Stephen Kneale, Author at Refcast

Happy Christians

By Stephen Kneale — 4 months ago

If we really are happy and content in him, letting our faces show it doesn’t hurt, does it? Actually speaking about how Jesus has made us happy and content must be a good and sensible thing. That, I think is why the world needs happy pastors. And not just happy pastors, but happy Christians. Unless people see that Jesus does indeed make us happy, why would they think he’ll do anything for them?

I am all too aware that different people are drawn to Christ because for different reasons. For me, I suppose there are two key factors. First – let’s just admit it off the bat – I was brought up in a Christian family. That means I was to some degree socially and culturally primed for it. It _felt_ right to some degree because it _felt_ normal because for me, growing up in a Christian family, it was normal for me. The social and cultural barriers were minimal given I had been brought up in it. What social and cultural barriers there were tended not to be to accessing Christ, but why most people in the church operated one way and my family followed suit when we gathered together, but when we were home we operated a slightly different way. And, for that matter, why my middle class mates at school seemed to operate more like my church but my working class mates more like my family at home. But those weren’t barriers for me, they were more just curiosities that took many years to even recognise and then begin to understand to some degree.
The other factor for me was simply the belief that it is all true. I even went through a period in my teens – probably more out of a sense that my life would be easier and more comfortable if it were not true – of wishing it wasn’t. But I had professed faith long before then and could ultimately never shake the nagging sense that it _is_ really true. And if true, then kicking against it was even more uncomfortable than whatever issues I determined at the time would have made my life easier if I could just merrily go along with them. I find living as thought something I don’t believe is true, or pretending something I do believe is true isn’t in reality, far harder to cope with than the social awkwardness of not fitting in or whatever.
So, fundamentally, those are the two key factors (I think) that primed me to be a believer. I was culturally and socially primed for it, making it all _feel_ ultimately normal. There were no family barriers for me but, actually, being a Christian in my family was an evident benefit to me (pragmatically speaking). But I also couldn’t get around the fact that I really do believe God exists, always have and never doubted it.
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Get the Basics Right

By Stephen Kneale — 4 months ago

The Big Picture for Small Churches (which is brilliant, by the way), John Benton helpfully boils it down to these five things: Quality presence, Quality welcome, Quality teaching, Quality hospitality, and Quality prayer. These are the basics as far as churches go. Basics that any church can do well.

I was watching a bit of post-match analysis from Roy Keane after England’s dismal loss to Greece. He was characteristically pretty miserable about them. But then, it’s hard to deny that they deserved it this time. His main takeaway – as has been that of many a football commentator and pundit for many decades – was this: they just didn’t get the basics right.
If in football we talk about getting the basics right, in basketball we tend to talk about fundamentals. You don’t wind up on the receiving end of absolute pastings without failing to work at the fundamentals. You can do all the fancy trickery under the sun, but if you can’t do the basics on defence or don’t commit to running back to help, all your skill will be for naught. You’ve got to get the fundamentals right before we talk about anything else.
We probably baulk at fundamentals (for different reasons) in the church. So, I think we’ll stick with basics. But it still holds true. Many a big church has come a cropper because it has run away with itself and forgotten about the basics. Many a small church has thrown the towel in because it doesn’t think it can operate on the necessary level whilst failing to spend any real time considering the basics, basics even they can do. In the church, we’ve got to do the basics.
The question is, what are the basics? What are the core things any church, of any size, can do well? What are the things that the Bible wants the church to be about? Helpfully, in his book The Big Picture for Small Churches (which is brilliant, by the way), John Benton helpfully boils it down to these five things:

Quality presence
Quality welcome
Quality teaching
Quality hospitality
Quality prayer

These are the basics as far as churches go. Basics that any church can do well.
By quality presence, we mean presence in our community. Being around as faithful witnesses to the Lord Jesus. It is through our presence in our community we will get opportunities to speak of Christ and share his gospel.
Being welcoming is Church Basics 101.
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Why Are We Scared to Teach Our People Theology?

By Stephen Kneale — 5 months ago

There is nothing stopping the majority of pastors from teaching basic systematics and biblical theology in their churches. Most could have a reasonable stab at historical theology and ecclesiology too. Assuming they’re able to teach the Bible at all, I’d imagine hermeneutics are going to be there too.

One of the great things about believing the Holy Spirit works in God’s people to help them understand the scriptures, and of believing in the perspicuity of the scriptures themselves, is that we ought to recognise all believers are capable of reading and understanding God’s Word. I won’t run through all the caveats (that I’m sure you’re familiar with) about what perspicuity actually means and how we might understand what the scriptures have to say. Let me just leave the bald statement here: all believers ought to be able to understand the scriptures for themselves in some measure.
Most pastors not only believe this, but reckon their job is therefore to show people what the scriptures say, what they mean and how they apply to us. I was talking to someone who was going to be leading a bible study at our church about this. We both recognised you could run any bible study armed only with these three questions: (1) what does this say?; (2) what does it mean?; and, (3) how does that apply to us? Even in our sermons, nothing should really come as a surprise to any of our people as we’re speaking. Everything we say they ought to be able to see in the pages they’re reading.
We tend to recognise that bible study and sermon prep is often much more complicated than it needs to be. I’ve heard more than a few pastors say something similar to what I said above concerning bible study. The emphasis is always on the fact that our people can understand this and they can teach the bible. They’ve convince themselves they can’t and that they need the experts to come and tell them, but the truth is, they can make observations on the text, work out what it means and then apply it too. Most of the time they just lack confidence. Lots of pastors actually spend their time trying to build that confidence in our people, showing them how we do it so that they can do it for themselves. We’re aiming to show them that they can read and understand the scriptures and don’t need the experts to tell them; they have the greatest interpretive expert dwelling inside of them!
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Jesus Knows Exactly Who He has Called and What He has Called You to

By Stephen Kneale — 5 months ago

Jesus knows what he asks of us as his disciples. He knows what we’ll have to bear. He isn’t taken by surprise by any of it. And just as he died for all the sins he knew you would commit even before you did it, he chose you to be his before the foundation of the earth and committed you to faithful obedience – knowing precisely what that would entail – because he wants to spend eternity with you.

Two thoughts (both wrong) often crop up in the believer’s mind. The first is that this sin is really the one that will put us beyond reconciliation. We kind of accept Jesus died for our sin, but we wonder whether this particular one might just put us beyond his reach. He couldn’t possible forgive this one. If only he knew this was coming he would never have accepted me in the first place.
In truth, this sort of thinking is more like the accusations from Satan. The Devil loves to tempt us into sin and, when we fall into it, loves to get us thinking that Jesus will never have us now. But you won’t find anything in the mouth of Jesus or anywhere in the pages of scripture that come close to ever suggesting this is the case.
In fact, the truth is that Jesus knew you would do this particular sin before he died for it. As God, in eternity past with his Father, Jesus chose a people for himself and he took great joy in choosing them. He knew all about them, he knew how they would sin, he knew what they were like and he chose them nevertheless. He went to the cross not only knowing who he was dying for, but what he was dying for.
None of your sin takes Jesus by surprise. He knew you were going to do it even before you knew you were going to do it. He paid for it at the cross knowing you were going to do it long before you did it, before you knew you were going to do it, before you even existed to know anything at all! Jesus knows all about you and your sin. He knows exactly what he is getting into when he said, ‘I want them’. He knew the sins he was paying for and he paid for them. Not just some of them, or the worst of them, but all of them.
What that means is there is no sin you can commit that will remove you from the love of Christ if you truly belong to him. The sign that you truly belong to him is that you repent. But if you are a repentant believer, Jesus is sat with his Father reminding him as our advocate that this is just another of those sins that he has already paid for at the cross. It was a sin they both knew was going to be committed by you, which was paid for 2000 years ago and which didn’t put them off choosing you in the first place.
That is the essence of what Paul says in Romans 8:38-39.
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We Have to Understand Different People

By Stephen Kneale — 5 months ago

Nobody wants to be the pastor who foists himself on others when people aren’t for a visit nor the one who turns up unannounced to family gatherings when they aren’t welcome. Neither do they want to be the pastor who never visits anyone when they’re desperate for a visit and won’t go to anything despite repeated invites. Nobody wants to be the pastor who keeps arranging meetings that just make people uncomfortable. But people don’t tick the same way. We have to understand our people as individuals and then work out how to serve them best if we are going to avoid these things.

I have heard it said that, as a pastor, there are things you can miss and things you can’t. What people tend to mean is that there are certain things you will be expected to be at and other things that matter much less. Often people mean that, if you weren’t available for a party, nobody is too worried but if you miss a funeral of a longstanding member, people are going to notice. And there is lots of truth in the observation.
But I sometimes think we are a bit simplistic in how we think about these things. There are those who insist they would make sure they were at every funeral. Others who are clear to make sure they get to every major bash. On a lesser, but still important, level there are people who are keen to make sure everyone in the church gets a visit. One thing people don’t always factor in is a bit of nuance about knowing our people.
There are, of course, those who would be mortally offended if you do not attend the funeral of their close relative to support them. But there are just as many who would feel it is intruding on a family affair for you to turn up. The answer here is not to simply always go or to always stay home. The key is knowing our people and understanding who are the folks who definitely want you around and who are those who would be happier without you there.
The same goes for visitation. There are some people who can’t get enough visits. Any time the pastor it available, they would love him to pop round and have a cup of tea with them. There are others who are quite content not being visited unless and until they have a specific issue they want to discuss with you. Again, the answer lies not in always visiting or never visiting. The answer is, know your people and do what serves each of them.
Even the form of what we do with people needs a bit of nuance.
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You Don’t get to Pick Your Family and You do have to Love Them

By Stephen Kneale — 6 months ago

It is the Lord himself who determines who belongs. It is he who sets people in families and it is he who adopts into his family. That means we don’t get to choose who belongs, we don’t get to decide who we are and aren’t going to love and we don’t get to determine who can belong and how it will function. These things belong to Jesus.

A little while ago, a blog post did the rounds insisting that we should stop saying church is a family and that this is unbiblical. A fair few people responded with an upturned eyebrow and a, ‘huh?’ Amongst them, I did here. I am pretty sure church is meant to be family and the Bible very much refers to the church in familial terms.
One of the many ways church is like a family is that you don’t get to choose who belongs to it. I never asked to have the particular brother and sister that I do. I just arrived and found one of them there already and the other one joined us later. I had no say in the matter. Nor, it turns out, do you get to choose the kind of people in your family either. We have some shared traits, but we’re also quite different people too. It’s entirely possible we might never have become friends had we met some other way but we weren’t related (obviously, both my siblings are privileged to know me…)
The church, a bit like that, is called to be a family. We aren’t supposed to have any specific say in who joins us; we ultimately get the people God has decided to make show up. Nor are we called to only reach one particular kind of people. I am on record on this blog – I don’t think homogenous unit principle churches are a great expression of the manifold wisdom of God in the gospel which specifically removes such barriers and distinctions. I do not think it is legitimate for churches to insist that they are only for or will only reach one kind of person. The church is a family, created by God, that doesn’t get to choose who belongs. Only Jesus gets to do that and only he gets to set what criteria exists to join.
One of the beauties of the church is when we are drawn from many different tribes, tongues and nations, and express our differing cultures in the life of the church and yet all belong together as one people. It is manifestly a manifestation of the gospel when we see such different people welcomed into the same family, all belonging together on the same terms and all in community together that is not centred on personalities or preferences or culture or anything other than the saving gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. We don’t get together because we have some shared affinity; we get together because we belong to the same family even though we are drawn from as varied a range of backgrounds as you can imagine.
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Following Jesus Will Make Your Life Harder

By Stephen Kneale — 6 months ago

Only genuine belief in the goodness of God and his commitment to his promises will get anyone to say “yes” to a deal that will make our lives harder. Why suffer for the sake of Christ? Because he calls us to do it and we believe he is good and he will work for our good in it.

God is not shaken by our honesty at how circumstances feel. We sometimes seem to think the only acceptable Christian response to anything terrible is to say, ‘God is good’ or ‘God is working this for good’ or some other Christian cliché. Those things are true, of course. God is good. God is working whatever it is for our good. But knowing that in our head doesn’t necessarily change how it feels.
I doubt Paul, when he was having his head bashed in with rocks for preaching the gospel, was going ‘God is working all things for my good’. Paul, I suspect, theologized about it later. Sometimes things just suck. We know our theology, we believe it, but what is happening is just awful. God isn’t offended nor undermined when we admit it.
It bears asking what we think we’re doing anyway by pretending to God—who knows everything—that we don’t feel the way we do. Like he’ll be fooled if we just go, ‘praise God because he’s good’, as if he doesn’t know how terrible we’re feeling. I think many of us are tempted to pray in such a way that you basically throw theological facts at God that he already knows, almost cliched phrases, to cover up the fact that you just feel awful, wish things would stop and frankly you think what you’re suffering is God’s fault! If I believe in a sovereign God, to some degree, I clearly do (theologically) think it is God’s fault. And if not quite so theologically driven, I am well aware—just like the rubbish Jeremiah had to put with simply because he was faithful—that much of the time it is doing what God wants i.e. being faithful that is the cause of my trouble.
The truth is, God knows what we think. He knows we believe what’s true. He knows, despite that, we feel awful because the situation is terrible. He isn’t undermined or upset when we admit we feel like we’re in the pit and we wish he’d do something about it. He isn’t even undermined when we tell him—because he knows we think it already—that we think it’s his fault. He’s sovereign, he’s in control, so why doesn’t he do anything. God is perfectly happy for us to tell him what we feel because he knows already. You’re not going to surprise him. We’re foolish if we think we can hide our true feelings from him.
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Nobody Can Win Against God; Nobody Can Lose with God

By Stephen Kneale — 6 months ago

If we know the God who always wins is with us, if we know those who stand against him can’t win, we can share the gospel boldly and speak of the greatness of Jesus faithfully, knowing – hard as some people’s response to us might be – the God who always wins is on our side so we cannot possibly lose.

In Jeremiah 20, the prophet accuses God of deceiving or seducing him into being a prophet against his will. In effect, he accuses God to making him a prophet and it bringing him nothing but hassle.
Landing hard on the idea of winning and losing, Jeremiah explains the bind he is in. If he speaks God’s Word he gets flak from the people. If he doesn’t speak, he has inner torment at not doing what is right as the Holy Spirit, or his conscience, or both burn him up inside. He says, if I speak I’m hurt outwardly and if don’t speak I’m hurt inwardly. I can’t win. But though Jeremiah can’t win, God will win. God wants Jeremiah to speak so Jeremiah will speak. If he stands against God’s plan, Jeremiah knows he cannot win.
But the flipside of that is also true. Although Jeremiah has got to speak because it’s what God wants him to do, if he’s on God’s side then he can’t lose. The persecutors are against God so can’t win. But God is with Jeremiah so he can’t lose.
Jeremiah doesn’t just say I can’t win. Instead, knowing that God always wins, and God is with him, Jeremiah says: we will win. With God against them, Jeremiah’s enemies can’t win.
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The Word that Cannot be Bound Offers Hope that Cannot Fail

By Stephen Kneale — 6 months ago

God’s Word is true and cannot be bound. God’s Word gives us a sure and certain hope for our future. That hope means, though we might suffer for it now, we have good reason to press on because we’ll be vindicated in the end.

We might faithfully speak God’s truth but where people believe lies, being right doesn’t mean we’ll be well received. The prophet Jeremiah spoke God’s truth and was right about everything he said. That didn’t stop him being beaten and put in the stocks. It didn’t stop people hating him because they hated his message.
Truth is always true but the truth is people don’t always welcome the truth. God’s Word may be right, but people don’t always want to hear what is right. We may share God’s Word as it is but people may hate us for it.
Nevertheless, it doesn’t matter how much people hate God’s Word or what they do to God’s people. God’s Word can’t be stopped. Truth remains true whether people want to hear it or not. God’s Word remains true whether people welcome it or not. God’s Word will come to pass whether people respond well to it or actively stand against it.
We may face the sharp end of the world’s hatred of God’s Word. We may be harmed and persecuted because of God’s Word. But the world cannot stop God’s Word. He promises that we’ll be vindicated in the end.
Unfortunately, knowing you’re right doesn’t make harm and persecution feel good.
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Why the Absolute Sovereignty of God is Good

By Stephen Kneale — 7 months ago

His sovereignty even over our very decisions and choices (including that to choose him) is good because it means none of our decisions and choices are the ones that ultimately derails his plans for the world, for his people or for us in particular. I am convinced that CH Spurgeon had it right: ‘The sovereignty of God is the pillow upon which the child of God rests his head at night, giving perfect peace.’

Some people really don’t seem to like belief in the absolute sovereignty of God. I don’t want to presume what, exactly, offends them about it. I just know that it does. But as an absolute sovereignty of God believer, I thought I would outline a few of the benefits that such a doctrine, if true, might bring us.
An Ordered Universe
If God is absolutely sovereign over all things, it means there is an ordered universe in which nothing ultimately happens by chance. The great thing about that is it means all things – even particularly difficult and heinous things – have some ultimate, good purpose behind them. It obviously doesn’t make the bad thing good in and of itself. Of course not. But it does mean the bad things isn’t just unremittingly bad. God does have a good purpose, in and ultimate sense, even in this.
Security in God’s Plan for my Life
One of the many handwringing things that Christians sometimes work themselves up about is whether they are “in God’s will”. There can be something about wondering whether we are “in God’s will” that has a habit of just totally hamstringing us so that we effectively don’t do anything at all. But a belief in the absolute sovereignty of God means I can’t walk outside of God’s will. Not in an ultimate sense. I can do what he tells me he doesn’t want me to do; I can walk outside of his preceptive will that way. I can do things that don’t make God happy; I can walk outside of his will of disposition that way too. But I can’t walk outside of his decretive will; what God ultimately intends to happen in the world.
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