A superb definition of the Church

The Principal of Melbourne Bible Institute (MBI) when I was a student there (1968–1970) was Rev. Dr J Graham Miller. Dr Miller, a Kiwi, had spent time in the New Hebrides (now Vanuatu) where there was a significant revival, then as a minister in a Presbyterian church in New Zealand where he also saw the Spirit move.

Amongst his legacy is a treasure trove of sermons recorded at his last parish, which was St Giles in Sydney suburban Hurstville. Listening to one such sermon, I came across this truly magnificent description of the church, drawn from Scripture. I don’t think I have ever come across a better description. Here it is.

We are embodied in one fellowship with Christ as head, and every member necessary to every other so that every member then is gifted with particular charismata, spiritual gifts, exactly fitted to the total outreach and effectiveness of his people. There is no ungifted Christian. There is no Christian whose gifts overlaps needlessly with that of another. All are marvellously integrated by the great head of the church into one body, in which there is to be no disharmony, no grinding of gears. It was expected that the local church would exhibit in its own life, the quality of love as the oil which will keep any discord from the fellowship. Reaching out from such a fellowship will be the witness of such a church to the community. In such a community, we will find the effectiveness of its witness right to the extreme of the nation in which we live.

Are church ministers out of touch with their parishioners?

Recently, I was asked the question: ‘ Do you think generally that our clergy understand and know what the people on the street are going through, how they think, what are their concerns?’ 

The short answer is a resounding NO! Clergy have absolutely no idea what people on the street are going through. 

Here’s a longer answer, to justify this sweeping observation. 

I was ordained early in 1985. I had a fairly unique experience. I was not required to do any theological education as my Melbourne College of Divinity qualification was deemed sufficient theological education. This meant that the gap between working in a bookshop in the main street of Geelong, and wearing a dog collar as a curate at All Saints Newtown, visiting aged care facilities and parishioners was three days — finished in the bookshop on Wednesday, attended a three day retreat for ordinands, and started at All Saints on Sunday, ordained (as I recall) the day before by David Penman in St Paul’s Cathedral, Melbourne. 

I happened to be President of the Belmont Traders Association when I was ordained, so very much in touch with the bread and butter issues that concern shop owners and managers. Instantly, my contact with the real world of commercial life ceased. I was sent to Aged Care homes in the care of the parish — quite a number of them where I administered the reserved sacrament to a large number of residents. I spent a fair bit of time preparing sermons — I preached every Sunday. I did a lot of visiting. I helped prepare for a truly dreadful stewardship campaign. And on the occasions I did visit my former shop keeper colleagues, I may as well have been a little green man from Mars. They were just not interested in talking to me.

I did insist on visiting people in their work places if at all possible. I vividly recall visiting one man who was the safety officer at the Pivot Phosphate Co. He told me about one occasion when he helped pull the body of an employee out of a phosphate crushing line he had fallen into! It rather changed my perspective on this man. Visiting at work places is one rare way in which clergy can keep in touch with people’s daily concerns.

Things were not much different when I arrived in Canberra. I had been offered the position of Director of Lay Education at St Mark’s Canberra, the theological training institution for the local diocese. The role which I developed was to encourage churches to adopt courses I commissioned and produced for use in their small groups. In less than a year into this role, the head of St Mark’s left, and was replaced by the newly installed assistant bishop. He re-assigned me to clerical duties. One parish wanted me as their minister, but the local diocesan biishop wouldn’t have a bar of it, and, having had a glimpse of the ‘real politik’ of the church, I eventually resigned.

Now please understand that I was absolutely committed to trying to bridge the gap between clergy and laity. I was passionate about Christianity and daily life (and I still am). I would not have been selected for the job of Director of Lay Education if various influential people had not recognized this passion. However, church structures made it impossible to maintain meaningful contact with ‘the real world’. 

And I was 43 years old when I was ordained. By then I had bought and sold a number of houses, I had worked in a number of different jobs,  I had lived in a number of different locations. I had been unemployed for five months. In others words I had heaps of experience in the real world.

Ministers do not face the same pressures as the rest of us. They have a security of tenure that people employed outside the church do not have — could only dream about. Relieving a minister of his job in the Anglican Church is a very torturous affair, and I have not heard of a minister being sacked for a very long time. Sadly, in one church I was associated with, a dispute arose between the incumbent minister and an associate minister, which could only be resolved by both leaving the parish. I recall that his position as incumbent meant he simply could not be sacked. I found the following on the Sydney Diocese website: ‘ . . .  (The) clergyman is regarded as self-employed, and the continuous enjoyment of his right is strongly protected by law and customs. However unpopular he may become with parishioners or bishop, he cannot be removed from the position he holds under normal circumstances’.

 How different from people in the non-church workforce! I have twice been sacked — on the spot, escorted out the door immediately — and by Christian employers! I spent five months unemployed after one such sacking.

I recently encountered a church that had employed a very young guy to help with youth work. Some time ago, at a church post-service lunch, I found myself sitting at the same table as him. I asked him what his plans for the future were. He said he planned to join the ministry and would train at Moore (I think). I asked him how old he was, and I think he said 19. In the course of discussion it transpired that he had come straight to the church from school, and would go straight to theological college. I was incredulous (and let him know it!). I asked him if he thought it was appropriate for someone to be ordained who had never held down a job in the secular world and had a precisely zero experience of life outside of the church. It was an embarrassing discussion! I can’t believe that the leadership of any church, including the Parish Council, would employ such an inexperienced person. Perhaps I should not be surprised as it appears that the incumbent in this particular church started his ministerial life at the age of 22.

I recount all this because if ANY clergyman was a candidate to understand what people in the street were going through, then I was.

I put together a snapshot of some local clergy — doing some research using the Anglican Directory.

I checked out seven local clergy, all known to me, and found that with one exception, all were ordained in their twenties, and in all cases, this was at least thirty years ago. These people, and their ilk, have absolutely zero understanding of what people in the street are going through. 

Oddly enough, the exception sort of proves the rule. I recently heard a sermon on Romans 13:1-7 which begins ‘Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment’. It was without question far and away the best sermon I have ever heard from the pulpit of this particular church. The preacher started with three really tough scenarios from real life, where it is impossible to obey the government. The sermon caused such a stir that the church put on a seminar to help people resolve the complexities and seemingly irreconcilable issues that the sermon raised. The point is that the sermon DID raise a whole raft of real world issues that people are grappling with every day. The sermon did leave me asking why on earth can’t we have such wonderful, practical sermons dealing with real life issues every Sunday, especially if they are followed up by opportunities for further discussion.   

The initial question strikes at the heart of the most fundamental flaw in the whole concept of ordained ministry — setting people apart for ministry. The trouble is that setting people apart for ministry also sets them apart from ordinary everyday life. Their ability to understand and empathize with ordinary people is greatly compromised. It is the main reason I have been advocating house churches. Ministry as understood in the New Testament is peer to peer, ministry given and received by people in the warp and woof of everyday life, who we understand are gifted by God for the purpose of ministering to one another and building one another up.

A home church Oasis

My friend Phill Brown, who runs Oikos, an organisation dedicated to promoting and helping the house church movement in Australia, in a recent newsletter included an account of a group that meets in Melbourne’s eastern suburbs. The approach is creative and quite novel, and very attractive. I asked Phil’s permission to reproduce it on my blog, and he has graciously acceded to my request. You can read about Oikos, sign up for their newsletter, subscribe to their quarterly magazine, and prose their many books at www.oikos.org.au.

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Greetings from Switzerland,

Today I awoke to snow on the ground as I enjoy some care at a holistic well-being clinic and feel very grateful. I’m reminded of our Oikos friends who operate a café in outer suburbs of Melbourne – who call their café meeting place like a ‘Switzerland’ a neutral space, be encouraged by their story….
Blessings

Phil Brown

“Are you weary, carrying a heavy burden?” ‘Come to me and I will refresh your life for I am your Oasis” Growing out of Matthew 11:18, Martin and Cher operate a Cafe in SE Melbourne that is used for workplace skills training, and also use the space to invite friends and make disciples in a caring and nurturing space – a safe oasis.
As they reflect on their values; they say – “We fall in love with Jesus and trust when we do our part, we let Holy Spirit and the Word do its transforming work”

They are growing in numbers, locations, leaders and the spiritual depth of people involved. Our vision is “making Jesus disciple makers”. Here is a glimpse of their journey and approach to reaching people:

“We operate a cafe so we use the cafe as a primary meeting place. Its neutral, safe and non-religious so people feel safe to come”. We call this “Switzerland” because it’s a neutral space to do Simple Church. Our simple process is: Connect in the cafe and invite customers into casual, enjoyable and sincere conversations.

Next, we invite them to a social gathering to eat with and meet likeminded people make friends. And then we invite them to a Jesus meal where we gently structure the gathering with prayers, devotion and dedication to Jesus. Someone different will lead the meeting and bring testimony, scripture, story or songs that gives honour to Jesus.

We regularly run a men’s breakfast and a women’s breakfast which has been much appreciated and bought meaning connections.

The group has been going 2 years and we have tried and failed on a few things, but persevered with what seems to be working for us.

Here are a few ideas that we have found work for us.

Consistency

We meet every 2 weeks and publish a calendar on a whatsapp group to let others know when and where we will meet. We have dates set for 3 to 4 months in advance to help everyone make plans.

Food

We pivot all we do around the relaxing joy of eating together. Hospitality is a command and we do our best to host and feed guests well.

House to House

We deliberately and intentionally move the meetings from the cafe into people’s homes. We began with a BBQ at our house and now pass the baton from house to house. Now every alternate gathering is in a house. We have a “respect” rule that when we are in the government of someone’s house they get to run and lead the meeting however they see fit. We have had glorious times.

Day and Time

We choose to not meet on a Sunday so we typically meet on a Friday or Saturday night. Some nights can be noisy with so much chatter and laughter… always a good sign. Also, the more impactful an evening the later everyone seems to leave. Some just don’t want to leave which is another signal it’s been a hearty night.

Leaders

We prayed about 9 months ago for leaders and what has happened is people are approaching us, asking can their house be the next venue. This has been an electric answer to our prayers.

Inviting

What we have noticed over the last 6 months is that people like the gatherings, and feel safe enough to invite friends. We are now about 4 generations deep in invitations which is a very exciting signal. We always have new people tagging along for the first time… who then become regulars… who then start inviting their friends. We call this “stickyness” or being “sticky”. When people “stick” they start inviting others naturally with enthusiasm and growth occurs organically.

Growth

We are growing in numbers and fast out growing the cafe for us all to fit. What is more important is the spiritual growth and maturity we see in the group in terms of attendance, generosity, Godly conversation and honesty. Its normal for members to ask for prayer or share a struggle so others can administer some wisdom and care. The core group has grown with 3 existing houses being used, and with 3 more houses opening up soon. We desperately need to keep the gatherings small and intimate between say, 8 to 14… so all can talk and participate. Managing larger groups at the cafe is a bit easier, and the gatherings in homes seem to default to the perfect number leading to great encounters.

Demographics

Our group is made up of diverse people from unsaved searching folks to well established Christians from a variety of church backgrounds all enjoying fellowship together. All united in a caring, loving, safe learning space. It’s very sweet.

Plans

We plan to move from house to house so that each house becomes its own regular venue with its own growing group. We like the Discovery Bible Reading (DBR) method which is simple to do and easy to replicate and have plans to test and implement that as a regular feature of our gatherings. Finally, we have emerging leaders who we will coach and resource to ultimately lead their own groups using the cafe as a central mission base of sorts.

Geography

Since our group was birthed from local customers, our group is hyper-local, meaning, most members can walk to the cafe. It’s not unusual to see members at the cafe in groups during the week for coffee or lunch enjoying deep and meaningful conversations. We may open up a migrant worker group in Cardinia and also possibly support a couple moving to Geelong who are keen to start another group. We follow the leading of the Lord “as the wind blows” so to speak.

Evangelism

None of this happens without an outreaching “heart”. To model any form of healthy discipling we need to be able to model the process of engaging strangers into powerful and trusted kingdom conversations. Building trust with authenticity are very important ingredients to our outreach efforts. We use and train our own ” Harpoon Method” of biblically based one-on-one evangelism which has a very high success rate and always leaves relationships intact. We have a deep heart to see any church doing small groups to add an outreach element to the group to mature the discipleship pattern.

Our values are:

Empower the Priesthood of every believer
Every conversation from the start of a relationship is a discipling conversation
Love each other, be king, patient and gracious to each other
Fall in love with Jesus
We do our part and let Holy Spirit and the Word do its transforming work

Fear

Col Stringer, a Pentecostal pastor from the Gold Coast, has written an excellent article on fear. I asked Col if I could reproduce it on my blog site, and he gave me permission. Col has written a significant number of books, many of which our business has printed. They are very good,. If you are interested, you can find them at www.colstringer.com.

What’s one of the greatest problems facing mankind today? Some say cancer, or AIDs, the breakdown of the family or drugs – and I certainly don’t make light of these problems. But there is one scourge that tries to attack everyone on this planet, young or old, rich or poor.  It manifest as a gnawing pain in the pit of the stomach. Many who succumb to  this scourge of mankind resort to booze, drugs, suicide or sex because of it. It can lead to breakdowns in marriages, families, it causes people on the very edge of success to sabotage their own efforts. Its name is FEAR!

This scourge has killed more dreams, ruined more careers and destroyed more families than all other these other things causes combined. It has taken more young lives than disease and accidents combined. In fact FEAR may be the worst enemy of the human species.  And it’s been with us since the beginning.  The Book of Genesis speaks of fear and it appears throughout the Bible.  Who can forget the classic line from the Old Testament that was delivered by Job when he said, “That which I feared most has come upon me.”  Satan uses fear as one of his greatest weapons against mankind. Many times when Jesus ministered to people his first words were, “Fear not!”

It seems the older we get the more prone we are to having this scourge control our lives. Sadly, now it seems even some Christians have been adding to this plague of fear, advocating packing up and heading for the hills to grow our organic vegies and live in caves. Fear is rampant today, not just in the earth – but in the church! I recently spoke with one group of (Spirit filled??) Christians who have given up on the Church and study the Torah at a synagogue. As we spoke the Apostle Paul’s words resonated thru my mind ‘You foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you?” He was talking to a bunch that had come out of living under the Law (of sin and death) and were now going back to live under the curse??  Or the passage in Romans where Paul writes; “I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation…” Salvation – sozo, healing, protection, deliverance. 

This of group Judaisers prophesied about a coming disaster of cataclysmic proportions , which they called ‘Jacobs Woes’ (and that’s why they were selling up, packing up and heading for the hills). Yet the Gospel has always operated in the thick of the action – nowhere do I find Jesus (or any other New Testament writer) suggesting we all ‘run for the hills’.  

A short time ago I spoke at a church of maybe 100 people – I had a word of knowledge about people suffering under this fear epidemic and so I gave a an altar call for such. Probably 30% of the congregation responded! Many sobbing and crying! 

So what is the answer? The Bible in 2 Tim 1:7 says That God has not given to us a spirit of fear…so fear must be a spirit! The Scripture goes on to add ‘….but one of power, love and a sound mind’.  The Bible tells us fear has torment and that perfect love casts out fear – but that’s not our love for God, as so many think – we are not capable of perfect love. It’s talking about God’s love for us! Get a revelation of how just much God loves you and it will drive all fear out of your life!

But true courage is not merely the absence of fear – if you’ve never experienced fear, your either a liar or had a lobotomy! We have all experienced gut wrenching fear – I know I have in Cyclone Tracy, when we lost our house. True courage is facing those fears, suck it up and tough it out. If we have do it scared – that’s fine, but just do it!

God’s Word can transform us from grasshoppers to giant killers. It comes from renewing our minds. “What we believe is the result of our thinking. If we think wrong, we will believe wrong!….In other words what we say will be wrong. It all hinges on out thinking. But the Word of God has been given to us to straighten out thinking!” 

I believe our nation is in trouble, these next elections may decide whether we remain a nation with Judeo-Christian roots or ?????? We desperately need believers who are not afraid to stand up for their faith and values! 

In Revelation 21:8 John makes an amazing statement, “But the cowardly, [a]unbelieving, abominable, murderers, sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars shall have their part in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.”

This might jerk the slack out of us, notice what John mentioned first – before the murders, sexually immoral and liars – ARE THE COWARDS!  Friends, it’s time to stand up, speak up and refuse to shut up!

Without faith it is impossible to please God.

I call you blessed, I call you strong. You are highly favoured, greatly blessed and deeply loved
Col Stringer

Ephesians 1:1-14

Studying Ephesians some time ago, I had cause to revisit the extensive notes I took at the time. The notes are gleaned from Tom Wright, The NIV Application Commentary or P.T. O’Brien’s Pillar Commentary on Ephesians. Rereading them, I found them extremely helpful, re-assuring, inspiring and comforting. I decided to reproduce them as a blog. Here they are!

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The entire prayer, all 11 verses of it, is woven through and through with the story of what God has done in Jesus the Messiah. He has blessed us in the King (verse three); he chose us in him (verse four), foreordained us through him (verse five), poured grace on us in him (verse six), gave us redemption in him (verse seven), set out his plan in him (verse nine), intending to sum up everything in him (verse 10). We have obtained our inheritance in him (verse 11), because we have set our hope on him (verse 12), and have been sealed in him with the spirit as the guarantee of what is to come (versus 13 – 14).

God’s character is best described as a “God for us” (cf. Rom. 8:31), the one who has chosen us. God has always been and always will be this kind of God. God is the God of past, present, and future, and in all three he is at work for us. Our security rests on what he did before the foundation of the world, on what he did and continues to do in Christ and in the Spirit, and on what he has promised for the future. God has intentionally chosen and planned to go to great lengths to achieve salvation for people.

In Christ” with its 164 occurrences, 36 of which are in Ephesians, is much more likely the central motif, or at least a central motif. Just as redemption is “in Christ” (1:7), so justification and every other act of God take place in Christ. In fact, the only way that the atonement makes sense, the only way that Christ’s death is effective for us, is if the union between Christ and believers is so strong that in some way his death is our death and his life is our life. This solidarity is achieved by a double identification via the Incarnation and faith. In the Incarnation Christ identifies with us and by faith we identify with him.

Our salvation in Christ is a vital stage only a stage, on the way to the much larger purpose of God. God’s plan is for the whole cosmos, the entire universe; his choosing and calling of us, and his shaping and directing of us in the Messiah, are somehow connected with that larger intention. The point is that we aren’t chosen for our own sake but for the sake of what God wants to accomplish through us.

This alerts us to the other hidden story which Paul is telling all through this great prayer. It is the story of the Exodus from Egypt. God chose Abraham, Isaac and Jacob to be the bearers of his promised salvation for the world — the rescue of the whole cosmos, humankind especially, from the sin and death that had come about through human rebellion. When Paul says that God chose us “in Christ” — the “us” here being the whole company of Christians — he is saying that those who believe in Jesus are now part of the fulfilment of that ancient purpose.

See also Genesis 18:17-19

As the language of grace and election shows, most of this doxology is really about God’s valuing of us. God blessed us, chose us from eternity, graced us, planned for us, sent Christ for us, revealed to us, will sum up all things in Christ in whom we have a part, gave us the Spirit as a guarantee, and will redeem us as his own people. The threefold repetition to the praise of his glory (1:6, 12, 14) shows the only possible response — worship and thanks to the God who values us and acts for us. The text is both a call to worship and a classic example of what worship should be.

People who know the value God has for them find both worship and obedience natural — not necessarily easy, but natural. The problem is that so many of us have difficulty believing that God really does value us personally and individually. Mere words about God’s valuing will not change the perception of those who already have negative self-images or who have been beaten down by life. The church has a responsibility in valuing people. With their worship Christians attest to the “real reality” where God values and seeks each human, and with their own actions Christians convey value to others by the way they live.

Paul does not spell out here the responsibility that comes with grace, but clearly “cheap grace” is not a viable option. If God has lavished so much value on us, we cannot devalue his efforts by ignoring him or the implications for life. Grace must lead to the very place it does in this text — to gratitude, a gratitude that is both spoken and lived. For Christianity, religion is grace and ethics is gratitude. The first response to God’s valuing us must be thanks and praise to God. All the rest of Christian living flows from this.

In the Old Testament the inheritance was the land of Canaan. What is the new promised land? What is the promised inheritance? The standard Christian answer has been “Heaven”.

However the inheritance Paul has in mind, so it appears from the present passage and the whole chapter is the whole world, when it has been renewed by a fresh act of God’s power and love. Paul has already said in verse 10 that God’s plan in the Messiah is to sum up everything in heaven and earth. God , after all, is the creator; he has no interest in leaving Earth to rot and making do for all eternity with only half of the original creation. God intends to flood the whole cosmos, heaven and earth together, with his presence and grace, and when that happens the new world that results, in which Jesus himself will be the central figure, is to be the “inheritance” for which Jesus is people are longing.

At the moment, therefore, the people who in this life have come to know and trust God in Jesus are to be the signs to the rest of the world that this glorious future is on the way.

And from v14. “But what is the inheritance? Here centuries of Western Christian tradition  have given the emphatic, though often implicit, reply “heaven”. Heaven is our home, our inheritance. We have re-read the story of the Exodus in those terms, with the crossing of the Jordan symbolizing the bodily death that will bring us to heaven itself, the Canaan for which we long. But this is precisely NOT what Paul says. What he says would have been clear had not the whole Western tradition been determined to look the other way at the crucial point. The inheritance is NOT heaven. Nor is it Palestine. The inheritance is the whole renewed, restored creation. I will Say it again: the whole world is now God’s holy land. That is how Paul’s retold Exodus narrative makes full and complete sense. And that, I suggest, is the ground plan for a fully biblical, fully Christians view of creation and of our responsibility toward it.”

Sealed with the Spirit (v13)

Equally, the sign that they themselves have received which guarantees them their future is the Holy Spirit. The spirit is to the Christians and the church what the cloud and fire were in the wilderness: the powerful, personal presence of the living God, holy and not to be taken lightly, leading and guiding the often muddled and rebellious people to their inheritance.

But the spirit is more than just a leader and guide. The spirit is actually part of the promised inheritance, because the spirit is God’s own presence, which in the New World will be fully and personally with us for ever.

Nowhere is the future triumph of God conveyed so clearly as with the gift of the Holy Spirit. Ephesians will later develop several aspects of a theology of the Spirit, but 1:13-14 focuses on the Spirit as the verification that we belong to God and that God will complete his promise to us. Texts like this show that the gift of the Spirit is not some second blessing or higher stage of the Christian faith and life — something for the spiritually elite. Rather, the Spirit is the possession — the necessary possession — of all Christians. He is God’s gift to us showing that we are his, and he bestows on us a sense of God’s presence and involvement in our lives. The obvious benefit of having the Spirit is a sense of peace and security that comes with belonging to God. How does a person know he or she has the Spirit? Primarily in the change that is brought into life, especially love.

Give us today our daily bread

Do we, in our affluent society, really need to pray this prayer — with our jobs, houses and cars, bank accounts, credit cards, superannuation and so on? We are not like the children of Israel in the desert, dependent on God to supply manna and quails and water from the rock.

On the other hand, do the following things factor into how we should regard this petition. 

   Jesus was a renowned party goer — except of course he partied with the wrong people?

   The great festive banquet promised at the end of the age. See Isaiah 25:6-8 and of course Psalm 23)?

   We should learn to live one day at a time — our DAILY bread?

I think the petition does refer to our physical needs. There is and always has been a great temptation to regard the ‘spiritual’ as more important and worthy of more attention than the physical. It stems from the philosophy of Plato, and is known (at least by some) as Platonic dualism, and it values the spiritual over the physical. But throughout the Bible, from Genesis chapter 1, where God creates humans with physical bodies, to the last couple of chapters of Revelation, that speak of the new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven to a very physical new earth, there is no distinction between the value God places on the physical and the spiritual.

God fed the children of Israel with bread and poultry whilst they spent 40 years wandering in the wilderness. Jesus had a very physical body — even after the resurrection  — on a couple of occasions he is recorded as eating after his resurrection. He promises us new physical bodies at the second coming. We celebrate his death and resurrection with physical bread and wine in the communion service. He fed the 5000 with real bread and fish. He was seriously into partying, albeit with the wrong people (a deliberate sign of the Kingdom) p. . . and so on.

So I don’t really believe this particular petition deals with spiritual bread,  but with meeting our physical needs. William Barclay writes ‘God cares for our bodies. Jesus showed us that; he spent so much time healing people’s diseases and satisfying physical hunger. He was anxious when he thought that the crowd who had followed him out into the lonely places had a long journey home, and no food to eat before they set out upon it. We do well to remember that God is interested in our bodies’

Having said that, I think there are some significant lessons to be taken to heart. The most obvious is that ultimately it is God who provides for all our needs, including our physical ones. The oft repeated injunction in Paul’s letters to be thankful at all times includes being thankful for our daily physical needs. Then ‘give us today’ surely suggests we should not be anxious for tomorrow. As Hebrews 13:5 (which I am fond of quoting) says literally ‘I will not, I will not cease to sustain and uphold you. I will not, I will not, I will not let you down’.

You might have a smile at this delightful story, also from William Barclay. ‘The difficulty of interpreting this petition was increased by the fact that there was very considerable doubt as to the meaning of the word epiousios, which is the word translated in the Revised Standard Version as daily. The extraordinary fact was that, until a short time ago, there was no other known occurrence of this word in the whole of Greek literature. The third-century Christian scholar Origen knew this, and indeed held that Matthew had invented the word. It was therefore not possible to be sure what it precisely meant. But not very long ago a papyrus fragment turned up with this word on it; and the papyrus fragment was actually a woman’s shopping list! And against an item on it was the word epiousios. It was a note to remind her to buy supplies of a certain food for the coming day.’

Barclay goes on: ‘very simply, what this petition means is: ‘Give me the things we need to eat for this coming day. Help me to get the things I’ve got on my shopping list when I go out this morning. Give me the things we need to eat when the children come in from school, and the family come in from work. Grant that the table is not bare when we sit down together today.’ This is a simple prayer that God will supply us with the things we need for the coming day.

And this: ‘We must note that Jesus did not teach us to pray: ‘Give me my daily bread.’ He taught us to pray: ‘Give us our daily bread.’ The problem of the world is not that there is not enough to go round; there is enough and to spare. The problem is not the supply of life’s essentials; it is the distribution of them. This prayer teaches us never to be selfish in our prayers. It is a prayer which we can help God to answer by giving to others who are less fortunate than we are. This prayer is not only a prayer that we may receive our daily bread; it is also a prayer that we may share our daily bread with others.’

Tom Wright comments

At the heart of the petition is a central biblical symbol of the kingdom: the great festive banquet which God has prepared for all his people. This picture  goes back to the vision of the land flowing with milk and honey; to the Psalmist, saying ‘Thou shalt prepare a table before me, in the presence of my foes’; to the children of Israel being fed with quails and manna in the wilderness; to prophecies like that of Isaiah.

On this mountain the LORD of hosts will make for all peoples
a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine,
of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well refined.
And he will destroy on this mountain
the shroud over all peoples,
the veil that is spread over all nations.
He will swallow up death forever;
and the Lord GOD will wipe away tears from all faces,
and the disgrace of his people 
he will take away from all the earth,
for the LORD has spoken. (Isaiah 25:6-8)

The three petitions in the prayer he gave his followers was a prayer for the complete fulfillment of the Kingdom: for God’s people to be rescued from hunger, guilt and fear.

This clause reminds us that God intends us to pray for specific needs. It may seem more ‘spiritual’ to pray for the conversion of the world than for a parking space near to to the meeting for which we’re about to be late. Now of course it would trivialize Christian prayer if we thought it was only about praying for parking spaces, or for our team to win the match, or for fine weather for the church fete. But once we put the prayer for daily bread within the whole Kingdom prayer where it belongs, to turn then to specific things we honestly need right now, it is not trivial. It is precisely what children do when they love and trust the one they call ‘Father’.

Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us, or, as the ESV translates it ‘and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.’Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us’.

I have a couple of questions to ponder.

Is it a condition of receiving God’s forgiveness that we forgive others first, or is there another way, perhaps, of looking at it?

Are we called on to forgive those who have sinned, perhaps graciously, against us — sexual abuse? Unfaithfulness? but who are not repentant themselves?

Strong’s dictionary Definition of the word used for debts in this passage.

g3783. 

ὀφείλημα opheilēma; from (the alternate of) 3784; something owed, i.e. (figuratively) a due; morally, a fault: — debt.

AV (2) – debt 2;

that which is owed

˜that which is justly or legally due, a debt

metaph. offence, sin Matthew uses the word hopheliama, whereas Luke uses hamartia, a better known word, so we can’t read too much into debts versus sins.

This does not teach that humans must forgive others before they can receive forgiveness themselves; rather, forgiveness of others is proof that that disciple’s sins are forgiven and he or she possesses salvation.

(William Barclay) The NT uses five different words for sin.

The most common word is hamartia. This was originally a shooting word and means a missing of the target. To fail to hit the target was hamartia. Therefore sin is the failure to be what we might have been and could have been.

(2) The second word for sin is parabasis, which literally means a stepping across. Sin is the stepping across the line which is drawn between right and wrong.

Do we always stay on the right side of the line which divides honesty and dishonesty? Is there never any such thing as a petty dishonesty in our lives?

(3) The third word for sin is paraptōma, which means a slipping across. It is the kind of slip which someone might make on a slippery or an icy road.

(4) The fourth word for sin is anomia, which means lawlessness. Anomia is the sin of the person who knows the right, and who yet does the wrong;

(5) The fifth word for sin is the word opheilēma, which is the word used in the body of the Lord’s Prayer; and opheilēma means a debt. It means a failure to pay that which is due, a failure in duty. None of us could ever dare to claim that we have perfectly fulfilled our duty to other people and to God: such perfection does not exist in this world.

William Barclay comments: ‘Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.’ The literal meaning is: ‘Forgive us our sins in proportion as we forgive those who have sinned against us.’ In verses 14 and 15, Jesus says in the plainest possible language that if we forgive others, God will forgive us; but if we refuse to forgive others, God will refuse to forgive us. It is, therefore, quite clear that if we pray this petition with an unhealed breach, an unsettled quarrel in our lives, we are asking God not to forgive us.

If we say: ‘I will never forgive so-and-so for what he or she has done to me,’ if we say: ‘I will never forget what so-and-so did to me,’ and then go and take this petition on our lips, we are quite deliberately asking God not to forgive us. As someone has put it: ‘Forgiveness, like peace, is one and indivisible.’ Human forgiveness and divine forgiveness are inextricably intertwined. Our forgiveness of one another and God’s forgiveness of us cannot be separated; they are interlinked and interdependent. If we remembered what we are doing when we take this petition on our lips, there would be times when we would not dare to pray it.’

What about forgiving others who are not themselves repentant? 

Peter J O’Brien (Sydney based Anglican theologian)

Forgiveness 

It would seem to me that forgiveness and repentance are closely linked and in many places the two words appear in the same verse. 

In contrast, it is surprisingly rare for the two words to be linked when Christians discuss these issues. Christians who have been severely abused are often told to forgive the other person, but the repentance of the perpetrator is rarely mentioned or forgotten about. The Bible tells us that Jesus died for our sins and we are forgiven if we repent and place our trust in Jesus. However, in my professional experience with Christian adults who were abused as children, they have often been instructed to forgive unconditionally without any mention of repentance by the offending party. It seems to me rather surprising that under their circumstances they are asked to do something that Jesus did not and does not do. It seems therefore that many Christians in positions of responsibility do not understand clearly what Jesus did. 

With this in mind I see the full meaning of forgiveness as the restoration of a right relationship. As a result of Jesus’ death and our repentance, we are restored into a right relationship with God. For someone who has been abused, the repentance of the abuser would seem crucial in restoring the relationship. If our child was physically or sexually abused by another person, would we allow our child to be placed in that person’s care, even if they had repented? Would we not rightfully be cautious about any continued relationship? Perish the thought if they had not repented! 

Jesus’ death on the cross leaves the door open for us to receive forgiveness. He does not force his offer of forgiveness on us. It is through God’s grace that we have the opportunity for that forgiveness; and it is through his grace that we can repent (which includes understanding the offer and choosing to accept it). Jesus teaches this attitude towards forgiveness to his disciples: 

Things that cause people to sin are bound to come, but woe to that person through whom they come. It would be better for him to be thrown into the sea with a millstone tied around his neck than for him to cause one of these little ones to sin. So watch yourselves. If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him. If he sins against you seven times in a day, and seven times he comes back to you and says, “I repent,” forgive him. (Luke 17:1-4, NIV) 

For the Christian who has been abused, I would suggest that the goal we should work towards is ‘letting go’ of their feelings of anger, hurt and the ‘need’ for revenge—finding a forgiving spirit. This means to be ready to give forgiveness if or when repentance is offered. If we use the word ‘forgive’ for this, we need to clearly differentiate it from the other meaning described above. 

This is a process that takes considerable time, and abused Christians will need to be able to express and work through their feelings during this process. To the adult who was sexually abused as a child, to the refugee who may have been physically and/or sexually abused and whose family might have been brutally killed, it would seem to me that placing a burden of unconditional forgiveness is hardly the ‘light burden’ Jesus talks about. I would suggest that those who have been sinned against should aim to be like Christ—to leave open the offer of forgiveness for, when and if, by God’s grace, the offending party repents. 

Lightening the burden 

While God’s love is unconditional and his offer of forgiveness is unconditional, the receipt of forgiveness is conditional. The condition clearly involves acknowledgement and acceptance of our sinfulness (repentance). Where the opportunity allows, our repentance should normally be followed by evidence of a change in our lives, that is, love in action. 

We need to remember this in our dealings with abused Christians. In order to give them the opportunity of recovery from their often horrific experiences we need to be able to acknowledge the great injustice done to them and to allow them the time to work through their feelings. This needs to be done with respect and sensitivity, allowing them permission to explore and to own their feelings, whatever their feelings may be. We certainly should not be condemning them for their feelings and should not be placing burdens on them, which are humanly impossible, and not something Jesus himself would do. 

What we may also unwittingly do is drive them away from what they most need—the healing, life-giving word of the gospel and the love and support of the Christian community (the body of Christ). I am not suggesting that it is okay for a person to hold onto their bitterness and their ‘right’ for revenge. People who have been abused need to work towards developing a forgiving spirit as it is only in developing a forgiving spirit that they can be free. But unless we make clear the difference between the two understandings of forgiveness, we may be adding to people’s burdens by making them think that they are responsible to restore or to create a relationship. 

Before we preach forgiveness, let us imagine ourselves walking in another’s shoes for just a while. As Jesus did for us. 

Portions of this article were first published in Briefing #291, December 2022

In Jesus’ name

What do we mean when we say at the end of our prayers ‘In Jesus name’ or something similar?

It means that we are invoking or calling on the authority that Jesus has given us to use in prayer. An illustration might be helpful

Suppose you have a child who has reached young adulthood. He or she has always wanted to work in a specialist area that inevitably involves being a long way away from home — let’s say your offspring has landed a job with the Great Barrier Reef authority in Townsville. They need a car so before heading off on the long drive, you are asked if your offspring could have a credit card on your account but with their name on it. They promise to only use it for things which you would approve of. After some considerable soul-searching you and your spouse agree to give you offspring your credit card with their name on it. Of course you emphasise that it must only be used in situations that you would approve of. They have no credit history so they can’t get their own credit card, and they are totally dependent upon your excellent credit history and your economic power.

Praying in the name of Jesus is a bit like this. The spiritual power belongs to Jesus. We have been given the incredible privilege of using that authority in prayer to achieve things that Jesus not only approves of but wants us to achieve.

As One under authority yet exercising the authority of God, Jesus did a most amazing thing after His resurrection: He passed on the authority in which He worked to His followers. These were Galileans, people without respect in Jewish society; but they had spent time with Jesus, and He trusted them even though they were continually letting Him down. 

The disciples had worked in Jesus’ authority while He was on earth; during His ministry. We read in Luke Chapter nine ‘And he called the twelve together and gave them power and authority over all demons and to cure diseases, and he sent them out to proclaim the kingdom of God and to heal.’ He promised them that when He left, He would send them the Holy Spirit—the One who had empowered Him—to enable them to do all He had done and more (John 14: 12). So, just before departing, He instructed them to wait in Jerusalem “for the gift I told you about, the gift my Father promised . . . the Holy Spirit” (Acts 1: 4–5). And He commissioned them to carry out certain tasks: “Go, then, to all peoples everywhere and make them my disciples: baptize them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and teach them to obey everything I have commanded you” (Matthew 28: 19–20). 

This Great Commission is prefaced by this statement: “I have been given all authority in heaven and on earth” (Matthew 28: 18). The commissioning of Jesus’ followers, which gives them authority to teach and minister, is founded on the authority of Jesus. Jesus’ disciples are then to teach their disciples, and their disciples to teach their disciples, and so on. 

The Great Commission implies, I believe, that Jesus’ authority will underlie ours as we obey.

A friend told me once about an acquaintance who had been converted to Christianity out of a New Age group. While in bondage to Satan, this woman had the ability to “see” the amount of spiritual power different people carry with them, and she could pick out the Christians in a group “a mile away” by simply noting the amount of power they carried. Although she knew Christians wield more power than New Agers, she also knew that most Christians have no idea what to do with that power. So the Christians were no threat, except the occasional one who knew how to use the power of Christ. She and her fellow New Agers tried to keep well away from such people. 

NT is full of promises to the effect that whatever we ask in prayer, we will receive. But we all know that what we ask must align to God’s will. A prayer for a million dollars is unlikely to be answered.

I want to mention three things that I believe are crucial if we are to effectively use the authority we have been given in Christ.

The first is know who you are in Christ. Charles Kraft, a writer who I have found particularly helpful writes: ‘Through years of working in inner healing and deliverance, I have become convinced that the enemy’s primary area of attack is our self-image. He does not want us to discover who we are. I minister to victimised, abused and defeated people whose lives are often characterised by severe hopelessness or depression. Yet they are often brimming with hidden talents and untapped spiritual gifts given to them by God. The enemy, knowing what these gifts and talents are, has done his best to keep these people in the dark about their abilities and the relationship to God. In doing so he has destroyed or nearly destroyed their awareness of who they are intended to be.

If we are to live and minister effectively for Christ, we need to know who we are, and what it means to be who we are. Here are eight suggestions.

We were intended for second place. We are created only a little lower than God, in the image of God himself.

We are redeemed. Although in Adam we gave it all away, God has stepped in and redeemed us. Through the fall we dropped to a position below the Angel Satan. But God did not leave things that way; he made it possible through Jesus, the second Adam for us to be re-established in our rightful position just under God, on the basis of our faith.

We are children of God. As John writes, “see how much the father has loved us! His love is so great that we are called records children — and so, in fact, we are”.

We have the Holy Spirit. As family members, God gives us the Holy Spirit to live within us. Thus we get to carry infinitely more power than all in the Satanic kingdom put together! Within us lives God himself, the creator and sustainer of the universe and the creator of all the angels, including Satan.

We are united with God. To use one of Paul’s favourite sayings, we are “in Christ”. God has united with us for eternity. God in Jesus joined himself to us.

We are children of the King. This is our true identity, giving a special rights and privileges with our famous father. We have, amongst other things, special permission as his princes and princesses to come into the king’s presence at any time. We call him Abba, our dad.

Can you identify with what Charles Kraft writes in relation to this truth. “Allowing this truths to penetrate the deepest parts of me has transformed me, destroying my negative self-image and abolishing destructive mind-sets. I have lived most of my life with an attitude akin to Charlie Brown’s or Murphy’s Law, an attitude that says, “it’s normal for things to go wrong, so if anything goes right, it must be a mistake”. With this attitude, I felt God must’ve made a mistake by linking up with me. What freedom I have found by allowing myself to accept and bask in the truth of what God thinks of me! And what confidence in operating in the authority and power he has entrusted to us!

We are entrusted with divine authority. By God’s grace, he actually trusts us! Something within me says, he should have known better than to entrust his work to us. But Jesus does trust us, Just as he trusted his disciples enough to turn the kingdom over to them.

We are inseparable from our spiritual authority.

Three things that are important in being aligned to God’s will.

  1. Know who you are in Christ
  2. Maintain intimacy in Christ (John 15)
  3. The tricky one — the importance of community whereas we are all about individualism.

We have “every spiritual blessing in the heavenly world” available to us (Ephesians 1: 3).

We (plural) have the mind of Christ.

I don’t call you servants, I call you friends. The servant doesn’t know what his master is up to, but you know.

Numerous promises that whatever you ask for in my name you will receive. But this is highly dependent on knowing His will, and this involves intimacy with God.

And there is mutuality — gifts of knowledge and prophecy given when we come together help us to know the Father’s will, but we are so individually focused.

If two or three of you agree on earth . . .

Three things we can agree are God’s will

That we should bless

That we should pray for healing

That our battle is against the principalities and powers, and that should be a focus of our prayers.

Frank Viola talks about the two passages that refer to taking the Kingdom of God by violence, or the parallel that refers to ‘pressing in’ to the kingdom. He points out that this means not being discouraged, not taking no for an answer, keeping it up.

Matthew 18: 18, the Lord makes an amazing statement: “What you prohibit on earth will be prohibited in heaven, and what you permit on earth will be permitted in heaven.” When Jesus first said this to Peter, He used the singular you. But when He repeated it in Matthew 18, He used the plural you, extending this authority to the whole group and to all His followers down through the centuries. Older translations use the word bind rather than prohibit or forbid and loose rather than permit or allow. Whatever terms are used, the focus is on the close relationship between what happens on earth and what goes on in heaven. Jesus’ statement seems to confer great authority on us to do something. Just what that something is, though, is hard to figure out with any degree of certainty.

We must know who we are and the authority that entails. We are children of the King! Royal blood flows in our veins. We have the authority to come boldly and confidently into His presence (Hebrews 4: 16) and call God “Abba,” Dad. We do not have to fear Him as Isaiah did (Isaiah 6: 5). Further, we know we are loved by God because of who we are, not because of anything we may accomplish. As John says, “See how much the Father has loved us! His love is so great that we are called God’s children—and so, in fact, we are” (1 John 3: 1). One mind-blowing aspect of our status is the trust God puts in us by granting us this position and the authority inherent in it.

Why house churches?

Many of us increasingly suffer from confusion about where to go to church. We are unwilling to keep going to traditional ‘big’ church. I think there is an another, and more biblical alternative and the purpose of this article is to advocate for it. It is variously called house churches, church that meets in the home, simple church, organic church, local ekklesia and various other names. 

Every ‘big church’ I know, operates with paid, ordained, denominationally authorized, institutional full-time ministers, often with no experience of the real world, or experience that is decades old and long forgotten, ‘ministering’ week in, week out to a passive congregation. If we are to believe Paul in 1 Corinthians 11-14, these passive congregants have all been blessed with unique spiritual gifts, given for the express purpose of ministering to one another. And yet the paid, full-time minister has taken upon himself (rarely herself) the role which in the NT is the birthright of ever believer. 

The result of such bare-faced robbery is stunted, immature, diminutive, pygmy believers, of whom Paul might well say ‘But I, brothers, could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ.’

Now admittedly, this rather harsh judgement is ameliorated somewhat by our small groups, our personal friendships, our reading (especially our reading) and our personal spiritual practices, but it remains true that when I am in a St Matt’s service, and Ian or someone else is preaching, I can look around at the one hundred or so Saints in the congregation and wonder how much more blessing we would be ministering to one another if our speaking rights had not been stolen.

I wonder if Paul could write of these clergy-centric, ‘one man band’ churches: ‘through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.’ I suspect not. 

Howard Snyder, an elder statesman of writings on the church, wrote the following. ‘The clergy-laity dichotomy is a direct carry-over from pre-Reformation Roman Catholicism and a throwback to the Old Testament priesthood. It is one of the principal obstacles to the church effectively being God’s agent of the Kingdom today because it creates a false idea that only ‘holy men’, namely, ordained ministers, are really qualified and responsible for leadership and significant ministry’.

And Christian Smith (a Professor of Sociology at the University of Notre Dame) wrote: ‘It is simply impossible to construct a defensible biblical justification for the institution of clergy as we know it’.

Does the following description of our local church ring bells?

‘The church often bears an uncomfortable resemblance to the dysfunctional family. There is the authoritarian presence of the minister — the professional who know all of the answers and calls most of the shots — whom few ever challenge either because they don’t dare of because they feel it would do no good if they did. There is the outward camaraderie and the inward loneliness of the congregation. There are the unspoken rules and hidden agendas, the doubts and disagreements that for propriety’s sake are kept more or less under cover. There are people with all sorts of enthusiasms and creativities which are not often enough made use of or even recognized because the tendency is not to rock the boat but to keep on doing things the way they have always been done.’ (Frederick Buechner)

Home churches are (or should be) non-hierarchical gatherings, where all believers are encouraged to participate and minister, using the gifts God has given them, to one another. 

There are millions of Christians throughout the world who are dissatisfied with conventional church to a sufficient degree to cause them to look at alternative ways of meeting. As a result countless home churches, simple churches, organic churches, local ekklesias  etc. are springing up all over the world. As the following photo was posted on a local church Facebook page on 29/6/21 shows, meeting in homes is hardly unbiblical.

Why I left the institutional church
One of my favourite authors left the institutional church for ‘organic church’ some 25 years ago. He wrote an article some time ago in which he gave ten reasons why he left the institutional church. Unfortunately I was unable to obtain permission to reproduce the article, as it has been revised and published in a new book. I’ve attempted to paraphrase it below, as well as condense the blessings he recounts upon actually making the change.
He makes a very significant comment by way of introduction. He points out that most people leave the institutional church because they are looking for a more genuine expression of Christianity — they are looking for face-to-face community, where every member participates, and where Jesus is deeply known and loved.

One autor, Reggie McNeal put it this way. ‘A growing number of people are leaving the institutional church for a new reason. They are not leaving because they have lost faith. They are leaving the church to preserve their faith.’ 

So here’s my paraphrase of his ten reasons for leaving the institutional church.

He was not able to share with his brothers and sisters what the Lord had given to him — even in small groups which were still very much under the control of the institutional church with which they were associated.

In like manner, he was not able to hear and receive from his brothers and sisters what the Lord had given to them — this ‘right’ to minister was reserved to the minister and his staff.

He discovered that many of the institutional church’s practices were not biblical — not rooted and grounded in Scripture. Most of its practices developed from non-Christian sources after the death of the apostles, and many are directly counter to the teachings of Jesus Christ. In fact he wrote a book about it.

The institutional church taught the priesthood of all believers, but didn’t actually practice it.

The institutional churches he attended did not care properly for the poor, including members of institutional congregations so impoverished that their utilities had been turned off and the church was completely ignorant of their plight.

The churches he attended were unable or unwilling to minister in the realm of demon possession.

He grew tired of the spiritual shallowness he experienced in the institutional churches he attended. He sought practical handles on how to live the indwelling life of Christ, but found none. He didn’t experience any teaching on the inexhaustible riches of Christ.

He became increasingly bored with church services, which were more or less identical no matter what church he attended. 

Church was always predicable. There was no evidence of the often surprising intervention of Jesus in the services he attended.

The fulness of Jesus Christ could never be expressed by one member of the body. It takes all the member of the body to express the fulness of Christ and that simply doesn’t happen in institutional churches.

When he made the change, He found his spiritual instincts, which were crying out for face-to-faxce community, mutual sharing and receiving were met. He learnt that he could not live the Christian life by himself. He saw how critical it is for local ekklesias to live under the direct headship of Christ without the intervention of ’the minister’, the Parish Council or other governing bodies. He waxes eloquent about the local ekklesia, where every member is giving to others, is ‘just below the glory of heaven. You haven’t lived until you’ve seen a body of believers function under Christ’s headship without any one leading, facilitating, or controlling’. He found spiritual depth and maturity, He found that ‘mutual edification’ resulted in transformation in ways that hearing sermons and singing worship songs did not.


Visions for a home church

I wrote the following a good few years ago. There is not a lot I would change. All I would say is that it represents a vision for a fairly mature home church and certainly not for one just getting going — taking its first baby steps. Most Christians used to ‘worshipping’ in an institutional church need considerable training to be able to fully participate in every member ministry in a home church environment. God’s ‘frozen’ people are so used to being consumers of sermons and bible studies prepared by others, that a fair bit of work is required to wean them off such ‘milk’.

I’ve long been a critic of church the way it is commonly done in the various churches I have been a member of. It occured to me that I really should write up what I think church would look like if it was more faithful to the NT pattern. I’ve been thinking about it, and came up with a scenario which would be much closer to the NT pattern than what we have in the big denominations. As I said, it is a vision for a fairy mature gathering, with a reasonable number of members — certainly not a vision for starting out.

The first thing is that the church would meet in in homes, and the number of people who were part of an individual home church could be no more than 20 to 30 people for practical reasons.  There would be no paid ministry and no ordination and no official or ‘assumed’ leader.

I envisage that the church meeting would be quite long — meeting around 9:00am, probably on a Sunday morning. It would go through to midday or 12:30pm, after which there would be a meal, which would incorporate Holy Communion. Perhaps the meal migh be once a month or qat some interval longer than weekly. Importantly, the meeting would be the only meeting — ther would be no expectation of attending numerous other meetings during the week

The really important thing would be for the meeting to be structured sufficiently loosely that the meeting can be genuinely managed by the Holy Spirit.

One person would oversee or ‘manage’ the meeting. I originally thought that such a person should vary from meeting to meeting. However I have come to realise that this is not necessarily the case Leading meetings is a gift of the Holy Spirit. In 1 Corinthians 12:28, Paul gives a list of people whom God has appointed in the church. One group is called ‘administrators’. This translation is favoured in virtually every English translation of the Bible. However the Greek word kuberneseis means helmsman, or more precisely ‘acts of helmsmanship’. Paul has in mind, therefore, a person who steers the ship. The reference can only be to the specific gifts which qualify a Christian to be a helmsman to his or her congregation, i..e. a truly director pf its order and its life. Such a role is a gift of the Spirit. I am very much indebted to David Prior’s wonderful book ‘The Church in the Home’, first published in 1983.

Their role would be to ensure all the various elements of the meeting actually happened. They would ‘run’ the meeting with a very light touch, seeking to ensure there was no quenching of the Holy Spirit. It would be emphasized that whilst we want to have some order in the meeting, people should feel free to contribute as led, with due consideration to what else is going on. Waiting is not a sin. The person overseeing the meeting could make it liturgical, or at least introduce liturgical elements if they wanted to. Following the church’s liturgy is no bad thing, as amongst other things, it ensures that the home church would not stick with a few favourite themes. Quite possibly the Saints who make up the church might decide that the ‘overseer’ or ‘manager’ was unnecessary.

There would be singing. Some would be previously planned, and would therefore most likely involve musicians in the group accompanying. But there would also be unplanned singing, with anyone in the group free to suggest a song as the mood of the meeting, or the effect of ministry on the individual concerned, led the person to make the suggestion. I would envisage that at times, people might want to praise God in tongues. I would also hope that if people were genuinely inspired by the Spirit, they would speak a message in tongues, and that someone would be Spirit enabled to interpret. the group would probably take a while to be comfortable with this. The group might try to put together a song book — something we did in a home church we participated in in Geelong in the ’80s — several words only books stuck together.

Prayer would be a major focus of the group. Through appropriate teaching, the group would take their responsibility as partners with God in the management of the world seriously, and as well as praying for one another, would pray for the needs of the world. I envisage a good chunk of time being devoted to prayer, but, as for singing, prayer ‘breaks’ as the Spirit leads. Prayer should involve giving people the opportunity to seek anointing and prayer for healing for themselves or / and for others. This would be a very important ministry.

There should be constant communication, outside of the weekly gathering, between church members with prayer requests as they manifest themselves, and with news of how whatever is being prayed for is working out.

My wife and I would want to introduce the concept of being a people of blessing. We would want to actually bless during the meeting. We would also want to encourage people to bless their neighbourhood, work people, relatives etc., and to encourage us by telling us about the consequences of participating in that blessing ministry. We would seek the opportunity to do some teaching about this, based on Roy Godwin’s books ‘The Grace Outpouring’ and ‘The Way of Blessing’ — and of course for this to be subject to the judgement of the group.

I envisage that some time would be devoted to people being invited to share with the group how God had been speaking to them through the week. What are you excited about? How has the Lord manifested himself to you during the week? What have you read that has enlightened you? 

I envisage that people would have the opportunity to share how their fulfilment of their mission went during week. This would include work. It would involve our witness at work, and this means not only speaking to people about Christ, but our behaviour — honesty, ethical behaviour, confronting your organisation where it is unethical etc. It would also involve the actual work itself. How has it contributed to making the world a better place? Will any of our work survive the fires of judgement and be taken up in the new creation? How about family and friends? Hobbies and relaxation activities?

In all these things there would be a great need for sensitivity so that people were not threatened, and help and teaching and mentoring was offered to help people grow into these ideas.

And there would be interaction with the Bible. That would happen (no doubt) in all the parts of the meeting, but there would be a particular period of the meeting devoted more specifically to interaction with the Bible. This interaction might take a myriad of different forms. People might be asked to prepare a study or studies on a particular subject. We could look at particular subjects of concern to individuals. Some that I would like to explore include ‘Just what is our mission — is it only to save souls or is it more extensive?’, ‘God and suffering’, ‘Is there such a thing as a blessing ministry’, ‘the Unseen Realm’ and so on. We could also ask people to prepare studies on passages of Scripture that have particularly blessed them or which they feel are greviously misunderstood. My candidates would be Romans 6 and 7, the story of the widow’s mite, and Matthew 28:18-20 (the Great Commission). We could, however, devolve the responsibility for choosing subjects and passages to the lectionary, guaranteeing variety.

People might lead a study or studies on a particular book of the Bible. Visitors might be invited to come and speak to the meeting. It might be that the group could watch a DVD. The important thing is that the whole meeting has the opportunity to participate, comment, criticise, ask questions etc. It would also be important that leading studies was not the province of the theologically trained. All people should feel free to make suggestions and lead themselves. Given that the contribution of people at the meeting, and the discussion that follows, leading is not a particularly burdensome task. In time, people gifted with teaching skills would emerge.

Given that we do not want to quench the Spirit, I would expect that there would be people who respond to promptings of the Spirit by saying things that might be construed as ‘prophecy’. This might prove to be important to help people seeking guidance. 

In all these things, the meeting would be free to exercise its judgement concerning contributions made by people — particularly in areas of teaching, prophecy, and tongues, and maybe singing contributions. Genuine humility will be a feature of such meetings.

And sacrificial love must lie at the heart of the whole meeting and outside the meeting. People should be held to account if they have undertaken to do things. Such holding to account must be done in love (not just saying it). When the meeting exercises its judgement about a contribution, and the judgement is not positive, it must be given and received in love. Doubtless there will be sad, hurt, damaged people in the group. This will be where those with pastoral gifts come to the fore, as they follow up during the week. See the Frank Viola article at the end of this paper for more on this.

The meal would most likely be a ‘managed’ pot luck meeting, where people bring a casserole, a salad or whatever. I doubt if tables would be big enough, so a buffet style of meal would be best. Perhaps whoever is designated the meeting ‘manager’  is the person who leads communion, with a blessing prayer and the breaking of bread at the beginning of the meal, and a blessing and sharing of wine at the end.  Maybe the meeting ‘leader’ could be asked to prepare a blessing to pronounce over the group at the end of meeting. Perhaps, just perhaps, it might be appropriate for meals to be catered from time to time.

Money. As there is no church building and there are no paid employees, there is a great opportunity to contribute to organizations and indivuals who are seeking to make the world a better place. Organizations such as MSF, the Barnabas Fund for instance, could be supported by the group. But perhaps a better way is to ensure that generosity is a core value that is taught, and that individual families are encouraged to support organizations in response to prayer seeking guidance. The various organisations and individuals that group members support would also be a focus of the church’s prayers.

Gender equality. Women and men must be treated equally throughout, so women are equally free to teach and be involved in all the ministries of the meeting, and men must take an equal part in meal provision with women.

Children. I personally don’t envisage being involved in a church with young children, so I haven’t given it much thought. Where churches have young children involved, the meeting itself would need to work out how to handle children. Maybe responsibilities would be rotated? One thing I do believe is that children are more capable of being seriously involved in meetings at a younger age than is normally practiced. When we did have children involved in our Tuesday night group in Geelong (at least six kids), we had no problem — they were not even an issue we ever discussed — it just worked.

It is really important that there is no authoritarian leadership. The church provides the leadership.
Wolfgang Simson describes his vision of what the church, unhindered, is becoming:
[I dream of a] church, which does not need huge amounts of money, or rhetoric, control and manipulation, which can do without powerful and charismatic heroes, which is non-religious at heart, which can thrill people to the core, make them lose their tongues out of sheer joy and astonishment, and simply teach us The Way to live. A church which not only has a message, but is the message. Something which spreads like an unstoppable virus, infects whatever it touches, and ultimately covers the earth with the glory and knowledge of God.

Some suggested reading

I have been a student of home churches and related matters most of my life as a Christian. I think the first book I ever read on the subject was ‘The Taste of New Wine’ by Keith Miller, when I was manager of Keswick Book Depot in Melbourne in the early seventies. However the three most influential books for me were as follows.

Paul’s Idea of Community by Robert Banks. Robert is a world renowned New Testament scholar. He used to be based in Canberra, and he is primarily responsible for us being in Canberra, as he recommended me for the position of Director of Lay Education at St Mark’s in 1985. Robert initiated a group of house churches in Canberra, and we briefly attended one when we came to Canberra. Alas, as an ordained minister, I could hardly keep that up. Those house churches no longer exist, and I have never been able to find out why.

Paul’s Idea of Community is a very deceptive book. You get world class scholarship in the simplest of packages. He takes a few paragraphs to deal with issues that scholars have debated in whole books. He just states what he believes the NT teaches. The book is 40 years old, and a new edition was released last year. His teaching is like icebergs. What you don’t see is the 90% of scholarship under the surface that produces the 10% you can see. Robert and his then wife Julia (who died of cancer many years ago) wrote a little booklet called ‘Going to Church in the First Century’, in which they sought to imagine a gathering of Christians in the First Century. This booklet has been incorporated into the 40th anniversary edition of ‘Paul’s Idea of Community’.

The second book is ‘Pagan Christianity: exploring the roots of our church practices’ by Frank Viola and George Barna. I found this to be an explosive book. The authors deal with the origins of church buildings, liturgies, the sermon, the pastor, dressing up, music, tithing, the sacraments (as regularly practiced) and Christian education. The book is extremely well researched. George Barna is a highly respected Christian researcher. Basically they show that every one of the afore mentioned has its origins in paganism, and that there is nothing holy, nothing biblical in any of them.

The third book is Frank Viola’s constructive follow-up to ‘Pagan Christianity’. It is ‘Reimagining Church’. He shares God’s original intent for the church, where the body of Christ is an organic, living, breathing organism. A church that is free of convention, formed by spiritual intimacy, and unbound by four walls. There are some guidelines on how to move forward for those desperate to leave the institutional church.

Final thoughts

I have mentioned the possibility of forming a house church to a number of people over the years, and I think it is fair to say I have been met with 100% silence. I tend to think that pretty much all Christians I know have a sense that belonging to ‘big church’ with a paid minister ministering to a passive congregation is the only legitimate expression of church, and that somehow it is God ordained, and totally beyond questioning. Frank Viola’s experience is similar. He writes (in ‘Reimagining Church’) ‘It seems to me that many of us are willing to tip over any sacred cow except the modern pastoral office and the Sunday-morning Protestant ritual. Regardless of how unbiblical these two religious traditions are, they seem to be off limits even to the most radical thinkers.’

I don’t know if this describes you or not. Pagan Christianity (and many, many other books) put such a view well and truly to the sword.
Some proponents of house churches say the best way to ‘plant’ such a church is to start it with non-Christians and enquirers. They say that house churches should be ‘missional’. I think this misunderstands ‘mission’, which opens up another massive area of discussion, and I’m not going there now.

I think the role of house churches is to support one another, encourage one another, provide assurance, give everyone the opportunity to discover and use their spiritual gifts, engage with Scripture, explore subjects we find challenging to get our minds around; in short, build one another up, whilst we engage in the mission God has given us during the week. 

I expect that if starting a house church is ‘of God’, then there would be plenty of opposition organized by Satan. I expect this would be mainly in the form of criticism from institutional church people. Expect it and be well prepared to deal with it.

I think new members should be by invitation only. I don’t think it should be an open meeting. It would not be for non-Christians, although I see no reason non-Christians couldn’t attend provided they were accompanied by a group member.


If this article has made you long for involvement in a house church, and if you live in the South Canberra area, please feel free to get in touch with me. You can find my contact details at www.kainosprint.com.au.

Yahweh’s option for the poor, or why all Christians should vote for left leaning candidates

I think it was in the base communities of Sao Paulo that the expression Yahweh’s option for the poor first arose. I recall reading about it first whilst employed at St Mark’s Canberra as Director of Lay Education in late eighties. 

To my mind there is overwhelming evidence of God’s concern for the poor, the disadvantaged, the widow, the fatherless and the refugee in scripture. Here is some of the evidence that comes to mind.

The story of Ruth and Boaz reminds me of the command in Deuteronomy 24:19 ‘When you reap your harvest in your field and forget a sheaf in the field, you shall not go back to get it. It shall be for the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow, that the LORD your God may bless you in all the work of your hands.’ 

Deuteronomy 15:1-2 speaks of the Sabbatical year ‘At the end of every seven years you shall grant a release. And this is the manner of the release: every creditor shall release what he has lent to his neighbor. He shall not exact it of his neighbor, his brother, because the LORD’S release has been proclaimed.’ 

And in Leviticus 25 we read of the marvellous year of jubilee. ‘You shall count seven weeks of years, seven times seven years, so that the time of the seven weeks of years shall give you forty-nine years. Then you shall sound the loud trumpet on the tenth day of the seventh month. On the Day of Atonement you shall sound the trumpet throughout all your land. And you shall consecrate the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you, when each of you shall return to his property and each of you shall return to his clan. That fiftieth year shall be a jubilee for you; in it you shall neither sow nor reap what grows of itself nor gather the grapes from the undressed vines. For it is a jubilee. It shall be holy to you.

There are laws relating to doing justice

You shall not steal; you shall not deal falsely; you shall not lie to one another. You shall not swear by my name falsely, and so profane the name of your God: I am the LORD.

“You shall not oppress your neighbor or rob him. The wages of a hired worker shall not remain with you all night until the morning. You shall not curse the deaf or put a stumbling block before the blind, but you shall fear your God: I am the LORD.

“You shall do no injustice in court. You shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great, but in righteousness shall you judge your neighbor. You shall not go around as a slanderer among your people, and you shall not stand up against the life of your neighbor: I am the LORD.

“You shall not hate your brother in your heart, but you shall reason frankly with your neighbor, lest you incur sin because of him. You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD. (Lev. 19)

“If your brother becomes poor and cannot maintain himself with you, you shall support him as though he were a stranger and a sojourner, and he shall live with you. Take no interest from him or profit, but fear your God, that your brother may live beside you. You shall not lend him your money at interest, nor give him your food for profit. I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt to give you the land of Canaan, and to be your God. (Lev. 25)

And then the prophets reveal how faithful Israel has been to this vision.

Cry aloud; do not hold back;

lift up your voice like a trumpet;


declare to my people their transgression,

to the house of Jacob their sins.

Yet they seek me daily

and delight to know my ways,

as if they were a nation that did righteousness

and did not forsake the judgment of their God;

they ask of me righteous judgments;

they delight to draw near to God.

Why have we fasted, and you see it not?

Why have we humbled ourselves, and you take no knowledge of it?’

Behold, in the day of your fast you seek your own pleasure,

and oppress all your workers.

Behold, you fast only to quarrel and to fight

and to hit with a wicked fist.

Fasting like yours this day

will not make your voice to be heard on high.

Is such the fast that I choose,

a day for a person to humble himself?

Is it to bow down his head like a reed,

and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him?

Will you call this a fast,

and a day acceptable to the LORD?

“Is not this the fast that I choose:

to loose the bonds of wickedness,

o undo the straps of the yoke,

to let the oppressed go free,

and to break every yoke?

Is it not to share your bread with the hungry

and bring the homeless poor into your house;

when you see the naked, to cover him,

and not to hide yourself from your own flesh?

Then shall your light break forth like the dawn,

and your healing shall spring up speedily;

your righteousness shall go before you;

the glory of the LORD shall be your rear guard.

Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer;

you shall cry, and he will say, ‘Here I am.’

If you take away the yoke from your midst,

the pointing of the finger, and speaking wickedness,

if you pour yourself out for the hungry

and satisfy the desire of the afflicted,

then shall your light rise in the darkness

and your gloom be as the noonday. (Isaiah 58)

I hate, I despise your feasts,

and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.

Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings,

I will not accept them;

and the peace offerings of your fattened animals,

I will not look upon them.

Take away from me the noise of your songs;

to the melody of your harps I will not listen.

But let justice roll down like waters,

and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. (Amos 5:20-24)

And this fabulous piece of paraphrasing from ‘The Message’. 

Listen to my Message,

you Sodom-schooled leaders.

Receive God’s revelation,

you Gomorrah-schooled people.

“Why this frenzy of sacrifices?”

GOD’s asking.

“Don’t you think I’ve had my fill of burnt sacrifices,

rams and plump grain-fed calves?

Don’t you think I’ve had my fill

of blood from bulls, lambs, and goats?

When you come before me,

who ever gave you the idea of acting like this,

Running here and there, doing this and that—

all this sheer commotion in the place provided for worship?

“Quit your worship charades.

I can’t stand your trivial religious games:

Monthly conferences, weekly Sabbaths, special meetings—

meetings, meetings, meetings—I can’t stand one more!

Meetings for this, meetings for that. I hate them!

You’ve worn me out!

I’m sick of your religion, religion, religion,

while you go right on sinning.

When you put on your next prayer-performance,

I’ll be looking the other way.

No matter how long or loud or often you pray,

I’ll not be listening.

And do you know why? Because you’ve been tearing

people to pieces, and your hands are bloody.

Go home and wash up.

Clean up your act.

Sweep your lives clean of your evildoings

so I don’t have to look at them any longer.

Say no to wrong.

Learn to do good.

Work for justice.

Help the down-and-out.

Stand up for the homeless.

Go to bat for the defenseless. (Isaiah 1:10-17, the Message)

And it goes on in the words of Jesus and beyond.

Jesus quotes Isaiah 61 as his ‘mission statement’:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,

because he has anointed me

to proclaim good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives

and recovering of sight to the blind,

to set at liberty those who are oppressed,

to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Jesus proclaims who are blessed in the Beatitudes

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

“Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.

“Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.

“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.

“Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

“Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. 

Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

Then there are the well known stories of Jesus.

The rich man and Lazarus in Luke 16:19-31.

“There was a rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. And at his gate was laid a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who desired to be fed with what fell from the rich man’s table. Moreover, even the dogs came and licked his sores. The poor man died and was carried by the angels to Abraham’s side. The rich man also died and was buried, and in Hades, being in torment, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham far off and Lazarus at his side. And he called out, Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the end of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am in anguish in this flame.’ But Abraham said, ‘Child, remember that you in your lifetime received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner bad things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in anguish. And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, in order that those who would pass from here to you may not be able, and none may cross from there to us.’ And he said, ‘Then I beg you, father, to send him to my father’s house— for I have five brothers—so that he may warn them, lest they also come into this place of torment.’ But Abraham said, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them hear them.’ And he said, ‘No, father Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.’ He said to him, ‘If they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.’”

And the famous account of the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25:31-46

“When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. And he will place the sheep on his right, but the goats on the left. Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’ Then the righteous will answer him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’ And the King will answer them, Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’

“Then he will say to those on his left, Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’ Then they also will answer, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to you?’ Then he will answer them, saying, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”

 This is a very interesting passage. Many if not most people assume Jesus is referring to anyone, anywhere, who is hungry, in prison etc. But on every other occasion where Jesus uses the term ‘brother’ as he does in v.40, he is referring to his followers, those who we would now call Christians. And when he says ‘I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me’ etc. it calls to mind his question to Saul in Acts ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?’ Jesus says that when we treat his ‘brothers’ well or badly, we are in fact treating him well or badly. So I conclude that the Matthew passage does NOT refer to all people everywhere, but to Christians — Christians anywhere in the world — which is challenge enough. 

And the apostles themselves agree with the testimony of the law and the prophets and Jesus himself. 

Paul devoted a tremendous amount of energy to the collection for the poor brothers and sisters in Jerusalem.

James famously wrote: What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. (James 2:14-17)

And less well known, the Apostle John wrote: By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him? Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth. (1 John 3:16)

—————

It seems to me that caring for less well off — Yahweh’s option for the poor — is a golden thread that runs right through Scripture. I suppose it goes without saying that left leaning political parties are more in tune with the option for the poor. Yes, such parties, many Christians would say would say, have many elements in their platforms that  a lot of Christians find offensive. Policies such as supporting euthanasia, infringing the rights of employers of Christian organisations to refuse employment to people who are not sympathetic to the organisations’ values, enthusiastically supporting the LGBTQI community, supporting gay marriage, endorsing Safe Schools programs with what many Christians consider to be hidden ‘fluid’ sexuality agendas, and so on. Left leaning parties, however, do tend to have a social conscience.

On the other hand, it seems to me that at least in this country, right leaning conservative governments are intent on ‘stealing from the poor’ and giving to the rich. It seems to me that neocon governments seek to provide the least they can get away with in social security to ‘keep the natives quiet’. At the last election, our family concluded that thanks to the Coalition, there is a privileged cohort in society consisting of wealthy individuals, organisations and corporations who are growing fat by sucking at the teat of the Australian economy, at the expense of the many millions not privileged to belong to this cohort. Coalition policy at the last election amounted to no more than ensuring this cohort can continue to enjoy the benefits of our economy with minimum disruption.

There is constant downward pressure on age pensions, unemployment benefits, NDIS payments, Medicare payments, and social security payments generally. Centrelink harasses alleged recipients of over-paid social security benefits with robot debt, and now, the ATO seeks to recoup alleged overpayments of JobKeeper debts, whilst refusing to even ask, let alone asking the Government to legislate or take concrete action to recover over paid JobKeeper payments to large corporations who, surprise, surprise, are key donors to the Libs and Nats. The Coalition wailed incessantly (and successfully) during the last election campaign at Labor’s plans to reign in negative gearing and the franking credit racket, which of course played well to those wealthy enough to have investment properties, and receive share dividends. They seem to regard the plight of people who are homeless as being their own fault. And don’t get me going on their attitudes to climate change (Labor, Morrison said, are ‘declaring war on the weekend’, ‘they want take away your utes), indigenous people, refugees (that is those who can’t afford to come by plane), equal opportunity and pay for women, and a fair dinkum corruption investigator.

The Coalition Government has presided over constant cuts to our foreign aid budget. Whilst the UK government has enshrined in law a .7% target of GNI, Australia is languishing round .2%, and the foreign aid bucket is constantly raided when further savings are ‘needed’. After all, there is no-one to advocate on behalf of foreign aid.

I hear very little criticism of the style of socialism adopted by Scandinavian countries whose highly taxed citizens don’t seem to complain about the cradle to grave welfare they enjoy. One of the things that really irritates me in Australia is the unchallenged assumption that higher taxes are bad and lower taxes are good. I think it is the other way around.  It has always been a mystery to me how we can expect ever improved schools, health services, roads, transport services, pensions etc., whilst ever lowering taxes. I did not do all that well at maths at school, but I reckon it just can’t be done. Brickbats to Peter Costello for constantly currying political favour by returning iron ore generated windfall taxes to taxpayers during his time as Treasurer. 

I highly recommend a book called ‘The Hole in the Gospel’ by Richard Stearns, President of World Vision USA at the time the book was written (2009). It lays out the case for Christians to embrace the whole gospel, so that there are armies of compassion stations in every corner of the world  doing small things with great love, working together in reclaiming the world for Christ’s kingdom. 

So why are there so many Christians who think democratic socialism is so on the nose? Well I have a theory. As Paul Keating used to say, ‘in a two horse race, always back self interest’. We have some wonderful friends, whose influence on my wife and I has been profound. They are ex-Kiwis and were caught up in the charismatic renewal that so blessed NZ. I have never been able to figure out why they are so right wing — aggressively, embarrassingly so. I think it’s the hip pocket. They are self-funded retirees, and they won’t have a bar of anything that might potentially affect their retirement income. I suspect that Christians with good superannuation incomes simply can’t see past issues relating to maximizing their income. This inevitably means they are Coalition voters. 

If I’m right, then of course it’s very, very sad on many fronts. It reflects on their confidence in God’s covenant faithfulness. ‘Keep your life free from love of money, and be content with what you have, for he has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” Or as Kenneth Wuest translates the five negative in the original Greek ‘I will not, I will not cease to sustain and uphold you. I will not, I will not, I will not let you down’. (Hebrews 13:5) And it reflects on an unwillingness to face up to ‘the hole in the gospel’. You tend to hear a lot about salvation, the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross and so on, but very little about our responsibility to the less well off.

I see that there are something like forty ‘Voices of . . . ’ campaigns in Australia at the moment, based on the ‘Voices of Indi’ that saw a particularly aggressive politician, Sophie Mirabella lose the seat of Indi to an independent, Kathy McGowan. If enough of these are successful to well and truly control the balance of power, one of my greatest wishes for Australian politics will have been fulfilled. That is that we should be rid, once for all, of the two party system, and instead be governed by a coalition of a variety of voices, forced to govern by compromise and negotiation. And please don’t claim that nothing will ever get done. Nothing ever gets done by the Libs as it is, other than maintaining the status quo to enable the privileged to suck at the teat of the Australian economy. All you have to do is look to such places as Scandinavia to put the lie to such infantile notions.

I guess there is one more thing I would like to say. I think the likes of Martyn Iles of the Australian Christian Lobby miss the point. They seem to act as though it is crucial to maintain Christian morals throughout society, and they seek to do it by creating a strong lobby group to argue against such things as abortion, gay marriage, constraints on employment options for Christian employers, constraints on ‘gay conversion’ ‘safe schools’ and so on. I don’t think such lobbying is the role of the church at all. The church is meant to consist of millions of outposts of small communities, found in every city, town and village throughout the world actually living out the truth of the gospel before the watching world. We are called to be agents of new creation infiltrating the present evil world, demonstrating that there is another way. But since we have failed so miserably to live up to this vision, we resort to lobbying.

In Isaiah 40:5, we are promised that ‘the glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together’. New Testament scholar Tom Wright says that the establishment of small communities of Christians living the gospel throughout the world is the fulfilment of this promise — Christian communities displaying the glory of God to the watching world. And THAT is how we change the world. It is how the early Christians changed the world. I maintain that we have much more hope of fulfilling this vision in small home churches than massive hierarchical, clergy dominated, churches where ‘the laity’ are passive consumers of sermons.

I rest my case, and would be glad to be shown where I am wrong.