councils, since the Apostles’ times, whether general or particular, may err; and many have erred. Therefore they are not to be made the rule of faith, or practice; but to be used as a help in both.’

How do we use the great creeds and confessions today? Well, we use them in all sorts of different ways. But let me suggest six.

We should use them as a safeguard against doctrinal drift.

Take the church of which I’m a pastor. The church is committed to the Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1689) and the 1966 Strict Baptist Affirmation of Faith. We do not require every member of the church to have given personal assent to every statement in those documents. That would limit our membership to mature, well-taught, believers who have had opportunity to study our two confessional documents. The New Testament forbids us to limit our membership in that way.

So when someone applies for membership in this church they declare their agreement to a much shorter ‘basis of faith’ (you could call it a creed): seven short paragraphs summing up only the most essential gospel truths.

But it’s different for those people who have been appointed to teach and lead the church. They must accept and uphold the doctrines taught in the 1689/1966 documents. The elders of the church must themselves believe those doctrines. And it’s their responsibility to make sure that the church never drifts away from them. They must make sure that nothing is taught in the church that contradicts those documents.

If I – or any other elder – were to turn away from the system of doctrine taught in those two confessions, it would be the duty of the church to rebuke me. If I showed no repentance, the church should dismiss me. Better for a church to be without a pastor than for the pastor to be teaching false doctrine.

It’s not just that the elders themselves must continue to teach the truths that are clearly laid out in the church’s confessional statements. They must never allow anyone else in the church to teach anything that contradicts those truths. If they stood by and allowed anyone to do so, they would be failing in their responsibility to act as shepherds and safeguard the flock. And again, if that continued, they should resign or be dismissed.

Many churches have drifted away from the truths that they held at the beginning, when they were first established. In some cases they’ve done so without even realising it. But if a church is clearly committed to a confession of faith, it makes it much harder for that drift to happen.

Ministers should use them when they’re preaching.

There are times when it’s appropriate for a pastor to work through one of the great confessions in a series of sermons. That way he makes sure that the congregation understands the whole sweep of Christian doctrine and how it all fits together.

Do you know what the very first book was that the Banner of Truth Trust published? It was called A Body of Divinity, and it was a series of sermons by a Puritan preacher called Thomas Watson on the first part of the Westminster Shorter Catechism. It was followed by two more volumes: The Ten Commandments and The Lord’s Prayer. Together they make up a commentary on the Shorter Catechism.

You might think those sermons would be terribly tedious and dry. But I challenge you to try them. Many readers have found themselves astonished to discover how racy a 17th century exposition of a catechism can be! It is possible to preach through the great statements of faith and to make it genuinely exciting.

But even when a minister isn’t preaching right through one of the confessions, I think he’s wise if he at least quotes them from time to time. Why? Well partly just to make it clear that what he’s saying isn’t some novel idea that he’s just dreamed up; rather it’s what Christians in the past together agreed the Bible was teaching. And so often, a sentence from one of the great confessions will sum up a whole line of teaching in a wonderfully succinct, precise way.

If I preach about the reason why we exist, I don’t expect many of my sentences to be so memorable that everyone will be able to quote them afterwards. But if I say, What is the chief end of man? and if I answer, Man’s chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever, that sums up everything I want to say in a way that everyone can remember.

We should use the confessions and creeds to prepare folk who are coming into membership in our churches.

This is especially the case if they’re folk who are coming from an evangelical background but one that’s different from our own.

For example, if someone from a Pentecostal or ‘charismatic’ background were applying for membership in this church, I would want to take that person through the section of the 1689 Confession which deals with the sufficiency of Scripture:

The whole counsel of God concerning all things necessary for his own glory, man’s salvation, faith and life, is either expressedly set down or necessarily contained in the holy Scripture: unto which nothing at any time is to be added, whether by new revelation of the Spirit, or traditions of men.

The confession declares that the Holy Scriptures are ‘most necessary, those former ways of God’s revealing his will unto his people being now ceased’.

So I could say to this candidate for church membership, ‘Look: this was what all evangelical Baptist churches agreed the Bible taught, three hundred years ago. And that’s still where we stand as a church.’

If I were talking to someone from a dispensational background, I could take them through what the 1689 Confession says about the second coming of Christ. It was written 150 years before dispensationalism was dreamed of, yet it had already dealt with all the issues that were going to come up to confuse people.

We should use the confessions for personal study.

As you study the great creeds and confessions, you’ll be gaining a systematic understanding of what the Bible teaches; how the great doctrines of the faith fit together. And they will equip you to be useful in serving the Lord.

Let’s imagine that you’re talking with an unbelieving friend. You tell the friend that God calls every one of us to repent. He asks what it means to repent. Many of us would struggle at that point to give a clear, straightforward answer that is true to Scripture. But if you know, for example, the 1966 Affirmation, you’ll know what to say.

You may not be able to quote the Affirmation directly. But you’ll know that there are three marks of true repentance. ‘True repentance is a Spirit-wrought change both of mind and will, which brings, ONE, a personal conviction of sin (“I’ve sinned against God”), TWO, a true sorrow for it (“I’m sorry for my sins – I hate them!”), and THREE, a turning from it (“O God, save me from my sins, forgive them and change my heart!”).’

Or a Christian friend from another church asks what the Lord’s Supper is for. You might flounder. But happily, you have the 1689 Confession at hand. And you remember that it has a wonderful summary of the purposes of the Lord’s Supper:

The supper of the Lord Jesus was instituted by him the same night wherein he was betrayed, to be observed in his churches unto the end of the world, for, ONE, the perpetual remembrance, and showing forth the sacrifice of himself in his death, TWO, confirmation of the faith of believers in all the benefits thereof, THREE, their spiritual nourishment and growth in him, FOUR, their further engagement in and to all duties which they owe unto him, and FIVE, to be a bond and pledge of their communion with him and with each other…

And alongside that summary, you’ll find references to the Bible verses that teach those truths.

Do you see? Working through either the 1689 Confession or the 1966 Affirmation is a fine training course in Christian doctrine. It will equip you to teach your children, to help other believers, and to witness to unbelievers.

We should use the confessions – and perhaps especially the catechisms – for the teaching of the young both in church and at home.

That’s what many of the great catechisms were produced for: so that children could learn Bible doctrine in simple, easily memorised form. If you want your children to grow up not just with a pile of disjointed bits of knowledge in the head, but with a systematic understanding of what the Bible teaches, there’s no better way of doing it than by teaching them one or another catechism. There are catechisms for people in every age group and at every level. This is the little Mother’s Catechism prepared by John Willison in 1732:

Who made you?

God.

Who is it that redeems you?

Jesus Christ.

Who it that sanctifies you?

The Holy Ghost.

Of what were you made?

Of dust.

What doth that teach you?

To be humble and mindful of death.

Have a look too at Erroll Hulse’s Catechism for Boys and Girls. And of course, we have what must be the greatest catechism of all: the Shorter Westmister Catechism (and there are revisions of it from a Baptist stance). It was prepared particularly with children and young people in mind. Moreover, there are many helpful workbooks available to help you teach it to youngsters. In our young people’s classes, we’ve found Dennis Hustedt’s Firm in the Faith (EP) excellent.

Most important of all, the creeds and confessions should be used to nourish our own spiritual lives.

Break off a single sentence from one of the great catechisms or confessions and you’ll find that you’re devouring pure Kendal mint cake – hundreds of calories in every bite. Or you’ll find you’re chewing the finest biltong – condensed nutrition to sustain you through long days in the desert. Buy the Shorter Catechism – it’s only a little booklet – and you will find more spiritual benefit from it than from a thousand of the latest Christian bestsellers.

Let me give you some bitesized pieces from different confessional standards. Maybe they’ll whet your appetite.

From the Westminster Shorter Catechism: ‘What is God? God is a Spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth.’

How long could you spend chewing on that? Why not spend half an hour a day for a week just meditating on the seven attributes of God that are listed here: his wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth. God is infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in them all.

From Luther’s Small Catechism:

I believe in God the Father almighty, Maker of heaven and earth. What does this mean? I believe that God has created me and all that exists; that he has given me and still preserves to me body and soul, eyes, ears, and all my limbs, my reason and all my senses; and also clothing and shoes, food and drink, house and home, wife and child, land, cattle, and all my property; that he provides me richly and daily with all the necessaries of life, protects me from all danger, and preserves and guards me from all evil; and all this out of pure paternal, divine goodness and mercy, without any merit or worthiness of mine; for all of which I am in duty bound to thank, praise, serve, and obey him. This is most certainly true.

You can read through that paragraph in sixty seconds but it will give you a programme for praise and thanksgiving that will last the rest of your life.

From the Westminster Larger Catechism:

What are the duties required of in the first commandment? The duties required in the first commandment are, the knowing and acknowledging of God to be the only true God, and our God; and to worship and glorify him accordingly, by thinking, meditating, remembering, highly esteeming, honouring, adoring, choosing, loving, desiring, fearing of him; believing him; trusting, hoping, delighting, rejoicing in him; being zealous for him; calling upon him, giving all praise and thanks, and yielding all obedience and submission to him with the whole man; being careful in all things to please him, and sorrowful when in any thing he is offended; and walking humbly with him.

From the Belgic Confession of 1561:

We believe that the same God, after he had created all things, did not forsake them or give them up to fortune and chance, but that he rules and and governs them according to his holy will, so that nothing happens in this world without his appointment; nevertheless God neither is the author of, nor can he be charged with, the sins which are committed. For his power and goodness are so great and incomprehensible, that he orders and executes his work in the most excellent and just manner even when the devil and wicked men act unjustly. And as to what he doth surpassing human understanding, we will not curiously enquire into it further than our capacity will admit of; but with the greatest humility and reverence adore the righteous, just judgments of God which are hid from us, contenting ourselves that we are Christ’s disciples, to learn only those things which he has revealed to us in his Word without transgressing those limits.

This doctrine affords us unspeakable consolation, since we are taught thereby that nothing can befall us by chance, but by the direction of our most gracious and heavenly Father, who watches over us with a paternal care, keeping all creatures so under his power that not a hair of our head (for they are all numbered), nor a sparrow, can fall to the ground, without the will of our Father, in whom we do entirely trust; being persuaded that he so restrains the devil and all our enemies, that, without his will and permission, they can not hurt us…

From the Canons of the Synod of Dordt:

Man was originally formed after the image of God. His understanding was adorned with a true and saving knowledge of his Creator, and of spiritual things; his heart and will were upright, all his affections pure, and the whole man was holy. But, revolting from God by the instigation of the devil and by his own free will, he forfeited these excellent gifts; and in the place thereof became involved in blindness of mind, horrible darkness, vanity, and perverseness of judgment; became wicked, rebellious, and obdurate in heart and will, and impure in his affections...

Therefore all men are conceived in sin, and are by nature children of wrath, incapable of saving good, prone to evil, dead in sin, and in bondage thereto; and without the regenerating grace of the Holy Spirit, they are neither able nor willing to return to God, to reform the depravity of their nature, or to dispose themselves to reformation.

And then back to the Westminster Shorter Catechism:

Who is the Redeemer of God’s elect? The only Redeemer of God’s elect is the Lord Jesus Christ, who, being the eternal Son of God, became man, and so was, and continueth to be, God and man in two distinct natures, and one person, forever.

From the Heidelberg Catechism of 1563:

What is thy only comfort in life and in death? That I, with body and soul, both in life and in death, am not my own, but belong to my faithful Saviour Jesus Christ, who with His precious blood has fully satisfied for all my sins, and redeemed me from all the power of the devil; and so preserves me, that without the will of my Father in heaven not a hair can fall from my head; yea, that all things must work together for my salvation. Wherefore, by His Holy Spirit, He also assures me of eternal life, and makes me heartily willing and ready henceforth to live unto Him.

And finally from the 1823 Confession of Faith of the Calvinistic Methodists:

But as to the godly, they shall go, at the gracious call of the Judge, into life eternal. This will be a life perfectly free from sin and all its consequences; and it will bring with it the full fruition of all happiness, glory, and consolation that human nature made perfect is capable of enjoying. This glory will essentially consist in beholding the glory of the Lord shining in all the perfections of his nature, in enjoying his peace without ceasing, in admiring and loving him, rejoicing in him, serving him and becoming like him; and its endless duration will be the crown of its excellence. Various expressions are used in Scripture to set forth the eternal glory of the saints; such as ‘entering into the joy of their Lord’; ‘the eternal weight of glory’; ‘being satisfied with the likeness of God’; ‘reigning with the Lord’, and that without ceasing and for ever.

The problem with creeds and confessions is that they’re dry and cerebral! Or so many people have tried to tell us. Well, is that how it feels when you hear sentences like these? Or do you feel, as I feel, that here are words full of sweetness and delight? I’m left wondering if folk who say such things have actually read the great confessions of faith!

Let me encourage you to know and to love the great creeds, confessions, and catechisms of the Church. They are a treasure beyond all reckoning.

All Bible quotations in this article are taken from the Holy Bible, English Standard Version, published by HarperCollins Publishers © 2001.

This article is adapted from an address given at the God’s Glory Our Joy conference.

By Stephen Rees, Pastor of Grace Baptist Church, Stockport.

A WALK WITH MR O: Everyone in the world

Mr O, do you think that I ought to become a missionary?

I strongly believe that every Christian should ask themselves that question. But what has caused you to ask it?

I’ve been doing some thinking. If someone in the UK or the USA starts to seek the Lord, it is comparatively easy for them to find the way of salvation. They can buy a Bible, go to church, download Christian materials, and perhaps come across a Christian teacher or work colleague, an open-air meeting or a beach mission. Meanwhile millions of others elsewhere are doomed to live and die with almost no chance of hearing the gospel. I think that maybe I should devote the rest of my life to telling them about Christ.

What you are saying is very challenging. But there is a problem in that sort of reasoning. Can you see what it is?

No, Mr O, I can’t. In fact this train of thought has really shaken me up. I’ve been shedding tears over the lost. There are so many of them; and they have no hope.

If the only thing that sends you abroad is a sense of people’s need, believe me, you will soon be discouraged beyond recovery. You will come home weary, broken, and useless. That’s not what you want, is it?

No, Mr O. So what’s wrong with what I’ve been saying?

This might shock you, but I have to tell you that although you are so wonderfully sincere, you are not thinking like a Christian. All reasoning which is properly Christian starts with God. That is true whatever the subject might be. That is what distinguishes the way Christians ‘tick’ from the way that non-Christians ‘tick’. Your thinking about missions has started with people’s need, and not with the Lord.

And now I’m all muddled and confused. Please help me out.

Our God is a missionary God. He sent Jesus ‘that the world through him might be saved’. Before he returned to heaven, our Saviour commanded his apostles to make disciples of all nations. He then commanded that those new disciples should be taught to observe everything that he had ever commanded his apostles. In other words, the Great Commission, as we call it, is to be fulfilled by every single Christian, with no exceptions. No exceptions at all.

So every Christian is to be a missionary?

Exactly! If the Great Commission means anything, it means that every Christian everywhere is to be engaged in regular, nameable, specific activities which have as their aim the evangelisation of the whole world.

But Mr O, that’s not what we see. Most Christians I know go to Sunday services and midweek meetings, and that’s it. They don’t get involved in any other spiritual activities.

Sadly, that is true. Maybe they are the first people that we should evangelise. Didn’t the Lord say, ‘He who does not love me does not keep my words’? Nobody who loves Christ just sits back and lets the world perish. Passive Christians are probably not true Christians at all. They don’t need to be stirred. They need to be converted!

I think that I’m beginning to see things more clearly. But among those who are spiritually active, how do some of them end up as full-time missionaries in other countries?

As people engage in activities aimed at proclaiming the gospel to the whole world, something happens to some of them. They begin to ‘ache’ inside. A particular need, or a particular part of the world, begins to interest them, and it won’t let them go. The more they pray about it, the more it gets hold of them. The more they seek the will of God, the more sure they become that they should give up everything else, and devote themselves to that particular need, country, language group, or whatever. But please note that ‘the missionary call’, as it is often referred to, doesn’t come to lazy Christians. It comes to people who love Christ and who are already engaged in telling others about him. And when they leave their comfort zone to proclaim him elsewhere, it is with the conviction that Christ himself has sent them – which is why they keep at it however great their discouragements.

Stuart Olyott, is an actively retired minister and conference speaker. He preaches most Sunday mornings at Caergwrle Evangelical Church.

A SHRINK THINKS... Leadership

I am intrigued by the word used in Hebrews for elders. Here such men are called leaders (13:7, 17, 24). I’ve rarely if ever heard such men referred to as ‘leaders’. Why is this?

We should first establish that ‘leader’ in Hebrews does indeed refer to the same men we commonly call elders or pastors or overseers or teachers.

We read in Hebrews that these leaders are men who (like teachers) ‘spoke the word of God’ to those Hebrew believers – that is, who preached the gospel (13:17); who (like overseers) kept watch over them (13:17); and whose lifestyle was to be exemplary (13:17; a key qualification for overseer in 1 Timothy 3 and elder in Titus 1). Thus, the functions and office of these leaders in Hebrews are the same as that of elders/pastors/teachers/overseers.

Hebrews 13 three times uses the same word for ‘leader’, one which was commonly used for political and military leaders in the societies of that time. We see the word used that way elsewhere in the New Testament. For example, Luke (2:2) uses it for Quirinius as governor/leader of Syria. Interestingly, Matthew (2:6) uses it – when Herod was seeking to find and kill Jesus, the (rival) king of the Jews – to proclaim that Jesus will be the ruler/leader, one who will shepherd God’s people.

This use of the word ‘leader’ here brings an extra dimension to our concept of elder, doesn’t it? A dimension which, in my experience, is too often neglected in our churches: that of leading by authority. If we neglect this aspect of eldership, then our elderships will be less than biblical, they will be lopsided, unbalanced, and less effective. Just as men with this office can be called teachers because they teach, overseers because they watch over, and so on, they are called leaders because they lead the congregation.

And this leadership is like the leadership we associate with kings of the past or military leaders. An energetic, driving, initiative-taking, and decision-making leadership. The kind of leadership we find Jesus exhibiting in the Gospels. We’ve noted above from Matthew that as the promised king of Israel this shepherd was prophesied to be such a leader.

Jesus was not passive. He didn’t wait for his disciples to decide where to go, did he? He didn’t carry out votes or seek a consensus among his disciples to see what they would like to do next, did he? His leadership was dynamic. He drove his apostles and the wider disciples forward. He took decisions and persuaded them to follow him wherever he led them.

He led by example and teaching, which is why in this section of Hebrews we have the famous declaration of 13:8. The former leaders (13:7) of yesterday, like the current leaders of today (13:17) taught and lived like the unchanging Jesus. He was, is, and ever will be our example of a leader.

So why might such leadership not be seen often? Perhaps because we focus on servant leadership? We (rightly) teach servant leadership based on Jesus’s explicit teaching (and example too, of course). But in Mark 10 (and parallels) Jesus brings this teaching in response to the self-centred request of James and John to have the best places in heaven, from where they imagined themselves acting like bossy Gentile leaders, lording it over other people.

In correcting them, Jesus teaches that true leadership serves others, acting in the best interests of others and not seeking status and power for our own good. Jesus is not teaching that because servants/slaves don’t make decisions, neither should Christian leaders! The point is that while leaders have authority and should use that authority, they should use it for the good of others, for the benefit of the church they serve. They are called to wield authority by making decisions and showing initiative.

In Hebrews 13:17 we are explicitly told to obey and submit to such leaders/elders. From where do they get this authority? Ultimately, of course, from Jesus Christ, our King, the great shepherd leader himself. But he delegates this authority to local churches who are responsible for their own government and who in turn delegate this authority to their elders.

Significantly in Hebrews 13:17 the command to ‘obey your leaders’ means to put your confidence in your leaders, to trust them to lead and so follow them. Our obedience involves trusting in practice these men to whom we have entrusted the authority. Our elders should be men we can trust to make the right decisions – that is, decisions for the benefit of the church, not themselves; men whom we trust to take initiatives that will direct the church into new practices and in new directions which are for our benefit and not just theirs. Such elders are also teachers who guide us from the Scriptures, pastors who guard the flock, and overseers who look out for us for our good. All aspects captured by these different titles need to be present in a balanced eldership.

Are our elders too timid? Too worried about upsetting people to make decisions and lead? Are people in our churches unwilling to trust them and to cede decision-making authority to them? Trust is important because, when watching over the congregation, elders see and learn and remember important factors which many in the church don’t know about and shouldn’t know about, important information which affects decisions.

Trust and a willingness to cede authority to elders is also important because they are our teachers and are mature Christians. Neither is true for all members in a church. Certainly there are mature and able men and women in the congregation too, including those who can teach. Wise elders will learn from such people and seek their counsel.

But overall the congregation by definition does not have the consistent quality of biblical knowledge and godly living of its elders. Which is why elders are best placed to make the decisions for and lead a church. And why elders should lead. And why congregations should trust and follow.

Alan Thomas, Professor and Consultant in Psychiatry. Elder at Newcastle Reformed Evangelical Church.

NEWS

News in brief

Need for new RE teachers

A recruitment campaign for religious education teachers has been launched, as data shows a massive 33 per cent drop in the number of applicants over the past decade. According to the Beyond the Ordinary campaign organisers, the Department for Education has missed its target for the recruitment of RE teachers in nine of the past ten years.

Yield to the Bible, Welby

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, has been urged to submit to the authority of the Bible on sexual ethics by the leader of one of the largest Anglican churches in England. Revd William Taylor, Rector of St Helen’s Bishopsgate in the City of London, urged him not to compromise the plain teaching of Scripture.

Will Brownies ban God songs?

Girlguiding has faced a backlash over suggestions they are about to axe references to God in their Brownies campfire songs. In a now deleted blog post, they said some of their traditional songs should be made more ‘inclusive’. One example given for lyrics that must change was, ‘Oh Lord, our God; thy children call.’

Never-married numbers rise

The percentage of adults who have never married or been in a civil partnership has increased every decade, from 26.3 per cent in 1991 to 37.9 per cent in 2021. The percentage of adults who are married or in a civil partnership (including separated) has fallen from 58.4 per cent in 1991 to 46.9 per cent in 2021.

New positions at UBM/UFM

Tim Howlett, Executive Officer for United Beach Missions for 12 years, has become its new Chairman. Tim’s former role passes to James Lycett. Tim has also become Head of Partnerships for UFM Worldwide. This role will see Tim develop UFM’s partnerships with UK churches, promoting engagement with world mission.

FIEC appoints new directors

The FIEC has appointed Gareth Lewis and Paul Mallard to their staff as Director for South Wales and Director for the West Midlands, respectively. Paul Mallard will also chair a Theology Team for FIEC, helping churches think through current theological challenges. The FIEC recently set aside financial resources to expand the work of its local directors.

Carrick church 5th anniversary

Carrick Free Baptist Church in Falmouth celebrated its 5th anniversary in February. A Saturday meeting was held to mark the occasion, with visiting speaker Stephen Ford (Lordshill Baptist Church, Snailbeach) preaching from Romans. Mike Lynch, elder at CFBC, said ‘It has been another good year for the church; we continue to know God’s blessing and sustaining care.’

EA Wales new head

Tim Rowlands has been appointed head of the Evangelical Alliance in Wales. EA said the role involves ‘supporting the church in Wales in its local mission and amplifying its voice into wider society and government’. A Welshman himself, Tim has ministered for 12 years in the Assemblies of God. He is also a classically trained musician.

US abortion legal actions

Two legal cases in the US show the issue of abortion is still far from settled. In Texas, five women are suing the State claiming they were illegally denied an abortion. In a separate legal case in New York, a court has ruled that a pro-life centre cannot be forced to hire pro-abortion staff.

Iran releases jailed pastor

A pastor has been set free from prison in Iran as part of a national amnesty. Yousef Nadarkhani, who has now been reunited with his family, was one of four Christians arrested in Rasht on 13 May 2016. Iran tolerates its native Christian minority, but severely persecutes those who convert from Islam to Christianity.

Russian forces target pastors

Russian forces in Ukraine have been accused of targeting evangelical pastors in the east of the country, accusing them of being US spies. According to persecution charity Release International, evangelical pastors are being arrested by Russian soldiers on the spurious grounds that the pastors acting for the American government.

Indian arsonist burns a church

Plans to burn several church buildings in central India were thwarted after officers arrested three Hindu extremists, but not before they had set one structure ablaze. Pastor Mahesh Kumre of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Chaukipura, Madhya Pradesh, said he found the building charred and the name ‘Ram’ written on a church wall in Hindi.

Street preacher overturns his conviction for ‘misgendering’

A judge has overturned the conviction of a Christian street preacher who was arrested and reported to the government’s anti-terrorism watchdog for ‘misgendering’ a heckler.

Dave McConnell, 42, from Wakefield, was appealing a conviction at Leeds Crown Court after he was arrested under section 4A of the Public Order Act 1986.

He was originally arrested for ‘insulting’ a member of the public in Leeds City Centre on 8 June 2021 after he ‘misgendered’ a biological male who self-identified as a ‘trans woman’.

According to his legal supporters, McConnell had been assaulted, abused, and had his belongings stolen while he was preaching.

Yet it was he who was subsequently convicted at the Magistrates Court, made to pay costs of £620 and forced to do 80 hours of community service.

This is despite there being no legal obligation to use a trans person’s preferred pronouns in the UK.

Following his conviction, and prior to the sentencing hearing, the Probation Service reported Dave to the Joint Counter-Terrorism Team.

But his conviction has now been overturned on appeal, and McConnell has welcomed the decision.

He said, ‘I am delighted and relieved that the Judge has overturned the conviction and that I can clear my name.

‘I am, however, appalled at how I have been treated by the authorities in this matter. No other street preacher, professional or member of the public must go through what I have.

‘“Misgendering” is not a crime and should never be treated as such. I do not believe I was “misgendering”, I believed I was telling the truth.

‘How I was treated was totally unreasonable and should concern anyone who cares about Christian freedoms and free speech in this country.’

He added, ‘Jesus changed my life as a young man, and I am passionate about engaging people with the hope that made such a difference to me.’

The Christian Legal Centre’s Andrea Williams said, ‘Police forces who fly pride flags from their headquarters are failing to provide Christian preachers with impartial protection.

‘If a person cries “offence” at a street preacher’s words, it’s the street preacher that is punished and taken out. This is deeply illiberal.’

See Comment

By Mike Judge, Editor

The Prime Minister vows to review sex education in schools

Rishi Sunak has committed to bringing forward a review of statutory guidance on Relationships and Sex Education (RSE), in light of the ‘safeguarding scandal’ of inappropriate materials being used in schools.

The Prime Minister made the pledge in the House of Commons in March in response to a question from Miriam Cates MP.

She told Sunak that children are being ‘subjected to lessons that are age-inappropriate, extreme, sexualising and inaccurate, often using resources from unregulated organisations that are actively campaigning to undermine parents. This is not a victory for equality, it is a catastrophe for childhood.’

Rishi Sunak said the review will ensure schools are not teaching ‘contested content’ in Relationships, Sex and Health Education (RSHE).

Cates had previously presented the Prime Minister with a letter and 130-page report documenting ‘unsuitably sexually explicit’ teaching resources.

Around 50 Conservative MPs publicly pressed him to ‘act with similar urgency and decisiveness’ as the Isle of Man government, where all sex education lessons have been suspended pending an independent review of the curriculum.

Parents remove their child, aged 4, from Church of England primary school over gender-change book

Parents of a four-year-old child at a Church of England (CofE) primary school have taken their children out after being told their children would take part in ‘gender identity lessons’.

St Mary’s primary school in Prittlewell, Essex, were told that World Book Day would be marked by getting the children to explore their gender identities through the book ‘My Shadow is Pink’.

2 March is generally marked by children dressing up as their favourite book characters as an encouragement to get children to read.

But the headteacher of St Mary’s told parents that the book by Scott Stuart, written about and for his young son, would be ‘used as a stimulus for the day’.

They were told that throughout the day ‘They will engage with the story and explore the themes within it’. The children were asked to dress up ‘to reflect how they see their shadow and how they see themselves’.

The book promotes gender confusion and the idea that changing what you wear or the things you like to do potentially affects your natal sex. It suggests an inner gender identity that is your true self (the shadows).

The book, which says it is appropriate for three-year-olds, begins to plant the idea that children can be born in the wrong body.

Christian parents Stephen and Joanne Evans said they ‘immediately knew something was not right’ when they found out and asked permission to withdraw their four-year-old for the day.

Their view, shared by a number of other parents, was that the book would sow confusion and was not appropriate for impressionable primary school children.

In a letter to the parents, headteacher Aleishia Lewis granted permission for withdrawal but also pushed back on the position the parents were taking and refused to change course.

Her letter to the Evanses, seen by Christian Concern, said, ‘If you would like to find out more about how the CofE is navigating their growing and developing understanding in relation to Christian teaching and learning about identity, sexuality, relationships and marriage, I would encourage you to read Living in Love and Faith.’

But Christian Concern said the letter demonstrated how the CofE’s continued departure from biblical teaching on human sexuality was being – and would continue to be – ‘weaponised against parents who believe we are born male and female and who do not want their children exposed to transgender ideology’.

Mr Evans and his wife have now written to the CofE’s chief education officer – the perhaps aptly named Nigel Genders.

Woman arrested for a second time for praying in her head near an abortion clinic, despite court judgment

A woman has been arrested for a second time after police officers confronted her when she was praying silently in her head near to the location of an abortion clinic.

A video of this second arrest of Isabel Vaughan-Spruce has been obtained by religious liberty group ADF UK and posted to social media, where it has gone viral.

The video shows police officers telling her, ‘you’ve said you’ve been engaging in prayer, which is the offence.’

Her second arrest came just weeks after a court confirmed that Vaughan-Spruce was not guilty in a previous incident where she was accused of breaching a Public Spaces Protection Order (PSPO) – also known as a ‘buffer zone’ – by silently praying near an abortion centre.

Commenting on her second arrest, Vaughan-Spruce said, ‘It was made clear by the court that my silent prayers were not a crime.

‘And yet, again, I have been arrested and treated as a criminal for having the exact same thoughts in my head, in the same location.

‘The ambiguity of laws that limit free expression and thought – even in peaceful, consensual conversation or in silent, internal prayer – leads to abject confusion, to the detriment of important fundamental rights. Nobody should be criminalised for their thoughts.’

She is being supported by ADF UK which said her arrest was attended by six police officers.

Jeremiah Igunnubole, legal counsel for ADF UK, said, ‘This isn’t 1984, but 2023 – nobody should be criminalised for their thoughts, for their prayers, and for a consensual conversation on a public street.

‘The cack-handed attempts to repeatedly criminalise Isabel’s prayers, and the clear confusion on the behalf of police officers about the status of freedom of thought under the law, makes clear that censorial “buffer zones” are not fit for purpose in a democratic society.

‘We all stand firmly against harassment on public streets. Harassment is already illegal. A government review in 2018 found that harassment near abortion facilities is rare, and peaceful prayer and offers of charitable help were the most common activities there.

‘The government concluded at that point that censorship zones would be disproportionate. No further reviews have since been conducted. What has now changed?’

Isabel Vaughan-Spruce’s second arrest came just days before MPs in the House of Commons were due to vote on proposals to introduce so-called ‘buffer zones’ nationwide.

An amendment had been tabled to make clear that silent prayers and consensual conversations should not be criminalised within such zones, but it did not receive sufficient support to be passed.

‘Terrorist’ chaplain vows to appeal against employment tribunal ruling

A school chaplain who was reported to the government’s terrorist watchdog for his sermon against ‘identity politics’ has vowed to appeal a tribunal ruling in which his case was dismissed.

As previously reported by ET, 50-year-old Bernard Randall was sacked from his role at Trent College in Derbyshire after delivering a sermon in 2019, in which he told pupils it was okay to question ideologies, including LGBT dogmas.

It was not the first time he had come up against the the school’s progressive policies – in 2018, he had refused to join in a chant of ‘smash heteronormativity’ during a training session by LGBT group Educate and Celebrate.

He was secretly reported to the government’s terrorist watchdog, Prevent, following his sermon, which he claimed had been developed in response to questions posed by pupils about transgender ideology.

In 2022, the East Midlands Employment Tribunal heard his case against his employer, where he sued them for discrimination, harassment, victimisation, and unfair dismissal.

But in the ruling handed down on 27 February 2023, employment Judge Victoria Butler ruled against Randall.

In relation to his sermon, she stated, ‘The duty to safeguard pupils from the risk of harm and the requirement to comply with the Independent Schools Standards Regulator outweigh the Claimant’s right to express his beliefs in the manner he did in a school environment.’

She also ruled the school had been within its rights to refer him to Prevent, saying, ‘The referral arose because of the objectionable way in which the Claimant manifested his beliefs and was justified because of the need to take a cautious approach from a safeguarding perspective.’

Speaking after the case, he described the ruling against him as a ‘blow for free speech and Christian freedoms’ and vowed to appeal.

He said, ‘It is a personal blow, but more importantly, it is a blow for all those who believe in freedom of speech, in freedom of religion, and in an educational system which opens the minds of young people rather than narrowing them or imposing an ideology that many or most in our society find troubling.’

BBC Panorama programme in ‘hatchet job’ against Christian pregnancy crisis centres

A Christian-ethos pregnancy crisis centre in the northeast of England has accused the BBC of producing ‘a hit piece attacking our work’.

The Tyneside Pregnancy Advice Centre (TPAC), which has been operating for 14 years in Newcastle upon Tyne, was targeted by the BBC Panorama programme.

The programme, which was broadcast on 27 February, branded the Christian-run centre as ‘coercive’, ‘manipulative’, and ‘deceptive’.

But Dr Chris Richards, on behalf of the centre’s Trustees, said, ‘The BBC has produced a hit piece attacking our work.

‘We were not invited to be interviewed,’ he said, adding, ‘We are submitting a complaint to the BBC.’

Panorama, which is the BBC’s flagship investigative programme, sent an undercover reporter into the Tyneside centre.

Dr Richards, founder of the centre, had given a full statement to the BBC ahead of broadcast, but it was heavily edited down by the publicly-funded broadcaster.

The full statement said, ‘Tyneside Pregnancy Advice Centre has a 14-year track record of compliance with all of its regulatory obligations. Over 1,200 women have benefitted from the work of our staff and volunteers.

‘Panorama could have sought journalistic balance by approaching us directly. Instead, your activist production team chose the prejudicial medium of a secret recording to seek to discredit a registered charity that provides free services to women who request them.

‘Our staff member quickly realised the person she was dealing with was a bad faith actor. Anyone who reads our website can see where we are coming from.

‘We are not a campaigning organisation. TPAC has never received any funding from US anti-abortion groups, and the BBC ought to know better than to peddle conspiracy theories.’

House of Commons rejects attempts to make clear that silent prayer is lawful

The House of Commons has struck down an amendment that would have protected people’s freedom to pray silently near abortion clinics.

The amendment was debated as part of the Public Order Bill which seeks to outlaw peaceful protest outside abortion clinics in England and Wales.

A group of MPs tried to clarify that ‘a person engaged in consensual communication or silent prayer’ within a censorship zone would not be committing an offence.

The amendment – which was tabled by Andrew Lewer MP and backed by MPs including Fiona Bruce, Miriam Cates, Nick Fletcher, Carla Lockhart, and Sir Edward Leigh – was defeated by 299 votes to 116.

Speaking in the House of Commons before the vote, Andrew Lewer MP said, ‘I have tabled my amendment because the bill, in its current form, has a problem.

‘The part of the bill it deals with is leading us into the territory of thought crimes and creates unprecedented interference with the rights to freedom of speech and thought in the UK.’

He continued, ‘I understand that many people will find it highly inappropriate for vocal or difficult protests to be held right outside abortion clinics, and I categorically condemn harassment against women at all points in their life, let alone near an abortion facility.

‘However, that is a world away from the police being able to detain people and question them over what they are doing if they are merely standing there or praying quietly – or worse, if they are praying silently and are then asked by the police, agents of the state, “What are you thinking about?”’

Over 70 people celebrate the marvel of God’s love at Reformation and Revival Fellowship conference held in Swanwick, Derbyshire

More love to thee, O Christ, more love to thee.

Sung near the start of the annual Reformation and Revival Fellowship conference last November, these words captured the emphasis of the speakers’ messages.

Over 70 people gathered for the conference at the Hayes Conference Centre in Swanwick, Derbyshire.

Our speakers were Ian Parry (Cardiff), Tim Conway (based in Manchester but originally from San Antonio, Texas), and Stuart Olyott from Liverpool.

The ministry was warm and encouraging; the greatness of God and the marvel of his love were set out and greatly blessed to our hearts.

Ian Parry took us through Genesis 20, showing us Abraham’s folly and the lessons to be learned. Emphasis was put upon believing what God has said and being devoted to his honour.

Tim Conway opened up the letters to the churches at Ephesus and Philadelphia found in Revelation. The greatness of the Lord, the challenge of the work, and the call to greater love and devotion to Christ were graphically brought out for us.

Stuart Olyott took us to John 20 and 21, showing us ‘Soul-refreshing views of Jesus’. The tenderness and compassion of the Saviour shone out to us. Our hearts echoed the words of the hymn as we longed to have ‘more love to Christ’.

Videos of this year’s conference are available at Reformation and Revival’s YouTube channel. CDs of messages can be obtained from Jim Lawson (jim.lawson@ntlworld.com).

By Roger Hitchings

Jude Conference, held in Bedford, highlights value of the local church

In January, the 4th annual Jude Conference took place at Providence Baptist Chapel in Bedford. The subject this year was ‘Restoring our affection for the local church’.

David Kay (Barnstaple) chaired the conference and reminded us how easily we can slip into low and wrong views of the local church. The subject was then addressed in six sessions.

Jonathan Northern (Baldock) reminded us of the divine purpose and defining characteristics of the local church – a glorious and precious institution in God’s eyes – and of Christ’s gracious focus and unerring manifesto: ‘I will build my church’.

Darren Cadapen (East Dulwich) explored the manifold impacts of the internet, both positive and negative. The internet impacts our assumptions and church life together. Darren reminded us that God’s wonderful coming among us was ‘in person’.

Oliver Wyncoll (Bedford) spoke about the centrality of church membership – its necessity, biblical metaphors, wonderful privileges, and covenant obligations.

Roland Burrows then gave us a helpful historical perspective on the local church.

Wezi Kaonga focused on Christ’s rule through church officers, with particular emphasis on ‘pastors and teachers’ as precious gifts from Christ to his churches.

John Thackway (Salisbury) took the last session, ‘When problems arise’. This session benefitted from more than 40 years of pastoral experience from its speaker. We were reminded of the need for faithful care and patient kindness, together with great wisdom as we seek to prevent and respond to various troubles that may occur in our churches. We were reminded that the Lord has his perfect purposes for good even through troubles.

By Derek Sparrow

Church Support Fellowship established to heed modern-day ‘Macedonian Call’ and offers to help in time of pressing need

In the book of Acts, we read of how Paul’s second and third missionary journeys were not just pioneering ventures, but were efforts to assist churches by organising, directing, and supporting them. The apostle had heard the Macedonian Call: ‘Come over into Macedonia, and help us’ (Acts 16:9).

The needs of churches are many and pressing in the UK today. In response to this, the Church Support Fellowship was set up in 2019.

A committee was formed which included Malcolm Watts (chairman), Roland Burrows, Richard Clarke, Dewi Higham, Jonathan Northern, Neil Pfeiffer, and John Thackway. Roland Burrows agreed to be the contact with the churches.

The deep concern held in common was for the spiritual state of churches. The desire was to help and encourage those which were in evident need and to support believers who were seeking, under God, to establish new churches.

The onus is upon us all to see if we can do something for these churches, thus ensuring a continuing witness at this present time and in future years.

Can we stand by, unmoved and undisturbed, by so many churches being closed? Should we not rather consider in our hearts what could be done to prevent further decline and irretrievable loss? There is a Macedonian cry of ‘Come over and help us’ from many struggling causes today.

We believe there is much that can be done at this time. We can make the cause of God and truth the great burden of our prayers. We can encourage our churches to look beyond themselves to the needs of other, smaller churches. We can encourage such churches by visiting them on occasion.

We can consider making financial gifts to support their work. We can mention to other men – gifted and called to preach – the need to minister in these smaller churches. If requested, ministers might be willing to take some oversight and care of a weak and needy church. We can do whatever lies in our power to show them spiritual interest and concern.

Our Lord was moved by the action of the woman in Bethany who anointed him with ‘spikenard very precious’, saying of her, ‘she hath done what she could’. We pray he will observe and approve our efforts today, and graciously say, ‘they have done what they could’.

By Roland Burrows

Dinosaur bones and Babylonian stones on display at new creation museum and research centre at Shropshire site

The Creation Research Centre, a new museum featuring fossils, dinosaur models, and archaeological artefacts has opened in Oswestry, Shropshire.

The facility also serves as a research centre for creation science. It is one of only two creation museums in the UK (the other being the Genesis Expo in Portsmouth).

A two-storey retail showroom in Oswestry was acquired for the purpose in July 2022 by Creation Research UK, a ministry founded by Australian geologist and conference speaker John McKay.

The director of the UK branch and curator of the museum is Joseph Hubbard. He has worked and travelled with McKay on international speaking tours, and has academic credentials in geology and zoology.

Speaking to ET, Joseph said that defending the historicity of Genesis is critical to Christianity: ‘Science aside, the New Testament writers assumed the historicity of Genesis – Paul, Peter, and Jesus himself made reference to the events of Genesis as real events that are foundational to the gospel.’

Hubbard has been collecting fossils since childhood trips along the Norfolk coast. He and McKay now have a vast collection, unearthed from sites across the world. The museum will serve to store and exhibit many of them. ‘We have over 25,000 fossils and artefacts,’ Joseph told ET.

Fossils on public display will include those of plants, crocodiles, and the skull of a mosasaurus (an extinct, 10-ton aquatic predator).

The Centre will also feature archaeological treasures, including Egyptian artefacts and a 2,500-year-old Babylonian foundation stone containing an inscription referring to (and perhaps written by) King Nebuchadnezzar.

The development of the museum has received a mixed reception. Local Shropshire newspapers reported on the new facility as a curiosity, but much feedback criticised the museum as ‘unscientific’.

However, Joseph believes the exhibits will help defend the creationist position and challenge visitors spiritually: ‘Rather than a record of life on Earth, fossils are a record of death on Earth. They evidence God’s judgment upon mankind through a worldwide flood.’

The facility will also enable visitors to witness experiments which help vindicate Young Earth Creationism. These include tests showing that stalactites and stalagmites can form rapidly (undermining the popular view that they only form slowly and thus demonstrate an old earth)

Other experiments will include matchsticks, water, and jam jars to demonstrate how polystrate fossils were formed by catastrophic flooding, such as would have occurred in Noah’s Flood.

By John Tredgett

Induction held for Donavan Lurrie at Cornerstone church, Bolton

The induction of Revd Donavan Lurrie took place at the Cornerstone Church, Bromley Cross, Bolton, last December. It was a happy, well-attended occasion.

Joining the Cornerstone congregation were Donavan’s family, as well as men who had faithfully preached the Word at the church prior to Donavan’s call.

The induction was led by Frank Brearley. He and his wife Jeanette are missionaries from New Tribes Mission and have a long association with Cornerstone.

Mark Bassett (Chorley Evangelical Church) led in prayer before Donavan shared his testimony, outlining how he and his family had been seeking the will of God for the future, citing Jeremiah 29:11 as an encouragement and a confirmation.

Donavan’s sister-in-law Caron then sang ‘All my life you have been faithful’. A message was given by Nigel Lurrie, a minister himself and brother of Donavan.

He outlined the challenge of living in accordance with the will of God. Using Luke 5, he spoke of how new wine could not be put into old wineskins. He highlighted to the congregation the need for changes in attitudes and behaviour if God is to do something new.

After the service, family, church members, and friends gathered in the ‘upper room’ of the church building to enjoy fellowship.

The congregation is glad to praise God for his providence in supplying its needs through a new pastor. Its members and friends readily support Donavan and his family in his ministry.

By Janet Hathaway

Obituary: Michael Grant (1941–2022)

On the last Sunday of October, 2022, Michael Grant preached his last sermon for Midleton Baptist Church in County Cork.

He preached on Jesus’s words about the last days, and on the importance of putting our trust in the Lord. Towards the end of the sermon, he shared a quotation encouraging the congregation to live life ‘as if Christ died yesterday, rose again today, and is coming again tomorrow’.

These were not simply words for Michael Grant. The message he preached that day was a description of the way he lived his own life until his death on the last day of 2022 at the age of 81.

Michael first responded to the gospel as a young man in Somerset after establishing a successful career as manager of a butcher’s shop.

His personal encounter with the living God changed the course of his life. He and his wife Rosemary set out in a new direction: Michael gave up his career and they sold their lovely home so that Michael would have the money to get a theological education. He felt strongly called to preach.

In 1972, Michael and Rosemary moved their family to Ireland so that Michael could become pastor of Waterford Baptist Church, where he served faithfully for 25 years.

Michael and Rosemary then moved to Bangor, County Down, and finally to Killeagh, County Cork.

Michael was a gifted preacher who gave his life in service to small churches in Ireland. The contexts were difficult, with strong opposition and fruit coming slowly.

Nonetheless, there remain people all over Ireland who tell stories of the impact of his visits, encouragements, and exhortations and the legendary hospitality of Michael and Rosemary’s home.

Michael Grant’s life was not lived on a large scale, or on a prominent platform. It was lived simply, faithfully, and focused on the Saviour. He loved his family, his church, and the communities he lived in.

By Seth Lewis

Obituary: Revd Edward ‘Ted’ Donnelly (1943–2023)

Evangelicals have been mourning the passing of Revd Edward Donnelly: pastor, seminary professor, and conference speaker.

Aged 79, he died on 4 March following a long illness. Raised in Belfast, Ted was educated at Methodist College Belfast and Queen’s University Belfast.

Ted was converted through the preaching of Revd A. R. Wright (his future father-in-law), and soon afterwards enrolled at the Reformed Theological Hall in Belfast to train for ministry.

He also studied for one year at Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary, Pittsburgh, and later completed a M.Th. degree with Queen’s University.

Ted was ordained and installed as minister of Dervock RP Church in 1967. In 1970 he married Lorna Wright and they sought to exalt the Lord’s name together in all they did for him.

From 1972 until 1974, Ted and Lorna served as missionaries in Nicosia, Cyprus, until war forced them to return home. Upon their return, Ted was called to the pastorate of Trinity Street RP Church in Belfast.

Apart from a three-year pastorate in Portrush, Ted pastored this congregation for 35 years, seeing the church relocate to the suburbs and grow, sending numerous men into the ministry, and planting a daughter congregation in Carrickfergus.

Ted’s ministry was marked by clear, faithful, and memorable preaching. Paying tribute to his father’s gifts, John Donnelly said at the thanksgiving service, ‘As he spoke he… wove a tapestry which came together beautifully in each sermon. And the picture was always of Christ.’

Ted also served as Professor of New Testament language and literature at the Reformed Theological College for almost his entire ministry.

Ted’s ministry extended far afield. He was much in demand at conferences across the world, and authored notable books including Peter: Eyewitness of his Majesty and Biblical Teaching on the Doctrine of Heaven and Hell. He served as a Trustee of the Banner of Truth trust for ten years.

Ted is survived by his wife Lorna, three children and seven grandchildren.

By John Tredgett

Obituary: Michael Toogood (1936–2023)

Michael Toogood, an evangelist and pastor who laboured for two decades reaching the lost in London’s West End, has died.

Raised in Borough Green, Kent, Michael was converted at the age of 20. He married Pam, and they had four children together.

After initially pursuing a career in graphic design, Michael felt called to the ministry: in 1962 he was set apart by his church in Bexleyheath, first as an evangelist and then as a pastor.

Michael served a church in New Cross and planted a church in Thamesmead, southeast London. For the next twenty years he engaged in church planting in central London. He went with Pam and two of his four children to the sleazy but exhilarating district of Soho in order to plant a church.

Soho was notorious as London’s red-light district, replete with night clubs, casinos, and brothels. The only accommodation Michael secured on arrival was an old basement flat lacking a bathroom.

The communal area could be very unpleasant. One neighbour had a separate toilet outside his flat which was in a filthy state. Michael immediately bought a mop and some disinfectant and cleaned up the stinking room.

Michael brought the gospel to other flat dwellers, meeting a whole range of responses. Many were the victims of sex, drug, and alcohol abuse.

A room was hired and a small congregation began to meet. Slowly, others began to attend. The area has changed, but the work continues today.

Michael wrote the story of what happened in Mission to Soho, a humbling read recounting God’s faithfulness.

Michael had a delightful personality; he was gracious and humble. He was a true spiritual giant – someone who not only cleans a lavatory for a troubled neighbour, but keeps it clean week by week without complaint.

He passed into the Lord’s presence on 12 February.

By Geoff Thomas and Andrew Murray

US: Keller Centre’s disturbing article is removed from The Gospel Coalition website after criticism

A deeply troubling article comparing Christ’s union with the church to the mechanics of sex between a husband and wife has been pulled from The Gospel Coalition (TGC) website.

The article, which contained graphic references to physical marital intimacy, drew widespread criticism and was eventually taken down by TGC.

ET has decided not to quote from the article, as the details are far too explicit and inappropriate to be republished here.

The article was posted as a Keller Centre book excerpt on the TGC website, taken from the book, Beautiful Union, written by Joshua Ryan Butler.

Butler is a lead pastor of Redemption Tempe, a church near Arizona State University. The subtitle for his book is, ‘How God’s vision for sex points us to the good, unlocks the true, and (sort of) explains everything.’

The Keller Centre for Cultural Apologetics was launched by TGC in February, named after Tim Keller who co-founded TGC in 2005.

Butler was a fellow of the newly-established Keller Centre and was scheduled to lead an online learning cohort, but he resigned following the criticism of his article.

Rebecca McLaughlin, a fellow at the Keller Centre welcomed the decision. She said, ‘I think it was the right decision for Josh to resign in light of this, for the online cohort he was going to lead on Beautiful Union to be cancelled, and for him no longer to speak on it at TGC23.’

She added, ‘I’m thankful that TGC is going to review its processes, especially written pieces connected to the Keller Centre. I think this is vital, in light of recent events.’

A statement released by Julius Kim, President of TGC, said the organisation had listened to the serious objections of its critics and had discussed the issue with the Board of Directors.

He said, ‘please forgive us. The Keller Centre for Cultural Apologetics is a new effort by TGC, and we are still learning how to work with our directors and our fellows to produce content that will serve our readers in a way that is trusted and wise.’

The Keller Centre says it wants to help ‘Christians share the truth, goodness, and beauty of the gospel as the only hope that fulfils our deepest longings.’

The Centre also plans to host an eight-week online learning cohort hosted by Christopher Watkin to take participants through his book, Biblical Critical Theory.Richard Turnbull has written a special review of Watkin’s book, published in this edition of ET, on p.25.

Australia: Law Commission accused of trying to water down the ethos of the nation’s faith schools

A row has broken out between the Australian Law Reform Commission and faith schools over plans to alter the rules about the hiring of teachers.

The Commission says faith schools should only be allowed to insist certain key roles – like head teachers and religious education teachers – are filled by teachers who share the faith ethos of the school.

Other staff roles, according to the Commission, should be open to any applicant irrespective of their faith, including teachers who are living an LGBT lifestyle.

But faith schools oppose the plans, saying it would mean the vast majority of teaching staff would not have to share the faith of the school, and the school’s ethos would be significantly watered down.

Faith groups have also accused the Law Commission of double standards – on the one hand the commission says LGBT teaching staff would help support LGBT students, but on the other hand they say it is not necessary for teachers to share the faith of the school to help support the ethos of the school.

The Sydney Anglican Church said the law commission has ‘inconsistently rejected the argument … that faith-based schools need teachers of the same religion as role models’.

‘Its rejection is based on the spurious ground for the purposes of this inquiry that “preferencing staff on the grounds of religion disadvantages those who are not of the same religion”.

‘This has the appearance of an unwarranted double standard which preferences one worldview over another.’

An alliance of religious leaders was formed to reject the proposals by the Australian Law Reform Commission.

The group includes the Sydney Anglican and Catholic churches, Greek Orthodox church, the National Imams Council, and Executive Council of Australia Jewry.

They wrote a letter to the attorney general arguing the ‘severe limits’ proposed by the ALRC went beyond its terms of reference.

The Australian Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, has responded by reiterating that the government will respect the right of religious schools to select staff based on faith.

He said, ‘we made our position clear a long time ago that faith-based schools can employ people of their own faith.’

At the 2022 election, the Labor Party under Anthony Albanese promised to ‘protect teachers from discrimination at work, while maintaining the right of religious schools to preference people of their faith in the selection of staff’.

China: Christians are forced to register on a government app before they are given permission to attend a church

Christians in Henan province, China, must register their details using an online app to receive approval to attend church services, according to the religious freedom charity China Aid.

The charity says that local believers must register and make an appointment through an internet application called ‘Smart Religion’, developed by the Ethnic and Religious Affairs Commission of Henan Province.

China Aid says the application requires religious people to select the religious venue they want to attend before booking.

Applicants must fill in personal information, including name, phone number, ID number, permanent residence, occupation, and date of birth, before they can make a reservation.

Those who are allowed into the church must also have their temperature taken and show a reservation code.

Many older Christians do not have a smart phone to access the app, and churches say the requirement to register has had a negative impact on church attendance.

Henan is reported to have one of the largest Christian populations in China, but the requirement to register with the app affects Muslims and Buddhists as well as Christians.

In July 2020, a symposium on the construction of a religious big data management platform was held in Henan. At that event several projects were discussed, including the construction of the ‘Smart Religion’ online app.

According to China Aid, the development of religious big data management includes the use of smart technologies – such as GPS tracking, artificial intelligence, and video surveillance – to identify who goes to a religious service, where, and when.

China’s Henan Daily reported that on 24 February this year, Zhang Leiming, a member of the Standing Committee of the Henan Provincial Party Committee and head of the United Front Work Department, met with the Provincial Ethnic and Religious Committee.

He reportedly said that it is necessary to strictly manage religion in a comprehensive way, and to unite and guide the majority of religious believers to follow the Chinese Communist Party unswervingly.

Global: Anglican group says it will break communion with the Church of England over same-sex blessings

Bishops from the Global South Fellowship of Anglican Churches (GSFA) have said they can no longer ‘walk together’ with the Church of England, after the CofE synod voted to allow same-sex blessings in churches.

Dr Justin Badi, chairman of the GSFA, said, ‘They are re-writing God’s law for His creation; laws that are reaffirmed by Christ in the Gospel accounts.’

As reported in ET in August last year, Badi had warned the CofE not to stray from biblical truth.

But in its latest letter, the GSFA, which claims to represent 75 percent of Anglicans worldwide, said it could no longer remain ‘in communion’ with provinces that have departed from the historic faith and taken the path of false teaching.

In the letter, the bishops added, ‘What has happened in the CofE has served to strengthen our resolve to work together to re-set the Communion, and to ensure the re-set Communion is marked by reform and renewal.’

The group said it intended to work with other orthodox Anglican groups to guide Christians who are in churches that have departed from the Bible.

Responding to the news, Anglican mission agency Soma UK issued an open letter to the GSFA.

The letter said, ‘We … share with you our deep concern that the Synod of the CofE has made decisions about the “blessing” of same-sex couples in civil marriages and partnerships that are at odds with scriptural orthodoxy and contrary to the understanding of marriage held by most Provinces in the Anglican Community, and particularly in the Global South where Soma UK has been privileged to serve.’

It continued, ‘We are distressed by the inevitable impact this will have upon the unity of the Anglican Communion.’

As reported on the front page of last month’s ET, the move by the CofE’s general synod to bless same-sex couples has caused controversy at home and abroad.

Senegal: World’s largest mercy ship treats its first surgical patient, aged 4

A four-year-old child from Senegal has become the first person to receive a surgical treatment on the world’s largest purpose-built civilian hospital ship, the ‘Global Mercy’.

Amadou, aged 4, from the south of Senegal, suffered with a windswept leg and bowed leg, but the early surgical intervention helped repair his condition before his development was severely impacted.

The ‘Global Mercy’ is the newest and largest vessel owned by faith-based charity Mercy Ships. It is projected to serve 150,000 patients over the next five decades.

The 174-meter, 37,000-ton ship has six operating rooms and houses over 600 medical and other volunteers from around the globe.

Dr Rachel Buckingham, the orthopaedic surgeon who performed Amadou’s operation, said, ‘Senegal does not have any children’s orthopaedic surgeons, which means that to try and have this surgery, patients would have to travel to another country, which is prohibitively expensive for most people, so most of these patients would never have the opportunity to have surgery.’

France: Age verification checks set to be brought in to shield kids from porn sites

France is set to introduce new age verification requirements to protect children from viewing online pornography.

It will become the first country to require a ‘digital certificate’ – similar to those used by banks – to prove that a user is not underage.

Last year, the French Senate released a shocking report which revealed that a monthly average of 2.3 million visitors to online porn sites in 2021 were minors.

Children are banned from accessing online pornography in France, but users only need to click on a button to indicate that they are over 18. According to studies, the average age of children accessing pornography is eleven.

REVIEWS

Holy Spirit Now Descend

Michael Haykin

Ettrick Press

190 pages; £5.95

BUY

Michael Haykin aims to write history that reflects that all people are ‘a core value to God’. He does this by bringing to us the lives of ‘little people’. In this vein, this book recounts the life of Thomas Davis, a Baptist pastor from the age of Whitefield and Wesley, one whose name is never mentioned alongside theirs.

It is an historical account, unembellished by the extra detail possible in fiction used to engage interest. Rather, it is dependent on what records of the time have been recovered. This doesn’t make it the easiest read. Nevertheless, if your interest is in church history, an extraordinary work of God, church life (including church planting), or the theology and thinking of the time, then it will engage you. It certainly isn’t a hard or a long read and serves the purpose of showing how God used other preachers in addition to Wesley and Whitefield to bring revival to England in the 1700s.

The author leads us through Davis’s background and ministry in Reading before considering the broader effect of the revival using the three churches planted by Davis as separate loci. One was in ‘the unsavoury market town of Wokingham’ (ch. 2), another in Staines (ch. 3), and one in Wallingford (ch. 4). There are stories of those converted and their contact with well-known characters of the day, inter-church life, hymns composed, and a series of theological issues. These are all clearly set in their historical context and Haykin avoids making unnecessary judgments as to what, from his perspective, is approved or otherwise.

Strongly recommended for those with an interest in Baptist and revival history.

Fergus Yuille

Reading, Berkshire

Revival: The Work of God

Jeremy Walker

Reformation Heritage Books

2hrs + 14hrs bonus content; £16.70

BUY

Every true believer longs to see and experience more of the glory of God in Christ. He reads his Bible, praying from the depth of his soul, ‘Show me your glory.’ This documentary demonstrates from church history the undeniable reality that God has historically on many occasions, in sovereign mercy, and in answer to earnest prayer, reinvigorated his church, awakening her from a slumbering and decaying condition.

Travelling to key sites in Scotland, England, Wales, Northern Ireland, and the USA, Jeremy Walker recounts key events and explains the biblical nature of revival.

We are in a situation like that of the judges when ‘a generation arose who did not know the LORD nor the work which he had done for Israel’. We have not seen the Lord’s power in revival for over a generation and are therefore at risk of failing to understand the need for, and the nature of, true revival. We are in danger of seeking strange fire and affirming what has not come from God.

‘Revival’ does a wonderful job at documenting the historical fact of revival, and its nature and purpose. It demonstrates that revivals do not undermine or set aside the normal work of God but are, as Geoff Thomas says, ‘an intensification of the normal work of God’. Joel Beeke rightly remarks, ‘Christians desire revival, because they desire the glory of God.’ Sinclair Ferguson, Ian Hamilton, and Stuart Olyott also provide enlightening comments.

I wholeheartedly commend this documentary. May it help us cry out to the Lord in these days: ‘Will you not revive us again, that your people may rejoice in you?’

Tom Allen

Eastbourne

Understanding Family Worship

Terry Johnson

Christian Focus

96 pages; £7.99

BUY

Is your home a ‘nursery for heaven or a breeding ground for hell?’ A strong challenge at the start of a book to help revive the practice of parents leading their children in daily worship. This challenge strikes painfully and powerfully at the heart of every Christian parent. Thankfully this short and pacey book pastorally encourages parents to do the greatest good for their children, leading them to the Lord and encouraging them to walk with him daily.

Johnson clearly reminds parents of their wonderful responsibility to lead children into daily devotional worship of God. Thoroughly rooted in Scripture and drawing on historical examples and teachings from the Reformation onwards, there is plenty of encouragement.

It moves on to a number of practical suggestions, including content, length, relevance, etc., but is let down by its brevity. For parents struggling to help their children to engage or to find the time in busy lives it offers a few helpful comments, but apart from the obvious answers it stops short of really tackling many modern family concerns.

This book provides parents with the encouragement, ingredients, and help to go about spending time with their children before God each day. A supplement to the larger The Family Worship Book, this is a useful resource to get parents thinking along the right lines and provides enough to get going or to restart family devotional worship.

James Chittenden

Redhill, Surrey

Dear Beth, Dear Tom: Letters to an enquiring Christian

John Legg

Covenant Books UK

80 pages; £3.25 each

BUY

Previously published by EP, this is essentially one book with two titles. Uncle Harry replies to his niece Beth or his nephew Tom, but apart from the names, the content is the same in both books. Beth and Tom are young enquiring Christians and they have an interest in solid biblical teaching. So this is a book to help the doctrinal understanding of Christians on difficult issues.

The questions asked and the responses given all relate to the Reformed doctrines of grace and so cover the sorts of questions that a new Christian reading their Bible with an enquiring mind will have.

The author has much experience in considering these teachings and puts over the answers very clearly, showing biblical balance on what are hard doctrines.

Each of the seven chapters has subheadings addressing topics like: Salvation is from the Lord, Free will and Evangelism, Ability and Responsibility, Sovereignty and Justice, Foreknowledge, For whom did Christ die?, Preaching Faith in Christ, Common Grace, Holiness and Heaven, Assurance and Presumption, and many more.

Thanks to the question-and-answer style, which picks up on potential objections, there is very helpful and practical material which is suitable for giving to those engaging with biblical doctrine and to those who have queries on the Reformed faith.

Two minor negatives: the layout comes across as a bit tired, and I wonder if it would be good to expand the content to include topical issues such as human identity and Christianity and diversity. Overall, these are excellent books and will help all in their doctrinal understanding.

Paul Relf

Chatham

God-Centred Priorities: Five principles for making wise decisions

Ray Trainer

DayOne

58 pages; £6

BUY

What a gem this little book is – one I wish had been available to me as I started out on the Christian path, wondering how to find God’s will for my life as I made important decisions such as where to study, what job to take, and whom to marry.

Trainer’s easy-to-read book is based on the premise that ‘The Bible is God’s pre-eminent instructions for us so that we might make wise and godly choices and so live as he would have us live’.

Fundamental to his book, the author refutes the idea that it is essential for the believer to discover God’s unique individual plan for him. He then lists six methods on which we should never solely rely (e.g., dreams and visions, circumstances).

Instead Trainer gives us five principles which we should use to make right choices. Helpfully, he puts these in picture form with the foundational principle being ‘Do What is Right’ (morally, as defined in the Bible). Three pillars are built on this foundation, and the overarching capstone shows the principle: ‘God’s Glory.’ You will need to read the book for yourself to find out the three pillars!

Trainer shows that his methods are biblically based through scriptural quotes and examples. His book is simple to understand and would be very useful to young Christians and all those who want help in knowing how to make wise decisions.

The book ends with a number of case studies suitable for group study. With very short chapters and these case studies, the book could easily be used profitably by church youth groups.

I highly recommend this book and would happily pass it on to others.

Jan Rhys

South Wales

A Sheep Remembers

David Calhoun

Banner of Truth

200 pages; £6.50

BUY

This wonderful little book proves that good things often come in small packages. In just 180 pages, David Calhoun packs more truth and content than many books three times the size manage.

It is a delightful and God-glorifying devotional book about Psalm 23 – so much more than a commentary. Each chapter contains four elements – a different English translation of the 23rd Psalm, a word of personal testimony, often drawing on the author’s long battle with cancer, a helpful commentary, and a selection of prayers, quotes, and illustrations that throw light on the verse or section being expounded.

At the end is a selection of 17 versions of the Psalm, including a few hymns based on it and often with an accompanying word of explanation about the author or poem. The book is completed by an enormously informative bibliography that reminded me of Spurgeon’s Commenting and Commentaries, where he makes some pithy comments on different works and their authors. For example, ‘some helpful ideas but discursive and confusingly organised’, ‘he goes too far in trying to derive spiritual truths’, and ‘solid, devout scholarship’.

Over the past year I have read many books that have richly fed my mind and led me deeper into a knowledge of God, but none that have fed my soul and warmed my heart more than this little volume.

If you care for your soul, please get a copy of this book. Even better – get two copies and give one away. I cannot think of a single person who would not greatly benefit from reading this book.

Now, I must go and find other books by this godly author and devour them as well.

John Brand

Edinburgh Bible College

Table of Contents

FEATURES

The first Good Friday

Are our Reformed churches drifting into heresy?

With the concerted attack on Kate Forbes, Scotland has become ‘the Land of the Beast’

What’s wrong with swearing?

Key questions on human sexuality answered

Massive need: Tiny Turkish church responds to earthquake

Special book review: Biblical Critical Theory

Asbury and the holy FOMO

COMMENT: Our beliefs are being policed, this is no time to keep quiet

GUEST COLUMN: Glorifying God with an ordinary life

THINKING IT THROUGH: Confessions then and now (Part 2):Read, mark, inwardly digest

A WALK WITH MR O: Everyone in the world

A SHRINK THINKS... Leadership

NEWS

News in brief

Street preacher overturns his conviction for ‘misgendering’

The Prime Minister vows to review sex education in schools

Parents remove their child, aged 4, from Church of England primary school over gender-change book

Woman arrested for a second time for praying in her head near an abortion clinic, despite court judgment

‘Terrorist’ chaplain vows to appeal against employment tribunal ruling

BBC Panorama programme in ‘hatchet job’ against Christian pregnancy crisis centres

House of Commons rejects attempts to make clear that silent prayer is lawful

Over 70 people celebrate the marvel of God’s love at Reformation and Revival Fellowship conference held in Swanwick, Derbyshire

Jude Conference, held in Bedford, highlights value of the local church

Church Support Fellowship established to heed modern-day ‘Macedonian Call’ and offers to help in time of pressing need

Dinosaur bones and Babylonian stones on display at new creation museum and research centre at Shropshire site

Induction held for Donavan Lurrie at Cornerstone church, Bolton

Obituary: Michael Grant (1941–2022)

Obituary: Revd Edward ‘Ted’ Donnelly (1943–2023)

Obituary: Michael Toogood (1936–2023)

US: Keller Centre’s disturbing article is removed from The Gospel Coalition website after criticism

Australia: Law Commission accused of trying to water down the ethos of the nation’s faith schools

China: Christians are forced to register on a government app before they are given permission to attend a church

Global: Anglican group says it will break communion with the Church of England over same-sex blessings

Senegal: World’s largest mercy ship treats its first surgical patient, aged 4

France: Age verification checks set to be brought in to shield kids from porn sites

REVIEWS

Holy Spirit Now Descend

Revival: The Work of God

Understanding Family Worship

Dear Beth, Dear Tom: Letters to an enquiring Christian

God-Centred Priorities: Five principles for making wise decisions

A Sheep Remembers