We need people who are self-starters, able to create new ministry opportunities and manage them well so that the work can grow. We need people who like the idea of being given freedom and flexibility to make the most of the opportunities on our doorstep. Maybe that sounds like something you would like to do. Maybe that sounds like an environment that you would enjoy. If so, maybe you can get in touch with us.

You may or may not know that our church is currently looking for a second full time worker. If you are interested, you can read the full advert here. It is fair to say, the advert somewhat divided opinion.
In part, that was because we are not particularly concerned about specific job titles. Nor, indeed, are we very concerned about narrowing down exactly what the person is going to do. We have always taken a principle of expecting people to look at what is currently going on – both in the church and more widely in the town – and ask themselves how they are going to quantitively and/or qualitatively add to the existing work. It has long been our belief that people will be far more engaged with what they are excited to be doing than what we have told them they must do.
Someone recently asked me, given this broad view, what actually prompted us to create a position? The answer to that is simple: the need. The need both in the town and in the church. We need people who will reach the lost and disciple the saved. We are quite open on the question of means of doing that, but there are 240,000 people in our borough and not a right lot of gospel ministry. Within our church, there are many people from unchurched backgrounds – and we have ongoing contact with many unbelievers – all of whom need someone to share the gospel with them and, if they know him, build them up in the Lord Jesus.
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“Sovereignty characterizes the whole Being of God. He is sovereign in all His attributes. He is sovereign in the exercise of His power. His power is exercised as He wills, when He wills, where He wills. This fact is evidenced on every page of Scripture. For a long season that power appears to be dormant, and then it goes forth with irresistible might.”

At our weekly Theology Breakfast, we have been looking at the Doctrine of God the last couple of weeks. Yesterday, we were thinking about both the attributes of God and the providence of God. The latter of those led to a helpful discussion on the nature of God’s sovereignty with some excellent questions coming up from it.
I would have gladly sat there much longer dealing with the questions, but I was preaching elsewhere in the morning so had to dash off to get to where I was preaching. Later in the afternoon, I encouraged someone – who was asking great questions – to grab a copy of The Sovereignty of God by A.W. Pink to help think through those questions further. I was pleased to hear they had already (before I suggested it) taken it upon themselves to buy a copy from our book stall. Even in hard places and supposedly non-reading cultures, this is why it pays to give away books, expect people to read and have a book stall available!
Anyway, as I suggested getting a copy of The Sovereignty of God, I was minded to grab my battered old copy off the shelf and start reading it. Though the language is a bit archaic, it’s still readable. It is mercifully short too. But the truths it packs into the book are brilliant and punchy. So, rather than write anything myself, I just thought I would give you an extended quote from Pink on why the absolute sovereignty of God matters (and, if you want my particular thoughts on that, you can get them here instead).
How different is the God of the Bible from the God of modern Christendom! The conception of Deity which prevails most widely today, even among those who profess to give heed to the Scriptures, is a miserable caricature, a pathetic travesty of the Truth. The God of the twentieth century is a helpless, effeminate being who commands the respect of no really thoughtful man. The God of the popular mind is the creation of a maudlin sentimentality. The God of many a present-day pulpit is an object of pity rather than of awe-inspiring reverence. To say that God the Father has purposed the salvation of all mankind, that God the Son died with the express intention of saving the whole human race, and that God the Holy Spirit is now seeking to win the world to Christ; when, as a matter of common observation, it is apparent that the great majority of our fellow-men are dying in sin, and passing into a hopeless eternity: is to say that God the Father is disappointed, that God the Son is dissatisfied, and that God the Holy Spirit is defeated. We have stated the issue baldly, but there is no escaping the conclusion. To argue that God is “trying His best” to save all mankind, but that the majority of men will not let Him save them, is to imply that the will of the Creator is impotent, and that the will of the creature is omnipotent. To throw the blame, as many do, upon the Devil, does not remove the difficulty, for if Satan is defeating the purpose of God, then Satan is Almighty and God is no longer the Supreme Being.
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There can sometimes be a reflex in churches that insists every effort must be made to include everyone all of the time. Certainly, if everyone can make one time and nobody can make another, it makes sense to think about that and make decisions accordingly. But in the end, no church can do everything.

Whenever talk of something a church is doing comes up, it doesn’t take long before all the whataboutery starts. It’s great that we’re providing X, but what about Y? It’s great that X is on at this time, but what about all the people who can’t make that time? It’s great that you are reaching this group of people, but what about that group of people? It’s great that you provide for this need, but what about that need? On and on and on it goes.
Now, don’t get me wrong, it can often be good to think about different things you might do as a church. Is it possible to meet a particular need that you currently aren’t is a good thought process to go through. If we are trying to serve people in the church, might moving times allow a different demographic to join in? Are people being unnecessarily excluded or are we doing things because there is only one particular way the thing will work? Are we simply blind to certain needs and people and knowing about them might alter what we do? All these are valid questions to ask and think through. The problem is not in their being asked, nor in their being thought through, but in the stymying effect whatabouttery can have on actually doing anything at all.
Let me offer you two very freeing thoughts when it comes to the church, its activities and what it might care to do. First, no church can possibly do everything. Second, not everything is for everyone. Both are absolutely okay.
First, no church can possibly do everything. If we build our church around a felt-needs approach, we will inevitably miss out some people’s felt needs. It is impossible for any church to perfectly serve the felt needs of everyone in it all the time. There will inevitably be times when somebody feels they have particular needs that aren’t being met. More to the point, the church does not exist to meet every felt need under the sun. It exists to makes disciple-making disciples and to equip them for works of service by allowing the Lord to do his work by his Word and Spirit. Whatever people’s felt-needs might be, the church is primarily there to meet a specific need.
If the result of putting on a women’s group is an immediate call of but what about the men? or what about the youth? we are essentially saying, unless we can run all these things, we will run none of them. Maybe we are in a position to run a youth group but aren’t in a position to run a men’s group. That doesn’t mean we don’t run the youth group. It just means we run what we are able, when we are able. The point isn’t to exclude and insist certain demographics don’t matter, it is just a basic response to the question, what is it feasible for us to do right now? If no church can do everything, we have to think about what we can do. If we are intent on doing what we can, it makes no sense not doing what we can do simply because there are some other things that we cannot do.
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We are not called to produce a certain yield, we are called to be faithful. The results, in the end, are his alone. And we can be happy with that because it frees us from the tyranny of thinking they rest upon us.

We all know that the results in ministry aren’t up to us. You do know that, right? My working theory is that enough of us didn’t know this, or acted as though we didn’t know this, that the Lord brought covid to us so that he could show us in no uncertain terms how little he needs us.
When we were entirely shut down and could not readily meet, the Lord seemed to grow our people. When we could run no programmes nor spend time with anybody meaningfully, the Lord seemed to be at work saving people. It is a lesson I am slow to learn and so the Lord continues showing me again and again. He does not need me to do what he wants doing.
I am minded of the person who became a believer whilst we were locked down and couldn’t do any outreach. I am reminded of the other person who trusted in Christ by engaging with all sorts of stuff I wouldn’t recommend to anyone. I am reminded of the person who, though a believer themselves, was in a church with radically different doctrine and a faulty understanding of the gospel. They figured what they were hearing wasn’t right simply because they were reading the Bible and saw it didn’t tally. I can think of several other stories besides.
In all these cases, we had very little (if anything) to do with it. The Lord worked by his Spirit through his Word to achieve what he wanted to achieve. In one case where something we did seemed to play a part, it did not lead to someone joining our church. They went to another church (a good, gospel preaching church) for various reasons. In the other cases, we had nothing really to do with it at all yet the Lord blessed our church as a result.

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God will prosper his people in Christ. I believe all things will work to our good. I believe throughout our lifetime that good is not necessarily material, but to form us into the likeness of Jesus. But I also believe that when he has finished doing so, he will share with us every good thing that belongs to him. We will lack nothing in him and we will prosper in every meaning and sense of that word in a perfect new creation with him. 

Yesterday, I wrote about how Romans 8:28 points us to a particular good to which all things are working for those who love Christ. These are not general goods, or wish-dreams that we have imagined, but the greatest good of being conformed to the likeness of Jesus. God has ordered everything in the universe with the specific intention of making his people like his Son.
As part of that, I said we often imagine goodness in a lesser form. We tend to think in terms of the goodness of health, wealth and happiness. Yesterday, I pushed away from that towards the truth of Romans 8:29 which insists the goodness of becoming like Jesus is a greater good than such things.
But it is hard to get away from the reality that health, wealth and happiness are good things. Again, even a cursory glance at the Old Testament shows you how such things are often built into the promises of God to his people. There is a reason why some assumed King Solomon was the one that God was going to send. His reign marked the high point of Israel’s history. They were wealthy, happy and enjoyed peace on their borders. These were part and parcel of what God promised his people.
Reformed people can get a bit funny about this stuff. It is a point Dale Ralph Davis makes so helpfully and graphically that I previously highlighted it here (and frequently think on it). He says:
We can say that 1 Kings 10 speaks a word of testimony, namely, that the prosperity of the people of God is always a gift of Yahweh’s goodness, which (I think) demands of us both gratitude (lest we idolize the gifts in place of God) and joy (lest we despise God’s gifts as though they were sinful). Some have difficulty with the latter response in 1 Kings 10. In spite of the positive tone of the writer commentators seem convinced that all that gold can’t be good and so feel impelled to emphasize the clouds on the horizon for Solomon’s kingdom. It reminds me of what missionary Don McClure once told about the Nuer people in the Sudan: ‘the Nuer believes that milk is a beverage for women and children, but he likes it so well that he cannot bear to see it all go to the women, so he makes a cocktail with a bite by adding cow urine, which makes it a man’s drink.’ That is, he can’t enjoy it unless he ruins it first. I wonder if we don’t do that with 1 Kings 10 – feel obligated to moan over ‘materialism’ and all that could possibly go wrong with such bounty rather than acknowledging that it is the blessing of the Lord that makes rich (cf. Prov 10:22) and being content to enjoy that should he give it. Must we, to stretch illustration into analogy, pour cow urine over the text in our panic to stay out of bed with the whore we call the health-and-wealth gospel?
Dale Ralph Davis, 1 Kings: The Wisdom & the Folly, Christian Focus, 2002, p. 104-5
Anything that smacks of the prosperity gospel – even if scripture expressly says it itself – must be shot down. We don’t want anyone thinking God might want them to actually be healthy, wealthy or happy do we? Well, that sort of thinking can end up making us deny what the Bible plainly says. Solomon’s reign being one such example.
What does that have to do with Romans 8:28-29? Because clearly that text does say that the good to which God works all things is conformity to the image of his son, Jesus Christ. It is right to say that good is higher than any other we might imagine. So, in what way might we do what Dr Davis tells us we ought not to do with this text?
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What is great about Romans 8:28 is not only that God is sovereign, nor that all things work together for our good, but that the good God has designed for us is far better than any good thing we might imagine for ourselves. Whatever good we can think of, God intends all things to work towards our ultimate good of becoming like Jesus. That good is far good-er than any goodly thing we might think of.

Romans 8:28 is one of those much beloved, oft quoted verses. Everybody likes it. It is the kind of thing people like to stick of mugs and t-shirts. If we’re going to hear about the sovereignty of God – which gets people hot under the collar for some reason – let’s think of it in Romans 8:28 terms. God’s sovereignty ultimately works for my good. That’s a truth we can get behind.
Unfortunately, as with the overwhelming majority of things ripped out of context, the truth of Romans 8:28 is usually massaged to mean whatever the person quoting it wants it to mean. If all things work for my good, then God will only ever do what is good for me. So far, so true. So, goes the reasoning, what is good? Money is good. Health is good. Every wish-dream I can possibly imagine must be good. If all things work together for good, God must surely be gearing up to give me all this stuff.
It doesn’t take a lot of thinking to see how many of things might prove not to be so good. If the history of Israel tells us anything it is that when everything is going pretty well, they do not suddenly start to thank God and believe in him more, but forget him and think all is well. Far more dangerous than difficult circumstances that cause us to press into our reliance on God are good times where we fool ourselves into thinking we have no need for him. Then, of course, there are the various biblical warnings specifically against these things at any rate. The New Testament has lots to say about storing up treasures on earth and seeking after money. These apparently good things are not warned against for nothing.
We all know instinctively anyway that too much of a good thing is a problem. Just think of “good” weather, for example. Good, in the eyes of many in the West, means pleasantly warm and sunny. But again, Israel knew only too well the problems associated with that sort of good weather all the time. What they were usually crying out for was rain.
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The effects of sin in the world are not mistakes on God’s part, but means by which his glory will one day be fully displayed either in the salvation of some from their sin or the pouring out of his righteous wrath against unrepentant sin. That lack of mistake on God’s part, does nothing of itself to help us with the question of what is sinful and what is good. For that, we need other biblical data and other objective data from the world around us. Which perhaps means we need to be a bit more careful when and where we employ the God makes no mistakes argument because we might just be accidentally propping up a Pelagian worldview that will lead people away from the gospel, rather than towards it.

Yesterday, I took a swipe at the test of time argument. I don’t think we should use it. In my view, it isn’t a fair and proper test. Indeed, it proves very little if anything. It is a mere observation that something has been around a long time, it does not help us determine how good that thing actually is.
Well, that brought to mind another line that Christians like to throw around. A line that is factually true, but doesn’t necessarily get us very far in discussions. Which is to say, I’m not sure how helpful it is to employ it either. That line is, God doesn’t make mistakes.
Of course, taken at face value, that is true. God does not make mistakes. He is sovereign Lord of the universe who works all things according to the counsel of his good will. In other words, God makes no mistake. What is, is, simply because he has ultimately determined it would be.
The problem is that this tends to lead to a Pelagian calculation. If God makes no mistakes, then what God makes must be good. God made me. Therefore, the way I am must be good. As a basic syllogism, people think of this way:

God only makes what is good.
God made me.
Therefore, I am good.

In other words, God makes no mistakes and God made me like this, therefore I must be exactly as God intended me to be. It doesn’t take a genius to see how this sort of Pelagianism is applied to all manner of current cultural discussions.
In answer to some of those cultural discussions, believers sometimes argue that God makes no mistakes. So, if you believe you have been born in the wrong body, but God makes no mistakes, the body you have must be the body that God wants you to have. Which seems reasonable until somebody turns around and agrees, God makes no mistakes, and he has given me certain innate desires which must be the kind of desires he wants me to have. Therefore, things God says are not right in his Word are countered with a God-makes-no-mistakes Pelagianism to affirm as good what God calls not good. At which point, we are left spluttering that isn’t what we meant; we were talking about characteristics beyond our control. As the person insists such things are beyond their control, somebody else arrives, hearing that God makes no mistakes over our bodies, and begins to ask about their severe disability. If God makes no mistakes, are you suggesting my disability is good? We might quickly grasp hold of a line that it isn’t part of God’s original design but sin means our bodies don’t work as they ought, at which point the original person says ‘like being born in the wrong body, you mean?’
My point here isn’t to suggest that God does make mistakes. Nor that the argument that God makes no mistakes is fundamentally untrue. Rather, that it is a line that is so capable of misunderstanding and rests on a number of presumptions that we might be best not saying it. Or, if we do say it, only after we have given umpteen caveats about what we actually mean.
The real issue is not really whether God makes mistakes or not. We know he doesn’t, the issue is whether what we see in the world is good or not and, more to the point, how God intends to work through it for his good purposes. The cross, for example, appeared like a big mistake to Jesus’ disciples, but it was in fact God’s redemptive plan in action. Did God make a mistake when Jesus was crucified? No. It’s just that what his disciples expected God would be doing, what they assumed were his plan and purposes, were not actually his plan at all. God doesn’t make mistakes, but we don’t always grasp what he is actually doing.
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The power of the gospel is seen most clearly and fully when we have nothing in common with people we love and care for – and with whom we are genuinely friends in real ways – other than Jesus and his gospel. Then, we are community that has been founded on the gospel. Then, we are people who can only point to Jesus as the grounds of why we are even here and friends with these people. 

One of the points we frequently reiterate in our church is that the power of the gospel is seen more clearly in the fact that we are all different people, from different backgrounds, countries and ethnicities. For example, what do I – a white, British, postgraduate-educated man – have in common with a black caribbean lady who left formal education at secondary level other than we speak the same language? Even then, we don’t exactly use all the same words. We don’t look like each other, we don’t sound like each other, we don’t speak like each other, we’re not interested in the same things either and I’m pretty sure we both have very different myers-briggs personality test scores. By any measure, we have very little in common.
For others in my church, it gets even worse. Not only do we not look and sound like each other, and have very different interests, but we literally do not speak the same language. We are different ethnicities, nationalities and even language groups. We can do our best to communicate, but there’s no pretending that isn’t sometimes a struggle. Short of merely being people, what on earth do we have in common with each other on paper?
In both these cases – and in many more besides – I struggle to believe I would hang out and spend any time with these people if it weren’t for the church. I struggle to believe they would have any interest in hanging out with me if it weren’t for the church either. And not just the church, which is ultimately just a group of people gathering, but the gospel around which the church is built.
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If it isn’t a baby really, we should be telling the Ferdinands to get over themselves and stop making mountains out of mole hills. It is not different to having some skin peel off. It is a total nonsense to make such things national news: couple distraught at clump of cells no longer existing. If, however, it is a real human life, not only is their sadness justified, it is entirely right and well placed. And as justifiable and proper as devastation at the loss of a child is, so too ought we to be horrified by the wanton destruction and murder of such same unborn children. But it clearly cannot be both.

Last week, I saw the sad news that Kate and Rio Ferdinand had lost their unborn baby. It doesn’t matter who you are, such things are always an absolute tragedy.
I was surprised by two things in the article. First, and the less, but nonetheless still, surprising thing was that this hit the news at all. That isn’t to diminish it, just to say I don’t tend to expect national newspapers to bother running these sorts of stories. Certainly not the kind of broadsheet I happened to read it in. I was surprised it was deemed especially newsworthy for most people.
But the much more surprising thing was the headline and nature of the content. The headline was very clear: Kate Ferdinand announces loss of her and husband Rio’s unborn baby. The content was even clearer still. It referred to them as having ‘lost their unborn child’ and reported that it was announced because ‘our baby had no heartbeat in our 12 week scan and I had to have surgery.’ I was surprised because their baby was referred to clearly as a baby and an unborn child despite only being 12-weeks old.
This is notable because we are continually told that babies of such an age are merely ‘clumps of cells’. They are usually referred to exclusively as foetuses. They are rarely referred to as babies or children.
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Our process, in the church, typically protect us as leaders. Multiple leaders let us share the burden of responsibility. Proper discussions amongst the elders, and real consultation with the membership, mean that more people can be brought onboard with whatever it is we hope to do.

If you are all about efficiency, the fastest way to get most things done is get one bloke, with one thing to do, and let him get on and do it. He can okay his own work, he can crack on with whatever he wants to do, he can do it straightaway and get going on it. If speed is what you’re after, get one person without a committee and let them get something done.
But sometimes there are processes we need to go through. And let’s make no bones about it, sometimes processes can be clunky. Sometimes they are frustrating. But there is usually a reason why we need to go through them. It doesn’t mean the process can’t be refined, streamlined or (in some cases) done away with altogether. But there is typically a reason it is there.
In the church, the fastest way to get stuff done as a pastor is to take unilateral decisions. Decide everything, on your own and then get it done. If efficiency is the only concern, or speed is of the essence, that is the way to do it. But usually, speed and efficiency are not the only – or even the main – considerations. We have people to take into account. The church doesn’t exist merely as a vehicle to get stuff done, it is a group of people bounded together in Christ who serve together in the cause of the gospel.

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