Therefore, since through God’s mercy we have this ministry, we do not lose heart. Rather, we have renounced secret and shameful ways; we do not use deception, nor do we distort the word of God. On the contrary, by setting forth the truth plainly we commend ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God.

2 Cor 4:1-2

My parents were Baptist missionaries in Papua New Guinea before returning to pastoral ministry. I grew up in Baptist churches.

I left the church in my teens and came back to faith through the influence of a Baptist youth leader. My early years of discipleship were spent in a Baptist church.

Eventually I served as an intern in that church before being sent out with my wife Michelle to plant a Baptist church in the eastern suburbs of Melbourne.

Today we serve with CRMAustralia multiplying churches. We’re back at the Baptist church I grew up in. It has adopted us as one of their missionary families and is the only Baptist church in our state intentionally planting churches.

Baptist churches were not the only influence on my development, but they have been at the centre.

Many years ago I studied Reformation history at the Baptist College. I was struck by the fluid nature of church history. Great religious movements come into being, they exist for a time and unless they are renewed by the Word and the Spirit, they decline.

My denomination is in decline and desperately needs to be renewed by the Word and the Spirit. It’s the sort of decline that cannot be fixed by missional initiatives, management consultants, or church growth principles.

The Christian movement is a missionary movement. The book of Acts tells the story of the ministry of the risen Christ as he deploys his word and the Spirit to advance the spread of the gospel through his people.

Despite insurmountable odds, the gospel advances because of Jesus Christ, the risen Saviour of the world. We are not the masters of our destinies. He is. We do not determine truth from error. He does.

The church of the prosperous West has been captured by the spirit of the age, and is paying dearly for its unfaithfulness. In the West we have the learning and the resources, but our secularized faith cannot win disciples and plant churches. Instead we empty churches, and close them down.

Meanwhile I rejoice that all over the world the gospel advances where God’s people place themselves under the authority of his Word and are empowered by the Holy Spirit. Jesus is Lord and will have the final say.

The main theme of Acts may be the spread of the word, but Jesus is the key player.

Jesus is risen and he reigns. His primary agents in forming and growing his church are the word and the Spirit (David Peterson).

The risen Lord sends the Spirit (2:33), inspires preachers (7:55-56), calls and commissions his witnesses (9:5-6; 22:14-21), heals the sick (9:34), and uses his servants to accomplish his saving purpose in the world (26:16-18).

Where does that leave us? On backs, lying in the dust of the Damascus road, crying out, “Who are you Lord?”

Friends

Over the past week I have been building relationship with a new single parent family met while door knocking.

I have just finished praying for mum – Julie – who has nasty ulcers on her arm that have been very slow healing. The pain has kept her from sleeping. I prayed that God would give her relief from the pain tonight, heal up those sores more quickly and give her His peace.

I prayed for her teenage son Matt, who is an atheist who likes to argue his point but he likes talking with me. I prayed God would reveal himself very personally to Matt. I asked Matt to stand with me as I took his mum’s hand and prayed for her.

His dad died of a heroin overdose when Matt and his sister Annie were young. Matt reminds me of myself when I was a teenager – he can really state an argument!!!

Please pray with me that God would show up in their lives and do something powerful. I have never been much good at praying for healing but God has been prodding me about stepping out in faith and giving him a chance to work.

Blessings

Tim

Someone should tell Tim that “door knocking” is so 1950s. I’m sure Jesus prefers Facebook. . .

Don’t forget to pray.

Jay: Let’s turn now to the common characteristics you have found in dynamic movements. I believe the first one is white-hot faith?

Steve: Yes, whenever you see a dynamic Christian movement I see white-hot faith — God’s presence and power equipping people for ministry, transforming their lives. Its not just the experiential side, there’s a deep commitment to the scriptures, a commitment to spiritual disciplines whether it’s the Moravians or early Methodists with their accountability groups. There’s a sense of dynamism and presence of God through his Spirit and the Word and there’s a commitment to live out different spiritual disciplines.

Jay: What’s the role of founders in this?

Steve: There are often key individuals or founding groups of people but I think one of the differences between an unhealthy cult or sect and a dynamic movement is that it is not just centred in the leader.

Jesus’ ministry came out of his individual experience of the Father, but he brought his disciples into that same experience and then they took it with them. So his movement was not just controlled by him in the sense of a cult leader might.

The reason for the power of the church in Acts, is that Jesus brought his disciples into the same experience he had of the father. So the best movements do that, they have a founder who embodies the movements but then that founder empowers the movement and it has a life of its own apart from them.

This white-hot faith is the driving force of Church history; it’s the engine room. It’s the sense of authority we have; it’s the energy that moves it forward. The Reformation didn’t just come out of Luther’s study; it came out of Luther’s wrestle with God.

“How can a holy God love me, Martin Luther?” That question drove him to his study to try to understand the doctrine of justification by faith. It was very much his experience of God, wrestling with God and the scriptures. Then that experience of justification by faith went everywhere, beyond Martin Luther and it became a dynamic force.

Some Wesleyan friends introduced me to John Wesely’s Covenant Prayer.

I am no longer my own, but yours.

Put me to what you will, rank me with whom you will;
put me to doing, put me to suffering;
let me be employed for you or laid aside for you,
exalted for you or brought low for you;
let me be full, let me be empty;
let me have all things, let me have nothing;
I freely and heartily yield all things to your pleasure and disposal

And now, O glorious and blessed God, Faither,
Son and Holy Spirit,
you are mine, and I am yours.
So be it.

And the covenant which I have made on earth,
let it be ratified in heaven.

Amen.

This prayer was the heart beat of one of the most dynamic movements for the renewal and expansion of the Christian movement.

As a young pioneer missionary Stuart helped spark a church planting movement in Asia that is still going strong. He returned to Australia and built one of the nation’s most significant churches. Now Crossway has become a movement and is planting churches. The church supports over 50 missionaries worldwide. Michelle and I are among them.

Stuart has faced death a number of times, persecution, disease, war, and militant Islam. He’s faced devastating family crises. The greatest challenge of all? Trying to lead a reluctant church to believe that our God is a God of miracles.

I’m guessing we all have something to learn from Stuart Robinson’s journey of forty years in ministry. He sums up the stages in his walk with God using just three words.

Stage 1: If. If God will be with me and will watch over me on this journey I am taking and will give me food to eat and clothes to wear so that I return safely to my father’s house, then the LORD will be my God. Gen 28:20-21

Stage 2: Because. I love the LORD, because (not if) he heard my voice; he heard my cry for mercy. Because he turned his ear to me, I will call on him as long as I live. Ps 116:1-2

Stage 3: Though. Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will be joyful in God my Savior. The Sovereign LORD is my strength he makes my feet like the feet of a deer, he enables me to go on the heights. Hab 3:17-19

Each stage has its place. We must move through each one until we come to a place of deep trust and obedience and can say with Job, “Though he slay me, yet will I hope in Him.” Job 13:15

Take the time to listen to this message. It may not make the journey any easier, but it will help you understand God’s agenda and what true success looks like.

How distant I am from the powerful ministry of Jesus to those who live under the oppression of the enemy.

That religion which God requires, and will accept, does not consist in weak, dull, and lifeless wishes, raising us but a little above a state of indifference: God, in his word, greatly insists upon it, that we be good in earnest, “fervent in spirit,” and our hearts vigorously engaged in religion. . .

If we be not in good earnest in religion, and our wills and inclinations be not strongly exercised, we are nothing.

The things of religion are so great, that there can be no suitableness in the exercises of our hearts, to their nature and importance, unless they be lively and powerful. In nothing is vigor in the actings of our inclinations so requisite, as in religion; and in nothing is lukewarmness so odious. True religion is evermore a powerful thing; and the power of it appears, in the first place in the inward exercises of it in the heart. . . .

And such, when they receive the Spirit of God, in his sanctifying and saving influences, are said to be “baptized with the Holy Ghost, and with fire;” by reason of the power and fervor of those exercises the Spirit of God excites in their hearts, whereby their hearts, when grace is in exercise, may be said to “burn within them;” as is said of the disciples (Luke 24:32).

Jonathan Edwards, Religious Affections, Part 1, Ch 2.

Took in a service at St Mary’s in London’s west end this week. They’re gearing up for a launch of their Life Course, an Alpha Course equivalent.

The guy leading the service gets up and says, “Hey there must be hundreds of you out there who have come to know Christ through the course.” I thought he was joking: he wasn’t.

Up gets Julia, that’s “Yulia” she’s Finnish and in her late twenties. Six months ago she signed up for the Life Course with three other friends from work. None of them Christians. Julia walked into banquet with 2-300 people and loved it, so she signed up for the course. As a result, Julia and two of her friends came to faith.

Wander around St Mary’s and you will meet hundreds of people who can you how that came to Christ through the life and witness of the church. They’re planning to launch two Life Courses simultaneously with around 300 in each one—mostly under 40’s.

Evangelism is a way of life at St Mary’s and it gets better.

St Mary’s is planting churches that reproduce this same heart for evangelism—in Auckland, New Zealand; Jacksonville, USA; Exeter, England; a Spanish church in London and Maceio, Brazil. And they’ve only just begun. Team member commit to go out from St Mary’s for 3-12 months to help get the new churches started. Most of them are self-funded. Most eventually return. Some stay permanently.

St Mary’s has set up its own theological and ministry training school which has developed into the launch of the Westminster Theological Centre headed up by St Mary’s resident theologian, Crispin Fletcher-Louis.

Right now they have 41 students in training and six of them are Church of England ordination candidates.

So while the rest of us sit around and moan about the “state of the church in the west” St Mary’s is getting on with the job. They have this naive belief in the Scriptures and the power of the Holy Spirit to transform lives. They love their church. Obviously they have not been attending the right seminars and reading the right authors. Someone should go down there and tell them it can’t be done.

You can’t explain St Mary’s without talking about its leader, John Peters. Have a listen to his messages on the Power of the Spirit and Open to the Spirit and see if you can work out how he does it and what sets St Mary’s apart as a church planting movement.

Missions is not the ultimate goal of the church. Worship is. Missions exists because worship doesn’t. Worship is ultimate, not missions, because God is ultimate,not man. When this age is over, the countless millions of the redeemed fall on their faces before the throne of God, missions will be no more. It is a temporary necessity. But worship abides forever.

Worship, therefore, is the fuel and goal of missions. It’s the goal of missions because in missions we simply aim to bring the nations into white-hot enjoyment of God’s glory. The goal of missions is the gladness of the peoples in the greatness of God (Ps 67:3-4; 97:1).

But worship is also the fuel of missions. Passion for God in worship precedes the offer of God in preaching. You can’t commend what you don’t cherish. . . . Missions begins and ends in worship.

“Let the Nations Be Glad! 2d ed.” (John Piper), 11.