There is no need to compare yourself unfavorably to those who have achieved more success on the basis of their greater gifts. And that’s because God’s assessment of you is made on the basis of what you did with what he gave you. Even though the five-talent servant and the two-talent servant generated different results (a gain of five for the first and a gain of two for the second), they received the same reward. Why? Because they had been equally faithful with what God had entrusted to them so that their results were proportionally identical.

It is for good reason that we have both the concept and the word average. To be average is to be typical, to be—when measured against points of comparison—rather unremarkable. It’s a truism that most of us are, in most ways, average. The average one of us is of average ability, has average looks, will live an average lifespan, and will leave an average mark on the world. That’s just the way averages work.
Maybe it’s something about being well into middle age that has given me greater freedom to admit all the ways in which I am average or below average. As a young man, I may have harbored dreams of excelling at everything I attempted and of achieving each of my dreams. I assumed I had all it would take to succeed in every way, that I was far beyond average and far more than ordinary. But as a not-so-young man, I have a more realistic assessment of myself—an assessment that accounts for the ways in which I am average or less-than-average. And there are many.
In this vein, I often find myself thinking of the parable of the talents and the way the main character in the story distributes his wealth to his servants. “To one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability.”
This man knew his servants and had realistically assessed their capabilities. He knew that some were more able than others, and he distributed his wealth accordingly. To the most able he gave much and to the least able he gave less. And crucially, he passed no judgment on the varying abilities, as if the two-talent servant was lazy and needed to work harder or the one-talent servant was apathetic and ought to expect himself to enlarge his capacity. He distributed to each what he knew they were capable of handling, whether by nature, nurture, or some combination of the two.
From the parable we learn that God distributes opportunity according to ability, for “talents” are all that God distributes among his people—gifts, passions, abilities, influence, education, money, and anything else that can be used to honor (or dishonor) the Lord and carry out (or fail to carry out) his purposes. 
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The notion that the church can manage just fine online on any kind of ongoing basis is a fatal error. It is an unscriptural theology of creation and incarnation that believes the body of Christ can exist and function equally well in an abstract digital world, reducing the Lord’s Table to relative unimportance, and the preached Word to a ‘talk’ just as effectively delivered digitally via pre-recorded video or live feed. Such an idea is a modern form of Docetism, the heretical belief that Christ merely took on the appearance of humanity, and that his human form was an illusion. 

The Allure of Syncretism
Like many historical crises, the present societal response to the threat of a new virus is highlighting the condition of the Christian church and exposing long papered-over fissures in evangelicalism in terms of the nature and priorities of the Christian faith and the foundations of our public theology.
In Canada, the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada (EFC) responded to the mass government lockdown in reaction to the virus by signing an interfaith statement of hope, not only with Islamic, Hindu, Sikh, and Buddhist leaders, but with heretical cults, urging Canadians to hopefulness because the generic, nebulous concept of religious faith “assures us of the caring embrace of the Creator, a sacred relationship sustained by prayer.” This ‘creator’ is an unknown God in the document, an idol like the one Paul confronted in Acts 17:22-34.
Canadians are urged in this multifaith manifesto to recognize that “Religion and spirituality can indeed contribute to building people up, to providing a sense of meaning, inner strength, new horizons and openness of hearts.” In view of this, the statement goes on, “As religious leaders, we wish to emphasize, especially in times like these, the power and importance of prayer.” Since Hindus and Buddhists neither recognize nor pray to an infinite-personal God, Muslims worship an unknown, non-relational being that is not triune, and Mormons deny the divinity of Christ, exactly what kind of shared meaning and inner strength can be gained from this polytheism is unclear. Before what or whom, exactly, are Canadians being urged to supplicate in prayer?
These kinds of spiritually bankrupt gestures are actually informed by pagan spirituality. They do nothing to witness to the salvation and Lordship of Christ, the hope of the gospel, the power of prayer to the living God or the cause of the religious freedom of any community. What they do accomplish is to obscure the clarity of Christian witness, the defense of the faith and true love of neighbor. Where in this statement is the God Paul preached at Mars Hill, and the Man he has appointed as judge of all the earth by raising Him from the dead? The Christian God vanishes into the empty vocabulary of pantheistic spirituality.
As far as the lockdown of the churches is concerned, the EFC joins other religions in calling for an unquestioning compliance with government policy in which they promise to be a model: “We urge all people in Canada to listen and follow attentively the directions of our public health officials and government leaders. We, as religious leaders, pledge to lead by example.” There is no call for serious civic engagement, keeping elected and non-elected officials accountable, nor a commitment to reopen churches as soon as possible; neither are any concerns raised over religious and civil liberties. It is a document with which any dictatorial regime would have been most happy.
Yet the EFC is clearly not representative of large swathes of scripturally faithful evangelical churches in Canada. Despite a widespread apathy in regard to culture, loss of distinctly Christian vision and naive statism among Christians – as seen in Canadian blogger Tim Challies’ recent article thanking God for government[1] – many leaders do not think that interfaith statements of hope, lemming-like support of government measures, and lockdown of the church for the foreseeable future is fine and necessary, and they are challenging the status quo. I had the privilege of spearheading, with Pastor Aaron Rock, a provincial campaign to reopen churches in Ontario which have been shut down despite businesses, retail and factories opening up. Over 400 churches have now signed our letter and counting.[2] The EFC would do well to begin a similar campaign for faithful churches to get behind.
The Illusion of Safety
Yet things appear to be worse elsewhere. Turning to the influential and frequently trend-setting motherland, a recent Evangelical Alliance (EA) article by Danny Webster is making the rounds, entitled “The Media Have it Wrong. Churches are not rushing to reopen their Doors.”[3] If this is a true reflection of evangelical opinion across the Atlantic, then the Covid-19 related social crisis has only further highlighted the precipitous decline of the evangelical mind in Britain. Perhaps we should all be asking ourselves whether in some measure we deserve our present exile and if so, will we learn anything from it? Because of the popularity and prevalence of the opinion expressed by the EA in the Western churches generally, Webster’s article warrants further analysis.
Webster and the EA apparently believe that the state’s treatment of churches as equivalent to restaurants, bars and cinemas is appropriate. It strikes me as tragic that the EA can find no evidence of UK church leaders anxious to get the churches open as soon as possible, suggesting instead that the vast majority of pastors implicitly support the notion that the people of God gathering for Word and sacrament and its wider ministry in the community is non-essential at this time. For the EA, being a good witness in our cultural moment means passive compliance with government policy and protecting people, or being ‘safe’ means not meeting at all. If it were in fact the church’s primary mandate to keep everyone safe from all risk, then the persecuted churches in communist and many Islamic nations today are dangerously irresponsible for continuing to meet and develop underground movements, because all such action exposes their congregants to extreme risk. Perhaps those Christians have something profoundly significant in mind in terms of the overall wellbeing of the church of Jesus Christ that makes trusting the sovereign God with the ordinary risks of life more important than the illusion of safety.
Webster uses familiar missiological phrases about the role of the church being to “proclaim Christ and to witness to his kingdom coming,” but he argues, “we do not do this by increasing the risk of harm to those we love and those we want to come to know Jesus.” Of course, this argument begs the real question about how to measure the harm of the present lockdown of the churches weighed against risks of infection, and overlooks the radical reductionism involved in reducing human health and wellbeing to biology and avoidance at all costs of exposure to viruses. And exactly how the indefinite lockdown of churches and mass quarantine of God’s people does enable us to ‘faithfully proclaim Christ’ and ‘witness to his kingdom coming’ – as like children we hide in the sofa cushions and heroically save the nation in our pyjamas via Zoom – is left unexplained.
I should add, whilst the Bible has important things to say about quarantining the seriously sick, you will not find a scriptural text where Christ or His apostles hid from the diseased and destitute, the lonely, depressed or dying in the interest of loving and saving them. If ever Christians should be wearied by empty evangelical platitudes to justify our inaction, it’s now.
The Abandonment of our Post
I have no doubt the article expresses a majority ‘evangelical’ opinion, but the real question is whether it represents a biblical and faithful response to an unprecedented indefinite lockdown of the church by civil government; is our response consistent with the historic witness of God’s people? At times like this, the truth and power of the gospel of the kingdom must be seen and heard – the Christian faith should come into its own as it has since plagues and panic-struck Rome in the time of the early Church. Yet some are actually abandoning the historic practices and gospel ministry tradition of God’s people in times of panic, sickness and crisis by hiding or fleeing. Some weeks ago, it was widely reported that members of the Church of England hierarchy (not the civil government) actually banned their own clergy[4] from ministering to the sick and dying (whether from Covid-19 or not) and even prevented them from streaming Easter services alone in their church buildings.
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Written by David S. Huffman |
Saturday, October 29, 2022
Authentic Christian fellowship is not about friendly chats over coffee and donuts, but about our shared relationship and communion with God. This should then lead us to a much deeper way of relating to one another. Here I would simply draw attention to our conversations with one another. They should have a more spiritual quality about them. Indeed, this is the very thrust of what we read about the believers in Jerusalem following Pentecost. Those who had received the word through Peter’s preaching of the gospel and were baptized “devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers”(Acts 2:41, 42). Jerry Bridges helpfully explains that the fellowship spoken of here was “sharing with one another what God was teaching through the Scriptures.” It was “an important part of true [Christian] community.” It is what distinguished or set apart believers from all other types of associations. 

Fellowship. It is a word that is common among Christians. Of course, it isn’t a word that is exclusive among believers. The English word itself, according to the Oxford Languages online dictionary, conveys a “friendly association, especially with people who share one’s interests.” Generally, such a friendly association among those who share a common interest entails some type of social activity. It might be meeting up at sporting event to watch their team play or attending a concert of their favorite musical artist. People gather with one another at bars, restaurants, and homes for meals. A service project motivated out of a common concern may also bring people together as well. Whatever has bonded them together, such gatherings may rightly be regarded as a type of fellowship. 
To be sure, there is common ground here when we begin to think of Christian fellowship. There is no question that believers share common interests and goals. Yet too often Christians can associate fellowship as primarily limited to gatherings with one another for meals or other social activities. Yet, the biblical idea of fellowship penetrates much deeper. As believers, we share a common identity and a common life in Jesus Christ. Authentic Christian fellowship yields a deeper connectedness to other believers than mere common interests and goals (though it includes these things). It entails a vital union with Christ and communion with God. Out of these two foundational principles flow the kind of character that should typify believer’s relationships with one another. 
I should state here that my thoughts on this matter have been greatly influenced by two people, the 15th century Puritan John Owen (1616-1683) and the late Jerry Bridges (1929-2016) who served as a longtime staff member of The Navigators. I commend their works to you, particularly Owen’s Communion with God and Bridges’ True Community. In view of the limited space for this article, I want to draw attention to what genuine Christian fellowship ought to look like in practice as the fruits of our common bond in Christ.
First, genuine Christian fellowship begins with union with Christ. In 1 John 1:3, the apostle wrote, “that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.” The word for fellowship here is the Greek word koinonia, which can also be translated as partnership, participation, sharing, and contribution. The key point of this text, for our purposes, is that the foundation for fellowship with the apostolic witnesses and, thus, with God the Father and God the Son is believing apostolic witness. And this witness or testimony (cf. 1 John 1:2) concerns the “word of life,” that is the gospel, the good news revealed in the person and work of the Son, Jesus Christ. There is a content of knowledge that must be affirmed as true and embraced by faith if there is to be any true fellowship. In 1 John 4:1-6 we see that denying that Jesus has come in the flesh is a characteristic of everything that is antichrist. It is a tacit denial of the testimony of the apostolic witnesses who heard with their ears, saw with their eyes, and touched with their hands the “word of life” (1 John 1:1). If we would enter into this fellowship, then we begin by believing the word of life as he is proclaimed through his chosen witnesses. Fellowship with God begins, in the apostle Paul‘s words, when we are ”baptized into Christ Jesus.” That is, when we believe the gospel. We are united with him, by faith, in his death and in a resurrection like his (Romans 6:2-5). 
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