Written by T. M. Suffield |
Friday, October 21, 2022
Our churches should act more like tended gardens. We as people need curation. We need a gardener, or we risk turning into human weeds: becoming without arriving. But we need that like plants do, slowly, in the right season, enjoying the timeless delights of growing in the same direction.

I’ve worked in a global corporate company and in some large public sector institutions. Every one of them has gone through some sort of major change programme while I was there. It’s the nature of the beast, nothing is perfect so every five years or so it gets reinvented—usually fixing a real problem by creating a different one.
I’ve never been a change manager but in some of these changes they’ve been things I needed to happen or things I was tasked with implementing. On other occasions they’ve been done to me, which is about as delightful as it sounds.
At my previous University we were early on in a project to implement some changes to teaching that would (all being well) improve things for students. I remember my manager expressing consternation and confusion that those we were needing to change weren’t excited about the potential changes. I know, it was a naïve thought. I looked at her and said, “because all change is loss.”
I think that surprised her, but it’s a truism. The kind of churches I’ve been part of are dynamic and change fairly frequently. This is a great strength and a great weakness. It is always pastorally difficult to help a congregation through a change—even a relatively minor one—because for someone change is always loss.
Incrementalism
Usually for those deciding on the change the loss is a desirable one, which can make it easy to lose sight of the fact that it won’t be for everyone, even if you think it should be. If you’re trying to lead change then people will be resistant to it if there is no tangible good. We have to remember that change usually challenges our underlying stories.
When change is done to you rather than with you that loss is inevitably pain rather than gain. It’s impossible to see the relative goods of the change or understand why its being done if you are a subject instead of a participant. Anyone who has been through a company reorganisation can testify to this.
Which is to say that if you’re a church leader and you’re changing something in your church’s life (and you probably are, let’s be honest), you need to consider carefully who will be impacted by the change. I would really encourage assuming someone will be rather than thinking they’ll be fine. What’s the story that this change will affect for them? Where will it hurt them, even though that wasn’t your intention?
This means organic or incremental change is easier for people to handle because we’re used to lightly editing our stories as we go along.
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Many may have preferred Knox to simply tolerate Mary, Queen of the Scots, but he could not tolerate what he did not believe to be biblical. There are too few men like this today. Knox was not a man who tolerated sin or opposition to God’s Word in any manner, but he was a man committed to the truth of God’s Word and ways. This commitment to God and His Word would even lead him into the life of a slave in the French galley, but even there, he would remain committed to the Lord, longing for the day when he would once more preach His Word.

Preaching the Word of God is one of the most blessed tasks a man may be called to perform. However, just as James warns that not all should desire to teach—for their judgment will be all the harsher before Christ (James 3:1)—many others prove to be ineffective communicators of gospel truth because they have failed to apprehend by faith the very conviction of truth needed to be a true preacher of the Word of God. Though various styles are used in preaching, and though God can take a man who mumbles, stumbles, and studders and make much of his message, the one who is not convicted of the truth will not a good preacher make. The point is not as much oratoary ability, but zeal for God and His Word.
John Knox, the Scottish Reformer, was one of those blessed men who possessed, from all accounts, both pathos and ethos; that is, Knox possessed the rare ability to passionately communicate what he held most dear: The Word of God. While the aim of preaching is never to entertain or produce a manufactured emotional response, true Gospel preaching will often thunder forth from a pulpit whether or not the preacher is himself emotional. The Word of God carries with it a distinct power to rouse up faith, conviction, repentance, and a turning towards Christ within the hearts of sinners as the Holy Spirit performs the act of regeneration (Rom. 10:17). But man is much less likely to preach that which he does not believe or care about. Therefore, the one who is convinced of the truth of Scripture and convicted by it cannot do anything other than stand upon the Word of God, will be, of necessity, a compelling communicator of Gospel truth.
John Knox was such a man. From the time his pulpit ministry began, right up until his death, Knox thundered forth the Word from the pulpit and wrote ferociously with his pen. James Melville, having gone to see Knox in 1571 only one year prior to his death, wrote:
“Of all the benefits I had that year was the coming of that most notable prophet and apostle of our nation, John Knox, at St. Andrews. I heard him teach the prophecies of Daniel that summer and the winter following. In the opening of his text he was moderate the space of a half an hour, but when he reached the application he made me tremble so much that I could not hold the pen to write. He wielded this power when in bodily weakness, for he had to be helped into the church and lifted into the pulpit where he had to lean on his first entry. But when he came to his sermon he was so active and vigorous that he was like to beat the pulpit into pieces and fly out of it.”[1]
The Scottish reformer, even frail in weak in age, was bold as a lion while tender as a lamb and always a bulwark of true, Christian faith. There is much, then, that the Christian who lives in a society intolerant towards Christians can learn from this powerful Saint of the past.
Bold Proclamations
Knox is, perhaps, best known today as a thunderous preacher of the Word of God who embodied the righteous man of Proverbs 24:1: He was as bold as a lion throughout his ministry, whether preaching to the masses or standing against “Bloody” Mary, Queen of the Scots.  Protestant Christians were typically not tolerated in Knox’s day, and the reformer often found himself facing various modes of persecution. Yet, he never once stopped boldly proclaiming the truth.
This courageous preaching was an admirable feature of his ministry. In his exceptional and succinct biography of Knox, Iain H. Murray writes:
“It was said of [Knox] when he died that he ‘never feared the face of man’; and that is true of him… He was never afraid to be alone, and to stand alone. His was the same heroic character that you see in Martin Luther standing in the Diet of Worms and elsewhere.
“But consider him as a preacher. His great characteristic as a preacher was vehemency.”
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Much of evangelicalism in today’s America makes Christianity a kind of business transaction. I push the right buttons, and out comes a blessing or some positive outcome from God. It works kind of like a cosmic vending machine. This is not the gospel message. As the Apostles’ Creed concludes, you get the forgiveness of sins, the communion of the saints, and everlasting life, but not the absolute guarantee of immediate reward.

I am a Facebook user. Quite frequently I will see a post that says, “Type ‘Amen’ and in exactly two hours everything in your life that needs to be healed will be healed.” Under the comments section there will be a long string of amens. Or one will say, “Type ‘Amen’ and in one hour you will receive a miracle in your life.” My question is, a miracle from what or who? God? Zeus? The Flying Spaghetti Monster?
One day back in the eighties I was driving and had the car radio on the Christian contemporary music station. The DJ was chastising his listeners for not giving more money when they passed the bucket around at Christian music concerts. He promised us that whatever we put in, God will return fourfold. Really? What about the illustration told by Jesus about the poor widow who gave her last two mites? Did she get a fourfold return? Was she even expecting it? What was the point Jesus was making?
Back in 2000 Bruce Wilkinson published a little book, The Prayer of Jabez. This refers to a brief passage, 1 Chronicles 4:10. It reads:
“Oh that you would bless me and enlarge my border, and that your hand might be with me, and that you would keep me from harm so that it might not bring me pain! And God granted what he asked.” 
It became a bestseller. Evangelical Christians were repeating the Prayer of Jabez like chanting a mantra, expecting a new car to appear in the driveway or some similar blessing. I remember sitting in an airport gate waiting area and a man to my left was talking to two women. He was telling them in an animated tone about the multiple miracles suddenly occurring in his life since he started praying the Prayer of Jabez.
I teach church history at African Bible College in Lilongwe, Malawi. I use as the textbook Church History in Plain Language by Bruce Shelley. Towards the end of the book he makes the observation about Americans in the 1980s and 90s: “Unlike the rich young ruler in the Gospels, church attenders seldom asked, ‘What must I do?’ They were far more likely to ask, ‘What do I get out of this?’”
One remembers in the Book of Daniel the three young men about to be pitched into the furnace for not worshipping Nebuchadnezzar’s idol. They said God was able to rescue them, BUT IF NOT they still would not bow down (Daniel 3:17-18).
There is the story of Esther who was called upon by Uncle Mordecai to risk her life by going to the king uninvited in order to save the Jews. She says, “If I perish, I perish” (Esther 4:16).
In the Book of Job we see a man losing everything, and it was by God’s permission. He makes the statement, “Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him” (Job 13:15).
The Book of Habakkuk ends with: “Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines, the produce of the olive fail, and the fields yield no food…yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will take joy in the God of my salvation” (Habakkuk 3:17).
Much of evangelicalism in today’s America makes Christianity a kind of business transaction. I push the right buttons, and out comes a blessing or some positive outcome from God. It works kind of like a cosmic vending machine. This is not the gospel message. As the Apostles’ Creed concludes, you get the forgiveness of sins, the communion of the saints, and everlasting life, but not the absolute guarantee of immediate reward. What is needed is for the church to forsake what I call voodoo evangelicalism and the attempt to manipulate God.
Larry Brown is a Minister in the Evangelical Presbyterian Church and serves as Professor of church history, world history, hermeneutics and missions at the African Bible College in Lilongwe, Malawi.
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